The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 10, 2431

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Once everyone was back in the ship, Ramses plotted a course to Ex-42, and launched. As they were standing there, Mateo looked over at Vitalie!324, who seemed to be deep in thought. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, or even what she was feeling, since she wasn’t part of the empathy circle, but he took a guess. “We’re going the wrong way.”

Ramses was taken aback. “Leona, could you check my math?”

“No, your math is fine,” Mateo started to clarify. “I mean, I don’t know that it is, but it always has been. I just mean, I think we’re going to the wrong place. How many populated planets did you say were on the way to Ex-42?”

“Thirty-one,” Leona reminded him.

“That’s thirty-one planets who could all do with a little extra...vitality.”

Vitalie hadn’t been paying that much attention, but she recognized the play on her name. “Wait, what? No, you don’t have to stop at all those other worlds on my account. Let’s go find your bad guy.”

“Hm,” Leona said. “Thirty-one worlds means an extra seven days on our mission. That’s not that big a deal.”

“Well, who knows what you’re gonna run into on the intervening planets?” Vitalie argued. “One of them might end up stopping you from being able to reach it. No, the safest course of action is to go straight there.” She shoved her open hand forwards from her nose.

“It could be a trap,” Angela reasoned. “Maybe that’s not where the archive is at all. Maybe it’s an inescapable prison planet. Going to the other worlds is strategically logical. We can’t lose the information that we have. We can only gain more.”

“That’s true,” Leona agreed. “So we wouldn’t be going just for the other versions of you, Vita. There are other reasons to make stops. Again, it’s a week out of the way.”

“It’s seven years,” Vitalie argued. “I think you lot tend to forget that. Everyone else moves on without you, and a lot can happen in that extra time. Ex-42 might be destroyed by the time we make it there if we go on every detour available. Hell, the Prime Minister might have sent a relativistic kill missile to beat us there.”

Marie shrugged. “If he sent a missile tomorrow, it would beat us there anyway. Hell, he could be on the quantum phone with them right now, instructing them to detonate their self-destruct, and then we would end up the whole twenty-four years too late. Time jumps or not, it’s a risk.”

Mateo placed a hand on Vitalie’s shoulder. “We’ll make one stop every day. There, we’ll resupply, if needed, maybe help a few people, and yes, we’ll also find your alternate self’s stasis pod, and let her out. If not us, then who?”

“Don’t think of it as being selfish,” Olimpia reasoned. “They’re not really you anymore. You’re helping your sisters.” She gestured towards Angela and Marie, who were also alternates of the same person, but now thought of each other as twin sisters.

Vitalie nodded in concession. “Okay. Where are we going instead, then?”

Ramses pulled up the map. “Ex-548. Gah, I can’t figure out the pattern here. It’s buggin’ the shit out of me,” he lamented

“Ex-548 ho!” Mateo declared, standing tall, and pointing towards the back wall.

They all stared at him. Leona glanced over at Ramses, and nodded slightly. Ramses went over to the controls, and altered course. The Goldilocks Corridor was named such that the stars with habitable planets were all laid out in a relatively straight line, so he only had to adjust a little bit.

A year later, they were in orbit over Ex-548. During the interim year, the ship took readings of the surface. No signals were being sent out into space, or within the atmosphere. There were signs of civilization, but no sign of movement. This planet was either abandoned, or the inhabitants were living underground.

“Or they’re all dead,” Olimpia offered.

“Yeah,” Leona agreed. “They could be dead. Mateo, you found Vitalie!908, so I’ll look for her this time. Olimpia, you wanna come with me?”

“Sure,” she answered.

“Hubby, it’s your turn to stay on the ship. Marie, you know enough about this stuff to stay with him in case something goes wrong up here. The rest will go down and see what’s up with what apparently used to be populated areas.”

“There are-slash-were five major settlements here,” Ramses reported. “We can split up, and—”

“Nope,” Leona interrupted. “Ram, Vitalie, and Angela, go together, and stay together. You have the most dangerous job, so I don’t want to shrink the numbers any more than they already are. We’re getting faster at finding the stasis pod, so I’m sure we’ll join you pretty quickly.”

“Ready...” Olimpia began, “...break.”

A couple of hours in, Leona and Olimpia were still trying to triangulate the stasis pod, having underestimated how difficult it would be. In his spare time, Ramses had been trying to figure out how to track them directly, but they weren’t designed to be located like a GPS beacon. It was also possible in this case that word had gotten around about the team’s interference in the goings-on of the Exin Empire that someone decided to dig her up, and do something else with her. Maybe they tossed her into the host star, or just released her, and then shot her in the head. They would keep trying all day either way.

