The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 18, 2398

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Leona pulls up to the building, and checks the text message again. Yes, this is the right address. It’s a news station; cable news, it appears. She’s sure she should recognize it—it’s probably really famous—but she’s found it hard to stomach these people’s ideas of journalistic integrity. Why would Winona summon her here? This is fishy. Ah, she may as well go in and check it out. It’s not an abandoned warehouse, after all, so if it’s another blacksite, there sure are a lot of cars in the parking lot. She gets out, and enters through the front door. The desk attendant asks for her name, and when she gives it, he hands her a badge. It already has her face on it. Maybe it is a government building, and the news station thing is just a front. He pulls out a map of the interior, and draws a pathway from this location to the greenroom, where she’s apparently supposed to go. She badges herself in, and heads off.

Winona is sitting on a couch in the greenroom, tapping on her phone. She holds one finger up, and keeps tapping with the other hand. She smiles up at Leona when she’s done. “Thank you for coming. Welcome to New York.”

“Why am I here, Honeycutt?”

Winona puts her phone away. “The day we launched the ship, did you launch something else? Or was there a payload in our rocket that we weren’t told about? I’m not mad, I just need to know before I go on.”

“Go on what?”

Winona doesn’t answer.

“You’re going on TV.”

“Someone has to answer for the launch. I’ve been on my damage control tour. Again, I’m not mad. We were going to send that thing into space sooner or later, we just weren’t planning on having Miss Walton or the kids on board. This particular show is particularly important, because of the other guest.”

“Who is the other guest?”

“The lead engineer for the Snowglobe Collective.” So the sinister organization exists in this reality too. That could mean that someone is purposely matching history, like with the War Memorial, or it’s actually the same company that spans multiple realities. “Well, he’s not really the lead engineer. He’s more the mouthpiece, but he’s going to use science to show how irresponsible we were.”

“They’re the ones who own the satellite,” Leona guesses.

“So you did launch something else? Did you attack the satellite on purpose? Were you targeting them?”

“It was a coincidence that had nothing to do with them,” Leona tries to explain. “We needed to orbit Earth to find Meredarchos and Erlendr. We didn’t have time to build and launch our own so Mateo...”

“So Mateo what?” Winona prods.

“He teleported up there.”

Winona nods. “Because of course you people can breathe in space.”

“It’s complicated.”

She sighs. “It always is.” She removes a holstered gun from her bag, and hands it to Leona. “Here’s your sidearm.”

“Mine?”

She jiggles the gun. “Yeah, you’re my bodyguard.”

“Since when?” Leona questions.

“Since that’s how I got you into the station. Don’t worry, it’s not just a cover. I need you to actually protect me. This is a crime hole.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a special place where certain crimes are legal as long as they’re justified in the eyes of the entity that dug the hole, i.e. the guy who owns it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The mouthpiece out there. We’re going to have a debate. If I lose, has the right to kill me. You cost his company hundreds of billions of dollars in potential revenue from their research investment.” There’s that high inflation again.

“You brought me here knowing that I would be trapped.”

“If I win, you can kill him.”

“I don’t want to kill him.”

“You won’t have to. It’ll be our prerogative. You’re my champion. He has his own, who I’m sure is not as good as you.”

Leona turns away from the gun. “I’m not trained on firearms.”

Winona reaches into her jacket, and pulls a stick from her breast pocket. She swings it down to telescope it open.

Leona rolls her eyes, and takes it from her. “That’ll work.”

“Thank you.”

“Is there a lawbook, or something here?”

Winona beams a file to her device. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m going to send it to my loophole expert.”

When called, the two of them leave the greenroom. Leona watches from side stage as Winona takes her place on one side of a table. A well-dressed man sits down on the other, while the host, Solomon Powers sits at the head. He gives his opening spiel to the audience, and then prompts the debate.

The lead engineer, a Mr. Jacey Plaskett throws a graphic to the space above his shoulder, not just in chroma key, but as a hologram. “What you’re looking at here is the last known location of our research satellite before it was attacked on the tenth of October. As you can see, at 17:56, the satellite begins a decaying orbit. It should have been able to stay up there for three years, which would be more than enough time for us to course correct, but roughly 36 hours later, we lost contact with it entirely. Not even the world’s greatest orbital tracker has any idea where it is. In between the time of the mysterious attacked, and the loss of signal, that woman right across from me launched an unsanctioned, unworthy, un-American fusion-powered rocketship from the weirdest longitudinal parallel imaginable in Kansas!”

“It’s in Missouri, actually. And how was it un-American?” Winona questions him.

“We have reason to believe that you employed scientists from Croatia.” He says that word with such disdain. “I can’t think of a country worse than it, besides the other baby-killing nations.”

“We’re not here to debate the morality of medical abortions,” the host reasons. “Please keep your remarks on topic.”

“Sorry about that, Solo. Thank you for your understanding.” Jacey turns his attention back to Winona. “What was your explanation for the launch again? You were testing fusion motion endurance?”

“That’s right,” Winona replies.

“What do you have to say about the timing?”

“It’s a coincidence. Our rocket was nowhere near your satellite at any time.”

“Right, and where is it now?”

This is all putting the team at risk. They’re at fault, but not for the reasons everyone thinks. Admitting responsibility would open the door for the authorities and the public to ask questions that neither Winona, nor the rest of the SD6, want to answer. The team doesn’t want that either. “That’s confidential.” It’s all she can say.

“Of course it is.”

