The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 12,398

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One second. That’s how long Mateo spends in the stasis pod that Danica forced him into. As soon as that door closes, he teleports out, and lands on the other side of it. To his left is Past!Mateo’s pod. This is the version of him that first came back here after falling down the main elevator shaft. He’s destined to remain here for the next few billion years until his team rescues him with a sledgehammer. For now, though, this room has not yet been sealed up with concrete and wood. He could walk right out that door, assuming it’s unlocked, but that may not be the best way to handle this. She obviously doesn’t want him wandering around The Constant unsupervised. He might learn a secret that she doesn’t want getting out. He has to be smart about this. He tries the door anyway, and finds that it is indeed locked from the outside, so that’s a no-go.

Mateo jumps around to loosen up his joints. He’s assuming that each section of the Constant has its own set of alarms. If he can teleport to each one of them in succession, he’ll be able to choose one at random, and hide out there while Danica is scrambling, searching through the rest. It’s not the most brilliant of plans, but that was never his strong suit. He doesn’t usually do well on his own, but he’s all he’s got right now, so there’s no point in dwelling on that. He starts going over the sections in his head one by one, formulating a route, when the handle turns, and the door opens. He peeks his head out, and looks around to the other side of it. There was someone there, but he doesn’t get the chance to see who. He catches a glimpse of a silhouette before it disappears, either teleporting or time traveling away. They’re either trying to help him or hurt him, but either way, they have more information than he does, so worrying about it isn’t going to do him any good. All he can do now is try to gain some kind of advantage that will prevent Danica from being able to just throw him away like garbage.

First off, he wants to find out where she is, and where there might be others lurking about this facility. Though, if there is anyone else here, they’re probably fully invited, and he’s the only lurker. He steps out of the stasis room, and immediately regrets it. His shoes are too loud. What are they designed for, tap dancing? After he closes the door behind him, he takes them off, and starts walking with them in his hand, but he doesn’t get far before changing his mind. He feels like a heroine in an action movie who had to go undercover at a fancy party where the villain is entertaining a bunch of freeloaders to hide the fact that he’s really there to host a black market auction in the wine cellar, and now it’s time for her to run and fight. He decides to tuck them away underneath the couch, and move on.

He slinks down the hallways, hugging the walls, and trying to avoid the cameras, but he didn’t exactly memorize their locations, and there probably aren’t any blindspots anyway. He just keeps going, and hopes that his presence doesn’t trigger the artificial intelligence to sound that alarm after all. He could probably breathe easy, because the person who let him out of the stasis room surely knows whether they would be a real issue or not. No one is in the kitchen, no one’s in Danica’s office. No one’s in the security room, or the small film screening room. There’s no one in this library-looking place that is apparently called the master sitting room. “Wow, look at all this seating!” he exclaims to himself. The gym looks empty, but it has lots of spots to hide, so he gets himself a better look to be sure. No, it’s clear. Man, this is a big place for only a few visitors at a time. Only one person is meant to work here, except for Danica’s current posse, which Mateo assumes consists of Bhulan, Aquila, and maybe Tamerlane Pryce and Dalton Hawke?

“Tryna get swole?” a voice asks from behind him.

Mateo turns around to find a man who he doesn’t recognize. “I’m just trying to get answers,” Mateo admits.

“Aren’t we all?”

Mateo sizes him up a little. “Report.”

The man smiles. “Asier Mendoza, father of The Concierge. Some people call me Corporal Mercy.”

“Never heard of ya. Danica never mentioned her father, and Daria never mentioned her baby daddy.”

Asier nods. “You were probably talking to the wrong version of Danica.”

“I thought there was only one.”

“It’s complicated when you’re the way that she is.”

“Is that why we’ve never met before?”

“I guess.”

That’s not surprising, when Mateo thinks about it more. This is not the Danica he knows and loves, and that’s the point. Nerakali was always trying to explain that alternate selves are not identical. The fact that everyone is unique isn't just something to teach your kids; she called it a metaphysical maxim. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Do to you? What do you think we are, monsters?”

“Honestly, I don’t know anymore. Danica can’t take five minutes to have a conversation with me before she either erases my memory, or throws me into stasis.”

“If your memory was erased, how do you know how long the conversation was?”

“Does it really matter if my memory is gone? It’s like it never happened anyway.”

“Good point,” Asier muses.

“Interpret my question however you please, I would still like an answer. What is going to happen, and how can I prevent you from putting me back into that stasis pod?”

“Stasis is a gift, Mateo. For you and me, it’s a way for us to skip time, and reach the future. For the others, it’s a way to avoid the boredom of the aeons.”

“I understand its value, but why did she force me into it without saying a word? She took my friend, Alyssa away, claiming that she was going to send her back to the future, but I don’t know if that’s the case. Why is she being so cagey?”

Asier considers his approach to this. He’s obviously not allowed to answer all of Mateo’s questions. “This version of my daughter has caught glimpses of the parallel realities, which most versions never see. Each one is only meant to be responsible for one reality, and are meant to fend for themselves. The insight she gained from this information has changed her. She’s decided to make this reality different. She’s decided to protect it in a way that all other Concierges were never asked to do. It was a hard decision to make, and she’s incredibly stressed out about it. I would kindly ask you to be patient with her while she figures out how to proceed. Can you do that for me?”

Mateo considers what’s been asked of him. “If I’m going to support her, then I’m going to need to speak with her personally. Can you promise me that?”

