The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 4, 2398

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Certain that the team would make new friends, or reunite with old ones, Ramses bought a gigantic table for the common room on the third floor. This is the kind of thing that you see in castles, where two people who married only for political purposes sit on either end, forcing their servant to make the ungodly trip several times throughout the meal. It comes in at five meters long, which is over sixteen feet in a measuring system that no one in this reality uses. It was hauled up here through the window, since it was custom made as a single piece, and had no way of fitting in the elevator. It’s designed to accommodate eighteen people, which is good, because they have fifteen at the moment. Vearden!Three joined them yesterday after being spotted, tracked, and recruited by Alyssa McIver, with assistance by Carlin McIver. They’re all gathered ‘round for a nice dinner, prepared by Heath, Andile, and the three youngest McIvers.

There was nothing particularly special about today, besides Vearden’s arrival, and some people were sort of maybe just a little bit worried about the possibility of these massive group dinners becoming a regular thing. Not everyone was available yesterday to hear Vearden’s story, so he tells it again at the urging of the children, who want to hear it again, since they’re still excited about this time travel stuff. “After the other Vearden—who I now know to have been Leona and her friends in a clone of me?—took my place on Tribulation Island, I took the map, and headed for Jupiter.”

“He means a person named Jupiter, not the planet,” young Moray makes sure they all know.

“Right,” Vearden agrees kindly. “So I find him, and he tells me that my work isn’t done yet. He says that I have one more thing to do before I can relax. He agreed to send me to when and wherever I wanted to go for my retirement, which I’m not sure I’m going to do. I mean, what does that even mean for people like us? This isn’t a job, it’s a lifestyle, right? Anyway, he asked me to open a door. Now, I don’t know if you realize this, but that whole opening doors to other points in spacetime isn’t something that I was truly ever able to do. I did it in order to find the other Vearden on Tribulation Island, but I was pretty sure I had help. But I did as he asked, and on the other side of that door was Jupiter again. They gave each other a knowing look, like it was all planned out. After I closed the door behind me, the second Jupiter handed me this necklace, and pushed me out of the window. I landed on my feet in a parking lot, so far from other buildings that it had to be some kind of portal.”

“So Jupiter can transition people from the Third Rail too,” Mateo muses. “He could bring us back if he wanted. Or Nerakali could, or The Warrior.”

“One of them would have to know that we’re even here,” Ramses believes.

“They might not be able to even then, though,” Angela reasons. “I’m starting to get the feeling that coming here is a hell of a lot easier than leaving.”

“That makes sense,” Marie says.

“Let me see the necklace,” Leona Matic requests of Vearden.

“Okay, sure.” Vearden takes it off, and hands it to her.

She examines it, with her eyes, and with her fingers. She holds it open like the start of Cat’s Cradle. She tries to ball it up, but it’s not really flexible enough. Finally she twists the clasp open, and separates the two ends, peering at one of them. “There is something in here.” She pinches it, and delicately begins to pull out the wire. As she does so, it grows thicker, like a cartoon. The casing is apparently bigger on the inside. The length appears to be the same as the circumference of the necklace, though. Once it’s free, they all look at what appears to just be a regular metal wire, though with an unusual greenish coloring.

“Oh, it’s the Livewire,” comes Mateo’s voice, but it’s not from the one sitting at the table. Alt!Mateo has come in, arm in a sling, and a bandage still around his forehead.

“Self,” the other Mateo begins, “you’ve decided to join us?”

“I realized that I had some unfinished business here.” Alt!Mateo glances over at Leona Reaver, but quickly corrects himself.

“You called this the Livewire,” Leona Matic says. “What does that mean?”

“No idea,” Alt!Mateo answers with a shrug. “That’s just what my friend, Gilbert called it. He didn’t say anything else.”

“You knew Gilbert Boyce?” Leona questions.

“Yeah, you too?”

She sighs and scoffs. As far as they were aware, Gilbert Boyce had nothing to do with anything in the timeline that this version of Mateo is from.

The other Mateo gets a better look at the thing. “Has anyone else noticed how familiar that shade of green is?”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Marie concurs.

“You’re right,” Ramses decides. “It looks like the Insulator of Life, which I guess makes sense since that’s what glass insulators do, hold wires in place.”

“Okay, fine!” Leona Delaney cries. “I’ll help you make it work!”

“Leona, what are you talking about?” her friend, Andile questions.

“If you get the Insulator of Life, I will help you work it. But you have to promise to give it right back to the person who’s using it right now.”

“Keep going,” Andile urges.

“Okay, I met The Dealer several years ago, Andile, when we got separated. He asked me if I needed the Insulator, and of course, I didn’t, because I was only living one day out of the year at the time. He asked me to help him find a worthy successor, and I’m like, what do I know about that? But I actually did find someone. She was a visitor to this time, and she didn’t belong, but she was going to die before she got back to her rightful place in the timeline, so I connected them, and I never saw either of them again. I didn’t know that this senator’s daughter had anything to do with it, I promise.”

“Delaney, it’s okay,” Leona assures her. “You don’t have to explain. We all have secrets. But can you tell us, what does the Livewire do? We may end up not having a use for it at all, and won’t have to bother your friend about it anyway.”

