The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 7, 2398

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Mateo is startled awake. He’s nervous at first, because he assumes the person who’s shaking him by the shoulders in the pitch black is a friendly, but he doesn’t know that for sure. “Who is that?” he asks.

“Shh. It’s Heath,” he says in a whisper.

Leona turns over in her sleep.

Mateo drops down into a whisper too. “What is happening?”

“I wanna show you something.”

“Can it wait until morning?”

“It is morning. Come on.” He gets his hands further along Mateo’s shoulder blades, and pulls him out of the bed.

“Can I put on pants first?”

“Probably should.”

Mateo hastily pulls on some clothes, and follows Heath out of the room. He slips his shoes on too, and they leave the condo. They walk down the hallway, down the elevator, and down the hill. He rubs the sand out of his eyes as they continue walking for another couple of kilometers. He complains a little, but feels he needs to respect his host’s decisions, as bizarre as they seem right now. Finally they make it to a parking garage. There’s something different about it, but Mateo can’t place his finger on it, because he’s still so sleepy. As they walk through it, though, he realizes that the ceilings are very high. Some garages can’t even accommodate a heavy duty pickup truck, but this could handle semi-truck trailers. He yawns. “What are we doing here?”

“I got the notification that my present arrived, and just couldn’t wait.”

“Present for me?” Mateo asks.

Heath stops at a...plane? He extends his arms to present it. “Present for us.”

“Is that an airplane?”

“It’s a flying carboat.”

“What?”

Heath runs his hand along the curve of what looks like a turned up wing. “It can float in the sea, drive on the roads, and fly through the sky.”

“What, couldn’t spring for the one that’s also a spaceship?” Mateo jokes.

“No,” he answers genuinely. He continues to admire the vehicle.

“Where are the wings?” Mateo questions.

“It’s a lifting body, it doesn’t need wings.” He points to the vertical wing thing. “Or that’s what those things are. I don’t know. All I know is it works, and it cost me a fortune.”

“Do we need all of this? Could we not just take regular commercial jets where we need to go, and then rent cars?”

“Well, sure, if you wanna be basic.”

“Far be it.”

“Isn’t it beautiful? Come on, let’s check out the inside.”

It has to be really narrow, so it can fit in the standard road lane—and those weird wings do stick out a little—but it’s pretty long, and sufficiently tall. That’s why it needs this high ceiling parking garage, but it should be able to fit under any bridge just fine. The controls are in the cockpit, where you would expect, for a pilot and co-pilot. Behind it are four little cubbies; two on each side, separated by seats. By the door is a little kitchenette, then a lav, a toilet, and steps up to a loft. It feels like too much. It feels like too much. It all feels too extravagant.

“These cubby seats recline into flat beds, while these two are just for sitting .” He pulls down one of the three jumpseats along the wall by the door. “You could technically fit eleven people, though these three of them wouldn’t have anywhere to sleep.” He continues the tour, pointing around as necessary. Cargo is stored behind the shower, to leave space underneath for mechanical. Retractable floats allow water takeoff and landing. Of course, the wheels retract as well. Back there is a powerful boat motor, but you could opt out of that in favor of just using the jet engines. Distributed propulsion, obviously more fuel efficient. Solar panels mostly provide power for internal systems and land travel operation, but they can support flight in a pinch. Well, they can support an emergency landing.”

“This is...” Mateo doesn’t want to repeat himself. Heath knows it’s a lot. He knows what he bought. “When did you have time to buy this? Was it on your wishlist before we got here?”

He laughs, “no. I ordered it as soon as we first started talking about the mission five days ago.”

“Quick delivery time,” Mateo notes.

“Was it?” It must be pretty typical in this reality.

“I really appreciate everything you’ve done, including this, but not excluding everything else. You’ve been a great help to us, and I thank you for helping Marie when she had no one.”

“You speak as if you’re about to leave alone.”

“I know this thing is yours, and I’m not saying you should give it to me—I would find another way—but I assume it runs itself, because no one has mentioned you having a pilot’s license. I’m just reminding you that I’m fine doing this by myself. You don’t have to spend time away from your wife. I know you two are going through something profound.”

“Yeah, we’ve been talking about that,” Heath says, nodding his head. “You need to add another destination to your list, which we’ll be going to first. Marie needs a real abortion.”

“Where is it?”

