The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 192,398

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Danica personally opens Mateo’s pod after the usual 10,000 years. “Good news,” she says. “We found Bhulan, but I wanted to wait until your usual wake up time, so you could help us.” She steps aside to let him out.

“Help you with getting her back?” he assumes. “How long did you wait?”

“Consistency is efficiency’s neighbor. I waited 700 years.”

“Okay. How did you find her?”

“I sent probes throughout the entire growing solar system. It took them so long, because I couldn’t send very many. This is a very delicate dance, and any alteration in the gravitational forces that bind the growing planets and asteroids together could throw off the entire timeline. We’re not safe from screwing up the future just because we’re living in the Hadean aeon.”

“And why do you need my help? Could not one of these probes tow Bhulan home?” Mateo suggests.

“That is not their job, Matthew. That is your job.”

He yawns, because even though he’s been away for thousands of years, he has not been asleep. It’s been a couple days, and he’s due for a rest. She won’t let him do it. “Tell me where to go.”

Danica smirks. “Constance, drop down a hologram, please.”

The AI creates an image of the early solar system, initially showing where they’re located under the crust on Theia. It zooms out and pans over, all the way to the remote location of Bhulan’s pod, floating randomly in the middle of empty space. “How far?”

“It’s around eighteen million kilometers from here.”

Mateo’s confused. “You mean eight.”

“No, look.” Danica uses her minority report hands to pull the image out again. “Eighteen and change.”

“Danica, I can’t make it that far. I’m limited to the distance of the moon, which means that would take over forty-five jumps.”

“Then make forty-five jumps.”

“I can’t breathe in space. I can survive the vacuum for short periods of time, but teleporting shortens that period significantly. I barely made it there and back last time, and that was half the distance. I didn’t know it could have drifted that far, but it’s out of my reach. I get that you wanted to teach me a lesson, but I’m not a wizard.”

Danica takes him by the shoulders, and starts leading him towards the elevator doors. “You’re going to go out there and get my friend back, no matter how far you have to go. You’ll do this, even if it kills you, and if you don’t, I’ll kill Abigail and Cheyenne. I don’t know what future history you have with the latter, but it’s clear that she’s important to you. Don’t. Test me.” She slaps a handheld device into his hand, which will direct him on the intercept course, then she presses the call button. The doors open.

He scowls at her. “Congratulations, cousin. You’ve done it.”

“Done what?”

“You’ve lowered yourself to villain status. Now you’re on my shitlist.”

“That’s okay. Way the timestream tells it, all your enemies become your friends.”

“Try telling that to Erlendr Preston, or Tristesse Ulinthra.”

“Who the hell is Tristesse Ulinthra?”

“Exactly,” he replies as he’s turning around. He doesn’t bother stepping into the elevator, he just makes his first jump into the void.

Jump two, jump three, jump four...jump forty-seven. He’s not going to make it. The pull of death is calling to him, begging him to close his eyes, and let go. He does let go, but not of his life; just the tracking device. As it’s floating away from him, he sees it showing him at around 300,000 kilometers from his destination. One more jump would do it, but it will also kill him. Then again, so will hanging out here. He’s well over halfway there, so it’s not like he can cut his losses and go back. There aren’t any spaceships or habitable planets around here. His only hope is not just getting to the stasis pod, but inside of it. It was designed to hold one person, but surely two can technically fit in a pinch. Bhulan won’t be happy, but she’ll be fine, and more importantly, so will he. He musters the last of his strength, and pushes himself to the limit. Eighteen million kilometers and change.

He’s arrived, holding onto the edge of the pod, but it must be the back of it, because there’s no little window. Let’s just get around to the other side before we do anything rash. There we are. Wait, that’s not Bhulan. Who is that? Holy crap, it’s Curtis Duvall. What the hell is this guy doing out here and way back when? Ha, Danica is going to be so pissed when she finds out. This is great. It means that Bhulan is still missing, and probably will be for the necessary amount of time, or Constance would have found more than one. This is farther out than he left her, so now it all makes sense. It also means he’s about to die. That is, unless he can get himself into the pod, which actually looks smaller than the ones the Constant uses. One final jump.

