The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 20, 2378

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At the end of the day, they jumped to the future, but they left the AOC in reframe time so it could continue on its way for them. They were about halfway through this leg of their journey, and everything seemed to be going smoothly. There was nothing to do but wait until tomorrow. Mateo was playing a game of RPS-101 Plus by himself. Ramses was reading a book, and Leona was teaching Olimpia more about the ship down in engineering. Angela crawled out of her grave chamber after a nap, and plopped herself down at the table. She sat there for a few moments, staring into space with her chin in the palm of her hand. “Can we...?” she trailed off out of boredom.

Mateo paused his game. “Yes?”

“You wouldn’t know.”

Ramses pretended to not have heard.

“Can we...?” she repeated, but still didn’t act like she cared enough to finish. “Can we...?”

“Can we what, Angela? Damn,” Ramses said, fed up. He set his tablet down.

“Can we make a lightyear drive?” She finally asked.

“Like the one that the Jameela Jamil has?”

“Yes.”

“No. Not for the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, anyway. The hull wouldn’t be able to handle the strain.” He hoped this would be the end of it, allowing him to return to his book.

“Can we make the hull stronger?” Angela suggested.

Annoyed. “Maybe, but I don’t have the resources, and I don’t know how to build one. Keep in mind that my education is nearly 200 years out of date, and I was never as smart as Team Keshida. It would be a nice thing to have, and had we not gotten ourselves trapped in this reality, they may have worked something out for us. Why? Are you bored?”

“I’m bored!” she cried adorably. She accidentally made eye contact with Mateo. “I’m not playing that game again.”

“Never?”

“Nuh-var!” she cried adorably again.

“Never have I ever wanted to never play this game again.” Mateo pretended to pick up a glass from the table, and take a sip from it.

“No, you’re supposed to drink if the statement is true for you,” Angela taught.

Mateo pantomimed chugging the rest of the glass. “Whatever!” he shouted, trying to be as cute as her, and failing. He threw it on the ground.

“Is everything okay up there?” Leona shouted from engineering.

“Fine!” Mateo yelled back.

They sat in silence for a few moments. Ramses kept eying his tablet, wondering if someone would ask him another question the second he tried to get back to his book. He was proven right once he finally did make the attempt.

“Why are we in this reality?” Mateo asked.

Ramses waved his hands in front of his chest. “Magic,” he whispered.

“Seriously.”

“Seriously, I don’t know,” Ramses answered. “It’s just something we have to handwave to get by. I understand why this reality was created, and I gather it’s profoundly more advanced than civilization is in the main sequence—maybe even more so than The Parallel—but I can’t tell you why we’re here, or how we get back. I’m not even sure that we want to get back; what do we care?”

“Hm,” Mateo noted.

“I suppose that would be up to the Captain,” Angela decided.

“My ears are burning,” Leona said as she was climbing up the steps.

“We’ve not even talked about whether we would want to get back to the main sequence,” Mateo fills her in, “let alone how we would accomplish such a thing.”

“Hm,” Leona said.

“My words exactly,” Mateo revealed.

“We would have to find someone here who understands how reality works, and if they’re capable of switching us back, they do, or if not, they help us find someone who can.”

“That may be asking a lot,” Olimpia said, coming up from behind her teacher. “We don’t know where we’re going, or who is going to be there when we arrive.”

“We don’t know much,” Leona concurred.

“We just have to take it one day at a time,” Angela said. “One boring day after the last.” She pressed her tough against her bottom lip, crossed here eyes, and bobbled her head around like she was mocking someone, but she was really just condemning the situation itself. How precious.

“What do you want to do, Angela?” Ramses asked. “What would not be boring?”

“An orgy,” she replied, and it was rather hard to tell if she was joking, or not.

“Okay, I’ll tell you what,” Ramses began, “I’ll try to securely access some sort of data network in this reality, and see if there’s any reference to the lightspeed drive. If it’s doable, I’ll program an AI to retrofit our ship with one, along with all the ancillary components necessary to make it safe. Does that sound fair? It doesn’t help with your boredom today, but I might as well.”

“I would much appreciate that,” Angela said. “Wake me up when that happens. I’m going back to bed.” She slipped off her chair like she was drunk, and crawled back over to her grave chamber, dipping over the edge head first, and rolling into it.

“Is she depressed?” Olimpia asked.

“None of us is a licensed psychologist,” Leona pointed out.

“It would make sense,” Mateo reasoned. “You can do literally anything in the afterlife simulation—break any law of physics. We’ve been through a lot since she joined the team, but it may be nothing compared to the adventures she made for herself for 300 years.”

“Let’s stop talking about her behind her back, shall we?” Leona strongly recommended.

“What should we talk about?” Olimpia asked, not suggesting that she disagreed.

“We could start a book club,” Mateo offered, getting the idea from Ramses who once again tried getting back to his own.

“Reading is mostly a quiet experience,” he patronized. “Can any of you handle that?”

“Well, what is it?”

“Infinite Jest,” Ramses answered.

Now they started mocking him.

“Oh, wow!” Olimpia said sarcastically as she pantomimed lifting a cup of tea with her pinky in the air.

“We’re not worthy,” Mateo confessed, fanning Ramses reverently.

Leona had an imaginary drink of her own; an alcoholic one of some kind that she swirled in its glass. “I went to collage.”

“Okay, thanks,” Ramses replied to all this. “I’m going up to read in the airlock. Not sure which door I’ll use when I’m done.”

“Aw, no, come back! We wanna watch you do it. What’s the point of reading that if not to rub it in everyone else’s face?”

“Oh, we are bored, aren’t we?” Olimpia mused.

“We could go over the mass differentials for spike propulsion again,” Leona said.

