The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 21, 2412

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Finding the Nexus, and getting the hell out of this galaxy, while dangerous and full of many unknowns, was their best and safest course of action. The angry Fifth Divisioner was one of apparently many who wanted to see the whole team dead, probably for not completely unreasonable reasons. They always had pretty good luck on Dardius, at least when it came to civilization. Of course, that was the location of Tribulation Island, which was arguably the source of every problem that still haunted them today, but other than that, it’s been great.

“What’s your idea, Constance?” Leona asked.

“Well, the three-word coordinate system is an interesting thing,” Constance began. “They’re meant to be random, but then I started thinking about how time travelers affect history in tiny little ways that a normal person wouldn’t notice. There are phrases that I’ve heard two people utter independently of each other, centuries apart, without them having ever crossed paths. Now, maybe that can be explained by a long chain of meetings, like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon, but based on other things I know about how time works...not necessarily. The Nexa are incredibly advanced, complex machines that can do a whole hell of a lot more than just send you from Point A to Point B. The people who came up with them cross the multiversal void like it’s nothing more than a tiny stream they can hop over with a modicum of momentum. They’re sometimes called gods. If anyone is capable of secretly impacting the algorithm of a natural language global coordinate system, it’s them.”

“Where are you going with this?” Mateo pressed, not impatiently.

Constance nodded, and turned a screen that hung down from the ceiling between the passenger section and the helm. She zoomed into the ocean. “Nexus.space.machine,” she said dramatically. “Middle of the Pacific Ocean, just as we suspected.

Leona peered at it. “Could it really be that...on the nose?”

“Might as well see what’s up,” Constance determined. “The nearest major land mass is three thousand kilometers away. There’s little risk in checking it out. I mean, except, of course, that guy who’s trying to kill you. But he could be anywhere.” She shrugged. “I doubt he’s there. If he is, it’s because I’m right.”

“Yeah,” Leona agreed. She looked back up at the screen, and took a breath. “Dante. Activate the cloak, plot a course back to Earth, and once we’re within teleportation range, jump us straight to—”

“Wait,” Olimpia piped up. “If there’s something there, we don’t wanna land right on top of it, or inside of it.”

“Good point.” Leona tapped on a different square on the map. “Jump to arise.until.converges instead.”

“Understood. Cloak activated. Jumping now.”

They were floating in the middle of the ocean. Around them was more ocean. There was no land in sight, no aircraft in the skies; they were totally alone. And there was no Nexus space machine to transport them to Dardius. But of course, it was never going to be that easy, or a satellite would have picked it up in the late 19th century. Angela started removing her clothes.

“Whaaat are you doing?” Ramses asked

“Don’t question her,” Olimpia scolded playfully, enjoying the show.

“I’m going for a swim. My guess is that it’s at the bottom of the ocean. I don’t know how deep it is here, but—”

“Three thousand, six hundred, and eighty-three meters,” Dante answered, unprompted.

“You can’t go down that far,” Ramses explained, “but...” He widened his eyes, and lifted his hand towards the ceiling.

“I can,” Dante volunteered.

“Let’s do it,” Leona said. “Run a grid sweep, centering on Nexus.space.machine.”

They didn’t have to do much of a sweep. As soon as they dove right under the surface, and pointed the headlights where they wanted to go, the Nexus building appeared within view. It wasn’t giving off any energy readings to speak of, and was undetectable via sonar, but it was visible to the naked eye. It was just under the water, and maintaining neutral buoyancy. The waves went up, it went up. The waves went down, it went down. It was possible to stand on top of it, and not get wet above the ankles, if not for the splashes. They dove the Dante deeper, and magnetically attached it to the exterior wall. Then they all seven teleported into the Nexus building.

“Venus, are you there?”

“I’m here, Leona.”

“I’m always worried that you won’t respond.”

“I can’t promise that I always will.”

“Thanks for being honest. We were hoping to be transported to Dardius?”

“Certainly.” The machine began to power up.

“Wait, let’s think about this,” Mateo said. Despite the fact that Mateo did not have anywhere near the relationship with this Venus Opsocor, the machine actually started to power down a little bit, apparently in response to his hesitation. “I’m a little tired. Aren’t you a little tired?”

“I guess,” Leona replied.

“I’m not,” Ramses said. “But if you worked half as hard as I imagine you would have had to in the stairwell, your bodies could be spent right now. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to take a rest.”

“If we wait one more day,” Leona began to reason, “everyone else is waiting a year. They’re expecting us.”

“They knew what they were getting into when they sent for us,” Marie reasoned right back. “They are under no illusions that our lives are quick and easy. You should sleep. It could be that they would rather us be late and energized than early and useless.”

Leona thought about it some more. All right. Venus, we’re going back to the Dante to sleep. Is it okay if we postpone this for a year?”

“Why go back when you have everything you need right here?” The Nexus went back to powering up. A light flashed, and when it receded, they found an undecagonal bed that fit perfectly within the undecagonal Nexus cavity. Someone designed it to be used for such an occasion, and it was just sitting on another world, waiting to be transported here when needed. Did they need it, though? Did anyone need a bed that was larger than most bedrooms?

“Orgy, party of seven!” Olimpia joked. She jumped into the bed, and started logrolling around.

“That’s my sister,” Angela argued, pointing to Marie.

Olimpia just shrugged.

“You definitely need some sleep, which is all that’s going to be happening in this bed. Thank you, Venus,” Leona said.

“I live to serve.”