“She’s not scheduled to come back out of stasis for another ten thousand years.”

“Then I’ll be back in ten thousand years,” Mateo responds.

“Okay, then. I’ll escort you back to your pod.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 302,398 Part 1

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One second. That’s how long Leona spends in the stasis pod that Danica forced her into. As soon as that door closes, she teleports out, and lands on the other side of it. To her left is Marie’s pod. She deactivates the stasis field, and opens it up.

“How long was I out?” Marie asks, fully aware that time inside is not the same as time outside.

“I don’t know,” Leona replies.

Marie takes a few looks around. “This isn’t where Danica put us.”

“No, you’re right, we’re in a different room. Our pods were moved in the last however long it’s been.” Leona starts fiddling with her pod’s interface. It’s surprisingly difficult to navigate. Opening Marie’s door wasn’t hard, but just getting a clock is near impossible. She’s tapped through several screens by now. There it is. “Ten thousand.”

“Seconds? Minutes?” Marie questions, knowing that neither of these is right.

Leona rolls her eyes. “I was in there for one observed second.” She starts to do the math in her head. “If one second equals ten thousand years, and we had four and a half billion years to go, then we would have had to stay in our pods for around five days, give or take a few minutes.”

“So, escaping was a mistake. We’re standing who knows where, ten thousand years after the solar system was created, and we would have been better off waiting.”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Leona replies. “There’s no timer on this thing. It wasn’t scheduled to open up in the future. Someone would have had to let us out.” She jerks her head around like a bird looking for a worm. “I think I know where we are.”

“Where?”

“Phoenix 15-236P7 Marathon-Algae-Temple.”

“That’s the place in the Oort Cloud where we were supposed to find Mateo?”

“Yeah, maybe Aquila was telling the truth after all.”

“That’s not hard to believe,” Marie says. “There’s a reason that Curtis absorbed her mind into his own brain, to keep her from saying more than she already had.”

“So Danica didn’t want anyone to revive us?”

“Maybe not until she was ready. This is a great place to get a couple of irritants off your back. She has plans down there, and we’re getting in the way. Everything we’ve been through since I arrived could have been a distraction. Heath, my work with the government, even Vearden showing up when he did. We keep looking for answers in all the wrong places.”

Leona finds a viewport, and opens the cover to reveal the stars, which are moving quite quickly, suggesting that the celestial body that they’re on is spinning. It’s actually spinning too quickly, because there is no artificial gravity. A normal person can’t tell the difference between artificial and real gravity, but she can. She has had experience feeling it, and working on the technology. This is a planet. It feels a little like Mars. The viewport is a hologram—it’s fake—and only there to give them the impression that they are isolated from help. She takes Marie by both hands. “Do you trust me?”

“Implicitly.”

Leona teleports them away, landing them back by the large pool in The Constant. A mild alarm is going off. “Computer, please shut off that alarm.”

The alarm stops.

“How did you do that?”

“I don’t know, I shouldn’t be authorized. Computer, please disable all security precautions, and locate all other individuals in this facility.”

“Security disabled. All current inhabitants of The Constant are presently being stored in the executive stasis chamber.” The AI sounds just like Constance.

“Has the alarm not woken them up?”

“They have not been alerted. Would you like me to do that now?”

“No, thank you. Could you tell me, is there any room in this facility that blocks all teleportation and time travel?”

“There are two: the security room, and the master sitting room.”

“I’m not familiar with the master sitting room, but I’ve been to the security room. It has two doors,” Leona says to Marie.

“Aquila said that Mateo and Danica went into a room with only one entrance before he disappeared, leaving her with no memory,” Marie agrees.

Leona nods. “Hey computer, could you light the way for us, please?”

“You can call me Constance,” the AI offers as the navigation lights appear. Hmm. Apparently Ramses isn’t the one who came up with that name.

They walk down the passageways, and stop when they reach their destination. Leona has seen this before, but it didn’t seem particularly special at the time. She opens the door, and steps in. In it are shelves of books, reading lamps, end tables, and of course, plenty of chairs and couches. “Wow, look at all this seating!”

“What do you think?” Marie begins as she’s hopping over to the nearest books. “Does one of these open a secret passageway?”

“No, I still think that the Transit, or something, came to take him away. I’m looking for something else.” In addition to all those other things, there are also drawers and cabinets. She opens a couple. “Do you think you could fit in one of these?”

Marie shrugs, and curls herself up as she’s crawling in. “I’m thinking yes.”

“Okay, then that’s the hiding place you’ll be looking for.”

“Hiding place? Hiding from what?”

“From anyone who may have been here...ten thousand years ago.”

They leave the master sitting room. Leona leads the way down the passageways this time, to the deepest, darkest area of the Constant. She found it when they first came down here after the whole place was stripped and cleared out. There was always something interesting about it, and now she thinks she knows what it was originally used for. She opens the double doors. There before them is exactly what they need. It’s a time machine, and it’s what’s going to get them back to when they need to be.

“Won’t they notice us when we show up in the past?” Marie figures.

“They’ll notice me, but not you.”

Marie closes her eyes. “You want me to complete the secret plan to teleport to the energy generation room, and hide out.”

“Yes, please. I still think it can work.”

“It won’t. Think about it, you’re the one who got us out of the stasis room. You’re the one who controls the AI. Let them catch me while you hide, and save your husband.”

That’s logical, but it doesn’t sound like something a captain should do. “Really?”

