The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 21, 2398

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Marie and Mateo are sitting across from each other in the two non-cubby seats while Ramses continues to do his work. They came here yesterday early morning, pretty much immediately after their run-in with Winona Honeycutt and her merry band of mercenaries. They were able to do this, because Ramses has been a lot more busy than they realized. He was able to rig up a make-shift temporal engine that can process what he calls temporal hydroxide; the apparent scientific name for water infused with temporal energy. He secured a few samples of the Death water, then injected the rest into this special new engine, which spirited them out of Türkiye airspace, and into the Atacama desert. Apparently, Body water could be found here, but only on February 9, 1972. This was just before a massive storm hit the area, delivering rainfall after a reported 400 years of drought. It’s one of the easier immortality waters to get to, but the absolute most difficult to pinpoint. If you can find water originating anywhere in a five kilometer radius, it should work, but it has to be enough, so good luck.

They’re obviously not here to look for Body water, which still no one knows the purpose of. They just needed a safe, remote place to work. They had one teleportation jump to use, and this place was on Ramses’ mind. He slept last night, but woke up bright and early to get back to the grind. He needs to be one hundred percent that this is going to do what they need it to. Unfortunately, that’s impossible, because they can’t exactly run it through human trials. Marie is okay with this. She knows that she’s taking a huge risk just by being here, and a bigger one by trying it. “Can you stop that?”

“Stop what?” Mateo asks.

“You’re bouncing your leg. Not only can I hear it, but I can feel it in my seat. This floor isn’t perfectly sturdy.”

“Sorry, I’m just nervous.”

“Why are you nervous? This is happening to me.”

“Yes, and I love you.”

She smiles. “Do you remember when we met?”

“Yeah, I was dead and fine with it, which surprised you, and all the other dead people you were in charge of orienting.”

“I could tell that you were special. Other people ended up in the afterlife to no surprise of their own. They had been given the privilege of time to accept it. But you weren’t just all right, you acted like you knew what was going to happen.”

“I didn’t. The afterlife simulation was a really well-kept secret, even amongst my people.”

She shrugs. “I guess you were just used to weird stuff.”

He nods. “Yeah.”

Ramses comes up from his little lab, which is mainly meant as an engineering section for the vehicle, but it’s the best space for his needs. “You left your phone when you came to check on me. Leona sent another coded message.”

Mateo glances at his watch. “Oh, crap, I was supposed to initiate.” He takes it, sees that she and Angela are still okay, then sends one back, letting her know that they’re fine too. They’ve been dealing with some scifi shit as well, but it’s not enough to warrant the away team’s return home, or their bug-out protocol.

“Are we ready?” Marie asks Ramses.

He grimaces just a little.

“Are we?” she asks again.

“I’m ready. Now it’s up to you.”

“Oh, great, it’s my responsibility again.”

“It always has been.”

“I know.”

“There is no time limit,” Ramses says. “You can wait as long as you need, or back out until I literally press the button.”

Marie sighs. “I don’t have infinite time. At some point, this cluster of cells is going to become a person, and it will become immoral to abort it.”

He nods. “I understand.” He looks around. “Um...if you still want this, I recommend we go to the cockpit. You should be lying down, and while the cubby seats recline, it would be better with more space.”

“That’s fine,” she says. “Let’s just not call it that. How about...the bridge?” After Ramses goes back downstairs to grab the machine, the two of them slow-walk up to the front. He goes in first, and Marie stops at the steps. She looks back at Mateo. “Are you coming?”

“Do you want me to?”

“I do,” she answers.

There are three steps down to the bridge, in between the pilot and co-pilot seats. Mateo sits on the first step, and holds Marie’s hand. After he places the target electrodes on either side of Marie’s belly, Ramses sits in the other seat, and calibrates his little machine. He does so carefully, so as to give her more time to cancel her request, but also to make sure it’s set up correctly. They only have one chance at this, and there is no guarantee that it will work. The fact is that she might die. Ramses Abdulrashid is an extremely intelligent and accomplished engineer, but he’s not a doctor. If something goes wrong, the first aid kit sitting open on the console might be their only hope. She’s consented a million times, but they’ve come down to the wire. In a matter of seconds, they will be at the point of no return.

He decides to give her one more opportunity. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

“I want this to happen,” Marie says quite formally. “I want an abortion.”

Ramses places his hand over the button. “I don’t know what it’s going to feel like physically, and I certainly don’t know what it’ll be like emotionally. It might be...jarring, like getting the wind knocked out of you. But we’re both here for you.”

“Okay,” she says, readjusting her position ever so slightly. “Do it.” She squeezes Mateo’s hand tighter.

“In five, four, three, two, one, mark.” He pushes the button.

Marie jolts and shudders.

“Are you okay?” Mateo asks.

She holds up her free hand. “I’m fine.” Her voice is tight, suggesting that she’s feeling a tightness too. “It’s just...oh, it’s cold. It’s really cold.”

“Is that normal?” Mateo asks Ramses.