Delaney sighs. “It can get you back home. Well, theoretically, it can. I don’t know that much about it, but when I was researching it back in my own timeline, the literature made it sound like someone would have to give up their life. It said something about needing a sacrifice on the other side of the call?”

Leona turned back to Vearden. “V, what did you see when you were with Jupiter the first time? Did you see me, and maybe a few other people?”

“Yeah,” Vearden confirms. “You were sleeping on the couch with Ellie Underhill, and two people that I didn’t recognize.”

Leona Matic grins in a devilish way. “We don’t need any sacrifices. Those four bodies on the couch aren’t asleep...they’re vacant. Jupiter planned this all along.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 3, 2398

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When Alyssa McIver was fully brought into the fold last week, she decided that she wouldn’t feel comfortable here if she wasn’t contributing in some way. Some of these people have jobs, and some go on missions, and who knows what’s going on that she and her family don’t even see? There had to be something she could do. Perhaps they wanted a roof garden. She could certainly help with that, but someone would have to pay for it, so that seemed like an odd request, since it could sound like she was being too greedy and needy. There was a way, though. On the first floor of the building, they had set up the security room. They didn’t have any security guards to work out of there, but they had plenty of cameras. They even had ones installed in a parking lot less than a mile away. She didn’t understand at first, but then they explained that that’s where everybody seems to end up when they come to this reality from elsewhere. It’s an easy job, but not one that can be ignored. Someone has to watch the footage, or at least review it fast forwarded later.

So that’s what she’s been doing for the last week. She keeps an eye on all of the cameras, some of which are just pointing at lava lamps, for reasons that she’s not expected to care about. Again, it’s not particularly difficult, but it keeps it off of other people’s plates, freeing them to conduct more important business. She’s sitting here right now, and has just realized that the building’s been nearly all cleared out. She doesn’t have audio, so she doesn’t know why, but it seems everyone left for different reasons, rather than as part of some conspiracy. Leona Matic had to go inspect a manufacturing plant, Angela and Kivi had to have a business lunch; who knows? As she’s rechecking the monitors, just in case she spots someone somewhere, she sees movement out of the corner of her eye. It’s one of the parking lot cameras. That’s not that weird. People drive in and out of it all the time. It’s an overflow lot, so it’s not extremely packed, but it sees traffic every day. Still, when that happens, she’s been asked to run it back to see if the persons there walked or drove like normal, or appeared out of nowhere. She jumps back ten seconds. Holy crap, he appeared out of nowhere. Wait, go back again, and keep an eye on the timestamp. Yep, it happened. It’s a time traveler.

It’s been almost a minute now, and every second that passes gives the visitor more time to leave. He may not even be trying to escape, but just not know to stick around and wait for the welcome party. There are so many people that Alyssa could call, but she doesn’t know who among them is closest to the lot, or whether they’re in a position to get there anyway. The Lofts aren’t that far from it, though. It’s within walking distance. More appropriately, it’s within running distance. She doesn’t have time to think this through. She’ll ask for forgiveness later. This is her best opportunity to demonstrate her value, and she considers it part of her job here. They didn’t specifically say that it was, but they didn’t tell her what else to do, probably because they didn’t truly believe that it would ever come up.

Carlin is in the hallway when Alyssa bursts out of the security room. “Lock up for me!” she yells back. “Moray is in charge!”

“Where are you going?” he questions.

“To the lot!” Someone ought to know where she’s run off to.

She races down Main Street as fast as she can, then steers to the left at Grand. She doesn’t stop, even when her shins begin to scream angrily at her. She just has to make it there, and then she can rest. The visitor needs to know that he’s not alone. Even if he runs off after that, at least he would have gotten that message. Or maybe he won’t get any message at all. Even at top speed, it still takes her five minutes to cover the distance, and the guy is no longer around when she reaches his last known location. He may be meters from her, but if he turned the corner of a nearby building, she wouldn’t be able to see him, and she has no idea which direction to try. What would someone who has just experienced this do? Where would they go? That depends on who they are, and what they know of all this. It’s an impossible question to answer.

Alyssa’s phone rings, and she picks it up instinctively, but keeps looking around for clues, all the while trying to catch her breath. “Carlin, I’m kind of busy right now.”

“He went south on Warwick,” Carlin replies.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“The guy you’re trying to find. He’s heading south, probably intending to cut through that park.”

“How do you know this?” Alyssa asks him.

“You left the room open. I took a look at the cameras, and watched him walk away. He’s out of range now, but if you hurry, you’ll catch up. He doesn’t seem to be in any sort of rush. Once he got his bearings, it looked like he kind of knew where he wanted to go.”

“Thanks,” Alyssa says. “I assume you’re watching me right now. Which way is Warwick?”

After she gets the info, Alyssa hangs up and heads off. She drops to a jog, because she no longer needs to break the land speed record, she only needs to close the gap. Before too long, she sees the back of the head of the target. He’s wearing the same clothes, so it’s got to be him. She drops pace so it doesn’t look like she’s coming for an attack, but maintains an advance.