“Croatia.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 6, 2398

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Marie is sitting with her alternate self at a late lunch, who she should probably think of as her twin sister now, since that’s what everyone beyond the team is meant to assume about them. They’ve been working on their relationship since Angela first appeared in this reality back in early April. It’s still a little weird, knowing that there’s this other person around with identical memories, but it helps now that Marie has four additional years’ worth of experiences. The more they diverge from each other, the less awkward it will become. But they will never lose the benefit they have of also knowing that there’s this other person around who knows how they feel about the world. Their personalities will not ever become unrecognizably different. She takes another bite.

“It’s not working.”

“What’s not working?” Angela asks.

“No bleeding, no cramps, no vomiting. These foods, they’re not working, and I’m getting sick of them.”

“Let me respond to you backwards. Remember what mother always said when we refused to eat our cucumbers.”

“Ugh, I hate cucumbers. And peppers. Now I really am gonna retch.”

“She said to treat them like medicine. You have to eat it, so just do it, and be done with it. Without cucumbers, we might have starved, and neither of us would exist right now.”

“Well, that’s a bit overdramatic, but okay.”

“Secondly, the foods might still be working. You just need more time. It’s barely been a week, and a miscarriage may not present itself for a couple more, which means you need to give it over a month.”

“The longer I wait, the fewer alternatives I have.”

“I understand that,” Angela agrees, “but you need to let this first attempt play out. You can’t keep going to the doctor to find out if it’s working, because then you’ll get in trouble, so all you can do is keep going, and....hope.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Marie accuses.

“You’re right, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

“What’s the next thing you wanted to tell me?”

“The cramps and the vomiting.”

“Yeah, that’s how I would know that I’m having a miscarriage.”

“They’re also symptoms of pregnancy,” Angela points out.

“And they’re sometimes symptoms of regular menstruation, what’s your point?”

“My point is, you’re not experiencing those at all?”

“No.”

“Did you...experience them while you were menstruating?”

“No.”

“Have you...ever been sick...since you came here?”

Marie pulls her head back, and stares into empty space to think on that question for a moment and a half. “No. Never.”

“According to Ramses, something is blocking our powers and patterns, but...our durable new bodies aren’t all just about powers. I don’t remember if he specifically said we could no longer get sick, but it was sort of implied. I mean, if you’re gonna give someone an upgrade, don’t include Huntington’s disease, or cancer. You would take those things out, along with other medical problems like the occasional low blood sugar, seasonal allergies, and stress-related hives.”

“We still can’t get sick,” Marie realizes, “even here. What does that mean?”

Angela shuts her eyes. “The food that you’re eating, which is tailored for you to place the fetus at risk, is dependent upon your reaction to certain chemicals that those foods possess. They throw off hormone imbalance, and they send bad neural signals. If your body was designed to work around that kind of thing—to combat it—then...”

“Then I may be medically incapable of having a miscarriage.”

Ramses sits down before he collapses. “It’s possible. I don’t understand how this reality works. If there is something out there that protects linear time, then our immortality shouldn’t be affected. But we know that it is, because we get tired, and we don’t absorb solar power, and we—” He stops short. Then he stands up, goes over to the kitchen, and takes out a knife. He drags it across his arm, going in far deeper than he needs to in order to illustrate his point.

“Goddamnit, Ramses!” Marie exclaims.

“Yeah, we can still get hurt...a lot easier than we should. But maybe...” He gets lost in his thoughts, and the other two don’t try to force him to continue. He starts rubbing his blood up and down his arm like he has an unhealthy fascination with it. “Maybe...” he repeats.

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe it’s external. Maybe it’s literally external. Your body doesn’t get sick, because most illnesses are internal, which might be protected against the...magical...power-dampening whatever?”

“I open my mouth all the time,” Marie counters. “I’ve cut myself before; with the knife you’re holding right now, in fact.”

Ramses shakes his head. “It’s not a constant thing. It’s not an invisible gas in the air. When we jumped from the main sequence to the Third Rail, we passed through something that stripped us of part of who we were. It took away everything special about our skin. It didn’t take away anything inside.”

“Then why can’t we teleport?” Angela questions.

“It’s a separate thing,” Ramses decides. “They’re two different things: the linear time protector, and the skin changer.”

“Why would someone do that?” Angela presses. “It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, it sort of does, but who’s going to all that trouble, and to what end?”

“Maybe it’s not on purpose. Maybe it’s just that whatever barrier is between realities does this to us.”

“It didn’t happen when you went to all those other realities, did it?” Angela asks.

