The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 16, 2398

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Angela is sitting on her bed, trying to do breathing exercises. Why does she need a bed? She’s only going to be here for six hours. No, don’t get distracted, that doesn’t matter. Breathe in slowly. Breathe out slowlier. Sit up straight, and puff up your chest. Give as much room to your bladder as possible.

There’s a knock at the cabin. “Angela?”

She finishes exhaling. “Yes, Moray?”

“Are you okay?”

“Open the door, Moray.” She’s speaking in that calm, meditative voice that people use to sound relaxed and unintrusive.

Moray does so, and asks again, “are you okay?”

She opens her eyes, and turns to face him. “I’ll be all right. Did you need something?”

“We’re just worried about you, you never came back to the game.”

“Right, I forgot. I’m sorry about that.” She turns back to the wall, and breathes deliberately again.

“Are you pregnant?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You look like our cow did when she was pregnant with a calf.”

Angela smiles, which turns into a yawn. “I’m not pregnant, Moray. I’m just meditating.”

“Oh.” He’s silent for a moment. “Can I join you?”

“One day I can teach you, but uh...that day cannot be today.” She breathes again.

Moray stops speaking as she continues her exercises with her eyes closed, but she can still feel his presence. That’s okay, if he just wants to watch, she’s not going to get angry about it. Or maybe she should, because this isn’t helping control her bladder very much. Jogging didn’t work either. Nor did pelvic floor exercises, though she probably misread the database, which would have likely gone on to say that that’s more of a recurrent process than a quick fix. Perhaps what she really needs is medical intervention.

Angela sighs, and hops off the bed. “Do you know where the infirmary is?”

“Yeah, we saw it on our tour, before you arrived. Are you hurt?”

“That’s a personal question,” she says.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

He leads her down the hallways and ladders. “It’s over there. I won’t disturb you any further.”

“Hey, Moray...”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

He nods, and walks off.

Angela steps into the infirmary. Only one person is in there with a lab coat, implying that he’s the doctor. “Hello, can I help you?”

She sighs again. “I feel the need to urinate, but I’m not allowed to, for reasons that I can’t really explain to you, but it’s a matter of life and death, and I know that sounds really weird, and I can’t say any more about it, but just know that I’m telling the truth. It’s really important that I hold it in until after the trip, because—”

“Madam Walton, it’s okay. I think I know how to help you.” He steps over to a refrigerator, and starts looking through it. “Ah, here we go.” He takes the vial out, and shows it to her. “Gonagozole. Now, this is not a safe medication, and I would not prescribe it for prolonged use, but if you just need to get through the day, it should be fine, and we can treat the side effects afterwards. Are you okay with that?”

“If it works, I should be able to recover on my own, but...what does it do?”

“It does a number of things, but the result you’re looking for is that it shrinks the uterus, which will alleviate your bladder. But that may not be enough” He takes out another vial. “This will enlarge your bladder, so there’s less pressure to urinate.”

“What are the side effects of these two things?”

“Nausea, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, fatigue, hot flashes, increased heart rate. You could contract a UTI, but I don’t see that happening with one dose.”

“I can deal with most of those, even the UTI, but not the first two. It’s not just urine. I cannot expel anything. The water in my system has to stay there.”

He sighs, and goes over to another fridge to retrieve a bottle of over-the-counter medication. “This will stop the nausea, and cause constipation. You won’t release any fluids, you probably won’t even cry.”

“I didn’t think about crying.”

“Madam Walton—”

“Angela.”

“Madam Angela, I cannot recommend you take these three medications in tandem. The side effects are mounting. Now, I will give them to you, because I have been instructed to literally give you and the kids whatever you ask for. This will work, but you’re going to be in an incredible amount of pain. It’s going to make you unbearably miserable.”

“I only need to last a day.”

“Still...I’d like to talk you out of it.”