“I don’t know,” he replies honestly, just as concerned and helpless.

Marie begins to do some measured breathing exercises, and relaxes as they go on. She exhales one last time, just as water is dripping onto the floor. She starts to cry.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 20, 2398

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They took it slow. Marie first drove them into a more rural area of Germany, then had to return the controls to Ramses, so he could fly them over some of Eastern Europe, taking a little bit of a scenic route to avoid Czechian airspace. When they landed in Ukraine, they drove to the nearest dock, and floated for a little bit until submerging, and going the rest of the way through the Black Sea underwater. They reached the shores of Türkiye at around 4:00 in the morning on June 19. They weren’t at a port, though, because then they would have to register as visitors. To sneak in, they arrived at the most underpopulated area they could find, and performed a little trick.

The Olimpia can’t just transition from water to ground seamlessly. It has to roll up a ramp, and of course, that ramp has to be big and sturdy enough to accommodate it. That wouldn’t work here, so they needed a work around. In aircraft mode, it’s best to fly up as fast as possible. Vertical take-off and hovering takes a lot more energy than a normal runway launch, and forward propulsion, because it’s not drawing in ambient air to power it, among other reasons. But they can spend some fuel to make this happen, allowing them to essentially hop out of the water, and land on the road. They can’t fly as high as they would during a real trip, because then radar could spot them. Again, it’s not ideal, but necessary in this situation to meet their objective. They had to get into Türkiye undetected, and make it most of the way across the country, also undetected.

They hid in dense vegetation most of the day, but didn’t feel compelled to wait until nightfall, because they wouldn’t reach any street cameras until about halfway into this leg. Now it’s 4:00 in the morning again, and it’s time to get a sample of this Death water, hoping that it can do what Ramses believes. If not, they’ll just travel to Croatia via the Mediterranean Sea. They’ll actually probably head that way while he works.

“Hurry up, and get what you need,” Marie whispers. “This area opens to visitors in about two and a half hours, but who knows when a staff member might show up to...I dunno, pick up trash, or whatever?”

Ramses drops his bag on the ground, generating a clanking sound.

“Shh,” she whispers loudly to him. “What is in there?”

“This.” He pulls out a metal tank that’s probably large enough to fit five gallons.

“What the hell is that?” Mateo questions.

“Do I have to answer that for you, or is it rhetorical?”

“I thought you only needed a tiny sample,” Marie complains.

“We only need a sample,” Ramses agrees, “but we don’t want to come back here in the future, do we? While we’re at it, we might as well stock up. I don’t now how useful this stuff could become.” He dips it in the pool, and lets it fill up.

“It’s poison,” Marie reminds him.

“Well, I don’t plan on using it for that. If we happened to be in the Atacama Desert instead, I would take as much as I could of Body water.”

“What does Body water do?” Marie asks.

“No one knows.” As Ramses is lifting the tank up, and holding it while Mateo screws on the lid, they hear a commotion nearby.

All of the sudden, a strike team descends upon them, flaghlights and firearms drawn. A figure of authority, face still blocked by shadow, steps closer to the trio. “Is this it?” the forger, Winona Honeycutt’s voice asks. “Is this what gives you your power?”

“You’re going to spark an international incident if you try to take it,” Marie says, stepping towards her.

“It looks like you’re taking it,” Winona replies.

“We were thirsty.” Ramses struggles to lift the tank up to his mouth, then partakes when Mateo steadies it for him. If his theory is correct, it shouldn’t be poisonous without some good old fashioned temporal energy.

“Hand it over,” Winona demands.

Mateo screws the lid back on, and begins to place it in the bag.

“I said, hand it over,” she repeats more earnestly.

“Remember how I told you we would do anything to protect ourselves and each other?” Mateo asks her.

“Stabbing yourself isn’t gonna help you this time,” Winona explains. “We have a medic on standby right here, and our own doctor back on the plane.”

“I don’t intend to stab myself. I’m reminding you that you’re out of your league.”

“My dear,” Winona begins. “It is you who is out of his league. My father and I are playing chess, while you’re playing checkers.”

Mateo chuckles. “Then neither of us can win. We’re not using the same pieces. We’re not even on the same game board. Your advantage is an illusion.”

“My advantage looks like a battery of guns,” she counters, indicating her people.

That’s true, Mateo is really just stalling, and it sounds like he and Ramses did so for as long as necessary. They hear an explosion in the distance. Lights fill the sky. Everyone looks over to find more explosions, and more lights. Someone has set up a fireworks show. It’s incredibly odd timing. In any reality, he would assume it was a cognizant friend, or even a future version of himself, creating a diversion, but here, it must just be a coincidence.

Whatever the cause, it’s enough. Mateo feels himself being pulled over the edge of the pool, and into the water. A surge of energy overwhelms his body, and snaps him away, delivering him to the ground beside the Olimpia.

A woman comes around the corner holding a gun. “Stop right there!”

Marie stands up, and hits her in the forehead—not like a boxer, but with the precision of a grasshopper. She falls to the ground, unconscious. She stands with her friends for half a moment. “No jokes about how fitting it was for a woman to get into a fight with another woman.”

