The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 7, 2398

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Mateo, Angela, and Ramses can’t wait any longer. Angela had the bright idea to crack open the LIR Map, and see if it could give them any answers. They were all shocked that they hadn’t thought of it before, and not just for this situation. It could have been really helpful before they got into this mess, and might even help them find Danica Matic, or other answers. As Leona described it, the map worked like a comic book strip. Future or present events could be seen illustrated on the page, allowing the viewer to make certain decisions with an advantage. That’s not what is happening here. Each of them sees something different when they look at it.

Angela is seeing moving compasses with numbers on them. Some of these numbers are going down, and some are going up. As she turns her body around, the compasses rotate, and are not always pointing North. Interim deadlines, she presupposes. These are the places that she’ll be going, and when she’s going to get to each one, or maybe how long she has before time runs out. It’s annoyingly cryptic with the details.

When Ramses is in charge of the map, he sees an actual map. There is no legend, so it takes him a minute to decipher, but he realizes that some of the points of interest are places that he’s been, and some of them are probably places that he has yet to go. A couple of them have both kinds of markings, suggesting that he’ll return to those places. A few really important places that they frequent, such as the loft, the lab, and the tasty taco restaurant down the street have their own special markers.

Mateo doesn’t see anything at all when he tries to look at it, which he’s choosing to believe is because he just so happened to try it last, and the other two have the plan covered, so he would have only seen what’s already been seen anyway. Yeah, that’s probably it. “Why do you think it stops here, though?” he asks. Somehow, Ramses and Angela managed to take possession of the LIR Map at the same time, which combined what they were seeing into one image, which Mateo actually can see, and so could likely anyone else in the room.

“What do you mean? That’s our goal,” Ramses decides.

“No, our goal is to get our friends back, and come home safely. This stops at the Dead Sea. What do we do after that?”

“Maybe the map doesn’t know what happens after that,” Angela suggests.

“The map knows literally everything,” Mateo argues. “I once saw Lincoln flip out when he went to another universe, because he was suddenly seeing an entirely different timestream than the one he normally does.”

“What are you saying?” Ramses questions.

“The map doesn’t show us what it knows. It shows us what we’re allowed to know. It’s psychic.”

Angela stands up straighter, and looks away from the console of The Olimpia. “Or it shows us decisions.” She pauses, but the other two don’t bother asking for more information, because they know she’ll go on. “We know to go to the Dead Sea, instead of the colony blocks, because our friends have already chosen to go there. Yeah, they’ll arrive in the future, but it’ll be part of the plan. They’ve not come up with a plan beyond that, and neither have we, so we can’t see it. It’s like The Oracle in The Matrix films.”

“That’s not how Lincoln’s power worked,” Mateo contends. “He could see everything, including alternate paths. He saw all timelines, even ones that hadn’t been created yet.”

“Well, it’s like you said,” Angela continues, “we’re not allowed to see all that. It’s restricted. I don’t know why, but I can make an educated guess.” It seems unlikely that the limitation would be built into the document when it was created. It probably has more to do with it presently being in this reality, which they know handles time and time travel in weird ways. Still, this should help enough. They know where they need to go at this very moment, and that’s more than most people get.

“So it can never tell us the future unless someone has already decided upon it,” Ramses laments. “Who has to decide? Obviously not just the map user, because we didn’t know we needed to go to Birket until today.”

“Didn’t we?” Mateo poses. “We all wanted to go to Birket. The map didn’t tell us that, it just proved that we got some follow-through. This reality; it’s different. Nothing and no one is all-knowing...or someone is, and they always squash their competitors.”

“It doesn’t matter what we don’t know,” Angela determines. “We have to go to Birket, we’re going to Birket. We spend most of our time understanding the future, but not knowing too many details. I’m sure we’ll get through this too, even with the limitations.”

Angela was right, but barely. They make it all the way to the Dead Sea, just in time to find Leona, Marie, Kivi, and Heath by water’s edge, along with another guy. As soon as they land, sirens go off, and a squadron of fighter jets starts heading their way. Leona throws a jug of Energy Water through the hatchway, but she doesn’t step in herself. She orders them to take off vertically, and teleport under the cover of clouds. Mateo frowns at her, but she doesn’t explain any further. Ramses reluctantly agrees, and takes off again, leaving the team on the ground. Angela monitors the computers so Ramses can inject the temporal hydroxide into the engine. After they successfully escape without the air force firing a single shot, they find a stranger in their midst.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 6, 2398

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The team tried to play it cool with Amir. They let him get a few meal vouchers for them, so they don’t starve. Heath is the one who needed these the most. Leona and Marie have realized that they can last a little bit longer without food, even though their upgraded bodies aren’t operating at full capacity. Kivi is apparently in the same boat, even though she supposedly originates from this reality, and never received any upgrade. Perhaps all Kivis are like that. She certainly does have a special ability, which they’re thinking now may not be just this thing that she happens to be good at, but which is actually somehow supernatural. She found Amir pretty quickly, as if he was giving off a smell. If it’s real, and not a coincidence, that is certainly a talent that they could use in the future.

