The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 42,398

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Mateo’s stasis pod opens on its own again. It’s been ten thousand years, on the dot. “These people are nothing if not consistent,” he thinks to himself out loud. He steps out of the room to find Tamerlane sitting in a chair as if patiently waiting for Mateo to finish getting ready so they can go see a movie together. “Oh. Hi.”

“Hey, good morning.”

“Have you been awake long?”

“Just an hour,” he replies. “They don’t want you wandering around here alone, which makes sense, right? You’re just Danica’s cousin, who anyone who has ever glanced at the timeline can see almost always does the right thing.”

Mateo narrows his eyes at him. “Why are you buttering me up?”

Tamerlane chuckles. “Is that how it sounds? I apologize. It’s just frustrating to see them treat you this way. It wasn’t even this bad when Bhulan and I first showed up.”

“It wasn’t? What was it like?”

“Well, at first Danica threw us in hock, but we talked a little bit, and she soon decided that we weren’t bad news. We lived together for years before anyone started seriously thinking about doing something different in this reality than the main sequence. I mean, of course, we didn’t always know that it was a parallel reality. Danica figured that our respective arrivals were just something that was destined to happen. Only once we learned the truth did she decide to look into how things turned out for her counterparts. And that...”

“Broke her,” Mateo guessed.

“It broke her heart,” he corrected.

“I would sure like to talk with her, if she’s around,” Mateo requests.

“Our schedules have become incongruent. Your whole idea of shunting the unwanted temporal energy to a remote world was brilliant, but it changed how often we come in and out of our pods. I’m only here to keep you company for the day.”

Mateo holds back what would be an offensive grimace. A whole day with no one for company but Tamerlane Pryce? No, thank you. Even though he believes him when he says that he’s an alternate version, Mateo doesn’t see them becoming friends in any reality. They don’t have a lot in common, and that is okay. “If I ask you a question, can you promise to keep it just between the two of us?”

“Certainly.” No hesitation, or hint of sarcasm.

“Why do I need to come out of stasis at all? Is ten thousand years some kind of inherent limit, or what?”

“They thought you were just going to keep teleporting out of your pod anyway, and while teleportation doesn’t technically go against our no time travel rule, it’s close enough, and they would rather you just not do it at all. I see your concern. If you would like to keep coming out of stasis, I won’t say anything. If you want to be on a different schedule, I’m sure they would be more than willing to discuss.”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t really matter when we’re talking billions of years.”

Tamerlane nods. He doesn’t push it when Mateo strongly suggests that he would prefer to be solo for the rest of the day. He seems to trust him more than Danica and Bhulan do. Maybe he really is a different Tamerlane Pryce.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 32,398

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Asier doesn’t come to retrieve Mateo after the next break from realtime. The stasis pod hatch opens on its own ten thousand years later, so Mateo steps out to head for the master sitting room. It’s empty, which he takes as an opportunity. Looking around to make sure that no one is spying on him, he creeps over to the globe, and opens it up. It’s empty too; the Omega Gyroscope has been removed from it.

“She knew she couldn’t trust you,” Bhulan reveals.

Mateo closes it back up without looking at her. “I just wanted to see it again.”

“Uhuh,” she says, not believing him. “It’s hers, you know. As long as the Gyroscope is in use, the user can do whatever they want with it, and no one can take it from them until the current objective has been fulfilled, or they give it freely.”

“It can’t be stolen, got it.” He steps away from it and sighs.

“I can be convinced not to tell her you came straight here to steal it.”

“I wasn’t stealing it, I was just going to borrow it.”

“For what purpose?”

“To get back to my family.”

Bhulan chuckles. “That thing can’t do that for you. I mean, technically it can, but not on its own. People seem to think that its power is limitless, but it’s not. It can alter the physical laws of the world that it is in. It can’t turn you into a bird, and it can’t send you forward in time. At best, it would give you the option of jumping through time, but you would have to figure out how to actually accomplish that on your own.”

“What if I asked it to alter the world so that psychically-powered wormholes capable of time travel open up when conceived up by someone who wants one?”

She smiles. “That’s creative, but you’re not psychic enough. It doesn’t alter people, I mean, not really. Like I said, it can’t turn you into a bird.”

“No birds, no psychics. Understood.”

“Anyway, we’re having a pool party today, if you wanna come. We can print you a swimsuit. I bet you’ve never worn one that fits perfectly.”

It seems weird to have a pool party with five people, three of which are related, but he follows her anyway. They’re in the short course pool today, instead of the Olympic-size one, and it is packed full of party-goers. Who the hell are these people? “Are they holograms, androids...?”

“Oh no, they’re real,” she claims. “Have you ever heard of Westfall?”