“Fight?” Mateo echoes. “That was a savage takedown.”

“We gotta go.” Ramses opens the door, and climbs in, followed by Marie and Mateo. “Hey, Olimpia, engage Escape Pattern Alpha.”

“Acknowledged. Initiating.” The plane takes off, and heads for the dark skies.

“How did we teleport?” Marie asks.

“I’m the one who teleported,” Ramses answers her. He shows them a syringe. “This is why I’m confident I can make the abortion bullet—”

“Don’t call it that.”

“I’ve figured out how to synthesize temporal energy,” he continues. “It’s only temporary, so I could inject you two too, but I think I have a better idea.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 19, 2398

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The LIR Map, yeah, that sounds interesting, but Angela is going through something right now that she feels she can’t talk to anyone about. It was her idea to take Marie’s place at her job, but the situation has turned out to be a house of cards, and she’s worried about ruining the whole thing. At some point, when this all dies down, Marie is going to want to return to her life, and it’s Angela’s responsibility to make sure it still exists when that happens. She thought it was a great idea to use the artificial intelligence that Ramses took from The Constant, but it’s placed her in an awkward position. She thought she was being so clever, carefully utilizing the powerful tool in such a way to prevent others from noticing. Notice, they did. Apparently, her employer has been utilizing an AI of their own. To make sure the code that their programmers write is created by a human, and is not some kind of virus, they scan all submissions. No one is in trouble, but her superiors are very interested in how her code keeps failing the scan tests. They’re just too perfect.

She finishes the video call with the Prime Executive of the company. It’s a pretty big deal. This guy doesn’t normally talk to people like her. She keeps downplaying her work, indicating that she simply spent a lot of time bulking up her library of repeaters, which would explain why her new programs are so sophisticated and bug-free, but he’s not buying it. He can’t force her to do anything, and he’s being really nice and patient about it, but this is why Marie’s life could all just fall apart.

A knock on the door. Heath is on the other side. When did he get home? “Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine, why?” Angela replies.

“I couldn’t help but hear part of the conversation. Evidently, you’re doing quite well at Marie’s job?”

As far as she knows, the people on this team don’t lie to each other. Of course, she may just be ignorant about it, and it’s certainly no good reason to lie to them herself, but in this case, she probably has no choice. They have enough on their plates. This is her problem, and she has to fix it, no matter the cost. “Yeah, it’s not that hard once you get the hang of it.”

He’s giving her the same face the exec was when she was trying to lie to him. “It actually sounds like you’re too good at the job.”

“What are you saying, that I’m better than your wife?”

“What?”

“You want I should call her about that? Could I get a quote?”

“What are you talking about? How did this become hostile?”

“Are you accusing me of something?”

“No, of course not. What kind of accusation might that be?”

“Just...I need to be alone right now.”

“Okay, that’s fine, I just—”

She closes the door, and leans up against it, trying some breathing exercises. This isn’t going to work. She needs help, even if she gets in trouble for what she tried to do. He’s still standing there when she opens it up again, like he knew she would. “All right. Let me tell you the truth.”

“It’s okay. We’ll figure it out. I have an instinct to help people with your face.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 18, 2398

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Leona is sitting on a stool in her new lab. She normally just works in an office, or remotes in from home, but she’s waiting for the item to arrive. She’s been asked to make a preliminary assessment on a mysterious object that Ramses and a band of mercenaries “liberated” from a transport team just outside of Munich. As of yet, no one has been willing to tell her what this object is, or even hinted at what it could be. They just hope she can figure it out, and give them some scientific advantage. She’s bored, because she was required to leave all communication devices outside of the room. It’s actually a room inside of a highly insulated room with blast doors, which the executives hope will insulate the rest of the facility, should the object explode. When she pointed out that this was a way of telling her that it was a bomb, they seemed to not quite agree with that.

Petra walks in. Behind her are two military men in black uniforms, carrying a plastic grayish case between them. “Over there,” she orders, pointing. They set it down on the table.

Leona gets up to get a look. “Okay, now can you tell me what it is?”

Petra clears her throat suggestively. The military men leave, but even after they do, Petra hesitates to respond.

“Okay, I guess I’ll just open it myself.” Leona places a hand upon it. She doesn’t hear anything, but she can feel something inside click, and rotate.

“Good luck,” Petra says. “Let me know what you find.”

“Wait, what?”

“That’s your first task, to get the case open. We’ve already tried, and it appears to be impenetrable. That’s why you have so many tools and equipment at your disposal.”

Leona looks at her, and then the case. “You don’t even know what this is?”

“No.”

“Why did you steal it?”

She hesitates again, but gets on with it. “It appeared to be rather important to the people we recovered it from.”

Leona just stands there. “It could be a nuclear bomb.”

Petra nods. “Yes.”

“It could be a biological weapon.”

Petra nods again. “It could.”

“And you want me to just open it without question.”