He notices that someone is behind him, so he looks over his shoulder, but since they’re in a park of all places, it doesn’t concern him. He must assume she’s just out to get some exercise. She decides not to wave. He may freak out yet, and if he does, she ought to be closer. He turns back, and keeps going, but then he stops. He turns around completely, and steps forward to meet her in the middle. “Alyssa? I thought that was you,” he says like they went to high school together.

She stops, worried. Maybe she’s the one who’s going to have to run away.

“Oh, sorry. I thought you were someone else,” the man backtracks.

She’s not buying it. “My name is Alyssa, so you really do know me. How?”

The man looks around. “Is it a coincidence that you’re in this park, or did you know that I arrived?”

She doesn’t speak, but it’s written all over her face.

He nods. “If you knew that you would find me here, you must know at least a little bit about time travel. You are from my past, but I must be from your future. That explains why you look a little younger than when I last saw you.”

“When was this?” she asks him.

“That’s too much information. We are not what the kids call simpatico, which means that I know things about your personal future. Best not to tamper with that.”

“Can you at least tell me your name?” she asks.

“Of course. I’m Vearden Haywood.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 2, 2398

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One of the first things that Bridgette learned about her father was that he was after two interrelated things. He wanted to collect unusual people, and special objects with unusual properties. Based on what she was able to gather from a distance, he didn’t accidentally see something he wasn’t supposed to, or get read into an organization already involved in this stuff. He was obsessed with the occult his entire life, and it took him half of it to get anywhere with his investigations. Aliens, vampires, cryptids, superheroes, and time travelers. He didn’t know for a fact whether any of these things existed, but he was convinced that one of them had to, or one of the many others in a long list of fictional possibilities. Was there a secret society of five people who ran the whole world from the shadows? Did immortals travel the world with swords, cutting each other’s heads off? It had to be something, and he had to find it, and find it he did.

Once Leona realized that Winona’s father, Senator Honeycutt had figured out the secret of reality, she called it The Masquerade. But this suggested that there was some kind of organized system to all this, like the Archipelago from Sense8, or the chaotic network of salmon and choosing ones from the main sequence. It doesn’t seem to be like that here. Leona Reaver, Delaney and Andile; even Alt!Mateo; none of them has ever found anyone like them. If there are other time travelers here, they’re scattered throughout the world. They may even be separated by time, up to billions of years. There is no network, no I know a guy thing going on here. At least that’s what they have believed this whole time. Even Marie, in all her dealings as a covert agent with the U.S. government, hasn’t found evidence of such a thing. Until perhaps now.

They call him The Dealer, and the only thing Bridgette had about him in her notes is that he moves around a lot, and if you want to do business with him, you’re going to need a referral. It took three days of calling and texting for Marie to procure one from Bridgette’s initial contact, but here she is in Mount Zeil in the Northern Territory. Like Lebanon, Kansas in the main reality—or Gothenburg in this one—for the United States, it’s the center of Australia. It also happens to be around 270 kilometers from Uluru, which is on Mateo’s list of important temporal locations to check out.

Marie ducks down to clear the top of the entrance. All kinds of knick knacks, tchotchkes, trinkets, and baubles sit on the shelves along the wall. What she would guess to be a massive aboriginal mask sits in the corner. The man behind it probably thinks that she doesn’t see him, and expects her to look around on her own while he watches to get an idea of what kind of person she is. She examines a few items, but there is nothing of interest to her, except for one thing. “Nothing in this shack is of any real value,” she begins, taking the black hat from its shelf, and raising it up. “...save for this.” She places it upon her head, faces the mask in the corner, and extends her arms to the side to present the new her. She’s transformed herself to look like a famous actor that anyone in the world would recognize.

The Dealer knocks the mask away from himself, and stands up. “You got it to work. How did you do that?”

“Let’s just say...I keep hydrated.” The Health-slash-Death waters are still technically in her system, and can allow her to tap into the temporal energy necessary to make the McIver hat work. It’s not enough to teleport, but this thing has its own power. Marie studies his face for a few seconds, and then transforms herself again, now to become a mirror image of him.

He slowly slinks towards her to get a better look. “Brilliant.”

She removes the hat to return to her true visage, and sets it back down. “Where did you get it, and where did you get the Insulator of Life?”

He gingerly sets the hat upon his own head, and frowns when he looks in a nearby beauty mirror to find that it still doesn’t work for him. It is unclear how he knew beforehand what it was supposed to do, or that it was supposed to do anything at all. Now he studies her face. “How well do you know history?”

“Not as well as someone my age should. Why?”

“I was born in 1991, right smack dab in the middle of the bloodiest battle of World War II. My mother was a soldier, who’s unit leader didn’t give a crap that she was nine months pregnant with me. She still had hands, which meant that she could still hold a gun. He was pissed when she went into labor, partially because of her, but also because the rest of her unit came together to protect her, instead of pushing forward with whatever mission they were on. When my cries rang out to the sky, it is said that everyone on both sides stopped shooting simultaneously...and they wept. The war ended that day, because of me. My first act in this world was potentially saving millions.”

“That’s...a haunting story.”

The Dealer smiles. “This isn’t about me, or my mother. It’s about the unit leader. You see, he wasn’t from around here, and when I say around here, I mean—”

“He was from another reality.”

