The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 5, 2426

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Sheriff Kamiński’s posse, and some of the former slaves that they had recently freed, constructed a hock in the building that they took over to live in until Team Matic could return, and teleport them all to the other side of the world. The natives stayed away from Fort Welrios, and the Welriosians stayed away from everyone else, unless they were conducting their searches and investigations. The people they interrogated cooperated as much as they were able, scared to death that the team would do to them what Leona did to their previous monarchy, or worse. No one knew where Maqsud Al-Amin’s son, Aristotle was, but the family he was staying with was missing as well. Child slaves were treated differently than the adults. Their duties were limited to performing household chores, and never anything outside until they reached double digits. Even then, the work was light, which the slavedrivers probably figured was a really nice thing to do for them. When there was no more work left each day, the masters of the house homeschooled them. The curriculum included indoctrinating the young ones into believing that this was what was best for them. Cool.

“He won’t talk,” Sheriff Kamiński explained. “He’s the only one left that we’re not sure about, which leads me to believe that he knows something.”

“He’ll talk to me,” Leona said, determined to find that boy.

“He’ll talk to me,” Mateo argued. “You’re too angry right now.”

“I’m not too angry!” she shouted.

“Is that what I said?” Mateo asked. “I misspoke. I meant, you’re needed on the other continent. I’m sure there’s an invention or something that the Welriosians could do with, and I certainly can’t help with that.”

“You’re on thin ice, Matic. Get me a lead.” She disappeared.

“Were I you,” he said to her through comms. He cleared his throat, and walked down the hall to the makeshift interrogation room. “What’s your name?”

“It’s—” the prisoner began.

“Don’t care. Do you know what space is made out of?”

The prisoner was confused. “Umm...nothing?”

“That’s exactly right. Or it isn’t. Maybe there’s dark matter up there, or giant spacewhales, I don’t know. What you say you and me go up and find out?” He offered his hand to him.

The prisoner slunk back as much as he could against his chair.

“Not interested?”

“I don’t care to be threatened.”

“I don’t care to not know where my friend is. Now I promised his parents that I would take care of him. You don’t want me to disappoint his mother, do you? I mean his real mother, not the one who literally abducted him, and forced him to do her work.”

“I don’t know where they are!”

“But you know something, don’t you?” Mateo guessed.

The prisoner shook his head, all but confirming that he was holding onto at least one small bit of vital information.

“I don’t need you to consent to the spacewalk,” Mateo said, standing up, and starting to make his way to the other side of the table.

“No!” he cried. “Fine. I really don’t know where they are, but I saw them leave.”

“Leave where? I mean, what direction?”

“No direction. They just disappeared.”

“What did it look like?” he teleported to the other side of the room. “Like that?”

“No.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“The mother, the daughter, the neighbor, and the boy. That’s all I saw.”

“The neighbor? No one said anything about the neighbor. What neighbor?”

“The neighbor next door. They were in his apartment. I don’t know why they went over there. He’s just this old man who lives alone. He didn’t have any slaves. He was alive back when we had them before, but he never did. He doesn’t even hire labor. I don’t know where he gets his money.”

“The family where Aristotle was staying, they were rich?”

“Poor people aren’t allowed to take the children in. They don’t know what to teach them. I’m the gardener for the old man’s neighbor on the other side, and I didn’t take any slaves either. I want to be clear about that. I just don’t want to lose my job.”

“Describe it.”

“Describe what.”

“I assume you saw something through the window? Four people disappeared before your eyes. Describe what it looked like.”

“There was a glow, and then his skylight shattered. The glow escaped from it, but it was so quick, I couldn’t see if the people were in it, or whatever. I looked back down, and the parlor was empty.”

“What color was the glow?”

“Gray, I guess.”

Mateo studied the young man’s face to see if he was lying, or holding back more information. He clearly had no idea how Maqsud’s power worked, but was describing what Mateo imagined it looked like from the outside. It was reasonable to guess that Aristotle inherited the same gift, though it was unknown if he used it accidentally, or on purpose. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was trying to escape this life, and the people he was with were just swept up in the energy field. Unfortunately, there was probably no way of knowing where they went.

“Someone patched up the roof the next day, long before the Welriosians started asking about it. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before, I just didn’t want to stand out. Workers who stand out get the worse jobs. Please don’t take me up to space.”

“Relax, I’m not going to kill you. I’ll go get someone to get you out of those chains, and escort you back to wherever you live.” Mateo stood up to leave.

“Wait.” He looked scared.

“What is it?”

“Take me to New Welrios, or whatever it is they’re calling it.”