“You’ll be handsomely rewarded.”

“If I live,” Leona amends for her.

Petra nods once more. “Correct.”

Leona sticks her tongue inside her bottom lip. “Thank you. You can go now.”

“Like I said...good luck.”

Leona scowls as her boss leaves the room, and then the other room. She places her hands on her hips, and looks around a moment when one of the observation cameras catches her eye. That’s what she’s calling them now, because they’re obviously not there for security. Petra and Senator Honeycutt are in a room right now, watching everything that happens. She’s not going to give them the satisfaction. She removes a giant freakin’ wrench from the wall, and smashes it against one of the cameras, and then another, and then most of the rest. She leaves the last one up for a second. “I’ll let you know what I find...if I feel like it.” With that, she destroys it, then sits down to wait for someone to arrive in anger, but no one does. So maybe they have a hidden camera that she can’t find, or they’re willing to take the L on this one.

Now that she’s alone, she can finally get to the bottom of all this. It could be anything. It could be dangerous. She’s just grateful that the thing didn’t pop open as soon as it found itself in her presence, because she doesn’t need any more questions. It is unlocked. It reacted to her touch as if she were always destined to have it. Wasting no more time, she goes back to the table, and lifts the lid. Inside is a large, blank piece of brown paper. Parchment, she might call it. “This is weird,” she says out loud. As she speaks, lines and colors begin to form on the page. In the top left corner is a square, displaying an image of this moment right here of Leona standing in her lab. Another square forms next to it, showing the observation room she predicted would exist. Petra, Honeycutt, and a few other people are watching her on a monitor, but they can’t see anything noteworthy, because the hidden camera is pointed at her back. The digital clock, that’s where the secret camera is.

She picks up the wrench again, and smashes the clock. When she returns to the parchment, a third square has appeared, illustrating that act, and then a fourth shows the Senator walking briskly down the hall. It looks like a comic strip, but that’s not the whole story. This...is the LIR Map. Lincoln Isaac Rutherford is a man from the main sequence with the ability to know everything about the universe, though not necessarily all at once. He has described time as a painting. Most people are standing very, very, very close to their little section of this painting. They can see some of the past, and blurred images of the future, but mostly only the present—their present. All he does is step back and get a better view, and then he can move over and look at a different section of the grand painting. A different section, kind of like a comic book panel?

Leona wasn’t around when Mateo, his brother, Darko, and Lincoln were charged with figuring out how to create this special map, which mimicked the latter’s ability, but reportedly, none of them ever actually saw it. They realized that the only way to get a clear picture of the universe was to leave it, but they were not asked to participate in this final step. Arcadia returned without showing them that it worked, though it obviously did. How it found its way to this reality, Leona couldn’t say, and neither could anyone else. If there’s one thing she knows about it, though, it’s that the map can’t be destroyed. Well, she doesn’t know that for sure, but due to its immense power, Arcadia probably demanded it to be made indestructible. So she folds it in half, confident that she’s not ruining a priceless relic. Then she folds it in half again, and again, and again, and again. When all is said and done, it’s the size of a quarter, and no thicker than it was before. She tucks it into her underwear just as the door is opening.

“What is it?” Senator Honeycutt demands to know.

“It’s nothing.”

He glowers at her, then steps over to look into the case. All he sees is the protective black foam, and an indentation that suggests that something the size of a desktop computer was in it at some point. “What did you do? What did you do with it?”

“Look around, my friend. Check the badge logs. I never left, and I couldn’t have hidden an object that size anywhere in here. That case is empty, and it has been this entire time. I don’t know why your enemies were transporting it so carefully, but it looks like you’ve been had. Maybe they knew you were coming?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 17, 2398

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Ramses was waiting for Marie and Mateo when they got back to the hotel from the hospital. He didn’t want to talk about the mission he went on for the senator and his daughter, but he assured them it wasn’t that bad. He made a point of telling them that he didn’t have to kill anyone, though people did get hurt, and he’s not sure if they’re on the right side of this. They stole an object in a luggage-sized grayish box, but no one would tell him what it was. Leona is being coerced into working on it once it arrives in Kansas City, so while there’s a chance it’s a weapon of some kind, they’ll know the answer soon enough. She’ll take the appropriate actions when she learns more information. Both she and Ramses asked that the away team continue on, and perhaps they should extend their trip to continue throwing off any suspicion of their true goals.

Their next destination is Prague, Czechia, which has fairly strict airspace policies. The only reason they want to go there is because heading for Croatia now would practically draw a straight line on the map. This is all highly calculated to insulate them from any prying eyes. It’s not perfect, and they could always get caught, but it’s the best they can do. Going to Croatia is dangerous. They have to be sneaky. There are underground systems in place once they near its borders, but reaching those systems in the first place is a delicate dance. Prague is just a distraction. Its traffic laws are strict too, as it is in Germany, which means they won’t be able to drive as fast as they want. That’s fine, it will only take them about five hours with one stop in the middle to cross a border. Marie will probably want to hide for that part.

