The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 12, 2398

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Mateo is up to his old tricks, though with a new twist. Every twenty-four hours, he and Danica are spirited away from their current position, and returned to a version of the time machine in the Constant. Instead of jumping a year into the future, though, they end up in a different parallel reality. They believe they have made their final jump now. They first went to the Fourth Quadrant, then the Parallel, then the main sequence, and finally the Fifth Division. There are only five of them total, so this ought to be the Third Rail again. Right? It has to be.

They leave the room, and head down the dimly lit passageways for Danica’s office. She tries to summon Constance, but she never replies. She tries to speak to whatever personality the AI in charge of this version may be, but no one else responds either. Either they’re in the right place, and there’s something wrong with the systems, or it’s a reality they were not previously aware of. “There’s one way to find out,” Danica says as they’re entering the office. “Help me move this.” She sticks her fingers underneath the edge of the back table.

Together, they carry it away to reveal nothing but an empty floor, and a papered wall. “Odd choice, I must say.”

She rolls her eyes, and peels most of the wallpaper away. Behind it, written on the wall in permanent marker, is a long-ass series of numbers and letters. “Yeah, that’s right. We should be home. So where is everyone?”

“This is some kind of code?” Mateo asks, mildly kicking the wall.

Danica starts to point at each number to explain them. H for heads on a coin, eleven for the outcome of a roll of two dice, six for the roll of one die alone, Queen of Hearts.” She takes a half step to finish. “I pulled six numbers for the lottery, five balls for bingo, and this...” She rips the rest of the wallpaper off to reveal a photograph of a lava lamp. “This is what that lamp over there looked like from my chair once I was done with all the other randomizations.”

Mateo nods. “So all of these variables are correct? This is indeed your version of the Constant?”

“It must be,” Danica decides. “The chances that every single outcome is the same in any other reality, especially when accounting for the lava lamp, are profoundly low. I’m not just talking about parallel realities, but other timelines.”

“Got it. So where is everybody?”

She regards him with distrust for a moment, having a debate in her own head, no doubt. Then she nods, and concedes. “Okay, follow me.” She leads him to a secret section of the facility, where they end up in a stasis chamber. This must be where she and the people she actually cares about were staying. It’s empty, as are the individual pods.

“There was always room for me in here with you,” Mateo notes.

She frowns. “You were never supposed to be here.”

He clears his throat. “Does the Omega Gyroscope prevent time travel?”

“Yes, that’s how I wanted it. That’s how we wanted it,” she corrects herself.

“Does it prevent time travel,” Mateo repeats, “or does it prevent altering the timeline?”

She looks away, clearly starting to see his point, but she doesn’t want to admit it.

He continues, “as long as that thing was working, I was always destined to travel back in time, and meet up with you. Your insistence that I’m not worthy of your time because of my intrusion is bullshit. You just don’t like me.”

“That’s not true, I don’t know you. No version of me knows any version of you very well. We’re salmon, the powers that be designed it that way.”

“The powers that be don’t have any jurisdiction in this reality, or over me anymore anywhere.”

“I know,” Danica acknowledges.

He sighs. “Can you get a time and date from one of these things?”

Danica taps on the screen a few times. “It’s dead.” She looks around. “Everything is dead. This is emergency lighting.”

“We seem to have life support.”

Danica looks towards the door, and thinks. “Or we don’t need it anymore.”

They jog down the hallways, and up to the main area for more information. They stop when they see the elevator shaft, which is no longer a shaft. Well, it still may be a shaft, but the wall behind it is gone. It leads to a short hallway, and a set of doors. “Has that always been there?” Mateo asks.

“Definitely not. This has been remodeled.”

They shrug at each other, and exit the building together, opening the double doors in sync. They have to blink when sunlight flies down to attack their eyes. They can obviously tell immediately that they’re in a breathable atmosphere. It’s the future. When they regain their site, they find themselves on a concrete trail, surrounded by lush vegetation, under a blue sky. A waterfall splashes pleasantly into the river or lake below. They’re not alone. Others are enjoying the day, casually strolling around the valley. Mateo notices an interesting symbol on a fencepost sign. It’s five keys in a 3D circle, with a sixth key in the center, larger and more prominent than the others. Danica spins around, and pushes the vines out of her way to try to open the doors again. “Locked.”

