The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 17, 2375

« < » > Table of Contents

It was happening again. The ship just experienced a sudden loss of power. Fortunately, it wasn’t as bad as last time. Instead of returning to the timestream after a year, they were here when it happened, which meant there was still enough breathable air to keep them from dying within the next few minutes. The artificial gravity was gone, and the lights were off, but their Cassidy cuffs were still working, suggesting that they weren’t suffering from a direct impact of the Power Vacuum. Still, it was incredibly annoying. There should have been more than enough distance between them and the beam, even when accounting for the waves that go beyond the visible spectrum of light. Leona asked to gather all of the cuffs so they could try to siphon their fusion generators into the ship. Ramses said that wouldn’t be necessary. “Why not?” she asked.

He pushed himself off the wall, and floated down to his grave chamber. He opened it up, accessed a storage panel, and retrieved a box. “I was worried this would happen, so I came prepared.” He opened the box, and inside was another box. “The insulation worked. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but it’ll make it easier to open.” He casually tossed the outer box into the slowly thinning air.

“That’s some kind of power source?” Mateo asked.

“It’s a time battery,” Ramses said. “Or rather, it will be.” He set the inner box on the table, and activated the magnet to hold it in place. Then he flipped over just for fun, and got himself down to his seat, where he strapped in.

Everyone else did the same, though with less gymnastics. “You haven’t built it yet?” Angela questioned. “How are you going to charge it if we have no power to begin with?”

“Oh, it’s charged,” Ramses replied. “It just doesn’t exist right now. I programmed it to jump two hours into the future an hour before the Vacuum was scheduled to show up. When it returns, it will be more than enough to power up the reframe engine, and get us back to Earth.”

“You shouldn’t be able to store that much power in that small of a package,” Leona argued. “Now if it’s a fusion reactor, you might be onto something, but you called it a battery.”

“It is a battery, but it doesn’t store electricity. It’s not called a time battery because it travels through time. It stores temporal energy, which is the most powerful kind in the universe.”

“Where did you get it?” Leona pressed.

“I engineered it, obviously,” Ramses answered. “You don’t think I could do something like that?”

“No, I mean, where’d you get the energy? You usually spend more generating it than you get out of it, like fusion was back in ancient times.”

“I did spend more energy than I got out of it. But I used a stellaris collapsis, which is basically free. Two devices were attached to each other by a tether. I sent the collector through a portal, which exited close enough to the event horizon to create temporal dissonance. I then processed the energy using the device on my end, and charged the battery. And when I say I did these things, I barely did anything. I was too busy working on the limbo simulation. Ishida did most of the work. The Jameela Jamil has their own time battery. Actually, they have a battery of batteries, and they’re all larger than this one.”

“Could you have not just siphoned Hawking radiation, or rotational energy, from the black hole itself?” Olimpia asked.

Mateo was surprised she knew that a stellaris collapsis was another name for a black hole, since he had already forgotten learning that a while ago. What was Hawking radiation?

“Storing that would have been harder. Temporal energy works well in compact form, such as this thing right here.” He pointed to the still empty box.

Most of the team just nodded. “Do we have enough oxygen to last us until it shows up?” Mateo asked, feeling dumb.

“Plenty,” Leona answered. “That’s why we have microponics upstairs.” She looked at her watch. “We are coming up on midnight central, though. Did you not account for that?”

“When I said the battery was scheduled to return two hours after it disappeared, I really meant two hours and one year. We’ll just have to set the AOC to jump with us, instead of waiting for us. So I guess we will need to siphon some cuff fusion.”

“I see,” Leona said. “I suppose you already modified the ship to utilize our new power systems.”

Ramses smirked, and reached under the table. After a click, the center of the table popped up. He took hold of it, and pulled out a tube that Mateo never knew was there. “For those of you who don’t know, we use an antimatter drive for propulsion. Regular ol’ fusion isn’t good enough to reach the speeds we need, or power the reframe engine.” He kicked the base of the table with his foot. “That regular fusion, however, is more than enough to power internal systems. It’s always better to have redundancies. This will be our third redundancy. The battery goes in here, and can handle both propulsion, and the ship itself.”

“For how long?” Angela asked.

“That depends on how we use it, and how much loss the battery experienced from the time jump. Normally, we wouldn’t have to do that, but it obviously didn’t work as an emergency cache if the Power Vacuum drained it while it was still in the timestream.”

“This was a good call, Ramses,” Leona complimented. “I wish I had thought of it. I was just so concerned with Mateo, and the afterlife simulation.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Ramses said, dismissing her guilt. “That’s why we’re a team.”

They spent pretty much all of their time together now, so there wasn’t much for them to talk about. They were relatively silent for the rest of the hour, but Angela and Olimpia had some stories, so that kept them occupied a little. A year later, the indicator light on the box turned green, prompting Ramses to open it, and check on his special battery. “Perfect condition, 83% capacity; not bad.” He installed it in its housing like it wasn’t any more complex than a USB drive, and powered up systems. The tube receded back into the table, and the fresh air came on.

“All right, it works,” Leona said, only a little surprised. “Plot a course to the exit portal. I’ll try to contact the Jamil.”

“Neither one of those things may be possible,” Ramses said, looking at his screen.

Leona pulled up her own screen to find out what he was talking about. “This doesn’t make any sense. Where the hell are we? Where’s the megaportal?”

“Did the Power Vacuum knock us off course?” Angela guessed.

“There are two things it could have done. One, left us to drift not too terribly far from where we were, or two, pulled us into the portal with it. Either way, we should have an inkling of where we are. I’m not seeing any stars at all, just distant galaxies. This is...”

“Bonkers?” Ramses finished for her.

“Bonkers,” Leona agreed.

“Maybe we traveled through time,” Olimpia suggested. “The stars are always moving.”

“I thought of that,” Ramses said. “Which is why I ran a program that checks the date based on stellar drift. A good time traveler always does that.” He gently pulled Leona over by the shoulder, and pointed to his screen. “What the shit is that?”

