The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 8, 2429

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Just as the old man and the little girl were finishing up packing their belongings, they heard a commotion outside. Mateo had led the authorities right to their doorstep, which meant it could no longer be theirs. No matter, the girl had to return to her life, and the old man had no strong feelings about this place. This was a suburb of the city, which was why it took the teleportation detectors a little longer than last time to dispatch a strike team. Mateo lifted the girl in one arm, and placed his free hand on the old man’s shoulder so they could all disappear just in time. They should be fine here, clear on the other side of the world, where the rest of the team was waiting. Even if they could be traced, it would take a long time for anyone to catch up to them. The government’s main concern was probably the city anyway, not the rest of the planet.

“Where’s the woman?” Mateo questioned.

“We dropped her off back in the city,” Marie replied. “We were listening to your conversation.”

“She wasn’t happy about it, but slaveowners don’t get a choice, do they?” Olimpia added with an evil smile.

Leona knelt down in front of the girl. “What’s your name?”

The girl couldn’t answer. She turned away shyly, and hid behind the old man.

“Niobe Schur,” Lilac answered for her.

Mateo nodded, and approached. “You’re all three from Extremus.”

Lilac shook her head. “That girl and my son have never set foot on that ship. We found a planet that was suitable for human life in the intergalactic void. We found it interesting, so we decided to stay and study it. Both of the kids were born there.” She gestured towards Niobe. “She to two scientists assigned to research the ecosystem, and Aristotle to me and a visitor who randomly showed up one day.” She smiled at the memory of her late love interest, Maqsud Al-Amin.

“Can you tell us more?” Leona urged gently.

“Sudy disappeared. It was a passionate but fleeting relationship. I had to stay on Verdemus, and he had to go explore the universe. It was a long time before I realized that I was pregnant, and I had no way of contacting him. So I raised our boy there, hoping at some point the father would come back for a booty call, and I could tell him the truth. He never came back, but someone else did.”

Angela patted her on the back comfortingly.

Lilac went on, “an asshole from our ship took the majority of the researchers on Verdemus hostage, and I don’t have all the details, but he blew it up. I was in charge of guarding the planetside hock, and he was my first prisoner after years of sitting around with nothing to do. That’s why I survived the explosion, because the hock was deliberately built far from the settlement. Thank God her parents asked me to look after her that day. Others weren’t so lucky. Anyway, the fact that we stayed on the planet was a secret from the rest of the ship, so I tried to raise them there together until one day, the portal back to Extremus was also destroyed, and the kids went missing.”

“So how did you find them?” Mateo asked.

Lilac took a breath. “A man who looked a lot like my child’s father came, and said he would take me to Aristotle. It wasn’t until later that I realized he was Aristotle himself, all grown up, and there to close his own time loop.” She chuckled at this. “He transported me to Welrios, where we found the younger version of him. Adult!Aristotle left, and we settled down with the locals. We were happy there for a few years until the whole doomsday device tried to destroy us. And now you’re all caught up.”

“Except you never said how Niobe ended up on EX-324,” Ramses noted.

“I still don’t know that,” Lilac admitted. “Seems to be quite the coincidence. Someone other than an Al-Amin took those two kids from Verdemus, and dropped them off on different worlds here in the Goldilocks Corridor. Now it’s not all that crazy. I don’t know if you know this, but Extremus was the source of the Exin Empire. Bronach Oaksent was one of us at one point. Exactly what went down, and why he betrayed the mission, is above my paygrade, but all of these star systems,” she said as she was drawing a line across the sky with her finger, “sit directly on the same vector as Extremus. It’s why we had to divert into the void in the first place. He went back in time to plant his flag long before Extremus even launched, and he went to deadly lengths to prevent us from ever knowing anything about this region of the galaxy. He wants to keep it secret, from everyone. That much I know, and the last time I checked, we were at war with him, because he eventually decided that we knew too much, and also probably that the planet of Verdemus was too close for comfort. Which is ridiculous, because it’s, like, 24,000 light years away.”

“That’s farther than the stellar neighborhood,” Leona pointed out.

Lilac tilted her head, shrugged her shoulders, and widened her eyes. “They’re probably next. Because they’re calling this the Three Bears War. And I don’t think it’s just a reference to the children’s story. I think there are four combatants, and if one of the bears is Extremus, the other is liable to be Earth.”

Mateo nodded, and took the homestone out of his pocket. He waved it for Lilac to see. “We can undo everything that happened to the children after they left Verdemus. Well, we can’t undo it—”

“I know what that thing is,” she promised. “I understand how it works.”

“Then you know that you can go with her,” Mateo began, “but you have to be absolutely certain that the first time she experienced nonlinear time was when she disappeared, and ended up in the Corridor.”

