The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 13, 2434

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Ramses wasn’t lying, nor even exaggerating. This particular pocket dimension was the smallest any of them had ever experienced. No, that wasn’t true. The one that Olimpia was trapped in between the two halves of The Sixth Key was even smaller than this, but to be fair, it was just for her. This was a very short hallway. Each of them had enough room to stand, but not outstretch their arms, if they wanted to. At one end of the hall was a storage closet with food and other necessities. At the other end was a stasis pod. Ram was glad that he installed that much, or Vitalie would have to find a way to survive over the course of the next year alone. They still had no clue how they were going to get out of this mess, but they were alive and together, and that was all that they could hope for for now. They were essentially living in a tiny little dimensional generator, which was floating alone in outer space. An EM field protected it from impacts, but there was no form of propulsion, not even for station keeping. There was no way of knowing where they would end up after a year, or what the former planet would look like after the dust settled.

Everything was completely different when the six of them returned to the timeline in 2434. Their living quarters were a lot larger. It had somehow grown while they were gone. It still wasn’t as big as the main one, which had been destroyed in the missile attack on Ex-741, but there was some breathing room now. “How the heck did this happen? Rambo?” Leona asked.

“It wasn’t me.” He ducked into one of the few rooms. “But my lab is back. It looks exactly as it did before, including all the stuff that I was working on.”

“How is that possible?” Marie questioned.

Mateo reached up to the console, and disengaged the stasis bubble of Vitalie’s pod. “Hey, do you know anything about this?”

Vitalie looked around. “Yeah, I built it while you were gone,” she answered as if they should have known that she would do that.

“How did you manage that?” Ramses asked her.

“Well, I’m a builder,” Vitalie said, just as casually as before.

“You are?” Leona asked.

“Yes. Newt Clemens transferred all of Étude Einarsson’s powers to me. As the Last Savior of Earth, she had teleporting abilities. As the daughter of Saga Einarsson, she had doorwalking abilities. As the daughter of Camden Voss, she had century-hopping abilities. And as the daughter of Andromeda Mercari, she had builder abilities. Now they’re all mine.”

They stared at her, only now realizing that none of them had bothered to ask her about this before. They had just gotten so used to being around people with special time powers that they didn’t question where they came from anymore. But Vitalie didn’t have any of that stuff before. She was born with the ability to astral project, which they hadn’t witnessed in a very long time. Actually, Leona was probably the only one who had ever seen her do it, since Mateo had a bad case of not being in existence at the time, and none of the others were part of the team yet.

“You’re welcome,” she said.

“No, no, no,” Leona said apologetically. “I meant to say thank you. We’re just shocked. We’re all grateful for you, though. Really. Thank you.”

They all agreed using their own words.

“How did you rebuild all of Ramses’ inventions?” Angela asked her.

“She used my master key,” Ramses answered instead. He held up a virtual storage device. “Everything I’ve finished, am working on, or plan to work on is on here, as is the current state of my lab. If you load a pack of starter nanites with my Bookmark program, it will start to rebuild everything from scratch. I told you about it in passing,” Ramses noted to Vitalie.

She shrugged. “I listen.”

“So, you’re a builder, huh?” Olimpia asked, stepping forward. “Can you build us an entirely new ship?”

“Not from in here,” Vitalie said apologetically.

“It’s been a year,” Leona began to reason. “Whatever the results of all those planet-destroying explosions, this system has surely fallen into some kind of equilibrium again. We just need to find the nearest celestial body. Then one of us can take a spacewalk, and teleport us to it.”

Ramses looked ashamed. “Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. There are no sensors on the exterior of the dimensional generator. There’s a single 180 degree camera, so you can hypothetically see if someone’s standing in front of the door, but that’s it. If one of us jumps out of the generator right now, and sees an object that we could teleport too, they wouldn’t know how far away it was. It could be beyond our range. Mateo, you’ve spent the longest in space? How many jumps did you make?”

“I made 48,” Mateo answered. “Well, it was technically 49, but the last one was to the other side of a door. I barely made it in before I would have died, though.”

“Yeah, so if it’s too far to see with the naked eye, we may all need to pitch in, teleporting along the route one at a time until the next person’s turn,” Ramses suggested.

“Could you build sensors now?” Olimpia offered, grimacing a tiny bit, worried that she was overstepping.”