“A galaxy?” Leona offered, unconvinced herself.

“A galaxy?” Ramses questioned, like it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard.

“A...hyperdense? Galaxy?”

“What is it?” Mateo asked, not feeling dumb anymore, because they were just being cryptic.

“You’re not missing anything here,” Leona told him. “We’re just as confused as you.” She cast her screen to the central hologram, showing them a big blob of light. “Those are stars, and they are very close together. It’s not enough for them to have chaotic gravitational pull on one another, but it’s not natural either.”

“How could it not be natural?” Olimpia asked. “You’re saying that someone moved these stars?”

“It’s doable,” Ramses explained. “It would take a hell of a long time, though.”

“Time ain’t nothin’ but a thang,” Angela said. It was a common aphoroid for time travelers, but it sounded rather odd coming from her lips.

“If that’s where all the stars are,” Olimpia began, “then that’s where all the planets are. Earth may be somewhere in that blob.”

“It would be virtually impossible to find,” Leona said, “even if that’s The Blob, formerly known as The Milky Way. There’s no frame of reference. We can’t even tell where we are. All we know is that we’re about thousands of light years away from that thing.”

“Still, shouldn’t we go there?” Olimpia continued. “Maybe we’ll receive more data as we get closer, and be able to make more informed decisions.”

“Maybe,” Leona said, unconvinced. “It could take a month to get there, assuming we’re as far from it as I think. It’s impossible to tell from here. We would be drowning in radiation, I’m not sure anyone still lives there.”

“Were you able to contact the Jamil?” Mateo asked.

“Yes, but we’re not receiving anything,” Leona said. “I sent a message, but no one’s there to hear it. We could be billions of years in the past, or even trillions of years into the future. Who the hell knows?” She tensed up, and looked around like a paranoid racoon.

“What is it?” Mateo asked.

“Usually when we say things like that, someone appears and tells us they have the answer. It’s more often than not the villain.” She continued to look around, prompting the rest of the team to do the same.

No one was there.

“I think we’re safe,” Mateo decided.

Leona pointed to him. “They sometimes show up after someone says something like that.”

They looked around some more. Still no one.

“We may be the only people left in this universe,” Ramses lamented. “Trillions of years is a long time. They could have set the stellar engines on autopilot, and then died out.”

“We don’t know anything,” Mateo reminded them. “Let’s not despair just yet.”

“We better hope someone is still around. We need other people,” Ramses concluded. “We’re going to run out of hydropellets and antimatter pods sooner or later. The time battery is a quick fix, and I can’t recreate it in the span of a single day. This ship is not designed to be completely self-sufficient. If I had had more time back when—”

“No one is blaming you for this, Ramses,” Leona hoped he understood. “We all love this ship, and we’re grateful. The Power Vacuum does not discriminate. It seems to have been even more powerful than we knew. We can only hope that our plan to redirect the beam worked as intended, even if it was the last thing we did.”

“Still,” Ramses said, “I would feel much better near a star—a safe star, free from dangerous gravitational disturbances, and hot hot heat—than out here in the void.”

“Aren’t there stars and planets in the void?” Angela asked. “Someone once told me there were more isolated rogues, actually, than there are in galaxies.”

“Probably,” Leona agreed, “but anyone powerful enough to consolidate a galaxy of stars is likely also capable of stealing intergalactic stars as well. Even if we could confirm that the blob was once the Milky Way, we don’t have the tools to measure its mass to figure that out. My estimate of how far we are is based on how far we were from the galactic core, but that operates under the assumption that we traveled through time, but not space.”

“Let’s scan the best we can,” Olimpia suggested, wincing with regret for letting it rhyme. “Maybe we’re parked ten light years from a Class-M planet, and we don’t even know.”

“Class-M planet,” Leona echoed with a laugh. “Thanks, I really needed that.”

“What did I say?” Olimpia asked.

Mateo patted her on the head like a puppy. “Welcome to the club.”

They did scan as best they could with the technology they had. They were able to detect a faint source of light that was anywhere between a few light years away to tens of thousands. The only way to measure its distance would be to compare its relative position to other celestial objects, of which there was none in that general direction. Furthermore, if it was being moved towards the blob like all the others, its location would be even more unpredictable, because they were seeing its light reach them from as far in the past as it was away from them in space. It was moving either way, but the stellar engines were almost certainly faster than natural stellar drift. Regardless, it was their only option, so they pointed the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez towards it, and took a leap of faith.

They left the timestream a day later, and returned to find themselves still in void space. They hadn’t reached the star, and in fact, couldn’t find it anymore. It could have been receding from them, for all they knew. They weren’t alone here, though. A massive ship was hovering above them. Oh boy.

« < » > Table of Contents

Extremus: Year 25

« < » > Table of Contents

Vice Admiral Perran Thatch stands at the podium. To his right is the newly appointed captain, Kaiora Leithe. To his left is the first lieutenant she chose, Corinna Seelen. Flanking them is Second Lieutenant Lars Callaghan, who will continue in this role until his 24-year shift is over. Also on stage is Kumara Bhasin. The crew voted on a new shift strategy for the head temporal engineer position. It is now scheduled to last 28 years. The education program is too long and difficult for them to have to worry about cycling a new person in every 12 years, and the additional four beyond the captain’s shift is there to allow for some continuity. It’s not technically the longest shift, though. The admiralty is a lifetime appointment, whether at the vice level, like Thatch and Belo, or full admirals, of which there is now none. Executive medical positions, like Dr. Holmes’ Chief Medical Officer, can last a lifetime as well. However, she is entitled to retire whenever she wants, as long as she secures a replacement. She is presently still active as the longest-serving member of the crew, and will probably die at her desk. She too is sitting on stage, next to Vice Admiral Olindse Belo, Former First Lieutenant Yitro Moralez, and the first two civilian Chairs.