“I’m sure of it,” Lilac responded.

Mateo stood up straight, and looked around at the group. “Is this what we want?”

“Are you sure Aristotle is back there already?” Leona asked the old man.

“I gave him the other stone...he disappeared.”

Mateo handed Lilac the stone. “Say your goodbyes. Sheriff? You can go with them too, if you want.” He separated himself from the crowd, and took in the scenery. This was a beautiful world, mostly untouched by man. They were on the edge of a meadow. Below them down the hill, the vegetation became more and more sparse before leading to a vast red desert. They could see for miles.

“I came here to do a job,” Kamiński said. “If that’s done, I would like to go back to New Welrios.”

“I think we can do that,” Leona agreed.

“Then what?” Angela asked.

“Rambo, you still have that star chart?” Mateo asked.

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t say where the primary planet is, though?”

“No, I don’t think these people are allowed to know it.”

Mateo turned back around. “Then let’s go find it. Unless it’s not my place to decide, I think I’ll call us Baby Bear.”

Shortly thereafter, Niobe and Lilac took the homestone away, hopefully back to their home on Verdemus, but there was no way to know that. If all went according to plan, they would have landed there nearly 90 years in the past. Trusting that it worked, those left behind teleported back up to their little ship, and returned to Ex-324. They sent Sheriff Kamiński to New Welrios, and the old man to the planet natives, but they didn’t stick around to exchange information with anyone. It was up to the two societies to learn to live together, and to carve out some semblance of a decent future. Vitalie!324 and Ramses!324 had their ideas about what that looked like, just like Vitalie!275 had plans for that world. That wasn’t Team Matic’s responsibility. They had a new mission. The other copy of Vitalie!324 would tag along to help, at least for now.

Their next stop was Ex-908, which was the other planet where Aristotle might have trotted to, because it was on a similar trajectory as Ex-275. There appeared to be no pattern to the numbers, and how they were determined; at least none that Leona and Ramses could detect. Her first guess was that it was based on Project Stargate, and the Galactic Coordinate System that was devised to organize the endeavor, but this didn’t match up either. They were probably more or less random, and served only to illustrate to the citizens that their identity wasn’t even worth casual thought.

They were all in the pocket dimension, because that was the only part of the ship where they could actually fit and move around. Come midnight central, they would suddenly find themselves at their destination, so most were taking it easy. Ramses was in his lab, as per usual. “What are you working on?” Mateo asked, walking in.

“I’ll give you three guesses,” Ramses said, dismissing whatever blobby image was on his screen so that Mateo couldn’t see.

“Is that sarcasm?”

“Do you detect sarcasm in my emotions?”

“No.”

Ramses smiled. “No, I just want you to guess. It’s a game.”

Mateo was getting smarter. He would be completely unrecognizable to himself at the age of 27. He wasn’t just accumulating more knowledge, but learning to be better at observing his environment, gathering facts, and sometimes even coming to the right conclusions with them. He looked around now for clues, but Ramses was making no effort to shield his view of anything, so there probably wasn’t anything specific that would help shed light. Still, just the act of looking around felt helpful. “You’re designing a new ship, aren’t you?”

Ramses laughed. “Damn! Good job! Yeah, this Breakthrough Starshot-lookin’ thing has been a good temporary solution, but I think we can all agree that we need something real. If we’re gonna fight this Bronach Oaksent prick, and his evil empire, it has to be something on par with the AOC. Care to come up with the name?”

“Hmm.” Mateo had been recently watching the versions of the comic book adaptations that they made in this timeline. “How about...The Iman Vellani?”

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Starstruck: The Toliman Nulls (Part I)

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When Brooke Prieto, Sharice Prieto, Mirage, and the newest member of their group, Belahkay Teal arrived inside the heliosphere of Alpha Centauri B, they immediately figured out why the vonearthans had chosen not to colonize it. All stars and other celestial bodies are valuable. They contain hydrogen, helium, and other elements, which can be used to produce energy and/or construct useful structures. Lots of science fiction stories only care about worlds that are naturally habitable, but that doesn’t really matter. With sufficiently advanced technology, anything can become habitable, even if that only means breaking it all apart to make enclosed spaceships. Nothing in the universe is completely useless, including Toliman, except that there’s something different about it. There’s something eerie about it. The closer they got to the star, the worse they felt, and there was no escape from this. Mirage was an early general intelligence turned transdimensional observer god turned android. Sharice was an unregulated AI turned android. Brooke was a human turned android. Out of the four of them, only Belahkay was alive with nearly all biological components. They were all capable of manipulating their sensory inputs to varying degrees, but not in this case. The sickness took hold of them all, and made them all feel the same.