“I don’t know how they’ll treat you there. I don’t know them very well at all. Most of our interactions have been us trying to rescue them.”

“Anywhere is better than here. I can work. I won’t expect them to do anything for them, I just can’t go back. My boss is...”

“You don’t have to explain. I’ll take you to a spot nearby. If you promise to stay put until I return, I’ll figure out whether you can join them. But if you’re requesting asylum, I’ll grant it immediately.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Mateo transported the witness to a backup location that Ramses and Angela found when there were looking for a place to relocate the Welriosians. Then he reconvened with his friends who had been listening through the comms the whole time. “Did I make the right call?”

“I think so, as long as he’s not lying, and he really didn’t own slaves.”

“Most people here never have,” Sheriff Kamiński explained. “There are hundreds of millions of them, yet only 11,000 of us.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Leona says, watching her husband’s face. “We can’t save them all. Even if we could confirm who else never had slaves, we could not relocate them all here, nor anywhere else, for that matter.”

“We have to do something,” Mateo urged. “This world is so bleak. Everything sucks here for everyone, except for the one percent. Even most of the poor people with slaves don’t just sit around all day. They use the slave to double their productivity. They’re miserable.”

“I don’t feel bad for them,” Leona said.

“Neither do I, there’s no excuse. I’m just saying that there must be something we can do to improve conditions here, so no one feels desperate enough to enslave anyone, or pay with pennies.”

Leona sighed, and considered it. “Ramses, go to the old man’s house, and try to figure out if you can determine Aristotle’s vector. Mateo, bring that kid to us. I have some questions of my own. No anger, I promise.”

Mateo retrieved the witness, and brought him to the alpha site. He then started to help transport more supplies from the main continent, to the Welriosians. They had survived just fine over the last year, but there were a few things the natives had access to that they still did not. They were all still living in the cave, but had constructed a number of buildings within it, so the residents could have places to live in separately. It somewhat resembled the lava tubes that people lived inside of on Luna and Mars. The expanse was there to protect them from the outside—in that case, the vacuum; and in this case, the elements—but people still wanted and needed privacy. They cut down trees for these structures, and also figured out how to make mud bricks from scratch. It was an impressive accomplishment, finding a way to thrive here in so little time. They were not doing this without experience, of course. They had done something similar on their sanctuary planet before it was discovered, and ultimately destroyed. Perhaps one day this community will have the technology to rival what they had before, and then even the cities on the other side of the world.

The team reconvened once more an hour later, Leona with a vague plan, and Ramses with the answers they would need to solidify it. “It’s not like I can trace their ion trail, or photon trail, or any other trail that science fiction stories like to claim will make anyone findable in space. I do believe I have a decent idea of where they might have gone, though. The Monarchy gave me a list of inhabited star systems in this part of the galaxy. Once I figured out what the data meant, I converted them to standard galactic coordinates, and only found two possible planets where they might have gone. It’s a light year away. They all are. No one in the Goldilocks Corridor is ever more than a light year away from anyone else. I’m sure that’s why they call it that.”

“How many systems are there?” Marie asked.

“A hundred and twenty, though there could be more by now. The list I have is dated thirty-four local years ago, which is about thirty-five standard years.”

Leona shook her head. “All these people, and we had no idea they existed.”

“We know now,” Mateo reminded her. “Our current problem is that we don’t have a ship anymore. We can’t get to Aristotle, even if we go the right way, and even if he still happens to be there. I don’t know how long it takes for him to recharge, but I doubt that’s what’s keeping him in one place by this point.”

“Guys?” Olimpia jumped in. “Shouldn’t Lilac be included in this conversation?”

“I’ll go get her,” Angela volunteered. It was reportedly difficult to convince her to leave Fort Welrios, and come to New Welrios. She couldn’t leave the place where she had last seen her son. But they were certain that he had left the planet over a year ago, and she trusted their judgment on that. They started the meeting up again once everyone was there.

“I can build us a ship.” Ramses kicked at the dirt underneath his feet. “It won’t have a fancy-schmancy reframe engine, but it will get us to where we’re going. Eventually.”

“Forgive us, the uneducated,” Olimpia began, “but why no reframe engine?”

“I don’t have any concentrated temporal energy, and I don’t have any way of manufacturing antimatter, which would be good enough to power it,” Ramses answered. “The natives here don’t even know what I’m talking about. The ships that come to pick up goods use fusion, and in fact, one of the things they process here is tritium. I’m sure we can steal some of that, given our...influence over these people. I also happen to have a mini-reactor in the basement of our lab, so...”