“That’s okay, I think I can teleport here, which implies that your precious gyroscope doesn’t last forever.”

“Well, prove it,” Danica suggests.

“There are too many people around,” he says. “We don’t know what they know.”

“It’s okay,” a familiar voice begins. “If you need to teleport somewhere, no one around will mind.” It’s Cheyenne. She’s smiling at them like a local before a couple of tourists. “As long as you take care not to disrupt the plants.”

“I’m sorry, have we met?” Mateo asks her.

“No, I don’t believe so. I have a pretty good memory.”

He nods. “Could you—and this may sound odd—tell us what year it is?”

“It’s December 12, 2398, according to the new Clavical Calendar.”

“Never heard of it,” Mateo says. “But it’s nice to meet you.” He offers his hand, which Cheyenne shakes. This seems to be when and where she’s from.”

“Even if you’ve spent your whole life on this world,” Cheyenne continues. “Surely you would have heard of the Clavical Calendar.”

“Why do you say that?” Danica asks. “What’s so special about this world?”

“It’s close to a black hole,” Cheyenne explains as she’s still shaking Danica’s hand. “A minute here is equal to about an hour out there.”

They disappear. They all disappear.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 112,398

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Abigail Genifer Siskin Pryce. Daughter of Tamerlane Pryce and Genifer Siskin. In at least one timeline in the main sequence, Tamerlane found Genifer by some means—be it by people database, or somehow by happenstance—and procreated with her. Theirs was an unusual arrangement, the particulars of which are known only to them. She wanted a child. He wanted a child who he could nickname Abiogenesis. Genifer raised Abigail throughout most of her childhood, but was forced to leave her one day to protect the universe from Tamerlane’s megalomania. She abandoned her. She sacrificed her. It was for the greater good, and at least one version of Abigail turned out all right, but it was no less tragic.

Abigail has a destiny beyond the boundaries of this universe, so it’s unclear where in the timeline this one originates. Bhulan didn’t want to ask for fear of disrupting the proper order of events, so she helps Abigail out of the time machine, provides her with clothing, and shows her where she can sleep. Bhulan wakes up Asier so she’s not the only well-adjusted and vetted resident of the Constant. Danica and Mateo still have not returned. Tamerlane is wary of Abigail, for she is not his daughter, and she is smart enough to understand that. This is not helping his recovery from his mental breakdown, though, as he sees her as the representation of yet another mistake that his alternate self made. After two weeks, Abigail agrees to go into stasis herself, so that her once-father can pull himself together. He manages to do so, and after a few months, they all end up back in their own separate pods. Bhulan, Tamerlane, and Asier come out every once in a while, but they leave Abigail in for ten thousand years, under a similar arrangement to the one they had with Mateo.

Now it has been 50,000 years since Danica disappeared, which marks the end of the waiting period. When Team Triple Threat—as Tamerlane liked to call them—were first starting out over a 100,000 years ago, they divvied up responsibilities, and agreed upon a hierarchy. Danica was at the top, with Bhulan as her number two. Anyone who came after Tamerlane would be ordered according to how trustworthy they seemed to the originals. So far, they’ve shown up in a reasonable order, making Danica’s father, Asier number four, and her cousin, Mateo number five. But none of them is allowed control over the most important object in the Constant, which is the Omega Gyroscope.

Danica placed a timer on it, like a dead man’s switch. If she ever lost contact with it for a duration of 50,000 years, possession over it would automatically switch to the next in the line, which is currently Bhulan. The responsibility falls to her now, to protect it, and curate the timeline. This should not be a problem; they all agreed to the parameters a very long time ago, and they were incredibly detailed, so she is not worried about making any bad decisions. She’s worried about what happens if she ever disappears for too long, because she’s not sure if she can trust Tamerlane anymore, and she’s honestly unclear as to what happens if something should happen to him. She doesn’t know if Asier was ever formally placed into the line of succession.

“No,” Asier answers, having evidently already discussed this with his daughter. “If Dani ever disappeared, and you disappeared, and Tamerlane disappeared, the Gyroscope would go on autopilot until the true number four showed up, which could be soon thereafter, or in billions of years.”

“Who is it?”

“That I can’t answer. I believe, now that the Gyroscope belongs to you, that you can find out who it is destined to be.”