According to the exploratory records, a single probe was sent to the star system. This happened at the same time that they were being sent to Proxima Centauri and Rigel Kentaurus. These were the three closest stars to Sol, so it made perfect sense. While the first two received later vessels, as well as passengers, Toliman was abandoned after the first probe. The reason for this was never publicized, but since there were hundreds of billions of other stars in this galaxy alone, no one really bothered to question that decision. Not even Mirage knew the answer, but her educated guess was that a time traveler had something to do with it. Travelers come from all time periods, and while the majority of history can be attributed to normal people making whatever decisions they feel they ought to, a few events were ultimately caused by someone who knew how specific decisions would turn out. Of course time travelers made certain decisions all the time, but in this case, we’re talking about deliberately driving the course of the future with profound and more obvious choices, or with big nudges.

For instance, to travel at something called fractional speeds—which is to say, a significant fraction of light speed—an object in motion must accelerate from a stopped position. This works with anything. A car can’t just suddenly go from zero miles per hour to 60 miles per hour with no intervening speeds in between. Except it can, as long as it can manipulate time and space properly. It was a time traveler, or perhaps a team, who first introduced the humans to this concept, and vonearthans have been taking the feature of interstellar travel for granted ever since. It’s not instant, but it’s impossibly fast. They don’t have to accelerate or decelerate at nearly the same rate as normal physical laws would suggest, which cuts down on travel time. Mirage was sure that Toliman was just like this. She thought a time traveler needed the star system for something, and made sure that no one would come here until they were ready. That might still be the case, but there was more to it. There was something wrong with it. There was something wrong with people when they came here.

Every atom in each one of their bodies was telling them to leave. They felt nausea, chills, muscle fatigue, dizziness, and fear. This place was frightening in an indescribable way. If they were on a planet, they would say that there was something in the air, but in this case, maybe it was in the radiation? They couldn’t tell, and they didn’t want to spend too much time trying to figure it out. Unfortunately, fate had other plans for them. They couldn’t leave, because one of the symptoms was a complete loss of motivation. Had Belahkay waited even one more minute, he may not have made it to the stasis pod, which saved his life. Because the other three stopped where they were, and didn’t move for the next five years. In that time, the little jumper ship they took from the planet of Bungula drifted throughout the star system until it finally happened to come close enough to the nanofactory that Mirage sent there years ago. Their real ship dispatched a tugboat to tow them into the hollowed-out asteroid. It wasn’t until the hatch was sealed behind them that they were released from the spell.

Brooke stood up, and emulated a deep breath. “What the hell was that?”

Sharice couldn’t stop shaking her head. “It was bad, it was bad, it was bad, it was bad. We can’t go back out, we can’t go back out, we can’t go back out.”

“We have to,” Mirage reasoned. “We can’t live here forever.” She composed herself, and approached the console to get some answers. “Whatever was doing whatever it was doing to us can’t reach us through the walls of the asteroid, but that might not always be enough. We have to take our new ship, and get the hell out of here.”

“Is the ship even finished?” Brooke questioned.

“Of course it is.” Mirage tapped the button to open the forward shutters. Before them was the interior of the asteroid. A shipyard was built here, and in the center was a beautiful shining vessel. It was small for a transgalactic ship, but it wasn’t possible to look at anything else in the room. The hull was a dark royal purple, with perfect curves, and no sharp edges. “Ladies...say hello to the Iman Vellani.”

“Unique design,” Brooke noticed.

Sharice was admiring the ship as well before looking over her shoulder. “The human. Is he okay?”

The Prietos ran down to the other side of the jumper to the stasis pod. “Vitals are okay,” Brooke said as she was looking through the interface screen. She released the door, and had to catch Belahkey before he fell to the floor.

He took a moment to catch his breath, and shake off the feeling of dread. “At the risk of sounding like a cliché, are we there yet?”

“Yes,” Sharice replied, “and now we’re leaving.”

“Good.” He shivered again. “What the hell is wrong with this star?”

“Mira?” Brooke asked. Belahkay was still having trouble walking, so she was carrying him down towards the control area. “What’s wrong with Toliman?”

“I don’t know, but...it affects everything. The Vellani, it’s...damaged. There are parts of its operational code that I didn’t write.”

“Can you repair it?” Sharice asked her.

Mirage sighed. “Not here. The effects of the...” She didn’t know what to call it.

“The Nulls,” Belahkay suggested. If it affects you as well as me, it’s not a real disease. It’s something new.”

“The Nulls,” Mirage echoed. “The shielding of this asteroid appears to be protecting us from the symptoms, but it’s really just suppressing them. I can already feel myself losing motivation again. We can’t stay here for even a day.”