“Let’s take a look at the Scales of Truth!” Solomon interjects. A curtain behind him slides open. The scale is pretty much to the table on Jacey’s side. “Oh, it’s not looking good for you, Miss Honeycutt.”

Leona’s phone dings. After she reads Kivi’s message, she steps into frame, wielding her telescopic stick, shocking all. “I challenge for control of the Microsovereignty.”

The audience gasps and Solomon smiles. “Listen, Little Miss—”

“What did you just call me?”

“Well, I’m sorry, I don’t know your name—”

“You don’t need to know my name, you just need to take off your jacket, and come down here for a fight.”

He’s still in shock. “A challenge for sovereignty entails a fight to the death.”

“I can choose to show you mercy when you’re on the floor and unconscious.”

“I don’t think you know who I am. I didn’t get to my position by being a little pussy cat. I earned it through strength and mercilessness. You’re not going to beat me, I don’t care how long your stick is.”

Leona lifts the stick up a little, and looks down at it. Then she throws it to the side. “Then I’ll do it with my bare hands.”

Everyone laughs, except for Winona, who knows what she can do. “Solomon, don’t take the bait. All she wants is for you to unilaterally rule in my favor. But rest assured, she will beat you, and you will lose everything.”

Solomon keeps staring at Leona for a moment, then looks over at Winona. His face hardens, and he starts to remove his jacket. This is a man who does not operate by silly things, like honor or morality. He likes to keep score, and there is no greater threat to his winning streak than a challenge that he doesn’t accept. He’s the kind of guy who would follow the old saying that goes, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take, even though any reasonable person would realize that the chances are actually zero percent. He rolls up his sleeves as he’s dramatically walking down the steps.

Leona leaves her rental in the lot. Winona drives them both back to the airport, where they’ll board a flight to Kansas City. “Did you know I would do that?”

Winona gulps. “I wasn’t aware of that loophole. I was just hoping you would beat his champion in combat. If you had, I would have gotten a second chance at the debate.”

“That wouldn’t have been enough.”

“I realize that now. I’m sorry,” Winona says after a beat. “The first time is hard.”

Leona lets her forehead bounce against the rattling window. “That wasn’t the first time I killed,” Leona contradicts. “It’s not even the first time I did it to gain control over something that I didn’t want. It’s just the first time I didn’t do it on purpose.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 17, 2398

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Technically, this next error that they’re investigating is a lot closer than Wyoming. It’s right in the heart of the Plaza in Kansas City, but Ramses chose to put it off, because he was pretty sure that Erlendr was on Brooks Lake, and that seemed more urgent. Interestingly, they’re in the shopping block where they first searched for the Salmon Civic Center, which doesn’t exist in this reality. Alyssa has been spending her free time monitoring the cameras that they have set up in the parking lot where everyone seems to appear, and no one has come through since Vearden several weeks ago. If someone is looking for the Civic Center, they’ve been looking for a real long time. Mateo has made up a story in his headcanon to explain that as they’re wandering around the block. He thinks that maybe a traveler showed up for the predictable reason, inadvertently drawing attention to themselves. Someone who runs one of these businesses noticed him, and they got to chatting, which eventually led to a job. The traveler is still around, because they work somewhere close now.

“That would be a decent story, and it may yet prove true, but there’s something different about this one.” Ramses is wielding a portable brain scanner, and is waving it around, hoping to detect their target.

“What’s that?” Mateo asks.

“The satellite orbited two dozen times before it stopped—or disappeared, as it were. In that time, ten brains produced ten errors two dozen times. One brain, however, produced an error only once.”

“Where was it during all the other scans?” Mateo questions, pretty sure that Ramses doesn’t know for sure.

“I can’t say for sure,” Ramses answers, “but funny enough, the orbital pass where it appeared happened at exactly midnight central Saturday night.”

“The club,” Mateo realizes. “The Salmonday Club only exists in an extra temporal dimension. I can’t remember what it’s called.”

“The Facsimile,” Ramses replies. “If my calculations are correct, it should be right around...here.” He stops at a dirty off-white wall.”

“That’s why we’re here so late.”

Ramses checks his watch. “We’re here just in time.” He pulls out a syringe, and prepares to inject himself with it.

“You’re going to teleport us in?”

“If our target is in there, they may not be able to get out, which implies the door that’s supposed to be in this spot doesn’t magically appear at 23:59:30. Ours may be the only way in or out.”

Mateo nods.

Ramses injects himself with the temporal energy-infused water. He lets it run through his bloodstream, then checks his watch again. “Are you ready?”

“You warned Leona where we might go, right?”’

“Of course.” Ramses winks, and takes Mateo by the shoulders. Once his watch beeps, he teleports them both through the temporal window.

They end up in the club, or what used to be the club. Now it’s a dirty and abandoned empty space with light trickling in from a collapsed roof, and mold growing on the walls. Ramses holds up his scanner, and tries to find the signal. Once he catches it, they exit the building, and head down the street. It too has been abandoned. Entire buildings have collapsed, vines have taken over. Cars have been burnt up. This is a post-apocalypse world. If anyone is living here, it’s not easy for them, and it’s not fun. Ramses continues to follow the signal only a short distance to the Ponce de Leon. It’s the only thing left standing in all its former glory. Someone is performing maintenance for it, and they likely live in this dimension’s version of the Bran safehouse.