This surprises him, but then he remembers just a minute ago when she activated the McIver hat without giving it a second thought. “That’s what he told me on his deathbed, and also that he was my real father, though I guessed as much when I heard we shared a first name. I don’t know why he didn’t raise me, or why he didn’t have the instinct to protect his baby mama during the war. I know that she wasn’t raped, though. They were in love at one time, to a certain degree. Anyway, he died right in front of me before he could say much more, but just before his last breath, he gave me a key to a safe deposit box. I found the glass insulator thing in there, and a few clues to other objects. Do you wanna know how old he was?” It was rhetorical. “I couldn’t get the exact date he was born, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of over 500 years ago. It’s all because of that little green object that doesn’t even give off any energy readings. As far as I can tell, it’s nothing but glass.”

“You’re being surprisingly forthcoming with all this,” Marie notes.

“I have to be. Someone needs to keep going. Someone needs to find the truth about this world, and I won’t be able to do it for very much longer.” He reaches up to his hair, and pulls it all off. He’s completely bald underneath. “Shortly after he passed, World War III began, which I believe to have been the worst. Biological weapons gave an estimated three million people cancer. I only survived because of the insulator.”

“Why did you give it away? You know you have to stay close for it to work.”

“I’m tired,” he explains. “I’m done. That’s why he gave it away, and I’m sure whoever Bridgette gave it to will also only last a few centuries.”

She nods, respecting his position. “I’m Marie. What’s your name?”

“Lawson Junior. I was apparently named after my father, and he was named after his mother, Laura Gardner.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 1, 2398

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The night nurse comes into the hospital room to check Alt!Mateo’s vitals. At first, he doesn’t notice the other Mateo in the chair next to him. He managed to get some sleep last night, but only a few hours, and now he’s probably awake for the rest of the day. “Oh, I didn’t see you there,” the nurse whispers. He looks over at the one in the bed, and then back to Mateo. “Twins?”

Mateo rolls his eyes as if he’s heard it a million times before. He hasn’t, but if they really were twins, this is likely how he would react to such a dumb question with such an obvious answer. “All my life. Sometimes I feel like we’re the same person, but other times, I look at him, and I don’t know who he is.”

The nurse nods, and takes a look at Alt!Mateo’s chart. “He got hit by a car?”

Mateo nods. “It was his fault. He’s an idiot.”

“All the smart genes went to you in the womb, huh?”

“No,” Mateo replies. “I’m an idiot too.”

This gets a chuckle out of him. “Can I get you anything? Some water, a soda?”

“I’m all right, thanks.” Mateo waits until the nurse is finished with his work before saying, “he’s gone.”

“How did you know that I was awake?” Alt!Mateo asks, turning over to face his other self.

“Because I know you.”

Alt!Mateo turns back away. “No, you don’t.”

“Do you remember what happened to you?”

“It’s like ya said, I was hit by a car...because I’m an idiot.”

“You ran into traffic, because you desperately wanted to get away from me and Delaney,” Mateo clarifies for him.

“Delaney?” Alt!Mateo echoes.

“That’s what we call her, to distinguish her from Leona Matic and Leona Reaver.”

“Peachy.”

“Would you like to be called something else too?”

“Don’t matter to me. Call me Alligator Pimpleface, for all I give a shit. Just get out of my room, and out of my state.”

“How much did it cost?”

“How much did what cost, New Jersey?” It’s surreal, talking to an alternate version of himself with the same sense of humor. It’s hard to trip him up when he sees every punchline coming a mile away.

“One dollar, Bob,” they say simultaneously like creepy twinspeak in a horror film.

Alt!Mateo can’t help but laugh at this, causing Mateo to hope that he might be opening up. “Look, I don’t know what you’ve been through, but...you’re not alone anymore. We can help you. All you have to do is let us. Come back.”

“Who told you that I was ever alone?” Alt!Mateo question.

“I don’t see anyone else in the room,” Mateo points out.

“They’re probably just getting tea.”

“What’s got you so upset? So sour?”

Alt!Mateo sighs, and sits up quickly, immediately regretting straining his still healing body, but pushing through it. “What has me upset? I killed someone, Matt!” He realizes that he doesn’t want to be so loud in public, but no one seems to have heard. “I killed an innocent woman. And to make matters worse, it hasn’t even technically happened yet. But that doesn’t mean I can stop it, so now she dreads every second she spends above ground, because she knows it’s coming, she just doesn’t know when.”

“Most everyone lives their life like that,” Mateo points out. “Most people don’t know the date of their own deaths.”

“Yes, because that’s what God decided. It’s not like that for her. I’m the one who put her in that position. No wonder God doesn’t come down and help us. He’s probably paralyzed with guilt!”

Mateo waits a beat. “You know that no one ever really dies, right?”

“What, like, we all go back to the earth, and it’s the cycle of life?”

“No, I mean that literally. It’s called the afterlife simulation. There are tiny little tube things in your brain, which are actually organic computers. They convert all of your thoughts to digital format, and when you die, your consciousness is uploaded to a server in the center of the galaxy, on a giant space statue called the Matrioshka Body.”