The settlement group was on the ground too, looking for an explanation for why no one seemed to live here anymore. When they were last here, the natives were living under turn of the 21st century Earth conditions, though they weren’t anywhere near that population size. Each settlement was the size of a town small enough for rumors to spread faster than sound, but large enough for a resident to meet someone as an adult who they had never heard of before. They were thousands of kilometers apart, on separate continents. None of the homes appeared to be locked, so they entered a few to get an idea of what may have happened here. There wasn’t any rotten food on the dinner table, or showers left running. There were also no signs of struggle, or hurried packing. Whatever the cause, it wasn’t sudden. The people had time to leave the lights off, and the doors closed. They left on purpose, and based on the level of dust, the computer estimated that it happened about a year ago. The interesting part was that all of the settlements were left in the same state, which meant that they all agreed to leave at the same time. The team just kept looking for answers.

Meanwhile, up on the ship, Mateo and Marie were in realspace, instead of the pocket dimension. They were lying down back to back in the tiny habitable section, admiring the view through the ports. “Hey, are your comms off?” Mateo asked.

“Output is off. Input is in cocktail mode.” Cocktail mode kept the conversations silent for the user unless someone else on the network used any out of a list of preselected keywords, like their names, or emergency.

Mateo didn’t continue right away. “Do you ever think about...?”

“Think about what?”

“Heath?”

“Oh.”

“Sorry, if that’s too sensitive of a topic.”

“No, it’s okay. I know I don’t talk about him enough. I mean he’s still my husband, and I should think about him more. I just...I don’t. I don’t know why. I know we left things in a bad place, but I think if I let myself dwell on it, I’ll see that I’m the bad guy. I left him long before he left me. I was never really committed to that relationship. I just never realized it until he had the courage to walk away. Don’t get me wrong, I still love him, but I’m a part of this team, and he’s not. He never wanted to be. He stayed as long as he did for me, but he has his own life to live. Could we have reconciled, and gotten back together?” She sighed. “Probably. Neither one of us tried very hard, and then we both all but died. It just seemed...like that chapter was over. I wanna be here, with all of you. I have no clue how he feels about it at this point. I hope he’s okay.”

“I hope so too.”

“Sometimes I wish I had just been alone during the four years before you showed up. It would have been easier. No attachments, no complications. I’m not blaming him for anything, but how would things have turned out if we could have just come back together as a team?”

“It could have been worse,” he pointed out. “I mean, I know it would have been worse if you had been alone. If you had ever recovered from that isolation, it still would have weighed on you for the rest of your life. I think, in the end, it was a good thing that you met him, even with the complications. I doubt our shared experience in the Third Rail for that year would have been improved by deleting him from the roster.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” she agreed.

“You’ll see him again. We always do.”

“Really?” She chuckled. “When was the last time you saw—I dunno—your mother, or that nanobot intelligence who tried to kill you near the beginning of your time traveling?”

He laughed with her. “Mirage? It’s been about since back then. I suppose you’re right; we don’t see everyone from our past again.”

“Is everyone on?” Olimpia asked through comms.

Everyone confirmed according to a predetermined order, so they would not talk over one another.

“Jump to our location, including Group Breakthrough. The ship will be fine on its own. There’s no one here. Not anymore.”

Leona and Olimpia were found standing next to Vitalie!548’s stasis pod in the middle of nowhere. It was leaning slightly to the left, open and empty, with dirt and sand piled up inside. “Now we know why it took us so long to find it.”

Ramses nodded. “It’s inactive, which incidentally shrinks its networking capabilities to a smaller radius. No reason to place two empty pods in sync.”

“Why were you able to find it at all?” Angela asked them.

“It’s still powered on, just enough to maintain coherence for this message, of which we only watched the beginning.” Leona reached in, and pressed a button.

At first, nothing happened. Then a hologram of Vitalie appeared from outside of frame, and turned around. She composed herself, running a finger through her hair as if she had intended to edit the very beginning out before uploading the final cut. “My name is Vitalie Crawville. I came to this planet long ago, and placed myself in stasis while I waited for the world to be populated. Unfortunately, someone else got to me before the population could. He overpowered me, and put me back in permanently. At least, I think it was supposed to be permanent. Later, probably due to geological activity, my pod was exposed enough to be discovered by the natives. They figured out how to free me, and I explained to them that my purpose here was to be their Caretaker.

“This was a peaceful world. For the most part, they didn’t need me to take care of them. Yet I stayed, and did what I could. It’s not like I had anywhere else to go. This was my only purpose. As it turned out, I was not the only thing that the Leighstens had found. They were a curious bunch, and as it happens, every inhabited world in this sector contains a hidden central computer, regardless of the level of advancement they are allowed to attain. Apparently, the Leighstens were an early experiment to make sure that the seeding process was viable. I have reason to believe that the godking who did this started a couple of similar experiments before he got it right, so you may encounter those during your travels. Once an experiment was over, he would abandon the project, because to him, the survivors were insignificant. We do not contribute to the Empire in any way, not anymore. I suppose we should be glad that we weren’t simply exterminated. Most of the details that would illuminate the full story were encrypted, but the computer was made to receive some news from other worlds, so we were able to keep up with current events.