Ramses pulls over at a rest stop an hour in. They get out to stretch their legs and grab some local food, then get back in. But Ramses doesn’t move. He just sits in front of the steering wheel, and stares into space.

“Are you okay?” Marie asks.

“Winona wants us to go to Türkiye,” he says.

“I know, you told us that,” she says. “Apparently there’s an even more important mission there?”

“The border is stronger than it is for Germany-Czechia, but she says she can sneak us across.”

Mateo flinches. “Okay, but we don’t want to go to Türkiye—that’s Turkey, right?”

Ramses nods, “we may want to go there.”

“Rambo, what are you talking about?” Marie asks.

He sighs. “You and I weren’t around when Mateo and Leona were dealing with the immortality waters. You were dead yourself, and I hadn’t even been born yet.”

“What does this have to do with anything?” Mateo questions.

“The Constant, the Bermuda Triangle; they both generated unusual amounts of temporal energy.”

“Stonehenge didn’t,” Mateo reminds him.

“First of all, we don’t know that there was ever anything special about Stonehenge. The Delegator always implied that he just liked the way it looked. He was the one with the power to transport people through portals. He used the walkways between the stones, because hell, why wouldn’t you, but that doesn’t mean the stones mean anything. Secondly, if the British Isles sank, this reality’s version of it might just be too deep underwater for this baby.” He pets the dashboard.

“You wanna make another diversion? There’s nothing special about Turkey,” Marie claims.

Mateo looks away. “Yes there is. There’s one thing.”

“What?” Marie presses. When no one answers, she repeats herself. “What? What is in Turkey?”

“Death,” Mateo answers cryptically.

“Then maybe we don’t go there.”

“No, I don’t mean death, I mean Death. Death water is in something called the Pools of, uhh...”

“Pamukkale,” Ramses helps.

“Death water?” Marie is still indignant about the whole thing. “Why is there an immortality water called Death?”

“I don’t know,” Ramses answers honestly, “but it’s the only water you would take if you want the full experience. If you drink Youth, it will make you young. If you drink Longevity, it will extend your lifespan. But if you want one hundred percent no-death, no injury, immortality, that one must be included.”

“What happens if you take it by itself?” Marie asks the obvious question.

“Well, it’s poison...you die,” Mateo replies bluntly.

“So again, why do we want that?”

“Because the reason we’re here is because one of us has to die,” Ramses says, also bluntly, but much more somberly.

Marie takes a long time to respond. “That one is a part of me at the moment. How could the fetus ingest it without me also ingesting it?”

Ramses takes a long time to respond as well. Then he takes something out of his pocket, and holds it up. “We teleport it.” It’s a time bullet.

“You’re gonna shoot me with that thing?” Marie asks in a no-thanks kind of way.

“No, that would defeat the purpose. I would transport the bullet itself, into the fetus, which would open upon contact, releasing the Pamukkale water.”

“You’re talking about just having a developing baby dying in my body.” She looks back and forth between the two of them.

Mateo takes a long time to speak. The Death water, as Zeferino once explained it to me—”

“Oh, he’s such a reliable resource,” Marie says sarcastically.

“I don’t know if he was telling the truth, but sometimes, the man could be sincere, and I remember the day he taught me about all of them. He looked like he was being honest. After the conversation, we didn’t talk about it again, so if he was trying to trick me, he was doing it in a weird way. Plus, this was long after all that Tribulation stuff.”

Marie shakes her head. “Go on, what did he say?”

“There are many reasons why people don’t just all take the immortality waters. They’re hard to get to, especially the last one, but one in particular is...unsavory.”

“Keep going,” she urges.

“It’s Health. Both Death and Health come from the pools of whatever. The former creates the latter when used.”

“It’s a sacrifice,” Marie says. “It’s a human sacrifice.”

“Yes.”

“Why would death make health? Maybe it would make life, because they’re opposites, but...” She doesn’t have an end to her sentence.

“Death isn’t really the end of life,” Ramses tries to explain. “It’s just the end of health. We’re proof of that. We all lost our bodily health, but kept our lives.”

Marie begins to pace. “So, under the assumption that the Pools of Pamukkale in this reality serve the same purpose as they do in the main sequence, you want to take a sample, and fill a time bullet with it. Then you want to teleport that bullet into my fetus—which would require phenomenal precision, by the way—which will poison it, and transform it into an elixir. So I get an abortion, and the cure for cancer at the same time.”

“Well, if you have cancer, then yeah. If you don’t, then at the most, you might just skip the flu this year. It doesn’t last forever if you don’t take Activator afterwards, and I believe it only works once if you don’t take Catalyst beforehand.”

“So you want to forgo Czechia, and take a detour all the way down to Türkiye, where we’ll be expected to complete an espionage mission we know nothing about, then steal a sub-detour to a tourist attraction to get a sample of water that authorities probably don’t want you to steal. I assume you’ve confirmed that the site even exists on this Earth.”

“It does,” Ramses promises.

“Well, that’s one complication down.”