They walk up the stairs, and knock on the door. They hear shuffling on the other side. A  very old man answers, and peers at them. He stares for quite a while, barely able to hold his own weight up. “I’m afraid there’s no way out.” He turns, and begins to walk towards the kitchen. “But there’s still tea, if you want it.” He sets a pot on a gas burner, and lights it. There’s no electricity, so he’s living like a camper in many ways. The unit is clean, though, and tidy. He takes pride in his space, even if no one else could ever have seen it until today.

“My name is Ramses Abdulrashid, and this is my associate, Mateo Matic. How long have you been trapped in this dimension?”

He looks up and to the left as he checks his memory archives. “Since Christmas Eve, 2022. The Cleanser trapped me here. He didn’t take too kindly to me helping one of his victims get her life back. Maybe you know her, Siria Webb?”

“We do,” Mateo answers.

“How was she doing?” the old man asks.

“She was all right when we left her,” Ramses replies, “but she never mentioned you, so you may have seen her more recently than we.”

The man nods. “Well, I’m Mackenzie Dodge, former proprietor of the Salmonday Club, and current sole occupier of this world. I wish we could have met under better circumstances.”

“We think we can get you out,” Mateo tells him. “We came here intentionally, strongly suspecting that someone was trapped. I can’t imagine being alone for over 370 years. It must have been hard.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Mackenzie says with a laugh as he’s preparing the tea bags. “This place only exists on the eighth day of the week.”

“Right.” Mateo looks over to Ramses.

He does the math in his head. “More than fifty-three years.”

“That’s still a lot, sir,” Mateo says.

Mackenzie smiles. “It is, but—” He suddenly grasps his head, and hisses in pain.

“Oh, no,” Mateo laments.

Before they can do anything, the patch of timonite on Mackenzie’s head spreads throughout his body, and spirits him away to the Sargan Forest. The two of them just stare at the kitchen counter in horror.

“Come on,” Ramses says. “I have to get back to my lab.”

“Are we not going to talk about what just happened?”

“Only so that I can say that it’s not your fault.

“Yes, it is.” Once is an occurrence, twice is a coincidence, and thrice is a pattern. From Mateo’s perspective, twice is evidence enough. Even if he’s not the cause of this issue, he’s certainly not helping. This investigation is going to have to move on without him. His connection to timonite and the bulkverse is too strong to let him just run around free, ruining people’s lives.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 16, 2398

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After helping the others settle into the hotel suite, Ramses pulled Mateo aside, and asked him to accompany him on a little mission. He revealed that the global brain scanner that Mateo installed on the orbiting satellite detected more than just Meredarchos and Erlendr’s location. There were other errors around the world. In truth, all things being equal, there was no way to know which was the right one. He had no choice but to guess that it was the one in San Diego, based on the fact that Kivi’s SD6 team was already there. It was a gamble that paid off, but now it’s time to investigate the other dots. Unfortunately, the scanner stopped working after a couple dozen passes. He can’t even make contact with it anymore. So by now, the data they compiled on these mysterious errors is already days old, and he doesn’t want to let it become even worse than that. Their first stop is to be a familiar old spot in Wyoming.

According to a quick word with Arcadia, her father loved water. He said that it wasn’t the same in The Gallery Dimension as it was in the normal world. He took a particular liking to untouched lakes and rivers, and had a special affinity for Brooks Lake. Mateo and Ramses are here now, standing at the edgewater, breathing in the clean air, and taking a break before things get real. Mateo smirks as he reflects on the last time he saw this beauty. It’s been a long time since he’s thought about this place. He and his family came here to avoid being caught by an evil version of Horace Reaver, but as far as they knew, there wasn’t anything special about it. Or not. Maybe his mother knew all along. It’s hard to tell with other people, he’s learned that since then. That version of his mom doesn’t even exist anymore. So much has changed.

“Hey, Rambo!” comes a voice from behind them. When they look back, a man in typical fishing getup smiles with a really open mouth. He removes his sunglasses. “Yeah, I thought that was you! What’re ya doin’ on this side of the lake?”

“Why wouldn’t I be over here?” Ramses asks.

“You told me you prefer what you called the Nile Side. You ever gonna tell me what that means?”

“One day,” Ramses calls back. “For now, I seem to have gotten lost while I was trying to show my friend here around. Maybe you could point me in the right direction?”

The fisherman is a bit suspicious, but what’s he gonna do, call the cops and claim that someone is impersonating his friend? “Just walk all along the bank until you get to the bridge, then keep going. I can see your cabin from here.” He points across the lake.

“Hey, thanks...friend.” Obviously Ramses doesn’t know his name.

“No prob. Happy fishin’.”

“Happy fishin’.”

“I guess that proves the early version of Erlendr is indeed here,” Mateo muses.

“The weirdest part is that he’s using my name with the locals.”

“Maybe he doesn’t much like himself.”

“We can use that,” Ramses says as he’s taking the first step around the lake.

The cabin is empty when they get there, but the door was locked, and it looks lived in. Mateo sits up on the bed while the real Ramses takes a chair. They wait for about an hour before the fake Ramses walks in. He doesn’t try to escape. He almost looks relieved. “I knew this day would come.”

“Why did you go where we could find you?” Mateo asks him.

“I just wanted to take a break from all the...” Erlendr can’t come up with the right word, so he just makes a growly noise of annoyance. “I met myself from the future, and I understand what’s to become of me, and also that it’s inevitable. You were fated to find me, no matter where I went, so I figured I might as well have relaxed until the time came.” He sets his bucket down, and slips off his wading boots. “Then this showed up, and I knew that I didn’t have long.” He parts the hair on his head, and reveals a small patch on his skin that’s sparkling with technicolors.