“Oh,” Ramses said, “I suppose I could just print one of my new probes. It’s not designed for outerspace, but it wouldn’t take too terribly long to modify it.”

“I’ll help you with that,” Leona volunteered. “Everyone else, just relax. There’s nothin’ else to do. There’s no one to help, no bad guy to fight.”

“There are plenty of people to help,” Mateo muttered to himself after everyone separated into different parts of the pocket. The seven of them were people too, and right now, they were the ones in need. He didn’t want to say anything before, because he wasn’t used to being right, but Leona and Ramses made a mistake. They jumped onto the idea they had of trying to solve this problem through technology. But the explosion of Ex-741 only happened a year ago, and it happened right here. Remember, the tiny little instrument they were hiding in had no form of propulsion. It could only move due to drift, and gravitational disturbance. They were not swimming through a vast empty sea of space, like the asteroid belt that was between Mars and Jupiter. They were still within a densely packed field of objects. There was no way that they weren’t close enough to something. Ramses needed raw materials, and that was all around them. They just needed to get a look at it.

Mateo first tried to check the camera, but the cosmos was swirling by it too fast to gauge anything. They didn’t have attitude control, so nothing was stopping the generator from spinning and spinning and spinning. He decided that he would just make one jump out there to get a look at things. He would do it totally in secret from the storage closet, in case somebody wanted to give him some advice about it, or try to talk him out of the attempt.

Just before he could leave, Vitalie stepped in. “What are you doing in here?”

“Nothing. I’m—stealing food,” he stammered.

She rolled her eyes. “Really. Tell me.”

So he told her about how he was going to check outside before they spent all this time on a new probe. It was like breaking into someone’s house. You always try to doorknob first. It might be unlocked anyway.

“I had the same thought,” she admitted, “but I assumed the smarties had already thought of that.”

“Maybe they did. But it can’t hurt to check for ourselves, in case they didn’t.”

“It could hurt, Mateo. I know you people can survive in space, but you shouldn’t do it if you don’t have to. If all you need is a good look, then...” she offered her hand. “Let me take you.”

“Okay, cool.”

She projected them outside the generator. They were floating in space, but still breathing the air that was being recycled inside the pocket dimension. He was right. The majority of Ex-741 remained intact. Massive chunks had been dislodged, and were now orbiting it like moons, but they were all totally visible, which means that they were close enough to reach. In fact, it would not take more than two jumps. He looked over at Vitalie next to him, but didn’t say anything. She laughed. “You can talk. We’re not really here, remember?”

“Thank you, Miss Crawville.” He jerked his head down towards the generator.

She pulled them back inside.

“Let it be a surprise.”

Vitalie smiled. “Okay.”

Mateo went back out there alone, but corporeally this time. He grabbed the generator with his hands, and teleported to the nearest chunk. He walked around and jumped a little to make sure that it was solid enough to hold together. Then he set the generator down, and piled some space dirt over the handle so it wouldn’t fly off. Then he dove back into the pocket, calmly walked into the lab, and took Leona and Ramses by the hands.

The two of them looked at him funny. “Are we going on a date?” Ram asked.

“Just hold your breath.” He jumped out yet again so he could show them where they were.

A few seconds later, the girls all appeared too, including Vitalie, who was in her astral form, so she could still breathe. Ramses reached down, and scooped some dirt up with his hand. He let it filter back down through his fingers. Like Mateo before, he nodded affirmatively, and disappeared. Everyone else followed, meeting in the common area that Vitalie had built for them.

Ramses sighed, and plopped himself down on the couch. “Well, I feel like a right fool,” he lamented in a British accent.

“I didn’t see it either,” Leona concurred.

“We all lack perspective sometimes,” Vitalie tried to reassure them. “That’s why you make such a great team, because you’re not just one person in six bodies.”

“I keep telling you, you’re part of the team,” Leona claimed.

Vitalie shook her head as she was smiling. “No, I don’t belong with you. There are dozens of planets in the Corridor, and not all of them have a Caretaker. I didn’t know how to calculate the error rate when I started duplicating myself, but I knew it wouldn’t be zero. I need to fill in the gaps.”

“You could duplicate yourself again,” Olimpia put forth.

Vitalie shook her head again. “No, I work alone. I appreciate you taking me in, but I gotta go.”

“Well, you can’t leave yet anyway,” Angela reasoned. “The smarties haven’t built us a new ship yet.”

