The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 21, 2398

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Alyssa comes out of her room, and looks around at the empty communal area of their hotel suite. It’s been empty for days. Mateo and Ramses are stuck is some sort of something or other. Leona and Winona are off doing whatever, they won’t talk about it, but it kind of sounds more personal than operational. Arcadia and Vearden are dealing with family issues. Kivi never lived here anyway. Marie was the last to leave, and she hasn’t called in since. Seems mighty weird, Alyssa living here all alone. Not only is it too much space for one person, but she has the least amount of experience with any of this. She’s just a farm girl from Central Kansas. That’s the problem, isn’t it? They don’t trust her with anything, so they don’t ask anything of her. At least not anymore. They asked her for a lot in the past. The temporal energy has dwindled, though, so she’s of no use to them as an illusionist. Still, a quick call would be nice.

She has to do something. Living it up in this fancy place is making her feel terrible. Maybe Marie needs her help tracking the other time travelers, but she doesn’t know how to ask. Let’s find out where she is. Alyssa pulls out her device, and looks for Marie’s location. Her device hasn’t moved in a long time, and it’s not where she had her surveillance nest set up. She zooms into the satellite view of the friend finder app, but she can’t tell what this building is. She has to cross-reference it with the regular map. It’s showing those coordinates to be a mental hospital, which doesn’t sound good. No one else’s device is on, or they’ve switched off location tracking. Either way, they’re not picking up. She can sit here alone and be useless, or she can try to help.

Seeing no better option, Alyssa looks up the number to the hospital, and dials. “Hello, English?” she confirms. “Yes, I’m looking for a friend. We share our location history, and she’s been there since yesterday afternoon.” She waits for a response. “Her name is Sydney Bristow?” It’s the alias that Marie has been using, and apparently the name of an agent on a TV show from her reality called Alias. “Oh, really? Well, does she have outside communication privileges?” She does, but Marie will have to call her if she’s feeling up to it. “My name is Alyssa, she’ll know me.” She hangs up, and waits.

Ten minutes later, her phone rings. “Sydney, are you okay?” The phone may be tapped, she doesn’t know what kind of laws they have over there, so stick with the alias. “Yeah, I can see where that might get you into trouble, if you weren’t talking to the right person. Well, how can I get you out of there?” Marie doesn’t want to leave. “You’re happy there? What, are ya gonna stay there forever?” Not forever, just a few days to clear her head. “Your friends need you. I need you, I don’t know what to do.” Marie has one idea. “You think I’m ready for something like that on my own?” Yes, it’s just reconnaissance. “That’s the problem, we don’t know what—or who—I might run into.”

They keep discussing it for a little bit, Alyssa asking to fly to Manila herself, and be there for her. Marie doesn’t want that, and she’s the one controlling the purse strings. The trip would cost about ten thousand dollars, and still, no one else is available to help. Marie has to go, so she leaves the choice up to her, and hangs up. Alyssa thinks about it for a few minutes. This is her moment to prove that she deserves to be part of the team, and she doesn’t always need help from other people. She grabs her coat, and heads downstairs. If she’s gonna do this, she’s gonna do it right. She needs to shop for supplies. Who knows what she’ll find in Springfield, Kansas?

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 20, 2398

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Marie has been staking out this apartment for the last two days. This is the kind of work that she used to do for SD6. She was taken off of all such assignments when her team showed up, and that became her only priority, both on a personal level, and for the government. This still has to do with time travel, but her team isn’t involved. They’re looking for people who have experienced an inordinate amount of time for a normal living human, or just have unusual brain chemistry. The orbital scanner that Ramses built, and which Mateo installed on a Snowglobe satellite, only mapped where these targets were at the time of the last scan. This information is now over a week old, so if any of them were just on vacation, or something, they’ll probably never find them. This may all be a waste of time. She hates this now. She hates everything she used to love or like. She’s just bitter and angry, and nothing seems right anymore. She shouldn’t take it out on the team, though, and she knows it. Hopefully they understand, and won’t hold it against her. Maybe getting herself a win will raise her spirits.