The auditorium is full. Nearly every member of the crew is here, except for a skeleton crew left to monitor the ship. Some key civilians are here as well. The rest of the seats were filled by lottery. The whole ship can watch its broadcast, and only a handful of people are too busy, or don’t care enough to do so. It’s time for Thatch’s speech. “Normally, the previous captain will be where I am right now. In 24 years, a full admiral by the name of Leithe will pass the baton to her own replacement. Until then, I have been asked to introduce her to you. I’m sure it’s not necessary, as you already know her, because she’s been working on the crew for the last few years. Still, it’s my honor to officially acknowledge her role as the new Captain of the TGS Extremus. Hm. TG, transgalactic. We may need to change that name. Fortunately, that’s not up to me. Nor is it up to Captain Leithe.

“We are living in a democracy, run smoothly by a joint executive force of crew and government. Some of the latter are here today to witness the occasion. We welcome them, and recognize their authority...” He pauses to let the words soak in. It was the government that decided what to do about Former Admiral Halan Yenant’s actions. The crew was prepared to pardon him completely, but theirs was not the only voice of importance. He broke a shipwide rule, and for that, he has to suffer the consequences. Not everyone agreed with it. Thatch finally goes on, “as they recognize ours.” Subtle. “My point is that Captain Leithe is now your leader but she is not a dictator. Everyone has the right to their opinion, and the freedom to exercise it, within a set of acceptable parameters.” He gives Consul Keone Biskup a dirty look. He replaced former Consul—and True Extremist—Dvronen after he was sent to hock. He is not a terrorist, and no one thinks that, but Dvronen isn’t here to accept Thatch’s ire, so he’s misdirecting it. “Anyway, I have every confidence in Captain Leithe to fulfill her duties honorably, ethically...and justifiably. Members of the crew, citizens of the ship, I give you...Captain Kaiora Leithe, Third of Ten.”

The crowd claps and cheers. Kaiora and Thatch try to shake hands in the midst of it. Kaiora looks at her hand in confusion. “Just go with it,” he says quietly, before spinning around to shake Corinna’s. She’s equally confused. Before Kaiora can take the mic, he leans back over to it, “And don’t forget First Lieutenant Corinna Seelen!” The cheering had begun to die down, but now it returns to full volume.

“Thank you very much! Thank you, thank you,” Kaiora says when it’s her turn to speak. “I’ll keep my speech short, so you can all get to the refreshments in the mess hall. I have a meeting immediately following this, so I won’t be able to attend, but I hear they made some very nice Glisnian delicacies. I’m not sure what Glisnians even eat, but I’m excited to find out, so save me some. I’m also excited to begin my work on this ship. We’ve had some pretty rough times, but I for one believe that we are past the worst. We are...free and clear, so to speak.” This is a reference to their recent unauthorized course correction. “To that end, I would like to address the rumors that I will be proposing a vote on returning to our old route, or something similar. This is a divisive issue, and I currently have no intention to make any further change to our new vector. I will continue to listen to the advice of my admirals.” She gestures towards Thatch and Olindse. “And I will listen to the wishes of the crew, and the people. I will not let anyone bully me into a decision; on this matter, or any other.” This is a reference to the current civilian government administration.

She continues, “I plan to be a fair captain, and a patient one, and I hope we can keep moving forward. To another two!” The crowd echoes her. This is a reference to the approximate number of light years the ship travels in the span of a day. Kaiora steps back from the mic so they can still hear her, but not well. “I-S-W-Y.” This is an acronym for I Stand with (Halan) Yenant, and has become a not-so-secret signal to indicate one’s support of Halan’s unilateral decision to reroute the Extremus under threat of annihilation. It’s a bold statement, and could cost her her own support from others, but she has decided to take a stand, because she believes it’s the right thing to do. She leans back in, and finishes with, “thank you again.” She steps away, and walks towards Vice Admiral Thatch. They suddenly teleport to the hock together, as planned. The audience is left to sit with whatever interpretation of their speeches that they’re formulating.

The hock watcher—which may be the funniest sounding job on the ship—smiles proudly. “Captain,” he says with a nod. “Admiral.”

“Turn off monitoring, please,” Kaiora orders.

“Sir,” the hock watcher replies respectfully as he follows through. He then unlocks the gate, and lets them in.

The hock is the most secure section of the ship, for obvious reasons. If seen as a cross section above, it resembles a hexagonal flower, with smaller hexagons inside of the petals. The central area is where the hock watcher works. It’s raised above the cells. Lift platforms lead down to the center of a block of six cells, which could potentially accommodate two people each. Hopefully they would never have more than 72 prisoners. There has never been much crime here. Only three cells are occupied. True Extremist, Dvronen Vatal is in one. Regular extremist, Ovan Teleres is in another. Disgraced former admiral, Halan Yenant is in the third. Kaiora looks back at the hock watcher. “Unlock his door, and double check the soundproofing.”

“Sir,” he repeats.

The cell is much smaller than where Halan was used to living before he was placed here, and he is never allowed to leave, but it has everything he needs. He has his own toilet, sink, and shower. He has a closet with a few choices, and a laundry terminal. He makes his own food with a synthesizer that is reloaded with cartridges by a robot on the other side of the wall. It’s programmed with all known recipes, which is a privilege that he enjoys, while the other two do not. Similarly, they are allowed to busy themselves with computer games, like RPS-101 Plus, but they don’t have access to the interstellar repository of knowledge, nor networked media. Halan can look up anything he wants, but information is one way, and is only updated weekly. It does not include current events on the Extremus, except for very key developments, such as the induction of a new captain. He has no means of reaching out to anyone on the ship, or anyone else, for that matter. He’s fine here, he’s fine. Kaiora, and pretty much everyone in the inner circle, are worried about him, but he’s fine. “Congratulations.”

“I ordered them to let you watch, were you able to watch?”

“Yes,” Halan says. “It was an interesting ceremony.”