Curtis wakes up with a start, and instinctively pulls the tube out of his nose. He’s not in temporal stasis, but in normal suspended animation. He’s been lying here for however long, aging incredibly slowly and asleep, but destined to die eventually, if never found. The Constant pods can supposedly last forever, but this was probably never meant to. Curtis gets his bearings, looking down to check if the two of them are accidentally touchin’ peen. “Umm...report.”

“This is the Hadean aeon. You’re floating in the middle of space, between where Earth and Mars will be.”

“What?”

“Actually, I don’t know that Mars doesn’t exist by now. But Earth is composed of two different planets, which have not yet collided, but they’re already there, ready to do that in millions of years.”

“How did I get here?”

“No idea.”

“How did you get here?”

“Magic,” Mateo whispers, trying to wave his hands in front of him theatrically, but there’s not enough room to do that.” Oops, sorry.”

“Yeah. That was my...”

“Yeah, sorry again. Anyway, I teleported. I teleport millions of miles in space to save someone else. It turns out it was you.”

“Well, thank you.”

“No problem, but uh...It’ll be some time before I can get us back to safety.”

“Well, in the meantime, make yourself at home. There’s plenty of space.”

Mateo laughs.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 182,398

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Mateo did as Tamerlane asked, though it was no small feat. The stasis pods are the lightest ever built in histories, but still more massive than Mateo. They set Bhulan’s to hover mode, which made it easier to move it to the elevator, and then into the airlock, but that’s not really the problem. Even some of the best teleporters have the standard triple mass limitation. They can carry themselves, and two other normal-sized adults, and no more. The number of people who are capable of handling more than that are very rare, and Ramses did not clone Mateo’s body to be one of them. The mass of the pod stood at the upper limit of this standard, which made the jumps difficult. He couldn’t wear a vacuum suit either, or that would have just added mass. He managed to make two dozen rapid jumps away from the planet, placing Bhulan’s pod in the middle of interplanetary space, at around ten million miles away. Tamerlane had placed a tracker on it, so it could be retrieved later, but then he sent the tracking device 50,000 years into the future using the time machine, so even if he wanted to, he would not be able to find her sooner.

It’s been 10,000 years now, and Mateo is getting worried. Using what Tamerlane taught him about his own stasis pod, he set the time difference at one minute per stint, instead of a second, which would have given him time to react if someone decided to reopen early. They haven’t. A full minute has passed, so he’s opening it himself. He steps into the main area to find Danica on that couch, clearly waiting for him. “Oh, hey.”

“Hello, cousin,” she replies.

“You don’t have to call me that, I know it makes you uncomfortable.”

“Oh, I just wanted to remind you that we’re kind of related, in case you ever got the idea to screw me over again.”

He sits down across from her. “There’s no need to be so vulgar.”

“I’m sorry. You want me to be a good girl?” she asks in a baby voice. Gross.

He’s going to ignore that. “Pryce made a compelling argument.”

“This oughta be good.”

“That no one should have the kind of power that that damn thing gets you.”

“Oh, this?” She reaches behind the couch as if going for a sword. When her hand returns, the Omega Gyroscope follows. She’s still not touching it; it’s hovering a few centimeters from her fingers. It seems you don’t have to be the possessor to play around with it. “You ever see the movie Wanted?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“We have a very extensive library here.” She peers at the rotating gyroscope as it hovers over her left hand. She holds her right hand at the ready. “A library, Mateo is a collection—”

“You don’t have to talk down to me. I know I’m not smart, but you don’t know everything either. For instance, you obviously don’t know that mocking dumb people for being dumb actually doesn’t make you smarter. It just makes you an asshole.”

“You teleported my best friend to the middle of empty space somewhere. Some would say you’re the asshole.”

He sighs. “What did you want to show me?”