“The lab has a basement?” Mateo asked.

Ramses shrugged. “Yeah, it’s for storage. Anyway, I could build a reframe engine, but it would use a lot of fuel, and I still probably couldn’t get it to maximum speeds. We also have that time-jumping thing tonight, so faster doesn’t really help us.”

“It would help me,” Lilac contended.

“We wouldn’t leave you alone on a strange new world to find your son. You could be on the wrong side of the planet with no hope of getting anywhere near where he might be. And you would also have no one there to protect you.”

“I could protect her,” Sheriff Kamiński jumped in. “I also know that you have teleportation tech that anyone can use.”

Ramses sighed. “We have emergency teleporters, which store temporal energy for, of course, emergency use. You can’t just jump however much you want, unless your body metabolizes temporal energy on its own, like ours do. When I was a normal human, I couldn’t have used anything like that on a regular basis.”

Leona frowned. “I’m sorry, Lilac. We want to find him too, but waiting two more years is the only way.”

“Two years?” Lilac questioned. “Why two?”

“I need time to build the ship,” Ramses said apologetically. “One year to build it while we’re gone, and another to make the journey to the destination.”

“Put me in stasis,” Lilac demanded.

“Well, it’s a relativistic trip, so what will take a year will only feel like five—”

“No,” Lilac interrupted. “Put me in stasis now. My heart aches for my son, so put me to sleep, and don’t wake me up until it’s time to find him.”

The team exchanged looks for a few moments, reading each other’s feelings. “Okay. I’ll prep a pod for you.”

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Extremus: Year 70

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The honeymoon period is over. Tinaya and Arqut have to set aside the fact that they’re married now, and focus on the new age that is hopefully dawning. She has completed her proposal for a new official form of government. It’s not going to be a radical departure from the way things already are, but it’s a pretty big change from what’s currently in the law books. No more First Chair, no more Second Chair. The line that separates the civilian passengers from the crew is going to be blurred, with each branch working together to support each other’s needs, and to work towards the betterment of the ship. Most vessels do it more like this, which is understandable thanks to their short trip times. There’s no reason for a full government when the journey is going to take a week or two. At that point, only the safety of everyone on board matters, and the crew is there for that. Extremus is going to be here for a total of 216 years, so it made sense to do it differently. But it doesn’t have to be that way, and if the others in charge start to listen to Tinaya, it won’t be for much longer.

She has distributed the new plan, and given everyone a week to look it over by themselves. The council members, high government offices, and executive crew members were strongly discouraged from discussing it with each other in the meantime, so everyone can be on the same page during the official discussions, but they surely broke this unwritten rule. They’re all here in the meeting room today, listening to Tinaya speak on it herself, and then they’ll go from here. She doesn’t just rehash what’s already in the written proposal. She gets into why they should do this, and how it would make things better and easier for everyone. They have some concerns. One of them is secrets and compartmentalization, and the other is the balance of power.

The current council leader is named Millaray Addison. “This is a quick timeline. You want us to change everything about how we run things in only three years? Forgive me, under three years, since we’re already in the middle of Year 70.”

“I felt it was important to begin the transition before I have the chance to run again for my final term. It would be very easy for someone in power to make a plan to abolish their own position when they won’t be holding onto it much longer anyway. That is why I will be stepping down at the end of my third term. I mean that no matter what. To show you how deeply passionate I am in favor of this change, I will not have a fourth term, regardless of what we decide about our future in the coming months.”

Lataran stands. “And what of me and my position? Would you have me step down as well?”

“The captaincy does not go away in my proposal,” Tinaya assures her.

“This is true,” Millaray agrees. “Why is that? Why lose the Chairs, but keep the Captain and Lieutenant? Is it because she is your friend?”

“In order for the crew to run smoothly,” Tinaya begins, “it must be at least partially militaristic in nature. No military in the universe could survive as a democracy. Someone must be in charge; at the top of the chain of command. The civilian government, on the other hand, would work just fine with a council. It already is. You make more decisions than I do on a regular basis. All this proposal does is make that official.”

“Well, it does more than that,” Council Leader Addison contends. “There are virtually no procedures for passing legislation.”

“Yes, there are,” Tinaya argues. “Everything will be a referendum.”

“Right.” Millaray quite nearly rolls her eyes. “Referendums, where everyone votes. Would that not become tedious and overly complex? There’s a reason why we have a representative government. You vote for the people who make decisions for you. That is how the common man’s voice is heard, not literally one by one. What you describe here would be cumbersome. How do you expect to pull it off?”