“But if your ship is broken.”

“It’s not broken, it just needs to be reprogrammed” Mirage contended. “I’ll fly it manually until we can do that. This will work. We’ll just point ourselves away from the star, and go. But just to be safe, Belahkay, you should go back into stasis.”

“No. I’m with you.”

“It’s your choice. I’m not your boss.”

“Aren’t you, though? Sharice asked as Mirage was walking away.

Mirage didn’t answer. While she went off to prepare for things in their shiny new ship, Sharice teleported Belahkay over, and then started to ferry all of their belongings. It thusly fell to Brooke to distribute antimatter bombs in key places in the asteroid. They weren’t really bombs, but antimatter was inherently unstable, so if you wanted to turn some of it into a bomb, all you had to do was find a way to disrupt the magnetic field that was keeping it from touching matter, and preferably do so remotely. They could imagine some intrepid explorers in the future, who couldn’t understand why this star system was off limits, coming here to figure things out. They too would become trapped, but if they were organic, it could result in their deaths. This could still happen, but at least there wouldn’t be anything left around here to make it more interesting and inviting.

Once everything was done, they convened on the Vellani, and prepared to launch. They left the jumper where it was, because it was no longer of any use to them. They had everything they would ever need right here. Mirage commanded the airlock doors to open, and then shot out of there as fast as they could. They immediately started to feel the effects of the nulls again, but now that they knew what they were up against, they were able to fight against it. If they were to stick around much longer, the sickness would probably win again, but they weren’t planning on doing that. Even if they did lose all hope, and become unable to escape, they wouldn’t last much longer. The antimatter containment pods were programmed to fail on a timer, rather than be detonated remotely. It had to be this way, because what if Brooke lost her motivation to trigger the chain reaction while she was out here. And anyway, there should have been enough time to get sufficiently far away. The resulting explosion would be large, but still mostly limited to the scope of the asteroid. The pods they used weren’t full to the brim with antimatter, and it’s not like they needed to destroy the whole solar system. So the question was, why did that happen?

They were more than far enough away from the asteroid when it exploded, but the annihilation didn’t stop there. Bursts of energy started to pop up in all directions, much farther than they should have. It was like there was more antimatter in the area than they expected. But that couldn’t be possible? Antimatter wasn’t just floating around all over space. It was short-lived, because whenever it came into contact with ordinary matter, they would annihilate each other, particle by particle. How was this still going on? How could they stop it?

“We can’t stop it,” Mirage explained to Belahkay, who probably should have been placed back in stasis. “But we can protect ourselves.” She tapped on the controls, and boosted the EM shield. It was a simple enough feature that every starship had. While time travelers had access to things like a teleportation field for dust and micrometeoroids, that wouldn’t help them with things like solar wind and cosmic radiation. Still, the electromagnetic shield wasn’t usually turned up to eleven, because it didn’t need to be. In this case, it did. The Vellani was made out of matter, and if those explosions got any closer, they would all be vaporized instantly. The EM shield held, but it wasn’t enough to protect them from the devastating effects of what they had done. Something started to pull them back towards the host star, and they couldn’t do anything about it.

“Can you boost the propulsion?” Belahkay offered. He was holding onto the center console since artificial gravity had been turned off. The other three could magnetize their feet at will.

“All available power is being diverted to the shield!” Sharice replied. “We would be destroyed if we started using it for anything else.”

“If we fall into that sun,” he reasoned, “we’re gonna be destroyed anyway.”

Mirage was watching the screen as the explosions all began to approach the star. It too was made out of ordinary matter. “There is no reality where we’re not destroyed! Everything living on Bungula is dead too! It’s over! We fucked up!”

The ship continued to fall into the sun at an accelerated rate, and soon, the four of them lost all will to care about it. They just sat there, not worrying about anything, not willing to do anything to fix it, which was okay, because there wasn’t anything to do except accept their fate. In the blink of an eye, Alpha Centauri B was gone, as was the newborn starship Iman Vellani, and its crew.

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Microstory 2055: My Real Problem

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Not much to report today. The medicine is working, and I’m feeling better. I’m trying to focus on getting a job, and not worrying too much about my requirements for that. It just has to give me some kind of steady income, and my employer can’t get hung up on my lack of social security number, or whatever other info this country expects out of me. I’ve not found anything yet. Unemployment seems to be rather low here. There are about as many jobs as there are people, and my arrival has thrown off that balance. I don’t know why I said that. I don’t really know how any of this works. I try to spend a little bit of time every day getting an idea of what exactly is different about this world, but there’s no real way for me to understand. My real problem is that I don’t have any résumé to speak of. I mean, I do, but I can’t prove any of it, since I lived in a different universe at the time. Still, I’m putting out feelers, as they say. Nothin’ yet, but I’ll keep looking. It’s only been a few days. I’ve spent months looking for work before, so I’m not going to be discouraged quite yet. Then again, I was living in a lot of privilege before. Now I have nothing to fall back on. I’m alone. That’s not true. I have this great finished attic, and I’m so grateful for it. Still, I don’t want to overstay my welcome. It’s important that I figure out how to take care of myself. I think I’m going to have to start hanging out in the side lot of a home improvement store as a day laborer, if that’s even a thing here.