“We’re with you,” Thatch explains. “Just say the word, and you’re on that time shuttle with Omega and Valencia.”

Halan smiles. “No. I’m where I belong. These are the rules that we set forth—”

“Don’t quote me the handbook, Hal, this is bullshit.”

“This is how it has to be. The ship had to go into the intergalactic void to avoid crashing into Feizi, but that choice was never going to come free. My new digs is the price we paid, and I pay it gladly. Better me than someone else, or worse, the mission. Please don’t try anything.” He looks now to Kaiora. “And don’t think that you’re going to be coming here for my advice, like Olindse did. I was an admiral back then, I’m not anymore.”

“No one has to know if we talk,” Kaiora argues.

“They’ll find out,” Halan contends. “Remember what I taught you?”

“Don’t let Callaghan near the PA system?”

“The other thing.”

“Three things cannot long be hidden,” she begins. “The sun—”

Halan says the second word with her, “the moon—”

“They all three say the third, “and the truth.”

“Why do we still say that?” Kaiora questions. “We don’t have a sun, or a moon. I’ve never even seen a moon.”

“Because we still have the truth,” Halan answers. “One day, our descendants will understand why I did what I did, and many will be grateful. Others won’t agree, but they’ll all. Know. The truth. That’s what’s important. This job is often about secrets. We withhold information from the public, from the crew, even those closest to us. You won’t get through the next 24 years with radical honesty. But you can certainly live with genuine honesty. Always remember that. Your second duty is to the mission, but your first is to the people. They’re the only reason we’re doing this.”

Kaiora inhales deeply, and exhales abruptly. She nods in acknowledgement, but not in full agreement. She was the first baby born on this ship, and she grew up with this man as her hero. Seeing him in this room is sickening, and she can’t promise she won’t eventually find a way to pardon him, and bring him back into the braintrust. The current First Chair of the civilian government isn’t going to be sitting down forever. That’s the whole point of the uneven shift schedule. As the old saying goes, if you don’t like the people in charge, wait five minutes.

“Very well,” Halan says, accepting her concession. “I would like to speak with Admiral Thatch in private, if that’s all right with you, Captain.”

“Of course,” Kaiora says, bowing out of the room.

Halan goes on, “you once told me that I would one day learn to trust you, but that it wouldn’t happen until after your death. You were wrong. I realized I should have trusted you all along when I saw you make that speech.”

“That’s not what I said,” Thatch disputes. “I said that it would be the day that I died.”

“You’re not dead yet,” Halan says, smirking.

Thatch smiles back. He waves his arm out, and lets it pass right through the door, as if it weren’t there at all. “Yes, I am.”

“Thatch...”

He tips an invisible hat. “Have a drink for me, won’t ya, kid?”

Back in Thatch’s stateroom, his nurse turns off the virtual hologram projector, and then she turns off her patient’s life support.

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 1790: Mateo Daily

< > Table of Contents

First off, I probably could have figured out how to squeeze in one more constellation to round out the year, but I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about my plans for next year. I’m going to be doing something wildly different with my macroseries, The Advancement of Mateo Matic. So far, I’ve mostly been writing one installment per week. The first one didn’t come out until the middle of March in my first year, so it only has 42 installments. In fact, I actually doubled up on one day, because I hate the number 41. The next year was pretty normal, but the third year, while there were 53 Sundays, I still only did 52 installments, because I skipped a week for narrative reasons. Ever since then, though, I’ve been able to keep to a steady routine of 52 installments per year. That is all about to change, but not permanently. Everything will hold to convention for the first 24 weeks. Mateo’s story will continue as you would expect, year by year. So too will my current Saturday mezzofiction series, Extremus. I have two microfiction series lined up as well. The first is a return to my Vantage Points multiseries, which will give way to 14 original sonnets. I’m scared about that last one, but hopefully I’ll come up with some good stuff by then. The last sonnet will post on June 10. The last entry in the second volume of Extremus will post on June 11. A new installment for TAMM will be on June 12, but I’m not yet sure how long it’s going to be, or whether the official changeover will happen the following day, where you will find...another installment of The Advancement of Mateo Matic. The next day, there will be another, and then another, and so on.

Throughout the rest of the year, I’ll only be posting TAMM stories. No mezzofiction, and no microfiction. Though, because expecting myself to write 2,000 words—give or take—every day is unreasonable, they will be shorter than usual. I’ll probably do at least 600 words, but I’m not sure yet. I’m not holding myself to anything that restrictive. Each one will take place a day after the last, as we follow Mateo and the team through their latest adventures. They’ll probably be more subdued, and less intense. They’ll probably be family-oriented, with less action. They might read like diary entries. Again, I don’t know yet. I have to get to that point before I really know where the story is going. I serve the story, not the other way around. There is a reason why the team will fall off their pattern, and a reason why it will last them a full year, but I’ve decided to not give that away just yet. If I had chosen to start this in January, I might have said something, but since it’s so far out, I call that a spoiler. This new posting method will continue until the middle of July 2023 when I start a new microfiction series called Conversations, and begin volume 3 of Extremus. I will also get back to the weekly installments of TAMM, and while the story will continue to evolve, I presently have no intentions of altering the posting schedule further. I think I messed up the math, so we’ll see what it looks like when I finish working on the calendar, but I’m sure it will be fine. Speaking of math, I came up with this in my first year, before I had tampered with Mateo’s pattern, so this felt like a much more dramatic change. Since then, he and Leona haven’t always jumped forwards each day anyway. Still, I’m excited, and I hope you are too. This started as a working title, but it’s the best I’ve come up with. I’m obviously calling it...Mateo Daily.