Bhulan sighs, and looks at the thing. Then she looks at her watch. “If it’s been programmed to make the switch down to the minute, then we have about a minute to go, based on when Danica disappeared through the time machine.”

Asier nods. “Are you ready? Is something going to happen, or do you know?”

“Danica felt a power when she laid in the initial psychic instructions, and she believed I would feel the same, though to be fair, she didn’t think this would ever happen. I mean, 50,000 freaking years. Who would have thought that any of us would be gone for that long? It’s unsafe to be in stasis all that time, and there’s nowhere else to go in the universe! Plus, she’s immortal...” Bhulan shuddered as she felt a chill crawling all over her body. The Omega Gyroscope always glows, but now it’s especially bright. “Oh my God.” It feels like the glow is inside of her. Power is an understatement.

Asier grimaces. He and Bhulan aren’t related, but they’ve known each other for thousands of years, this certainly seems wrong, and makes him uncomfortable. It looks too pleasurable. “Should I leave.”

“No, no, it’s okay. It’s over. Now I’m back to being myself, except it’s like I have this extra body part. I can feel it, always there. Not pressure, nor pain, but a weight. It hangs from my whole body, like an extra layer of skin.”

“Is it...talking to you?”

“No, it’s not conscious. It’s my new skin, and I’m its new brain. I have to tell it what to do.”

“Surely there’s information encoded in it,” Asier figures.

“Yeah, I think I can interface with it.”

“Maybe you should lie down first.”

“Yeah, okay, thanks.”

He helps her onto the couch, and then steps back, ready to break her out of her trance, or mop up a psychic nosebleed, or help with whatever is about to go down.

Bhulan closes her eyes, and focuses on the Gyroscope; on listening to what it has to say, if anything. After around twenty seconds, she feels herself slipping off of the couch, and into a pool of water. She floats around a little before landing at the bottom. Only now does she open her eyes. Glowing curved beams are flying over her head, and underneath the transparent floor. They look familiar until she realizes that, d’uh, she’s in a giant gyroscope, and those moving curves are the gimbals. A silhouette forms before her, out of the glow. It’s not long before she recognizes the figure as Danica, but it’s not really her, it’s just a 3D recording, but not even that, because all of this is just in Bhulan’s head.

“Yay, Bhulan!” Danica cries, hanging onto the spin axis like it’s a stripper pole. Okay, so she may be more of an uploaded consciousness, and less of a recording.

“Are you real?”

“I’m as close as you’re gonna get, because if you’re here, the real me is probably dead. Ask me anything.”

“What is the airspeed velocity of the unladen swallow?”

“That’s an easy one. Eleven meters per second. What do you really wanna know?”

“Who is fourth in line for succession of the Omega Gyroscope, after Pryce?”

“That’s even easier,” Ghost!Danica says with a wide smile. “It’s Leona Matic.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 102,398

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Bhulan steps out of her stasis pod, and then out of the joint stasis chamber. She stands in the hallway for a moment, rubbing her eyes. She was actually sleeping in there, instead of only standing and waiting for the time to pass. She yawns, and smacks her lips together in a cartoonish way. “Constance, have Danica and Mateo returned yet?”

“Not yet, sir. I would have alerted you if they had.”

“You would not have if she had told you not to.”

“If she had told me not to, I would probably be lying right now.”

“Are you lying?”

Constance pauses for effect. “No.”

“Where are Tamerlane and Asier?”

“Asier is still in stasis. Tamerlane is in his simulation room.”

Bhulan rolls her eyes, and heads that way. She finds him busy at his desk, scribbling notes on paper, instead of typing them out with a keyboard, or dictating them directly. The floor is covered in crumpled up paper from his now defunct ideas, and other mistakes. He’s not looking well. “How are we feeling today?”

He darts his head up, apparently having just realized that she’s in the room. “Bhu, I think I have it figured out. Instead of having all the different levels in the same world, we put them on completely separate worlds. You can’t want what you don’t know exists. I’m still working out the levels, but this system allows a lot more of them than the old one. If you’re allowed to build new worlds, then you do that on a separate server from the people who are stuck in prison. And they’re separate from just the regular folks. Right? I mean this makes sense, right? It makes sense to me. Heaven.”