“No, I’m okay for now,” Olimpia said. It was one thing to be able to begin a troubleshooting process on the ship if something went wrong. It was a whole different thing to comprehend the actual mechanics of antimatter reactions on a serious level.

“Very well. I’m going to go back down and triple check the magnetic containment fields on the antimatter pods,” Leona decided. “You’re always welcome to help.”

They watched her leave. “I’m gonna...go take a midday bath, I guess.”

“Want some company?” Olimpia asked.

What?

“Kidding,” she clarified. “Sort of. We’re all friends now, right?”

“You and Angela both...are...” He didn’t know what he wanted to say. “Bye.”

“Interesting idea.”

Again, what? He actually didn’t leave right away. He had to gather his belongings, and carry them up to the upper level. As he was climbing the steps, Olimpia rang Angela’s trapdoor bell, and crawled in. What was happening there?

Ramses looked like a deer in the headlights when he saw Mateo through the window. Mateo had to smile and lift up his shower caddy to assure his friend that this was not an interruption. Ramses nodded with appreciation.

The AOC may have been a small ship, but it was state-of-the-art when it was first engineered, and it was still in perfect operating condition. The hygiene facilities were particularly nice. Since the vessel was cylindrical, the bathtub wasn’t standard size, but it was close. The water was always hot, and the pressure always on point. It had an excellent filtration system, so it never felt like a waste when they came up here just to relax. Normally, the tub would even already be filled up for him once the AI heard that he was planning to use it. Unfortunately, Mateo completely forgot that the far side shower room was not presently in working order. They had converted it into a single destination portal to better coordinate with the people on the JJ. While they were now in a totally different reality, the room had not yet been converted back to normal. It wasn’t like it was hard to get by with only one shower for five people.

The Jameela Jamil should not have been in range, but somehow it was. Mateo walked through under the assumption that he was about to step into water that had been warmed to his temperature preference, but instead ended up coming out the other portal. The entry room looked just as it had before. This all looked very normal, except supposedly not possible. He opened the door on the other side of the wall, and entered the bridge completely naked to find Team Keshida, along with Sasha and Vendelin.

“Interesting,” Kestral said. “We checked the portal. We could no longer reach you. We also couldn’t locate you anywhere near that brown dwarf. Where have you been all this time?”

“We—we’re in the Fifth Division,” Mateo explained.

“You are, or you were?” Ishida asked to clarify. It wasn’t too terribly surprising that they had heard of it, or that they weren’t surprised by the development itself.

“As far as I know, the AOC is still there,” he answered.

“Is this the first time you tried the portal?” Sasha questioned.

“First time I did,” Mateo replied. “Ramses and Leona took a look at it briefly, but it didn’t seem likely that it was capable of crossing into alternate realities.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Kestral confirmed. “But I don’t suppose you know how you got there in the first place.”

Mateo just shook his head.

“Are you okay?” Sasha asked. “Is everyone safe?”

“We’re fine. The place is a little weird. You?”

“We’re all right,” Ishida said. “Teagarden is still asking us to do things, as we all suspected they would.”

He looked over to Vendelin. “I see you’ve added another member to your team.”

“Blackbourne has been of great use to us,” Kestral divulged. “We’re helping him work through his issues.”

Vendelin sported a sad but hopeful half-smile.

“That’s good,” Mateo said, glad to have apparently made the right choice in saving the man from what appeared to be a much less inviting afterlife simulation.

“What will you do?” Ishida asked. “Do you wanna go get your team, and bring them through the portal? There may be a limit to its use.”

“It may even only be one-way,” Sasha warned.

“I don’t know that we’ll want to leave our ship behind,” Mateo lamented.

“In that case,” Kestral began with a sigh, “you should take this.” She dug into her bag of holding, and removed a circular object that almost looked like it was made of hair. “The Traversa Bracelet. Ariadna agreed to make precisely one of these, and no more. Ramses and Leona will be able to figure out how to incorporate it into the AOC’s drive systems. There is a strong possibility, however, that doing so will vaporize the thing, so you may only get one shot.”

Mateo accepted the bracelet graciously. “I really appreciate it. We may not use it right away, but it will be a vital accessory in the future. I was wondering if I could trouble you for one more thing, though, if it’s not too much.”

“What might that be?” Ishida asked.

“Would you mind maybe, possibly giving me the plans to a lightyear drive?”

“I can do that,” Kestral agreed. “You won’t be able to use it on the AOC, though. It’s far too big and massive. You would need to construct an entirely new ship, which it sounds like you don’t wanna do.”

“I’ll leave that up to the team,” Mateo decided. “Maybe it will still help them boost our current teleporter.”

“Very well. I’ll download the data to a drive.”

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Extremus: Year 28

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Ovan Teleres is the first candidate for Olindse’s little rehabilitation experiment. They decided to stop calling it reintegration, because it suggested an outcome that may never materialize. One day, she hopes to get her mentor, Halan Yenant out of hock, but she can’t go straight for him. She has to play the political game, and begin with someone who has already shown remorse for his actions. In a moment of weakness, he tried to take control of the ship. It was pretty bad, and violent, resulting in the deaths of two people. He has since expressed a desire to repent for his actions, and improve himself. Today was the initial interview for the process. Once the program gets up and running, Olindse will step back, and let Counselor Persephone Falk establish her own therapeutic methods. This is just to make sure Ovan understands what’s going to happen, and why. If his sessions go well, they’ll restart the process with the other two permanent prisoners, along with anyone who ends up being sent here.

“Any further questions?” Olindse asks.

“No, I’m—I feel grateful for this opportunity,” Ovan replies. “I’m ready to begin.”

“That’s good to hear,” Olindse says. “The two of us will coordinate...”

Persephone nods.

Olindse goes on, “and you will probably have your first private session in two days.”