She’s right, it didn’t. Or did it? Mateo and Ramses thought they were converting solar energy in the Parallel, but even though he personally engineered these upgraded bodies, he hasn’t spent much time in his own. Maybe he was mistaken this whole time. “I need to talk to Leona.”

“Wait.” Marie stops him from going down one of his absent-minded genius professor rabbit holes. “What can I do? How do I fix this?”

He shakes his head at her. “I don’t know. Let me think on that too.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 5, 2398

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Leona braces herself for another day of work. She loves the lab itself. The technology here is so—with no better way to say it—weird. Due to religion, of course, as well as other variables, there are some things that were just straight up never invented. Other things were invented too early. According to what limited research she’s been able to do during her downtime, none of these early inventions has been as ridiculous as, say, aerosol deodorant before the wheel, but she finds it fascinating to read about them nonetheless. For instance, unlike in the main reality, where the electric vehicle, and the combustion engine, were invented around the same time, the latter predates the former by nearly a hundred years on this planet. This was how people drove around in the 20th century. Also unlike the main sequence, once car batteries became efficient enough to last two day’s worth of the average daily commute on a single charge, the transition period between the two form factors was extremely short. This was probably because the people who originally sold petrol-powered vehicles were also responsible for manufacturing the battery-powered ones, so they saw no reason to stifle progress. Who could have guessed that all the corporations would have to do to maintain their oligopolies would be to innovate deliberately, and noncompetitively?

One major scientific advancement that this world randomly doesn’t have is reconstructive surgery. We’re not just talking about elective surgery where someone wants to change their appearance because they think it will make them more attractive. Skin grafts, deformity corrections, even sexual reassignment surgery; none of these things exist here. Leona so far can’t figure out why. When she’s brought it up to her coworkers at both of her jobs, people seem amenable to the examples, and they can’t explain why they haven’t been done before. Another thing this culture seem never to have invented is sexual harassment seminars. What Leona believes is that all harassment training is focused on protecting children. Apparently, once someone reaches the age of seventeen, they’re expected to fend for themselves. They should be able to reject unwanted advances on their own, stand up for themselves against bullies, and brush off inappropriate comments. Well, that last one is even more complicated, because her definition of inappropriate is very different than whatever these people have decided on.

This is why Leona hates working here, and if this one thing were to change, it would make it worthwhile. They wouldn’t even have to repair the shortcomings of society in a greater respect. All they would have to do is let her do what she needs to do to help them, and not try to interfere, or be involved. This would be so much easier if she could work alone. She’s the one from the alternate reality. She’s the one who has seen all kinds of wondrous technology. Many people in this lab may be smarter, but none of them can match her experience and knowledge. Having to deal with this one particular colleague who has been assigned to learn from her has made her almost want to quit. After a productive conversation with Marie and Angela, Leona has resolved to do something about it today. Marie reminded her that the lab needs her more than she needs it. Yes, she wants to know what happened to their powers and patterns, but not at the expense of her dignity and self-respect.

As soon as she steps off the elevator, she sees him. He’s trying to hand her a cup of coffee, as he does every day. He thinks it’s sweet, but from him, it feels like an attack. Plus, she doesn’t really drink coffee—especially not the kind from the Third Rail, which no matter the variety, always tastes at least a little sweet—and she’s told him this numerous times. It’s not that he doesn’t understand, he just doesn’t care. He expects this to become a lovely story they’ll tell their grandkids one day; that he just kept trying, even though she never accepted. Oh, hahaha, that’s so cute. She’s about to preemptively tell him yet again that she doesn’t want any, but he begins a different subject. “Aww, come on. Where’s that teal blouse I like so much? Your tits look so great in that.”

She stops and stares for a moment. Then she takes one of the cups from his hand, aims it towards him, and squeezes. He screams in agony. “Yours look great in that.”

“Fucking bitch!”

She ignores him, and walks right up to Petra’s office.

“What’s that ruckus down there?” Petra asks.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay.” She’s always so trusting, it’s bizarre.

“Did you receive my latest numbers?”

“Yes, I did!” Petra exclaimed. “They’re very promising. I don’t think you were lying about your ability to develop actual fusion technology.”

“I wasn’t. So...you’re impressed?”

“Very much.”

“You might even say that you value my contributions.”

“Of course.”

“You wouldn’t be super happy if I—oh, I dunno—quit?”

Her smile disappears. “Are you going to quit? Have you been in talks with India Tech? They may have lots of money, but they can’t give you what—”

“It’s not about money. It’s about this place. It’s about him.” Leona just sort of glances towards the bottom of the door.