She has the extra mobile scanner that Ramses left in his hotel room. He didn’t have time to write up a manual, and the data burst he was able to send from the time bubble he and Mateo are presently trapped in didn’t say much about it. Even so, it seems pretty self-explanatory. Marie was able to adapt it to a tripod, and place it next to her other surveillance equipment. She doesn’t know which unit in the apartment complex is housing the target, but they’ll have to go through the front door at some point, and when they do, this thing should beep to let her know. It starts to beep. The scanner doesn’t communicate with the digital scope, of course, so she has to cross-reference the time codes to find who she’s looking for. Three people entered the building at about the same time, but two of them appeared to be together, and the scanner only caught one unusual brain. That’s not a guarantee, but it’s a safer bet. She pulls up the photo, runs downstairs from her surveillance nest, crosses the street, and enters the building.

“English?” she asks the lobby supervisor.

“Yes,” he replies. “But my shift is over. Divina will be out soon.”

Just as he’s saying that, the woman she was looking for steps out of the back office in her uniform. The scanner beeps. The two of them exchange a few words in Filipino, and then the man leaves. “Yes, can I help you?”

Marie isn’t prepared for this either. She doesn’t know what to say, so she just goes with the tried and true code words. “Yeah, thank you. Listen, I’m in the mood for some fish. Do you know of a good restaurant that serves salmon?”

The lobby supervisor starts to consult her computer. “There is a really great seafood  restaurant down the street, but I can pull up a comprehensive list for you.”

Hmm. That didn’t work. Marie holds up her scanner, which thankfully, doesn’t look like a weapon. Yeah, her brain is definitely unusual.

“I’m sorry, do you live here? We’re really only meant to help residents.”

“I’m a time traveler from the 19th century, trapped in your reality, hoping to find others like me. We have been looking for a way back home, but we don’t want to leave without first checking to see if anyone else would like to join. I believe you’re one of us.”

“Of course, ma’am. One moment, please.” She calls the authorities.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 19, 2398

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Vearden and Arcadia are sitting in the car together. It’s pretty cold out there, so it’s still running with the heat on full. They’re not talking, but it’s not awkward. It’s just that neither wants to interrupt the other, and they both feel like they’ll probably start talking at the same time, and make it awkward. So maybe it is a little awkward either way. Finally, Arcadia starts. “You have to pretend to be happy.”

“I am happy.”

“I’m serious, abortion is very illegal here. The ultrasound tech, the receptionist—no one can get the sense that we would consider it in a trillion years.”

“I’m not considering it.”

“That’s good, very convincing. Say it just like that.”

“Arcadia, who are you arguing with; me...or yourself?”

“Vearden, I’m thousands of years old. I’ve never been able to have children; not that I would have wanted to with anyone for most of my life as I was surrounded by my family anyway. This is never going to work. You and me? No one was shipping us. No one even thought about it. Now here we are, pregnant out of wedlock—”

“They don’t care about that here, which is weird, given their backward ways.”

Arcadia looks over at Vearden with a frown.

He nods softly. “I want to raise this baby, and I want to raise it with you. I know that our respective backgrounds are complicated at best, but so it is for everyone we care about. Some of those people are here with us, and will be more than willing to help. You may not be used to people loving you like that, but you have it now. I believe they’ve forgiven you for Tribulation Island. I haven’t even heard whispers of locking you back up, have you? That’s pretty telling, if you ask me.”

That’s a good point. They let her out, and never so much as threatened to put her back. Forgiveness is a strong word, but maybe she’s on the road to one day becoming like her sister, Nerakali. Arcadia takes a deep breath. She’s ready to face this, or hopes that she is. She opens the door, only to pull it back immediately. “Drive.”

“What? Why? Vearden asks.

“Please just go, or you’re going to get Leona in trouble.”

He starts the car. As they’re driving off, he looks back. “Did you see someone?”

“I just saw people,” she explains, shaking her head. “I saw people who will very likely recognize Leona Matic after she killed an enemy combatant on national television yesterday. I can’t go in there, claiming to be pregnant, until I solidify my identity.”

“I thought you did have your own identity,” Vearden says.

“I technically do, or rather Leona Delaney did, which I just sort of absorbed when I took over her body. We never came up with a connection to Leona Matic, though. I’m obviously her twin sister, but were we separated at birth, or what? What’s the story there? We need to regroup.”

“Okay, I agree, but as you said, Leona is going through something right now, and Winona is with her. Mateo and Ramses are still in that other dimension, Kivi is overseeing the prisoners, and Marie is trying to track down other possible time travelers. I don’t think Alyssa can help, so who could we reach out to?”

“Well, I’ve got one idea.”

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.”