Angela looks between the three medications. She has to do this. If there’s even a tiny chance that Alt!Tamerlane isn’t lying, she has to do everything she can to protect Marie. They’re two separate people now, it’s not a selfish act. “Will they still work if I’m unconscious, or would I just soil myself?”

“No, they would still work.”

“Then I need you to give me a fourth drug.”

“A sedative,” he guesses.

“Yes.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

He doesn’t want to, but he apparently has to. “Follow me.” He leads her to the back of the infirmary, and into a nook with a somewhat private bed. “Lie down and get comfortable. You may remove your clothing, if you would prefer; I’ll close the curtain.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Angela stips down to her bra and underwear, and gets under the covers. She adjusts herself, and restarts her breathing exercises.

“Are you certain that you want to go through with this? You can still back out.”

She looks up at him with her most genuine facial expression. “Do it.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 15, 2398

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Okay, the other times could have been indigestion, or something, but that was definitely a kick. The baby is kicking. Arcadia finds the nearest device, and pulls up a calendar. Based on every test she’s undergone, and every memory she has of her experiences with Vearden, their best guess is that she got pregnant on the first of September. No date before that is possible, and not many dates after make much sense. They weren’t trying to get pregnant, so it’s not like the two of them were having sex every night. They had just gotten together, and things were still new, so September 1 is the best estimate. The doctor agreed with this assessment. And as long as she’s not crazy, and today is indeed December 15, it’s only been fifteen weeks, which is too early for kicking. According to the baby books, the earliest should be sixteen weeks, and even then, eh, probably not too much. It shouldn’t be this intense either. “Feel.” She takes Vearden’s hand, and sticks it up her shirt. “I think something’s wrong.”

Vearden doesn’t know why he’s doing this, but he leaves his hand there patiently. He’s prepared to stay like that for months. He knows better than to question her requests, however bizarre they become. Then something happens, he feels the kick. “Oh, wow.” He smiles. “That’s amazing.”

“That’s amazing?” She scoffs. “Don’t you know what this means?”

“That our little girl is an early bloomer.” He read the baby books too.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It means that the baby isn’t ours!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Someone else was using this body before I showed up. I think we’re way off on our estimate.” She looks back at the calendar. “We would be off by a month. Leona Delaney could have gotten pregnant the day she left her body, on August fifth.”

Vearden doesn’t want to upset her, but... “Honey, the doctors are not off by a month. Those tests are pretty accurate.”

Who knows how accurate these dumb Third Rail doctors are? Third Rail? More like third rate. She’s distraught. This is someone else’s baby, and she stole it. Who cares if the math doesn’t work out so great? The baby books don’t lie. They don’t lie!

Vearden can see how close she is to the edge. “It’s okay, we'll figure this out,” he promises. “Let’s think about this. If this body was pregnant before you started using it, you couldn’t have ever had a period, right? Have you had a period in this body?”

Arcadia hangs there earnestly for a moment, but then her heart rate starts to drop back down to acceptable levels. She sighs. “Yes, of course I have.”

“This is your baby, this is my baby. Like I said, she’s just a little ahead of the game. If you’re really worried, we can set an appointment for later today, or tomorrow. We are time travelers, so it’s not irrational for us to be extra cautious.”

“Okay, I think we should do that, yeah.”

Vearden nods, and pulls up the medical scheduler app. “There’s one at nine tomorrow morning.”

“Book it, Dano.”

He laughs, and does the thing. Then he puts the device down. “In the meantime, what do you think of Delaney?”

“Leona or Theo? Doesn’t matter, I can’t rightly say that I’m a fan of either. They started out as my enemies, and I’m a work in progress.”

“No, I mean Delaney as a first name,” he clarifies. “I feel like it would be a nice way to honor the genetic mother.” 

She mulls it over for a second. “Delaney Haywood. I think it’s an unusual choice, so I like it.”

“Or Delaney Preston,” Vearden suggests. “I’m a modern man.”