“Him?” Petra asks before realizing she already knows the answer. “Oh. Him.”

“He’s still harassing me, and I’ve had enough of it.”

“I know, I’m sorry. You’re not the only one complaining, but I can’t report him to Staff Support just for bringing you a beverage every morning. Can you imagine how that conversation would go? He’s too nice. That’s not illegal, or against policy.”

“It should be!” Leona catches her breath. “At least in this context.”

“I know he won’t stop bothering you. I’ll try to talk to him again.”

“I only want you to have one more conversation, and it’s either going to be an exit interview with me...or with him.”

“Is this an ultimatum?” Petra asks.

“Absolutely. You can fire him, or I quit. You’re not going to entice me with more money, or a bigger workspace, or even less time having to work with that man in person. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. I want him gone. I want him humiliated, and out of a job, and I want him to hate me for it.”

“This is a big ask, Magnus Matic.”

Leona nods, not disagreeing with her. “Fusion, or one little asshole with a big mouth. You can only have one.”

“Well, when you put it like that...”

“Great. And bonus, if you do it soon, I’ll finally have enough time to complete the simulations, and then I can start on some real design specifications. You’re welcome.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 4, 2398

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“Hey, Ada...um, Abdoor—uh...”

“You’re close, sir. It’s Abdulrashid.”

“I knew that.”

“You can just call me Ramses.”

“No, I need to learn.”

“Okay.”

His boss doesn’t say anything more.

“Is that all you wanted to do; learn my name?”

“Oh, no. Umm. Look, here’s the thing. I know you’ve already been working for us for a bunch of years, or whatever, but corporate has this new policy where everybody who starts at a new location—be it their first day with us, or a transfer—has to be run through another background check.”

“Okay...”

“Most of it is easy, I literally just copied and pasted your living, work, and education histories from your transfer papers. But there’s one thing you’re gonna hafta do yourself.”

Ramses thinks about it for a moment. “The drug test.”

Oswald nods, and echoes, “the drug test.”

“That’s fine.” Ramses may no longer have his superpowers anymore, but he knows how to eat and live healthily, so his system is likely cleaner than anyone else’s in this joint. It definitely doesn’t have any drugs in it. “I can pee in a cup.”

Oswald contorts his face. “Pee in a cup? Why the hell would you do that? I’m talking about a blood test to make sure you don’t have any illegal substances in your body. I’m not sure what pee and cups have to do with anything.”

Oh, this world is different.

Oswald takes another sip from his fountain drink, but no longer has the taste for it after Ramses’ remark. “Ugh. Pee in a cup,” he says again, muttering under his breath. “You’re one crazy dude, Abdul-Jabbar.” There is no way, in a reality where people give blood samples instead of urine samples for drug screenings, that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar also exists. The point of divergence was far too long ago.

Stockboy sneaks up to Rames by the side. “Have you even ever had a drug screening before?” he asks, sipping at his own drink, unfazed by the conversation that he obviously heard.

No, he’s never taken one before. In his time, using recreational drugs was rare, so people just assumed you weren’t on them. If you were, and it didn’t negatively impact your productivity, then probably no one would notice. But if they did catch you...

“You’re taking too long to answer,” Stockboy muses.

That’s right, he spends too much time in his head. It’s a habit he picked up from Mateo. “Of course I’ve had one. I spent some time in Croatia. The complex where I wanted to live had a strict drug policy, which required multiple forms of testing. You can test for drugs in urine, we just don’t normally do it.”

“Weird. And gross.”

Ramses sighs, and looks over at him. “Get back to that smart speaker that’s stuck on a triple echo.”

“Sir, yes sir!” he mocks with an equally disrespectful salute.

Now that the coast is clear, Leona feels comfortable approaching Ramses to discuss something sensitive. “You remember that our background information is fake, right?”

“Right,” Ramses agrees.

“So when they run a real check on you, that’s what they’ll find...nothing. The forger didn’t fake a background check, she faked the results.”

“Oh, shit. We’re exactly the kind of people those things are meant to look out for.”

“Not exactly,” Leona corrects.

“Wait, you just had your own check, when you first started here. How did you handle it?”

“I had to go pay the forger again. She was not happy. She said she never wanted to see our faces once we left the first time.”

“I have to work late today, and fill in for Bruno tomorrow.” He looks at her with his deep set Persian puppy dog eyes.

“You want me to go back a third time?”