“Not private,” Armelle Lyons says. Head of Security is a weird position here. A shift lasts for eight years, but the end of it does not spell the end of the crewmember’s service to the ship. Armelle worked security before she was selected to run the team, and after she was finished, she went back to being a regular security officer. She will continue on this way until she chooses to retire, which could be any day now. The people who created the shift schedule determined that security could be the most stressful work over the long term, and they didn’t want to force anyone to stick around if they weren’t into it anymore. They wouldn’t be very good at maintaining security if they were burned out or sick of it. You have to prove your stamina to be appointed the leader, but there is still a limit to this.

“Well, we’re still working out the kinks,” Olindse admits, “which is why we’re not starting right away. All patients have the right to privacy, Madam Lyons. We’ll figure out some way to keep you close by without letting you hear what is said in this room.”

Armelle growls.

“Anyway, if that’s it, then I guess we’re done here.” She stands up, and accepts Ovan’s handshake amidst Armelle’s protests. This won’t work without a level of trust, and a handshake is the least that they can offer the prisoners.

Once they leave the cell, Hock Watcher Giordana asks to keep her down here while Armelle escorts Persephone out.

“What is it?” Olindse asks.

“It’s Vatal. He’s asked to speak with you,” Caldr reveals.

“He can wait his turn,” she decides.

“He says it’s time sensitive.”

“It sounds like a trick already.”

“I’ll be right there with you,” he promises. “I’ll magnetize him to the far side.” Every prisoner wears advanced cuffs around their wrists. They serve a number of purposes. They can release a chemical sedative into the bloodstream, or deliver a debilitating electrical shock, or sequester them to a certain area. The latter is used all the time. Cell doors are kept closed and locked when not in use, but they’re not technically necessary. None of them can cross the threshold. A dimensional barrier would just force them back like an extremely powerful wall of wind. Of course, there is also an electromagnet inside the cuffs, which can bind them to one another, or against the back wall. Olindse insisted that this not be done with Ovan, but Dvronen is another story. He’s an incredibly dangerous and intelligent man who hates the ship, and everyone on it. At least Ovan isn’t an evil spy.

“Very well. I’ll give him five minutes, at most.”

They stand before the door. Caldr is wearing his own cuff, which controls all the others. He taps the commands into it, and they hear the familiar clink of metal against metal. Caldr opens the door.

“Is this necessary?” Dvronen asks. He looks so pathetic, trapped there with his hands behind his back. He’s always been so prim and proper; it must be excruciatingly embarrassing, being reduced to this.

“Quite,” Caldr answers.

“What do you want?” Olindse questions.

“Why, Vice Admiral, this is not a good start to your reintegration program.”

“Rehabilitation,” she corrects.

“What did I say?”

“You have four minutes.”

“Is it safe to say that I am the most hated man on the ship?” Dvronen poses.

It’s his time, so if he wants to take the long way ‘round to go nowhere, then fine. “Sure, that sounds about right.”

“What if I told you that what Oaksent did when he took those genesis samples was actually all part of the plan?”

“I would say I know it was all part of the plan. It was his dirty plan. He clearly didn’t do it on a whim.”

Dvronen smirks. “No, I mean it was part of the ship’s mission.”

“The mission, according to who?” she questions.

“It’s whom.”

“Sorry,” she laughs. “I mean, the mission, according to who?”

He looks perturbed. “The Conceptualizers.” The Conceptualizers were a small group of people who originally wanted to leave Gatewood. They started formulating plans before Omega Parker even came to them with the idea for the Extremus ship. As their voices grew louder, their ranks grew too, and they eventually abandoned their collective term. Going by a specific name felt silly and juvenile. Most people didn’t refer to the people who framed the mission as Conceptualizers, but it was occasionally bandied around.

“They came up with the idea of attacking the ship, and trying to kill everyone on it?” That’s hard to believe.

“No, of course not. Their idea predates the Extremus concept. They wanted to seed life all throughout the Milky Way, and in order to compete with Earth, they wanted to do all this deep in the past. When Omega showed up with the new idea, everyone sort of fell in line. Well...not everyone.”

“Bronach Oaksent was not a Conceptualizer,” Olindse argues. “He was too young to have been involved in those discussions.”

Dvronen shakes his head. “He was, but his grandmother wasn’t. She used to let him sit in on their meetings. They talked about a number of different plans, and he was inspired.”

“It doesn’t matter that they talked about interfering with Earth’s Project Stargate, because they didn’t go through with it. They chose Extremus over it.”

“And like I was saying, not everyone agreed with that decision.”

“If that’s true, why did they involve Extremus at all? They could have built their own ship, and left us out of it. As I said, they attacked us, and they didn’t have to.”

“Do you know what’s in the Bridger section?” Dvronen goes on.

“Yeah, the Bridgers, and the samples that Oaksent left behind when he broke in.”

“There’s more. There’s a lot more down there. Maybe you wanna...find out for yourself?”

“I don’t have authorization. Neither do you. Neither did Oaksent.”

“Then you need to talk to someone who does.”

“The Captain is not going to go along with this. Nor should she.”

“You don’t need the Captain from the present day. You don’t even need a captain at all. Most admirals have—and will have—access to the Bridgers, because they will be former full captains. You’re a little different, since you were only interim.”

“Are you expecting me to go talk to a future admiral, or something?”

“There is another, and I don’t mean Yenant. Let’s not get him involved. There’s someone from the past who would be willing to help you. He never went down there, he doesn’t know the truth. But he could have, and he’ll still have authorization, because no one thinks to strip dead people of their access codes.”

“If I go down there and investigate, what are you getting out of it?” Olindse questions.

“I think...when you learn what’s really going on on this vessel, you’ll want to release me from hock. You’ll be on my side at that point.”

She laughs. “Wow, you really believe that, don’t you? Your five minutes were up a long time ago, by the way.”