Alt!Mateo peers at him. “That sounds insane, Matt, and that is saying a lot, given what we both know about how the world works.”

“Worlds,” Mateo corrects. “There are countless others, and I know a lot more than you. I don’t remember how many times I’ve died. What I’m trying to tell you is that Leona is going to be fine. She’ll just go up to the big video game in the sky. So shall you.”

Alt!Mateo considers the possibility for a moment. “Even if that’s true, it doesn’t matter. It won’t last.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re from an old timeline,” Alt!Mateo reasons. “It’s gonna collapse, whether we’re in this so-called simulation, or not. Everybody dies.”

Mateo closes his eyes, embarrassed at the terrible logical mistake he made. “You’re right. Reality One doesn’t count. Neither does mine. We keep changing the timeline, so what does that mean for me, and my past?”

Alt!Mateo struggles to lean towards his alternate, almost menacingly. “It means nothing. Life doesn’t matter. Everything you try will be erased...and you too shall be replaced. No rhyming intended.”

Mateo leans back, letting the words sink in. “You’re right again.” He doesn’t let Alt!Mateo be pleased with himself for long, though. “Which begs the question, why are you so butthurt about all of this? Leona Reaver will die no matter what you did.” He shrugs coolly. “She’s even already met her replacements. That’s pretty rare, even in our world...or worlds, rather.”

Alt!Mateo reaches out for the remote, and lowers the head of his bed down until it’s fully flat. “I need to get some real sleep now. Leave me be, please.”

Mateo stands up, and grabs his tea from the table. “Come back to KC, and not for me, but because my guess is that you owe her. She deserves some level of closure before fate intervenes, and spirits her away to her inevitable death. Goodnight, sir.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 31, 2398

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Bridgette didn’t want to tell them who she was keeping alive in the back of her apartment with the Insulator of Life. That’s okay, it’s her business, but it was important they find out where she got it in the first place. She agreed to hand over the information, as long as they left, and left her alone. Mateo wanted to go find his alternate self, so Marie took the documents to deal with it herself. In the meantime, Mateo was able to convince Leona Delaney—the one who lost her version of Mateo after the kidney transplant—to accompany him on the trip to New Jersey. Never mind how he found out Alt!Mateo was there. He probably won’t respond well to anyone’s face but hers, and the other Leonas are busy at the moment.

Mateo looks through the map as Delaney is driving into the city. The internet calls Howell a township, but neither of them really knows what that means, especially not in this reality. No matter, the point is that Alt!Mateo was captured on camera on Aldrich Road, just off the highway. The file that Winona gave them indicates that he doesn’t have access to a vehicle, or at least didn’t have one in Kansas City, because he hitchhiked with truckers all the way there. So he most likely walked to the restaurant from his motel, and there’s only one in the area. That’s where they head first, hoping that someone will agree to help them.

The clerk—or maybe the owner—doesn’t seem pleased about seeing Mateo when they walk up to the counter. “Have you seen a man who looks like me?” Mateo asks.

“You mean you’re not the one in Room Eleven?” he asks.

“No, that would be my brother.”

The guy looks between the two of them. “He in some kind of trouble?”

“Only with the family. It’s important that we find him, though.”

“Could you maybe let us in his room?” Delaney asks.

“I can’t do that. You probably shoulda told me you were him, and lost your key.”

Mateo smirks, and nods over to a notice taped on the glass. “Then I would have had to pay the thousand dollar lost key fee.”

The man shrugs.

“Is he in there right now?” Delaney asks.

“Haven’t seen him all day, ‘cept when he left this morning. I have a great view of all those rooms. I’da seen him if he had come back. He wasn’t carryin’ nothin’ and he didn’t check out, so do what you will with that information.”

“Okay.”

“I can get you the room next door,” the guy says.

“Thanks,” Delaney says, “but we’ll just wait for him in our car.”

Mateo isn’t sure that he agrees. Since his stuff is still here, he’s probably coming back, and if he doesn't, there is nothing more they can do to find him unless they get more updated intel. The only thing to do now is stake the place out. It could take days, they better get a room. “Hold on. Is Room One vacant?”

“Sure is.”

“Book us for the night.” Mateo catches Delaney’s look. “It’s an L-shape. We have a better view of him through the window, and it’s too hot to sit in a car.”

Delaney is nervous, but she appreciates the logic. “Okay.”

The man chuckles at all this, but takes their money, just the same.

It’s an incredibly gross room, but if all goes well, they won’t be sleeping here, or anything. They crack the shades, and position the chair in a good place. Mateo takes first watch while Delaney sits on the bed. They wait for hours, switching places when one of them gets tired of it, but boredom is the real killer. Everything here costs, including so much as turning on the television. They could probably expense it to the government, but then they get audited, and it would be this whole thing.

“Hey, uhh…Mateo?”

He’s in the chair again now. “Yeah?”

“It’s getting late,” she states.

“I know,” he replies.

“What are we gonna do about sleeping? There’s only one bed.”

“He may return in the middle of the night. We have to take shifts anyway.”

“Oh, right.”

“Why? Do you want to book a room in a nicer place?”

“No, it’s…it’s not that.”

“What is it? I know you don’t know me that well, but you can tell me anything.”