“Team Matic, I know that you’re the ones watching this. Only you would have been granted access to this file. Out of concern for the Leighstens’ safety, I have made drastic arrangements for their protection. You will not find us, and more importantly, neither will Bronach Oaksent. Do not look into this matter further. I am doing my job. I am taking care of them. It hurts my heart to say that I would not be able to accomplish this if I didn’t keep them away from you. You are...irritants. You shuffle shit up and you make changes. You do it everywhere you go. Sometimes you succeed, and sometimes...you just make things worse. The Exins will retaliate, and that may result in a scorched policy. Honestly, Oaksent is nothing if not unpredictable. We’re not the only ones getting the news feed. They know you’re here now, and each next world will have one year more than the world before to prepare for your arrival. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do whatever it is you’re trying to do, but I can’t let the Leighstens get caught in the line of fire. Please leave now. This pod will self-destruct in five seconds.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Leona assured the team. “The first thing I did was disable the triggering mechanism. We’ll still blow it up, but I know that Ramses likes to scavenge for parts.”

“No,” Vitalie!324 insisted. She turned away. “Destroy it all please.”

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Starstruck: Phase Two (Part III)

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The year: 2283. After traveling at maximum reframe speeds for 33 years, they were at the new antistar. Like the first one, it was located in the intergalactic void, which was the safest place for it. If any particle from it encountered any particle of regular matter, they would annihilate each other. Fortunately, there is really no such thing as an antiphoton, or simply seeing the light emanating from an antistar would destroy you. They were orbiting at a safe distance, but keeping their EM shield up at all times for safety. They sacrificed less essential systems, like lighting and life support. Belahkay could survive by limiting himself to a small section of the ship, and he was posthuman enough to manage with less than an OG human. The other three didn’t need much at all.

Photons were not the only particles that came out of stars, and those would be quite dangerous. That was why the antistar was so lonesome. Any one that tried to form closer to other celestial bodies would end up being annihilated sooner or later. Being that the universe was created over fourteen billion years ago, the chances of an antistar surviving inside of a galaxy were low, and the probability would only decrease.

During the ride over here, all four of the crew stayed in VR stasis pretty much the whole time. This left their normal substrates in dormant, energy-saving mode—or in Belahkay’s case, metabolic suspension—but their minds active. They spent most of that time constructing new simulated worlds in a shared virtual environment. They could theoretically connect themselves to the quantum grid, and interact with other people in the galaxy, but they didn’t want to risk leading people to this region of the Milky Way. Yeah, anyone capable of traversing these vast distances in any reasonable amount of time would almost certainly be a part of the time traveler underground anyway, but there was no reason to put anyone in any unnecessary danger. The Exins had the ability to form portals between stars, like the one they used to maintain a connection between the original antistar, and Alpha Centaurus B, so that was another reason to leave everyone else out of the line of fire.

As far as the Exins themselves went, the crew tried to learn more about them, and how they came to be this far out from Earth, but they were not able to learn much. They tried to hack into their communications system, but there didn’t appear to be one. Surely their escort vessel has some way to maintain contact with the rest of their empire, but their means of accomplishing this was not readily apparent. That escort ship occasionally pinged the Iman Vellani to make sure that it was still on course, and of course, it always was. They made no attempt to escape, and that was partly due to the fact that none of them had seen an antistar before, and this may be the only opportunity to get up close and personal with one. One thing that their escorts did decide to tell them was that both of the two antistars they managed to locate were incredibly unstable. This could be for any number of reasons, ranging from the possibility that antimatter itself was inherently unstable in mass quantities, to just the fact that some stars were less stable than others. On cosmic timescales, a star dying out after a few millions years would certainly be something to write home about, but it could be quite common in the world of anti-celestials. There just wasn’t enough known about them.

“Yep. That is an antistar,” Mirage said admiringly. “I can’t believe I’m seeing one. She’s beautiful.”

Belahkay pointed to a blip on the screen. “What’s that over there?”

Sharice stepped forward, and zoomed in. “Holy shit, it’s a planet. It’s a gas giant.”

“That’s so unlikely,” Mirage noted. She looked through the data as well. “I think...I think it’s made of antimatter too.”

“An antiplanet,” Brooke mused. “In every sense of the word. You could send that hurtling through space, and completely annihilate any target you wanted.”

“By you,” Mirage figured, “you mean these Exins.”