Everyone slept through the night, including the four of them who didn’t expend a ton of energy in an underground monkey bar prison. Constance found it to be an eye-opening experience, because while she had obviously placed herself in dormant mode before, she had never slept as an organic being. It made her appreciate the human struggle more in several hours than she had accrued in the prior four and a half billion years of her life. That was probably a tiny exaggeration, though. Once everyone was up and ready, Venus made the gargantuan bed disappear. She then loaded the coordinates to the Nexus on Tribulation Island, and sent them all away.

“You have arrived,” she announced at their destination. Because she was everywhere all at once.

The two Nexus technicians greeted them, of course knowing exactly who they were, and having been expecting their visit. They made no indication that the team was late. They contacted someone to come and explain why they were asked to come here, and told them that they were free to wait inside, or get some fresh air. This planet never had any air pollution, which was something that all Vonearthan colonies shared, but this one held a population of billions, so it was particularly astonishing.

When they stepped outside, they found the Dante sitting on the sand next to the Nexus building. “Venus. How did you bring it here?” Leona asked her.

“The cavity is more of what you would call a guideline than an actual rule. I am the Nexus. I am the network.” Hm. Interesting.

They wandered around, and did enjoy the fresh air until a woman arrived an hour later from an airshuttle. She stepped out, and looked directly at Mateo, rather than the group as a whole. “Mateo Matic. My name is Tyra Nieman, Generation Ten. I am here to take you to my daughter, Karla Nieman, Generation Eleven.”

“Do we have business with her?” Mateo asked. “I don’t believe we’ve met, though I do recognize the surname. I think it’s in my notebook.”

“It ought to be,” Tyra said. “You had sex with our ancestor nearly three hundred years ago.” She turned to head back towards the shuttle. “Come. Your daughter will be born soon.”

They followed her into the shuttle, and rode with her to the mainland. Mateo started flipping through his notes, but he already remembered what Tyra was referring to. Two hundred and seventy-nine years ago, Mateo and Leona found themselves on the rogue planet of Durus. A settlement called Ladytown was attacked by the government, which resulted in all of the males living there contracting a deadly disease. They asked Mateo to donate sperm so they could repopulate and rebuild. They did not have the technology to do this medically, so he had to perform the old fashioned way. He paired with several women, but after returning to the timestream a year later, he learned that none of the pregnancies took. According to this woman, that was apparently untrue, or the truth was at least complicated. In their world, complicated was the resting state. Their best guess was that Saffira Nieman was placed in stasis, or jumped forward in time, and it was just that no one mentioned it. But if Saffira was finally about to have the baby, what did her descendent, Karla have to do with anything?

Tyra declined to clarify the situation, insisting that, as the current mother—which she said as if the word were more of a title than a relationship—Karla was responsible for speaking for herself. So they waited until they were in the house in Sutvindr, where the Niemans lived. There they were taken into a bedroom, where a pregnant woman was lying in bed. Mateo wasn’t the best with faces, but this was definitely not Saffira.

A man was sitting on a chair next to the bed. “It’s all right, father. I would like to speak with him alone.”

“What if you need something?” her father asks.

“Then I am sure that Mister Matic is more than capable of helping. If his reputation is accurate, he will be more than willing as well.”

“Of course,” Mateo concurred. “She is safe with me.”

The father grunted, and left the room. Leona had stepped in as well, and was reluctant to leave.

“It’s okay, Madam Delaney. You may stay as well,” the woman said with a smile, though it appeared to be difficult for her to change the expression on her face. With all due respect, she looked very tired. “I’m sure you have lots of questions,” she began as she was trying to sit up. She accepted Mateo’s help with the pillows. “Or maybe you just have the one: what the fuck is going on? Bear with me, and I promise, everything will make sense.” She cleared her throat, and reached over for some water. “My name is Karla Nieman, Generation Eleven: the final mother. Now, what does that mean? Well, hundreds of years ago, you impregnated Saffira Nieman. She lived and died with no idea that she was pregnant for years on end. She actually had her own kid—two kids, I believe; a girl and a boy. The girl, when she came of age, became pregnant as well. She lived and died also without knowing the truth. It was actually not until the fourth generation that people started to suspect that something was weird.”

“Oh my God.”

“Leona’s getting it,” Karla said with a bigger smile, and a laugh. “That’s when she started to feel symptoms, because for the baby, the pregnancy has been going on for the last several weeks.”

Mateo lost his breath. He turned away to get it back. He was hyperventilating. Leona tried to place her hands upon his shoulders to comfort him, but it only made it worse. After a couple of minutes, he composed himself, and turned back around. “I’m terribly sorry about that. I just...now I understand that... I’m sorry.”

“Yes, it’s a lot to take in. We can only imagine how difficult it must have been for Generations Four and Five. They had to figure it out with limited medical technology, and a cursory understanding of time travel studies. You’re famous, Mateo, and the Nieman bloodline knows more about you than anyone else in the universe, but that’s only because we made a point to know. We had to. But the early mothers had no reason to research your life yet.”

“So you’ve been pregnant your whole life? The baby just keeps going down the generations?” Mateo asked.

“No,” Karla responded with a shake of her head. “It doesn’t happen until after puberty. Until then, the previous mother holds onto it. But remember, it’s a once a year thing. It’s just like your life—” She interrupted herself to stare into space with a look of immense pain. Her sigh turned into a whimper, which turned into a scream, though it wasn’t too loud. Mateo just let her squeeze his hand until the contraction was over two minutes later. She breathed heavily, and drank some more water. “Forgive me.”

“That is nothing that needs to be forgiven,” Leona insisted.