“See? You’re already starting to like me. Otherwise, you would have been strict about that time limit.”

“Goodbye Dvronen. I’ll see you in a few weeks for the start of your rehabilitation.”

“Go down there, Admiral. Go see for yourself,” Dvronen says as Olindse and Caldr are stepping out of the cell.

Once the door is closed, Caldr tries to release the magnets. She places a hand over his cuff. “No. Leave him like that for a few hours.”

“That’s considered torture, ma’am. It’s against the law.”

Olindse gives him a terrifying look.

“I’ll...fudge the report.”

“That can wait. Meet me in the executive infirmary in thirty minutes.”

“You want me to do what?” Dr. Holmes asks.

“Erase our memories. Mine, his, and Dvronen Vatal’s.”

Dr. Holmes looks over to Caldr, who just lets out a grimace. He kind of understands why it is Olindse is asking for this. “Any particular memories, or do you just want me to take ‘em all?”  This isn’t something that she’s allowed to just do when requested. It’s technically feasible, but there’s this whole protocol.

“Vatal is trying to gain an advantage over me, and I need him to not remember that. I need to not remember it either, or maybe he gets the advantage anyway. The Hock Watcher here was just an innocent bystander.”

“Plus me,” Dr. Holmes adds.

“No, you don’t need to know anything about it,” Olindse reasons.

Dr. Holmes shakes her head. “Actually, I do. In order to delete the right memories, I need to know what they are. I mean, I could take the entire day, but then you’d be, like, what the hell happened to my entire day!” She’s not usually this volatile.

“So, no matter what, someone would have to recall the memories?” Caldr figures.

Dr. Holmes sighs. “No, I could delete the entire procedure from my own mind without risking reversion, since I know how to convince myself to ignore the inconsistencies. I’ve been trained for this. I just don’t know if I should in this case.”

“It’s about the Bridger section,” Olindse explains.

Dr. Holmes takes some time to respond. “What do you know?”

“Too much already. What do you know?”

“About as much.”

“It shouldn’t be very hard,” Olindse assumes, “not for me, nor for Caldr. Vatal is a different story. He deliberately withheld information from us to maintain leverage. We don’t know what else he knows about the Bridgers, but we would certainly love to take that from him too. You see why that’s important, ethical ramifications notwithstanding.”

The doctor folds her arms, and leans back to consider those ethics. There is no obvious answer to this. Getting rid of anything and everything Dvronen knows about the ship that he shouldn’t would surely be a boon for them, but erasing memories without consent lies in shaky territory. It’s not illegal to do on a post-conviction hock prisoner, but it’s not something she takes lightly either. She would feel a lot better about it if someone could order her. A Vice Admiral doesn’t have that power. “The brain doesn’t store memories like a computer does. You would have to walk me through each idea, and tell me what to extract. It’s not a pleasant experience. It’s not painful, but it can be awkward and uncomfortable.”

“I understand.”

“How would you do the same with Vatal?” Caldr asks.

“Him, I would brute force,” Dr. Holmes begins. “I can rip out ancillary memories, and not worry about him experiencing time discrepancies. He’ll know something’s wrong, but he has no legal recourse to gripe about it. We have to be more delicate with you two, because you might make a big stink about me performing a medical procedure on you that you don’t remember. It won’t work if you realize that you’re missing something, and then we could all be in trouble.”

“Do it,” Olindse agrees. She looks over to Caldr, who agrees too, knowing that it has to be this way. “Please.”

They start with Dvronen. That’s the great thing about no one else working in the hock section, it’s easy to be sneaky. Caldr goes next, and then Olindse. Dr. Holmes navigates from the general, and makes her way down to the specific. She removes the conversation with Dvronen, but not the one with Ovan. As far as Olindse’s concerned, she left after the interview, and didn’t do anything else of significance today. She didn’t burn a secret note to herself, or talk to the doctor, or go back down to the hock.

A year later, the secret note reverses entropy, and rematerializes on her desk.

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Microstory 1805: Field Work

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Like any young girl with parents who taught her to be independent and powerful, I dreamed of joining law enforcement. No, I know, that’s not a universal dream, but it sure felt like it back then. I couldn’t see myself doing anything else. As I grew up, my passion for the work only grew stronger. I wanted to be out there in the field, making the tough calls, and actually seeing the people I was helping. While I was still in college, my personality began to change. I still wanted to help others, but I no longer seemed interested in field work. Fortunately, I knew that there were plenty of jobs that didn’t require me to do anything like that. I won’t get into specifics about the path I took, but I ended up becoming a Threat Investigator for the government. It was my job to process calls from civilians who were reporting crimes and of course, threats. I occasionally had to go out and speak to people in person, but that only ever happened when the potential threat was nearby. Most of the time, I asked questions, and determined next steps, which generally involved contacting local authorities, or my branch’s local offices. It could be rewarding, but it was also stressful. It would be terrible if I downplayed a threat that turned out to be a really big deal, and it was almost as bad if I sounded the alarm about a threat that ended up being nothing; maybe even a hoax. Citizens from all over the country counted on me to accurately evaluate each situation, and decide the best course of action from the information I was given. I made mistakes, and I lived with regrets, but nothing was bad enough to warrant a disciplinary response...until it was. I made the wrong call, and people got hurt. No one died, but they very well could have. I should have taken it more seriously, even though the caller sounded unconvinced himself, and a background check made it look like he didn’t have much credibility. I wasn’t fired, but I couldn’t let anything like it happen again. Then I received my last call.

