The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 12, 2398

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Boots on the ground, that’s what Leona called them. Ramses installed a new global brain scanner on the AOC in orbit, and since they own it themselves, they don’t have to worry about losing control over it. While they’re up there, Mateo and Alyssa are down below. It will be their job to approach the so-called errors, and ask them if they would like to be brought into the fold. The scanner doesn’t operate in real time, since it’s not joined by a constellation of satellites, but their information is never more than ninety minutes out of date.

Ramses didn’t equip their ship with a particularly powerful camera, so they don’t have eyes on the surface. There is nothing particularly distinctive about one error versus another. They’ve decided to go to Venice, Italy first, mostly because both of them want to go there. Mateo was there once, very briefly. This was at the beginning of The Rogue’s Tribulations, which would turn out to be commissioned by The Cleanser. Mateo and Leona still didn’t know what was going on yet, they were just trying to survive. In that timeline in the main sequence, Venice was mostly underwater due to climate breakdown. That hasn’t happened here. The land is perfectly dry, and a great place for a vacation. Of course, that’s not what they’re doing here, but that doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy themselves while they wait for updated intel.

The last ping came from one of the bridges over the Grand Canal, but their target could be anywhere by now. In the meantime, they rest their elbows on the stone railing, and watch the gondolas go by. It’s quite romantic here, he wishes Leona could join. Maybe she can. No one’s going to be looking for her face here, right? They expect her to be somewhere in North America. Eh, she’s smart enough to come up with that option herself, and for all he knows, she’s the only thing keeping the other residents from going crazy up there. Alyssa is pretty good company too. Besides, this isn’t really for fun. It could be dangerous in its own right.

After a few minutes, Mateo looks into the distance, and sees a gondola passenger standing up in the boat as its moving towards them. He’s waving to someone on the bridge. There are other people here, but none of them is waving back, or paying him any mind. As the gondola gets closer, the man points excitedly, then goes back to waving. He starts calling up to them once he’s within earshot. “Hey, Mateo! You’re here!”

“I am!” Mateo replies. “And you are...here too!”

“You don’t recognize me!” He seems pretty offended.

“Of course I do, you’re, uh...why am I lying? Sorry, I don’t!”

“Everest! Everest Conway! I delivered your eulogy!”

Of course! he repeats in his own head, but this time he means it. He died on the planet of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida a long time ago, and it’s largely considered his true death, even though it’s not the one that landed him in the afterlife simulation. Thousands of people attended his funeral, including himself, and millions—if not billions—watched on TV. It was a surreal experience, he kind of tries not to think about it anymore. “Sorry, it’s just that I meet so many people! What are you doing here?”

“Why don’t you come down and take a ride?” Everest offers. “People are staring!”

“Okay.” Mateo starts to lift his leg over the railing. A few people gasp and freak out, making him feel like he’s Eric Andre. He pulls their hearts back up into their respective chests when he gets back on two feet, and assures them with hand gestures that it was just a joke. He and Alyssa cross the bridge all the way, and meet the gondola on the dock. He pays the fare in Usonian money, and they get on board. The gondolier adjusts their seating to account for weight, and then they head off.

“Don’t worry, he doesn’t speak English,” Everest explains. “Hey, Alyssa.”

She presents her hand. “Alyssa McIver of the Lebanon McIvers.”

“Everest Conway of Fistula Crisium-Tranquillitatis Conways.”

“Pipe of the Tranquil Crisis?” she questions.

“You speak Latin?” Mateo asks her.

“A little.”

Everest laughs. “It’s a lava tube on the moon, located between the Sea of Crises and the Sea of Tranquility. I lived my childhood underground.”

“I see.”

“If I remember correctly,” Mateo begins, “you were on a tour of my personal history. Have you been here the whole time, watching us, not helping?”

“I’ve not been able to watch via observation dimension,” Everest explains. “They don’t exist here. I had to keep my distance, but this is a loophole.”

“Why?”

“I’ll explain what I can in a few minutes. Go as fast as possible, Italo.”

“Are you being racist, or is that his real name?”

“Real name. An Italian named Italo. It’s very common.”

“I thought you said he didn’t speak English,” Alyssa reminds him when she realizes that they are indeed moving faster.

“He knows that one phrase.” Minutes later, they’ve passed under the highway, out of the canal, and into the open water. They go under the highway again at a different point, and now they’re really in the open. There aren’t any other gondolas around now, just other, larger boats. “It’s the water,” Everest goes on. “It dampens the signal. They can see that we’re together, but they don’t know what we’re talking about.”

“Who are we talking about?” Mateo asks.

“It will put you more at risk if I give you that information, but this is my first and only opportunity to drop a little bit of truth on you. I was dishonest in your eulogy. We’re not friends. We’re not enemies either. It’s hard to explain, because I want to tell you that I don’t know you well, but the truth is that I know everything there is to know about you. The real problem is that you don’t know me. I never joined your group. I was sent to observe you by a third party, and while I’m not cognizant of their endgame, I can’t imagine it’s good. I came up with this lie about us being future friends in case we ever ran into each other during my mission.”