She keeps staring intently at the gyroscope. “The main character has been recruited into a shadowy organization, but before he can start killing people for them, he has to be trained, and go through tests. One of these tests is being able to snag a fast moving object called a shuttle through the fabric. We don’t have a loom here, but...” She darts her fingers into the gyroscope, taking something from the glowing orb in the center, and pulling it out before the metal bars—or whatever—can snap her fingers off. She drops one end of the object, but keeps hold of the other. It’s the hundemarke.

“What are you doing with that thing?”

“We’re trying to protect the timeline, but you seem to think you know better, and keep interfering with our work. First you show up, then you question our methods, then you try to escape through a time machine, and now you’ve kidnapped Bhulan.”

“Kidnapped is a strong word.”

“A strong word, and the right word.”

“I’m sorry.”

She feigns delight. “Great. Go out and get her back for me!”

“I don’t know where she is,” Mateo explains. “I just jumped randomly. Tamerlane is the one with the tracker.”

Danica nods, because she knows this to be true. “Well, the reason I’m showing you the hundemarke is because this is what’s really in control of the timeline in this reality. The Gyroscope is a power source, and an interface. We tell it what we want to happen, then the Gyroscope tells the hundemarke, and the hundemarke keeps it from being undone with time travel, or similar nonsense. Right now, Bhulan is in control of the Gyroscope, because that is how it works. Only one person can control it at any one time, or contradictions would give rise to paradoxes. The hundemarke does not operate the same way. If someone uses it to undo something else that someone used it for, then a new reality will simply spring up to avoid the paradoxes. You’ve seen that first hand. My point is that the hundemarke is fine. We combined it with the Gyroscope, because that makes it easier to execute decisions on a global scale.” She places the dog tag around her neck. “But I can do without it. Tamerlane’s plan is flawed, and your participation in that plan only served to piss me off, and make me trust you even less than I already did.”

“This sounds like an internal matter that I shouldn’t have anything to do with.”

“You placed yourself in the middle of it when you took sides, and agreed to help Tamerlane betray us.”

“At least he can take ten minutes out of the billions of years he has in front of him to hold a simple conversation! What did you expect? Haven’t you heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

“I’m gonna stick you in that pod, and not let you out.”

“Great, that’s what I’ve been asking you to do, so I can get back to my family!”

“When I said not, I meant never.”

“Don’t do this, sweet Danica. Don’t make me give you the speech about how people who go up against us never win. Don’t become my enemy.”

“That speech is about how well you win with a team.” She looks around. “I don’t see any of them here.”

Mateo leans forward. “I wasn’t born with a team. I built it, and I can build it again. Because I may not be a genius from the future, or a genius from the present, or a well-educated dead person with centuries of experience. Gathering armies is my forte.”

She leans forward to match. “Bring it on.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 172,398

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Mateo has been waiting in his stasis pod for ten minutes now, and that has given him enough time to do a little math in his head, which is not his strong suit, but they didn’t give him any entertainment in here. If one second inside means 10,000 years outside, that means that he’s been waiting to be let out for 6,000,000 years. That’s right, right? That has to be right. He’s been solving the same equation over and over for the last five minutes. A minute is 600,000 years. Just a pen and paper would help. No, it doesn’t matter how long he’s been waiting, it’s both too long, and not long enough. If he can just stay in here for the next... Oh no, he’s going to have to do more math to figure out how long it will take him to get back to 2398, where his team is. Even then, he could only ever get a rough estimate, because everyone is telling him that this is four and a half billion years in the past, but they’ve never gotten more specific than that. Asier injected him with a power suppressant before he shut the hatch, so he can’t escape. This is false imprisonment. “It’s false imprisonment!”

The hatch opens. It’s Tamerlane Pryce. “I agree.”

Mateo looks at his watch again. “Six point six million years. You’ve kept me in here for longer than ever.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Tamerlane explains. “Though you’re still right, it’s your longest stint yet, but still only 30,000 years.”

“How is that possible?”

Tamerlane turns a virtual dial on the pod’s touchscreen. “You can adjust the differential. Ten thousand years is just the standard during this aeon.”

“Oh. I guess that makes sense. Why is Danica letting me out now?”