“So, in your version of the afterlife simulation, no one can ever improve their afterlives. Whatever they did in their real lives decides their eternity, and that never changes.”

He starts nodding at her with an earnest forced smile. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, umm...shit. You’re right, this doesn’t work.” He stares at the corner of the room while he grabs some of the paper, crumples it up, and tosses it away. He then looks back down at his desk. “Wait, I threw away the wrong thing.”

“Tam.” She can see where this is going.

“Where did that end up on the floor? Do you see it? I think it was yellow.” He gets on his knees, and shuffles around in search of it.

“Tam, get up.”

“No, I have to find it. I was calculating the power requirements earlier. See, I think my real problem was relying too much on the Matrioshka Body as hosts. I need to be in control of the hardware, as well as the software, or I won’t be able to protect the residents.”

Bhulan crouches down, and tries to comfort him with her hands on his shoulders. “Tam, that wasn’t you. It was an alternate version of you.”

He stares into her eyes like she just kicked his puppy. “I know that, you think I don’t know that? You know what I mean. I’m trying to do better than he did. If I can figure this out, I can rewrite the entire program, and dismantle his version of the simulation entirely. You know how much heartbreak I can prevent?”

“Tam, he didn’t...he didn’t come up with it. He took ideas from others. And those people aren’t here either. This is not your problem to solve.” This isn’t the first time he’s become singularly focused on trying to fix the supposed mistakes of his counterpart in the main sequence who created an entire computer simulation that houses the uploaded consciousness of everyone who died across a span of tens of thousands of years. She has to be patient with him when he’s in this state. He spends the most amount of time out of stasis—to no one’s fault but his own—and he spends a lot of that in here, dealing with his issues. None of them is qualified to bring him back to reality. Still, they have to try every time, because they don’t think his fixation is healthy.

“People know what he did. They know who he is, and I look exactly like him. How do I stop looking like him?” He blinks slowly, and falls back to sit against the wall. “I had the dream again.” Time moves differently in dreams, and this is true of everyone, but the phenomenon is especially potent in people who are in stasis while they’re doing it. They can experience many lifetimes—or even longer—in great detail in a short amount of pod time if their brain becomes acutely aware of the passage of realtime. Some are more susceptible to this bug than others, Tamerlane Pryce being one of them. It starts to become a real problem after the first few thousand years in stasis, which is why most people wouldn’t even know what you’re talking about if you bring it up. This is one reason why the four of them always come out every once in a while, to stretch their legs, and to reset their internal clocks. Again, he has to do it more often to avoid suffering from psychotic breaks, but sometimes, not even that is enough.

“Come on,” she says, helping him back to his feet. “I know you’re afraid to go back to sleep, but once you surrender, you always feel better. You’re not in stasis right now, and I promise you that no one is going to force you back into it. Why don’t you just stay out here for a year or two? Someone will be with you at all times, starting with me.”

“Are Dani and Matt not back yet?”

“No, but if you agree to go to sleep, I’ll run diagnostics on the machine again.”

“Okay, thank you.”

Bhulan helps him back to his room, and even into his bed, as if a mother mothering her child. He conks out pretty quickly, so she leaves. She’s about to just go watch some Future!TV when she decides to not make herself a liar. She goes up to the time machine room, which they’re not even supposed to enter, but Mateo did, and Danica went after him. They disappeared 40,000 years ago, and never returned. They plan to be here for billions of years, so there’s technically no rush, but it’s still worrisome. According to the literature, the machine is designed for recon, and should always bring the travelers back to the moment of departure, even if they’re dead, and even if the machine itself is broken, which it isn’t anymore. She stands there in the doorway for a few minutes after a good diagnostics check, knowing that there’s not much else she can do to help the situation. She turns around, like she always does, giving up on this being the day they come back. Suddenly, the machine powers up.

A naked body appears in the center of the chamber, its back to Bhulan. It doesn’t move for a minute, and she’s honestly kind of afraid to approach. She’s lived with Danica for thousands of years, so she knows it’s not her, but it could be anyone else with a feminine figure. She’s breathing, though, so that’s good. Finally, she turns over so Bhulan can see her face. “Who the hell are you?” Bhulan questions.