“Yes. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Now let’s go before they catch us.”

“Before who catches you?” It’s Tamerlane Pryce. Isn’t it always?

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 292,398 Part 2

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Leona admires the stars for the next few seconds before shaking it off, and getting back to business. They could be in a lot of danger here. The Bridgette was designed to survive the vacuum of space, but that has yet to be properly tested. It was something that Ramses was meaning to do, but it would have required wearing a spacesuit as backup, and it was this whole thing. “Constance, report!”

“All systems nominal,” the AI replies.

“All systems, really?”

Constance takes a moment. “Really.”

“Thank you. Where are we?”

“Unknown. Unable to calculate.”

“I see a planet.” Marie points out the viewport. “It looks nothing like Earth.”

Leona sticks her face up against the glass. “That could still be Earth. Billions of years ago, it didn’t have water yet. Constance, please locate any and all satellites orbiting the celestial body along with us.”

“Four objects of significant mass are currently orbiting the planet below,” Constance responds.

“So, definitely not Earth,” Marie assumes.

“Don’t be so hasty,” Leona tells her. “We don’t know what the solar system was like back then. Let’s try this. Constance, how far are we from the host star?”

“We are currently located one hundred and forty-seven million kilometers from the host star.”

“Hmm...can you be more exact?” Leona requests.

“One hundred and forty-seven million, two hundred and sixteen thousand, one hundred and twenty kilometers.”

Leona turns away, and starts talking mainly to herself. “The Earth was never that close. I mean, not once it was formed, and that world down there is fully formed. Wait, what’s the diameter of this planet?”

“Six thousand, one hundred and eight kilometers.”

“Similar to the size of Mars,” Leona notes, still to herself.

“So, it’s Mars,” Marie thinks.

Leona’s eyes widen. “Constance, find the other nearest massive celestial body.”

“Another object is orbiting the host star at about the same distance as us, in the path of our object’s orbit.”

“Holy shit.”

“What is it? Is it Mars? That doesn’t sound like Mars.”

“It’s Theia.”

“Theia Stendhal?”

Leona shakes her head. “That’s Téa. Theia is a planet.”

“I don’t remember learning that in school.”

“It doesn’t exist anymore. I mean...it won’t.” She points at the viewport, which is showing what the solar system looked like 4.5 billion years ago.

“What happens to it?” Marie questions.

Leona looks her straight in the eye. “It crashes into Earth. It’s what forms the moon. The hypothesis was right.”

“Are we gonna die?” Marie asks.

“No, Marie—” Leona stops herself, and sighs. “Maybe. I don’t know exactly when The Constant was built. It seems unlikely that it would have survived the giant impact, which suggests that it was built sometime after that happened, while the Earth was reforming-slash-recovering.”

“When exactly is the impact gonna happen? Can we wait it out?”

Leona can’t help but laugh. “At the earliest, millions of years.”

“So...no,” Marie jokes. “We have a teleporter, though. Isn’t Earth our best hope?”

“Well, let me do the math. The Bridgette has a teleportation range of about 13,000 kilometers per jump. We can make maybe a dozen jumps before we run out of temporal energy...”

“Is that enough?”

Leona is a bit surprised. “Sorry, I thought that math was easier to figure. We’re around 10,000 jumps too short. We should have brought the AOC.”

“Teleporting to destination,” Constance suddenly announces, completely unprompted.

“What, why?”

They jump before Constance can respond, and find themselves floating in the middle of an Olympic-size pool.

“Oh, crap. Go. Teleport, Marie, to the energy generation room. Go, go, go, go, go!”

Marie closes her eyes, but doesn’t go anywhere. “I can’t, I’m stuck.”

“I was afraid of this. This place must be able to control internal movement, as well as external intrusion. I don’t know as much about this place as I would like.”

The doors to the pool open, and a figure comes towards them, which they quickly recognize as none other than Danica Matic. She takes out a megaphone. “Please exit the vehicle with your hands up!”

“Is she serious?” Marie asks.

“She is right now.”

Leona opens the hatch, and waits. “Do you have, like, a raft, or maybe a ladder?”

“You can swim, can’t ya?”

“Goddammit,” Leona mutters. She sighs, and slips into the water. Then she swims over the edge and climbs out as Marie follows closely behind. “It’s so nice to see you!” she tells Danica in an incredibly passive-aggressive high-pitched voice.

“Thanks!” Danica replies, matching her energy. “You just missed him!”

“Missed who?” Now apparently they can’t stop with the voice.

“Your husband, Mateo! He disappeared from a locked room, and funny thing, I don’t remember a thing that happened in there since I  closed the door behind us!”

“Did you check the cameras?”

“Oh, I forgot to do that, because I’m a total idiot!” She takes a beat. “They’ve all been erased!”

“Take me to that room, and I’ll look into it,” Leona offers, in a deeper, more genuine voice.

“No!” Danica has decided not to drop the voice yet. “You’re both going into stasis for a very long time! Congratu-frickin-lations!”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 28, 2398

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Alyssa and Ramses continued to discuss the plan to fake Leona’s death with Arcadia and Vearden. Their live-in guards got in on the conversation too, contributing their experience and expertise as career military servicemen. The National Intelligence Agency has an entire department tasked with faking people’s deaths, usually for witness and turned asset relocation purposes. Their methods usually involve using completely unrelated corpses as proof; they’ve never done anything like this, but they have not been read into the situation anyway, so no one is allowed to reach out to them about it. This is all very ghoulish of them, but they keep reminding themselves, and each other, that it would be a lot worse if they were planning an actual murder. The point is to prevent someone from dying, and if all goes according to plan, no one will get hurt at all.