Microstory 1789: Kendall Cole

< > Table of Contents

Kendall Cole is one sick puppy; not evil, per se, but certainly not a good person. She loves to start trouble, and she is a master at it. She knows how to manipulate others into doing what she wants, and not even for her own gain. Well, she appears to gain the joy of watching people squirm, but she isn’t otherwise benefiting from all this conflict. At least, it doesn’t seem like it gets her anything else. She just likes to watch people in pain, and her parents were always worried that this would translate into something really bad and violent when she grew up. Therapy didn’t help. Socialization didn’t help. Nothing did her any good. If there was an opportunity to make people feel bad, and get away with it, she would do it. As she grew up, however, she got better at causing trouble in secret, leading her parents to believe that she had learned to change her ways. She stopped getting in trouble at school, because of how good she was at convincing others to become the agents of chaos, so she never really learned what consequences were. No one gave her any real reason to improve herself, so she never did, and she never regretted it either. Kendall didn’t become a serial killer, or anything, though. That much could be said of her. She just liked to undermine people at work, especially her boss, and make the job unnecessarily harder on others. A missing file here, an anonymously forwarded private email there. She didn’t limit herself to her real workplace. She once took a second job at a family planning manufacturer. She deliberately tampered with thousands of pregnancy tests to make them all show up as positive, no matter what. She timed it according to a co-worker’s tenure at the company, and framed him for the crime. No one ever suspected her, and bonus, she made a little extra money.

She might have said that sabotage was her middle name, except then that would be admitting to others what she was, and that would have ruined all the fun. Her power came from her invisibility, and no one could ever know that she was behind all of this turmoil. Someone took notice once when she gaslit an entire apartment complex into believing that a virus was spreading through the gas lines. She tricked them all into shutting off their gas, and quarantining themselves in the building for an entire week before the children of one of the tenants grew suspicious, and reached out to the CDC. She didn’t set one foot on the premises, and no one could have possibly connected her to it. A self-proclaimed “mastermind with genius-level intellect” felt compelled to investigate on his own by looking into who had contacted the building manager. He traced the call to a payphone, then phished his way into reviewing the security cameras of the convenience store next to it, where he witnessed who he thought to be the culprit making that call. Using facial recognition software that he bought for a steep price on the internet, he figured out the woman’s identity. He began to stalk her to find out what her motivation was, and whether she did other things like it. He never saw a damn thing, and he became impatient with the whole matter. He decided to give her a taste of her own medicine by killing her on paper. He notified her place of business that she was dead. He cancelled all of her credit cards. He informed her parents that she was gone. He identified a Jane Doe as her in the morgue. The authorities found him rather quickly, and arrested him for fraud, harassment, and a number of other charges. He only received one visitor in prison. It was Kendall Cole, there to gloat about how she had tricked him into ruining a completely innocent person’s life, as well as his own.

Microstory 1788: Vulpeculiar

< > Table of Contents

I never wanted to get into gambling. My family has a history of gambling addiction, and I knew that I didn’t want to even look down that path, so I never put myself in that position. Unfortunately, gambling found me anyway, and I fell into it hard. Maybe if I hadn’t been so afraid of it, I could have learned restraint, but there’s no way to know now. I’m madly in love with it, and every time I lose, it only makes me want more, because there’s always a chance of turning things around. I’m actually not half-bad, now that I know the rules of my favorite games. I’ve come up with a system, and I know everyone says that, but most of the people who say it are thousands—or even hundreds of thousands—of dollars in debt, whereas I always keep myself in the black. I have a special savings account of money that I don’t touch. It doesn’t matter how close I get to losing everything else, that money is for food and shelter, and I’ve held firm on that. That doesn’t mean my life has been safe and happy. I’ve certainly had some problems, especially with sore losers who think that they’re entitled to live their own lives free from consequences. It’s hard to disabuse them of the idea that they won when they’re holding the scary end of a gun against my temple. I’ve recently become immersed in the shadier side of gambling, to which the authorities either turn a blind eye, or can’t even find. I’ve just been going deeper and deeper, playing games with higher and higher stakes. I’ve recently discovered the most mysterious and unusual game of them all. Bottom of the rabbit hole, I call it. The people who play it, though...they call it Vulpeculiar.

There’s a family game I remember playing as a kid called Catch Phrase. I don’t remember the rules, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s just the game disc for Vulpeculiar that reminds me of it. Only 121 people can play in the world, and the only time someone new can join is if someone quits while they’re in the black. This is hard to do, because if you’re in the red, you can’t choose to play. Only someone else can select you as an opponent. It’s a game of chance. You choose who you want to play against, and how much to bet. Then you squeeze the button. You either win, or you lose, and the only strategy is to decide to quit while you’re ahead. When you lose—and you will lose—if you can’t pay with money or collateral, you pay with your soul. You’ll be sucked into the disc, where you’re conscious, and totally at the mercy of the corporeal players. They can give you a chance to win back your freedom, or they can ignore your slot, and play against someone else. The guy who got me into this mess is probably best described as my frenemy. I guess he figured it would be easy to convince me to help him cheat. It’s a two-man job. If I hold the disc, and he squeezes the button, the game is confused about who the player is. If he loses, the round will be disqualified, and nothing will happen. But if he wins, it will pay out into our supposed joint account. Of course, he betrayed me, and never gave me access to those funds, so I’ve decided to screw him over too. I let go of the disc at the very last second, dooming him to losing after betting the sum of every player’s debt against the “dealer”, which he could never hope to pay. He’s sucked into the disc, and I realize I’m the last corporeal player left. It has to end here. The game is evil, and I’m the only one who can stop it. I bet the pot too. It’s over a billion dollars, so I assume that I’ll be sucked in, and leave no slots open for new players. I was wrong. Not only do I win, but the other 120 slots suddenly open up. I think I just killed everyone.