Ramses peers at it. “It’s timonite.”

“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Erlendr sits on a little step stool and calmly starts to remove his fishing gear.

Ramses thinks through this new information, then looks over at Mateo. “We did this. We did this to him. The scanner somehow...marked him?”

“We know where he’s going, and we know how he gets free from that world.”

“That’s not the issue. If the scanner did this to him, did it do it to the others?”

“We don’t even know who they might be,” Mateo says.

“Exactly. We could be banishing enemies...or friends.”

“Oh my God, I need to call Kivi. We cannot unleash Meredarchos on that unsuspecting world.”

“What does Meredarchos have to do with anything?” Erlendr questions.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worried about anything anymore,” Erlendr claims. “It would be nice, however, if you could let me know how long I have until this happens to me?”

“No idea,” Ramses answers.

“How many other errors are out there?” Mateo asks Ramses.

“Ten. All over the world.”

“Could you build another scanner? If I got you a spaceship to launch it on, would you be able to make a new one?”

“You can do that?” Erlendr asks. “You can just get a spaceship?”

“Hush now,” he demands.

“I already have a backup orbital scanner,” Ramses explains, “but I’m not sure if that’s the best way to do this, not if it’s only going to last three days.”

“I think it only lasted three days because of the timonite I accidentally left up there,” Mateo posits. “It must have spirited it away, like it’s going to do with him.”

“Guys,” Erlendr tries to interject.

“I said shush.” Mateo goes back to Ramses. “What happened with the satellite before won’t happen the next time.”

“Sounds like a reasonable hypothesis,” Ramses decides. “You really think they’ll give us access to a ship? Maybe if the one from the lab were still available...”

“Guys,” Erlendr says more forcefully.

“Quiet!” Mateo and Ramses order simultaneously.

“I don’t think you’re gonna have to listen to my voice much longer.” Erlendr is holding his head with both hands. His face is turning red. He’s in a great deal of pain. The timonite bubbles, and begins to spread downwards. Once it’s covered the whole body, he disappears, as he was always meant to.

Ramses sighs. “Consider this time loop closed.”

“Let’s just hope that it happens to different people at different times.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 15, 2398

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Marie was able to spend one night in the lofts, in the other room of Ramses’ apartment, which looked nothing like the one she shared with Heath, due to the interference from the elevator and stairwell, and because he furnished it quite differently. Still, she was occupying the building where her husband first left her. This was already a sore memory, but it’s been made worse by his final and irreversible death. She had always hoped that he would come home eventually. He never even mentioned the word divorce, but now they will never get that chance. She can’t go back to the condo either, because that’s where he actually died. Her first thought was to go look for her own apartment, but she needs something now, and that is a long and involved process. She doesn’t have time for that.

Fortunately, they still have plenty of money, so Leona suggested that they splurge on a really nice hotel suite. It wasn’t the easiest to find one according to their specific requirements, but once they did, they found it to be available, because it’s so expensive, and it’s off-season for Kansas City tourism. Four bedrooms—two with this reality’s analog to king-sized beds, and two with queen-sized analog—a decent kitchenette, and a luxurious living room, but one glaring omission is a temporal sciences lab. But that’s okay, because this is what Marie needs. They could have just booked four or five rooms separately, but they have grown accustomed to being able to meet with each other spontaneously without running into any strangers. They really prefer a common space that is just theirs, where no one else can come in without their permission. This hotel has a feature that allows them to forgo housekeeping in favor of doing it themselves, which provides them with an extra layer of privacy.

“I still want to live in the AOC, where I belong. I still consider that my true home, even after all the other places I’ve been for the last several centuries.”

“That’s going to be a challenge,” Ramses explains softly. “First we have to find a submarine that can go that deep. Then we have to convince whoever is responsible for it to lend it to us, possibly while having to read them in on time travel. Then Leona and I have to get inside and repair any damage. Then we have to break the surface. Then we have to get into space.”

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

“What are we going to do once we’re up there?” Leona asks her. “We wouldn’t be able to land on Earth whenever we wanted or needed to. That ship was designed for low atmosphere launches and landings, and it was later equipped with a teleporter, which we can’t use in this reality. Even if we pack enough resources to last until our best guess at escape, what are we going to do while we’re in orbit, play RPS-101 Plus all day?”

“I don’t need anyone to go up there with me,” Marie contends. You can stay down here, and interrogate Meredarchos, and kill Erlendr, and look for Danica, and do whatever else you feel is necessary.”

“No,” Leona says. “We stay together from now on.”

“That’s not your decision. You’re the captain of the AOC, and if you’re not going to help me get it back, I don’t have to listen to a goddamn word you say. This suite was paid for with my money, so if you think about it, I should be the one in charge!” She storms off, and slams her bedroom door behind her.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 14, 2398

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Marie is back in Kansas City. Arcadia, of all people, is driving her and Vearden from Chicago in a rental, since The Olimpia has finally been destroyed, and a copy of the AOC sank in the ocean. The hospital was stunned by her sudden and miraculous recovery. They couldn’t explain it, but they wanted to. They held her for the better part of three more days, under the guise of needing to keep her under observation. Instead, they were running as many tests as possible, worried that the word would get out to the public. It was Winona who finally freed her using her political wiles.