“Pleeeeeeeaaaase? I just don’t know how much time we need.”

“I guess I don’t really wanna go to work, so...all right.” She takes off her apron. “But you’re finishing my shift here.” She hangs it on his neck.

“Great,” Ramses decides. “I’ll call it cross-training. Thank you so much for this.”

“Sure, Rambo.”

Leona calls Mateo to pick her up, and drop her off at the forger’s secret hideout. He asks to go in with her, but she won’t allow it. The forger will be even unhappier than she was the last time, and they don’t need to compound that problem with extra people. Leona is confident that she can handle it on her own, and it’s true that she doesn’t feel like going back to the lab anyway.

“You’re not mad?”

“Why would I be mad,” the forger asks.

“You were mad last time.”

“You silly Egyptian water lily, I was kidding!”

“What’s with you?” Leona questions. “You don’t smile.”

“You don’t know me that well.”

“It’s exceedingly obvious that you don’t smile. You don’t give off the right vibe.”

“Oh, it’s—relax, we’re all friends here.”

“I feel like you’re about to tell me that...” Leona trails off. She takes a receipt out of her purse, and scribbles down a note that reads, Is this place bugged?

“No, we’re not bugged. I’m not trying to trick you, I’m just being friendly.”

“To what end?”

“To...” Her demeanor drops with each following word as she struggles to maintain the charade. “I don’t know what a normal person would say in this scenario.”

“They would tell the truth,” Leona explains.

The forger scoffs. “No, they wouldn’t.”

“Do you need something from me?”

“Do you need something from me?” she returns annoyingly.

“Yes, I need an emergency background check interception.”

“Easy.”

“And in return, you want,” Leona prompts.

“Oh, I don’t want anything,” the forger begins. “However, maybe in the future there could be something that you could get me?”

Leona narrows her eyes. “Something, like what?”

“Well, you work at that lab.”

“You got me in there. You could send anyone you wanted.”

“Honest hour? I didn’t think your fake university transfer would work.” She grimaces. “I’m glad to know it did, though.”

Leona ponders the offer. It would be dangerous, but that’s not the problem. The problem is she doesn’t know what it is yet. So here’s hoping that it’s worth it. “Fine.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 3, 2398

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Mateo and Heath aren’t about to leave just yet. It will be at least another week, possibly two. They’re pretty sure they’re going to do it, but they don’t want to jump into anything without thinking it through. They’re going to need a little time to plan out some kind of itinerary. Until then, Mateo is going to continue to study at the library. Today, Angela is there for a different reason, which is to become a volunteer. She doesn’t have a degree in library sciences, so she isn’t seeking a paid position, and it doesn’t bother her much that her alternate self is paying her way now, so this should work out just fine. She isn’t worried that they’ll reject her, but she still wants to look nice, and be professional. She’s wearing a slightly frilly blouse, gray jacket, and a matching gray pencil skirt. Though, they call that last one a slimmy here, which probably doesn’t sound funny to the natives.

As the hour approaches, she finds herself to be more nervous than she should. She knows the librarian, Madam MacDougas pretty well, and they seem to have a good rapport, but now that she thinks about it, she’s never interviewed before. Before she died, she wasn’t allowed to have a job. She was always expected to meet a nice white man, and let him take care of her financially—preferably someone with lots of slaves, since they add to the profits, but not the overhead—while she handled the housework. When she was on track to become a counselor in the afterlife simulation, she was just promoted when it was time. Her past actions were enough to prove that she was ready for the responsibility, and if they had not been, the people in charge would have simply waited until they were.

Mateo senses her anxiety. “You. Are. One of the wisest, and kindest people I know. You may be the best. You’re gonna do great.”

She smiles. “Thanks.”

“I’ll be in philosophy. You remember where that is? It might be on the test.”

“I’ll see you later, Mateo,” Angela says. She breathes, and prepares herself. Then she walks over to the counter, where Madam McDougas is opening her daily computer programs. “Do you have time to talk?”

Madam McDougas stops what she’s doing, and places her hands on her lap. “It’s about time.”

Angela looks at her watch. “You just opened.”

“No, I mean it’s about time you asked me for a job.”

“How did you know?”

“You’ve been spending most of your time recently scanning the shelves, and taking notes. I gathered that you were familiarizing yourself with the organization of the books, instead of studying the subjects inside. You haven’t cracked a book in three days.”

“Oh. That’s quite observant of you. Well, I don’t need a job. I just wanted to donate some of my time.”