“She’s not, but I’ve confirmed that she’s asleep right now, as is everyone else. It was a tricky situation, I would have tried to retrieve you sooner, but the AI was programmed to alert her to any unusual activity. Constance is undergoing maintenance at the moment. Well, she was, and then I took that opportunity to shut her down. When she awakens, she’ll know that she lost time, but by then, it will be too late.”

“Are you going to send me back home?”

Tamerlane grimaces slightly. “No.”

“Then we have nothing to talk about.” Mateo steps backwards back into his pod.

“I need your help with something. If you’re tired of Danica and Bhulan having all the power, then I know how to take it away from them.”

“Oh, yeah, how’s that?”

“Did you notice the dynamic between the two of them shift when you returned from the other realities?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know them all that well.”

“Bhulan is the one in charge of the Omega Gyroscope now.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “Time. Danica was gone for too long, declared dead in absentia. For normal people, the waiting period is seven years. For us, it’s 50,000. Operating under a preprogrammed assumption that Danica would never return, the Gyroscope automatically switched masters to the next in line, which is Bhu-Bhu.”

Mateo is not the sharpest bulb in the basket, but he thinks he has this one figured out. Power moved from Danica to Bhulan, and now Tamerlane is asking for a favor, and that is most likely to help Tamerlane take control. But what could he do to help? “Since I showed up here, Tamerlane Pryce, you...have been the most forthcoming. You’ve always been that way, though, haven’t you? Bhulan told me about some of your issues, stemming from your guilt over your alternate self. But there’s something you may not know about him; he always thought he was doing the right thing. He wasn’t evil, just...alone. And if you don’t want to be like him, all you need to do is surround yourself with people that you trust.”

He nods, “yeah, I’ve heard that before.”

“Here’s something you may not have heard. They also need to trust you, or it doesn’t mean anything. So tell me, what good will it do becoming the master of the Omega Gyroscope?” He says those last words so dismissively.

“I don’t want to be its master,” Tamerlane clarifies. “I want to set it free.”

“Explain.”

“It’s not supposed to have a master. It’s got a mind of its own, despite what the others may believe. If you help me get rid of Bhulan for 50,000 years at least, I’ll go away on my own, and give it another fifty. I promise to not return until its bond with us is broken, and it starts to get to decide what to do on its own.”

“What good does that do me?” Mateo questions. “What little progress I’ve made with my cousin will just be ruined.”

“We’re gonna be here awhile, you’ll hug and make up. The people—if you can even call them that—who designed this place; what do you know about them?”

“Nothing. No one’s told me anything. I don’t even know if they’ll ever exist, or if they collapsed their own timeline by creating the Constant.”

“Truthfully, I don’t know a whole lot about them either. Neither does Danica. One thing I do know is that they perceive the passage of time differently than you or I. They didn’t need stasis to not get bored for billions of years. I’m sure, on an intellectual level, they knew that stasis was necessary to prevent their little Concierge from going crazy, but I also don’t think their minds could truly fathom what going crazy would actually mean. They didn’t consider Danica’s needs very much, and they didn’t take me and Bhulan into account at all.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“I need you to teleport Bhulan far away from here. I can help you get your powers back, so you don’t have to worry about that. I’m telling you what I know of the Constant’s origins, because if you don’t do this, your cousin is going to be fired, and replaced with someone else entirely. I don’t mean an alternate version, I mean someone else. They have other candidates, they always did, and they kept their names on file.”

“Why would they do that? Why would they fire her?”

“Because they don’t want her to be too powerful. She is an underling, and she has a boss, just like anyone else. We’ve made our choice about what we want this reality to become, but now that that’s set, Danica has to wipe her hands clean of it, or her actions—her power—will wake him up. That’s why I sent you on a detour through time, and why we have to do something similar to Bhulan. I don’t know who he is, but I know he’s bad news. If he finds out what she’s done, he will place every reality in danger. Help me avoid triggering the failsafe by keeping your cousin off of his radar. The only way to do that is to distance her from the most powerful object in the universe.”

He sounds crazy, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

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.