“We don’t have to choose this,” Ramses tells her, standing up from the driver’s seat. He presents it to her. “But whatever we do, you have to be the one to make that choice. That’s what pro-choice means.”

“Thanks for mansplaining that to me,” Marie snaps back.

Ramses doesn’t respond, so Mateo decides to do so in his place. “He’s not telling you it’s your choice so that you will know that it is. He’s telling you so that you know that he knows...that it is.”

“You two have really thought a lot about this,” Marie realizes.

“Mateo didn’t know a thing. He didn’t even know about Türkiye.”

“Actually, I did,” Mateo clarifies. “Winona lamented that we chose to come here, instead of there. I didn’t think it would come up again, though.”

Marie considers the information she’s been given, and the profoundly difficult choice now laid before her. Deciding to get an abortion was hard enough, but now she has to determine whether she’s going to go through with it using the conventional, scientific method, or if she’s going to depend on the complex nature of temporal magic. “Wait, if the water in Pamukkale is poisonous, wouldn’t lots of people know as much?”

“It has to be infused with temporal energy,” Ramses says. “Such was its natural state on November 13, 1622. That’s the date most people travel to when they’re on the quest for it. Using the data I’ve gathered by studying the Existence water from the Bermuda Triangle, however I believe that I can synthesize what we need.”

Agreeing that she has to be the one to make the choice either way, Marie sits down in the chair, and starts The Olimpia back up. She keeps going on the selected route. A part of her just wants to do the normal thing, and not hope that the time bullet works. So she passes what might have been their exit, and heads for the border, for an hour, until they’re nearly there. She comes to a stop. They can already see the border checkpoint far off in the distance, but they can still choose to go elsewhere. They have to choose now, though. Either they get back on the highway and head Southeast, or stick to the original plan. Or they can open Door Number Three.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 16, 2398

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Mateo is finally getting out of the hospital today. The detective asked him all sorts of questions about who stabbed him on the street, but Mateo was prepared for this. He came up with a lie about how he didn’t know who she was, or what she wanted. She seemed pleasant enough at first, but when he tried to explain that he didn’t speak German, she grew irritated and impatient. Her anger with him continued until she just took out a knife, and shoved it in his stomach. She must have been wearing gloves, which would explain why only his fingerprints are on the weapon. It was a ridiculous story, but nothing that the authorities could disprove. He obviously wasn’t at fault here. Bystanders they managed to reach out to didn’t say anything that might corroborate his statement, but they didn’t say anything damning either. After all, he’s the one who got injured here, they’re all on his side.

He did make one mistake, though. Most victims of violent attack are known to seek justice after what happened to them. Mateo failed to hound the detective with calls regarding the progress of his investigation, probably because actually finding the forger from Kansas City would make this worse for him. He wanted to get away from her, and get out of whatever mission she had planned for him. He doesn’t want her in jail. She clearly has friends in high places, and they would not take kindly to that development. The self-stabbing wasn’t great for them either, but hardly enough to trigger some kind of retaliation. Even so, it’s not like the detective can arrest him for being too patient.

As it turns out, Ramses screwed everything up. They weren’t able to communicate with each other too much, and only had the opportunity to exchange a few ASL signs. Mateo wanted Ramses to keep an eye on the forger using the tracking device he planted on her, in case she tried to come to the hospital. He didn’t mean for Ramses to go off and infiltrate her little gang of mercenaries, or whatever they are. When Ramses asked the question of stay?, Mateo thought he was offering to stay nearby. Ramses apparently meant to ask whether Mateo wanted to stay. Which, of course he did, he was stabbed! Due to this misunderstanding, Ramses has been missing for the last few days, though according to a recent interaction Leona had with a higher up at her company, he’s not really being held against his will. He’s just Mateo’s substitute, which defeats the whole purpose of the stabbing, but hopefully it will all work out in the end. Time will tell.

For now, Mateo just has to leave before someone else finds out that there’s something unusual about him. He healed from the wound incredibly quickly. It wasn’t superhero before-your-eyes rapid healing, but it was much faster than a normal person should take to recover. He’s only waited this long to skidaddle so that people don’t ask questions. He had an ally in this endeavor. The nurse who was responsible for him most of the time saw how quickly he healed, and protected him so that no one else would see that there was something different about him. Something different indeed, though still not quite up to standards, and perhaps they’ll soon have to do some self testing to expand on what they know so far. So Ramses’ bodies are still working for them, but in a limited capacity. He was so fortunate to have gotten her as a nurse, because someone else probably would have alerted the hierarchy. It’s also a good thing doctors are just as hands-off as anywhere. She wheels him out to the back of the building, where Marie is waiting with a less flashy rental car. But they don’t part ways before sharing contact info.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 15, 2398

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Leona is about to leave after a long day at work when the internal investigator from a couple weeks ago steps into her office. He exhales, lowers her head, and pinches the bridge of her nose, wishing that she had just made her way to the elevator when she had the chance.

“I’m not here to take up your time,” he claims. “In fact, I’m here because I want to give you a heads-up about something that will be happening in the future.”