“Are you sure? We do have a couple of open positions.”

“I’m not qualified for such things. I just like learning.”

“Maybe we could work something out. What if I took a look at your résumé?”

Angela grimaced.

“You don’t have one of those, do you?”

“My past is...complicated.”

Madam McDougas nods. “Like Azad Devi.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Angela apologizes, hoping to God that it is the name of a person, though.

“Hm. You could stand to read a little more fiction. If you’re only a volunteer, you’ll have time for that.”

“Anything. Shelving, cleaning; I’ll do whatever you need...except teach fiction. Where I grew up, such media was scarce.”

Madam McDougas nods. “Some cults are more complicated than others. I don’t need to hear the details.”

That’s a good thing to know, that people might stop asking questions if you lead them to believe that your religion of origin was obscure, and limiting in bizarre ways. Yeah, that’s it. She didn’t know that pencil skirts were called slimmies because she was raised in a sheltered environment. That makes sense. She’ll have to remember to pass this advice on to the others. They just don’t want to be too specific, or claim a lie that can be too easily refuted. “I appreciate your understanding,” Angela says, neither confirming, nor denying, Madam McDougas’ assumptions.

“It will help to know more about what you know. Do you have any experience in a library, or an educational setting?”

Yes, actually. There were plenty of such facilities in the afterlife simulation. If someone at a higher level wanted to know something, they could just ask, and an answer would come. For the rest, some of the more fortunate strongly believed that they still deserved whatever education they desired, so they built places of learning. Limiteds and Basics were especially fond of these constructs, but they weren’t the only ones in need. Level 3 Hock prisoners were mostly stuck in their cells and cell blocks. Having access to the means of expanding their knowledge was fundamental to maintaining their sanity under sentences of centuries, or even millennia. Angela felt honored to help them through that in this way, and this attitude is part of what promoted her to higher levels in the first place.

“I’ve volunteered at libraries before, and for continuing education programs.”

Madam McDougas is pleased with this answer. “That’s all I need to know. We already have plenty of volunteers, so I don’t have anything specific to assign you. Why don’t you go meet with Doug, and see what he might have for you to do.”

“Thank you for this opportunity,” Angela says graciously.

“Thank you,” she echoes.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 2, 2398

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Mateo pulls up to Leona’s evening workplace, and puts it in park. She looks over at the building, but doesn’t get out of the car. He looks in the rearview mirror to make eye contact with Angela in the back, but she doesn’t know what the problem is either, if there is one. “Are you okay?” he asks.

“What?” Leona asks as if just realizing that there are other people around. “Oh. It’s fine.” She pulls her backpack from between her legs, and opens the door, struggling with it just a little bit, out of unrelated tension, not because of the door itself.

“You can talk to me, remember?”

“It’s fine,” Leona says, pretty dismissively. “I’m stressed, but I can’t elaborate.”

“Were I you,” Mateo reminds her.

“Yeah.” She walks away.

“She keeps doing that. She keeps not responding to that appropriately.”

“Yeah. We’ve noticed,” Angela reveals. She crawls up to the front.

He sighs. “We’re still going to the retail store, right?”

“I should say so.”

He puts the car back in gear, but remembers that he needs to map it out first, so he just holds on the brake, and finds it. Once he does, he pulls away, and heads for their destination. “Listen, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Go ahead,” Angela offers.

“I’ve been...kind of wanting a job. I’ve actually been needing it. No matter how much I make, it will barely make a dent in Marie and Heath’s bank account, but I still feel compelled to contribute something. I have to help in some way.”

“We thought you might be feeling that way,” Angela says.

“You’ve been talking about me?”

“Everyone talks about everyone else,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Okay.”

“We just think you need to keep a low profile.”

“Lower than where I already am?” he questions.

“Yes.”

“I was thinking about applying for a job at the library. That’s why I’m going to the store, to pick up a suit.”

“That’s what I’m going to do. Well, as a volunteer. Great minds think alike.”

He’s about to contend that he doesn’t have a great mind, but that’s the sort of thing his therapist would advise him not to say. He needs to learn to value himself. So he decides that it’s true. “Yes, exactly,” he tells her. That’s a big step for him. “Why do you get to keep yourself busy, and I don’t?”

“No one said you couldn’t keep busy. We have something else in mind for you.”

“How long are these conversations behind my back?”

“I think you’ll like it.”

“Oh?”

“You have a list of places you think might hold answers for us, like Easter Island, and Antarctica.”