Amir has been very helpful and kind, but they’ve gotten to the point today that squeezing information out of him covertly is no longer working. It’s time to take a more direct approach, and just tell him why they’re here. “Listen,” Leona begins, “thanks for all your help, but I think we need to be honest with you.”

Amir drops his whole face towards the floor. “You didn’t just think I looked like a nice guy,” he figures. “You were sent in here to retrieve me.”

“So you know?” Leona asks.

“I’m only in here to get away from people like you. Who do you work for?”

“We weren’t sent here to extract you,” she begins. “We ended up across the border for unrelated reasons, and I think the Senator just thought it would be a great opportunity to exploit our skills again. We had no idea you existed until a couple of days ago, I swear.”

“Senator Morton has something on you?”

“No, Honeycutt,” Marie clarifies.

Amir shrugs. “Never heard of him. Who knows how many links in the espionage chain are between you and me?”

“Do you want to live here?” Kivi asks him.

“Not particularly,” Amir answers. “It’s just the safest place to be. I didn’t think anyone would be able to find me, and even if they did, the government wouldn’t want to help. I’m not sure how your boss convinced them, but maybe he’s more powerful than Morton.”

“He’s not our boss, he just has a grip on us,” Heath contends.

“I’m sorry to hear that, but I’m afraid I’m not going anywhere. Either you get out without me, or you stay here for the rest of your lives. I don’t care what it takes, I’m staying away from Arctos.”

“Arctos? What is that?” Leona asks, thinking about it, but still needing answers.

“That’s what they call themselves,” Amir says. “Their symbol is a bear.”

Marie looks at Leona. “Leelee, is that...?”

“Bears eat salmon,” Leona says. “That must be what it means.”

“Yeah,” Amir remembers, “they used to talk about salmon all the time, like it was some kind of rival organization.”

“We’re not rivals,” Leona tells him. “We’re targets. Did you hurt any of them? Did you work for these Arctos people, or something? Did you escape?”

“I didn’t work for anybody,” Amir claims. “I was their prisoner. Or their test subject, it was always unclear to me. They thought I was salmon at first until tests somehow proved that I had nothing to do with them.”

“What kind of tests?” Kivi asks.

Amir shakes his head. “Mostly involving water? I don’t know, it wasn’t torture, but it was weird. I couldn’t say what they were looking for. Yes, I did escape, because some of them thought that I should be let go since I wasn’t really salmon, but others seemed to think that I was associated with them in some way. I really don’t know, can we stop talking about this, please?”

So the Honeycutts know more than they have let on so far. Or maybe they’ve been letting it on just fine, but the team has been blind to the truth. There are people here who are aware of time travel, and now they know that there are other time travelers. Amir must be connected to them, perhaps by relation, or he saw something as a child he didn’t understand. Regardless, they all have to get out of here. They don’t know how long Amir has been on Melville’s radar, so maybe he’s not any less safe than before, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s definitely not safe now. “We can’t,” Leona says apologetically. “In fact, we’ll need your help more than ever. Can you get us back to the shore? Can you get us to the Dead Sea?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 5, 2398

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Heath and Marie moved off to one side of the line of megablocks while Leona and Kivi went to the other, planning to meet in the middle. They started asking everyone they could find whether they knew anything about the person they were searching for. The inside man who gave them their mission info was right when he said they didn’t know much. They have a first and last name, but Amir Hussain is so common in this area that it’s hard to pinpoint just one individual. They have a photo, but it’s grainy and shadowy, so the people they try to show it to can’t always quite tell. Plus, residents don’t really want to talk, which is understandable. There’s no way for them to know whether the team has good intentions, or bad, or if their target is a good person, or not.

They wake up the next day having accomplished just about nothing. It’s just so overwhelming. This isn’t working, so they’re going to have to change tactics. It will take far too long to canvas the entire country. The government representative who handed them this mission said that this place doesn’t take census, but they have to keep records of some kind. Otherwise, how did he ever find the four of them?