It was from a young man who lived in my city, or rather on the outskirts of it at the time. He was a member of a militia who was supposedly planning an attack on the capitol. The more I spoke with him, the more I realized that this guy actually joined the militia with the intention of taking them down from the inside. Apparently, his family was more into the anti-government stuff, and he had been forced to pretend to be like them so he could blend in, and stop his life from being so hard. Now he was in way over his head, and he needed my help to get him out of it. I went out into the field, and investigated the threat myself. Suddenly, I found myself in over my head. It wasn’t against protocol for me to go out there for a visit, but things snowballed so quickly, and I was captured and detained by the aggressors. Well, this proved that the threat was real, but there was nothing that I could do about it, at least not on my own. Fortunately, the self-appointed mole in the organization wasn’t found out himself, so I was able to sneak him a message, which he bravely took back to my superiors. They sent a strike team to raid the place, and I would like to tell you that they successfully prevented the attack, but I honestly don’t know one way or the other. It turned into a bloody mess just as the year was coming to a close. The bad guys realized immediately which among them ratted them out, and we were both executed in an attempt to show the agents that they meant business. Again, I can’t tell you what happened after that, but I can only hope that some good came out of our sacrifice, and they weren’t able to commit any further acts of violence.

Microstory 1804: Good Opinions and Right Choices

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I was raised in an extremely hostile environment. My parents were racist, hateful, and mean. When my older brother was first growing up, he tried to rebel against them. He didn’t go full liberal—because he didn’t know what that meant—but he didn’t agree with the kinds of things they would say. And they weren’t super obvious about it. They didn’t go around claiming that black people were inferior. They just used very unclever cover words like urban and hoodlum. They weren’t as inconspicuous as they thought they were, though, and my brother wanted no part of it. Unfortunately, they decided they weren’t going to give him a choice. They verbally abused him until he stopped talking all that lovey dovey nonsense. The world didn’t use terms like snowflake and libtard back then, but they would have loved it if they had been alive to learn them. Anyway, when I was old enough to start possibly making my own decisions, my brother realized how similar we were. He taught me to pretend to be like our family. I let them think that I was all about letting poor people die on the streets to save the dollar in my pocket, and not getting upset about the injustices we would see on the news. I did a really great job, blending in as the good little conservative boy that I was expected to be. I did too good of a job, actually. They were so proud of me. My brother and I had about the same grades in school, but since they were so disappointed in him, it was like I was the second coming of the messiah. I also had to pretend to believe in the messiah. I wasn’t an exceptional student, or person in general, but I could do no wrong, and my parents did what they could to give me the opportunities they felt that I deserved.

They paid my way into a preparatory school, which led me to a really great college. I hated every minute of it, but I figured I would take my free education, and do something positive with it. The problem was that I was so used to pretending to be an entitled prick that it was too hard to turn off at this point. I let them get me conscripted into a secret underground brotherhood, which was designed to foster a network of good ol’ boys who help each other go places, and get out of jams. It was so rough, being around people with such wrong opinions. I know people say that there’s no such thing as a wrong opinion, but those people’s opinions are wrong. There is a right way to think about how the world should be run, and a very bad way. It was impossible to walk away, though, and not because the only way out would have been in a bodybag, but because it was so tempting to accept their gifts. With their help, I was poised to step on a lot of heads, and make a lot of money. At that point, I didn’t really care that everyone who was helping me get there disgusted me to my core. Because maybe they didn’t. Maybe they weren’t so bad. None of my brothers were violent or outwardly intolerant either. They were great at hiding it, and some of them probably weren’t even that conservative at all. That’s obviously how the secret society formed, but we all make our own choices. I had to make a choice too. I had to do something to become my own man, and stop letting my family dictate how the world should see me. The brotherhood fed into a militia. Not everyone joined it, but it was an option. I continued to pretend, and took the path towards that anti-government group. They accepted me, and armed me, and it wasn’t long before they decided to plan an attack on the capitol. Before they could, I warned the authorities, and got the place raided. I finally made the right choice, and it was my last.

Microstory 1803: Life Can’t Be Engineered

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I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I went to school for engineering. I didn’t even know what kind of engineering I was interested in. I figured it was better to at least have some kind of direction, rather than spending two years undeclared, and then having to rush to graduate on time. I ended up choosing civil engineering, and ultimately earned an architectural degree to go along with it. A lot of people do it the other way around, but like I said, I hadn’t been thinking that far ahead. I started out at a firm where the work wasn’t very exciting. We constructed a lot of facilities that were basically carbon copies of buildings that already existed. Sure, there were some modifications necessary for every new project, due to certain constraints, like geography, but for the most part, I didn’t find the work challenging or glamorous. A friend from college called me up, and said that he was starting a business on his own. It was going to be small in every sense of the word. We were going to build these newish things called tiny homes. They were meant to be as small as possible while including all the necessary amenities that a homeowner would expect to encounter in a normal-sized house or apartment. Space was key, and understanding how to work within the restrictions of a smaller space was paramount. I was looking for a challenge, and I found it. I had so much fun, engineering household objects to not be simply smaller, but more efficient. My job has proved that humans need less space to live comfortably than some may believe, as long as they have the right tools. I designed some of those tools. I had to continue my education since not all of this was civil engineering, but it wasn’t too hard, and I enjoyed every second of it.

One of my proudest accomplishments was a stackable washer/dryer that included a sink. It took up a lot less room than you might have assumed, and it even won me an industry award. The whole washer came out like a drawer, it was so cool, if I do say so myself. There were a few other minor contributions, like the actual mechanism for a bed that receded into the floor, and other collaborative efforts. I even literally built my own house using the skills I used for my job. I was proud of myself for that too, obviously, but the laundry sink was my baby, at least at the time. I hadn’t thought much about starting a family. I wasn’t against it, but every morning, when I woke up, I thought about my workday, and didn’t realize how much time I had let pass until a stranger called me a cat lady. I think he was just being a jerk, because he shouldn’t have known that I was an old maid, but something clicked in me that night, and I decided that I did want a family. Back then, there weren’t any dating apps, or even online matchmaking services at all. All I could do was keep going to bars, hoping to meet someone nice. Occasionally, a friend would set me up with someone, but it never worked out. After all that searching, and all that failure, I discovered that my future was right under my nose. It was like a romcom when I suddenly started to see my business partner as something more. We both loved what we did for a living, we had a great shorthand with each other, and the attraction had always been there. We both agreed we would have one child, I guess to keep in line with our shared minimalist approach to life. That didn’t quite work out. Our first two children were twins, and our third was an accident. We loved them so much, we decided to have just one more. The fourth and fifth were also twins, but it was long before that when we outgrew our tiny home. We were forced to upgrade. It was worth it.