“Thank you. As I was saying, the way it worked is that once the next mother in line goes through puberty, the baby will transport itself to her. The doctors called it Spontaneous Uterine Transplantation. Actually, they originally called it Spontaneous Matrilineal Uterine Transplantation, but someone pointed out that it spelled out Smut, so they changed it. But it’s still matrilineal. To my knowledge, a daughter was never a guarantee. I only have three brothers, but previous mothers have had many more, because they needed to make sure that there was an impregnable person to carry the torch. Ha! That’s not the right word, is it? It seems like it should be. If you can be impregnated, you’re impregnable! Right? Am I right? I’m right!” She laughed heartily.

They laughed with her.

“Anyway, as we’ve said, there have been eleven generations of this for the last three hundred years. The baby exists for one day out of the year, just like you. It jumps forward in time at the end of that day, but the funny thing is, every fun component of pregnancy sticks around. Bloating, cramps, wonky hormones: I’ve had them since I was a teen. And now...”

“Now you’ve been in labor for, what, a week?” Leona guessed.

“A month,” Karla corrected. “I’ve been having contractions for a month. And unless this baby comes today, I’m going to be having them for a whole other year. The final mother has always been a revered figure in our family history. But they never thought about the downsides. And I’m the only one who has to go through them.” She leaned over to the side, and glanced at the door as if she could see through it. “Between you and me, my mom has always resented me. My grandmother—God bless her—she was scared to death that she would birth a premature baby. But her husband was always, like, Telma—her name was Telma—he was like, Telma, this is Mateo Matic’s child. It magically disappears every year, and then comes back to the same womb. Then it moves to a different womb! It’s not gonna be premature! It’s gonna come out perfect! My grandfather, he was a laugh riot. But my mom! My mom. She thought she was the one. Lots of babies are born at thirty weeks, she’d say. She never let me forget it. But she was wrong. It’s me. I’m the birth mother. And she doesn’t resent me anymore.” She indicated herself in the bed. “Not after seeing me like this, and being pretty sure that the baby’s birthdate is April 22, 2413. Ain’t nobody wants to be me no more, I’ll tell ya that much. Sorry, I got a bit of an accent that comes out when I’m riled up. I know I’m in trouble, but you’re here now, and I can’t help but be excited.”

“We understand,” Leona said. “But you really should get some rest. We will indeed get you anything you need. We can try to...” she started to say uncomfortably.

“Induce?” Karla assumed. “I’m not allowed to. It’s this whole spiritual thing. I gotta go through it all the way. We’re on the baby’s timetable. We always have been. Everybody’s afraid that something’ll go wrong if we interfere in any way.”

Leona frowned at her, as did Mateo.

“It’ll be all right, Sugar,” Karla said. “I’m a tough chick. I’ll get through this, and then I’ll be the only mother that matters. And my mother will hate me for it.” She seemed quite pleased with this eventuality.

They stayed with her for the rest of the day, learning more of the family history, and of Karla’s personal life. She hadn’t come up with a name for the baby yet, but the past mothers always thought that it would be a good idea to choose a Croatian name. A year later, Romana Saffira Nieman took her first breath in the fresh Dardieti air.

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Extremus: Year 56

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They did not have much time to listen to Nerakali Preston explain what she meant when she claimed that she died and lost all of her powers. They could hear a security team coming down the hallway. Rodari switched off the mirror quickly, so that when the guards opened the door, it looked like they were still trying to figure out how to work the thing. Tinaya was grateful for his quick thinking. There was no way that they weren’t going to get caught, but at least now no one knows that they were trying to reach out to Nerakali. Their lie was that they were trying to contact Captain Halan Yenant. It was believable and not unreasonable. Tinaya wanted to be Captain some day, and even though that dream seems to have fallen right back into the valley of implausibility, it made sense that she would seek counsel from the first Captain.

It’s been nearly a year now. They were all sentenced to as much time in hock for unauthorized entry into a restricted area. The court was not cruel, though. Instead of keeping them locked up separately, they lived together in a sort of prison suite. They had their own rooms, but also a communal area. It was during this time that Tinaya and Rodari got to know each other better as they worked together to take care of Omega and the others. Though Valencia and Lataran grew more independent by the week, being locked up was not doing any favors to their recovery. Today is the day that they’re going to be released, and Captain Soto Tamm himself would reportedly like to come down to see it happen in person.

“Can we talk?” Rodari asks.

“Yeah, is everything okay?” Tinaya replies.

“I wanted to, uhh... I wanted...”

“What is it, Rodi?”

“He shuts his eyes, and breathes out his nose. He starts to whisper, “Bridger spies are not allowed to fraternize.”

“Right,” she agreed. “We’re just friends.”

“Are we, though?”

It is an unwritten rule that Captains do not get themselves into romantic relationships. It’s a sacrifice that they’re all expected to make. Aunt Kaiora broke this convention with Chief Medical Officer Holmes, but they never really made it official. Candidates for the civilian government tend to do better in the elections when they can parade around their spouse, but the crew—particularly the executive crew—is the opposite. It just seems to everyone that it should be like that. Tinaya cares about Rodari, but she made the choice to not even consider dating when she was a child, for this very reason. So it really doesn’t matter how she feels, and it doesn’t matter how he feels either. Then again, everything Avelino supposedly did to restore her reputation appears to have been reversed by the mirror room incident. The chances that she actually does make Captain one day have only gone down. He’s no better off. “We are.” She tries to sound certain, but the expression she slips into at the end of the sentence betrays her.

He pretends not to notice. “You deserve to be loved, Tinaya, on a personal level. You don’t have to be all things to all members of the crew, and residents of the ship. You’re allowed to have your own life.”