Mateo nods. “Were you hired to do this, or...?”

“Coerced. They have my family. Or rather, they strongly suggested that they do. That’s another reason I don’t think their intentions with you are honorable. But to my knowledge, they haven’t actually ever hurt anyone. That’s why I couldn’t go to the authorities, or anything. My only choice was to do what they asked, I’m sorry.”

“How can I get this information to my team? Do we need open water?”

“If you absolutely had to, yes, but you have to be there for a good reason, or they’ll get suspicious. I was hoping at least Leona and Ramses would be here with you, but that’s not what happened. Sorry, I can’t answer any more questions. This is all I can say. Now go back,” he orders the gondolier. “I taught him that phrase too.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 11, 2398

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It’s been a month since Angela, Carlin, Moray, Petra, and a small crew of scientists started their relativistic journey to the Oort Cloud. For them, however, it’s only been an hour, and nothing interesting has happened. The four of them are in the middle of a game of Bridge, but that’s about it. Now Angela’s bladder is yelling at her, so she’s taking her break and heading for the head. When she opens the door, she runs into someone she assumes to be one of the research scientists. She doesn’t even look up at his face. “Oh, apologies. I’ll go find another facility.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, madam,” the man says as she’s trying to walk away. That voice. She would recognize it anywhere, even a thousand years from now. It’s the man who put her in prison, Tamerlane Pryce.

She spins around, a little too whimsically than she would like, given the tone she wants to present. “They were right. You’re here.”

He’s genuinely confused. “Someone told you I would be on the rocket?”

“No, I mean, this reality. I don’t know why you’re on the rocket.”

“I’m here to save your life,” he says cryptically.

She folds her arms. “How? Did a seer four million years ago tell you that it would blow up?”

He chuckles. “We don’t have seers. That’s by design. No time travel, no fortune telling, no temporal manipulation of any kind...except for the thing that controls all of that, of course.”

“Of course,” she mocks. “I would love to continue this conversation, but I really do have to go.”

“I meant what I said,” he calls up when she tries to turn away from him again. “You shouldn’t use the toilet.”

“Excuse me? You’re trying to tell a woman what to do with her body?”

He nods as he’s preparing his explanation. “Exactly four months ago, Earth realtime, you imbibed three cups of water while stranded in the village of Vertegen, on the Svalbard archipelago.”

“Yes, we surmised that they were three types of immortality water. That’s why I’m here, to buy time for my friends to find the rest, so Marie isn’t killed.”

“That’s not why I had the villagers give you the water,” Pryce says. “Something worse happens in your future, and I feel responsible for you, so I didn’t want you to die, but that event cannot be changed. What I mean is, the sequence of events leading up to it can’t, but I could alter the outcome. Fortunately, you came to my reality, and provided me with the perfect opportunity to do just that.”

“Okay. Let’s say I believe you. Why won’t you let me pee now?”

He shrugs with both his shoulders, and his chin. “Isn’t it obvious? The waters don’t last forever. Your body purges them from your system, just as they purge anything else you consume...unless it’s permanently detrimental, like a pathogen. If you pee today, Marie will die. Actually, she’ll already be dead, because the whole point is that you would be trying to save her life in the past. You don’t have much time left. I calculated incorrectly, and didn’t give you very much time to reach all eleven immortality waters before the first ones expire. You can do it, but you have to hold on for the next several hours. Your friends are already on the path that will lead them to a permanent solution.”

“We don’t need any solution that you came up with,” Angela contends. “I lived in your world for centuries, but I eventually broke out, thanks to my new family. We’ll break out of this one too, especially now that I know it’s yours.”

Pryce smiles sadly. “The afterlife simulation is not my world. Now, before you argue, I really mean it. I’m a different version of the man you know. He went back in time, and created a new timeline, one in which no one ever really dies. I was born in that one. I never did any of the stuff that he did.”

She’s taken aback by this, but his story isn’t completely implausible. He certainly wouldn’t be the first alternate self she’s met. There have been so many in the Third Rail alone; it’s like a magnet for them. She herself has an alt who goes by their middle name. “You just said you felt responsible for me.”

“I do. I feel personally responsible for all the people he’s hurt. If he’s not going to make up for his mistakes, then I guess I have to.”

She takes a deep breath. “Horace Reaver was a serial killer in one reality, then a rich douchebag in the next, and a hero in the next. I want to trust that you’re like that, but there’s no reason to believe versions of people in subsequent timelines are always better than their Past!Selves. It could just as easily go the other way. Maybe you’re not the man I knew, but that doesn’t mean you’re an improvement.”

“You’re right, but I can give you this.” He pulls a water bottle from behind his back like it’s Excalibur. “Energy water isn’t the most difficult kind to procure, but in the political climate surrounding the Dead Sea and Birket, I would prefer it if you didn’t risk your freedom by trying to go back there to steal more.”