“Abigail. Abigail Genifer Siskin Pryce.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 9, 2398

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Arcadia has her own life, so she hasn’t had time to learn how to use the equipment in the lab. She and Ramses came up with a code phrase in case he ever suspected himself of being psychically compromised again, but that’s about as far as they got with the protocols. She and Vearden drove there from their house yesterday, and they’ve been here ever since, reading the manual that Ramses prepared in case he was ever indisposed. He didn’t write all of himself. He got a lot of help from their new AI, Constance. Actually, it was more like him helping her. The text is well organized, and easy to understand for the less educated, like Arcadia, but it’s still a lot, so she didn’t want to rush this. “Okay, I’ve found Alyssa’s most recent scan.”

“Okay,” Ramses replies, still inside the containment chamber with Alyssa. It was awkward after their conversation, but they took turns on the cot, and made it work. He might install multiple cots after all this, but on the other hand, he doesn’t want to plan for another crisis.

“And I see her history. It’s definitely changed.”

“Good, can you look at my history?”

“Yeah, I see it right here.”

“Okay, run a scan on both of us, it’s fine, just make sure you tell the scanner that it should be expecting two consciousnesses, instead of one.”

“No, I think I know how to scan you and you alone.”

“All right.” Ramses grimaces. That’s not a very high level function, but it’s not completely obvious either.

“Just please go to your separate corners,” Arcadia requests.

Ramses stays near the front while Alyssa goes behind him, thinking she’s getting out of the way.

“No, um, different corners.” The chamber is more circular than it is round, but Alyssa figures it out, and ends up catty-corner to him. Now that the two subjects aren’t too close to each other, the machine scans Ramses’ brain. Arcadia watches the data come in. She’s seen enough already by comparing the new scan with his scan history. “Constance, sequestration wall.”

A wall comes down from the ceiling, physically separating Ramses from Alyssa. “What? Why did you do that?” Alyssa questions.

Ramses sighs. “I’m not infected. She’s trying to protect me from you.”

“I still need to keep you contained,” Arcadia says. “I’ve only run one test, so you can’t leave, but I don’t want to risk further cross-contamination.”

“It’s gonna be okay,” Ramses says to Alyssa.

“Get it out. Get it out of my brain,” she begs.

“It’s not that bad,” Ramses assures her. “Erlendr can’t control your actions. It’s more like he extracted a piece of his consciousness, and implanted it in you, so everything you’ve experienced since then can be his. But don’t worry, you only uploaded yourself into the Insulator once to see if he would respond better to you asking for help with Leona’s bounty. You haven’t been back, which means he can’t have downloaded anything from you yet.”

“How do you know he didn’t download anything from me from my life before?”

“We would have seen that,” Ramses tells her. “We would have seen him doing that as it was happening. He hasn’t gotten anything from you, and we’re gonna figure out how to get the infection out before it can do any harm, right?” He turns to face Arcadia at the last few words.

“Yeah, I can do this,” Arcadia replies confidently. “With my new knowledge of this tech, combined with my naturally psychic abilities, this will be easy. I just need to know more about what we’re dealing with. I have to analyze Alyssa’s scan history.”

“Synthesize,” Ramses corrects. “You need to synthesize it. It’s far more complicated than just pointing to an area of the brain, and saying, that’s been taken over by Erlendr.”

“I know, I just...don’t know all the lingo yet,” Arcadia says. Yikes, she thinks. Is she going to be able to do this?

After Arcadia completes one more scan for good measure on Alyssa’s brain, Alyssa sighs, and plops herself down on the cot to wait. Arcadia works on the problem for the next few hours. She scans her own brain with an external unit to figure out why it is that her mental defenses weren’t able to protect Alyssa from this intrusion. She asks Ramses for a little guidance throughout, but doesn’t want to involve him too much as she’s not one hundred percent sure that he’s not also secretly infected. Vearden, unable to do anything, becomes the errand boy for all three of them. He goes out to get them food, and other amenities. He also dotes on Arcadia, and tries to make sure she has everything she needs to be comfortable, like a lumbar pillow, and ice chips. She’s fourteen weeks pregnant, not in hospice, but if he can’t stop her from working, he’s at least going to make sure she doesn’t overexert herself. She accepts the support, because arguing would make it worse, and it is helping her focus on Alyssa.