“Can I suggest something?” Kivi asks, surprisingly nervously.

“Yes, of course,” Leona says.

“Sorry, I just don’t know my place within the group.”

“You just said it yourself,” Marie explains. “Your place is within the group.”

Kivi smiles. “Every Kivi has a superpower. I mean...not literally. We just have our own skill set, unique to us. I’m shockingly good at finding allies. They have a certain look about them, like an aura, except auras aren’t real, because like I was saying, it’s not magic. It’s just something that I can do. I can’t tell you how, because most of my memories are false, but I know this to be true about myself.”

“We believe you,” Marie tells her. “Go ahead and try to find us an ally.”

Kivi starts to walk around their megablock. She’s eyeing the people around them as if shopping for a nice new pair of shoes. The other three follow her as she’s browsing, but try not to get too close. They’re already friends with her, so they don’t want to throw off her spidey sense, or whatever it is. She keeps going for several minutes, ultimately making it halfway to the other side of the block when she suddenly stops. She’s not looking at anybody at first, but then she turns her chin quickly, like a dog who has suddenly noticed a squirrel. She walks briskly across the lawn, and approaches a stranger. He’s staring at her now, but she doesn’t say anything; she can’t.

Leona decides to trust Kivi’s intuition, and take control of the situation. “Hello. Sorry, we’re new, and she’s nervous. We were hoping to meet someone who could sort of show us around, and make sure that we’re not causing any trouble. You just seem like the kind of guy who would be open to that.”

He smiles quite kindly at them. “Why, yes, actually, I am. I have helped a number of people get themselves oriented. Do you already have a unit assigned to you?”

“Yes,” Leona answers.

“But no food.”

“Not yet.”

“I’m sure I can help you with that.” He extends his hand, and nods as each of them recites their respective name. “It’s nice to meet you all. I’m Amir Hussain.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 4, 2398

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They’re called megablocks. By nesting courtyards inside of other courtyards, many times over, and building vertically, tens of thousands of people can live on a plot of land not much greater than 60 acres. Most of these do not contain prison cells, though they could be modified, if need be. When the government of Birket built the first one, their idea was to give criminals a place to live, but nothing else. They would have to farm for themselves, and take whatever water rations they were allotted. Over time, other nations, and private organizations, took pity on the residents of the penal colony, and began to send them supplies. Now these gifts are airdropped on a weekly basis. Furniture, entertainment, and of course food is shipped in from all over the work. The leaders of Birket do not try to stop this. Their only concern is keeping the guilty away from the Dead Sea and Jordan River, or transporting them to Egypt when the appropriate asylum paperwork goes through. For the four time travelers in this reality, this paperwork has not yet gone through, and they’re not sure it ever will.

In other penal colonies throughout history, left to their own devices, the people living there usually govern themselves, and this is true of the Birket colony, though to no astounding degree. The internal leadership only worries about whether someone has a place to live, and whether they intend to cause trouble. Don’t cause trouble. It’s the only written rule, and it’s posted all over the place. Stealing, murder, rape; these all fall into this category of crime, along with a lot of other things, and they all come with the same punishment. The original megablock is a prison within the prison, does indeed contain cells that lock from the outside, and is reserved to house all the ne’er do wells that disrupt the unexciting harmony of life in the other megablocks. It’s rundown, dirty, and rationed. There aren’t too many people in there since most of the colony residents are here because they want to be, not because they have behavioral issues.

Leona, Marie, Kivi, and Heath don’t want to be here, but they are trying to make the best of it. They arrived with two phones, which means that Ramses will be able to trace their location. These devices were taken away from them, and communication with the outside world is extremely restricted—which helps to curb the population—but they’re confident that they will be released soon. For now, all they can do is wait in the bare housing unit that was assigned to them. There is hardly anything in here, because they have yet to earn that right, but it shouldn’t matter much. Overall, it’s not a bad place to live, which is why some people try to cross the border intentionally. In some cases, it’s the best path to asylum, even if that ends up being somewhere else. There’s only so much room, though, so they don't encourage it. Newbies just have to sleep on the floor, and pretty much beg for rations, and this is a fact that the rest of the world knows all too well, which is again why not all refugees just flock here.

For the most part, representatives of the Birket government do not step foot in the megablocks. When they do, it’s kind of a big deal. People know that special circumstances have forced this to happen. That apparently isn’t going to be okay in this situation, which is why one of them has had to make contact with the group in secret. “Which one of you is Agent Leona Delaney?” the young boy asks.