Microstory 1787: Flying Fish

< > Table of Contents

Sleep and I have always had a love-hate relationship. I love it, but it resists me every single night. I was an adult before I learned that normal people fall asleep within twenty minutes. When my health teacher told us that, I wanted to punch him in the face, and knock him out. Then I wanted him to wake up, and punch me in the face so I would know what it feels like to not lie awake in bed for literally two hours. Over the years, I’ve tried some things to alleviate the problem: meditation, melatonin, stronger pills that put me, and the morning drivers around me, at terrible risk. Some of it has helped a little, but nothing has helped a lot. I would get six hours on a really good night, and I was proud of myself for anything over five. Now that I’m older, I’ve decided to prioritize my time better. Instead of staying up late, and waking up just before it’s time to go to work, I figured I may as well go to bed early, and have more me-time in the mornings. If it’s early enough, it’s still dark, so there’s no glare on my TV. That’s what’s really helped, waking up before sun, instead of fighting for every ounce of rest in those precious final moments. Now I lie awake for an hour, but since I give myself more time overall, I end up with seven hours, and it probably doesn’t get any better than that. I even try to avoid this thing called social jetlag, which means sleeping different hours on certain nights, which for most is due to not having to work on the weekends. Last night was different. It was a Friday, and I was in the middle of a good TV binge, so I decided it would be okay to go to bed at 23:00. That’s 11:00 PM for you people who can’t count past 12. It turned out to be a bad idea...for a bizarre reason. Had I gone to sleep at my new normal time, I wouldn’t have been awake to hear the man outside my window.

At first, I think it must be an innocuous noise. The purr of my refrigerator, the buzz of the street lights, the revving of a distant car. It isn’t so distant, and it isn’t so innocuous. It sounds like someone mimicking the sound of a motor with their mouth, and it only gets worse when he starts talking. “Flying fish,” he says, “flying fish”. Over and over and over again, “flying fish. Yeah, baby, flying fish.” Fuck, what does he want with me? I’m about to die, I’m about to die. What do I do? Don’t turn on the lights, then he’ll see that you’re here. Look out the window. No, not that one, it’s too close. I can’t see anything. What about the window in the study? Still nothing. Can you still hear him? “Flying fish.” Call mom, she’ll know what to do. No, bring the dog in first, and put her in her cage.  Then call mom. Shit, it’s late, they go to bed earlier than I do. Call 911, she says, that’s what it’s there for. Yes, it qualifies an emergency, call them now. Dispatch doesn’t understand my problem fully, but she dispatches a fleet anyway. Firetruck first on the scene. I look back out the window in the study. The firefighter is bent at the hip, hand on the shoulder of a man. He’s sitting in the street, up against the curb. He’s wobbly, and incoherent. He must be drunk. She’s being gentle and patient with him. Ambulance, police cruiser, that red pickup truck the fire station boss drives, another police cruiser. It’s okay, Daisy, go back to sleep. Chew on your cactus if you’re nervous. They load him up faster than I would have thought. I’ve seen car accidents in real life; been in a couple myself. They usually move slower than movies make it seem. They close the ambulance doors, and clear the street. The quiet returns, and it’s like they were never even here. Then a fish flies past my window, followed by another, and another. He wasn’t lying.

Microstory 1786: Virgin By Nature

< > Table of Contents

I accepted long ago that I wasn’t ever going to find myself a partner, or even just a warm body for the night. I was doomed from the start, and I’ve been branded an incel because of it. It’s true that I’m what one might call a virgin—though, that is an outdated term—and it’s true that it’s not by choice, but that doesn’t mean that I blame others for my situation. This is all me, and I take ownership of it. I wish there was a term for people like me. Since that word has been attributed to terrorists, rapists, and mysoginists, I’ve tried to just call myself a loser. It’s not a particularly favorable term either, but at least it distances me from those violent and aggressive men who believe the world, and its women, owe them something. I am a socially awkward extrovert. Yes, you read that right. I love putting myself out there, and meeting new people. I’m just incredibly bad at it. I’ve tried to take seminars, and watch tutorials, but none of them has worked. Many of them come off just as angry and entitled as the incel movement. I don’t know how to talk to others, no matter how badly I want to, or how hard I try. I keep saying the wrong things, and making myself look like an idiot. I always look weird, and make people uncomfortable. So what exactly is my problem, and is there anything I can do to fix it? I don’t think so, but even if I were better at communicating with people, I’ve realized that it doesn’t really matter. I’m traditionally unattractive. Yeah, I may be able to alleviate that a little with better hair, and hipper clothes. I may even be able to learn to express myself appropriately. That’s just the first filter, though. There are plenty of people in this world who are willing to look past looks, or are just as awkward as me, and could probably deal with it. But they won’t get past my other filters.

What is a filter? Well, people use them all the time when forming relationships. They don’t walk around with a sign hanging from their necks that announce that they’re available, and then just accept the first person who responds positively. Once they find someone they’re attracted to in some manner, they look for common ground. What do they both like to do, or what aspects of their personalities complement each other? Do they get along, or do they have too many differences? If those incompatibilities add up and overweigh the things they like about each other, the relationship either ends healthily, or becomes toxic. Unfortunately for me, those incompatibilities are pretty much guaranteed to be there from the start. The biggest filter is drug use. I can’t be with someone who does recreational drugs, including alcohol. I can’t stand drunks, and while I support recovering addicts, I still can’t relate to them, and I don’t know how to help them. That right there wipes most people off the board. Some people are sober because of religion, but I’m a staunch atheist, so that wipes off most of who’s left, because I can’t stand those people either. I would have to find a nonreligious teetotaler who likes to dance all night, and even listen to techno off the dance floor. That person just doesn’t exist, especially not when you account for other filters, like gender, relative age, and sexuality. Because the most important filter—the only one that’s necessary for me to remain alone—is other people’s filters. I may find the perfect girl, but if she doesn’t like me, it can’t go anywhere. It won’t even begin. That’s what truly keeps me from finding a soulmate. I don’t want to be with someone who would want to be with someone like me.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 16, 2374

« < » > Table of Contents

In order for Ramses to make his small simulation look like the afterlife simulation, he had to connect the two of them together, and borrow code. The idea was that the fake sim, which they were calling limbo, would be placed between the individual’s consciousness signal, and the real afterlife. When Mateo and Leona died, they were supposed to travel through limbo first, but before they could make it all the way to where Pryce wanted them to go, Ramses would sever the connection, and trap them in limbo. From here, he should be able to download them into new bodies, and they would be on their merry way. And yes, Leona was part of this too. She decided that, if something went wrong, they would at least travel to the great known beyond together. No one argued with her about it, because it wasn’t a true and final death, and they were confident there would be some way to retrieve the both of them regardless.