They’re pulling into the basement garage now to avoid being seen by the new employees on the first floor, who don’t know a single thing about any of this. They’ve been informed that Angela is dead. It seemed easier to put it that way, rather than making up some excuse for why she bolted without so much as a goodbye. Ramses has been on the premises the entire time, and Alyssa has made herself moderately available for questions. Syntyche and Derina haven’t asked for much, and honestly, it’s hard for the team to care all that much about it, given everything that they’re dealing with. Even Angela wouldn’t have wanted to sacrifice her friends’ safety for the sake of the company. Perhaps the chapter is prematurely over. It may be best for them to distance themselves from it, and from society in general.

“I want my ship back.”

“Are you talking about the Olimpia, or the AOC?”

“The AOC,” Marie clarifies. “I know it sank, but did it survive?”

Ramses sighs. “I’ve been thinking about that, if it had tipped over in the water, it probably would have floated. The only reason it sank is because of the reframe engine, which I did not include in my initial designs. It sort of sucked the rest of the vessel under, so I don’t think there was a leak. It should be able to withstand at least fifteen hundred bars, and at an estimated depth of 10,000 meters...” He trails off when Marie, Arcadia, and Vearden look at him funny. “Yes, it probably survived, but getting down there would be a challenge. You could even call it...a deep challenge?”

They don’t get the joke. “I would ask you kindly to do some research on the matter,” Marie requests. I know that the Olimpia could not dive that deep, but maybe there’s a submarine out there somewhere that can, and if the government has any access to it, I will probably ask them, even if it’s the last favor they ever owe me.”

“Hold on,” Vearden begins, “your spaceship is at the bottom of the ocean. Can you just swim up through the water, and then fly into the sky?”

“I won’t know until I get down there,” Ramses replies. “Under ideal conditions, yeah, it could do it. I didn’t design it for a subaqueous launch, but in a pinch, I believe that it could get airborne. I just need to get inside first.”

“Is that where you wanna live?” Vearden asks Marie. “Not here, or the condo?”

“That’s where Heath died,” Marie says. “I don’t ever wanna see that place again.”

“That’s okay,” Ramses tells her.

“I don’t want to live here either. Every corner reminds me of him.”

“We could find somewhere else,” Arcadia suggests. “Living inside of a small spacecraft is going to be conspicuous no matter where we put it.”

“I don’t just wanna live in the ship,” Marie contends. “I wanna live in space.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 13, 2398

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The tack team, as it turns out, was on Meredarchos and Erlendr’s trail the entire time. It’s just that Kivi just picked up other people’s scents along the way. It was the original spotter, and newly appointed technician, Manuel Hurst who figured it out. All he did was draw a line from Kansas City to Los Angeles. He then added blue dots that designated places they had gone to, and red dots for reported activity that fit the modus operandi of their target. The dots matched. The rest of the team feels like this validated Kivi’s participation, but she sees it a different way. If they had just gone straight to these places, and looked for the bad guys using traditional means, they may have caught them sooner. She kept distracting the team from the real mission, wasting precious time.

“I know it bothers you now,” Arcadia says, “but you’ll forget about it eventually.”

“How?” Kivi asks.

“You’ll save so many missing persons, and catch so many bad guys, that you’ll remember your trial period as exactly that; a trial. Now that you know that other scents can distract you from the one that you’re going for, you can figure out how to focus.”

“Can you teach me?”

“I don’t know about that. I never had to learn how to use my powers. They were always just...there. I was all but a sociopath, which meant I never had to worry about things like distractions. And then when I was thrown out of The Gallery, I did whatever I wanted. I didn’t have any goals, so there was no way to fail.”

Kivi frowns.

“Bottom line, you just need practice. I think this is a great place for you. This isn’t me, but you belong on this team. I don’t recommend going back to Team Matic, or that software company you were helping with. That’s just my opinion, what do I know?”

“I should think you know a lot,” Kivi muses.

Arcadia chuckles, and then heaves.

“Are you okay?”

She runs into the bathroom, and retches for the second time today as Kivi holds her hair for her. “Ugh,” Arcadia says as she’s wiping her lips. “This new body is irritating. How do you humans live like this?”

Kivi gets a thought. “Umm...women have been living like this for hundreds of thousands of years.”

“Well, it’s annoying.” Arcadia isn’t picking up what she’s putting down.

“I said women have been living like this.”

“What do you mean, that men don’t get sick?”

“Of course they do, but I’m talking about morning sickness.”

Arcadia glances at her watch. “It’s 12:45.”

Kivi rolls her eyes. “I guess your endocrine system doesn’t keep good time.”

“Honest hour, I don’t know what the endocrine system is, except that it’s the thing that Gary Busey is going to pull out of my body if I put that straitjacket on him. Remember, I was literally made out of clay.”

“Well, you’re not made out of clay anymore, you’re living in Leona Delaney’s body. That must be different for you.”

“Don’t remind me, my morning sickness is the least annoying thing that’s—wait. Morning sickness? Are you trying to tell me...?”

I’ll go buy you a home test,” Kivi volunteers.

“It’s not possible,” Arcadia says.

“I assure you, it is.”