“Who is asking?” Leona questions.

“Senator Melville Honeycutt has a mission for you while you’re stuck here. I would do it myself, but—” He presents himself regrettably. “...I don’t fit the prerequisites.”

“You live here permanently?” Marie asks him.

“I have a certain medical condition that stunted my aging,” he explains. “It would have made my life annoying, but I work here, because I can fly under the radar. No one suspects the kid to be the inside man.”

“I assume that Honeycutt wants us to find someone?” Leona asks.

“You make it sound so simple. I don’t think it is. They don’t exactly take census in the colony. If you’re here, people assume you belong, and no one cares who you are, or who you were before your verdict. Yes, he wants you to find someone. But you won’t have much to go on.”

“That’s okay,” Kivi says. “I’m sure we have done a lot more with a lot less.”

The young-looking man takes an envelope out of his breast pocket, and hands it to Leona. “Good luck. He’ll theoretically release all five of you once you find your target.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 3, 2398

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In the early 22nd century in the Middle East, what is colloquially known as the Water Wars began. Water from the Jordan River was diverted from the Dead Sea so much that it all but dried up, leading to sinkholes, dying vegetation, and other ecological issues. As the problem escalated, a rebel force arose, intending to protect the lake from any further interference. They repaired and preserved it, eventually winning control of the entire area. Their cause was so successful that it spurred similar disputes around the world. Some were not so successful, and some were more violent, but the conflicts were all ended one way or another, and World War IV went down in history both as the shortest-lived, and the one with the fewest casualties.

Today, the Dead Sea, parts of the Jordan River, and surrounding lands belong to the Sovereign Nation of Birket. Very few people who live there are considered law-abiding citizens. It exports no commodities, and does not participate in the international stage. Its borders are protected by designated military branches from Israel and Jordan, who agreed to certain terms under a treaty signed by all three parties and the Global Council following the outcome of the first battles of WWIV. The majority of the people who live there do so in a penal colony, usually after being found guilty of attempting to adulturize the waters. Prisoners are treated well, but are almost always serving life sentences. The government exercises an excellent parole program, though, which has transformed the colony into less of a prison, and more of an intermediary for asylum seekers.

When Marie and Kivi, and later Leona and Heath, suddenly appeared at the lake’s edge, they were pretty much immediately found guilty of adulterization. It’s up to Mateo, Ramses, and Angela to rescue them. Obviously, this is easier said than done. Getting into Birket isn’t a problem if you plan on going straight to the colony, which some people do as refugees to escape their lives in other regions. Getting out, of course, is much harder. If not done by prison break, it entails a lot of paperwork. It requires a sponsor from a country willing to take that person in, but this sponsor can’t be just some rando who feels empathy for the refugee. It has to be someone important, such as...a U.S. senator?

“I must say, these visits are becoming tiresome for me,” Senator Honeycutt laments. “Your wife wanted us to stay away from you.”

“You can’t break that deal without suffering her wrath,” Mateo begins to explain, “but we can break it anytime we want.”

“I suppose that follows a level of logic I would enjoy in my own pursuits,” the Senator replies. “What are your friends doing in Birket, and why did they believe they wouldn’t get caught?”

“You don’t need to know that,” Ramses says. “You just need to get them out.”

Melville sighs. “It won’t be that easy. I already have two sponsees, which is twice as many as the congressional average. Doing this will raise eyebrows.”

“You don’t have to sponsor them yourself,” Mateo tells him. “You just have to make it happen. Surely there is some other bleeding-heart politician who hasn’t yet sponsored a refugee, who also happens to owe you a favor?”

“What makes you think anyone owes me any favor at all?” Melville questions.

“You run a secret paramilitary operation that illegally crosses borders,” Ramses guesses, based on his experiences with them. He doesn’t actually know that their tactics are illegal, but since his daughter uses a forged identity small business to recruit its members, it doesn’t exactly scream overt. “Your number one currency is favors.”

“I may know someone,” Melville decides after thinking it over. “She was just elected, and while she didn’t run specifically on a platform of Birket refugees, she might be interested in padding her résumé with something like this right away to secure reëlection.”

“Perfect,” Mateo determines. “Call her.”

“No one who owes me a favor right now would be caught dead doing anything like what you’re asking. It’s not their political slant. She is the only choice, but we have not yet crossed paths, so if I do this, she’ll probably treat it as a favor for me, despite the fact that it will ultimately help her. I’ll owe her a favor.”