“We should be quite worried about that,” Brooke confirmed. “They might be able to do it with the star itself anyway, but it’s so powerful, I think they probably want to keep it on hand for their regular needs. An antiplanet might seem like a tolerable sacrifice as a single projectile against a major enemy. It could decimate an interstellar-based civilization. How would you stop it once it was on its way?”

“What are we talking about here?” Sharice asked. “Are we going to destroy it?”

“We could throw it into the sun,” Belahkay suggested. “We would just be adding to their antimatter stockpile, not taking anything away. They appear to be more interested in staying hidden than picking a fight with outsiders. If we do this, and they argue, how might they explain why they’re so mad about it if not to use it as a weapon?”

“As Mirage has pointed out, they’re holding the cards,” Brooke began. “They may not feel obliged to explain why they wouldn’t want us to destroy the antiplanet, or they might go ahead and admit that they would like to keep it as a weapon, because they don’t think there’s anything we could do to stop them.”

“They’re wrong,” Mirage declared.

“We know that, but how could we convince them that we’re not just going to roll over and do whatever they want without making any decisions?” Brooke questioned.

Mirage nodded slightly as she was thinking about it. “Destroying the antiplanet. That will send the message that, just because they’ve demanded we do something for them, and that we’re actually going to do it, doesn’t mean we’ve lost all agency.” They spent much of their time during the last 33 years debating whether they would go through with this at all, and they settled on doing it, instead of running. Again, this might be a once in an eon opportunity, and while the Exins may have control over it now, that might not be so true in the future. Based on Mirage’s once-godlike knowledge of the future, other, far more powerful civilizations, would be stepping on stage relatively soon. The Exins were probably still nothing compared to the likes of the Fifth Division, and the Parallelers.

“The Iman Vellani is impressive,” Sharice admitted. “But I’ve been up and down its systems, and it can’t move a planet, let alone an antiplanet.”

“This isn’t something that’s going to be done tomorrow. While we’re constructing the containment rings, we’ll also construct a modified stellar engine, fitted with a forward-facing EM generator to push the planet.”

“Ah, it’s a test,” Belahkay realized.

“What? They’re just testing us?” Sharice asked him.

“No, moving the planet can be a test. It’s small, we can argue that it’s insignificant. We need to make sure that it’s both possible and feasible to engineer the rings, and one way we could do that would be to build this modified stellar engine first. So when they ask us why we’re doing it, that’s our excuse.”

“They already know that it works,” Mirage explained. “They devised the rings in the first place, for use around the first antistar.”

“We didn’t see that,” Belahkay contended. “They didn’t send us any data from the operation of the original rings. All we have to go on are the specifications for the rings themselves. Nothing about that proves that they actually function properly. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to let us test the technology out with a prototype first. It shouldn’t take up any extra time. Like you’ve said, this is all going to be automated. It’s not like we’re building it brick by brick. We’ll program some robots to build the rings, and others to build the prototype simultaneously.”

A call came in. It was Ex-10. “That’s enough gawking. Now that you know we’re telling the truth about the antistar, please proceed to the nearest regular star system for your raw materials, and begin processing immediately. You only have about a century to get it done.”

“We have a hundred and fifty years,” Mirage argued.

“That’s not what we agreed upon.”

“The time hasn’t started until now, upon reaching the star for initial inspection and observation,” Mirage insisted. “You’ll agree to this, or you’ll have nothing. We’re prepared to die on this hill, and we’ll take as many of you with us on our way down. Then you’ll have to build it yourselves. Sounds like a lot of work. You’ll still be over two hundred years ahead of schedule, so stop complaining, and let us do what we do.”

There was a long pause before Ex-10 replied. “Very well. Be finished by 2434. I tacked on an extra year as a sign of good faith.”

Mirage took a beat before responding too. “We appreciate that.”

“Sending you the coordinates to the nearest second star system. We recommend you cannibalize it for your self-replicating machines. We assume that’s how you’ll gather the reset of the raw materials for the rings. That’s how it was done the first time centuries ago.”

“I’m sure we’ll do something similar,” Mirage agreed, “but faster.”

“We look forward to it,” Ex-10 said before he hung up.

“All right!” Mirage clapped her hands together. “Do work, son.”

It took them about three weeks to get to the staging star system using the reframe engine. The yellow dwarf that was not unlike Sol was located on the outer edge of the Milky Way galaxy. It was here that they built more than two thousand nanofactory ships out of an orbiting asteroid field. Each of these ships had their own reframe engine, so they could go out to other nearby star systems. Some of them had to travel as far as fifteen light years, but that only took them around a week. Bringing all of the materials back was going to be the big chore here. The reframe engine was not something that could be scaled very well. It wasn’t constrained to a single size, but there was still a limit to it, and the mass of a terrestrial planet was well beyond that limit. Even so, each was only responsible for that one system, so the automators only had to build celestial thrusters for themselves. These were giant rockets that propelled the planets through space. While they couldn’t get back to the crew in only a week, they were able to accelerate to high relativistic speeds. The whole second phase of the project only took 50 years, which wasn’t too bad considering. This would leave them with 100 years.