When she returns twenty minutes later, Arcadia takes the test into the bathroom, and carefully follows the instructions. Near as she can tell, they’re just like they are in the main sequence. You pee on a stick, and look for a symbol after a minute or two. Not that she’s ever concerned herself with such pedestrian matters. Like she mentioned, her original body was made out of clay. She had all working outward parts, but her internal organs were a different matter. They weren’t nonexistent exactly, but they weren’t the same either. They had minimal function, and were mostly there for show. Honest hour again, she had never even had sex before she came here, and met Vearden Hayward. She was told, and believed, that she could never get pregnant, no matter which body she was in. It wasn’t just her womb or hormones, but her mind. It wasn’t fit for motherhood, so it could never be. She was supposedly designed that way.

It was the same for all the Preston clay children. Zeferino had a way with the ladies. As far as she knows, he never abused his power, but he did enjoy the occasional recreational...event. Nerakali would be a better comparison, but she seemed to have no interest. There is no precedent for this situation. A pregnant Preston? That’s absurd.

Kivi nods as they’re waiting for the results. “That may be true in the main sequence. If you jumped into someone else’s body, maybe you really couldn’t have children, even if that person normally would. But this is the Third Rail. The rules are different here. Why did you not use protection?”

“I guess when you spend thousands of years without so much as considering something as a possibility, you don’t let go of it, even when the variables change.” She buries her face in her hands. “I can’t do this. When Athanaric told me that I couldn’t have children, he was discussing it on a neuroglandular level. When my father said the same thing...he was talking about it psychologically. I’m a garbage person. Vearden and you guys have made me better, but I’ll never really get that stink off of me.”

“I don’t believe that,” Kivi says sincerely.

The alarm goes off.

“You read it.”

“Okay.” Kivi takes the stick, and compares the readout to the chart imprinted next to it. Rip it off like an adhesive bandage. “Arcadia, you’re pregnant.”

Arcadia grabs the stick, and looks at it herself. Then she pulls the second stick out of the box, and goes back into the bathroom. Guessing that Arcadia may be in denial, she bought three more boxes of three different brands, which Arcadia proceeds to pee on until she runs out. That’s eight tests in total, the girl is pregnant.

“Are you going to tell Vearden?”

“Of course I will, what kind of person do you think I am? Oh, wait...”

“In my—albeit limited—experience, sooner is better than later.”

Arcadia looks down at the pile of tests and boxes. “Would you mind disposing of all this in such a way so as to prevent anyone else at this blacksite from seeing them?”

“Consider it done. What are you going to do?”

“Do you know where he is?”

“Last I heard, he was still with Marie at the hospital in Chicago.”

“Then I’m going to Chicago.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 12, 2398

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Mateo survived his trip up into orbit. He concentrated on making the jump to the best satellite for the job, according to what little information Ramses gave him about it. He placed the scanner on the hull and let it go. It started spinning and transforming on its own, staying in place, and freeing Mateo to die. He didn’t, of course. His body too transformed, back into the way it was before they got stuck in this reality, but after Leona downloaded his mind to this upgraded substrate. Ramses did say that they would be able to survive in the vacuum of space, though to be fair, he said that it could last for hours. All he could do was hang onto the satellite he had co-opted, and hope for a miracle. His biological enhancements were back, but his temporal powers were gone. He could feel both the timonite, and the telekinetic coating, drip off of him, and land by the scanner. He had no way of teleporting back home. All he could do was feel.

If Mateo were better with technology, maybe he could figure out how to send a message to Ramses through the scanner, but he didn’t know what any of its few buttons did, and he couldn’t risk pressing them if one turned out to be an off button, or something. It was better to sacrifice himself than to ruin their best chance of finding Meredarchos and Erlendr. His only option was to send vibes outwards and hope that a member of his team could feel them. He thought that maybe he could feel Leona’s emotions in return, but it was hard to tell. What Ramses failed to explain was that surviving in the vacuum is not the same thing as breathing in an atmosphere. It’s not painful, but it’s highly uncomfortable. Imagine stretching your arms out in the morning, or after you’ve finished the first paragraph and a half of a story that you’re writing. Now imagine never being able to put your arms down, or readjust your position in any way. That’s what it’s like to be in space, unable to breathe—not needing to, but still feeling the constant urge to respire.

Leona saved him yesterday in a spacesuit, which could not have come too soon. There is no telling how long Mateo would have been able to hold on. It had become even harder to go without having normal bodily function than it was at the beginning. She wrapped him in an emergency vacuum-sealed tent, and opened a tank of oxygen. It slowly repaired the damage that space had done to him, and before their supply ran out, Leona had already installed and activated the carbon scrubber. They have been sitting here ever since then, still tied to the satellite, waiting for the end of quarantine. Something on the planet is keeping them from realizing their full potential in these bodies. That’s the only explanation for why Mateo isn’t a popsicle right now. He has to recover completely before it’s safe for him to go back to whatever that is. They were also not entirely sure what that recovery would entail, or how detrimental it could be to just start trying to walk around on the ground afterwards. So far, neither of them has experienced any health issues. They were likely never in any danger. Even so, it was a necessary precaution, and one which might yet prove to be inadequate. They still have to see what it’s like for them down on the surface.