“What is your authority here again?” Leona asks, not expecting a direct answer.

“Authority Zero.”

“That is a band where I come from.”

“Where I’m from, it’s the freedom to do whatever I want,” he replies.

“Yeah. What do you want?”

“I have a team in Munich as we speak, who have been charged with acquiring a certain object under...shall we say, special circumstances.”

“They’re stealing it.”

“Well, yes...”

“They’re stealing it violently.”

“I can neither confirm, nor deny, the nature of the operation.”

She clears her throat, not wanting to give away the fact that three members of her team are presently in Munich, and they may or may not be involved in all that.”

“There are no more secrets between us,” the Authority Zero Internal Investigator lies. “We know your husband is there. We tapped him for this assignment, but he declined...also violently. We had to come up with an alternative.”

That’s why Ramses isn’t answering his phone. Mateo doesn’t know where he is, but he expressed his theories. “If they get hurt...”

“I take care of my team. I can’t guarantee their safety. We would have to put them in a padded room for that, and even then, nothing is perfect. The point is, Mister Abdulrashid—”

“Abdulrashid.”

“Abdulrashid.”

“Abdulrashid.”

“Abdulrashid.”

“Why can no one in the world pronounce that man’s name?”

“It’s because people in this country are...less enthusiastic about Arabs—”

She interrupts again, “he’s not an Arab, he’s from Egypt.”

“The point is that people around here do not generally associate with people from that part of the world. Pronouncing their words is just not something we find necessary to learn.”

“Ramses hasn’t experienced any racism in this country,” Leona notes.

“There’s a political reason for that. It’s a lot to explain, but people most likely assume he was relocated from the slums as a child. There was a huge push for that a few decades ago. Tens of thousands of children—mostly infants—were rescued from their parents, brought to civilized regions, and assimilated into the culture. Your friend is the right age to have been part of that. It’s interesting he seems to have kept his name, though. That’s not common. Or did he adopt it later out of reallocated loyalty?”

“I knew there were religious issues, but I guess I didn’t realize how widespread the racism was.”

“It’s not racism,” he defends. “It had nothing to do with race. Now, I’m not saying what they did was right, per se, but those kids were living in utter squalor. Their lives are better now. They’re better here. Our culture—across all religions—teaches scientifically proven idealistic life values, which they were lacking in their home country. Again, I didn’t participate in that, but you can’t argue with the results.”

Leona blinks. Racism. What he just described is racism, and he can’t see it. It’s xenophobia too. Because of Marie and Heath, the team was mostly prepared to just live here forever, but every day comes with at least one more reason to get the hell out. “Oh, I certainly can. You give me enough information, I’ll argue until the cows come home.”

“What cows?”

“It’s obviously just an expression. Is that all?”

“Ah, right,” he says. “The object that Mister—uh...what your friend will be securing for us will need to be reverse engineered when it gets here. That’s what you’ll be doing, probably at the start of next week.”

“What is it?”

“You don’t need to know that just yet.”

“Does it pertain to my work, or will it just be a distraction?”

“We hope it will help, actually,” he decides.

He has her by the balls, as Mateo once said. He knows about the team, and he knows about their connection to timey-wimey stuff. Or at least, he knows that they have a connection to something weird. The forger is aware of all this too, and God knows who else. Their only option now is to play ball. It’s the only way to protect Marie. She just has to hope they don’t know about that aspect of their lives. “What’s your name, if not Shady Corporate Authority Zero Interrogator?”

“Honeycutt. Senator Melville Honeycutt.”

Crap, that can’t be good. “It’s nice to formally meet you.” Now she really is going to have to fake being polite to him.

“I assume Leona Matic isn’t your real name?”

She adds more belongings to her bag. “No, it is. We didn’t think there would be anyone we would need to hide from.”

“Why did you need forged papers, then?”

“We required identities, not names.”

“I see.”

“What’s her name, the forger?” she presses, even though she really just wants to leave. “The one who is endangering my friends overseas?”

“Winona. Winona Honeycutt. I call her Winnie.”

Double crap. What is the wife or daughter of a senator doing as a forger in the seedy part of Kansas City? And what is a senator doing interrogating a suspect in what’s meant to be a semi-academic, semi-private laboratory? And how did they find out anything about them in the first place? “If you’re related, then you must know that I’m now pretending to work for SD6, and also that I’m apparently in charge of investigating her forging den?”

He dismisses this with a wave of his hand. “We set it up so that you would become the de facto lead investigator. They won’t find anything at the alleged crime scene, and you won’t implicate my daughter at any rate, will you?”

“No, sir. She’s safe. I just don’t know what to tell the agent and detective. I reached out once to tell them that my lead evaporated, and they have been calling me ever since.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of somethin’. Try to keep them out of it. They’re not part of the inner circle; you are.”