Microstory 1802: A Mother Doesn’t Know

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The end has finally come, and I welcome the relief. The doctors have been keeping a close eye on me for years now, but they can’t stop the inevitable. I have a DNR, and nobody lives forever. I don’t remember how I ended up in this institution, but it was definitely against my will. They keep me drugged up so I can’t think straight, let alone move fast enough to get out of this place. It’s been such sorrowful torture. I would protest against them, but I just don’t have the energy anymore, and haven’t for a very long time. They know this about me. They do that on purpose. They took away my free will, because if I had a voice, people might actually listen to what I have to say. But they can’t have that. No, far be it for me to speak my mind. I’m a crazy person, who no one cares about. I had someone who cared about me, but they took him away. Not the same people, technically, mind you, but close enough. Anybody who works for the institutions of this country, and promotes the oppression of the masses, might as well just be one evil man. I can’t wait to get the hell out of here, and I am well aware that the only way that happens is in a bodybag. The time has almost come; what I’ve been yearning for. This won’t be the first time that I died. I tried to kill myself a few years ago. My son got into an awful mess, and ended up being murdered by a cop. I was foolish to have made my attempt on the day the charity organization would come to deliver meals. He was the only person who ever gave a damn about me, and now he’s gone. What do I have to live for but him? Now this cough has taken me down my final path, and I’ve been letting it happen. They can’t keep me locked up forever, no sir. Now it’s just a waiting game.

I reflect on the decades behind me. They say that your life flashes before your eyes, but maybe that doesn’t always happen automatically. Maybe I have to force it, and expedite the process. I’ll take any advantage I can get. I did my best raising my child, but I could only do so much without his terrible father. Sure, he was the one paying for everything, so I didn’t have to work, but he should have been there. He should have helped teach our son how to be a man. I don’t know how to be a man; I’ve never done it before! Looking back, maybe there were some signs that he wasn’t well, and maybe I should have gotten him some help. But, really, how was I meant to know that his fixation on certain girls in his class was some kind of warning? It didn’t seem weird when these fixations transferred down to new girls. They kept staying the same age, while he grew older. He was very protective of others; I thought it was sweet. He didn’t ever kill any small animals, which everyone says is the behavior you’re supposed to look for. He has absolutely no trouble feeling empathy for people. I mean, when I say these signs were obvious in retrospect, it’s because hindsight is 20/20, not because I think I should have understood what the problem was back then. I couldn’t have known, I couldn’t. He did some bad things when he was older—those cages. He didn’t have to die for it, though, and they certainly shouldn’t have blamed me for it. Like I said, he didn’t ever show any violent tendencies. He truly wanted to help those women, and the situation sometimes just got out of hand. If their own parents had raised them better, perhaps they wouldn’t look so vulnerable. That’s what he was attracted to, but not in a sexual way. He wanted to help them, and I can’t help but be proud of him for that. I know he’s in heaven now, where he belongs, and I know that I’ll soon meet him there...at last.

Microstory 1801: Jellyfish Cycle

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I have been around for centuries, but I’ve not been young the entire time, or even most of the time. A few species of jellyfish are capable of something similar, through by different means. They use their genetics to be immortal. I use my soul. Before they can die, they will revert to an earlier stage of development, and begin anew. These creatures have evolved to do this, but the same can’t be said for me, because humans are not like that. The majority of us aren’t, anyway. I belong to a subspecies of humans called voldisil. We did not technically evolve out of the other either, though. You see, there are three genders. Normal people are only conceived by two, but a third can get involved, often without their knowledge. They’ll inject something else into the process. It’s a spiritual experience, which those like me would consider a gift. Back in the early second century, I was created, and unfortunately, I never had the pleasure of meeting my third parent. My mother and father died shortly after I came into the world, when you think about it, because it was only a few decades. I felt like I was able to spend a lot of time with my family back then, but I now realize how precious those moments were, and how I should not have taken them for granted. When I was 36, I contracted malaria, and I assumed that was it for me. There was no cure, no vaccine. It was pretty much a death sentence in my region in that time period. One night, I felt myself drifting away, and had to make peace with the end. I was surprised to find myself waking up the next morning as a toddler. All of my memories were intact, and I was cured. I couldn’t explain it. A new couple adopted me, thinking I was the child of a victim, and not even considering the possibility that I was the patient. They just thought of me as their little miracle.

I continued to go through this cycle lifetime after lifetime. Though, I probably shouldn’t call them lifetimes. I would be older when the transition happened every time, but I was also coming back older. The second time it happened, for instance, I looked more like an eight-year-old. By the fifth cycle, I no longer had to worry about someone trying to take care of me. I appeared to be old enough to handle myself. Each time, I would have to pack up, and move to a new land, so no one would become suspicious. I felt like I was in my early forties the last time I cycled, but that was only sixteen years ago. I’ve not known what it was like to die of age-related causes in a very long time. If I keep this up, I’ll probably only have days to live at a time, and I don’t want that. My soul’s ability to rejuvenate my body was never destined to last forever, and I always knew this about myself. What I needed to do was find some way to make my legacy last. I, of all people, understood what it looked like when someone just faded away. That’s what happens to most, in the end. Barring great fame, perhaps someone’s great great grandchildren will recall stories of their ancestors, but they won’t likely pass these on to their own descendants. I didn’t have any myself, because I didn’t know what their lives would have been like. It wasn’t worth the risk. As I lie here on my bed, prepared to go through this once more, and come back as another middle aged woman, I see now. I see that my third parent must have been in my same position all those years ago. This must be how it works; we pass the torch. I may simply be the latest in a line going back to the dawn of man. My final thoughts are of a newborn baby crying with the others two floors down, who receives my spirit ability, and has no choice but to accept the burden.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 19, 2377

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“Ramses, dark mode!” Leona ordered.