Angela peers at it. “How do I know that isn’t just tap water from a suburban house’s kitchen sink?”

“I went through a lot of trouble to get you the three first immortality waters. The first one is from billions of years ago, the next is from another universe, and the next is from another galaxy. If I couldn’t even sneak into Birket to get this one, I certainly couldn’t have gotten the others, and the whole endeavor is moot.”

She keeps her eyes narrowed, but accepts the gift. “I can’t drink this yet. If I remember the order, I need waters from the Bermuda Triangle and North Pole first.”

He nods. “The others will handle that. This is a good faith gesture, don’t drink it until you get back to Earth. But remember, you can’t go pee. I haven’t had a doctor examine you, so I can’t say for sure it would purge your system of what you need to keep, but if I were you, I wouldn’t risk it.”

Now that he’s been talking about it so much, it’s all that she can focus on. The pressure is worse than ever, though that’s clearly only a psychological reaction. Assuming she believes him in the first place, how long can she last before she explodes? “Thank you...I think.”

He smiles, “that’s as much as I can ask. I better go hide again. I’m a stowaway, after all. Try to keep yourself busy. Maybe activate your acute stress response. When your body is in a hurry, it shuts down digestion, because it knows that it can’t take a break when you’re running from a saber-toothed tiger."

Angela watches him disappear, then she returns to her cabin to stash the Energy water in her refrigerator. Then she goes out for a jog. It doesn’t work.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 10, 2398

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Ramses is getting a little frustrated. He loves this ship, but like they were discussing the other day, it’s a passenger vessel. It’s designed to keep a small crew alive while they travel to other worlds. It’s not equipped to handle the kind of science that he needs to do up here. The only logical places to try are down in engineering, and up in microponics, but that’s two separate levels, and it’s made even harder by the main level in between them, where all the normies are hanging out. They seem to be dealing with their own problems, most likely due to extreme boredom. The central computer houses a plethora of entertainment and interesting data to keep them a little busy, but that will only take them so far. They’re all going a little crazy, even with the more manageable numbers, and nothing is going to make it better...nothing unless Ramses can solve their problems by ignoring his own self-care.

Leona’s healing nanites are hard at work, though they’re operating slower than they would in the other realities. She should be fully functional by now, having no issue climbing up and down the steps. This is something that she’s struggling with, though, because she’s not at a hundred percent. Ramses doesn’t help her down, but he has his arms open underneath in case she falls. “How’s it going?” she asks once her feet are safely planted on the floor.

“Slow,” he replies. “I don’t have any resources, or data. What I really need are samples from the moon, or some other celestial object. Preferably both.”

She shakes her head. “We can’t be that far from orbit. We must maintain immediate access to Earth.”

He sighs, and throws up a holographic image of the planet. He points at it demonstratively. “There is—I think—a direct correlation between proximity to the surface, and magnitude of the suppression of our powers and enhancements.”

“Okay.”

He’s getting frustrated again. “Don’t you see? After you and Mateo survived the vacuum of space, we hypothesized that the suppression originated from the atmosphere, but I think it originates from somewhere on the ground, and now we’re too far away.”

“Okay.”

He sighs again. She knows exactly where he’s going with this, but she’s pretending to be on a different page. “To test this, I need to change orbit. We need to get farther from the hypothetical source on the surface. I think whatever it is is spreading some kind of aerosol through the air. The denser the air, the easier it is to spread.”

“Then you’re going in the wrong direction. What we need to do is send something all the way through the atmospheric levels, and gauge how the temporal energy fluctuates, if at all.”

Okay, he’s really frustrated now. “I need to do both. I need to know if it’s based on proximity alone, or the air.”

“We’ve already tested that. We’ve been all over the world, across thousands of kilometers. Now we’re only a few hundred kilometers away. Does anything change across our orbital path? Can you pinpoint a specific source, like a city, or an island?”

“No, I’m just trying to cover all of our bases.”

Now Leona is the one who sighs. “I’ve been saying that I want our team to be more of a democracy. I have made too many decisions as captain.” She contorts her face sarcastically, and puts the word in airquotes. “We voted, you lost.”

“You swayed the votes.”

“That’s what campaigning is, it’s not unethical!”

“You swayed them...as captain!”

“Arcadia, Vearden, and Cheyenne do not have the same sort of visceral reaction to my leadership as you and Marie do. I was never their captain.”

“Stop doing airquotes! Why are you doing that? You are the captain.”

“It’s a meaningless title that you all just bestowed upon me, because there was no one else around to do it. It’s your ship, you would be better suited, except you’re busy keeping it from blowing up, and killing us all.”

“It’s not meaningless. You didn’t get the position by default. You were born with those leadership skills. Everyone agrees with that, including Arcadia, Vearden, and Cheyenne. Stop selling yourself short. There’s a reason why normal ships aren’t democracies, because we don’t have time for that!”

