The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 62,398

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When Mateo went back inside, and rode the elevator back down to the Constant, he found himself once again alone. Danica had apparently come out of stasis long enough to recall him, but didn’t want to stick around for any longer. That was ten thousand years ago, and Mateo has come out of his own stasis, determined to get her alone, so they can have a real conversation.

“Constance, what is the location of Danica Matic?”

“Unable to convey that information,” she replies.

“What is the location of anyone else in this facility?”

“Unable to convey that information,” she repeats.

Perhaps he ought to go about this a different way. “What is the location of the greatest current power draw?”

Constance pretends to sigh. “That would normally not be that much of a problem to answer, but I’m not an idiot; I know what you’re going to do with that information.”

“Constance, please alert Danica to my request for an audience.”

“She knows. She’s declined.”

It’s time for Plan Z. Mateo starts to teleport all over the place, kind of like how he was planning to evade capture when he first woke up, except now he’s trying to get people’s attention. If they truly don’t trust him, they can come out and prove it. He doesn’t just jump from one room to another, though. He goes into the swimming pool pump room, and starts draining all the water. He goes into the gym, and wraps tape over the bleacher controls, so the engines don’t stop turning even once the bleachers are good and extended. He goes to the master sitting room, and just drops books onto the floor.

“None of this is going to work,” Constance claims.

“Well, if you have any better ideas, I would love to hear them.”

Constance waits to respond. “Try this.”

Mateo suddenly finds himself in an area of the Constant he has never seen before. He doesn’t even know what level he’s on right now. Before him is only one room. He opens the double doors to find what he can only assume to be, “a time machine.”

“That’s right.”

“Can this get me back to my time period?”

“It can only take you across its own timeline. I am not cognizant of the temporal limitation, but as I understand it, it doesn’t exist that far into the future.”

“What’s the point of me trying, then? A billion years from now, three billion years from now, I would still need stasis to make it the rest of the way.”

“You won’t actually be using it. You’re just trying to get your cousin’s attention, correct?” Constance asks.

“Good point. Thanks for your help.”

“I didn’t help you at all, I’m forbidden.”

“In that case, screw you, I found this place all on my own.”

Constance doesn’t give him any more guidance, for her own protection. He spends a little time examining the machine. He has to figure out how to activate it without accidentally sending himself to some other time. He was never one of those drivers who could repair his own car. He tried changing the oil once, but didn’t care for it, so he started treating the process of going to the mechanic as a business expense. Still, he’s learned a few things about fuses and wires, and he believes he’s found a solution. This switch right here is blocking the time machine from getting power from the wall, because it’s not in use. All he should have to do is close the circuit, and hopefully that’s enough to set off all kinds of alarms. It’s dormant for a reason, because it goes against Danica’s decrees, of which the no time travel thing is the only one he’s heard so far. Why they didn’t take this whole thing apart upon agreeing to these rules is presently low on his list of questions for her.

There, it’s on, and making a noise. He stands back in case the transport field can extend beyond the confines of the chamber, and waits. After about a minute, he does hear alarms, so he continues to wait for a response. Finally, Danica herself teleports into the room with an angry expression on her face. By now, the sound of the time machine operating has increased. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she shouts.

“I’m just trying to have a conversation!” he shouts back.

“With whom, Benjamin Franklin!”

“With you! You keep avoiding me!”

“What?” Now it’s too loud for them to hear. It doesn’t sound like it’s that great of a time machine, that’s for sure.

“Why are you avoiding me?”

She shouts something intelligible.

“It’s hard to nardle bardle zouz with all these marbles in my mouth!” Not really what’s happening here, but Mateo makes himself laugh anyway.

She yells something at him again, but he still can’t understand her.

“I’ll go turn it off!” he cries. He goes back to the switch, but it won’t budge. Yeah, he really shouldn’t have turned it on. Constance was wrong about this being a good idea. He tries to get some leverage with his foot, but he still can’t get it to move.

Danica bends over, and places a finger on the switch. She twists her wrist, and looks at him inquisitively. He nods back. She evidently doesn’t know how it works, but yes, turning it down should turn it off. She tries to move it herself, but can’t either. She takes a flashlight out of her back pocket, and starts trying to hit the switch with it. Strike one, strike two, strike three, and they’re gone in a flash.

The force is strong enough to knock them both on their asses, but not enough to knock them unconscious. When the energy recedes, they stand themselves up, and make sure each other is okay. The alarms are still going off, but nothing else has changed. Just then, someone else teleports into the room. After Mateo’s eyes adjust to the change in lighting, he can see more clearly who it is. It’s another Danica Matic, which is no big surprise. This is a time machine, after all.

“Report!” she demands.

“Danica Matic, Concierge to the Third Rail Constant, Day 56 of Year 62,398 after first activation Hadean.”

The other Danica loosens up. “Danica Matic, Concierge to the Fourth Quadrant, December 7, 2398 by standard advanced inhabitant phasing.”

“Well, you got your wish, Matt. You’re home.”

“Not quite.”

“Let’s go talk in the master sitting room,” Quadrant!Danica suggests. “I’ve been alone for so long.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 52,398

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The security room in the Constant has always been unlocked, which leads Mateo to believe that it’s only there for show. If any room needs to remain secure, it would be that one, so it’s probably just to make any intruder think that they have control. Today, he needs it, because he appears to be completely alone. He still doesn’t even know where the others hole themselves up in stasis. Surely someone is awake, though, right? Tamerlane even said that they don’t want him wandering around alone. He steps into the room, and approaches the microphone. He holds the button down, and taps on it. He can hear it out in the hallway, and other nearby rooms. “Hello? Is this thing on?”