“Yeah...?” She can’t really be going where it sounds like she’s going.

“We think you should check them out,” she suggests.

“Seriously? How is that a low profile?”

“I guess that’s not the right term. Anyway, they may be dead ends, but they may hold the key to everything. We just think someone should be responsible for trying.”

“You want me to go off alone?” he asks. “That seems weird. I mean, I’m fine doing it alone, but it’s weird that you would agree.”

“You wouldn’t be alone,” she promises. “Heath would be going with you.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 1, 2398

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Mateo was surprised to learn that Marie’s therapist had an opening the following day, but he decided he needed to go ahead and get on it, instead of waiting. Now he’s waiting in the waiting room, with a little boy and his father. There appears to only be one therapist here, so either they’re really early, or Mateo’s in the wrong place. Not long before the door opens, though, the father looks at his watch, gathers his son, and they leave together. Maybe they just didn’t have anything to do before their next appointment?

“Mister Matic?” Magnus Sharpe presumes.

“That’s me.”

“What would you like me to call you?” she asks.

“Mateo is fine.” He walks past her as she holds the door open, and takes a seat on the couch. A little furry dog slowly waddles over to him, and situates itself upon his shoes.

“You can carefully move him if you don’t want him there,” Mag. Sharpe tells him. “Some people find him comforting.”

“He’s good there.”

“On the phone, you said that you’re a friend of a patient of mine?”

“Yes. Marie Walton.”

“I cannot confirm that she’s a client, or anyone else, so if you want to talk about her, we’ll have to move forward under the possibly true assumption that I’ve never even heard of her before.”

“Okay.”

“What brings you here today?”

“Well, I don’t know what she told you...I mean, she couldn’t have told you anything since you don’t know her, so I guess I’ll explain. We’re time travelers. When it began, it was just me. I was in a cemetery with my friends on my birthday, and suddenly everyone around me disappeared. I quickly learned that I was the one who disappeared, and that I had been gone for a year. I soon thereafter met my future wife, who became like me when I donated my kidney to her. The other three showed up later, for various reasons.”

She nods, not only like she understands, but believes him.

“None of this is all that important to my issue, but I’m giving you background, so you know what makes us a team. We’re not just a group of old friends who met at college, or in a stuck elevator.”

“That wouldn’t be what makes you a team,” Mag. Sharpe notes. “Teams accomplish goals together.”

“Well, we help people. At least we try. Sometimes a friend gives us missions, sometimes an enemy does, and sometimes we don’t even know who’s calling the shots.”

She jerks her head, confused.

Mateo thinks he knows why. “Yeah, there’s this mysterious group called the powers that be who have some kind of control over the whole universe.”

She shakes her head now. “No, I’ve heard of them. I didn’t know that you would complete missions for enemies. Tell me about that.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess that would sound weird, so I must just be used to it. I think that those people generally wanted to do good, but they built this reputation of being assholes, because they have all this power, and power corrupts, ya know? So they want to change, but when you’re a time traveler, it’s basically impossible to change your reputation, since linear time is just an illusion. So they keep being assholes, and force us to help others. That way they don’t actually have to have done any of the helping, but it still gets done.”

“Interesting.”

He chuckles mildly. This is going surprisingly well. He’s never felt so uncomfortable around regular humans than he has in this world, but Mag. Sharpe feels like someone he can trust. Now it’s time to get to the real issue, though, which has nothing to do with time travel.

“Go on,” she urges.

“Well, as you’ve probably heard, all the others are the smart ones. Angela and Marie studied and trained a lot of different things in the simulation. Leona and Ramses both studied science in normal school before they found out about any of this. I’m just the big dummy. The only reason I’m here is because my only true skill is that I attract the villains, and those villains have other victims, so that’s how we meet.”

“You feel useless.”

“Yes. I can’t fly a ship, or fight a monster. I try to look back on the things that I’ve accomplished since this started, and it’s all rooted in convincing others to help me. I don’t actually do anything myself.”

“You don’t think that alone is a skill?”

“Being helpless, and others taking pity on me? Not really,” he says.

“I think it is,” she counters plainly.  “I mean, think about it, if none of this time travel stuff existed, what could you do with that? What kind of job could you get? Why, you could help other people get jobs. That’s called recruitment, or headhunting. Heck, you would even excel as the top executive of a big company. People like that don’t need to understand the products or services they provide. They just need to know how to find the people who do. That is a skill, and most people don’t have it, because we grow up to be jaded and cynical, so we find it difficult to trust in the expertise of others. So not only is it a skill, but a virtue.”