Microstory 2054: Technically The Top Floor

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Believe it or not, the free clinic was pretty good. I guess I don’t have to tell you that. My target audience lives in this world, right? It would be hard to get this message back to my version of Earth, where free clinics aren’t great, because society doesn’t care about the people who have to use such services. Anyway, a lot of people here need it, so it was really busy, but they were good at prioritizing patients. I’m feeling sick, but there was a girl in there who had nailed her hand to her thigh. Well, I guess I don’t know that she did it to herself, but she obviously needed to be treated before me either way. Once I was in the room, the doctor was patient and understanding. She also didn’t question who I was, or where I came from. I mean, she did ask those questions, but she didn’t push it when I couldn’t answer them. She prescribed me some medicine, and gave me a large sample until I could afford to actually buy the medicine. She also gave me the card for a social worker, who is known for being really caring of people in my situation. I kind of have to wait for that, though, because he deals with a lot of sensitive people, and I don’t want to get him sick. In the meantime, though, no more sleeping in the park for me. One of the nurses is letting me stay in her attic. At first, I was worried about that, because I’m already sick, and I’ve always had trouble with allergies, but she was underselling it. Yeah, it’s technically the top floor of the house, and it’s slanted like an attic, but it’s fully finished, clean, and well-ventilated. It also spans the whole length of the house, so my living space is larger than anyone else’s room. It almost feels like I belong here. Maybe I was too harsh on this world, calling it Boreverse, and all. I’ve not had a home for a long time, not really. Even the 20 years I spent waiting for Cricket before felt like a resort stay; not something permanent. And the five years we lived together with Claire still felt like we were just looking for a way out. That’s not to say that I want to keep living here. I still need to get back to them. But at least I’m not out in the cold anymore, so to speak.

Microstory 2053: Cold, Or Whatever

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Welp, I made a mistake. I really should have focused on shelter. One thing they don’t tell you when you first start to travel the multiverse is that each world comes with its own set of special diseases. Even if two worlds have the same thing, and call it the same thing, they’ll be different strains. When I first entered Havenverse, I got sick, and now that I’m in Boreverse, it’s happening again. Whatever this is, I’m sure it’s very common and unexciting to the natives, but it could actually kill me. According to the internet, there are free clinics. One of them isn’t even that far, but it’s unclear how good it is. Your mapping service allows people to rate businesses, but not review them. It seems as though they never thought of that. It doesn’t even use the star system either. You either hate it or love; nothing in between. But they don’t actually tell you how people rated it either. They then take the ratings, and categorize them according to a vague unnumbered list of impressions, like seems okay, or not great. In addition to being boring, this world also appears to be rather unhelpful. Wish me luck anyway. I’m headed there now to see if anything can be done about this cold, or whatever. Hopefully they won’t turn me down because I don’t have an ID. I don’t know what I would do then. I guess I would just die. I don’t look it, but I’m pushin’ 60, I guess.

Microstory 2052: Day Two

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I have to write this one really quickly, because I’m running out of money, and I know that I really shouldn’t be spending it on the internet, when what I really need is food and shelter, but I figure that I can get those things for free if I’m smart, or just later. First, while my immortality is gone, I’m still running on the energy that I got back when a window to the bulk briefly opened up. I probably won’t have to eat for at least for another week, maybe two. The weather is surprisingly mild here. They say it’s January in Kansas City, but it doesn’t feel like that. I don’t think the temperature—or the weather in general, for that matter—has changed once since I arrived here yesterday. Either your calendar is a lot different than the ones in other universes, or geography is. Maybe the continents drifted differently? Could this version of North America be closer to where the equator would be—wait, no, that doesn’t make any sense. I would have noticed that just by looking at a globe. The equator is the equator, regardless, and we’re about as distant from it as I recall. This is just super weird. Anyway, where was I? Oh, I had a little money in my pocket from Havenverse, and luckily, they use the same kind of bills here. I think that’s kind of how it works, though. Westfall is a special section of a universe-traveling machine called The Crossover. Westfall is seemingly random, and doesn’t send you clear across to a distant brane that’s unlike your own. The whole point is that you usually don’t even realize it’s happened. A lot of things are gonna be the same, like currency, and history, but apparently not weather. Still need to find a job, and a place to live, though. If anyone has any leads, hit me up in the comments. At this point, I’ll do pretty much anything. But I don’t deal with food or cleaning. Or waste or sewage. Or animals, because I’m allergic. And I really don’t like to work with my hands, or lift really heavy objects. I don’t want the environment to be too dirty or cold. I’m also not very skilled, so it needs to be entry level, but still pay extremely well. Other than that, I’m up for anything. Let me know, I’m gonna go take another nap in the park.