“I don’t believe the world needs any more Prestons,” Arcadia decides. “It may have been a lie that I could never have children, but one thing’s for sure, the idea behind convincing us of that was a noble pursuit, and I can admit that.”

“I dunno,” Vearden muses, “I don’t regret having a child with you. Do you? And do you think Nerakali would be a bad mother?”

“No, and no.”

Ramses opens the door to the room, and waits there. “She’s ready for you.”

Arcadia nods, and stands up. “Arcadia Haywood, reporting for duty.”

Ramses stops, tilts his Spock brain, and stares at the corner.

Arcadia gently lunges towards him, because he’s blocking the way through. “Are we doing this, or what?”

“You just called yourself a Haywood. Are you married?”

“Umm...no. I mean, we haven’t really discussed it.”

“Well, I’ve discussed it a little,” Vearden argues.

“Argh,” she growls softly. She didn’t expect to have to have this conversation again, especially not with Ramses.

“No, it’s good. Um...do you remember when the Officiant showed up, and took Cheyenne and Curtis away?”

“Neither of us was there, but yeah, I remember you telling us about it. Why?”

“The Officiant. She comes for divorce, but she’ll also come for a marriage, won’t she? That’s her main job, I would hope.”

Arcadia winces. “Not in this reality. That was a special occasion. Cheyenne had a magical script to read, and  had never heard of it before. I’ve actually only crossed paths with the Officiant once, and that was for Leona and Mateo.”

“Well, what prompted her to show up for that?” Ramses asks

Arcadia shrugs. “It was the biggest event of the timeline, everyone was talking about it. I think it’s harder for normal time traveler couples.”

“Maybe we could try a few things to see how hard it really is.” Vearden offers.

Arcadia gives him that look.

“If only to help our friends. We don’t have to get married if you don’t want to.”

“Some people’s psychic calls work by intention. You have to really mean it, or it won’t work,” Arcadia explains.

“Then let’s mean it!” he suggests.

“I thought we were here to help Alyssa,” she reminds them both.

“Yes, right,” Ramses remembers. “She’s waiting. We can talk about this later.”

“Okay.” Arcadia steps through the door as Ramses is holding it open for her. But she swings back, and switches her gaze between them. “And for the record, there’s no such thing as an illegitimate child. I won’t get married just to satisfy some kind of traditional, socially acceptable standard of a dutifully nuclear family dynamic.”

Vearden holds his hands up in defense, but doesn’t rebut, because he agrees with what she said. He wants to marry her anyway.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 142,398

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Cheyenne was frustrated and confused. She didn’t want to be allowed to stay, she wanted someone to help her get home. Danica refused to do anything of the sort, so now no one is happy. Morale is incredibly low, and the place is getting crowded. She gets tired of the arguing, and ends up ordering everyone into their stasis pods, with the promise to revive everyone in the next hundred thousand years, or so. Mateo does not find that acceptable, so instead of waiting for the door to open, he just teleports out after a second. Asier is waiting with a gun. “Do you know how to use that thing?”

“I was a cop...in another life,” Asier explains.

“It’s gonna take more than that to stop me,” Mateo explains right back. “I was a regular human...in a regular life. Now I’m something more.”

Asier winces, but doesn’t falter. He doesn’t know what that means. “What?”

“Y’all knew about my teleportation ability, but not my biological enhancements? Either your daughter didn’t tell you about them, or she herself doesn’t know.”

“She tells me everything.”

“Well, go ahead and shoot me. I can’t get hurt as long as I’m in the Constant.” That’s an exaggeration. “Barring that, I’m going to go wake up Abigail and Cheyenne, and help them return to their time periods.”

“How do you reckon you’ll do that?” Asier questions. He hasn’t lowered his gun.

“I know where the time machine is.”