It’s time for that right now. At this point, the risks are no longer decreasing the longer they wait. It’s going to be a delicate dance. They’ll have to detach from the satellite, retract the tent, teleport the maximum distance, which should be a few dozen kilometers up in the air...and then parachute down. All with only one spacesuit.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 11, 2398

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Angela and Ramses stared at the sky after Mateo left, even though they obviously wouldn’t have been able to see him floating around up there. They themselves floated in the water for around ninety minutes until Ramses’ device beeped. The satellite module was up there, and starting to scan every brain in the world. It will take a little bit of time, but he programmed it with a threshold. Each scan will look for the most generalized data first. They’re not hunting for someone of an exact age. They’re looking for someone with an ungodly number of years of experience. The scanner doesn’t have to look very deep into someone’s mind to see whether they’ve been around for a lifetime, or several lifetimes. To be safe, he placed this threshold at a hundred years. Yes, it will find people who are 110 years old, but that’s okay, there still shouldn’t be too many to sift through, and once they have their dataset pared down, they will be able to run more detailed scans to tease out the specific person that they’re looking for. They don’t know how old Meredarchos is, and they don’t know how old Erlendr is at this moment, but it’s well past a century, and in all likelihood, the scanner will come back with an error when it comes across a single brain with two consciousnesses.

The two of them hit their emergency teleporters, and returned to the lab to watch the data come in. They would focus their efforts on North America, since the entity has only been spotted here, but that’s not how the scanner works. They’re not in control of whatever satellite the module managed to latch itself onto. It’s going to make a pass at a rate according to its speed of orbit, and will scan as many minds as possible before it passes out of range. Then it will make another pass and try again. It will do its best to filter and ignore duplicates, but the tradeoff in the cursory glance is that it won’t always know whether it scanned a given individual yet. Still, napkin math suggests that the process will only take a day. It takes half a day. It’s morning.

“There, that’s him,” Ramses announces, waking Angela up.

“Are you sure?” Angela asks.

“It has to be. This is the second time the scanner has seen him. It’s returned an error, because it can’t rectify the unusual brain chemistry, just as I had hoped and predicted.”

Angela picks up her phone, and dials. “I’m calling Kivi.” Arcadia is the one who picks up. Apparently, the tactical team is not too far from where Meredarchos and Erlendr are hiding out in San Diego, but they’re all pretty far from where Marie is being made comfortable at a hospital in Chicago. She hangs up. “I believe Mateo.”

“What do you mean?” Ramses is still looking over the data, making sure that there aren’t any other outliers, who might actually be who they’re looking for.

“He said that the Vertegens gave me immortality water, and that they gave each one to me in order. Do you know the order?”

Ramses sighs, and peels himself from the screen. “Yes.”

Angela waits for him to elaborate. “Go ahead.”

He sighs again. “You need Catalyst from the early waters of Earth, Longevity from Atlantis, Time from the island of Lorania on Dardius—which is in another galaxy, by the way, so I’m not sure how the Vertegens would have pulled that off.”

“Keep going,” Angela urges.

“Assuming you drank those three, the next one you would need is Body from the Atacama Desert, Existence from the Bermuda Triangle, Invulnerability from the North Pole, Energy from the Dead Sea, Youth from the Fountain of Youth in Florida, Death and Health from the Pools of Pamukkale, and...”

“Go on, don’t stop now.”

“And for any of these to become permanent, you would have to drink Activator from the last liquid water on Earth before it’s destroyed. Earliest estimate of that is a bolide impact on par with the Theia collision, which created the moon, which could happen anywhere between now and never, followed by solar expansion in over seven billion years.”

“So you’re saying there’s a chance.”

“Angela, you can’t save Marie by sticking yourself in the Insulator of Life. You would have to put, not just your mind, but also your body in there, and we don’t know how Meredarchos did it. We don’t even know if what you do can affect Marie at all!”

Angela goes over the lockers, where an extra set of tactical gear is just hanging there in case of emergency. “Fortunately, we find the Insulator, we find Meredarchos, so I’ll just ask him.”

“You won’t be able to get to San Diego in time,” Ramses warns. “The government team is already right there.”

“That’s why you’re gonna give me an injection of temporal energy. I know that you collected rocks from the Atacama, which you squeezed water out of. Don’t I need that one anyway?”

Ramses isn’t happy about testing his new formula on a living organism, but he doesn’t have much choice. Yes, he took rocks from the desert. Each one has oxygen and hydrogen trapped inside, and a process called electrolysis allows a scientist such as himself to extract both. The results can then theoretically be recombined to produce water, which he did. It is a painstaking process, and he needed a lot of rocks to make even one vial of the stuff, but it tested positive for temporal energy. It’s Body water, through and through. He unlocks one of his cabinets, and then lifts the bottom up to reveal a small refrigerated safe. He unlocks that with a 42-digit code, and retrieves the syringe. “Have a seat, I’ll get the rubbing alcohol.”

Once the injection is in, Angela finishes putting on her gear. She offers to take Ramses with her, but he decides that someone needs to stay at home base, which makes sense. So Angela teleports alone, all the way to the tack team’s location in Chula Vista, particularly to Kivi’s position. Best guess is Meredarchos and Erlendr are aware that the team is hot on their trail, and are trying to make a break for it across the border to Mexico. It’s hard enough for normal authorities to cross for official business, but when it comes to covert operatives, you can forget about it. It’s now or never.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Kivi whispers.

“I’m better trained than you are,” Angela either informs, or reminds, her. She can’t remember how much she’s talked about her experiences in the afterlife simulation.

A voice comes in on the radio, “spotter, report.”

“No visual yet,” Kivi reports back. “We have an addition who will be assisting with capture.”

“Understood.”

“She’s just letting me join the mission without question?” Angela asks.

“She’s been told that we have unusual skills and knowledge, and access to rare or unique resources. She’s been advised to expect people like you showing up when the situation calls for it, and assumes that you’ve all been properly vetted. It’s a pretty great group,” Kivi says, putting the binoculars back in front of her eyes. “I know that you’re worried about your sister, but please try not to ruin it.”