Vitalie let out that sweet knowing smile one last time. “I never needed a ship.” She looked towards the exit. “I just need a door.” She stood up, and grabbed the knob before looking over her shoulder at them. “Whose birthday is coming up the soonest?”

“Ours is June 19th,” Marie said, indicating herself and Angela.

“Happy birthday.” Vitalie checked her wristwatch as she was opening the door. There was a hallway on the other side of it, but it wasn’t the one in the pocket dimension. It was in another time and place. “Your gift is outside.” She closed the door behind her, and when Olimpia opened it up seconds later, she was gone, and it was back to the regular hallway.

They teleported outside once again to find a ship waiting for them, still powering down from having just landed.

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Starstruck: Back to the Future (Part VI)

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Mirage swam over to Lilac, who was scared and nervous, but not panicking yet. She hitched a ride when Niobe used the homestone to go from somewhere in the Goldilocks Corridor, back to her home on Verdemus. This couldn’t be Verdemus, because there were too many people, and too many houses by the shore, and also, Niobe was nowhere to be found. “Lilac. My name is Mirage. I’m going to explain everything, but first, you should know that both Niobe and your son, Aristotle are perfectly safe. They’re fine, and I’m going to get you back to them, okay?”

“Okay. Where are we?”

“Topeka, Kansas, 2036.”

“Niobe has never been to Topeka, Kansas, 2036.”

“I know. This is my homestone destination. For some reason, you were unable to exit the stone, so I activated it myself, hoping to get you out with a new trip. Think of it like rebooting a computer to clear out the memory.”

“Hey, are you two all right?” A dude in a tank top was standing on the edge of his boat, holding a paddle, apparently ready to pull them in if need be. It was April, so not a great time for swimming, but the day was rather warm.

“We’re cool, dawg!” Mirage replied.

He winced, but respected their personal bubbles.

“So, that could have deleted my file?” Lilac assumed. “It could have killed me?”

“Yes, I took a risk. It was probably fifty-fifty, but know this too, there is already a Lilac on Verdemus in 2341. She’s taking care of the kids. She either has not left to ultimately become you in her future, or she never will, because we’re in a new timeline.”

“Right. I don’t know much about how this stuff works, but I tried not to think about Past!Lilac. I just wanted to see my son again.”

“You will. It will take us 300 years to get there, but I will return you to him.”

“We should start by getting out of the water. I suppose it’s a coincidence, and that Maqsud Al-Amin isn’t here too?”

“No, sorry, it’s a coincidence.” Maqsud Al-Amin, also known as The Trotter, was capable of traveling profoundly vast distances from planet to planet. He found it easier to accomplish the task by starting in a sufficiently voluminous body of water. Sherwood Lake would do. Mirage didn’t know whether Lilac simply knew this about him, or if she had some other reason to suspect that he might be involved. She chose not to push it.

Lilac started to breaststroke towards the shore. “He’s Aristotle’s father.”

Oh, interesting. How come Mirage didn’t know this? She was losing her edge. Too much of the timeline must have changed since she left the Gallery Dimension to become a real girl. She would have to make peace with that.

They climbed out of the lake, and shook off a little. Some other people tried to hand them towels, but they were just going to air dry. They walked with each other up the road until they were hidden enough from view for Mirage to teleport them both away from here.

They landed in the middle of the concourse of the Salmon Civic Center, which was a secret hidden section of a building that only time travelers had access to. There was a bank, a post office, and even a weekend club, among other things. If you were a time traveler in need of help in the 21st century or later, and The Constant was inaccessible, for whatever reason, the SCC was the place to go. It existed on a secret subterranean floor underneath a strip mall on The Plaza. A man power walked up to them. “Good morning. My name is Konstantin Orlov. Do you require any immediate medical attention?”

Mirage looked over at Lilac, who replied with, “I’m fine.”

When Kostantin switched his gaze to Mirage, she replied, “I’m an android.”

“I see. Well, I’m here to help you navigate the Center, or try to help you with anything else you may need. Right now, it’s 11:24 Central Standard Time on April 13, 2036, in Kansas City, Missouri, United States of America, Earth. Have you ever been to the 2030s before?”

Mirage pointed. “I have, she hasn’t.”

“Do you have any questions about the current level of technology or cultural dynamics?”

“I’ve studied the history,” Lilac said dismissively.