“You knew where it was,” Asier clarifies. “It’s been moved. I don’t know how far you can teleport, but I doubt you could make the jump, even if you knew where we put it. Even if you found it, you wouldn’t be able to put it back together, and even if you did, you wouldn’t know how to operate it.”

“I would argue that if I could figure out how to reassemble it, I could figure out how to make it work.”

“Probably.”

Mateo takes a half step.

“Don’t wake them up. Bhulan has consulted the Omega Gyroscope. They’re both meant to stay in there, and you’re meant to go back.”

“How convenient that no one else can consult the gyroscope,” Mateo mocks with airquotes. “You could make any decision you want, and then just claim that it’s part of destiny. That’s what religious leaders do to control the masses. I prayed on it, and God told me that we should all marry multiple sixteen-year-old girls each, and have lots of babies for each other to marry sixteen years from now.”

Asier shakes his head. “Mormonism is not going to exist in this reality.”

Mateo chuckles. “No, you’ll replace it with a hundred new ideologies that are just as bad.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” Warning him about the future will only make things worse.

“We built a new section. You’ll never find Cheyenne and Abigail either.”

“I really thought that Danica and I were getting better.”

“I’ve been there,” he admits. “You should have known her when she was a teenager. Now get back in your pod. Please. Before she sees you.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 132,398

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Okay, now they really are back. Mateo and Danica were finally sent to the right version of the Constant in the right reality, though not at the right time. They’re 70,000 years late, for no apparent reason. A lot changed in that time, but not that much if you only look at the full duration, and don’t include time in stasis. The daughter of a different verion of Tamerlane Pryce, Abigail is here, having appeared in the time machine when they were expecting Mateo and Danica instead. Possession of the Omega Gyroscope automatically passed down to Bhulan, which probably doesn’t really affect Mateo, because he doesn’t know where it is, or how to use it, and everyone else seems to agree that he can’t be trusted anyway. No one on the dream team knows what they’re going to do about all this, so the four of them move off to have a private meeting. Meanwhile, Mateo is left with Cheyenne and Abigail.

“So...” he begins awkwardly. “How have you been?”

“Her, or me?” Cheyenne questions.

“Both.”

“We’ve never met,” she replies.

“Neither have we,” Abigail says for herself.

“Well...best not to say anything, I guess. We’ll just sit here quietly.”

“Sit where?” Cheyenne asks.

“Right here. I don’t think the bigwigs want us to wander off alone.”

“No,” Cheyenne laughs. “I mean, where are we? What is this place? Who are you? How do I get home?”

“We’re in the Constant, on a pre-Earth planet called Theia. This facility was built to one day provide respite to time travelers. It was created so far back in the past, because that would make it harder for someone to prevent it from ever existing. I’m Mateo Matic. That is Abigail Siskin. Those people are my cousin, Danica Matic, her father, Asier Mendoza, Bhulan Cargill, and her father, Tamerlane Pryce.”

“He’s not my father,” Abigail contends.

“Right, he’s the father of someone who looks exactly like her, and Danica isn’t really my cousin, but she looks exactly like her too. How you get home is hopefully something they’re all discussing.”

“I understand Time Travel 101,” Cheyenne insists. You don’t have to baby me.”

“You misunderstand,” Mateo begins. “My explanation is not meant to condescend to you. It’s because I did not spend much time in your world, and I am not familiar with what you and your people know, and do not know.”

“I see.”

They return to the uncomfortable silence, Mateo musing at how comically common it is for random people to just show up. Yeah, they’re time travelers, but this is so ridiculous. Cheyenne’s origins were always mysterious, so it’s not totally surprising that she has something to do with this. Abigail is way out of left field, though. Or maybe not, since her father is here. Well, he’s her once-father, so still. Who else is coming?

While Mateo is listing the most likelies in his head, the braintrust returns to announce that Danica was reminded of how things were when Bhulan and Tamerlane first showed up, and how she had to treat them like normal guests. “You can all stay.”

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.”