Since the specifications for the rings were already done, this plan was decided upon over the 33 years that it took them to arrive in this region of space. Everything was correct, and ready to go. Those automators worked smoothly on their own, sending back periodic updates, and error reports. In the meantime, they learned that they needed something else. There was one component that could not be found around any old star. In fact, it was only on one planet. And that planet...was inhabited.

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Microstory 2065: Not Gonna Hurt You

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Today I had a tour of the garden where I’ll be working starting next month. Or I should say, I hope I’ll be working there. She thought it was going to be okay that I don’t have any proof of citizenship, or a bank account, or a national ID number. Where I’m from, there’s no such thing as an NID. We have social security numbers that serve the same purpose, but that’s not really what the system was made for. I’m getting sidetracked again. The garden. It’s not the end of the world that I can’t prove I was born here, or that I was born at all, but there’s a process. She won’t be able to officially hire me until I get all that squared away. If you’ll remember, I was going to meet with a social worker earlier this month, but I never ended up doing that, because I secured this great place to live, and everything seemed to be okay without my new life. I’m getting over my second illness, but I’m still not there yet, so come Monday, I’ll finally be doing that. We’ll keep our distances from each other, and I’ll at least be wearing a mask. I spoke with him briefly on the phone, and he thinks that it will be okay. There is a proper way to enter this country, whether you want to come as a visitor, or stay as a citizen, but it’s not that difficult. It’s extremely difficult and painful in my version of the United States, but they see no reason to do it like that here. Where I’m from, people are terribly afraid that criminals will come in from foreign nations, but here’s the thing, there are criminals everywhere. You can commit a crime in the country you’re born in just as easily as a different one. No, that’s not true. It’s actually easier, because you don’t have to go somewhere first. How can we stop foreign criminals if we don’t just criminalize immigration itself? Uh, well what do we do about native criminals? It’s called law enforcement. Ever heard of it? It may begin with the border in some cases, but it’s not like it ends there. So stop freaking out, I’m not gonna hurt you. Can I be a citizen now? Everyone I’ve talked to about it says, yes, probably. Have a nice weekend!

Microstory 2064: Naïve and Trusting

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I had a phone call with a guy who claimed to also be from another universe, and it was pretty interesting. Out of respect for his privacy, I’m not going to tell you his real name. He hasn’t consented to me talking about him. Though, I think he would kind of be okay with it. How can I put this? He’s the opposite of a conspiracy theorist? He isn’t paranoid about the government, or anything like that. He’s very naïve and trusting, which is why he responded to my ad in the first place. As it turns out, he’s been looking out for any message like mine, which is why he receives the Kansas City Post even though he lives in Chicago, among reportedly tons of others. Surprisingly enough, I’m not one hundred percent certain that he’s not also from another universe. Have you ever heard of the Mandela Effect? Of course you haven’t. You’re too boring to come up with psychology terms like that. Basically it refers to a phenomenon where people believe something is true that is not, like maybe that a particular mascot has always worn a hat, when in fact, the hat never existed. Maybe you remember a character from an old TV show having a brother, when what you’re probably thinking of is an episode where he pretends to be a neighbor’s brother so they can get a discount at the arcade. I just made those up, but you get what I mean. That’s essentially what may or not be happening with my new Chicago friend. He wasn’t talking about all these crazy differences from where he supposedly grew up. There are lots of little differences, like street names, and the biggest companies in the world. All of these can be attributed to poor memory, or more severe mental health issues, but they could also mean he came through Westfall, and for some reason, is aware that it happened. I will need to speak with him more to get a better understanding of what he’s been dealing with. No valid conclusion yet.

Microstory 2063: It Was Murder

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I’ve been thinking a lot about my friends, Cricket and Claire. If I never see them again, I would at least like to know that they’re safe and still together. I placed a not-so-cryptic ad in the newspaper, asking if anyone else happens to be from another universe. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Nick Fisherman IV, you’re going to get a lot of crazies who never actually traveled the bulkverse. But here’s the thing, I don’t care. If they’re not lying, then maybe we can figure something out, or maybe we’ll just commiserate together. If they are lying, who cares? I’ve told you how boring this world is. It would be a nice change of pace to meet someone who doesn’t think like everyone else. Hell, they could be a dangerous psychopath, and that would still be better than all this tedium. Welp, that’s all I got for ya today. I’ll let you know if anyone responds to my ad. Just as a little disclaimer, no matter what the autopsy says...it was murder.