They watched themselves fly right through Ramses’ backdoor into the afterlife sim, and land on the edge of the city. It didn’t look completely abandoned, but it didn’t look like it did before either. Vines were growing up the sides of the buildings, and there was trash all over the place. A few totalled cars were haphazardly parked off to the side. One of them was gently on fire. It looked like something out of a free-for-all violent video game. Did someone turn this place into a video game? It was certainly possible.

Mateo looked down at his clothes. “We’re wearing white.”

“I know,” Leona replied.

“It doesn’t seem like we should be walking around here wearing white.”

“I know, we can’t change into something else, though. If we try to put something else on top of our clothing, it will just turn white. Otherwise no one would be able to have purple curtains, or blue bed sheets.”

“Can we...?”

“We’ll stand out, but...it does work, I’ve seen it. I mean, it doesn’t automatically give you access wherever you want, or downgrade you, but at least no one can see what level you are. They’ll probably assume we’re Yellow Limiteds, who actually were downgraded recently, and are embarrassed by it.”

They both stripped down naked, and stuffed their clothes underneath the burning car. It was then that Mateo noticed his penis was exceptionally large, and Leona’s breasts were at least one size higher. She rolled her eyes. “He’s so superficial,” she said, referring to Tamerlane Pryce.

The backdoor was gone. It wasn’t located in a particular spot in the simulation. Ramses did that on purpose in order to prevent Pryce from being able to find it, and destroy it. Unfortunately, it meant it would be difficult for them to find it. It wasn’t impossible, though. If they just kept walking, their intuition should eventually just lead them to the right location at the right time. They started to walk down the streets, hoping not to be overrun by zombies, grand thieves, cyberpunks, or whatever roamed this world now. Leona stopped suddenly just after they passed by an alleyway. She held there for a beat before stepping backwards, and walking into it. Here she found what her intuition was trying to show her. It wasn’t the backdoor. It was something bad.

“Do we know him?” Mateo asked.

They were staring at a poster of a man who had co-opted the Barack Obama Hope poster design. That wasn’t the buzzword here, though. Instead, it was Autonomy. And yes, Leona knew him. “I did this. I made this world.”

“How?” Mateo asked without judgment.

“He was an NPC. I turned him into a real boy. I gave him agency.” She exhaled, and indicated the world around them. “This is apparently what he did with it.”

Mateo placed an arm around her hip, but it felt sexual, and that wasn’t what he was going for, so he switched to her shoulder. “Ellie is supposed to be in charge here. If not her, Pryce. You didn’t do this. Something would have had to happen long after you left. He probably just took advantage of some kind of power struggle.”

“Power vacuum,” came a voice from farther down the alleyway. He walked out of the darkness, revealing himself to be a talking human-sized bunny. He was wearing a cool hat, and a vest, but no pants. Fortunately, he didn’t have any genitals to speak of. His fur was pink. “They were both MIA for an extended period of time.”

“Do we know him too?” Mateo repeated. “I feel like I would remember if I met a talking rabbit, and I hope that you would have mentioned it at some point if you had met him without me.”

“I don’t know this avatar, it’s a mod.”

“I’ve always thought of myself as a bunneh,” the rabbit said. He seemed to be sincere, but they were having trouble taking him seriously like this. “Fast, cunning, deceptively intelligent. Protective and ambitious.”

“Well...” Leona began, “they’re fast.”

Perturbed and offended, the bunny waved his little paws in front of his face, and transformed it into that of a human’s. The rest of the avatar remained in bunny form, though, including the rest of his wittle head. “Recognize me now?” Yes.

“Ew, David,” Leona zinged.

“It’s grotesque! Kill it! Kill it with fire!” Mateo joked.

Vendelin Blackbourne growled in a very unbunny-like way. He approximated the motion a human would be able to execute to snap their fingers, since they would have hands...and therefore fingers. Still, the magic worked, finally showing them his true form. “Happy now?”

“Not really,” Leona answered honestly.

“You’re gonna need me,” Vendelin argued. “I know this world.”

“We’re not staying long,” she explained.

“And we have to get going,” Mateo added. “Have fun here.”

“Pinochio has eyes everywhere. You won’t get far.”

“Is that what he’s calling himself?” Leona questioned.

“Did he have some other name before?” Vendelin asked.

“I don’t think he had one at all.”

She led the way away from the once-bunny, and Mateo followed closely behind. He didn’t get far before something tugged at his ankle. He looked down to find an orange shackle around it. They both looked back, only to watch Vendelin wrap the other end of it around his own ankle. He chuckled once. “Hock chains. They won’t take you to jail, but...you won’t go anywhere without me.”

Mateo looked at Leona, who shrugged with just her eyebrows. They started walking again in the direction they were going. “Don’t slow us down.” Vendelin was a nuisance, and maybe even evil, but now that their friends were about to solve the Power Vacuum problem, he probably wasn’t too much of a threat. Once they figured out how to get these restraints off, they would decide what to do with him.

Vendelin jogged up to get next to them. “Don’t you two wanna know how I died?”

“We assume the Pluoraias executed you.”

“Yeah, but don’t you wanna know how they did it?”

“Not really.”

“You’re a lot less interesting than I’m sure you were led to believe you were when you were alive.”

“Oh, yeah? You think so? Yeah. Well. Um. I once, uh, lived in a different timeline.”

They just kept walking, unimpressed.

“Really? Nothing?”

“We’ve all been there.”