“Great!” Kostantin exclaimed. “What is the specific nature of your visit today?”

“We need to get to the future,” Mirage began to explain. “Do you have any available time travelers, or access to stasis pods?”

He tilted his head to the side. “We do have a few pods, but they are currently in use. Unfortunately, we have been limited to only those few by, uhh...certain powerful forces. We are working on securing authorization for more, but I couldn’t tell you when that may happen. In the meantime, have you tried The Constant?”

“I would rather not involve The Concierge in this.” The Constant was like the Salmon Civic Center, but it was highly exclusive, and a hell of a lot older. Anyone who knew the SCC was here could get in, unless specifically banned. Even if you had once enjoyed the amenities and security of The Constant, you were not necessarily allowed to return. The rules were impossible to know. You just had to try, and hope for the best, but Mirage didn’t want to even try unless they had no other choice.

“I understand.” He had this polite customer service representative thing down. “In that case, you might want to speak with the Travel Agents. They will take down your information, and try to connect you with someone who might be able to jump you into the future. I must warn you, not everyone is met with a favorable transaction. Payment is often cost-prohibitive for people.” In the world of time travelers, cost was a far more complicated concept. They almost never dealt in such petty trivialities as fiat currency, or even precious gems or metals. It was sometimes a favor that the provider couldn’t do for themselves, and sometimes a sacrifice that didn’t technically need to be done, but the point was for the customer to lose something. For instance, if you loved your beautiful long hair, they may ask you to cut it all off. They didn’t need your hair, but if you really wanted their help, you had to be willing to part with it. Others just gave away their services for free, but when the Travel Agents were in play, there could be a middleman fee anyway.

“Thank you very much for your help, Kostya.” Mirage turned and led Lilac to the back corner. The Travel Agency was empty, except for an old man who was either sleeping or dead on the bench against the wall. Lilac rang the bell. A thirtysomething man in a blue sweater vest came up from the back with a Stepford smile. “Hello. I’m Romeo. My wife, Honey is finishing up something in the back. How can I help you?”

Honey and Romeo. Wow, okay. “I’m Mirage and Lilac. We came here from 2341 Verdemus. We need to return there to the exact same moment.”

“Okay, was that your first time traveling through time?” Romeo asked. “Perhaps you could find a homestone.”

“A homestone is how we got here,” Lilac answered before Mirage could stop her.

Romeo smirked. “Get out here, please, Honey!”

“What did I do?” Lilac whispered to Mirage.

“It’ll be okay. You just started the negotiation too high.”

“Negotiation?”

A woman who just looked like the feminine version of Romeo came around the corner. “What is it, dear? Oh, customers. I should have put my face on.”

“It’s fine,” Mirage assured her.

“Honey...” Romeo began, building anticipation. “They have a homestone.”

“Oh my, isn’t that wonderful? We just so happened to be in the market for one of those. Do you happen to have more than one?”

“Only the one,” Mirage replied a bit too hastily, which wasn’t necessary, since it was the truth.

“I’m afraid our rates are too high for only one stone. If you had another, we could talk about sending you where you need to go. Which would be where?”

“Verdemus in 2341,” Mirage repeated.

“I’ve never heard of a Verdemus. Is that a musical artist?” A common joke for this crowd, though not in so many words.

“Ya know what, don’t worry about it. Just get us to anytime on Earth in the 22nd century, and we’ll make our way to our final destination on our own.” That far in the future, they will have no problem finding stasis pods, or a ship. Hell, she could engineer her own ship and pod using the technology available in that time period.

“I’m afraid that that doesn’t change our rates. We’ll need one homestone per traveler. Two travelers, two—”

“We get it.” Mirage emulated a sigh. “One stone, one traveler. Get my friend here to this exact spot on November 22, 2260. I’ll go the long way ‘round, and meet up with her. Deal?”

The couple exchanged looks. They really wanted more than one homestone, but the only way for Mirage to procure a second one would be if the Travel Agents found them a time traveler, which would render the quest stupid and pointless, and they knew it. They nodded at each other simultaneously, then Romeo went on. “Give us a few hours to find the right traveler for your needs. You may wait over there, or go explore the Center.” He handed Lilac a buzz coaster while Honey started flipping through a rolling index of contacts. “Richard and Allen’s restaurant is open as well. I especially recommend the hadrosaurus burgers. I know what you’re thinking, but all dinosaur meat is lab-grown, and ethically sourced from still-living specimens in the appropriate prehistoric period.”