Microstory 2051: Greetings From Boreverse

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This is not my world. I don’t even know where I would call home anymore. I was born an unremarkable autistic kid in central Kansas in 1987, on a version of Earth. When I was four years old, a random cosmic accident imbued me with access to a higher plane of existence. From there, my knowledge and powers grew as more and more data came flooding in from these other dimensions. I started writing this information down in the form of fictional stories. But they weren’t fictional. They were just mostly happening in other universes. I even wrote myself into the stories, and occasionally interacted with my own characters. I didn’t realize the danger I was putting myself in, until the boundaries between my world and the rest began to blur, and instead of merely bringing characters to life, I was becoming part of a new story. A lot of stuff happened that I won’t get into, but it involves time travel, my alternate self, and a desperate scheme to retrieve my dog from a collapsed timeline. I let the other me live out his life, and sacrificed myself to the same collapse, essentially switching places with my dog, Daisy. But there was hope. My other self had all my same powers, and part of that was being able to generate characters at will, so he made me. He remade me, and inserted me into one of the most pleasant universes in the bulkverse. That’s where I met Cricket.

Cricket is a bioenhanced posthuman from Moderaverse, who lived in a world that stressed biological improvement over external technological development. I was starting to like it, but it did not last. We found ourselves being randomly sent to yet another universe, on another version of Earth. We were able to escape that, but not back to Moderaverse. We started to travel the bulk, meeting all sorts of new people, and making a new friend in a U.S. Marine named Claire Fuller. We continued to go on adventures together, vaguely trying to get back to Cricket’s world, but mostly just trying to find our place in the cosmos. In the meantime, I found myself with the ability to borrow my characters’ special powers, one at a time. The last one I took was true immortality, and I never gave it back. But I lost it anyway when I went to Havenverse, which doesn’t allow such gifts. The three of us lived there for five years, trying to make the best of it. But then we were separated when a powerful being put me in the crosshairs of an abductor. It was he who forced me through an interversal portal that I imagine was meant for him. Now I’m here, in a world that is not unlike Havenverse, but it’s even worse, because it’s boring. Everything just seems so dull and tedious. My immortality is still gone, but I was able to get it back temporarily, so at least I’m young again. The problem is that I have no identity, no money, and no place to live. I’m in this internet cafe to chronicle my struggles as I focus on essential needs before I can move on to more metaphysical ambitions. I have to get back to Cricket and Claire, whether that means returning to Havenverse, or finding them somewhere else in the multiverse. Until then, natives of this Earth, enjoy my daily updates in a new series that I call Pleadings From Boreverse. Sorry to have to call it that...but you sort of brought it on yourselves.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 7, 2428

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Ramses never told them which one was staying behind, and which would be going with them. Only the two of them understood whether the winner of Rock, Paper, Scissors would get to stay, or whether losing meant that he would have to stay. The same went for the two versions of Vitalie, who went off to make their own decision about it. Apparently, she wasn’t capable of simply sending someone else back in time. She had to go with them, which is why there were two now. Any given planet only gets one Caretaker, though, and they have to deal with that limitation, so one of the Vitalies climbed into the ship with them to help look for Lilac’s son.

The ship was extremely small. Most of it was taken up by the engine, and other functional equipment. The habitable space was limited to about the size of a stasis pod, which granted access to the pocket dimension generator. So it was bigger on the inside, like the TARDIS, but hopefully only a temporary situation, unlike the TARDIS. Lilac was placed back into stasis, and Team Matic jumped to the future, so Vitalie and Sheriff Kamiński were the only people who actually experienced the full duration of the trip. They were traveling at relativistic speeds, though, so while it took a whole year to get there, they only had to occupy their minds for about twelve hours. When the time-skippers came back to the timestream, their unnamed vessel was at its destination. It was programmed to seek an asteroid nearby, and wait until the humans could arrive to investigate. Aristotle might be here, or he might have been here at one point, or he might never have been here at all.

“What is this planet called?” Olimpia asked. They were looking at it through the viewscreen, watching it getting larger and larger as they drew closer and closer.