“No, I mean, literally,” Vendelin insisted. “I was a prisoner on Earth, and then suddenly, I wasn’t. And no one could remember who I was, and I didn’t have a record, and I just started my life over.”

“Cool story, bro.”

“You don’t believe me,” Vendelin assumed.

“No, we believe you, but we still don’t find it interesting. Like I said, we’ve all been there.”

“Oh. You’re serious. You’re time travelers.”

“Yes.”

He stopped, and looked down at the ground, but he was really just staring into space. “Am I not special? Am I not unique?”

“Blackbourne...” Leona began, not knowing where the rest of that sentence was gonna come from.

“I based my whole worldview off of that. I thought that I was given the chance to make something of myself. I didn’t want to go down the same road I walked before, and I didn’t; I was good. I was special, and...I had a purpose. The machine, it was...I thought I was helping. But did I just...?” He paused. “Did I just walk the same road I was on in the old timeline, but I went further?”

Mateo kicked the chain out of his way, so he could approach the man in his existential crisis. He stood before him, and patiently waited until Vendelin lifted his chin, tears still in his eyes. Then Mateo waited a few seconds more. “Probably.”

“Was what happened to me just random?”

Mateo slipped into a slight sad smile, and repeated himself, “probably.”

“Leona! Mateo!” It was Ramses. He was running towards them in full tactical gear. It was black, but it wasn’t killing him, since he was an interloper, as was Olimpia, who was holding open the door. It did not look easy for her.

“Come on,” Mateo urged. He pulled at the chain, but Vendelin wouldn’t budge. “Come on! We’re letting you escape with us!”

Vendelin reached down with a little key, and unlocked Mateo’s shackle. “I don’t deserve to escape.”

“Mateo!” Leona called back to him. Ramses had her by the elbow, still in the middle of ushering her towards the program’s backdoor.

Mateo held up the index finger of patience. “Do you know why you’re a pink bunny?”

Vendelin made an exaggerated shrug.

“Pryce created a system where most people come here Yellow. Bad people are in hock, or worse, but everyone else has to work their way up from Limited privileges. Why were you automatically pink?”

He shrugged again.

“Vendelin, time travelers get special privileges. You are special. And you still have time to walk a different road.” Mateo pointed to the backdoor, which Ramses was now helping Olimpia keep open. “It starts over there.”

Vendelin had to spend a little more time in the limbo simulation. The four of them had bodies waiting for them in base reality, but nothing was prepared for him yet. They still weren’t sure what they were going to do with him, and anway, it wasn’t the most pressing problem here. The Power Vacuum was right on its wait to the location of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The megaportals were up and running, and it was finally time to see this through. If no one else got hurt from this travesty, they could probably go easy on the man who built it. If even one more person was so much as superficially injured by its damaging power, it could be very bad for him.

Mateo and Leona crawled out of their pods in their new bodies, and came face to face with themselves. Alternate versions of the both of them were coming out of their own pods at the same time.

“Who are you?” Leona asked in an accusing tone.

“Now, don’t get mad,” the other Mateo said.

“We just don’t wanna have to wear the cuffs anymore,” the other Leona said.

Mateo squinted at them. “Ramses? Olimpia? What did you do?”

“They wanna be like us,” Leona realized.

“We want to be part of the team,” Ramses corrected. “And we don’t want anything to get in the way of us doing that.”

“You’ve just doomed yourself to this life,” Mateo argued, no longer weirded out by talking to someone who looked exactly like him. “The cuffs give you the freedom to walk away anytime you want. Now you’re stuck with us.”

“That’s exactly what we want,” Olimpia reasoned. “That’s what we’re trying to tell you. We’ve both been wanting this for a long time.”

“Me longer than her,” Ramses said.

“How did you even do it?” Leona asked. “Those bodies should be dead.”

“It’s the future,” Ramses said. “We can bring a couple of substrates back to life, if only briefly. We didn’t kill you with a bomb.”

“Look,” Olimpia began, “what’s done is done. There’s no point in arguing about it anymore. Let’s just go back to the AOC, and finish this mission.”

“Fix your faces first,” Mateo ordered. “It’s confusing.”

“Of course,” Olimpia said. “Our old bodies are still waiting for us.”

She and Ramses transferred their respective consciousnesses back to where they belonged. Even now, nothing could be done to undo what was done. They were salmon now, on the same pattern as the Matics, and Angela. Five of a kind. Honestly, if Mateo had to pick three people to stay on their team permanently, they would be them. It certainly wasn’t the worst thing ever.

They all went back to the AOC together through the closet portal. Sasha was back after having spent some time on New Earth, negotiating with the android who was deemed the rightful owner of it. His name was Onesnethri, and he agreed to let the seeding process proceed as planned, as long as he was in charge of early development. He agreed to work with a partner of Teagarden’s choosing. This was the result of a bunch of diplomatic discussions that the rest of the team didn’t have to worry about. They washed their hands clean of it. Now it was time to protect Gatewood and Earth from impending doom. Sasha and Kivi stayed with Team Keshida on the Jameela Jamil side, where the exit portal was. Theoretically, there was nothing that any of them could do at this point. They were just waiting for the destructive beam to show up, and only needed to be prepared to solve any hiccup, which would hopefully not come.

The team sat around the table, and watched the hologram in anticipation. “There!” Angela finally said, pointing at a flash of light, which had finally come close enough to be visible using one of their strategically placed interstellar stations. Immediately after the flash, the image disappeared completely. “What was that?”

“The diameter of the beam is larger than what we can see. The phenomenon exists beyond the visible spectrum of light.”

“Is the portal large enough to fit all that,” Angela continued, “what we can see, and what we can’t?”

“Yes,” Leona said confidently.

One by one, the warning stations went offline until the Power Vacuum was upon them. They saw it tunnel into the portal, but it also interfered with communications, so they couldn’t confirm its exit with the Jamil. Just as the tail of the beam fell through, they felt a loss of attitude control. The AOC went dark, and sent them spiraling.

« < » > Table of Contents