“I don’t expect to pull anything off. I will not be involved,” Tinaya promises. “It’s very important that I lose all semblance of power here, or it will appear selfish and self-serving. I’m afraid, if you agree to this, you would have to deal with everything yourselves. The way I see it, drawing up these plans is how I contribute, and now that it’s done, my part should be too. I don’t mean to sound like I’m abandoning you, but I really think that this won’t work if there is any hint of impropriety. Lots of great First Chairs have served fewer than four terms. Well, I suppose there have not been lots of us at all, but you know what I mean.”

Consul Abdastartus Sievert is a quiet man; one of those people who only speaks when it’s necessary, and when he feels that it is indeed the case, he’s always right. When it looks like he’s about to say something, most people know to shut up and let him do it. He’s been leaning back in his chair, but he sits up straight now. The room falls silent. “I appreciate the sentiment, First Chair Leithe. I think we all do. However, you will forgive us for finding the prospect of losing your input permanently to be...unsettling. You have birthed this project, now you must raise it.”

“Now, hold on,” Millaray interrupts. “We’ve not agreed to anything...”

Consul Sievert holds up a hand to quiet her. “Everyone has been discussing this plan since she first sent it to us. Don’t think I’ve not heard. We all have questions, comments, and concerns. The plan needs tweaking, and then no matter what, we will decide upon it by referendum. The Extremusians will have their chance to speak, and we’ll hear anyone who wishes to vocalize their opinion before the vote. Referendums are not difficult these days. We’re not going to use paper, for heaven’s sake. A more fair democracy is well within our reach on a logistical level. But there is one major thing that needs to be changed before we get to that point. Someone needs to be in charge of making sure it works. They need to keep up with the maintenance.” Some people wear watches, while others were wristbands. The former is good enough in most cases, but for those who deal with documents, like the consul, they prefer to have a large screen, especially since their documents are sensitive, and holograms would not be appropriate in mixed company. Consul Sievert swipes up on his to cast a document onto the main screen for all to see. Addendum Two Forty-Nine, Reinstatement of the Superintendent.”

The Superintendent is the so-called god of this universe, and if he exists, he has nothing to do with this. The Superintendent of Extremus, on the other hand, was a short-lived position given to a man who turned out to be a traitor. The ship did not launch with a superintendent, and it has not had one since, but it remains an option. Tinaya considered including it in her original proposal, but she was pretty sure that they would ask her to do it, so she intentionally left it out. Now it seems there’s no way around it. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” she claims. “The system is based on the greatest number of voices for the greatest common good. No one needs to be at the top.”

“That’s not what a superintendent does,” Lataran reminds her. She’s right, and Tinaya knows that. Like the superintendent of an apartment building, her job would be to fix issues as they come up, not to make decisions. But that’s not really what happened when Calixte Salmon held the responsibility. Not only did he actively endanger the safety of the crew and passengers, but he was found to have abused his power on a regular basis. There is a lot of historical stigma attached to it now. “I second the Consul’s motion. The proposal outlines what we need to do to make the transition. It doesn’t account for everything. It can’t.”

“If everyone feels that way,” Tinaya begins, “then give me another month. I’ll add whatever needs to be added to make it work on its own. It should be a well-oiled machine. That’s the whole point. If anyone’s going to be superintendent, then why change anything at all? Why not just redefine the First Chair’s purview?”

“Because that’s a different meeting,” Council Leader Addison says. “I didn’t spend all this time reading the document you prepared, only to have most of it erased in favor of simply rewriting your job description.”

“So you believe in this proposal?” Lataran asks her.

“I never said that I didn’t,” Addison replies. “I just want to make sure we get it right. This is a good start, First Chair Leithe. It needs work.”

“I agree.” Well, Tinaya does agree, but maybe not to as high of a degree as the Council Leader is implying with her tone.

“Is that what we’re doing here today?” Lataran questions. “Are we just deciding whether we should work on this further? If that’s what’s happening, then let’s stop arguing, and actually get to it. Nothing we do with the framework has to have any bearing on how the ship is actually run, because nothing’s happening yet. We’re just sharing a document.” She’s right about this too. This is only the beginning.

“I suppose we’re here to discuss whether we even want to keep discussing it or not,” Addison determines.

“Anyone who is adamant that we should put the kibosh on this project right now without any further discussion, run to the other side of the room, and tap the back wall with your left hand,” Lataran suggests.

Addison sighs. “That is not how we do things here, Captain.”

“That’s the way I do it,” Lataran jokes under her breath.

Tinaya can’t help but smirk at the remark.