“Thanks.” Mirage didn’t eat, and Lilac wasn’t going to eat that.

“It’s Sunday, so the Salmonday Club is still open, though the portal to the Facsimile is closed.

“Thank you very much.”

“Oh, wait. Payment first.”

“No,” Mirage insisted. “Find us a ride first. If they charge for their services as well, we may need to reassess.”

“Very well.” They weren’t happy about this either, but they wanted the business.

The two of them left, and went over to the restaurant. Lilac was indeed hungry. This place was open all day and all night. It was actually technically two restaurants. A public-facing version was located on the other side of the barrier, and up a flight of stairs, between the Civic Center and the rest of the world. Regular people ate there all the time, and had no idea that they could be just meters away from a bunch of time travelers eating the same food. Or maybe they were eating different foods. The regular side served the standard fare. This side served literally anything, from anywhere in time and space, including apparently lab-grown dinosaurs.

“Mirage and Lilac?” a man behind them asked as they were sitting at their table, having finished eating a long time ago.

“Can we help you?”

“Garen Ashlock. A seer sent me here to find the Oasis and the Flower.”

Mirage was surprised, and she wasn’t easily surprised. “And you riddled that out to our real names?”

“I know who you are,” he clarified. “Do you need my help getting somewhen?”

Mirage looked behind him at the Travel Agency. “They didn’t call you?”

Ashlock looked over his shoulder. “Those creepos? No, they’re way overpriced.”

“We made a deal,” Lilac pointed out. “If we go with him instead, is that gonna cause us problems?”

Mirage scoffed. “I would like to see them make good on any consequences. Mister Ashlock, if you would be willing to get us both to at least 2260, we would be grateful.” That was the year humanity figured out how to travel at maximum relativistic speeds. The reframe engine was invented nearly fifteen years earlier, but the majority of civilization did not so much as know about it, so it was better to be safe than sorry. Lilac only had so much time in her life.

“Ooo. Unfortch, that’s too far,” Ashlock lamented. “My seer didn’t say anything about that. Why would they imply I needed to help you when I’m unable?”

“What’s your limit?

He grimaced. “It’s complicated. I don’t have a limit in terms of a solid number. It’s this complex algorithm involving my current state of health, including my age, how much I slept last night, how much I drank last night...”

“Give us a ballpark,” Mirage interrupted.

“Today feels like a gross day. That’s 144.”

“That will be far enough,” Mirage decided. “At that point, We’ll have everything we’ll need available to take us the rest of the way,” she explained to Lilac. “I could eventually make a stasis pod these days too, but closer is better, for safety and security. It would take me longer to procure the materials.”

Mirage and Lilac stood next to each other while Ashlock stood before them. He waved his hands around each other like an airbender, and then pushed his temporal energy forwards. Lilac’s body shrank to an infinitesimal point as it was thrown backwards. “Okay,” Mirage said. “Me next.”

“Uhh...that was supposed to be for the both of you,” he said quite nervously. “I don’t know why you’re still here.”

Honey walked over in her clackity high heels, sporting her eerie smile, and speaking with her fake politeness. “You entered into a verbal contract. You’re staying here until I get my homestone. Then you’ll go where I say you go...and by whose hand.”

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Microstory 2080: It’s Frickin’ Perfect

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I’ve been writing kind of long posts recently, especially that one from Monday last week. I’m particularly tired today, though. I had so much to do. I had to work first shift, and then go to several appointments for my apartment search. My real estate agent was great. She doesn’t make as much money in her job as the kind that sell full family homes, but she was committed, and she understood what I was looking for. There was one particular unit that I am very interested in. You can see the entire thing from one spot. A single room quadruples as a kitchen, living room, bedroom, and office. One door leads to a closet, and the other to a bathroom. I think they said it was 27 square meters in area, which is about 290 square feet, if you like to use the WRONG measuring system. The way the building manager tells it when we met him, there was a bit of an error when calculating the number of units that could fit within the length of the complex. Every floor has this tiny little thing that they tacked on in the corner. It’s too big to be just a storage closet, or something, but not big enough for most people’s needs. I am not most people. It’s frickin’ perfect. I can already picture the layout. The building is a little farther from work than I would like, because I would prefer to walk, but I think I can invest in a bike, and still avoid buying a car. I don’t know what I will do in really bad weather, but it might be worth it.