Finally, Arcadia is certain that there is nothing wrong with Ramses, which is probably what she should have been most worried about the entire time. With him back in commission, she doesn’t need to be responsible for Alyssa’s psychic restoration. She lets him out of the containment chamber, and steps aside so he can take over. She doesn’t want to leave while he’s working, though, because now she’s invested.

“Hold on,” Ramses says. He pulls up Alyssa’s scan history again, and puts them all in a row. “Constance, loop these images in rapid succession, chronologically.”

The AI performs the request.

“What is it?” Alyssa asks.

“It can’t be.” Ramses peers at the screen, and watches the loop a few more times while Arcadia watches it over his shoulder, not sure what she’s seeing. He stops, and looks inquisitively up at Alyssa. “This is going to be an odd question, but I need you to really think hard about it. Before you met this team, did you have any other interaction with someone who may have been a time traveler, or a psychic, or something? Thinking back, was there someone who you now realize may have been a little...different?”

“Not that I can think of,” she answers. “Why? Have my scans always been weird?”

“Well, I first scanned your mind a long time ago, when we were figuring out how to do your illusion powers, and I always took the data as what we in the business call baseline, but maybe they never were. I don’t think this is Erlendr. I think someone else put something in your head, and it could have been a long time ago.”

“What do we do about that?” Arcadia questions.

Ramses takes a breath. “More tests.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 8, 2398

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Ramses and Mateo decided to not talk to each other too much for fear of disturbing the timeline, which feels more fragile than the ones in other realities. Ramses is grateful to know that his best friend is safe...for now, but worried more than ever for Leona. He can’t help either of them right now. He has his own problems to deal with. Erlendr initially declined his offer to loan him Leona Reaver’s body so they can fake Leona Matic’s death to get the bounty off her head. As promised, Ramses let him stay in Bhulan’s field of daisies simulation in the Insulator of Life anyway. The next day, Erlendr called to say that he had changed his mind, and he would help them with their ruse. The next day after that, he called again to change his mind again. He’s been flip-flopping ever since, and it’s only now that Ramses has realized that it doesn’t matter what they do now. They can never trust the man to follow the script. Team Matic has turned a number of people to the light side over the ages, but Erlendr Preston will never be one of them. Some people are just broken, and they can’t be fixed, because too many pieces are missing. In his case, it’s any concept of selflessness.

“I’ll do it,” Alyssa says.

“You’ll do what?” Ramses questions.

“Transfer my mind to Reaver’s body. I’ll play the part that Erlendr was going to.”

Ramses brushes the idea away from himself. “You can’t do that, it’s too dangerous.”

“Are you saying I’m not capable? You were gonna trust that man, but not me? I’ve heard the stories.”

“It’s not that we trust him,” Ramses explains, “it’s that we don’t care what happens to him. If it doesn’t work, and that Reaver body is on its last life, it would be no great loss to the world. That’s not something I’m prepared to risk when it comes to someone I actually care about.”

“You care about Leona more,” Alyssa forthputs.

“What makes you say that?”

“You’ve known her a lot longer.”

Ramses winces. “Love isn’t measured on a sliding scale. You’re one of us, I thought we had already convinced you of this.”

“The danger she’s in is real. Someone is going to kill her, or Arcadia. It’s just a matter of time, in my opinion. I only might die if I do this. I’ll take those odds.”

“Like I said, I love you, but I’m the one who understands the odds. We still don’t know who placed the extraction mirror underneath Alt!Mateo and Leona Reaver. They may have always been trying to kill you, and have been waiting for you to do what you’re proposing the whole time. You’re still not accustomed to envisaging motivations that don’t exist yet...of people who may not even exist yet.”

“Everyone else has risked their lives to help each other. If you truly think of me as part of the group...” She places a hand on his thigh, “and you truly love me, you’ll let me help.” She slides her hand a couple of centimeters up, extinguishing all ambiguity.

He’s never going to agree to this. They’ll just have to find another way. This whole plan was never foolproof, nor inherently necessary. There’s every chance that, even if it goes off without a hitch, Leona and Arcadia will still be in danger. No need to put Alyssa in the same position. Ramses gently removes her hand from his leg. “It’s hard to calculate how much older I am than you.”

She leans in. “I’m sorry, I stopped listening after you said that you were hard.”

“Not what I meant, just like I didn’t mean it that way when I said I love you.”