“Why do we keep yelling compliments at each other!”

“Because I’m tired, but I don’t have time to sleep, because there’s too much to do, but I don’t have a real lab, because that’s not what the AOC is for!”

“You need a spacelab,” Leona notes quietly.

“I need a spacelab,” he echoes.

She nods. “Let me see what I can do.”

“What would you be able to do? We can’t make this ship any bigger.”

“Can’t we?” she asks rhetorically.

Ramses takes a beat to answer, but then does so seriously, “no, we can’t.”

“But can we?”

He waits a longer time this time. “No,” he repeats.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she paraphrases herself from before. “Anyway, I came down to show you what I’ve been working on. I’m a scientist too, if you’ll recall.”

He follows her up, but they have to pass through the main level first. The other four are staring at them. “Are mommy and daddy done fighting?” Arcadia asks.

“For now...” Leona replies mysteriously.

They continue up to the next level, where she opens the hatch to the airlock antechamber, and then the one for the airlock. Mateo is standing there with a smile.

“Is everything okay?” Ramses asks. “Those temporal energy injections are supposed to be for emergencies only.

“Everything is fine,” Mateo says. “I’m not really here, I’m a hologram.”

“Oh.” Ramses looks up at the holographic projects that Leona installed. “Cool.”

“It’s more than that.”

“I see that.” Ramses sees some objects that are not projectors. “What are those?”

“Magnetic field generators,” Leona replies. She places a hand on Mateo’s shoulder to demonstrate how he feels like a physical presence, instead of just light.

“A real life holodeck.”

“Yeah.”

“So this is more for you, wouldn’t you say?”

Leona takes a beat. “Yes.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 9, 2398

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It’s just Mateo and Alyssa now. Winona came back down to the surface of Earth as well, but she has her own life with SD6, so she’s more of an honorary member of the team. Mateo used his temporary teleporting powers to jump them down to Kansas City, where the two true team members stayed in The Bridgette. It was a little weird for them, but fine. They made it work. This morning, Vearden called from space to ask them for a favor. He and Arcadia were approved for the house in the suburbs that they want to buy. The only thing pending that can’t be done over the phone is the home inspection. They want someone there to observe the process in person, so that’s where they are now.

“This is a beautiful vehicle ya got there,” the inspector says when they meet in the driveway. He immediately seems salty and talkative, and he clearly has an aversion to personal hygiene. Perhaps he’s a Suilien, like those people in the hospital who were being purified by their rivals. Or he’s given up on life, and he’s faking it through forced cheerfulness. Or maybe he was just in a hurry this morning.

“Oh, yeah, it’s a company car,” Mateo explains. It’s not entirely a lie.

“Car is a bit of a weak word, don’t you think?” The inspector caresses the outer hull with his grubby little hand. My car can’t fly.”

“Oh, if it did, you couldn’t ever drive anything else again,” Mateo muses, trying to play the part of the friendly suburbanite. “It would get you to your jobs faster.”

The inspector looks at his watch, and frowns. “I’m not late,” he insists.

Awkward. “No, I—I’m not saying that you were, I was just...”

“Ah, I got you! You’re too easy, my friend. What’s your name, brother?”

“Mateo. Mateo Gelen.” He was about to say his real last name, but then he thought that it would be best not to go around declaring any possible connection to the infamous Leona Matic. It’s still not yet safe.

Alyssa shakes the man’s hand next. “Alyssa...” she begins, and they can both see her struggling to think of a fake name too. “...Gelen.”

Okay, that’s okay. Mateo can work with that. He smiles, reaches behind her back to her opposite shoulder, and pulls her closer.

He smirks creepily. “See, I knew you and I had a lot in common. I like ‘em young too. You ol’ dog.” Then he howls. The man actually howls out loud. In front of people.

Mateo just clears his throat uncomfortably.

“Ha-ha, anyway, I’m Guthrie. Guthrie The Dog. Nah, they don’t call me that, but I’m tryin’ it out. Wadya think?”

“I think it...suits you.”

He takes it as a compliment. “Anyway, I better get to work, shouldn’t I? It’s like you said, I can’t fly to my other jobs.”

The rest of the day is just as inappropriate and uncomfortable. They’re happy to help, but this guy is a lot to deal with. They would rather be in charge of moving all of Arcadia and Vearden’s belongings, which they probably will have to do later. That is, if it’s ever safe enough for them to return to Earth. They have sure all been doing a lot of moving recently. It’s good, though, it makes them feel kind of normal. Packing and carrying boxes is the kind of thing that regular people do everyday without thinking about bombs, tactical teams, and spaceships. They just worry about men like Guthrie.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 8, 2398

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Each grave chamber on the AOC is wide enough to accommodate two sleeping persons, but there are only six seats in the main area, life support would struggle to satisfy the needs of twelve people, and microponics would not be able to feed all of them for an extended period of time. Plus, it would just be too crowded. Ramses built this ship using the resources that he was allotted on Proxima Doma, which were not infinite. It was never meant for the long term. Its only purpose at the time of fabrication was to make a quick jump to Bungula, and really that’s it. There are nine people here right now, and it’s already getting to be too much. The only one on their team who didn’t join them is Kivi, because she’s working with her tack team on the ground.