“All right. Here’s how we’ll move forward,” Addison continues. “You’ve all had time to look over the proposal, but you’ve not necessarily put down any notes. Everyone here will do that over the course of the next...shall we say, two weeks. Submit your input to First Chair Leithe, who will take our suggestions under advisement, and draft a new version. She’ll then resubmit it back to us, and we’ll take another week to look over the improvements. That is when we will reconvene, and discuss any persistent issues. Also at that meeting, we’ll talk about how we’ll continue on from there. Everything make sense? Good, let’s go to lunch,” she says before anyone has a chance to respond.

The next couple of months are grueling. Everyone on the council picks apart every word Tinaya wrote in her proposal, and tries to come up with something better. Whenever she starts to think that maybe they’re happy enough with it, they find something else to change. They go through this a few more times until the final document resembles the original one more closely than it does any of the other versions. Her first ideas turn out to be the best. Except for the superintendent part. They do end up putting that in there. It doesn’t specifically say that Tinaya has to be the one to do it, but the whole population of the ship is going to vote on it next year, so she fully expects them to ask her. She needs to find them an alternative. She’s about ready to retire.

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Microstory 2040: Wisconsin

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My fathers’ bad luck continued as they were trying to fly from Alaska to New Jersey. They were supposed to make a stop in Chicago, which is where my papa used to live, but that’s not what happened. On their way on the first plane, another passenger got really drunk, and started misbehaving. He was causing problems for everyone, and being really rude, so the pilot had no choice but to land the plane at a different airport to let him off. They even had to have the police waiting for him there. The closest one was this little airport called Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport. It wasn’t really built for planes like that, so it took them a long time to get through all the stuff with the police, and start trying to fly again. By the time they were ready, they couldn’t leave anyway, because of a snowstorm that had formed over Canada. If that guy had just not gotten drunk, they would have arrived in New Jersey on time. Honestly, it’s kind of scary for me to think about, though. They had to spend one night in Wisconsin until the storm passed, and then they were able to fly again. By the time they made it to New Jersey, though, the child they were going to adopt had already gone to another family. They were too late. They would have to wait a few months longer. They had to wait for me. I, for one, am glad that they did.

Microstory 2039: Alaska

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Like I said, it took a long time for me to get adopted. While they were working on it, my fathers put off their honeymoon. They got married in 2015, but it was 2017, and they still hadn’t gone on it yet. It was looking like they were going to have to wait even longer for me to be ready to come home with them, so they decided to finally go on the trip. It was almost the wintertime, but they had their hearts set on an Alaska vacation, so that’s where they went. It was really, really, really cold there, but they still had fun. They slept in a cabin, but it was heated, and they packed a lot of clothing. While they were there, they got a call from the adoption agency, telling them that a child was ready, but they had to get to New Jersey right away. They hadn’t gotten much time to relax. They quickly packed up their belongings, and got back to the airport. The problem was that there weren’t any flights until the next day. It was a really stressful time for them. They didn’t get to enjoy very much of Alaska, but they said it was beautiful. My papa used the word gorgeous to describe it.

Microstory 2038: Maryland and D.C.

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It takes a long time to adopt a child, especially one that is in the situation that I was in. My parents put in their application right away, but it was almost three years before it finally went through! I lived in an orphanage while I was waiting, and the people in charge had to first find out if there was any way to get me back to where I was born. In the year 2016, and evil man started to run for president. He doesn’t like people who look like me, or who are from countries like my home country. He thinks that everyone who wasn’t born in this country is automatically bad. Even if they were born here, if their parents weren’t, he just doesn’t like them anyway. He believes in a lot of other bad things, and a bunch of people wanted to vote for him, because they felt the same way. My fathers are good people, who feel nothing but love for everyone. So while they were waiting for me to come into their lives, they drove down to Washington D.C. to protest against the presidential candidate. Washington D.C. isn’t a state, it’s a district, but it’s pretty much in Maryland, and my fathers’ hotel was really close to the border, so they spent a little time over on that side of it, and I think that it counts. They marched on the streets to let people know that they didn’t want this man to win the election, and guess what, he didn’t! He was never a president, and I say my fathers had something to do with it. They obviously weren’t the only ones who protested, but as my grandma will say, every voice counts. I think that’s probably true. If you feel a certain way, and you want people to know it, then you should say it. That’s what it means to be in a free country. Even the bad man had a right to say what he didn’t, even though it was all bad stuff.