She breathes in deeply. “No. I’m not. Captain Tamm is coming today. I have to show him that I’m worthy. Now, my stint in hock does not look good on my record, but I’m not going to stop going for this. I’m not gonna quit. Someone will be replacing him in seventeen years, and I won’t stop fighting to be that person until someone else sits down in that seat.” Ugh, she doesn’t have time for this. They still need to figure out how to fix their neurological issues. She’s been spending a lot of her time organizing the knowledge that she absorbed from the others. Now that she has the tools in her brain, she needs the tools to get back into the Bridger section. They still don’t know who did this to them, but she is pretty sure that she can trust Rodari. They just need to make sure that no one else catches them. The first step is getting the hell out of here, and the last one is total domination. Getting a boyfriend is decidedly not a step on the task list. 

“I understand, I just...wanted to get us both on the same page.”

She nods once respectfully, as if they have just finalized a modest real estate deal.

Tao Li approaches them from the hallway. They don’t even lock the door anymore. None of them is going to try to escape, and even if they did, they would have to get through several more doors before they reached any semblance of freedom, and even then, they’re stuck on a spaceship in the intergalactic void. Where would they go? Tao became Hock Watcher years ago when the first one, Caldr Giordana retired a week before he died. Fortunately, as his health was beginning to decline, he took on an apprentice, so Li knows what he’s doing. “Tamm isn’t coming.”

“Let me guess,” Rodari says with a chuckle. “He’s busy dealing with the longest stretch of peace that this ship has experienced since it first launched?”

“That’s not for me to know,” Li replies, “and it’s certainly not for you to know. Anyway, he has sent his lieutenant in his place. Allow me to introduce you to Second Lieutenant Athan Velitchkov.” He steps away to reveal the man behind him.

Tinaya resists her urge to crack a joke about not being able to swing the First Lieutenant. “Lieutenant Velitchkov,” she instead says with an outstretched arm. It’s nice to meet you.” Second Lieutenants can be touchy about their position. It’s technically more correct to address him with his full title, but leaving out the second part is more likely to make him happier.

He smiles, and shakes her hand. “We’ve actually met, but I doubt you would remember. You were about three at the time.” Every important member of the crew has a reputation that goes beyond what people know for sure about them. His reputation is that he’s quiet, nice, and as sharp as a whip. He’s also known to be a lot more competent than his bosses, though it’s unclear how he feels about that, or about them. He smiles even wider, and faces Li. “Thank you, Hock Watcher, you may go now. You as well, Mister Stenger. I would like to speak with Captain Leithe alone.”

She looks bashfully at the floor. It’s fine when her peers joke about her already being the Captain, but when a real member of the crew says it, it rings a little differently.

He wraps his arm over her shoulders, but does not actually make contact. He just starts walking away for a private conversation, and allows her to follow. “Can you keep a secret, Captain?”

“I would ask you to stop calling me that, sir?” she requests.

“Can you keep a secret?” he repeats.

She nods.

“I’m calling you the Captain, because I know that you’ll be the Captain. I even know when. And I know this, because you and I went to the same school.”

Her eyes widen, and she looks back at Rodari.

“Yes, I’m aware that he too attended said school, but I still wanted to speak with you alone. If you would like to share what we discuss with him later—if you trust him enough for that—spy to spy, then I’m not gonna write you up. I just wanted to touch base with you, because this experience in hock has been what I’m sure you believe to be a setback, but I promise that it is anything but.”

“Sir?” She doesn’t understand.

“Tamm hasn’t gone through anything. He was born to a lot of privilege. He’s never suffered, he’s never lost, he’s never had to work for anything. People are going to get sick of that, if they haven’t already. What you’ve gone through is not what’s going to stop you from making captain, it’s what’s going to get you into that seat. Make no mistake, no one is doing this on purpose. We just see the future, and we’re allowing it to happen. We could stop it. We could protect you. And you would still become Captain. But you wouldn’t be respected, and that’s what we need. That’s what our future needs. Let me ask you this, have you ever heard of the term Eighth of Eight?”

“No,” she answers truthfully. “But it sounds like something that I shouldn’t hear about. It sounds like a temporal issue.”

He nods. “Yenant, Belo, and Leithe were all great leaders. Tamm is an okay guy, if you get to know him. Honestly, your two successors are up in the air, though. We don’t know how they’ll fare, because the future keeps shifting. You keep shifting it. You’re making decisions outside of time that we don’t understand. Now, I’m not going to try to explain it to you.” He looks over at Valencia. “I’m sure you have the knowledge somewhere in there yourself. But what I can tell you is that the eighth Captain...is not shifting. That asshole is written in stone, and it’s looking more and more like there’s a reason for that. Like...another force at play is making him inevitable, despite the fact that he hasn’t even been born yet.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?”

“As I said, he’s inevitable, but you can alleviate the problem, by being the best Captain this ship has ever seen, and making the next two after you even better. People will fight for Eighth of Eight, but they’ll surely win unless people also fight for you. You will become a symbol, an historical figure, whether you want to be or not. The future leaders will cite your tenure as the reason for whatever they think that future should be. You can either let the good guys of that future cite you for your successes, or the bad guys cite you as a failure. The Bridgers, they—we brought you into this; we created all this drama surrounding the years leading up to your rise to power, hoping to make you strong. Now you can give up, and just rest on your laurels, or you can be the source of inspiration for the next generation, and the next. That could be what makes Eighth of Eight’s reign of terror ultimately short-lived, and corrected infinitely afterwards.”

“You’re somehow telling me too much about the future while not really saying anything about what I’m supposed to do about it.”

“That’s my strength as an orator. That’s why the Bridgers chose me, and why Tamm chose me too. I was gonna be Captain myself, ya know. The Bridgers kept trying to put one of their own in that chair, until they realized that their safest bet was to find someone who was destined to sit there anyway.”

“So they chose me? I’m a puppet.”