Microstory 2062: From Womb to Tomb

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Right. I was going to tell you how I got my name. I might as well. Nothing is happening today. My symptoms are about as bad as they were yesterday. I told you that I have a bad memory, though, so maybe I’m wrong about that. I tried looking for a website or app that helps you keep track of your health and mood, but it doesn’t exist. You’re so uncreative here. I want to call you small-minded, but that’s usually reserved for people who don’t like things like diversity, or can’t see the forest through the trees. It’s more like you don’t do anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. Could a health tracker app save lives? Maybe. But also maybe not, and it hasn’t occurred to you to try. Anyway, I’m rambling again. My name. Nick Fisherman IV. Why that number? Well, I can’t give you too many details, but the original Nick Fisherman never called himself the first. He just was the first. I don’t know much about him, but in the universe he lived in, he was being monitored by what you could think of as a guardian angel. Except that these angels didn’t guard anything. They only served as observers. They watched your whole life from womb to tomb, and never interfered. These never-called angels had no emotions, nor personal motivations. Or rather, they weren’t supposed to. The one responsible for the first Nick Fisherman developed feelings for his subject, and ultimately decided to adopt the name for himself. Thus was birthed Nick Fisherman II. This story was passed onto me after he accidentally became my observer. I wasn’t meant to ever be assigned one of them, but it happened, and since that was an interesting development, the leadership just let it keep going. Fast forward to my adulthood, I ended up going back in time, and creating a new timeline. I’ve let my other self go by Nick Fisherman III, which leaves me as the fourth. So there you go. There’s the story, as vague as is needed under the circumstances. Keep reading III’s “fictional” stories, and you may learn a little more about it.

Microstory 2061: Anyway, I’m Taking Some Drugs

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If you’ve been following my microblog, you know that I got sick again. It’s not even the same thing. The first one was a virus that I can’t pronounce, but this one is a bacterium that I can’t pronounce. I guess my immune system was in shambles for so long that something else managed to get in there before I closed up shop. I should have known. It’s definitely happened to me before. I just forget these things. The thing about being immortal is it doesn’t change your brain chemistry. It’s a purely physiological situation. It’s pretty much impossible to study the condition, because no one could ever take my blood, or anything, but I think that one of the downsides is an inability to improve in certain ways. I could never get stronger. Lifting weights, doing cardio, none of it mattered. Exercise didn’t make me feel better (it also didn’t make me feel worse at least). Nothing could change. The brain isn’t a muscle, but I think it suffers from the same limitations. I could gain new memories, of course, but I couldn’t really grow as a person. Anyway, I’m taking some drugs besides the antibiotics, so I’m not sure if I’m making any sense, but basically what I’m saying is my memory sucks. People would always tell me I should keep a diary to remind myself of my own history, but I would always forget to do it, so that never really worked. I’m surprised at how diligent I’ve been about this. Don’t expect me to keep going. If it’s anything like my previous attempts, I’ll stop by the end of the month. The only thing more boring than this world is talking about my personal experiences with it. Nick Fisherman IV, signing off. Oh, wait. Did I never tell you what my name was before? Oh my God, that’s kind of funny. Maybe I’ll explain where the name comes from, and what makes me the fourth out of four. It’s not anywhere near as simple as that my father was the third, and so on up the bloodline. It’s more like how they name kings.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 9, 2430

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Ex-908 was unlike the other two planets in the Goldilocks Corridor that the team had been to. The first one was at medieval-level technology. The second one was more like the 2030s. This world was far more advanced, with an early-warning outer system defense grid, and multiple space stations in orbit. Fortunately, the AI on this little ship was intelligent enough to avoid being detected. It stayed out of range by hiding on a planetesimal in the inner edge of the transtellar debris cloud, which was smaller than the Oort Cloud that was around Earth.

“What are we going to do here?” Angela asked. “We’re trying to find the bad guy, but what exactly are we expecting to accomplish on this world? Or the next one? Do we have any protocols, procedures, or plans?”

“Good question,” Mateo said. It took him a few seconds to realize that everyone was waiting for him to answer it. “Why are y’all lookin’ at me? I’m not the captain.”

“This was your idea, though,” Marie pointed out.

“Wull...” He fumbled for words. “Why are you listening to me? I don’t know what the hell I’m talkin’ about!”

“It’s okay, honey.”

“Look at them, salivating like honey badgers, acting like I have all the answers. This is just what we do, try to stop all the bad shit happening when we find ourselves in a position to make a difference.”

“Okay, okay, it’s fine. Relax,” Leona encouraged. She looked into his eyes, and started to breathe methodically until he matched her. Then she gestured for him to continue while she talked. “This is the most advanced civilization we’ve run into. There seems to be some air of mystery surrounding the emperor of this empire, of whatever it is they call him, but maybe they know something. Let’s go and ask.”