“I was 28 when this happened to me. I had plenty of time to become a top executive, or at least start making my way down that road. But instead, I’m a driver. I’m a literal driver, and that’s all I could ever have been.”

“Yeah, not the most glamorous role, and I’m not saying that you should have become an executive, or that you did something wrong because you didn’t. I’m saying everyone has their own strengths, and just because yours aren’t as obvious as your friends, doesn’t mean they’re not valuable. You seem to be feeling inadequate in this reality, because while you’ve always relied on your team, you’ve probably always been able to contribute by following their direction. Now that you’re here, and relatively safe, there’s really nothing you need to do to help. If you were to sit on the couch all day in front of the TV, while the others were at work, they would be fine. No more antagonists, no more missions. It would be like if they were the parents, and you were the child. No one gets mad at the child for not having a job.”

“Hmm. Yeah, that is the difference. I was pretty much always busy, but now, all I do is read library books, so my ineptitude stands out more.”

“What are you studying?”

“Philosophy.”

She nods. “The proverbial subject that won’t get you a job unless you remain in academics. My daughter’s doing the same thing, but she doesn’t want to become a professor, or anything. So after she gets a degree, she’s going to have to find something probably unrelated.”

“What would that be?” he asks.

“You like the library, Mateo?”

“Eh, it’s growing on me.”

“Then why don’t you work there?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 30, 2398

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It’s been three weeks. They’ve been in this reality for three straight weeks. In that time, Heath and Angela went to jail, Leona and Ramses got jobs; the former nailed down two. Meanwhile, Mateo has read a few books, and meditated in a graveyard in the company of someone who he at best believes to be another lost time traveler, and at worst, their next antagonist. Even though a lot of technology in this reality resembles the kind he grew up with, there are some modern conveniences that make their lives easier. The Waltons own this little robot that cleans the whole condo, floor to ceiling. It roams around the condo, seeking dirt and grime, and destroying it without being told. It can even disinfect a room with ultraviolet light, run laundry and dish cycles, and answer basic questions from the internet.

There’s really nothing for Mateo to do to make up for everything these people are doing for him, and it’s starting to really get to him. Marie and Heath have done so much in such a short time, and he needs to figure out how to repay them, even only fractionally. Yes, they’re rich, but it feels weird, taking and never giving. Then again, he’s always done that. He still lived with his parents at 28. He didn’t even own the car he used for work. Hell, even Ramses built their ship for them. Mateo doesn’t contribute. That has to change, and since he can’t come up with an answer on his own, he’s going to have to seek help from someone else. Unfortunately, he can’t speak to the only five people he knows here. “What if...hypothetically, someone on this planet needed to seek guidance from a therapist?”

Leona sets her fork down on her plate. “Are you okay?”

“It’s a hypothetical. I’m fine.”

“What do you wanna know?” Heath asks.

“What’s privacy like here? I just...I mean—I’m not saying if a murderer confesses to his doctor, but just anything weird or crazy-sounding?”

“There are different classes of mental health professionals,” Heath explains. “Some of them are required to act upon what they learn of their clients. Others are required to not act upon it. You could confess to that murder, and they wouldn’t be able to say anything. But they’re less educated in psychology, so they might not be as helpful.”

“Is there something you would like to talk about?” Leona presses.

“Of course not. Just curious,” Mateo insists, quite unbelievably.

“I can get you the name of someone I used to talk to about being a time traveler,” Marie explains. “Like the forger, she never divulged anything to anyone, and she listened with an open mind. Or rather, she was good at pretending to believe me. Hypothetically speaking, I never actually talked to her.”

“Honey, you never told me about that,” Heath says.

Marie doesn’t look him in the eye. “I never had to work late. Or rather, I was always working late, I never sought professional help.”

He runs his fingers through his own hair, but doesn’t say anything else.

“Okay, I would appreciate that,” Mateo tells her, “hypothetically.”

Leona places a comforting hand on his arm.

“Do you remember—none of you was with us at the time—Leona, do you remember when Nerakali shared her ability with us, and I was able to manipulate people’s memories?”

She nods. “I do. Or...maybe I don’t.”

He waves his hands at all of his friends. “This conversation never happened. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”

Humoring him, the rest of the team move the conversation along, and don’t talk about this again. Marie writes down the name and number of a therapist, and passes it to Mateo like a grade school love note.