“So, they don’t even know where they are?”

“They think that this is a rich community’s disaster bunker.”

“Isn’t that what it actually is anyway?” Mateo suggests.

She just rolls her eyes. The three of them aren’t rich in the traditional sense, but they command all of this real estate, and all power is concentrated in them. They’re rich.

“Did you ask for them to come here?” he asks. “Spit it out,” he encourages when she hesitates to respond.

“It’s the Gyroscope. This is a glitch. Tamerlane thinks it has something to do with its user. He was actually the first Westfall victim to show up, and he just never left. Without them, there would be nothing to do here. Most of the time, when we’re not in stasis, it’s because alarms have reported that someone is here who shouldn’t be. One of us is then tasked with leaving the stasis chamber, and containing the intruder.”

“That’s why Danica is so freaked out, because the whole point is to prevent all this scifi stuff from being able to happen in this reality.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“But intruders like this don’t happen in the other realities, right?”

“Not to this annoying degree, no.” She gestures towards the kids laughing and screaming in the water, thinking they’re pulling one over on a wealthy snob.

“Maybe it’s wrong to think of it as a glitch. Maybe it’s more of a consequence. The Gyroscope is like a vacuum, sucking up all temporal energy, and pushing it away from the world, but that opens tears in whatever separates this universe from others. Things are supposed to go out only, but occasionally, something comes the wrong direction through these tears. I mean, maybe it’s even the temporal energy itself that’s doing it. If you were trying to suck out all the carbon, it would be fine, but what you’re doing is taking power away from us, and giving it to them, which they then use to sneak in.”

Bhulan slowly turns her face away from him in thought. “Hmm.”

“I don’t sound like an idiot?”

“Usually, yes, but that was surprisingly...not entirely ridiculous. What we need to do is move the temporal energy out of the world, and put it somewhere where we can contain it, where it can’t affect anyone. Like a...pocket dimension?”

“Or how about Durus?” Mateo offers. He’s not doing it to be nice. Durus is a rogue planet that is not very far away from Earth in celestial terms, and if he and his friends can get back to the AOC, it won’t take them long to make the journey. From there, the smart team members will surely be able to come up with a way out of the Third Rail, with virtually limitless power at their disposal.

“No, there are too many people there. Well, not in this reality, of course, but in others, and that would put them at risk of accidentally crossing over. One errant portal, and the system breaks down.”

That’s okay, it doesn’t have to be Durus. As long as Mateo knows where it is, they can get to it four and a half billion years from now. By then, these people will have tossed it to the back of their minds so they can focus on other issues. Once this new plan works, they’ll stop worrying about it, which will allow Mateo’s team to exploit it. “I suppose Dardius is out.” He doesn’t want them choosing it, because it’s too far away from here. The AOC can’t make it in a reasonable amount of time.

“Yeah, we wouldn’t wanna do that.” She looks over at him. “In fact, we wouldn’t want it to be anywhere where there are people. That includes you. You’re trying to trick me into telling you where we’ll end up sending the temporal energy.”

“I don’t understand the problem,” Mateo argues. “You want us to leave the Third Rail, we want to leave the Third Rail. To me, that sounds like our objectives are aligned, but you keep acting like I’m the frickin’ enemy.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Yeah, it’s way complicated, and I’m just a big ol’ dum-dum who couldn’t find his arms with his hands. Well, if I’m no longer needed, I think I’ll go take a nap. I haven’t slept in a long time, because the time jumps give me a huge case of FOMO.”

“Mateo...”

“No, it’s okay, I understand. Good luck with your little power vacuum.” Holy crap, power vacuum? Is it really that obvious? Did he just help himself realize where they end up dumping the temporal energy?

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 22,398

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Mateo willingly returns to the stasis pod, but he’s once again brought out after only one second. When Asier opens the hatch, ten thousand more years have passed. No one was reportedly awake at the time, though there’s no way for Mateo to know whether that’s true or not. “Well, we do things a little differently than you,” Asier explains. “Time moves a little slower for us in our pods, and slower still in our joint stasis chamber. It’s still not as slow as time is moving for the rest of the universe, though. This allows us to decide when we want to be part of the group, and when we want to move off alone, while at the same time not being bored by watching the clock tick by as slowly as realtime. And now, you’re part of the group too.”