“The last one could stop us from teleporting,” Olimpia reminded her as she was rubbing Mateo’s arm up and down, since he was the one who suffered from that technology the most. “We were smart to leave one of us in the ship, but that could have easily not been enough. We may not be so lucky this time.”

“Ah.” Ramses disappeared into his lab, and returned a few seconds later. He was holding a damaged gizmo with wires loosely hanging out of it. “The spatial tether. Yes, I almost forgot. In the future, I might be able to help us avoid it altogether, but until then, I’ve designed some clippers, which will break us out of it.” He held up the remote that he had been carrying around lately to do other things, like disrupt Bronach Oaksent’s interstellar holographic projection. The only thing is, there’s only one. If any of us gets caught, you’re gonna need me.”

Leona takes it out of his hand, and turns it around in her own. “How long will it take you to build another one?”

“A second remote that does everything? All day,” Ramses answers. “A cheap knock-off that only clips spatial tethers? A couple hours, maybe.”

“Stay here and do that,” Leona orders. “I’ll take this one in case we need it. Hopefully, if they have such technology, it operates on the same principles. If not, you’ll be up here to save us.”

“I’ll stay with him,” Olimpia volunteered. “I don’t think anyone should be alone. I can be your little assistant,” she said to him.

“I would love that.”

“Okay, we’ll split into three teams. The second group needs to go find this planet’s version of The Caretaker. Vitalie, I don’t know if you wanna do that, or if you very much don’t want to...”

“If not me,” Vitalie!324 began, “at least someone she recognizes. So either you or Matt. The other iterants never met Angela-slash-Marie.”

“I’ll do it,” Mateo said. “Whatever questions need to be asked to find Oaksent’s ruling world, I’m not the one to ask them. It may end up in a fight, who knows?”

“Okay,” Leona agreed. “I’ll go start askin’ questions, and knockin’ heads. Mateo will find Vitalie!908. Ramses and Olimpia are staying with the ship. By the way, keep moving. Break orbit, if you have to, which I think you probably will. Go into darklurking mode. We’ll still be able to communicate through our comms. I don’t think more than two need to stay here, though. Nor do I think finding the other Caretaker is more than a two-person job. So who wants to join my husband while the other two come back me up?”

Both Angela and Marie raised their hands.

“I don’t know what that means,” Leona said to them.

“We both want to help Mateo,” Marie clarified. She looked over at her sister. Then they dropped their hands down simultaneously for a round of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Marie won after the third game.

“All right, is everyone ready?” Leona posed.

They nodded.

“Rambo, navigate us to the planet. I want you to look for three things. Number one, the biggest, baddest seat of government you can detect. Number two, the remotest region on the surface. Number two, the most complex cave system that’s still remote. If something goes wrong, jump to, and hide in, the caves. We can find each other while avoiding pursuit. Once we know where to go, we’ll split. Group Confrontation will go to the city. Group Stasis will find the other iterant. She seems to usually be away from civilization. Obviously, Group Breakthrough will stay with the ship, which I’m realizing now still needs a name.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Mateo claimed.

She was thrown off a little by this, but didn’t push it. “Okay. Let’s do it to it!”

The quickly-conceived plan went as well as they thought it would. Speed was key, which Leona knew. Orbital defenses sprang into action, but they weren’t fast enough for them. The three groups jumped to their respective missions, and no one was caught. Not yet, anyway.

As it turned out, they might not have to worry about spatial tethers preventing them from teleporting. When they appeared in the lobby of what appeared to be some kind of capitol building, no one batted an eye. They walked up to the reception desk. “Hello. My name is Captain Leona Matic of the...” She faltered. “Well, I gave my ship away, but that doesn’t matter. We need to talk to whoever is in charge here.”

“In charge of what?” the receptionist asked. She looked pretty young to hold the job, and didn’t seem to care about it. She may as well have been chewing gum.

“The planet.”

She yawned. “I heard he’s dead.”

“Not Bronach Oaksent. I mean, in charge of this world specifically, or maybe even just this city?” Unlike the first two planets, this world had several distinct cities, and any number of smaller towns in between. This one was the largest.

“Oh, the Prime Minister. He’s on the top floor, but—”

They didn’t bother listening to her full explanation. They just jumped right up there and started to look around. There were people hurrying about, but it didn’t feel like a crisis. This just looked like a Tuesday. One of them made the mistake of walking a little bit slower than most. Angela gently stopped him by the arm. “Pardon me. Where can we find the Prime Minister?”

“He’s back there. Can I go now?”