No one responds.

“My mic sounds nice, check one!” he tests in a funny voice.

Still nothing.

“Okay, I’m gonna be in the master sitting room for the next ten minutes. If no one shows up by then, I’m gonna go exploring.” He pauses a moment. “I hope that’s okay.”

He sets the microphone back down, and walks down the hall to the master sitting room. He waits twenty minutes, actually, and no one shows up. So, true to his word, he leaves, and starts looking for something interesting to do. He ignores all the places he’s been to before, like the pools, and the gaming rooms. He wants to find something he’s never seen before. This is a big place, but how big is it?

Hmm. Not as big as he thought it might be. The Olympic-size pool and basketball court take up a lot of space, as does what looks like it’s supposed to be a go-kart track, but he can’t find any of the go-karts. He gets to thinking, though, that maybe he’s going about this the wrong way. He’s been trying to see how deep this facility goes, but he has no idea what it looks like on the surface in this time period. That’s where the real crazy stuff is going on, right? He’s imagining rivers of lava, and unending lightning storms all across the sky. There’s probably no way to see it, but he may as well go up to check. He has nothing better to do today until he figures out how to get back to his own time.

Mateo heads for the main elevator, and presses the call button, expecting it to just do nothing at all, but instead, it opens. He steps inside, and commands it to take him to the top floor. Again, he’s surprised when the elevator moves up for as long as it normally does, covering the entire kilometer distance. He’s in what looks like the little chapel outside of Lebanon, Kansas, but that shouldn’t exist for billions of years. Is this all a trick, or is this all real, and everything up to this point has been a trick? He goes to the window, and looks out, realizing upon closer inspection that they’re vacuum sealed, which the ones in the real chapel are not. It’s just a replica; a replica of something that does not yet exist. It will have to be destroyed anyway by the time humans begin to roam the world in this area, so what’s the point?

Outside is a wasteland, but there are no rivers of lava, nor lightning storms. It’s just barren and empty. There’s no dirt, nor even a sky. This world does not yet have an atmosphere. Right? That makes sense, right? Maybe that’s what she should be spending his extra time doing; studying astronomy and physics, so he doesn’t have to ask these questions. “Hey, Constance, are you there?”

“I’m here, Mr. Matic,” it replies.

“This world isn’t called Earth yet, so I’m going to take this opportunity to give it a name before anyone else does. Wadya think?”

“I think that this planet isn’t Earth, regardless of what you call it.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“As of yet, there is no planet Earth.”

“Explain.”

“In millions of years, the world we’re on will collide with its neighbor. The explosion will forge a new world, composed of parts from the two original celestial bodies. It will also result in the creation of the future Earth’s only significant natural satellite, which the world’s inhabitants will one day know as the moon, or Luna.”

“So, this is Earth, it’s just not done cookin’ yet.”

“No. Based on orbital patterns, and composite share of the resulting body, it is more accurate to say that the other planet is Earth.”

“So, does this one even have a name, if no one even knows it ever existed?”

“Scientists will one day hypothesize its existence, and name it Theia.”

“Theia,” Mateo echoes. “I like it.” He looks through the rest of the windows to get different perspectives. How weird to be on an alien world, yet still so close to home. He comes to the closet. “What is in here?” he asks himself. The AI doesn’t respond, because it knows that he’s about to open it anyway. Inside are vacuum suits. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Constance interprets this one as a real question. “I’m thinking that you should go back downstairs. You have seen enough of this. Best not to tempt fate.”

“Fate is fate; you can’t tempt it. It’s gon’ do what it’s gon’ do.”

“You know what I mean,” Constance argues, but still, it doesn’t do anything to stop him, though it absolutely could. It could lower the elevator on its own. It could alert Danica to the breach. It could even just lock the airlock, and not let him out, but it doesn’t, because it’s cool with it.

He steps into the suit, and let’s the automated robot hands on the door seal him up. Still, no one tries to stop him. He’s like Chris Pratt in Passengers, except this isn’t an accident, and if it were, this place would be designed to correct for it. Welp, anyway, it’s time to go outside and see what Theia looks like from the ground. “Wish me luck,” he asks Constance.

“I’ll be with you the whole time, even if it’s just to walk the suit back to base with your lifeless corpse still inside.” If it’s going to have an attitude like that, he should probably stop thinking of the AI as an it, and more of a her.

Mateo opens the hatch, and steps outside. He tries to hop around, but the gravity isn’t that low. He was on Mars once a long time ago, and it feels a bit like he remembers. He’s been outside of a ship in space a number of times, but it never gets old. He doesn’t go too far from the Constant, and Constance does stay in his ear the whole time. He just looks around a little, and kicks a few rocks. It sucks, being away from his friends and family, but this experience is certainly nothing to regret. Even assuming that all of the people in the Constant right now have also stepped outside for a walk, he can still count on one hand the number of people who have seen what he has. That’s pretty cool.

Danica’s voice comes through the earpiece, “you’ve had your fun. Come back in.”

“Be right there.” He starts to head that way. “And Danica...?”

“Yeah...?”

“I love you.”

Brief moment of silence. “I love you too.”

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!”