They have entered the library from before, which appears to be a hangout room for these people. Danica is there, along with Bhulan, and Tamerlane, and that’s it. It’s kind of a letdown, really, Mateo was hoping to see someone here that he didn’t already know was a part of this, so it could be a shock, and maybe explain a few things? Maybe Tristesse Ulinthra is hiding behind the couch? Or how about this, Leona’s birth mother is in the bathroom right now, and about to walk through the door behind them. He’ll just have to wait and see, there’s no inherent reason why everyone in The Constant right now is also awake. He just wishes he could have some kind of ally here to talk to. There are so few people, but there are two clear sides to the party, and he’s on one side alone. He feels out of place, which may be what others have felt when they encounter the team that he’s been on since it was only him and Leona. He’s always had to accept others, rather than be accepted, and truthfully, he doesn’t care for this side of things.

They noticed him at first, but are sort of ignoring him. Asier goes to grab himself a drink from the bar which seems weird for a library, but whatever. Mateo breathes, and works up the nerve to approach the triumvirate. “Matt,” Danica says with a nod.

“Dan,” he volleys awkwardly.

She sighs. “You and I never met.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that. We met, what was it, twenty thousand years ago?”

“No, I know, but I mean, you have history with your Danica. I’m not her. So you’re expecting me to take you in my arms, and tell you everything is going to be okay, but I don’t know you, and you don’t know me.”

Asier side steps over, and offers Mateo a cup of something. “You look like you could use this.”

Mateo continues to stare at his once-cousin while he takes the drink, and takes a sip. It’s just orange juice, no pulp. “I understand the concept of alternate selves.” He jerks his head to the door behind him. “I sleep next to another one of me.”

“Well, you’re not really sleeping—” Tamerlane starts to correct.

Mateo faces him. “No, no, no. You can shut the fuck up.” He turns back to Danica. “I understand that you do not feel as close to me as I do to you, but I would like you to consider something that you seem to have not realized yet.” He points to the crown moulding above them, as if that is specifically what he’s discussing. “This place, the Constant...is a glorified hotel. They even call you The Concierge. Your job is to take in guests, and make them feel relaxed, because people like me have really hard lives. Mine’s not even that bad, comparatively, and I recognize that. Just the same, I expect to be treated with respect. Whether I was technically invited, or not, what you don’t do when someone arrives at your doorstep—who you damn well know is not a threat to you—is throw them in a stasis pod for ten thousand years!”

Bhulan clears her throat, and instinctively shies from the raised voice.

Mateo breathes again. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I can see that it’s a very touchy subject. If you really were my cousin, Future!You would have tried to reach out by now. And funny enough, if you had, I would never have come back here. But I can’t submit a complaint to the customer service department, because you haven’t done that yet. All I can ask is that while I’m here, you try to be patient with me. A parent does not angrily send their child to their room because they ask where babies come from, and the parent isn’t ready to go over that.” He’s starting to get angry himself again, and raising his voice. “Getting pissed at me for trying to get my family home is a bit absurd, if you ask me!” He looks back over at Tamerlane. “And I mean, this guy? I know he hasn’t done the whole afterlife simulation yet, but surely you know how that turns out!”

“I’m not who you think I am either,” Tamerlane says, seemingly a little afraid of being shut down again.

“You mean you’re an alternate?”

“My alt went back in time to create the timeline that had the simulation, and I was born in that timeline. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Mateo nods. “I apologize for snapping at you. I will...try to remember that, and treat you as someone I’ve only just now met. Rule Number Five: treat everyone you meet with respect, as they may unexpectedly return.” He downs the rest of his drink, and decides to walk away. The ball’s in Danica’s court now.

She picks it up. “Can I show you something?”

He turns back around, and closes his eyes gently while he bows slightly.

“Are you sure about this?” Bhulan questions.

“Unless you want to deliberately break The First Decree—which you must admit, would be quite a pathetic attempt at adhering to the Decrees—he’s going to be with us for quite a long time. I would prefer it if he stopped getting so angry at us.”

“We could always keep him in stasis the whole time.”

Danica ignores the suggestion. “It’s just over here.” She walks towards the rotating globe on the other counter.

Mateo plots an intercept course. “It’s quite nice, very detailed.”

Danica laughs, and splits the globe at the equator. The inside is hollow, as one would expect, but it’s not empty. A gyroscope is floating in the center, spinning around, and producing a scifi glow. It’s obviously the Omega Gyroscope, which can apparently manipulate reality to any and all degree.

“Quite nice, indeed,” Mateo emphasizes.

“This is what we’ve been protecting. We protect it so it can protect the timeline. No one is supposed to come here, to this reality. There is no time travel; that’s the First Decree. You being here flies in the face of everything the three of us discussed. There’s a weakness to the Gyroscope’s power, and you’re proof of that. That is why I’m so touchy, because it proves that everything I’m trying to do here will eventually become meaningless.”

“And your father? Is he proof of that too?”

Danica looks at Asier with a frown. “He was...an exception to the First Decree.”

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.”