Microstory 2079: Struggling and Stammering

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I’m working first shift tomorrow, so I’ve set up a few appointments to go look at apartments, maybe somewhere that’s right next to the nursery, or at least closer. I won’t be signing any contracts quite yet, but I imagine that it’s going to take me a little bit of time to find the right place. This has nothing to do with how the world works. I have very specific requirements. It doesn’t have to be big, and it certainly doesn’t have to be luxurious, but it needs to be clean, and/or I need to be able to clean it without breaking my back. So in that regard, it would be better small, especially since it’s just me. I like things to be efficient and quick. Procedural memory is key. I want there to be a place for everything, with everything in its place. One benefit to coming to a new world is that this is a fresh start. I’m not burdened by all these hand-me-downs that don’t fit my needs perfectly, or regretful purchases that I made in my youth. I get to start from scratch, and buy only what I require, conceived by my more mature, experienced brain. It may still seem too early to do all this, since I’ve not even received my first paycheck yet, but I believe that they’re going to be lenient on me when it comes to when the first rent payment is due, due to my financial situation. It’s more important to them that I give them reason to believe that I can reliably pay on a consistent basis, not necessarily pay right away. I can prove that I am gainfully employed, and that I have decent job security. I’m still in touch with my social worker, who is reaching out to the necessary people to facilitate the future move. They’ve certainly dealt with harder cases than me, including people who can’t conduct business deals for themselves. I could never run a Fortune 500 company, but I’m capable of understanding the basics of a rental agreement. It’s nice to have someone in my corner who can explain what’s going on with me. I’m pretty awkward in social situations. If we’re only there to talk business, that’s fine, but if you start asking me about myself, you’ll find me struggling and stammering. Buhbye.

Microstory 2078: Where I Live and Work

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I only worked first shift today, which was great, because it gave me time to get to the bank for my final new identity paperwork. If I wanna get paid, then I’m going to need an account, because they don’t do physical money here if they can help it. I didn’t come to this world with a known identity, which I assumed would be a major issue, but it’s not as bad as I figured. The government will give me a new one as long as they don’t find any reason to suspect that I’m changing to a new ID because I did bad things with my old one. Every major city has at least one Identity Services department that is capable of handling this. All I had to do was provide my fingerprints, multiple DNA samples, images from all angles, and video testimony. I have to tell them where I live, and where I work, and if either of these things changes, I’m required to alert them. They’re basically going to keep track of me to a higher degree than they would for someone who was born with a name, and kept it throughout their whole lives. If they find out that I’ve committed some crime in the past, though, all of this will be immediately revoked, and I’ll need to answer for any outstanding warrants. Of course, I don’t have any of those, which is why this special program is perfect for me. I don’t care if they know where I live and work, or that I have to check in with my social worker at least once a month. I’m glad that all of that is finally behind me. You’re looking at the official blog for the official resident of The United States of America, Nick Fisherman. Everything should be completed in enough time for my first deposit, and if not, I can wait a week, no big deal.

Microstory 2077: A Break of Such Length

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I don’t want this blog to only be about my job at the nursery, but that’s really all I have going on. I don’t have any hobbies or interests, not on this world, anyway. I suppose I’ll start to get more into gardening, won’t I? It might be weird if I do the same thing in my free time that I do for work, but that may be all I really have. Someday soon, though, I’ll be able to afford my own place, and with it, my own computer. Then I can get back into writing. Until then, I can only work with what I have. Speaking of work, today I was there for only a single shift, from 06:00 to 12:00, instead of all the way to closing at 19:00. That’s the normal duration of a workday around here. People tend to work six hours a day, five days a week. That adds up to only thirty hours per week, instead of the forty where I’m from. Plus, every business in this country—no matter how small—is required to pay for a half hour lunch. A break of such length is required to avoid mistreatment of employees, so it only made sense to the legislators to make that part of the wages. Some businesses are allowed to do it differently by paying half a person’s wage for a full hour lunch break, because it makes the timekeeping easier, but others have you clock back in after your official lunch is done, but then stay on break. That sounds more annoying, and doesn’t allow you to go anywhere for the whole time. The nursery is right on the edge of town, so there aren’t a whole lot of places nearby, but one restaurant serves a particularly eclectic set of dishes, so it’s easy to go there more than once without feeling like you’re eating the same thing every time. It’s a little expensive, but I always get the cheapest thing on the menu. Once I get my own place, I won’t have to worry about borrowing my landlord’s kitchen, so I’ll really try to start making my own lunch. We’ll see how that goes. I’m lazy, so I get tired of that sort of thing.