“Very well, sir.” She’s becoming more respectful by the minute. But of course, she still doesn’t trust them, so when she finally makes it home that night, after updating the group chat, she asks Angela to begin running some countermeasures.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 14, 2398

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Upon learning that this reality does not have the same sign language inventory as the main sequence, Marie thought it might be a good idea to teach it to Heath in case they ever needed to communicate with each other on the down low. It was a perfect idea, because under normal circumstances, such a language might not be viable. You either come up with a new language on your own, or somehow find one so dead, no one but you and your people know it. Drawing from a history completely removed from the current timeline is a pretty good workaround. The more the team learns about this world, the stranger it becomes. It makes no sense that the majority of the North Atlantic Isles don’t exist, yet English does. Yet American Sign Language doesn’t. Yet something called North American Sign Language does. Someone has to be making these decisions; mixing and matching parts of reality that they like, and leaving out the ones that they don’t. That begs the question, what the hell do these people have against the United Kingdom? And also, how does everyone in the U.S. explain the fact that the language they use is called English? Where does that word come from?

Anyway, Marie taught the rest of the team a few basic signs once they were sure that their superhuman group empathy was no longer a thing. They all now know the alphabet, even Mateo, and a few other words, like yes, no, and pasteurized milk. That last one is even better, because Louis Pasteur was never born, so these people just call it thermal sterilization. They also don’t have the Global Positioning System, instead opting to call it SatNav, which is ironically, the British term for it! So even if this detective figures out that Mateo is using some form of sign language to communicate with Ramses in the hospital hallway, and even if he somehow recognizes the letters to be G-P-S, he will have no appreciation for their combined meaning, nor be able to follow it as a lead.

Ramses flicks his finger in the air to let Mateo know that he understands, but he does it just as the detective is turning around, because he actually does notice something strange about Mateo’s finger movements, and his gaze. Ramses covers by itching his temple, and looking away coolly. Once he’s confident that the exchange has remained sufficiently secret, he takes out his phone, and logs onto the tracking system. Yes, one tracker is unaccounted for. It’s one of the microdots, and it’s presently on the move, which suggests that it has not fallen off onto the sidewalk. That is the problem with them being so tiny. To be hard to find, they have to be easy to lose.

Ramses makes two fists, but keeps his thumbs and pinkies out. He holds them in front of his stomach, and drops them down. Then he holds his palms upwards to make it a question. Stay?

Mateo makes a gesture, almost like he’s knocking on a door to reply with yes.

The detective sees this motion too, but by the time he turns around once more, Ramses is already walking away to track the location of the microdot. He doesn’t know who has it, or why, so he’s going to have to make a few educated guesses—and he’s going to have to do it all alone, so he doesn’t place Marie in danger—but he’s sure that it will all work out in the end.

By the time he catches up with the dot, it has pretty much stopped for the last ten minutes, suggesting that the target has made it to a destination, and is now moving about minimally. He looks around. This particular building appears abandoned, though none of the ones surrounding it are. It’s a relatively busy part of town. He feels all right just opening the door, and walking inside to do a little recon. He sneaks around slowly and quietly. Just because the dot is still a ways away, doesn’t mean there isn’t someone else closer. This place could have been packed with ne’er do wells, for all he knew. As he draws near, he starts to hear voices talking to each other. He can’t make out what they’re saying, but he can tell that at least one of them is upset. The rest are staying calm, so they’re not arguing against each other, per se. He will have to get closer to hear the conversation. Fortunately, he can make out a few words, so it’s not in German. Mission, contingency, and night shift stick out to him. Unfortunately, that’s all he gets.

He feels a blunt object pressing against the back of his head. He built these new bodies with a sort of spidey-sense, so it’s really annoying how this reality didn’t let him keep it. “Go forward,” the voice behind him demands in a transatlantic accent.

“Move ahead,” Ramses responds, still not complying. “Try to detect it, it’s not too late.”

“Huh?” she questions.

He can feel the gun drift from his head slightly, indicating that she’s loosened a little tension in her hand. He spins around, and pins her wrist to the wall. She tries to punch him in the face, but he blocks it, and kicks her in the chest. As she’s falling to her back, her arm slides out from under his hand, and he manages to snag the gun from her. He doesn’t point it at her on the floor, though, because he knows the ruckus has alerted the others. Instead, he backs up to get himself into a defensible position. The group runs in with their own weapons drawn, preparing to fire, but waiting for the go-ahead from someone.

The forger from Kansas City comes in from behind, not holding a gun. “Mister Abdulrashid.”

“It’s Abdulrashid,” he corrects.

“What did I say?”

“Something stupid.”

She sighs. “Lower your weapons,” she orders her team, all of whom comply immediately, without question. “It looks like we have the substitute we’ve been looking for. Thank you for coming, Mister...”

“Abdulrashid,” one of the men pronounces for her in a perfect accent. It’s nice to hear, even coming from a presumed enemy.

The forger smiles. “This operation is back on,” she announces to her people. She redirects her attention to Ramses. “You’re lucky we don’t need an NMA agent for this one, or we would have had to take Mateo out of the hospital while he was still trying to recover. This one does require skill, though. How are you with a sniper?”