Delaney hesitates, but then she really decides to just go for it. “Can we have sex?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, I never got that far with my Mateo, and I was just thinking—”

“Well, stop doing that, I guess.”

“Stop doing what, thinking?”

“If those are the kinds of thoughts you have, then just quit while you’re ahead.”

“If it’s a problem of fidelity, I already asked your wife about it, and she said—”

“You didn’t ask her anything. Why are you lying to me?”

“Will you stop interrupting?”

“Probably not, not if you’re gonna say things like that. I don’t know how much you’ve been told, but I got a lap dance once, and it nearly destroyed my marriage. I’m not going there, and I would ask you to respect that.”

“Your wife sounds like a bitch.”

“What exactly is your problem?”

“My problem?” She’s getting angry. “My problem is that the life of my life died to save my life, and I end up in this reality, only to find—not one, but two—men who look exactly like him. One of them has now asked me to help him find the other, and it’s giving me all these emotions that I’m not allowed to talk to anyone about!”

“I know a good therapist.”

“You know what I mean!”

“No, I obviously don’t. If you need help, you need to find someone who can do that for you, and I’m not that guy. I can’t even begin to understand what you’re going through, because I’ve lost the love of my life too, but I keep getting her back.”

Something clicks in her brain. “Yeah. You did. But I remember your Leona telling us that you were from two different realities. So how did you make that work?”

“Her brain was blended,” Mateo answers, hoping that the fight is over.

Leona tries to guess the meaning by the context. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s when someone pulls memories from an alternate—”

“Stop. Hold very still,” Leona interrupts him to say.

“What is it?”

Leona carefully lifts her hands up. “The sun set while we were talking.” She claps, signaling the lights to turn off. She gasps at the sight outside the window.

Mateo pivots to see what she’s so afraid of. It’s Alt!Mateo, and he is not happy. He’s so not happy that he runs away into the night.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 30, 2398

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Winona opens the door, and lets them in. This is a much nicer place than her forging den. Either being the daughter of a U.S. senator has its perks, or she’s just rich. It would make sense. Poor people don’t outnumber the rich ones in politics, no matter which reality we’re talking about. “Welcome. Would you like something to drink?”

“We’re not here for that,” Marie answers.

Winona nods, and starts making herself something.

Mateo is waiting patiently, but Marie has known Winona for a lot longer, so she doesn’t have to be polite. “Do you have it?”

“Well, yeah, but we need to talk about returning the favor.”

“Are you looking for someone too?” Mateo asks.

“As a matter of fact, yes, but not all favors are returned in kind. It just so happens to be the case this time.”

“Is this another Amir Hussain?”

She chuckles. “Don’t worry about him. Only Senator Morton cared about finding him, so wherever you left him, he’ll be safe...at least from us. I promise you that.”

“Her promises are solid,” Marie tells Mateo when he asks her with his eyes.

“Who are you looking for then?” Mateo asks, getting back to business. When she hands him the envelope, he opens it to find a picture of himself. “There’s another one?”

Winona shuts her eyes, slightly aggravated. “No, that’s your packet. He was last spotted in Howell, New Jersey. I’m giving you that in good faith that you’ll help me with my problem, even without incentive.”

“Don’t fall for it,” Marie warns him. “If we don’t follow through, she’ll use it against us later. Our incentive to pay her back now is to not have to pay her back later.”

“I understand,” Mateo says. “Go ahead and give us the second packet.”

Winona hands it to him. There’s a picture in this one too, but neither Mateo nor Marie recognize the woman in it. “We were friends as kids,” she explains. “Morton and my father worked closely together at one point. Then the former turned radically conservative, and dad had to cut ties with him. But then they both got elected to the senate, and suddenly had to start working together again. To be honest, we always thought it was just a way to get his daughter back in his life, but it didn’t work. They’ve been estranged for about eleven years now, I think.”

“Wait,” Mateo says. “The Honeycutts and Mortons were family friends. Then everybody had a falling out with Senator Morton, including his own daughter?”

“He wasn’t a senator yet, but yes.”

“Now she’s missing?” Marie asks.

“No, she’s not missing,” Winona clarifies. “We know exactly where she is, but you’re the only one who can bring her back into the fold.”

“The only one, who?” Mateo asks. “Which of us is the only one?”

“Her.” She points at Marie.

“What are you talking about?” Marie questions. “I never met the girl.”

“We have strong reason to believe that Bridgette has been keeping an eye on her father’s covert operations. That’s what happened between me and my father. He didn’t deliberately read me into all of this. I had to find my own way to the truth. The point is, we think she knows who you are.”

Marie sighs deeply. “You want us to approach her, and get her to come in to brief you on whatever it is she knows that you may not already know about your rival’s secret endeavors.”

“Bingpot,” Winona says.

“So, you want us to lie, or something?” Mateo guesses.

“No lying. Be honest. Tell her what you think of me, that’s okay. Just tell her that I wanna talk. We don’t want to trick her, but if I send my own people, she’ll run and go underground. You’ll be just enough of a curiosity to get her to pause, and listen for a second. There’s no huge rush, though. You can go find your doppelgänger first.”