Leona had to go into orbit to heal her legs—which is working, by the way—but also to avoid the killer bounty hunters who are trying to kill her, either for the money, or because they’re true believers. Arcadia had to come up here too, because she looks like Leona, and guns don’t discriminate. Just as Mateo wanted to be with his wife, so too Vearden wanted to be with whatever he and Arcadia call each other. Marie and Cheyenne probably had to come, because they’re known associates of Leona by now, and are in just as much danger. Lastly, Ramses is the engineer, and had a lot of projects on the backburner that he has finally been able to actually follow through on. As for the final two new residents, Alyssa politely asked to see Earth from above, and Winona demanded impolitely.

It has only been a day, but everyone is already getting on each other’s nerves. Over half of them weren’t originally part of the crew, so no one yet knows their quirks and pet peeves. The shorthand the four originals had with each other has gone out the window in mixed company. So nobody’s happy, but the ones who have a choice don’t want to choose to leave. Mateo has proposed a competition. The winner gets to stay, and the losers have to go back down to the surface. Leona, Marie, Arcadia, and Cheyenne are exempt. Ramses doesn’t have to compete either, because he will be traveling back and forth as needed. This leaves Mateo versus Alyssa versus Vearden versus Winona. The only question is what the contest will entail. His first idea is to play a round of RPS-101 Plus, but he’s the only one in the group who has ever played it, so isn’t that unfair?

“Yes, it’s very unfair,” Leona points out.

“You have four people,” Marie begins. “You could always play Bridge.”

“No, remember what you told me?” Cheyenne asks her.

“Oh, yeah.” Marie frowns a little. “People here play Bridge with different rules.”

“I’ve never played before, so that doesn’t seem to matter,” Mateo notes.

“Neither have I,” says all three other contestants simultaneously.

“Why are we overthinking this?” Vearden questions. “Let’s just play regular rock, paper, scissors. Anyone can win, even if you’ve never played before.”

“A little boring, if you ask me,” Arcadia says.

“Do we really want to base it on chance?” Winona asks. “That doesn’t seem right.”

Everyone starts arguing all at once—about RPS, the flip of a coin, and a few computer games that the ship has installed—until Alyssa loudly interrupts, “enough! Here’s what we’re gonna do. Mateo, Winona, and I will go back to Earth. Vearden will be allowed to stay with the mother of his child. There. It’s done.” Yeah, that makes sense.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 7, 2398

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Leona is sitting in her wheelchair while Mateo is sitting up in her bed. He’s mindlessly flipping through channels on the TV, but it’s impossible to find something good. He’s sure there are plenty of great programs here, but they always make him a little uncomfortable. It feels like Third Railers are on a slightly different frequency than normal people. Their idea of entertainment isn’t wrong or even weird, it’s just a little too different than what he’s used to. It’s hard to explain what he doesn’t like about it, but he can only stomach about ten minutes of it before it makes him shiver, and he has to change it to something else.

“I’m getting hungry,” Leona notes.

Mateo checks her watch. She’s not allowed to wear jewelry while she’s checked in as a patient, in case they need to take her out for tests. It shouldn’t matter now since no one is running any tests of the sort, but they don’t want to piss the hostage-takers off any more than they already are. “Rations were meant to come an hour ago.”

“I hope they’re late because patients in critical need of nutrition are taking priority, and not that they’ve decided to starve us.”

“Want me to go out there and check?”

She shakes her head vigorously. “Nope. I don’t want you to draw attention to you or us at all. Maybe you could sneak back over to Cheyenne’s room again, though?”

“Okay.” He peeks his head through the doorway. The coast is clear—too clear, like a scene in a horror movie that you think is maybe a dream sequence, but it turns out the killer’s not dead, and he’s found her, and the hospital floor is totally empty only to increase tension, despite how unlikely that is. Mateo slinks down the hallways, and slips into Cheyenne’s room.

Marie is in there with her. They’re playing a card game across the bed. “Problem, or is she still just worried?” Marie asks.

“The second thing,” Mateo answers. “Have you heard anything? Are they going to let us out anytime soon?”

“It depends on what you mean by soon,” Cheyenne replies. “Santiens are pretty hardcore. They won’t stop until they’ve purified everyone they deem to be unclean.”

“Yeah, and you’re sure that doesn’t mean they’re going to kill them, right?”

“Positive,” Cheyenne assures him.