The ship became a darklurker. All nonessential systems were powered down to make themselves as undetectable as possible. Mateo decided to float up to the upper level, which was the only place with regular viewports. They were the only means of seeing what was going on outside. There was another ship out there. It was much smaller than The Investigator, which had taken them to the stellar engine. At the moment, it wasn’t doing anything. Perhaps it never noticed them, and its presence was a mere coincidence. Probably not, but they could hope.

“Battery level,” Leona whispered. She didn’t need to, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

“Twenty-four percent,” Angela reported.

“Hull integrity.”

“Holding.”

Ramses popped his head up from the lower level.

“Propulsion,” Leona prompted.

“There is nothing out here close enough for us to get to it without the battery, and this maneuver took a lot more out of us than I hoped it would. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Leona promised. “Mateo—where’s Mateo?”

“He went upstairs,” Olimpia said.

“I’m getting a bad feeling,” Leona said, standing up. “Ramses, use a tablet, and run some simulations. I want options for getting us out of this mess.”

“Sir,” Ramses replied.

Meanwhile, Leona went up to see what her husband was doing. He was in the airlock, hatch closed, finishing up fitting himself with one of the vacuum suits. “What are you doing?” she asked through the intercom

“I’m gonna board that thing,” he answered.

“The hell you are.”

“Stop wasting power on the intercom,” Mateo argued.

Leona rapidly pressed the charging button on the console. Something as simple as this did not require much power, and could be recharged quite easily. “There, now it’s back up to four bars. You are not going out there.”

“We need fuel, that thing has fuel,” he contended.

“I’m sure it does. It has antimatter pods, and hydropellets, but the former won’t be compatible with our system, and you don’t know what you’re looking for.”

“I know what I’m looking for,” he said. “I’m not as dumb as you think. I don’t know how antimatter works, but I’ve seen you people replace lots of parts on this thing while I was sitting around with nothing to do. I can retrieve them for you, and the two of you can adapt the alien technology. If nothing else, the deuterium and tritium can be used with the regular fusion drive, correct?”

She sighed. “They can. It’ll be slow, but yes.”

“Slow for us is maybe a few weeks,” Mateo pointed out as he was placing the helmet over his head.

“I’ll go with you,” Leona offered. “There are eleven other suits.”

“But there’s only one jetpack, and I need all the power I can get.”

“Mateo...”

“Let me do this. Let me do something.”

“You promise you know what you’re looking for?”

“I do. You know our code words. If something goes wrong, and I tell you to through the cuff, then you darkburst the hell out of here, and don’t look back.”

“Mateo...” she repeated.

“I’ll be fine, I promise.” He couldn’t promise that, but he had to do something. They needed those power sources. Being stuck in an intergalactic void was just not a sustainable living arrangement. Better him than someone else. Out of everyone on the team, he was the most expendable. He double checked his vacuum suit, then turned around, and jacked himself into the jetpack on the wall. In the olden days, one or two people had to help an astronaut into a suit like this. This was a lot better, especially if Leona had chosen to be less agreeable about the whole thing.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Leona was still so worried.

Mateo separated himself from the wall, and struggled to stay vertical from the weight of the jetpack. “Were I you.”

“Were I you.” She switched off the artificial gravity for him, so he didn’t have to stand. Then she pressed the button to open the outer doors, and watched him go.

According to the heads up display, the mysterious nonresponsive ship was floating about a kilometer away from the AOC. It had yet to make any move against them, or any move at all, for that matter. Ramses was reading heat waste coming off from it, so it didn’t appear to be abandoned, unless it was, and it happened pretty recently. The AOC remained in dark mode, staying in communication with Mateo using a carefully tuned laser. This would stop working once he boarded the vessel, but at that point, he should be able to take off part of the suit, and begin using the highly secure Cassidy cuff.

Using data relayed from Mateo’s sensors, Ramses was able to pinpoint a good place for ingress in what was probably an infrequently used airlock for automated external hull repair. It was too small for his jetpack to fit, so he removed it, and magnetically held it against the hull to retrieve later. He opened the airlock using the manual override they found, and slipped in. Still no response from anyone on the ship, suggesting that they had no idea he was there, or even that the AOC was. This could prove to be the hard part, figuring out how to repressurize the airlock without the team’s help. He reached over, just hoping there wasn’t an authorization code to block him, but before he could touch anything, the room started to make noise. It was repressurizing on its own, theoretically in reaction to his presence. The inner doors opened on their own too. Mateo removed his helmet, set it on the floor, and carefully exited.

He looked one way. Coast was clear. He looked the other way. Not clear. A man was standing there with a weapon of some kind trained on him. “Weapons on the floor.”

“I don’t have any,” Mateo told him honestly. They had never thought to store them on the AOC. It wasn’t a warship, after all.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why did you let me in if you thought I was a threat?” That airlock didn’t pressurize itself. This guy was surely in control.

“I wanted to know who you are, and what you’re doing here.”

“We need fuel,” Mateo answered. “Our own ship, it’s...it’s not gonna get far.”

“You mean that lifeboat down there?”

“You noticed us.”

“I’m not an idiot. Weapons, now.”