She let him go, and they walked down the hallway until they reached the big double doors. Angela opened one while Vitalie!324 opened the other. Leona barged in through the center. A group of men were in the middle of a conversation around the long table. They stopped and looked over at the disruption. “Good afternoon, folks. My name is Leona Matic. Perhaps you’ve heard of me. It seems that your god-king is a pretty big asshole. I’m aimin’ to take him down. Problem is, ya see, I don’t know where he is. You tell me what you know, I’ll leave you be. You stand in my way, I’ll take you down first.” She teleported randomly around the room, which wasn’t impressing them. “You may know people who can do this. You may be able to do it yourself. But I have other tricks up my sleeve, so don’t test me. Where is the seat of power for this Exin Empire? My guess is you call it Ex-001, but I dunno.”

The man at the head of the table was the only one standing. He tugged down on his sports jacket authoritatively, and began to come around the corner. “Emergency teleportation.” Everyone disappeared, except for him. “You’ll leave them be, because they got nothin’ to do with this. Your fight’s with me.”

“You’re not Bronach Oaksent,” Leona accused.

“No, but I run this rock. We have heard of you. We were just discussing your team. You’re a problem. You’ve been to two planets already, not counting the, uhh...traitors. I think you’ll find that you won’t be able to bully us like you did 275 and 324. They are...irrelevant, especially Ex-324, which is in the state that it’s in because it doesn’t provide Oaksent with what he demands. And you’re wrong, the primary system is not called Ex-001. You could never begin to understand our naming conventions.”

“What’s the main world called?”

The Prime Minister smirked. “I can tell you what it’s called, but that doesn’t mean you’ll find it. No one goes to Ex-69, not even me.”

Leona cleared her throat. “Do you know the significance of the number 69, sir?”

“Oaksent calls it the Divine Figure. That’s all we need to know. That’s more than you deserve to know.”

Angela wrote it out for him on a whiteboard. “It’s two numbers having sex.”

Leona never broke eye contact with the Prime Minister. “Your leader is a fucking child. Tell me where he is, or I’m gonna fuck up your shit.”

“I would rather die.”

“Weird nerd,” she mused. She tilted her head away. “Ramses, are you locked on?”

“We’re in, sir,” he replied through comms. “What do you wanna do?”

“Burn up the biggest one,” she ordered. “I want this world to be defenseless.”

The Prime Minister’s face couldn’t decide if he felt horrified, or confused. “What are you doing? What are you burning?”

The phone on the back counter started to ring.

Leona paced around menacingly. “We were wondering, why would your world need the kind of defenses that it does? It doesn’t make any sense. This is an empire in the middle of nowhere. No one out there knows that you exist. And the other two planets don’t have it. You don’t care about Ex-324 and Ex-275. So are you fighting against outsiders like us...or amongst yourselves? We didn’t speak long, but Oaksent didn’t strike me as the type who would have some sort of inherent opposition to civil war. You’re not his little babies. You’re his playthings. Hell, he probably stirs up conflict on purpose. I suppose I’m more like him than I thought, because I’m doin’ the same thing. If you keep refusing me, there will be nothing left to defend you, except for her.”

Vitalie raised her hand up, and waved with her fingers. “That’s assuming you can convince her to stay here as your Caretaker. The rest of your defenses will have burnt up in the atmosphere.”

“What do you want?” the Prime Minister demanded to know.

“I want to know where your god-king is!”

“I told you, no one knows that!”

“Ramses, on my mark, drop another one, but don’t worry about avoiding populated areas this time.”

“Wait!” He struggled to catch his breath. “You would do that? You would kill innocent people? That’s not the Team Matic I grew up hearing stories about.”

“You must have heard sanitized versions of those stories. The way I see it, you’re fighting a war on multiple fronts. I consider you to be an enemy combatant, and I’ll do what I need to do to protect the lives of the people that I care about. The Welriosians weren’t hurting anyone, and your boss tried to destroy them all. What happens when the vonearthans make it this far out? How will you react?”

“It’s not my job to react to outsiders. We’re the farest from the stellar neighborhood out here. That’s the whole point.”

“What is Ex-908’s responsibility to the empire?” Leona asked.

The Prime Minister took a breath. “These are testing grounds. Ex-182 regularly attacks us to see how we survive. If you destroy even one more of our satellites, we’ll all die. These aren’t games, the stakes are real.”

“I’ll leave you with what you have left if you tell me what you know, like I’ve asked a thousand times already.”

“I really don’t know where Ex-69 is, but I know someone who might. Ex-42 could have the answers you need. I think it’s about 24 light years away. It’s where we keep all of our data. It’s like one giant space server.”

“Ram, you know where Ex-42 is?”

“There are thirty-one planets between here and there.”

“That’s our next stop.”

The Prime Minister looked over at the phone. “I never answered it. Which satellite did you destroy?”

Leona looked at him incredulously. “I didn’t destroy any of them. Ramses was the one calling you on that phone. He was able to hack the communications network, and not much else quite yet.”

“You were bluffing,” he realized.

“We were that time.” They teleported away.

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