A group of heavily armed people belonging to a religion called Santienism took over the hospital when they learned that a group of Suiliens were involved in a bus crash, and were brought here for treatment. According to Carlin and Moray’s research, the two sects were once one, but Santiens broke away when they became obsessed with using natural remedies to cure disease. This caused the Suiliens to both metaphorically and literally dig into their own beliefs. They sleep in the dirt, and don’t ever bathe, believing that nature is the closest thing to divinity. Neither one of them believes in real science, and members of both sides get sick a lot because of their unhealthy habits. When their medical issues become too much for them to bear, they will go against their convictions with real doctors, but they are not meant to visit the same facilities due to a self-imposed policy of segregation. These are extenuating circumstances.

They have locked the building down so that no one can come in, and no one can leave. They have installed signal blockers to prevent communication to the outside world, which is why Mateo and Leona were unable to make their rendezvous with Ramses. They don’t know if he and Alyssa left without them, or if they’re still waiting in that park upstate. All they would have had to do, though, would be to check the internet for current events in the area. This isn’t national news by any stretch, as things like this happen from time to time, but it’s noteworthy enough to be reported on locally.

It’s been two nights since this debacle began, and now it’s early morning. How long exactly does it take to purify a bus full of your enemies, whether that means killing them, or not? Mateo looks towards the door, but that’s not what he’s thinking about. This is a team of action. They don’t do well just sitting around, waiting for other people to make things happen. His instincts are telling him to go out there, and make the situation better...or maybe make it worse instead, but brief.

“Don’t do it,” Marie urges him, knowing him well enough to predict his impulses. “This isn’t our problem.”

“We’ll be out of here by the end of the day,” Cheyenne believes.

“No, you won’t, and it’s your problem now.” One of the hostage-takers is standing in the doorway, aiming a gun at them from his waist like a buster in a film noir.

“We’re not doing anything wrong,” Marie protests.

“What religions are you?” the man with the gun asks, stepping closer menacingly.

“Unaffiliated,” she replies.

“The marker on your door indicates that you’re Caducean.”

Cheyenne leans forward to look at the faith indicator, but she can’t read it. “I hadn’t noticed. My friends must have put that there. Caduceans tend to receive priority treatment.” Caduceans do believe in science, and most medical professionals affiliate.

“Lying about your faith is an offense.”

“It’s not illegal.” One might think it would be, but not as long as the lie isn’t accompanied by other crimes. Still, some find the practice irreverent. In this case, he should just let it go as he obviously has more important stuff going on right now.

He relaxes his hand, but keeps his gun at the ready. “There are too many people in this room. One visitor at a time. One of you has to go back to your room, or downstairs with the other non-patients, depending on which one agrees to leave.”

“I’m going,” Mateo says.

“No, I’ll go,” Marie insists as she’s standing up. She gives Mateo a look that hopefully means don’t bring Leona into this, just stay here, because that’s how he’s interpreting it.

Ramses suddenly appears out of nowhere. “Oh. You have company over. I’m so sorry to disturb you.”

“Where the hells did you come from?” the gunman questions angrily.

“Umm....the bathroom?”

“The bathroom is behind me.”

“We don’t have time for this.” Ramses takes Mateo and Cheyenne by the hands, and teleports them to the rendezvous point in the park. Leona is already there, as are Winona and the AOC. Ramses makes one more jump to the hospital for Marie.

“What’s going on?” Mateo asks Winona.

She shakes her head and sighs. “Those guys who bombed the studio; they only did it to steal money, but nobody knows that yet. Someone was inspired to try to fix what they thought was a mistake. There is a bounty on Leona’s head. We had to act.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 6, 2398

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Ramses tries to deliver The Bridgette back to the park in New York, but it seems that Winona has managed to lock him out of all systems. That’s impressive. These Third Railers are more resourceful than he thought. He’ll have to remember that moving forward. He doesn’t like being surprised, or the one beholden to someone else. He’s always meant to be in control, and once he clears the override feature that Winona installed on this craft, he’ll get back to that. For now, he has to do what she says. They need their starship back, and this is the way they’re getting it. It’s not the first time their plans didn’t go as planned. They always figure out a workaround to the obstacles.

Winona sets her tablet on the console, and lets it sync with the Bridgette. “Constance, please navigate us to these coordinates in realspace.”

“Prepare for liftoff,” the AI replies.

“I’m sorry I had to do that,” Winona says to Ramses. “I like Leona; I consider her one of my own. But I had to make a call. We will get her up into space, I promise you.”

“You can’t promise that,” Ramses says, “but I can. I can also promise you that getting on my team’s bad side never works out for people. You live in your own little reality, but we always win. You apologized with words, now do it through action.”

Winona nods. The computer beeps. She looks down at the console. “We’re here.” She activates the radio. “Amberjack, this is Pelican. Come in, Amberjack.”

“Amberjack Actual here, go ahead.”

“Permission to land and come aboard. Three visitors total, limited equipment.”

“Permission granted.”

“Constance, please land. Once we’re aboard the Amberjack, dive to a depth of thirty meters, and travel three hundred kilometers to the Northeast, avoiding detection along the way. Once there, resurface, launch, and return to base.”