“It doesn’t have a name,” Ramses explained. “None of them does. They were only assigned numbers. We just came from EX-324, and now we’re on our way to EX-275.”

“It’s just one more way to make the natives miserable,” Angela figured. “They’re not allowed to have their own identity, let alone culture.”

Ramses placed the ship in orbit, and started to scan for civilization. Just as it was on the last world, there seemed to be only one region where people lived. It was hard to tell the population, of course, but it was probably larger here. They were living in high rises, and getting around via land vehicles on streets. This ship’s limited sensors were picking up multiple power sources, which appeared to generate electricity from fossil fuels, though it was impossible to tell from here. Just because a planet developed to have an ecosystem comparable to Earth’s, doesn’t mean it necessarily produced fossil fuels. It didn’t matter much. They were just trying to get an idea of what they might be up against. The people on the last planet didn’t appear to love the way they lived, even the wealthy citizens, but they were obedient to the Exin Empire. This one might be better taken care of, and more loyal, or they might be 100% rebellious. The only way they were going to get any real answers was to just go down there.

They released Lilac from stasis. Leona teleported her down to the surface while Marie took Sheriff Kamiński. Most of the rest followed, but Angela stayed with the ship. It was advanced enough to orbit indefinitely on its own, but it seemed prudent to leave someone up there at all times while in potential enemy territory. If they couldn’t figure out how to cross the 16,000 light year gap between them and the stellar neighborhood, they would probably have to keep doing things like that. It might be smart to enlarge and retrofit their new vessel to be more robust, or even build yet another one from scratch. It was too early to make that decision. Today was about finding Aristotle Al-Amin, and only that.

They were in an alleyway between what they guessed to be a hotel, and the capitol building. They still didn’t have a plan. If Aristotle was indeed here, bringing him up to anyone might place him in danger. There was no one they could trust. And also, no one could trust them. Before they had a chance to look around a little, a drone zoomed around the corner, and approached them. “Teleportation detected,” the robot voice declared. “Initiating dampening field.”

Mateo tried to jump, hoping to get ahead of the dampening field, but it started faster than he thought. It wasn’t like any he had ever experienced before. It didn’t stop him from teleporting completely, or limit him to a certain area. It made it feel like his skin was trying to rip itself apart. He flickered between the alleyway, and a different location. He couldn’t see much, but an old man was sitting in a chair, watching in horror as Mateo suffered. It only lasted for a few seconds before the field finally secured him in one place, on his hands and knees on the uneven brick road.

“Please do not attempt to escape,” the drone demanded. “An escort team has been deployed to transport you.”

While they were waiting, Leona knelt down to help Mateo recover. There wasn’t anything she could do but massage his arms and back until he was ready to stand up again. Meanwhile, Olimpia tested the boundaries of the field. It wasn’t just keeping them from jumping away. She started to feel the same pain he did just by attempting to cross the border through realspace. They were going to be taken to some kind of holding cell, but they were already in one right here. Ramses closed his eyes to concentrate. He was reaching out to Angela on the ship, but everyone on the team could feel him. Instead of using his words through the comms, which could be compromised, he went back to the emotion language they were working on. He ran the gamut of feelings, effortlessly switching from frustration to intrigue, to nostalgia, to disorientation, to vulnerability, to impatience, to triumph. Before he could finish the second word, Angela replied with understanding. She wasn’t trying to spell a word that began with the letter U. She literally meant that she understood where he was going with this.

A black van screeched by from the main street, and came to a sudden stop. A team of faceless stormtrooper-types flooded out of the door, and stuffed the team inside. They didn’t tie anyone up, or strap them down, but they could feel a mobile dampening field in here with them. They didn’t drive for very long before they reached the jail, or whatever it was. The abductors reversed what they did before, and dragged everyone out so they could stick them in a big cell together. No one on either side said a word. Once the secret police were gone, the prisoners helped each other up, and get over to the benches against the wall. They were acutely aware of the toilet that was just out in the open for them to use because someone was already using it, trying to keep herself as covered as possible. Everyone looked away politely, hoping it would be enough to make her feel safe.

Once she was finished, they thought it would be okay to talk. “We never asked,” Mateo began, looking over at Lilac. “Do you know where Aristotle was staying on EX-324? Did you meet the woman, or her daughter, or their neighbor, the old man?”

“No,” Lilac answered. “Why?”

“I saw an old man,” Mateo explained. “It seems unlikely that I would randomly go to him when I tried to teleport away, but...I dunno.”

“It’s not that unlikely,” Ramses said. “Our empathy allows us to communicate with each other, but we can still form strong connections to other people. You were desperately looking for Aristotle, and your power may have found him. That’s what I was trying to do when we landed in that alley. He may have been there at one point too.”