“I’m not here to get the Insulator back to my sister. I’m here to get in, and prevent her from ever getting sick.”

“I don’t understand how any of that works, but—” She interrupts herself to speak into the radio. “Visual on the target. I repeat, I have a visual on the target.” A man has just rounded the corner in the vacant park. He’s struggling to walk, but not because of any disability. He’s acting like half of him doesn’t really want to go in that direction. Maybe that’s exactly what’s happening. If Meredarchos and Erlendr are evenly matched, psychically speaking, it may still be difficult for them to agree on a course of action. That’s good for them.

“Light ‘em up,” the leader orders.

“No, you can’t kill him,” Angela argues, getting to her feet. “I need him to tell me how to use the Insulator.

“Stop,” Kivi demands at a loud whisper. “She means to target him with a laser designator.”

It’s too late. Angela stops herself from heading towards the man, but her cover’s been blown. He looks up, and spots her. He takes a gut out of the back of his pants and tries to aim it at her, but something stops her. That doesn’t really make much sense. At worst, both Meredarchos an Erlendr want her dead, and at best, they don’t care. Either way, nothing should be holding them back.

“Go, go, go!” the leader orders. “Blitz formation!”

Seven other people come out of the woodwork, and begin to run towards their target, holding their own guns. He tries to aim at any one of them too, but he can’t hold his weapon at anything but the ground. He yells, frustrated with his own inadequacy. The team overwhelms him, so he tries to invade their minds, but he’s shocked to find that they’re all impervious to his psychic powers, thanks to a little mental masonry on Arcadia Preston’s part. Two operatives place him in cuffs while a third searches his bag.

“Do you see a small glass greenish-blue object in there?” Angela asks.

“This right here?” He takes the Insulator of Life out.

“Yes.” Angela takes it from him and shakes it in front of Meredarchos’ face. “How do you get in this thing physically? It’s only supposed to be able to store consciousness, so how do you do it? Tell me!”

“I have no idea.” He kind of looks like he’s telling the truth, but that’s not good enough.

“Tell me!” she repeats.

“I honestly don’t. I didn’t even know that wasn’t how it was supposed to work,” Meredarchos claims. “She’s the one who put me in it in the first place.” He jerks his head towards Arcadia.

Everyone looks at her. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” she tells them.

Kivi nods understandingly. “You haven’t done that yet. It’s in your future.”

“I must figure it out eventually,” Arcadia realizes. “The problem is that could mean this very moment, or a hundred years from now.”

“Marie doesn’t have that kind of time,” Angela complains.

“Then let’s give her more time.” It’s Leona. No one noticed her appear, and they don’t know where she’s been, or what she’s been up to, this entire time. “I suspected as much as Mateo did regarding the water, and I’ve been working on a backup plan.”

“What might that be?” Kivi asks.

Leona doesn’t bother answering her. She brings Angela into a hug, and teleports them both away. They land in the underground lab where Leona worked before the government provided them with their own facility at The Lofts. Angela looks up in awe at the huge spaceship towering above them.

“Welcome home,” a woman says, approaching them.

“Whoa. What are we doing here?” Angela asks.

“Angela Walton, this is Magnus Petra Burgundy. Petra, Angela.”

Angela shakes Petra’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you.” She faces Leona. “What am I doing here, LeeLee?”

“This is how we save Marie. What you need is time. Time to...procure the necessary ingredients for her recovery.” She eyes Petra, who clearly doesn’t know everything about what’s going on here, though she didn’t bat an eye when they appeared out of nowhere, so she doesn’t know nothing.

“The Insulator was a bust,” Angela laments.

“I know. That was probably never going to work. That’s why I’m giving you this.” She gestures towards the ship. “This project has not been officially abandoned, but when the government started focusing on homeland grid integration of fusion power, space exploration ended up on the backburner.”

“How does that help me? We already have Time water from Dardius,” she says through gritted teeth. It doesn’t matter much. Petra can hear, but isn’t familiar.

“You’re not going anywhere, per se,” Leona begins. “You’re going on a loop to and back from the Oort Cloud. For us, months will pass, but for you, around six hours. This is regular special relativity at work, no time powers necessary, just profound speed.”

“Is this going to work?” Angela questions.

“We can’t let the earlier water that you drank break down in your system. This is the only way.”

“Am I going alone?”

“I’m going with,” Petra says, “as will a crew of experts. You’re in good hands.”

Angela is nervous, but she trusts Leona’s judgment. “I guess I’ll see you on the other side then. It’s ready to go, right?”

“We’ve been in a holding pattern,” Petra explains, “but the countdown started as soon as you showed up. Follow me.”

All three of them take the elevator to the entry level of the ship while the silo blast doors are closing. “Shouldn’t you stay out here?” Angela asks Leona.

“I need to pick up my husband. I can’t teleport all the way into orbit, so I’m going to hitch a ride, and then bug out before you break orbit.” Hmm...he’s alive?

They continue walking through the corridors until reaching the seating area. Carlin and Moray are playing a card game with two other crew members. Angela exchanges a look with Leona, but they don’t talk about it. This may be the safest place for them. After the countdown reaches zero, they launch into space, much to the surprise of everyone in the world. Shuttles don’t launch from Kansas City.

Several hours later, Marie wakes up in her hospital bed feeling much better.