“Understood,” Constance replies.

She regards Ramses’ expression. “The Bridgette will be fully yours after today.”

“Clearly.”

They land the Bridgette, and board the sub. They’re surprised to see what must be a full crew waiting for them. It’s hard to walk through, there are so many people. They were to understand that there would only be a few left around, while the rest rested and relaxed in Bermuda. Winona and Executor Ongaro go into his office to have a chat about it. When they come out ten minutes later, Winona explains to Ramses and Alyssa that rumor spread about what kind of mission they were going on, and everyone wanted to be a part of it. She questioned why he didn’t just order them to go on shore leave, being the Executor and all. He claimed that his own curiosity made him feel like he couldn’t rob others of the opportunity. Bad leadership, if you ask Ramses, but nothing can be done about it now. They have already begun the dive.

By the time they reach the bottom, Ramses has started to receive a signal from the AOC. So not only is it close, but it’s on and operational. That’s good, it strongly suggests that life support is still active. Even if it’s not, it shouldn’t be too hard to re-engage it. Once they’re close enough, the sub’s lights shine upon the vessel. It’s sitting neatly on the ocean floor, right between two little rocky cliffs. Either it was damn lucky to have fallen right in the perfect spot, or the AI is still on, and navigated it well enough to protect hull integrity.

“Wow. This is yours?” one of the crewmen asks.

“Yes,” Ramses replies, not super happy about having all these eyes on his ship.

“It can fly to the stars?” another asks.

Ramses looks over to Winona. “You have some leaks to plug up.” He’s not referring to the sub, or the ship.

“A lot of people had to be read in for this, Winona defends.

“How do we dock with it?” Executor Ongaro asks them.

“We don’t.” And now for the hard part. There are more people here than Ramses was led to believe. Keeping the secret amongst a smaller group would have been easier, but they probably know enough already anyway. He’s just gonna teleport in, now that he has a target. “You have a torpedo room, right?”

Executor Ongaro laughs. “Yeah, but you’re not going to be able to fire one from there, if that’s what you’re thinking. That’s just where they’re loaded.”

“That’s not what I was thinking. I just need privacy. Can you give me that, or are we gonna have a problem?”

Ongaro sizes him up, but decides to agree. “That will be fine.” He doesn’t think there’s anything he can do in that room that they won’t be able to find out about.

The torpedo room offers them a plausible way off of the sub, and onto the AOC. It’s ridiculously impossible at this depth, but they will probably assume that Ramses used some kind of crazy supersoldier serum that allowed him to traverse the distance safely. What he won’t guess is that he can inject himself with a magical formula that will allow him to teleport over there without getting a single drop of water on him. Ongaro leads him down to the other side of the vessel, and shows him into the room, ordering the crew manning their stations to leave. He makes a mistake, though, when he accidentally looks up to the security camera in the corner. That’s fine, disabling basic surveillance is incredibly easy for Ramses with his trusty mission kit.

Winona closes the door behind them. “They’ll still be watching.”

“They’ll try.” Ramses presses the button on his signal scrambler, and shuts off the cameras and microphones. Then he places a magnetic lock on the door, in case going blind pisses them off enough to try to get back in here.

“You’re not going to try to stop me from coming with you?” Winona asks.

“I can’t leave you here with these warmongers,” Ramses tells her. “I’m mad at you right now, but we’ll get through this. That’s what it means to be on our team. Isn’t that what you want?”

“Yes.”

Ramses injects himself with the Existence Water. “Then hold onto me tightly.”

Both Alyssa and Winona take him in a bear hug, and let him transport them into the AOC. He was right, life support is fine. A cursory glance at the diagnostics screen shows that everything is fine. The hull did suffer a few scrapes on the way down, but it repaired itself without any prompting. Ramses takes out the data drive where he keeps the base code for the AI that he got from The Constant. He plugs it into a dataport, and uploads it as an upgrade. “Constance, can you hear me?”

“Five by five,” Constance replies.

“Run full diagnostics on yourself, please.”

Once the perfect diagnostic finishes, Ramses says, “okay, then. Please teleport to the last New York coordinates where the Bridgette was.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 5, 2398

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Ramses left New York, and came back to Kansas City. The best way to help Leona is to get himself down to the bottom of the ocean, where he can recover the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Mateo had the idea to just go to the surface of the Bermuda Triangle, and utilize the temporal energy there to teleport down, but that’s too risky. They don’t know exactly where it is, and they don’t know if the interior is habitable. It may have all been crushed under the pressure of the ocean, for all they know. The best and safest way to do it would be to take a submarine down there, and enter manually. He is procuring temporal energy injections to be used in an emergency, but hopefully it won’t come to that. The only problem is that they do not have access to a submarine capable of reaching such depths.

“Okay, I’ve secured you a submarine capable of reaching those depths,” Winona says as she’s entering the team’s new laboratory, not looking up from her tablet.