“Everyone is a product of their environment and upbringing. That’s why I’m here, to give you the scissors to cut your strings. But it has to be a choice. Cutting all of them means cutting yourself off from the only people on your side.” He hands her her skeleton key. “Leaving at least one on, at least lets us keep helping you.” He walks away coolly.

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Microstory 1970: Suspect

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Reese: Anything yet?

Micro: No, man, I’m sorry. These Mississippi systems are crazy. How can I put this? It’s not like they have the best security in the world, it’s more like their protocols are all over the place, it’s impossible to find anything. I don’t understand how anyone makes contact with anyone else. There’s so much data to sift through, and you don’t have the AI systems that I would normally use. These damn redzones are killing me. I haven’t been able to get any more hits for the last two days. If you haven’t found him yet, he may have left the state. If he’s done that, we’re gonna need a new lead.

Reese: Well, it’s okay. Just do your best. I know it’s been a few days; we’ll get there.

Micro: *laughing* Don’t trust people so much. It hasn’t been a few days. It’s been several. When someone screws up, you need to let them know, so they do better.

Reese: That’s exactly what I do. But I don’t like wasting time. You know how well you’re doing. Me reiterating it isn’t gonna make it go faster. Just get it done, Duval.

Micro: Yes, sir. That’s more like it.

Anaïs: Don’t worry about that, Micro. I found him. Here’s a map of our suspect’s most frequent locations. This one is a hotel, but he spends the majority of his time right here. There’s an apartment above the restaurant, so I think that’s where he’s staying.

Reese: Where did you get this?

Anaïs: I can’t tell you that.

Reese: No, I’m sorry; that’s not acceptable. You need to explain yourself right now.

Micro: There ya go. Let ‘er have it.

Reese: Duval, stay out of this.

Anaïs: What’s it matter? This is where he is, whoever he is.

Reese: My people have been looking into this week. Half these locations were already on our radar, because Micro found part of the trail. I’ve had our people fishing around, and they always come back with no bites. You keep disappearing without any assignments, and now you suddenly have all the answers. How did you find out about this apartment? It’s in a redzone, which we just found out about. It’s nearly impossible to trace anyone there. That’s probably why he chose this spot.

Anaïs: Look, I know you’re upset—

Reese: I’m not upset, I’m worried. If this intel is good, then it still needs to be verified. Otherwise, it’s not actionable. I need to know where you got this, and how.

Anaïs: You want it verified? Fine, verify it. Micro, plug these missing waypoints, and see if they match up with whatever else you already have.

Reese: No, no, no. You don’t give orders. I give the orders. Barring that, Leonard is in charge. Now, you’re my tactician, which means that you act when we have somewhere to go. You don’t find us the target in the first place unless I tell you to. Even so, if my people are stepping out, and getting their information from bad places, then we’re in trouble. It means I can’t trust you. Can I trust you, Agent Altimari?

Anaïs: Yes.

Reese: Then prove it.

Anaïs: Okay. I’ll tell you about my past. But not in front of her.

Microstory 1969: Out of the Loop

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SI Eliot: Director? I need to talk to you.

Director Washington: What is it, Hisham? I’m very busy.

SI Eliot: I just tried to call Agent Parsons, and Myka Tennison responded instead.

Director Washington: Okay. That’s normal. She works at DExA as well.

SI Eliot: Yes, but evidently she’s been left in charge, which I did not clear her for. She hasn’t gone through the proper training.

Director Washington: The other agents haven’t even started yet. She’s perfectly capable of holding down the fort during these early days.

SI Eliot: Ah, but why would she need to do that? If Parsons were just on some small errand, I wouldn’t care, but that’s not where he is, is he?

Director Washington: You make it sound, Eliot, that you already know where he is.

SI Eliot: What business do we have in Mississippi?

Director Washington: *finally turning away from her computer* I don’t know how you found out that he was there, but it is no concern of yours.

SI Eliot: It’s not, huh? When we were first conceiving the Department for Exogenic Affairs, it was understood that the staff would report to Parsons, Miazga, and Tennison, and that they would report to me. Then I would report to you, and you to NatCo.

Director Washington: That’s right, Special Investigator. You report to me. And so does everyone else. I don’t have to ask you for permission to do anything.

SI Eliot: I’m not asking to give you my permission, but I can’t do my job if I’m constantly kept out of the loop.

Director Washington: This is one time. How is that constant?

SI Eliot: It’s setting a tone, sir. Like you said, nothing should really be happening in those offices right now, so I hardly understand why anyone would have to leave it for a field operation. If I’m not authorized to know about it, then I deserve to know why.

Director Washington: *standing up* No, you don’t. You are entitled to nothing. Agent Parsons is following my orders, and if there is any reason to read you into the situation, I’ll make the decision, and act accordingly. And we didn’t conceive of anything. DExA is a pet project for the National Commander, and something that he’s been thinking about for longer than he’s been in command. It’s just that we’ve finally given him an excuse to budget for it. If I were you, I would stop asking questions. You have plenty of work to do, so I suggest you go back to your floor, and do it.

SI Eliot: *frowning and thinking* There’s a mole, isn’t there? Or at least there may be.

Director Washington: Goodbye, Mister Eliot.

SI Eliot: You only call me mister when I’m getting too close to the edge of my privilege. Okay. Well, that makes sense. When you’re dealing with this many people, internal investigations are bound to happen. I want you to know that you can count on me, sir. I have nothing to hide, and will be fully cooperative.

Director Washington: If you really mean that, you’ll go back downstairs and drop it.

SI Eliot: Of course. Let me know if you need anything. Remember the skills that put me in this job in the first place. I’m good at getting information out of people.