“So you want some kind of compensation to make it worth your while,” Ramses figures. “That way, we’re all paying for something.”

“The problem is, I don’t know what she’ll ask for, or when. I didn’t follow her campaign, because she was never on our radar, so I don’t know a whole lot about her motives, or secret agenda. When she comes to collect, you may need to be ready to be involved, or be involved in something else, to—as you put it—compensate me for whatever it is I’ll have to pay.”

Mateo places two fists on the Senator’s desk, and leans in. “I have access to the hungerberries, in case you thought that was just something between the two of you, and that Leona’s current predicament prevents her from following through on her threat.”

Melville leans in as well, so that their faces are awkwardly close. “You can only play a card so many times before I start to recognize the wear and tear on the back of it. The favor chain we’re building here is my way of letting you maintain your hold over me and my family without playing the card a second time. I suggest you take it.”

Mateo lets go. “Get them out. Ramses and I will be waiting for them in...where did you say it was?” he asks his friend.

“Egypt,” Ramses reminds him. “Birket usually releases prisoners to Egypt.”

“Right. We’ll be in Egypt. Call us when your colleague gets back to you, and we’ll deliver. Make it happen, whatever it takes.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 2, 2398

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Heath is pacing around again, this time in the main seating area of The Olimpia. He hasn’t spoken to his wife in four days, and hasn’t seen her in five. Neither she nor Kivi has been responding to their messages, but their devices are still on and active, in Middle of Nowhere, Florida. In fact, they haven’t moved a centimeter since June 30, which suggests all kinds of possible explanations. They could be dead, or stuck in a timeloop or time bubble. They could have lost their belongings, and moved on, or someone might have stolen them, and left them somewhere. Heath is presently considering all of these possibilities, plus some more outlandish ones. He keeps asking Leona and Ramses questions about how time and time travel work so he can add more to the growing list, and enhance his own sense of dread. It’s not healthy, but nothing they say appears to be helping him out of the grim hole that he’s digging for himself.

Leona is operating the controls, hunting for a landing site as close to the unmoving phones as possible. Ramses gets on the intercom to begin an announcement as they approach their destination. “Welcome to the location of Youth Water. It comes from a natural spring in the middle of inland Florida, which dried up centuries before it was permanently settled by Europeans. In the main sequence, this area was well-developed by the time the culture advanced to this point in its history. It boasts one of the first regions to undergo the massive rewilding effort that sought to revitalize the world’s wildlife, and consolidate human populations into ever smaller artificial habitations. But still, the spring was dry, only to be accessed long ago in the past. It is one of the most popular of the immortality waters, because it can help promote life extension in the deveiled humans of history without interfering in later endeavors to assemble the other waters, and possibly achieve complete and total immortality.

“According to the correspondence map, Marie and Kivi’s devices are currently located at the approximate location of this spring, implying that there is something quite interesting there. And I’ve just been informed by my co-pilot that the nearest open area for vertical landing is about four kilometers from this site. We apologize for the hike that will soon be demanded of you, but barring teleportation, or aerial vehicle fast rope, this is the best we can do. Mateo and I will be staying with the Olimpia in case it’s needed at a moment’s notice. The rest of you will make the trek to the target location. Thank you, and please be patient while we execute this latest, delicate maneuver to the ground.”

Mateo and Ramses wait in the clearing while the others go out and attempt to make sense of all of this. A couple of hours later, Angela returns alone. “They’re gone.”

“What do you mean, they’re gone? They’ve gone where?”

Angela catches her breath. “While Leona was looking through the phones they found by the edge of the water, Heath dove in, believing the spring to be the ultimate answer to his question. She went in after him, and they both disappeared. I was feeling a strong pull to follow them. It took everything I had to not get in the water too, because I knew I shouldn’t. They did have their devices on them. Ramses, can you track them?”

He loads up his own device. It takes him longer than they would think. It should be a quick friend location ping. “Umm...it’s complicated.”

“How so?” Mateo asks.

“They’re in the future.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 1, 2398

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Marie continues to watch the water try to escape gravity, but inevitably fall back down. All of the sudden, a hand touches her shoulder, and she breaks out of it to find Kivi next to her. They’re not in the water, though. They’re somewhere else in the middle of the woods. “What happened?”

“You were in there for two minutes. I worked up the nerve to go in after you.”

“Then you dragged me out of the water, through the woods? To what end?”

“I dragged nobody nowhere. You must have teleported us here.”

“I did no such thing!” Marie insists.

“Okay, then the time gods did it. I’m sorry, I don’t know,” she defends.