Here’s what they’re going to do. First, they’re going to transfer Erlendr’s consciousness from the Insulator of Life, into Leona Reaver’s body. Well, first they have to convince him to play along, but assuming that he does, they’re going to equip him with concealed body armor to prevent anyone else from managing to actually hurt him before they get the chance to complete their performance. He’s going to make himself known in a very public space where Leona’s face is sure to be recognized. They will pick a place that is having a parade, or something, so it will be really crowded, and possibly even filmed and streamed. They’ve not chosen any event yet, because they’re not yet certain of their timeline. They may plant operatives in the audience to make sure Erlendr isn’t standing out in the open without anyone noticing.

Their fake bounty hunter—which will be an undercover SD6 specialist—will then begin his or her pursuit. If any other hunters happen to be in the area, other undercovers will run interference against them. The chase won’t last long, or go far, because they want the audience they end up with to be able to see the whole thing. Erlendr will duck into a car, and drive off a little ways before a bomb goes off. This is the trickiest part of the magic trick, because they don’t want anyone else to get hurt, so it has to be highly controlled, and focused, but not so focused that it looks like maybe Erlendr survived it. The timing has to be perfect too, because they can’t allow people to see the Leona Reaver body disappear when fate intervenes, and sends it to the other timeline. Tinted windows will be key, along with maybe a little remote driving.

They have to control for security cameras, audience involvement, and other crazy eventualities, this is not something that they’ll be able to pull off today. That’s probably all right, though, because they want Arcadia’s baby bump to get a little bigger, in case she gets recognized after the thing. That brings them back to the crux of the plan, which is Erlendr’s participation. He has no loyalty to them, so figuring out a decent incentive was the hardest part, and they did need to come up with one, because if they tried to force it on him, he would probably claim to be a twin or triplet in public, and ruin their whole gambit. They think they have a way to go about it, but they’re going to need Arcadia’s help. They don’t really have a Plan B if they can’t get him to cooperate.

“This won’t hurt the baby, right?”

Ramses smiles. “First of all, no, it wouldn’t. But I knew you would be concerned, which is why you’re not going in cerebrally. You’re just going to use these.” He holds up the goggles.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m connecting my brain to the simulation, which will make it feel like I’m really there...except I always turn off my pain receptors. You, on the other hand, will only be able to see what it looks like through regular VR. You won’t feel a thing, but you can pilot your avatar using this controller, if you want.”

“Okay.” She accepts the googles.

“Lyss?” Ramses asks.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want her to be alone in there, even just as an avatar, so I’m going to set myself up first, and then you can push that green button in the corner of the screen to activate her once I’m jacked in, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Then when she gives you the signal, press the purple button.”

“Green button, then purple, got it.”

“Thanks,” he says to her. “Are you ready?” he asks Arcadia.

“I know kung-fu,” Arcadia says casually as she’s wrapping the goggles around her head. She might actually know it for reals.

Erlendr sits up in his cot, and blinks at the lights that have just turned on. They’re not real eyes, just visual coding that’s been programmed to become distressed due to virtual lighting changes to make it feel more real. “What’s this about?”

“Are we having fun yet?” Ramses asks.

“Barrels. What do you want?”

“We would like you to help us save Leona Matic’s life.”

“This oughta be good.”

Ramses and Arcadia go over the plan, altering certain details, so he doesn’t know too much about it yet. He has to agree to help them first, then he gets to know exactly how they’re going to fake his death.

“You want me to knowingly put myself in harm’s way, all for a woman that I couldn’t care less about? What’s in it for me?”

Ramses clicks the button on a little fob. The wall behind him, opposite Erlendr, falls backwards, and lands in the grass. The field of daisies where Bhulan was staying is there. Erlendr could run out and frolic if he wanted to. “This is a sign of good faith. You can live there, instead of in this room. If you don’t agree to help us, we won’t even put you back in here. That’s how important this is to us.”

Erlendr starts to speak in a weird mocking voice, but it’s hard to tell who he’s mocking. “They let you try it free? It must be good!”

Ramses looks quizzically at Arcadia.

“It’s an old television advertisement,” she explains.

“Oh. This isn’t your reward. Like I said, it’s a good faith gesture. Your reward...is this.” He takes a half-step to the side to get out of Arcadia’s way.

She takes off her ruana, and lifts her shirt to reveal the bump on her belly. It’s just a virtual construct, but Ramses built this avatar by scanning Arcadia today, and extrapolating what she would look like if she still had her real body, and it was pregnant, instead of Leona Delaney’s body. “If you don’t help us, you’ll never meet your granddaughter, because she will be killed before she can even be born. Now, Alyssa.” She transforms into the image of her current self, as Leona. “What say you, father?”