Director Washington: Thank you, SI Eliot, goodbye.

Microstory 1968: On the Books

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Moenia: Hey, Becca. I could have come to you.

Anaïs: Nice try, Moe. This one’s on the books, but I’m not meant to know anyone here.

Moenia: I get it, you don’t want me to see where you’re camped out.

Anaïs: Are you still in the game?

Moenia: Depends on what you’re lookin’ for. Wadya need this time? I got guns. I got gizmos. I got poisons and easy paper, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Anaïs: You know I’m not. I need to find someone. Reports are that he’s in town.

Moenia: He’s from the states proper?

Anaïs: Don’t know. We don’t know his name either, but we have the phone number he calls from. He doesn’t understand that the point of a burner is to burn it before too long.

Moenia: Who’s this we you’re talking about? You got yourself a new crew?

Anaïs: Somethin’ like that. Can you help me, or what?

Moenia: Nah, man. I’ve been outta Missi for almost as long as you have. I’m not touched in anymore.

Anaïs: That’s disappointing, Moe-Moe.

Moenia: Don’t you worry your pretty little self about it, though. I may know a guy.

Anaïs: You do? What guy?

Moenia: Well...I may know a guy who knows a guy.

Anaïs: That’s reassuring.

Moenia: Word is, he can find anyone in the city. I myself have never had the displeasure of needing anyone dead, but if you’ve got the hitch, lemme hook you up...for a small finder’s fee, o’ course.

Anaïs: I don’t need ‘im dead. I just need to find ‘im.

Moenia: Right, you just wanna talk. *airquotes* I get it.

Anaïs: You’ll get your fee, don’t ask questions. Give me the contact info for your guy who knows a guy. This is time sensitive.  A lot is at stake.

Moenia: You make it sound like the whole world’s in danger.

Anaïs: [...]

Moenia: Ah, shit. You’re on a shady trip. I don’t want no part of that. When you go in, you go in hard, and I don’t wanna hear about this on the books crap. I know you lyin’.

Anaïs: I’m not lying, it’s on the books. It’s just...a different book.

Moenia: Shit, Becca. You’re gonna get me killed. You’re not even under, are you? You got yourself a whole team this time. Where are they? Sniper on the roof?

Anaïs: The sniper’s back at the safehouse. They don’t know about this. Now can you put me in touch with the finder, or not?

Moenia: Yeah, I’ll get you his number, but you didn’t get it from me. I don’t want money for this, I just wanna get the hell out of this territory.

Anaïs: We may need your services later. We brought tools, but somethin’ may come up.

Moenia: Nah, I’m not stickin’ around. Give me your new number, I’ll do one more thing, and then I’m out. I know better than to be in Mississippi when Hurricane Becca rolls in. You need help at the Canadian border, I’m your man, but not here. It’s too hot.

Anaïs: All right, Moenia. You get me what I need, and I won’t bother you again.

Microstory 1967: Recognizing the Signs

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Reese: You two set up the computers. Sasho, follow me. I need you for something. Grab that bag. No, not that one. Yes, that one. Sachs, you know which case to grab. *leaves*

Ophelia: What do you think they’re talking about up there?

Micro: Leonard knows. Don’t ya, Leonard?

Leonard: Not sure, but that was obviously a rifle case, so my guess is that they’re going to start teaching Sasho how to spot through a scope.

Ophelia: That makes sense.

Micro: You ever shot anyone in your universe, Leo? Can I call you Leo?

Leonard: Leo is fine, yeah. And yes, I have had to fire my weapon before.

Micro: One of your parolees?

Leonard: No, this was something else.

Ophelia: What did you mean, in your universe? Are you just referring to the world of law enforcement, or am I missing something?

Leonard: Uhh...

Micro: Oh, we’re not from this universe. Like, literally. I’m from Salmonverse, and I don’t think his has a name.

Ophelia: I was not aware of this.

Leonard: We didn’t tell anyone, Micro. We especially didn’t tell anyone about you, since the government already knows about me, and we can still protect you from them.

Micro: *shrugging* I don’t need to be protected. I can take care of myself. I don’t see what the big deal is. We came through Westfall, which is the least jarring way to travel. Now, if I were from Linseverse, then you would really have something to question, because then your hacker would be a talking dinosaur—

Ophelia: Is that real, or are you joking?

Leonard: She’s joking.

Micro: No, they’re real. Troodons evolved human-comparable intelligence after not being wiped out in an extinction level event, like what happened in our three respective versions of Earth. I’ve never been there, but it’s in the multiversal historical record.

Leonard: How much do you know about all this? Have you met the Superintendent?

Ophelia: Who’s the Superintendent?

Micro: *laughing* No. Ophelia, the Superintendent knows a lot about the bulkverse, because his spirit possesses psychic abilities that allow him to witness hyperdimensionally remote events, which he uses to write stories that no one reads. But he’s not the only one with such knowledge, Leonard. One day, you’ll meet others.

Leonard: You said that there was no hope that I would get back home.

Micro: I meant that there was no reason to fixate on the possibility. Don’t waste your time in pursuit of it. But once you fall into the secret underbelly of reality, it’s pretty much impossible to crawl out of it, and leave it behind. You’ll cross paths with someone new, and your conditions will change again. Ophelia will probably meet someone else too, if she hasn’t already, but she just won’t realize it. You’ll learn to recognize the signs.

Leonard: Hmm. Well, Ophelia, I hope you can keep a secret. This is sensitive stuff.

Ophelia: I promise to say nothing. As long as you teach me to recognize the signs too.

Microstory 1966: Safehouse School

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Reese: Sergeant?

Sachs: Sachs.