“I’m almost twenty-two. Where I’m from, when you turn nineteen, there’s no maximum age for your chosen partner.”

“Where I’m from, there is. I think of you as a little sister.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Look—”

“Perfect,” Alyssa interrupts. “Now you’re gonna condescend to me.”

“Look around, Lyss. We’re the only two people left. Angela’s on a spaceship with your brothers, Leona and Marie are missing, Mateo is in another reality. Arcadia and Vearden are...ya know, not really part of this anyway. I don’t even wanna talk about Cheyenne. We’re both feeling lonely, I’m sure, but I’ve seen this happen before, in another life. These sorts of relationships that are just about boredom and escapism don’t just not work out; they turn sour. If we were normal people, I might not think it’s that big of a deal, but we’re going to leave the Third Rail one day, and we could be stuck on a tiny spaceship together. Trust me, it’s not a good idea, age gap notwithstanding.”

“I’m not asking for a boyfriend,” Alyssa spits. “Jesus, get over yourself.”

“What did you just say?”

“I said get over yourself.”

“No, who’s Jesus?”

“It’s just an expression.”

“No, it’s not, he’s a real person from history, but as far as I know, not your history. Why would that be an expression in this timeline?”

“I dunno, man, I’m not a linguist. Stop trying to change the subject. This isn’t one of your crazy time travel mysteries. If you’re not going to let me help you protect Leona, then we need to focus on coming up with a new plan.”

“No, this is the only thing that matters right now. If you really wanna help, I need you to get into that containment chamber, and stand in the center.”

“Are you going to hurt me?” she asks.

“Only if you refuse. Alyssa would not refuse.”

“I am Alyssa.”

“Great!” He nods at her, because she already has her orders.

Confused, she steps up into the chamber, and waits as he closes the door, then goes over to fiddle with his gizmos. “Are you seeing anything?”

“Don’t move, please,” he requests. He engages the scan, and watches the data. She looks mostly like herself, but not entirely. There’s something wrong with her brain, and in all likelihood, his own as well. He grabs his phone, and dials Arcadia. When she answers, he utters the emergency code, “media mavens mount surgical strikes from trapper keeper collages, and online magazine racks.”

“Get in the chamber,” Arcadia demands. “I’m on my way.”

“What the hell is wrong?” Alyssa asks Ramses after he steps into the chamber with her, and commands the lab to go into lockdown.

“Your mind is infected with psychic energy, most likely Erlendr’s. I’ve been in the Insulator more than you; I must assume I’m infected too. Don’t worry, help is coming.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 7, 2398

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Mateo and Rail!Danica follow Quadrant!Danica out of the time machine room, and down to the main floor of the Constant. He makes a mental note of the path so he can get back to it later, in any reality. He has no idea how he could have missed it while he was exploring the Third Rail version of it, but it all seems to have worked out. He’s closer to getting back his family than ever, and it shouldn’t be long now.

The master sitting room is in the exact same place as the other one, but it’s been decorated differently. It would seem that each Danica can put their own spin on things here, and since they apparently come from different timeline, their tastes can vary widely. “Wow, look at all this seating!” Mateo repeats the joke he made last time, which no one was around to hear. Neither of them gets the reference, which is reasonable. He and Rail!Danica take their seats while Quadrant!Danica prepares their tea at the bar. “I’ve always wondered,” Mateo begins, “why you have to make your own tea, and why there are light switches when it could easily be controlled by voice, or something.”

“This facility is one of the most advanced in histories,” Quadrant!Danica starts to respond. “It was designed by an intelligence hundreds of thousands of years from now. Everything could be automated, it never degrades, and it’s virtually indestructible. But it’s not designed for people hundreds of thousands of years from now. It’s designed for people today, and people that lived centuries ago. They might not understand how a lightbulb works, but when you tell them that the magical candle starts burning when they flip the switch, they can at least wrap their heads around the idea of moving something to make something happen. If you tell them they have to pray to an energy god they’ve never heard of called electricity, well that’s...that’s unbearable for some.”

“I met an energy god once,” Mateo muses. “He didn’t ask me to pray to him.”

Neither of the Danicas is sure what to think of his claim that he met a god. “Anyway,” Quadrant!Danica continues. “I make the tea by hand, because I’m bored enough down here alone, I don’t need to be efficient or lazy on top of it.”