Microstory 2037: Florida

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So like I said, my fathers had two houses here in Plymouth. They had to move to the second one so they could take care of a child, which ended up being me. As they were just finishing up moving all the way into the second one, though, they got a call from papa’s mother. It was about my grandpa, who I never met. And that’s because he died that day. My papa was the first person she called about it, and then she called my Aunt Cooper. And then my Aunt Cooper called my papa so they could talk about it too. They cried about it together, because they loved my grandpa. They tell me that he was a great, hard-working man. I wish I could have known him. I was alive already, but my fathers had not adopted me yet. When he and my grandma were both finally retired, they left Idaho, and moved all the way down to Florida. A lot of people like to retire there, because it’s sunny all the time, and really pretty. They lived in a building called unassisted living, because they had trouble moving around too much, but they still didn’t need a nurse to take care of them all the time. My papa had actually visited a couple times since they moved there. He had even helped them move in, but I decided to talk about Florida on this slide, instead of earlier, because this is when my papa went down to go to his father’s funeral. It was really sad, and I’m kind of glad I at least wasn’t there for that part. Only a few of grandpa’s friends were able to make it, because a lot of them were already dead, and some of them weren’t able to travel. Some of them lived in Florida too, though.

Microstory 2036: Massachusetts

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I was on the news. Well, I wasn’t really on it myself. My dad would call it featured if I was, but they told my story, and we think we can see me in the background in some of the footage. While my fathers, my aunt, my uncle, and my cousins, were moving to their new houses here in Plymouth, Massachusetts, they had TVs on. We always have the TV going, even if we’re not really watching anything. We just like to have it on in the background. As they were carrying all those boxes, though, they noticed something on the news that was running. Everybody stopped what they were doing to watch. That’s how they even knew that I existed at all in the first place. Until that day, my fathers had not thought much about having children. Two men cannot have a baby the normal way, and they were both so busy with their jobs, they had not thought much about anything else. They did want kids at some point, though, and they realized while they were watching the news that they wanted to help. They didn’t know that I was one of the kids there, but they knew that someone like me would need a good home. The house they were trying to move into was small. It was really only big enough for the two of them. They were supposed to go to their honeymoon right after they were mostly done, but they decided to cancel their plans. Instead, they only moved as much furniture as they would need at the minimum, and then they started to look for a completely new house. It had to be big enough for a full family, even though they still didn’t know how they were going to adopt me yet. They stayed there for two days while they were canceling the contract from the people they bought the house from. I think it made them upset, but they found someone else to buy it all the way. Meanwhile, my fathers moved in with my papa’s sister, and stayed there until they could find the house that I live in now.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 4, 2425

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Mateo woke up in incredible pain. There was something jammed into his waist, and up his spine. He tried to reach back there to feel for it, but it was hard to contort his arms into the correct angle. He was face down in the dirt. While it was more difficult to breathe than it should be in this upgraded body, it balanced out to being about normal for a regular human. He shut his eyes and reached out to his team. He could feel them all, and thought they were pretty close by. He struggled to turn his head, and was able to see them lying next to him. Most of them were beginning to stir, and he could finally see what was wrong with them. There were huge weights upon all of them. No, two weights each; literal balls and chains. He should be able to sit up if he just pushed them off of his back. He had to roll them a few times to build momentum, but they came off. Now that he was free, he could start to recover, and rebuild his strength. The sun was coming up on whatever planet this was, so he could use that to refuel his energy.

The rest of the team was able to do the same, and as the sky grew brighter, they gained more information about where they were. It was a desert, with structures scattered about, including what looked like the entrance to a mine. People were gloomily walking towards it with gear. No one was paying the six of them any mind. After an hour, they were strong enough to stand. “How much do these weigh?” Mateo asked.

“Over 200 kilograms,” Leona answered, swinging one around by the chain, careful not to let it crash into her leg. “That’s equal to the mass of roughly three people.”

“Which means we can’t teleport them with us,” Angela noted. Unless there was something special about them, a teleporter could only transport two extra people with them. Some people couldn’t even take that many. It didn’t seem tied to strength, or even the weight of the travelers. It was just kind of a vague arbitrary limit. One could push themselves to carry just a little bit more, but not quite this much more. Whoever placed these belts on them knew what they were up against.

“Okay, but why can’t I just teleport out of the belt?” Olimpia asked.

“It’s fused to your spine,” said a stranger. He walked up to them coolly. “A crude solution, but it works, doesn’t it? We do not have the technology to suppress temporal powers here, so this was our best option.”

“The solution to what problem?” Leona questioned. She made a step towards him. She was strong enough to drag the weights behind her, but it wasn’t pleasant. “What do you have against us?”