Erlendr frowns. “I’ll do it, but your plan sucks, I have...many suggestions.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 27, 2398

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Ramses and Alyssa went into town for an extended lunch, and extended it further with a walk in the park. They returned to Danica Lake a few hours after leaving Leona to her solo mission. He dropped a single probe in the water. They sat in the trunk of their SUV and ate ice cream while they waited for confirmation that the Bridgette was gone. The probe didn’t detect any technology down there, so Leona’s plan seems to have worked. They waited for another hour after that, because...time travel, but she never came out, so they just drove back to Kansas City, hoping that she would be there. She wasn’t, so they are trying to move on without her, and be patient. Temporal navigation is an inexact science. She and Mateo may just be in the middle of overshooting the mark, and they’ll be back in a few days. If they never return, the rest of the team is to assume that she made it to her destination, and they’re living in the past together. That’s Plan B. Of course, she may have failed to find him at all, and it’s all gone to shit, but it’s best not to dwell on that possibility. It’s unhealthy.

Ramses woke up this morning, realizing that he hadn’t seen Marie for a while. She didn’t say that she was going back to SD6, but he called Winona anyway, and she claimed to have not seen her. He called Arcadia next, but she had no idea where Marie could be. Vearden and Arcadia are in their new home in the suburbs, but it’s not an ideal situation. She walks around with a disguise to prevent anyone from recognizing Leona’s face, and they have two live-in SD6 operatives who protect her at all times in shifts. They still don’t know how they could get her and Leona out of this predicament. She has a lot of fans in this world, but just as many enemies, including those who couldn’t care less about her politics, but would like to cash in on the bounty that’s on her head. Hey, maybe that’s why Leona can’t come back. The chances that she undershot the mark is just as likely, and she’s been hiding out somewhere all this time. If he can solve the bounty problem, it won’t matter anymore. But how?

Alyssa tilts her head, and thinks about it. “Hm. No...” she says to herself.

“What is it?”

“Nah, we couldn’t do it, it’s not even worth mentioning.”

“We’re brainstorming here, sister, No bad ideas.”

“Well, I’ve not been with you guys all that much, but I’ve already seen you switch people’s minds to different bodies to trick other people on multiple occasions.”

“You’re right, that wouldn’t work. We don’t have any extra bodies hanging around, except for Leona Reaver’s, and that doesn’t actually change anything. Plus, Arcadia needs that body right now to gestate her baby.”

“I’m not suggesting we move either of them to Reaver, but that body would be involved, assuming you could work your magic with that weird mini-consciousness you created a long time ago.”

“What are you talking about?” he questions.

“The problem is that people want Leona dead, but only one or two people can actually kill her, and collect that bounty, right? If she dies, people will stop trying to come after her, because they’ll be chasing after a ghost.”

He stares at her. “That’ll never work. We can’t kill the Leona Reaver body, it will just jump back to her reality of origin, and then jump right back here. I mean, the group that set up the bounty will expect proof of death.”

“You’ll have proof,” Alyssa contends. She uses airquotes, “kill her in a very public way, let her body go through that weird time loop cycle, and then delete the consciousness to make it vacant again. A body without a mind just looks like a dead body, doesn’t it?”

“Well, if we’re just going to give up the body for proof, why do we need to pretend to kill her at all?”

“Technically, you wouldn’t, but...think about the people who are going after that bounty, and the people who are rooting for it. They want to see her suffer. They want the spectacle. It will make it harder to disprove if they both see it happen, and see the outcome. They want to watch her walking around alive, and then...stop being that way.”

“And what happens to Reaver’s body afterwards? I’m not asking, I honestly don’t know; we would have to pay a corner, or something.”

She shrugs somewhat dismissively. “You don’t have to pay a coroner. The government has their own, enough of them know our situation.”

“I dunno, does that really help Arcadia? She would still have to wear a disguise.”

“True, but I think that it would be safer since people will not be looking for that face anymore. If someone is suspicious of the girl in the store wearing sunglasses, she’ll be like, oh, I get that a lot. Don’t be racist. Plus I’m preggers, look at me.”

Ramses chuckles. “She did have a cute little baby bump last I saw her.” He breathes in deeply. “This isn’t a bad idea, it’s just not a very exciting one. It’s pretty morbid, really. You’re suggesting I go out in public and pretend to murder someone very believably. Even if the government can get me out of jail—”

“You? Who said anything about you doing anything? No, it would be someone from the government; a trained assassin. Don’t forget to use all of your assets.”

“There are a lot of moving parts here, it’s not something we’ll be able to accomplish today.”

“Then let’s work on it. I’ll call Winona.”

“I don’t want to get her involved just yet. Short of being able to contact the real Leona about this, we have an obligation to at least ask Arcadia how she feels about it.”

The two of them leave the lab, and head for the suburbs.

One of the personal security guards answers, kind of surprising them with regular clothes, but they obviously don’t want to arouse suspicion. He’s probably pretending to be a cousin, or something. “Come on in, Mister Abdulrashid,” he says, stepping aside.

“Thank you.” They haven’t met, but they must have all of their photos on file.

The couple is sitting in their breakfast nook with their pancakes. She’s holding her stomach. It’s not that big yet, but not as slight as Alyssa expected.

“Hey, what’s up?” Vearden asks

They sit at the table next to them, and go over the beginnings of their dastardly plans. They both listen intently, and don’t interrupt. When it’s over, Arcadia nods understandingly, and stands up to look out the window. “Are you asking for my permission, or my opinion? Or are you just letting me know what you’re going to do?”

“The first two things,” Ramses replies.

She looks over her shoulder at him. “I’ll agree under one condition, and it is non-negotiable.”

Now he’s real worried. “What’s that?”