Reese: Sachs, right. You searched the safehouse?

Sachs: It’s secure. We can start setting up.

Reese: *into his radio* Bring the equipment on in, Sasho. *to Sachs* Sasho and Sachs. Those two names are uncomfortably close. Hey, what’s your middle name, Sasho?

Sasho: *lugging luggage down the hall* Risto.

Reese: Really?

Sachs: Reese and Risto. That’s better.

Micro: Oh, this room is fine, Sachs Reese—I mean Sasho Risto—you can just drop that stuff anywhere. I’ll sort it out.

Ophelia: What does all this stuff do?

Micro: Everythings. All the thing. Surveillance, tracking, ordering pizza.

Reese: You two set up the computers. Sasho, follow me. I need you for something. Grab that bag. No, not that one. Yes, that one. Sachs, you know which case to grab. *leads them up to the attic* Okay. There’s a lot of space up here, which is good, but you could technically do this in a bathroom. Sasho, if you’ll open that up, you’ll find a projector and screen. Go ahead and lay everything out on this table.

Sachs: Is that what I think it is?

Reese: State of the art.

Sasho: I don’t understand. What is all this stuff for?

Sachs: *picking up a small object* This goes on the trigger?

Reese: Yes. Sasho, this is a sniper training toolkit. It’s a highly advanced altered reality system, which simulates real-world conditions for targets in any environment, at a distance up to four kilometers. It’s basically a simulation game that teaches you how to shoot without firing any real bullets. We’re limited by resources and space here. We can’t teach you how to spot in the middle of downtown Memphis, Mississippi. Don’t worry, we don’t expect you to learn everything in a few days, but you have to start somewhere. The training program is generally eight months, and if you would like to do that, we can discuss at a later date, but while others on the team are trying to locate our target, I figured you might as well get a taste.

Sasho: Yeah.

Reese: You did want this, right? You told me on the plane you wanted to branch out from your experience as a jailer.

Sasho: Yeah, I do. I just didn’t expect to start anything so soon. This all looks expensive. Is it all for me?

Sachs: It’s for me too. I’ve always wanted to learn with something like this. You can do it anywhere, anytime. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m out of practice, but I’ve not been in combat for a few years. This can reportedly simulate just about anything.

Reese: You wanna try it? The stakes are incredibly low. That’s why scientists and engineers designed it in the first place.

Sasho: Okay. Start at the beginning. What do I do?

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 20, 2411

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After their nemesis left them, probably trying to instill mysterious fear in their hearts, identityless stormtroopers kept guard over them for the entire day. If they were on the right side of things, they would be wearing red shirts. The fact that there were so many of them, and they were all armed, implied that there was some way to escape. At first, Mateo, Leona, and Olimpia let the bad guys hold onto their advantage. They had the numbers, this could not be denied, and they may have all been true believers in whatever cause this was, but they didn’t love each other like the three prisoners did. They seemed to be from different realities, and weren’t too terribly organized. Who was in charge was a big question, because while it seemed like the angry dude from the Fifth Division, the troopers didn’t give them the impression that they even knew anything about the guy. In fact, it was possible that no one was in charge, but this was a random collection of everyone who fought for the cause, and happened to be on main sequence Earth at the time.

After a while of sitting around, Mateo decided to take a risk. He and the girls didn’t ever speak out loud. They communicated with their feelings, doing their best to convey their intentions and thoughts through startling shifts in emotion, as well as a few sly macroexpressions. He teleported himself out of the room, directly on the other side of the guards standing in the entryway. They flipped out, but he was too fast for them. He teleported again, and again, and a few more times. Each time he landed, he took note of more information regarding the layout of this underground lair. It didn’t appear to be too large but he only stuck to one level. He was looking for an elevator, or even the stairs, but he didn’t really want to let on that all he was doing was building a map in his head. He wanted it to look like a genuine escape attempt. He mostly just wanted to be sure that he could teleport at all. The power suppressors were preventing them from leaving the lair, but they could evidently jump wherever they wanted within its walls. Before anyone caught him, he was back in the first chamber.

That was when the nemesis came back. “What exactly did that accomplish?”

“I may or may not have been counting your numbers,” Mateo lied. “And I may or may not have been checking to see how responsive they were to a threat. No comment.”

“You can’t say no comment after you make a comment, you idiot.”

“That’s why you’re over there, and I’m stuck in here.” Mateo has found that, even when someone thinks that they’re not susceptible to flattery, they are. Even when they know someone else is trying to stroke their ego, they’ll fall for it. They’ll fall for it every time. That doesn’t mean the manipulator will be able to turn their target into an obedient zombie, but it always moves the needle. It’s always worth a shot.

He scoffed. “We’ll double it—no, we’ll triple it.” He looked down at his wrist. “You’ll be gone in a few hours, and you won’t come back for a year. We’ll have that entire time to increase our numbers, and build the craziest prison you’ve ever seen. This entire place will be covered in monkey bars.”

“Monkey bars?” Leona questioned.

He chuckled. “Monkey bars. That is my design. Even if you teleport out of this chamber, you’ll be caught in a metal net, somewhere in the hallway. Sure, maybe you can start slithering your way through them like the snakes that you are, but you won’t get far before someone with a gun finds you. You could try to teleport again, but how confident are you that you won’t twist your ankle between two bars, or even rematerialize with one going through your neck?”

“Sounds like you have this all figured out,” Olimpia mused.

“I think of everything. You can’t get past me.” He sighed, and walked away. “Guns up at all times. If they disappear, and it’s not midnight...?” He looked back over his shoulder for dramatic effect. “Find them again, and shoot them in the kneecaps.”