“I didn’t see Aristotle,” Mateo clarified. “Or anyone else.”

“His location is in your brain somewhere,” Leona said. “You can navigate back to him. When we get out of here, that’s as good a place as any to start our search.”

“How are we going to get out of here?” Sheriff Kamiński asked.

“With a little help from our friends,” Marie answered.

The woman who was on the toilet perked up now. Leona noticed. “We’ll take you too. Don’t worry.”

“I can’t go anywhere,” the woman said forlornly. “I broke the law. There’s nowhere to go.”

“What law did you break?” Olimpia asked her.

“Unlawful technology. I didn’t even know what it was. Still don’t. They didn’t take it from me, though.”  She pulled a stone out of her pocket, and showed it to them. “Doesn’t look like tech to me.”

Leona chuckled. “It’s a homestone. It will take you back in time to the first moment you experienced nonlinear time.”

“I’ve never experienced nonlinear time,” the woman revealed. “That is very illegal. I don’t understand why they just let me keep it.”

“They probably know you can’t use it,” Leona said with a shrug. “When we teleport you out of here, if you ever wanna get back into this cell, at this moment in time, you can squeeze it.”

She set it down on the bench like it was carrying a disease. “No, thank you.”

“Lilac, where is home for you?” Mateo asked her. “Maqsud had never been to Welrios before, and was quite surprised to learn you were there, so it must have been somewhere else.”

“I would rather not say. Not here.”

Mateo was about to ask whether the stone would help, but perhaps that would be too much information too, so he dropped it. That way he could pick up the homestone. It was useless to everyone but Lilac and maybe Sheriff Kamiński. They didn’t know if he was born on Welrios, or what. For now, all they could do was sit tight. It was hours before Angela and a third version of Vitalie showed up to rescue them. They burst into the building, and destroyed the dampening field generator. Then everyone teleported out to regroup on the other side of the planet.

“Hey,” Vitalie!324 said.

“Hey,” Vitalie!275 replied.

“Thanks for finding the other me, Angie.”

“No problem. I got energy for days.”

“If there’s one of you on every world,” Leona began, “we’ll always be able to count on you, won’t we?”

“Every inhabited world,” Vitalie!324 corrected.

“I’m gonna go,” Mateo decided, changing subjects. “I’m gonna go alone.”

“Are you sure?” Leona asked.

“Lilac, I don’t want to get your hopes up, so I’m just gonna run down this old man lead, and get back to you if it goes anywhere. It could be just some rando Two-Seven-Fiver.”

“The rest of us will keep moving,” Leona said. “They may be able to track teleportations, even this far out. Were I you.”

“Were I you,” Mateo echoed. He teleported away, and found himself face to face with the old man from before. He was still sitting in that chair, but a quick look around showed that he was not alone. A little girl was there too, and there could have been others in another room. “Sorry to bother you, but...”

“Have you been looking for us?”

“It depends on who you are.”

“I’m from EX-324, as is she.” The old man nods towards the girl.

“So you know what my next question is.”

“Where’s the boy?” the old man assumed. “I sent him home.”

“Ex-324 is not his home,” Mateo contended. “And Welrios has been destroyed.”

“He’s not from Welrios either,” the old man started to explain.

“Oh. When you say home...”

The old man nodded.

“You used one of these.” Mateo took out the homestone that the woman in the jail gave him.”

The old man nodded again.

“Where’s the slaveowner woman?”

“Who cares?” the old man wondered.

“Well, isn’t that her mother?” Mateo gestured towards the girl.

“No,” the old man answered. “As it turns out, she’s from the same planet as Aristotle. It’s quite the coincidence, but he recognized her when that woman took him as a child slave too. They knew each other as little kids, and he tried to take them both back there during an argument in my house. But Aristotle’s powers are...unrefined. Since the slaveowner and I were in the room with them, we screwed up the navigation, and ended up on the closest planet on the same vector. You have to account for mass; he didn’t know that.”

“Where did you get the stones, and how did one of them end up with some random woman in the jail cell?”

“Who said that was just some random woman?” the old man asked.

“Shit.” It must have been the slaveowner. “Goddammit, we should have found photos, or gotten descriptions. She’s playing innocent.”

“If she got you that homestone, she was hoping you would give it to the boy’s mother, so she could tag along, and get the hell out of Exin space. I want you to do the same thing, but I want you to take the girl instead. The stones need to account for mass as well.”

“Oh, I’m aware.” Mateo looked back at the girl again. “Where did you say they were from? What’s the name of the planet?”

“They call it Verdemus. People from the generation ship Extremus colonized it.”

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