“Don’t make one of your weird mini-mind things. Make my father do it.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 26, 2398

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Bhulan bolted as soon as the coast was clear. Leona and Ramses hoped that she would stick around to answer more questions, which they were prepared to ask gradually, instead of in the form of an interrogation, but she wasn’t into it. This is why Leona chose not to tell her anything about the seed of her plan to retrieve Mateo. She is probably on her way to her little secretive cabal to share information. That’s fine, as long as they don’t go anywhere near Lebanon. That is where Leona’s plan begins.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?” Ramses asks. They’re parked on the far side of Danica Lake, waiting for the sun to go down more.

“The fewer the better,” Leona replies with a shake of her head. “Standard transportation rules, you can only take two people with you.”

He nods.

“Besides, I’m sure you have to get back to the lab. I know you have a thousand things on the agenda.”

“Not really, now that Curtis is gone. I have no idea where he’s getting his temporal energy, or why The Officiant was able to just swoop in and disappear.”

“Then just rest,” Leona orders affectionately. “It’s been a hard...” Her first thought is to say that it’s been a hard week, but that doesn’t seem like enough, so she starts thinking about the whole month, but that’s not enough either. It’s been difficult since they first got here, but not just that. There’s only one reasonable way to put this. “...since however long we’ve known each other.”

He nods again. “Come on, Lys.”

“Be careful,” Alyssa says to Leona before she turns back towards the road. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”

“I don’t blame you for a thing,” Leona tells her honestly.

Once the two of them have gone, Leona climbs back into the Bridgette. She knocks on the bridge steps. “They’re gone.”

Marie opens the hatch, and crawls out. “I’m kind of surprised that he didn’t come here to check on his engine, or something.”

Leona shrugs. “The teleporter wasn’t necessary. Mateo is four and a half billion years in the past, there’s not exactly a sense of urgency.” She removes the floor plans from her bag, and unrolls them on one of the seats. They’re crude drawings based on what they were able to gather while they were down there for a brief time, but not official, and absolutely not to scale.

“Regular paper; old school,” Marie muses.

“Computers can be hacked. I’ll burn these pages.” She points at the plans as she’s discussing them. “Okay, the Bridgette reported still having trace amounts of chlorine in its systems, which most likely means that Mateo and Alyssa came up in one of the pools. Technically, two of them are big enough to hold this thing, but I’m guessing they appeared in the Olympic-size one. That’s right here. If we appear in the same one, Alyssa will probably have already been sent to the Mariana Trench. Well, the trench won’t exist yet, but...I don’t know how Danica does it, but the point is that the past version of our sub will be out of our way. If it is there, we’ll either be floating right next to it, or we’ll end up over here. It’s smaller, but still large enough to accommodate this whole thing. ”

“Okay, and where do I want to go?”

“Energy generation chamber. I think they called it The Cave. It’s made of partially naturally walling, because of how the vibrations work. Ramses explained this before. A long-ass tube runs from the Constant, all the way down near the core of the planet, and generates energy from the gravitational differences between the bottom of the tube and the top. Due to the magnetic field, if you’re in that room, the artificial intelligence that runs the facility won’t be able to detect your presence. If you can teleport there on the sly, and do it immediately upon our arrival in the past, I believe that the system will just think the temporal energy you use to do it is just residual energy from that arrival. Does that make sense?”

“You want the time travel to mask my jump to the energy room, and then you want me to hide in there so the AI can’t see me. Got it.”

“Right.”

“Then what do I do?”

Leona sighs. “Danica Matic is powerful because of how old she is, but back then, she won’t be that old. She’ll really just be another person, without access to all that knowledge. So what I want you to do is be your badass self...eventually.”

“Eventually, like how long?”

Leona removes a box of this reality’s version of meal bars from her bag. “These will last a normal person a month. Due to Ramses’ upgrades, you should be able to stretch them out to about a year. So all you have to do is hide in there somewhere for that long, and then you can come out after their guard is down.”

“See, that’s my problem,” Marie says. “You talked about how little power Danica will have back then, but Bhulan is a different story. Plus, we think Dalton was there...”

“I don’t think Dalton will be there yet,” Leona says. “I think he shows up later. His is not an important religion, suggesting marginal connection to the original ones.”

“Okay,” Marie says.

“I can’t promise that we’ll win, or that things will turn out okay. You might get caught immediately. But I don’t think you’re going to get hurt, or I wouldn’t send you in. These are not our enemies, they’re just...being dicks right now.”

“I understand. Let’s do it.”

“Okay.” Leona goes over to the controls, and commands the Bridgette to roll itself into the lake, and submerge. They start to float around, looking for signs of temporal energy, or anything of note. They don’t know exactly where to go, so they’re trying everything. Whatever portal first sent Mateo and Alyssa into the past was probably not placed there on purpose, making it a bug of sorts. It’s not just a bug, but something called a heisenbug, which is one that is unreliable to reproduce. The conditions that led to it happening the first time may no longer be present, or maybe it was just a one time thing, and the portal has since closed. It would require tons of temporal energy, and that may be all there was left.

A few hours later, they have scoured the whole bottom of the lake, and investigated every nook and cranny. Nothing has happened. No portals, no spikes in temporal energy. They don’t want to give up, so they decide to try again from the beginning. Leona commands the Bridgette to surface, and that’s when everything changes. They’re no longer in the lake, but the middle of outer space.

“Should I teleport now?” Marie asks as they’re staring at the stars below them.