“Really?” Alyssa asks. She stayed in the area, and has been handling the transition for Ramses. No one asked her to do that, but she didn’t want them to have to worry about that. He’s on the roof right now, upgrading the satellite dish, so they can communicate with the AOC once it’s up there.

“Oh,” I thought you were him. “Where is he?”

“Roof satellite,” Alyssa answers.

“Ah.” Winona nods awkwardly. “I’m Winona Honeycutt.”

“I know that. We’ve met. Many times.”

“Right, but we were never really introduced; not formally.”

Alyssa smirks in a confused-but-whatever sort of way. “Alyssa McIver.”

Winona nods awkwardly again.

“Do you want me to go get him, errr...?”

“Yeah, if you could, I think that would be okay.”

Alyssa could just ping his handheld, but Winona is clearly uncomfortable being alone with her. She must have her reasons, which may be as simple as the fact that she mainly deals with the core team, instead of ancillary members like her. So she leaves.

She comes back quickly with Ramses. “I hear you got a sub for me?”

“My superiors are very interested in the prospect of activating a ship designed to travel the stars. The Marine Corps has a deep sea sub capable of reaching the bottom of the ocean. It’s obviously usually busy with other things, but as luck would have it, the majority of the crew is being given shore leave in Bermuda. The skeleton crew remaining has agreed to take a detour to the coordinates that you provided, but we gotta go now if we want to rendezvous with them. They won’t wait for us forever.”

“Us” Ramses questions.

“I’m the liaison. I’m going.”

Ramses looks in the general direction of New York, where most of the rest of the team is. They don’t all have to join them on this mission, but one of them certainly does. “We have to pick up Leona first.”

Winona checks her watch. “We don’t have time for that.”

“The whole point of getting the AOC back is to heal her.”

“It is only one reason,” Winona contends.

“It’s the only one that matters. I don’t know what you’ve sold your superiors on, but your scientists aren’t getting their hands on my ship, and neither is your military.”

Winona sighs, and looks at her watch again. It’s been fifteen seconds. “Some of your magic water is in the Bermuda Triangle, right?” She goes on without waiting for a response, “let’s take your new vehicle there, fill up on whatever you need, quickly jump up to New York, and finally jump back. You did say that the engine you built for it can store enough power for two or more jumps?”

“Yes,” Ramses confirms. “The concentrator filters regular water, so that only—”

“Great, let’s go,” Winona says, urging them on with a wave of her hand.

“I want to go too,” Alyssa announces.

“Fine, whatever.” Winona waves more. “Let’s all go. But we gotta do it now.”

Ramses and Alyssa grab their go-bags, and head for the garage. “Constance,” Ramses speaks into his watch, “run a pre-flight check on The Bridgette.”

“Acknowledged,” the AI replies.

“Working title,” Ramses explains when Alyssa gives him a look.

“I mean the name of your AI,” Alyssa clarifies her expression.

“I got it from the Constant,” he says with a shrug.

“By the time they board the craft, the pre-flight check is complete.”

“Constance,” Ramses speaks into aether this time. “Please fly us to Site W-5.”

“Proceeding to the center of the Bermuda Triangle,” Constance responds.

During the flight, Ramses contacts Mateo to ask him to pick a secluded area upstate where the Bridgette can teleport to. He should transport Leona there, so they can get her all the way to the Triangle, down to the bottom of the ocean, and up into orbit. It’s nearly midnight central when Ramses, Aylssa, and Winona reach the very center of the Triangle. He lands the vehicle in ship mode, and collects enough water to fill his special engine’s storage tanks. Once it’s ready to go, he teleports the whole thing to Harriman State Park. It’s off-season, so there shouldn’t be anyone in the area to witness their arrival and departure. To be honest, he was afraid that it wouldn’t work at all, but they make it to the clearing, and land on the ground to wait for their friends.

Mateo and Leona are nowhere to be found, so Ramses tries to call them, but they don’t answer. Winona keeps urging them to get back to the Triangle. The sub is on a very tight schedule, and there is only a short window to make this detour dive happen. If they miss this window, the sub will move on to its next mission, and she can’t guarantee when they’ll ever have such an opportunity again.

“They’ll be here,” Ramses promises for the upteenth time.

“We can find a way to get her into it later, but right now, we just need to recover it,” Winona insists.

“It doesn’t work like that. Leona is in a fragile state. I can’t just teleport her up there naked. She needs to be in the vessel when it launches.”

“I’m sorry, we can’t wait any longer.”

“Well, there’s not really anything you can do about it, so...” Ramses claims.

“Yes, there is.” Winona pulls a key from inside her shirt as she’s stepping down into the bridge. She removes a hidden panel compartment under the controls, which reveals the keyhole. She sticks her key in, and turns the light from red to green.

“What the hell is that?” Ramses questions.

“My failsafe,” Winona answers. “Constance, jump to W-5.” They jump.