Marie sighs again. “We can’t go try to bring him in, and then have to leave to do something else. When we do go, we’ll need to be able to give him our undivided attention. We’ll go talk to this Bridgette Morton for you. That’s all the favor is, though. We can’t guarantee it’ll work.”

“No one ever can,” Winona says. “Pleasure doing business.”

They leave Winona’s apartment, and head for Bridgette’s, which looks strikingly similar, as if they used the same architect and designer. Or perhaps it’s some common political aesthetic called senatorial modern. She’s surprised and excited to see them. “It’s you. You’re one of the people from my father’s menagerie. Please, do come in.”

“Is that what he called it?” Marie asks.

“No, that’s what I’ve called it. He had this thing about transparent prisons. He thought that part of a convict’s punishment should be losing all sense of privacy. The darkness surrounding your glass box was his form of a panopticon. Are you thirsty?”

“We’re fine. You knew what he was doing this whole time?” Mateo asks her.

“Yes, but I have limited data, and almost no resources,” Bridgette explains. “I’m the one who leaked your location to Winona, because I couldn’t get you out myself.”

“I believe she’s aware of that,” Marie says, “and she would like to meet with you.”

“To what end? Does she want to join forces? Look, I helped you out of the box, because it didn’t look like you deserved to be there, and as far as I can tell, the Honeycutts aren’t as bad as my father was, but they’re not exactly saints either.”

“I think she just wants to talk,” Mateo says sincerely. “For now,” he adds.

Bridgette scoffs. “That’s not all she wants from me.”

“What do you mean?” Marie asks.

Bridgette hesitates to go on, but seems to decide to when she notices Mateo and Marie not applying any pressure to her. “My father took notes about you. I don’t know exactly what he meant, but he said he couldn’t trust people like you. Generally speaking, any enemy of his is a friend to nearly everyone else. But still, I’m risking more than you could know by showing you this.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t feel comfortable,” Marie assures her.

This only deepens Bridgette’s belief that the two of them can be trusted. She goes back into a room, where they hear the distinct sound of her turning a permutation lock. She returns with an object that’s covered by a golden cloth. She hesitates once more, or maybe she’s just pausing for effect, and then she reveals what’s underneath. It’s a green glass telegraph insulator. “I’m not ready to tell you what this does, and I don’t know how it works anyway, but I can tell you that it’s immensely valuable.”

Mateo nods. “Ah yes, that is called the Insulator of Life. So tell me, who is it keeping alive?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 29, 2398

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It came to Leona Matic’s attention that Alt!Leona doesn’t really like to be called that. Before things went haywire in her timeline, she had already developed feelings for her version of Mateo Matic, but they never got married, and she never took his name. She asked to be referred to Leona Delaney, or maybe just Delaney. They both asked Leona Reaver what she would like to be called to distinguish her from her two alternates, and she doesn’t really care. Unless ambiguity comes up, they decide to use her married name in the same way. They all have different last names, so that should make things easier to understand, and prevent any of them feeling less than.

Reaver wanders into the lab. Ramses is out in the field so Leona Matic is the only one here right now. “What are you working on?”

Leona sighs, grateful for the break. “My final report.”

“Report on what?”

“I’m building the government a fusion powered rocket ship. It’s all been on paper and computer modeling so far, but that’s almost over. I’ve completed quadruple checking the specifications, and once it’s approved, it will be ready to be disseminated to manufacturing. Well, I guess I still have more paperwork, because we can’t have people knowing what it is they’re building, so I have to break up the work. One guy will be in charge of fabricating part of the shielding, while another welds them together, but neither will know what the finished product looks like, or what it’s for. Sorry, I’m rambling. This type of work always makes it hard to go back to talking normal.”

Reaver is looking at the document on Leona’s screen, but not really.

“What is it?” Leona asks.

“How did you do this?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“How did you get so smart? I barely passed my high school math classes,” she clarifies. She looks like she’s feeling very self-conscious and unworthy.

“Oh. Me too, early on. But then I got a tutor.” She looks up and thinks about it. “Actually, it was Mateo’s half-sister from an old timeline...but we didn’t know that yet.”

“That’s all it took? One tutor, and you’re suddenly a genius?”

“Quite frankly, Leona Reaver, you’re also a genius. So pretty much, yeah. Frida didn’t just teach me how to solve for X. She showed me how to think about math and science in a new way. She showed me that I already knew all this stuff, but it was trapped in a box of anxiety, self-doubt, and an inferiority complex.”

Reaver continues to look at the document in a half-grimace.

“Do you wanna ask me something?” Leona asks.

“I’m afraid that you’re too busy.”

Leona nods. “Honestly, I am. Work is ramping up, not slowing down. I’ll have to be away from home daily for months, overseeing production. But Ramses is independent, and better educated,” she adds in response to Reaver’s frown. “He’s just as intelligent, but he was born later in the timeline, so he would be a better teacher.”

“Do you think he’ll go for it?” Reaver asks hopingly. “Would you ask for me?”

“He absolutely will, but I think it’ll be better if you ask instead. Show initiative.”