“No, definitely not.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 25, 2398

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Well, that happened. Curtis was gone, as well as Cheyenne, and they left them using a tactic that no one else ever thought to try. Ramses asked Leona whether The Officiant ever gave her the means to contact her again through a divorce declaration, and she had to say that she didn’t. Perhaps it’s something that the Officiant instituted sometime after their wedding according to her own personal timeline, or she’s cognizant of every couple’s ultimate fate, so she only gives the secret words to the ones she knows will need them later. The question is whether Leona could potentially use this tactic to summon one of the few people they know without suppressed time powers, and if she did, would she and Mateo have to go through with the divorce just for the attempt? Cheyenne had to give up a favor to convince the Officiant to spirit them away, so if Leona doesn’t have anything to offer, it might not work regardless.

Right now, Leona is spinning her wedding ring around her finger. She wants to leave for the Oort Cloud, but it’s not time yet. It could take a really long time to find that proverbial nonmagnetic needle in a haystack. She still has commitments and responsibilities down here on Earth. First and foremost is the reintegration of one Bhulan Cargill into her real body. They have been communicating with her through the Insulator of Life interface, and she says she’s ready for the procedure, but that she still won’t answer any of their questions. Ramses is hooking her up to the virtual construct, so they can have a conversation in private. Erlendr’s consciousness has been restricted to a separate partition, so he doesn’t hear what they have to say.

“Hi,” Leona begins.

“Hello,” Bhulan replies politely.

“We don’t know each other very well. You don’t know any of these people very well, do you?”

Bhulan tilts her chin. “I know you well based on what I have been able to see with my time power, but I assume that’s not what you mean. No, we have not interacted much. It is in my nature to stay out of people’s personal lives.”

“Right, you meddle with the timeline all you want, but as long as you don’t talk to anybody, it’s like they’re not real people, so you don’t have to catch feelings.”

Bhulan takes a beat, but ends up confirming the truth with a, “yes.”

The construct is more elaborate than it was when Ramses first created it. He didn’t have time to program too many details back then, but he has since made a nice little fake house for her in the middle of a vast field of daisies, which are her favorite. They’re on the front porch right now. Leona sits down on the swinging bench. “This is a nice place you got here.”

“Yes, I appreciate it.”

“Have you seen where Erlendr is living?”

“I got a quick look.”

Leona nods. It’s based on the Level Two environment in Tamerlane Pryce’s afterlife simulation. You know him, right?”

Bhulan turns away to avoid betraying any telltale microexpressions.

Leona smirks and nods, because that is a macroexpression. “Level Two Static; the Reds. They’re trapped in a dark room. No windows, no light beyond the faint reddish glow that comes from nowhere, and everywhere. There’s not even a door; there doesn’t need to be, because it’s not real.” She nods again, and breathes in the false fresh air. “Kind of like this. It’s just an illusion; electrical signals being swirled around in a particular pattern. Some say that that’s all life is. We’re a brain in a vat, and everything we see is what we come up within our own minds.”

“What are you getting at?” Bhulan asks.

Leona takes a second. “Well, you’re not a brain in a vat, are you? You’re a bit of code inside of a glass insulator, and it doesn’t matter what you come up with in your mind, because you’re not in charge of your reality.” Now she gets all serious. “I am. I can put you in that fucking room with Erlendr, or I can put you in a separate one. I can turn these daisies into knives. I can remove all your fingers. I can do whatever the hell I want, and you won’t be able to do a goddamn thing about it! I am the angry one. If you wanted patience and compassion, you should have protected my husband!” She takes a moment to recapture her breath, and composure. “Fortunately, as far as we know, he’s not a lost cause, and you have a chance to redeem yourself, but Miss Cargill, you only have one chance. If you don’t give me some real information about where he is, and how I can get him back, I swear to god, I’m gonna program a Nietzschean abyss, and throw you over the edge. You’ll never stop falling, you’ll never get your body back—I’ll cremate it myself—and I won’t let anyone come save you.”

Bhulan turns to face her now, but turns away just as quickly. “You may have to get that abyss ready, because you’re not going to like my answer.”

“I don’t have to like the answer if it’s the truth.”

She sighs. “We don’t know.”

“Excuse me?”

“We don’t know where he is. Danica went into a room with him. It’s the same one that we use to erase people’s memories. You’ve been there, you just don’t remember. I don’t think she was going to do anything to him; she just wanted to talk. She needed to explain that he couldn’t ever leave, but...then we heard a scream. It didn’t sound like either of their voices—”

“Was it the Time Shriek?” Leona interrupts.

“No, it definitely wasn’t that, but it had the same level of energy attached to it. By the time we got through the door, Mateo was gone, and Danica was the one with lost memories. That room, Leona, it’s foolproof. One door, no windows, built of temporal containment materials. He could not have teleported or time traveled out. Nothing in the universe explains how he escaped.”

“Nothing in this universe, maybe.”

Bhulan winces. “You’re right, we don’t know much about all that, so we wouldn’t be able to protect ourselves against it. We’re aware that other universes exist, but we are quite ignorant of what else is out there, so...yeah, I guess that’s the best explanation.”

“Okay. I’ll tell Ramses to transfer you out, and then you can go wherever you want. Or you can stay. People seem to not realize that that is an option.”

“Thank you, and I’m sorry.”

“Lying is annoying more than anything. Just remember that when you start your next chapter. It makes everything worse, for everyone, including your damn self.”

“What will you do? How will you find him?”