The man rolled his eyes. “Ours is a caste-based society. The rich pay the poor to do their work, and if they can swing it, the poor force someone else to do it instead. Over the years, forced labor has gone away after a number of unfortunate slave uprisings. It’s not what you think, though. They weren’t elevated to higher castes. They had to be killed for their ingratitude, but that means there are no more slaves now. Well, there weren’t. Last year, you brought us thousands of able-bodied men and women to fill that void once more. Thank you so much for that. As I believe the Earthans say...no take-backs.”

“Hence the weights,” Leona said. “You know that if we can teleport, we can decimate your system, and free the slaves ourselves without any of them dying.”

He nodded. “We are well aware of who you are, Mrs. Matic. You have all been famous for millennia. As time travelers, you could have shown up at any point in our history, so every child is taught to fear you.”

“The children should not fear us,” Mateo pointed out. “Only the adults.”

“Quite,” the slavedriver agreed.

They were never able to get the chains off the entire day. It appeared that no one wanted anything to do with the team. They just left them to the elements the whole time. No one came by with food or water. They were seemingly trying to let them die without having to get any blood on their hands. They pretty much just sat there with nothing to keep them busy. There was one more hope, and they didn’t even have to work for it. Midnight hit, and the team jumped forward an Earthan year. They left the weights behind. They were bloody and hurt, but the injuries from having the weights ripped out of their bodies would heal. They could not necessarily say the same thing for the people what done this to them.

The Welriosians had to be slaves for yet another year while the team was gone again, but there was nothing they could do to undo that travesty. All they could do was fix it now. It was time to show these people how right they were to fear Team Matic. They approached a few passersby who weren’t dressed well, but also weren’t working, suggesting that they were the impoverished slaveowners that the man was talking about last year. They were all so fearful of helping, so they had to try a few people, but they finally learned where the head of the snake rested. They teleported up to what was literally an ivory tower. Well, it was white, anyway. The guards put up a fight, but they did not have firearms, and the team could always teleport away before their blades could get anywhere close to drawing blood.

The boss of this world was just called The Monarchy. “You have no right!”

“You have no right!” Leona shouted right back to him. “Let them go! Let them all go!” she demanded.

“This is how our system is built,” the Monarchy defended. “You came to our world. We didn’t ask you to do that, but we took you in. All of our slaves are well-housed and well-fed. Now, we understand that you six are special, which is why we have no plans on enslaving you as well, but I will not allow you to interfere with our way of life.”

She pursed her lips to consider their options. She looked over at another man. “Are you second in command?”

The other guy’s eyes darted towards the Monarchy.

“Don’t look at him. Look at me. Are you next in line?”

“I am.”

“I am ordering you to free the slaves.”

“I do not have such power,” he answered with a shake of his head.

“You will.” Leona took the Monarchy by the shoulders, and teleported away. She returned a few minutes later, soaking wet, and smelling of salt.

“What did you do with him?” the new Monarchy asked. “Did you drown him?”

“He’s alive...but he won’t be making any decisions from now on. “I suggest you do not make the same mistakes that he did. There’s plenty of room on that island. I can do this all day.”

Afraid, the new Monarchy breathed deeply. “It’s true, you could do whatever you please all day, but no longer than that. I am willing to free the slaves. I honestly don’t care who does the work, just as long as it gets done.”

“And I don’t care about how your society works. I’m not here to blow up your shit. If you let the Welriosians go, we won’t have a problem. We’ll leave, and you’ll be free to continue on from there.”

“But that’s just it,” the new Monarchy continued. “Perhaps you will one day be able to leave, but what about those Welriosians? I will not live forever. I could lose power tomorrow, and my successor could spend the next year undoing what you ordered me to do. Can you take 11,0000 people with you? I mean no disrespect, I’m just trying to explain the risks here.”

“How far spread out are you over this planet?” Leona asked him.

“Not far,” he replied. “There are a few hundred million of us on this continent.”

“What about on other continents?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir. We are all slaves here, who answer to a greater power. It is possible that there are others elsewhere of which we would not be cognizant. Our technology is deliberately suppressed.”

She almost felt bad for him. She turned to Ramses. “You’re better at lasting in orbit. I have trouble seeing while I’m up there. Would you please scout for us?”

“Sure, boss.” He teleported away just after Angela took him by the hand to go along with him.

Meanwhile, Leona tilted her chin, and the rest of the team could tell that she was doing math in her head. “It should only take us about an hour to ferry everyone to wherever they’re going. The only reason we didn’t do that during the evacuation of the bunkers is because there were so many nooks and crannies, and it was very cramped in some places. If we can organize the slaves into one wide open space, this should be easy.” She looked back at the new Monarchy. “You’ll need to do that for us as well.”