Mateo began to take off the rest of his suit, proving that he didn’t have anything up his sleeve.

“What is this thing?” the man questioned, holding Mateo’s wrist up, and indicating the Cassidy cuff.

“Comms and basic sensors.” He didn’t need to know about the sync teleporter, or the temporal pattern link.

He seemed satisfied with this answer. That was exactly what it looked like. More importantly, it didn’t look like a weapon. “That way,” he ordered with a jerk of his gun. He continued to direct Mateo from behind. This was a nice ship; kept clean and well-lit. There didn’t appear to be anyone else here, but it was pretty large. They could have been busy in other sections without Mateo ever knowing. “What fuel do you need, isotopes?”

“That, and antimatter pods. I know it’s a big ask, but if you’ll just speak with my Captain, I’m sure we can work something out. There’s no need for things to get—”

“We’re here.”

They were entering a big storage room. The roar of the engine was louder now, coming from a door on the other side. It did not look like a hock cell.

“How much do you need?” the man asked.

“Um.” That was an interesting question. He was just planning on stealing as much as he could carry. “Whatever you can spare. Our propulsion drive can handle six pods simultaneously, but our engineers will have to transfer what you have to—” He stopped himself to look down at the case the man had just opened. Inside were six pods. They looked nearly identical to the ones the AOC used. “Is that some kind of standard design?”

“I have no idea.” He shut the case, and pulled another one from the shelf. You carry them, I’ll carry the isotopes.

“Not that I’m not appreciative, but...why are you doing this?”

“I want you out of my business,” the man answered, “and I don’t care what it takes. This is my territory now, and I don’t need you hanging around any longer than necessary.”

It kind of sounded like he was doing something illegal. Mateo didn’t really care, though. This wasn’t his reality, and he didn’t know anything about the culture. He couldn’t even say that Salufi, or the others on the matrioshka brain, were bad people. Their reaction to the team’s arrival was not outrageous. They just couldn’t have it, and needed to leave. “I understand.”

“Thanks, let’s go.”

They started to walk back towards the service airlock, this time without the gun. “I’m sure you don’t want questions, but does this have anything to do with the matrioshka brain that was parked somewhere around here last year?”

The man stopped him at the shoulder. “You know it was here. Did you see it?”

“I was on it. We barely escaped.” Again, he couldn’t be sure whose side this guy was on, but against the matrioshka brain was a pretty fair bet at this point.

“Do you know its exact coordinates?” he pressed.

“Uhh, I don’t, I’m just the delivery boy. My Captain probably knows, or will do everything she can to help you find it.”

He set the isotopes down, and took one of the antimatter cases from Mateo. “Contact your ship. I will give you twice as much as this if you can get me to where they were.”

“This was exactly a year ago,” Mateo warned him. “We can probably find where it was then, but if it moved after that...”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I just need its flight path, so I can predict where it will be next.”

“What are you going to do with this information?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Mateo weighed his options in his head. He didn’t have much to go on, but one side imprisoned the team, and the other gave them presents. Dance with the one that brought you, he figured. He tapped on his cuff. “Leona.”

“Finally! Yes—my God—where have you been?”

“In a meeting,” he mused.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Perfectly fine,” he answered. “Jump to these coordinates. I’ve made a business arrangement with a new associate.”

“Powering up now.”

“Hey, I don’t know how long this is gonna take,” Mateo started to say to the man, “but in case we make quick work of this, we should formalize it. My name is Mateo Matic. My wife, Leona is the Captain. We have an engineer, and two other crew members on board.”

“Xerian Oyana.”

Mateo pulled up his own info on his cuff. “This is my personal quantum sequence. If you ever need anything else, call me, and we’ll try to help if we’re in the neighborhood. Time lag might be a factor.”

Xerian pulled out his handheld device, and accepted the data, exchanging it with his own. After Leona teleported to their location, they all three went up to the bridge, stopping briefly at the storage room to double their payment. Once at the controls, Leona retraced the AOC’s steps, and found the region of space where the matrioshka brain was last year. Xerian knew it was somewhere around here, but he needed to be as accurate as possible. He added it to the points he had already plotted on a map, and connected them with a new line. “Ah, they’re tricky, but I see a pattern.”

“Me too,” Leona said.

Mateo didn’t see it. It just looked like a random mess to him.

“Well, I appreciate your help,” Xerian said.

“We appreciate yours. This should last us quite a while.”

“I must be off. I think I can finally get ahead of them.”

“We’ll leave, but do you know where we can go? Is there some kind of haven for people who don’t have identities, and don’t have a great relationship with that matrioshka brain?

“Andromeda is your only hope,” Xerian explained. “But since I imagine you don’t have a lightyear drive, it will take you too long to get there.”

“You don’t have instant transporters?” Leona pressed.

“We do, but that’s what I mean,” Xerian went on. “The closest Nexus that won’t ask questions is nearly 1400 light years away.”

Mateo looked over to Leona, who closed her eyes and nodded. That will be fine. Xerian didn’t know about the reframe engine, or their salmon pattern. “Thanks again,” she said.

Xerian found the coordinates to both the Nexus, and a supposedly safe place in the Andromeda galaxy, and beamed them to her cuff.

After the two of them teleported back to the AOC, Mateo realized there could be another way. “Maybe we should just ask if we can stay with him.”

“That is not our business,” Leona contended. “We just need to get somewhere safe.”

“I think I trust him,” Mateo decided.

“That’s great!” Leona said with false enthusiasm. “We’re still gonna go do our own thing. Ramses.” She held out one of the cases of antimatter, and one of the tritium. “Load these up while I plot our course. We’ll be there in two years.”

“We’ll be where?” Mateo pointed out.

“We’ll see,” she said simply.

They weren’t necessarily headed towards safety. They still didn’t know what the hell was going on in this reality.

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