Marie composes herself. “No, I’m sorry. I think there’s something weird about that water. I was not in there for two minutes. Rather, that’s not what it felt like. And right now I feel agitated, and angry at you for taking me away from it. It’s not fair. I want to go back there. I know that I shouldn’t be so...invested, but there’s something drawing me to it, like an addictive drug.”

“Maybe it’s an actual drug,” Kivi reasons.

“Yeah, and maybe drinking it turns you into an asshole.”

“Are immortals assholes?”

“Ya know, I’m not sure if I’ve ever met anyone who drank all the waters. I know of some people who were, to various degrees, immortal, but for other reasons. Mateo once told me of one guy, though. He was an asshole, but I don’t know if this was why.”

Kivi nods. “We need to figure out where we are.”

“I don’t suppose you brought the tablet with us, or anything from our bag?”

“You got naked, I got naked. I didn’t think anything else should get wet.”

“Take my hand.” Marie tries to jump them back to the spring, and then back to Kansas City. Finally she tries to return to the Springfield airport, where they left the car, but nothing. If she was the one responsible for teleporting them before, she can’t do it again. “Ugh, I wish I had just kept my watch on. That would have been good enough.”

“We have to find help. We can’t just sit here. No one knows where we are.”

“Agreed.”

They get up, and start walking through the trees. They don’t have to go far at all before they see a huge body of water before them. They’re definitely nowhere near the Fountain of Youth anymore. They keep walking, until they get to the beach.

“Do you know where this is?”

Marie squints, and looks around. “It couldn’t be...” She steps into the water, reaches in to get some on her hand, and sticks it in her mouth. She tries to spit it out.

“Ocean water?”

“No. The salinity is much too high for that. It’s the Dead Sea, otherwise known as the source of Energy water.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 30, 2398

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Marie just got back from a hiking trip with her husband, so she’s not having too many problems. Kivi, on the other hand, was literally born less than a week ago, so she doesn’t have a whole lot of experience in the wilderness. “Ow!” She stops walking and instinctively, reaches up to slap herself in the cheek. “That’s blood. I’m bleeding.”

“It’s not only your blood,” Marie tries to tell her, “and it’s just a little.”

“A bug bit me, and you think that it’s totally fine.”

“It’s a hematophage. It only needed a little bit of your blood. We put on that smelly stuff to keep them away.”

“It’s obviously not working.”

“Well, it’s not magic.”

“Why did you say that in a different accent?”

Marie gets going on the trail. “It’s a pop culture reference.”

“You know I won’t get those.”

“I know,” Marie says as she’s getting farther ahead.

“What if it was carrying a disease?”

“It probably wasn’t.”

“Probably?”

“Hurry up! I wanna get there before it gets dark!”

“How do you know where we’re going again?”

“Ramses had a little bit of data from the main sequence in his bag when he came to this reality. Using the AI, he was able to overlay corresponding coordinates to the geography of this world, which we can follow using SatNav.”

“In English?”

“I have a map.”

They continue for another kilometer or so until they hear rushing water. This area is surprisingly remote, while it’s pretty heavily developed in the main sequence. The trek was rough, but they have come to a clearing, where they find a source of water. “Ah, there it is, you were right,” Kivi says with a smile.

Marie zooms in and out of the map. “No, this isn’t right at all.”

“You said we were looking for the Fountain of Youth, and that to me looks like a fountain. I mean, the water isn’t coming out of sculpted horses, but it’s nice enough, I guess.”

“Hold on.” She goes into the overlay code, and checks for errors, to the best of her ability with only a cursory glance. There’s too much data to go over comprehensively right now. “This isn’t gonna do me any good.” She starts to remove her clothes, ultimately keeping her bra and underwear on.

“What if someone else comes?”

Marie looks around. “I see no signs that a single human has ever been in this area ever. It’s pretty well hidden. I’m not worried. Besides, I don’t care.” She wades into the water, which she finds to be lukewarm. It’s not a hot spring, but it’s not freezing either. Perhaps it’s warmed by geothermal energy just a little bit. She walks along the smooth floor, encountering no obstacles or sharp rocks, and approaches the bubbling fountain in the center.” A warmness comes over her, but not physically, just emotionally.

“Can you teleport?” Kivi asks.

“What?” Marie didn’t really hear that. She’s mesmerized by the sight, and can’t think about anything else. It just looks like the work of jets in a hot tub, but there’s something so beautiful and entrancing about it, she can’t look away.

Kivi yells something else from the shore.