“It will take us longer to organize and gather all of them then it will be for you to transport them to wherever it is you decide, sir,” the new Monarchy explained.

“Then you better start now. We’ll give you 22 hours, but earlier would be in your best interests; believe you me.”

“Right away, sir.” They didn’t love that he was treating them with such high regard, because it was clearly because he feared them, but it had to be this way to get stuff done. They were fine playing the part of gods among ants.

Ramses and Angela returned a few minutes later to recruit help from Olimpia and Mateo. They had spotted a sufficiently-sized land mass, but they still needed to make sure that it was safe enough for the Welriosians to live on. Ramses happened to have an edibility testing device with him, so he taught Olimpia how to use it. Over the course of the next half a day, she tested as many fruits and roots as she could in the immediate area, but there would not be enough time for them to check everything available. They would leave it with the refugees so they could take care of it themselves while the team was unavailable. While Mateo and Angela were scouting the immediate area to make sure there weren’t any other dangers lurking, like dinosaurs or unstable ground, Ramses programmed a nanoexcavator to start building the Welriosians a place for them to live that was out of the elements. It was just going to be a really simple artificial cave, but it would take care of them until they could build their own shelters throughout the next year. They were going to take whatever supplies and other resources they needed from the natives too, and just hope that it would be enough.

All of this had to get done in a matter of hours, because Team Matic was going to disappear at the end of today. There was nothing they could do to stop that, but it didn’t look like anyone here had spaceships, or even airplanes, so the Welriosians should be safe...for now. Life wasn’t going to be easy, but it wasn’t easy where they were living before. The real danger came from out there. This planet here was being controlled and used by the empire that reigned over this region of the galaxy. Representatives could arrive at any time in their own ships, and who knows how they would react to this development? Perhaps they already knew, and someone was on their way. The new Monarchy claimed that no one in the Goldilocks Corridor had FTL capabilities, except for the prime world, which no one here had ever been alive to encounter. They were a mysterious super-ruling class which may or may not exist anymore. If Bronach Oaksent was the true master of all, though, his capital planet probably was still in power, but was perhaps, busy with other things.

The team was doing the best they could with what they had, and now that they were completely shipless themselves, that wasn’t a whole lot. They never stopped working, scouting the area, testing the food, building the infrastructure, and coordinating the emancipations. There was so much, and it was impossible to make sure they had everyone in the time allotted. Mayor Merrick was still alive, and in possession of a full town census, but the priority was getting as many people to the new continent as possible. If that didn’t amount to everyone, the rest were just going to have to wait. They weren’t actually gods. “That’s not good enough,” Merrick complained.

“I’m sorry, it’s the best we can do.”

“No, I’m not blaming you, but we can’t just go hide under a rock, and hope that we all made it. We can take a new census while we’re there, but then what? It will be another year until you can ferry the missing, if we can even find them in another day.”

“What else can we do?” Marie asked. She was in charge of the gathering on this end. “You don’t want us to transport you somewhere closer, do you?”

“No. I want you to get my people as far from here as possible.” Merrick paused. “But some of us should stay behind. The strongest fighters, and I will make sure that none of these people hid one of my own somewhere in a basement, or something.”

Marie shook her head. “Far be it for us to tell you how to lead your people, but I’m not sure if I would feel comfortable deciding who has to stay.”

“I’ll get enough volunteers,” Merrick assured her. “I won’t need to force anyone. Sheriff Kamiński!”

The crowd parted so a man could step forward. “Right here, sir!”

“Organize a posse for me. Make it clear that it’s voluntary. I need ten to stay here for a year until the teleporters return. We’ll be responsible for finding any stragglers.”

“You shouldn’t do it,” Sheriff Kamiński insisted. “You need to be there to lead everyone else. Someone has to run a count, and then relay that information to us, so know who’s missing.” Everyone seemed to agree with that, that Merrick should be on the other continent, and they vocalized as much. “I’ll lead the posse from here. We will need a way to communicate, though.”

“We can handle that,” Marie clarified. She tapped on her own communicator. “Rambo, I need two spare comm discs.”

“Coming right up.”

Once the logistics were cleared up, all six members of Team Matic started to teleport the Welriosians once again, two by two. Three hours later, midnight central hit, and they jumped to the future. They were glad that the sheriff’s posse stayed behind. Over a hundred people were not emancipated when they were meant to be. This included Maqsud’s baby mama, Lilac, who was now safe in a building that they had seized. It was now called Fort Welrios. Her son, Aristotle, however, was still missing.

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