Mateo nods. “I see. Well, I don’t know whether to apologize for the intrusion, or say you’re welcome for the company.”

Quadrant!Danica smirks. “I don’t have visitors. Literally no one else has ever been down here before. I appreciate the...intrusion.”

“Why stay?” Rail!Danica asks her. “If you know there aren’t any time travelers to assist. I mean, they don’t even know you’re here. You’re underwater, and insulated against all means of detection.”

“It didn’t even occur to me and my team to look for you,” Mateo adds.

“Where would I go?” Quadrant!Danica poses. “This is my home.”

That’s a nice place for a sequitur. “Speaking of homes, I was hoping to get back to mine.” Mateo looks up at the calendar, confirming that it’s December 7, 2398. “I’ve only been away for a few weeks, I would rather just skip that time with my friends than go back to early Earth and wait it out in stasis. Are you capable of moving between realities?”

“I’m not,” Quadrant!Danica says apologetically. “The designers didn’t take parallel realities into account. As far as they knew, each new timeline would supplant the last, making crossovers pointless.”

Mateo frowns.

“I can help you reach out to your people, though,” Quadrant!Danica goes on. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the residents of this world, and when I noticed that they made contact with the Third Rail, I co-opted the interdimensional communication technology that your friend, Ramses created for myself. I’ve been monitoring the chatter, though I have never engaged.”

“That would be lovely,” Mateo says before turning to face Rail!Danica. “That is, unless you don’t want me talking to anyone at all. I’ve noticed you haven’t tried to stuff me into a stasis pod lately, are you feeling all right?”

Rail!Danica rolls her eyes, and ignores him. “Would you grant me access to your office, so I can read the manual on the time machine?” she asks her alternate self. She glares at Mateo. “Somebody broke ours, and I’ve not yet taken the time to study it.”

Quadrant!Danica closes her eyes, and motions towards the door. “You know where it is. But your tea is almost ready.”

“I’m not thirsty,” Rail!Danica says. She leaves the room in a slight huff.

“I take it you two don’t get along,” Quadrant!Danica points out.

“Do you know anything about what the Third Rail is, and why it’s so different?”

The kettle starts to scream. “I have a vague understanding, based on the interdimensional chatter, but I’ve otherwise always been pretty cut off here.

“Well, I won’t speak out of turn, but she’s very controlling and withholding. For the version of you who’s most involved in the affairs of surface people, she sure is unwilling to help.”

“I’m sure she has her reasons. If you were in stasis you probably didn’t see them.”

“I’m her cousin...or...sort of. I hope you at least know that you can talk to me.”

“I appreciate the sentiment. Try to give her a break,” she says as she’s pouring the water. “This is a tough life for all of us, and we’re not given a choice.”

“The first version of Danica I met was very specifically given a choice by The Delegator. There were Stonehenge portals, and everything.”

Quadrant!Danica’s face turns serious. “That was no choice at all. She looks at the walls and ceiling. “All roads lead here. That’s something I think you should know, even if she doesn’t want you to.” She lightens up a bit. “Now, about that phone call.”

Mateo is able to reach out to Ramses, who is relieved to hear his voice. They exchange brief stories about what’s been happening. Ramses and Alyssa wanted to insert Erlendr’s mind into Leona Reaver’s body to fake Leona Matic’s death, but he ultimately declined the offer. They don’t know what they’re going to do now. As for Mateo’s wife, Leona; she went to Lebanon to find him, and since Marie has been missing for the same amount of time, they suspect that she stowed away on the Bridgette. There is no sign of them anywhere, but a spike in temporal energy under the surface of Danica Lake suggests that they went somewhere. If she’s back there then that’s where Mateo needs to be. There’s no way through the dimensional barrier anyway. Ramses wanted to tackle that issue, but the Traversa Bracelet has since been destroyed, and it kind of had to fall down on his list of priorities. Now the real problem is getting back to the past.

Rail!Danica comes back into the room. “I’ve figured out how to get us back.”

“How?” Mateo asks.

Rail!Danica looks at her watch. “All we have to do is wait. After 24 hours, the machine is going to pull us back automatically. It was designed for short recon trips, not permanent travel. I think I’ll have that tea now.”

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.”