“Okay, I think I will. Thanks...self.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 28, 2398

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Most everybody is somewhere other than the third floor lofts. Leona and Ramses are in the lab. Alt!Leona and Andile are helping Angela with her new business on the first floor. Heath is giving the McIvers a guided tour of Kansas City. Kivi is off doing something on her own, and Leona Reaver is holed up in her apartment. Marie is alone in her and Heath’s unit, so Mateo takes this opportunity to knock on the door. “When did you last speak with your handler?”

Marie frowns, uncomfortable at having to have this conversation, but not angry at him for starting it. “I’ve been informed of the development. You’ve not told Leona?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“I wanted to hear what you had to say about it.”

“You want me to justify my actions?” she figures.

“Some of them.”

Marie sighs. “I had nothing when I first came here. Heath makes it sound like this romantic story where he believed in me the whole time, and we fell in love at first sight. It wasn’t that easy, and it took much longer than that. I was homeless for a bit, sleeping in an empty lot before I ever felt safe telling him anything. I needed money, and I needed an identity. Winona had already set up her forgery operation by then, so that’s who I ended up with. Can you imagine how different my life would have been if I had just found a different forger? I can. I think about it all the time. She asked me a lot more questions than she did you, Mateo, and I didn’t have any good answers. She gave me what I asked for, free of charge, and I should have known right then that it wasn’t just pity, but I was on the hook. She started asking me to do things to pay her back. Little things at first, then more dangerous, and she came to realize that I was far more educated and skilled than any normal person could achieve within a single lifetime.

“I honestly don’t remember how we broached the subject, but I remember I gave her as little information about where I come from as possible. I didn’t just spill the beans about everything all at once. She’s been squeezing more and more out of me ever since. One day, she noticed a few extra people stepping into my condo, and she questioned me about you. It was her idea to have her forge your papers too. She had shut down by then, as it was an only temporary assignment years ago. She finished re-setting up her den just hours before we arrived for help, and you were her only recent clients. That’s what put her on the radar of legitimate law enforcement, because they noticed unusual activity in the system. She’s the daughter of a U.S. senator, but she’s not invisible. She decided she needed help, so she concocted this plan to get into bed with you by upgrading your credentials to SD6. To protect you, I...manipulated the situation to put a greater target on Leona, since she has actual training in the field.”

“This all checks out so far, but it doesn’t explain everything that’s happened to us.” He’s not judging her for what she did to get by. They’ve all done things. He’s only questioning her choice to keep it from them. The government has been weird with them from the start, which doesn’t make sense, given her position. Why wasn’t she honest? “They keep following us around the globe. Why is that?”

She’s seething just a bit. “They don’t trust me to report back on you, which they’re right not to. I’m trying to keep you out of it as much as possible. They’re following us because they hope you will eventually be more forthcoming about our origins and abilities.”

“What do they know about us already?”

“They know that we’re time travelers, and that we don’t have control over it. I’ve told them that you’re cognizant of certain special locations around the world that can give us temporary control. We are now looking for this special water in the hopes that it can somehow get us back home.”

“These claims are rather accurate,” Mateo points out.

“Yes, it’s very easy to omit information, but it’s not easy to lie to them outright. If I make a claim, it better be true, to some degree.”

Mateo nods. Now for the real question. “Why lie to us?”

Marie is reluctant to answer, or maybe she’s unsteady in her self-awareness. “This life; this...secret agent shit, it teaches you not to trust people. You get really comfortable hiding things from others, even when you love them. Heath knows absolutely nothing. I sold my intellectual property, that’s true, which mostly explains why we’re so rich, but it doesn’t account for all the money. I get paid for this work. I get paid very well. I just have to go in the field every once in a while.”

“Field work, doing what?”

“Various things, usually unrelated. At least that’s what I thought, but now we’ve found out that Senator Morton was involved, I’m starting to think there’s some kind of secret civil war in the government, and it’s all connected.”

“If there’s a secret war,” Mateo begins, “our team is at the center of it.”

“Yes. Unless...”

“Unless our arrival here is but a fraction of the story, and plenty of other travelers have made their way into this reality.”

“Yes, we may be only part of a statistic. I’ve been trying to find that out, but Winona doesn’t give without getting.”

“Then let’s give,” he suggests.

“What do you mean?”

“She wants answers, and you haven’t been able to give her very many, because you’ve had to protect us. But the thing is that we’re here, and we can protect each other, so let’s give her whatever we need to in order to get what we want. She may know where my cousin is, and not even realize it. She may know the location of a reality transition point, but not understand its nature.”

“You want to tell the rest what I did?” Marie asks, up to her eyeballs in anxiety.

“Well, only the core group. Andile, the alternates, and the McIvers don’t need to know anything about all that.”

“That’s how it starts,” Marie says, “the lying. You start justifying what you’re saying, and what you’re not. Then it just gets worse from there.”

“You’ve had to carry this burden on your own for four years, and I would love to share the load, but I am not smart enough to help. We need the others. Leona, Ramses, and Angela can tell us what to do. Truthfully, Kivi is literally unreliable, and Heath...”

“Heath is still an outsider to you.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help it.”

“That’s okay, I get that. Either way, can we wait a little while longer?”

“Okay,” Mateo replies diplomatically. “Whenever you’re ready.”