“Sure,” one of the guards said. He didn’t say, yes sir. Yeah, he wasn’t really their boss. They were humoring more than anything. But the monkey bars. Those will be real.

Once he was gone, the prisoners stepped deeper into the room, and started exchanging emotions. Mateo slowly lifted his chin, and looked up. At the same time, he forced himself to express the feelings of being high, and elevated in the sense of euphoria. Then he shifted to boredom and fatigue while bouncing his head from side to side, like one might do while walking up the stairs. To the guards, these gestures meant nothing, but to the three of them, they were the first vocabulary of a new language.

Leona took a moment to interpret his meaning, then nodded slightly with her eyes shut. She echoed the boredom and fatigue with her own bounces. They would take the stairs. She added the feeling of falling, followed immediately by shock. They weren’t going to walk two kilometers up the stairs. They would teleport all the way up, using line of sight to better see where they were going, which wasn’t something they would be able to do in an elevator. Even in the shaft, they wouldn’t know where they could land.

The two of them looked to Olimpia, who nodded back. She understood the plan. There wasn’t really any to translate monkey bars into an emotion, so she carefully pantomimed grabbing onto objects one hand at a time, and also itched at her armpit.

Mateo nodded as he was tapping on his wrist. He held up five fingers, then dropped them one by one. After zero, he suddenly opened his hand again, and nodded more deliberately. This was a timing issue. The guards took their watches, and started lying about what time it was, hoping to stop them from using their jump to the future as an advantage, like they did with a past prison break. But it was futile. These bodies always knew how far midnight was. Now that the plan was set, they stepped farther from each other to wait out the day. As midnight approached, the guards became more agitated, checking their own watches more and more frequently, so if the team didn’t already know exactly when it was time to execute the plan, they could gauge by that.

Seconds before go-time, the guards tensed up their weapons, and drew nearer, terribly afraid of what they were about to do, and thinking that there was any way to stop it. There wasn’t. Mateo stood in the middle, and held hands with Leona and Olimpia on either side. He was the obvious navigator, so there was no reason to have communicated that beforehand. Five, four, three, two, one, jump. They were in the staircase. None of the guards was around, but they would have immediately noticed that the time jumpers never returned to the timestream. An alarm began to blare.

“Can you feel that?” Mateo asked.

“Yeah,” Leona said. “You got the timing right. We could have jumped just before midnight, or just after, but if we had waited until after, we wouldn’t have gotten through this wall.” Their time powers were gone. They were no longer able to teleport.

“I don’t know if it’s right. We’re still stuck,” Mateo reasoned.

“We can’t jump—can’t jump,” Olimpia said through her time echo affliction, which she was forced to revert to when they stole her Cassidy cuff, “but we can jump—we can jump.”

Leona did the math. “Two kilometers. Each flight is three meters tall, which means fifteen steps per. If we jump to each landing, that means skipping seven steps at a time, which is doable for us, but that’s still over thirteen hundred physical jumps.”

“I’m not suggesting we skip seven steps. I’m suggesting we skip all of them. It’ll be less like jumping, and more like climbing.

They all looked up as far as their vision could see through the space between the flights of stairs. Mateo sighed. “These substrates are brand new. I have all the energy this body holds right now. I think we can do it.”

They started to hear people rush into the stairwell from other levels. “We better go now.” She took a few steps back on the landing, then ran forward and dove up to the railing. She swung herself around, and landed on the nex railing. But she never stopped. She held onto her momentum, and kept swinging around, and around, and around. Olimpia went next, followed by Mateo. They would occasionally lose their momentum to kick a guard in the face, so they would just start again, and get it back right away.

This didn’t last forever. The guards eventually wised up, and just took the elevator far enough above the team’s location. Then they packed themselves in like sardines, and created a blockade on level 345. There were countless mooks before them, all wearing black, and multiplying like Agent Smiths. The Fifth Divisioner walked up to them from below. “Did you really think that this would work? That’s why we chose somewhere so deep. You can’t get out. You should have given up on the first step.”

Olimpia looked at her friends, and conveyed the feeling of overwhelmingness while she massaged her throat. Another benefit to Ramses’ upgrades was the ability to simply switch off their hearing. Most animals never evolved the ability to do this, because it would be unadvantageous to not be able to detect danger when not looking at it, or sensing it in any other way. But that wasn’t a problem for them. Olimpia faced the Fifth Divisioner. “You should have let me keep my cuff,” she said rather quietly.

He couldn’t quite hear that. “What?”

“You should have let me keep my...” she repeated, increasing the volume with each word, but waiting for the last one until she could build up the energy that she needed. This was when Mateo and Leona shut off their hearing, but they could read her lips as she turned back to the blockade, and screamed, “cuff!” with enough force to knock them into each other, and burst their eardrums. They pawed at their ears, but there was no stopping the sound. It reverberated up and down the stairwell, hitting everyone not on the right side of a door. It bounced off the walls, and continued to attack, even when Olimpia was no longer expelling the syllable. They took this opportunity to turn, and head down one-half flight, knocking the Fifth Divisioner down the other half as he struggled against the sonic weapon as well.

Mateo opened the door, and shuffled the ladies inside. They ran down the hallway, pushed the button, and then took the elevator to the surface. From there, they teleported to one of the arcologies in Chile, which was a random location that none of them had any prior ties to. They found a courtesy phone in the atrium, and contacted the Dante. Ramses, Angela, Marie, and Constance were still in the middle of planning the rescue mission. They burst moded themselves away from Earth, then darkbursted themselves a little bit before making a stop on a random asteroid in the inner belt to regroup. Even with this inconvenient detour, they still needed to locate the second Earth Nexus. Constance thought that she may have that figured out.

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