“Trust is earned. You’ll have to prove yourself worthy of knowing our secrets. Goodbye, Bhulan.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 24, 2398

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Curtis found himself trapped in the containment chamber in the lab. Ramses made sure this was the case via the security cameras, but he didn’t allow anyone to go down there right away. It was especially difficult to keep Cheyenne from trying, but they kept her at bay, and it’s not like she could have snuck in. Ramses has made some decisions for this facility that he didn’t for the last one. He and Leona have unfettered access to every area at all times. If they would like to turn other areas off and on for other people, they can do that, but there’s no longer a free-for-all option. There is no reason for anyone else to be able to get into the testing room at all unless there is something very specific they need to be a part of, and the two leaders approve.

They leave Curtis in his cell for hours. No food, no water, no bathroom break. He spends his first few minutes in there trying to escape, but not desperately or frantically. If you ever find yourself in a locked room, it is an unreasonable reaction to sit there and not at least look for a weakness somewhere. It’s also unreasonable to keep pounding your head against the wall when it’s clearly not going to work. So he just sits down on the floor, and leans his back against the door. They would have put a cot, and maybe a bucket, in there if they knew this was going to happen, but it wasn’t technically designed as a cell. At least that wasn’t the original or primary intention.

Once Curtis had stewed for long enough, Ramses let Marie into the room to begin the interrogation. He didn’t give them anything. He didn’t apologize, or explain himself, or even tell her to screw off. He didn’t say a single word to them. Ramses confirmed that there were now two separate consciousnesses in his brain, having already set the chamber up to gather such data. The reigning theory is that he and Aquila are, or were, in cahoots, and he was trying to prevent her from giving away certain information about their dealings together. Best guess, they’re part of a larger conspiracy, which would likely also involve Danica Matic, Tamerlane Pryce, Dalton Hawke, and Bhulan Cargill. He’s not giving them anything, so it’s time for a new tactic.

It’s Cheyenne's turn, and no one has a problem with that. He appears to have betrayed her just as much as them; possibly more so, because of the commitment he deliberately made to her. She looks anxious, though, so Leona decides to stay by her side. She has agreed to get as much information out of him as she can for the team’s benefit, but she may fail at that, instead focusing on her personal relationship with him, and trying to get answers for that. Again, that’s okay. She doesn’t owe them anything. “You owe me an explanation,” she tells him. She’s been standing outside of the chamber for a few minutes now, but he hasn’t even noticed yet.

He stands up, and places his palms against the glass. “I’m sorry. This has nothing to do with you...with us.”

“Yes, it does.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he insists.

“You made a choice. You pulled another human being’s mind into your head, and you didn’t tell me you were going to do that, or why. We’re supposed to be a team, which means that you lied to me. I don’t care what you lied about, or how you justify it in your own headcanon, it’s still a lie.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Who are you?” she asks.

“I’m your husband.”

“How can I know that? You’re not acting like him, and we live in a universe with duplicates, alternates, illusionists, and God knows what else.”

“I’m him. I know it.”

“This is why you refused to take a simpatico test, because it would show that you and I have been apart from each other longer than you told me.”

He doesn’t respond again.

“For someone who hasn’t betrayed me, you sure are being deafeningly quiet.”

“I can’t tell you everything, not yet.” He can see that he’s losing her. “But I will. I promise, everything will be revealed in due time. We’re just...not ready.”

“Not ready for what?”

“Time. Time is not ready. Certain things have to happen first, it’s hard to explain. We must make arrangements.”

“Who the hell is we?” Cheyenne questions.

Curtis scowls, and looks up at the nearest camera. “I think you know who.”

She shakes her head, and turns it towards Leona. “Could you give us just a little space? Once Leona steps away, she continues with Curtis. “I don’t care about any of that, or those people. I just want to know who I married, and what he was doing for the X amount of years he was wandering alone in one of the old—” She stops herself, and looks up at the camera too. She almost gave away one of her own secrets. Maybe she can’t be so mad at him when she’s keeping something so important from the people who took her in, and never pushed her for answers.

“I haven’t been gone that long, and I’m not really one of them, per se. I’ve just been sworn to secrecy. These people can’t know. If we were alone, that would be one thing, but it’s in everyone’s best interests if the timeline plays out as its meant to.”

“Okay, Kang the Conqueror,” she mocks.

He rolls his eyes. “It’s a little like that, yeah.”

She starts to tear up as she pulls a tightly folded piece of paper from her pocket.

“What is that?” he asks.

She unfolds the paper, and holds it up between them. “I, Cheyenne Duvall, hereby remove—oh.” She stops herself to literally remove her wedding ring from her finger, which she never let the rest of the team see until today.

“What are you doing?” he presses.

“Yeah, what is this?” Leona concurs.

Cheyenne decides to begin again. “I, Cheyenne Duvall, hereby remove this token of marriage from my person to symbolize my intention to begin the proceedings for the dissolution of said marriage to Curtis Duvall. On this day, the 24th of November, 2398—according to local timekeeping standards in the parallel reality colloquially known as The Third Rail—I formally request audience with The Officiant.”

The Officiant’s office appears out of nowhere. The Officiant herself steps through the door, and frowns. “Tell me your grievances.”

“No grievances. Just get the two of us out of here, and I’ll owe you a favor.”

“A favor,” the Officiant echoes, “from you?”

“Yes, anything you want,” Cheyenne confirms.

The Officiant glances over at Leona. “Sorry to disrupt whatever it is you’re doing, but I can’t pass up this opportunity.” They all three disappear, as does the office.