Microstory 2076: About My Weaknesses

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Obviously, since it’s winter, most of the work we do at the nursery has been in the greenhouses, but that’s not all we can do. Apparently, since there are fewer customers, we’ll be spending a lot of time cleaning, and doing inventory. When I first started, the weather was unseasonably warm, so I was able to get a taste of what it’s like in the spring, but now that the temperature is dropping again, things have started to slow down, at least in terms of customer service. Like I said, there’s plenty to do, but it’s not as stressful, because there’s not as much of a timing issue. Soon enough, our busiest time of year will begin, and I’m getting anxious about it. They do a lot of workshops here, to teach the public about how to care for plants, and which ones to choose for their needs or wants. I can learn all I want about the industry, but I’ll never be good at teaching others about it. I come from a family of teachers, including my paternal grandparents, my aunt, my father, and my sister. I was not born with that gene. I just don’t explain things well, and I have such a shoddy memory that I forget whether I’ve said something already. More often than not, though, that doesn’t result in me repeating myself. I end up skipping crucial information instead because I think I’ve already said it. Then the whole thing just doesn’t make any sense. I was clear with the boss about my weaknesses, though, so I think they’re just going to keep me away from the students. At least I hope that I was clear. Maybe I skipped over crucial information. And anyway, we don’t have to worry about that quite yet. We’re still in the winter slowdown. Peace out!

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 12, 2433

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Leona peered at the viewscreen. “A shipyard, you say?”

“A shipyard, and a ship graveyard. A sizable portion of the surface is riddled with old ships, new ships,” Ramses explained. He looked more excited than a child on Christmas day. “All shapes and sizes.”

“You wanna take one?” she asked.

“Noooo,” he insisted. “I mean, if the shoe fits, I guess... But it has everything we need to build our own. The place looks abandoned.”

“You don’t have a life signs detector, though, so you don’t know that. All we can do is search for radio waves.”

“Yeah, but look at it down there, there’s no activity.”

“They could be lying in wait,” Mateo suggested. “This feels like a trap. We’re going in a straight line. They’ll always know where we’ll end up next.”

“They couldn’t have set all this up in just a few years,” Ramses contended. “Trust me, it’s fine. But...”

“But what?” Leona questioned.

“But we’ll need to land this little vessel down there to get to them. We can’t teleport to the surface without it.”

Leona was suspicious now. “Why not?”

Ramses breathed out through his nose, worried about how he’ll be received. “Okay, you know how most ships in our little underworld of time travelers have a teleportation field, right? Instead of just letting micrometeoroids hit the hull, we teleport the objects away as they pass through the field.”

“Right...” Leona encouraged.

“Well, the Exins apparently use that technology too, and...all of those ships down there are...passively active.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” She shook her head, getting kind of annoyed with him. “Passively active?”

“The fields are in standby mode. They’re not constantly using power, but if you try to make a jump anywhere down there, sufficiently close to the materials I need to build us a real ship, the generators will react, just as they would to any other celestial object. They’ll activate briefly, and then close back up again.”

“How do you know this?” Leona asked incredulously. “Have you seen this phenomenon before, a giant collection of ships with teleportation field generators?”

“No,” Ramses assured her, “I tested it with a probe.”

“What probe? We never talked about any probes.”

Ramses acted almost offended. “I built a probe. I thought it made sense to start using them to scout ahead. It’s designed to search for Vitalie too, so no one will ever need to go on that mission again. At least, not at first. As soon as it finds the pod, someone can jump there to wake her up, and greet her. And that will continue to work, just not here.”

Leona sighed. “Ramses, what happened to the probe? Was it sent back like a slingshot?”

He seemed afraid to answer, but he did. “There’s a game that you people used to play in the before-fore times? There’s a metal ball, and you hit it with these little things, and it bounces around...”

“Pinball,” Mateo realized.

“Yeah, it was like that.” Ramses nodded. He started pointing at the screen. “The probe was here, and then here, and then here, and then somewhere over there, and then I lost contact, because I think it was ripped apart by the tidal forces of overlapping teleportation fields.”

“Sounds like a wild ride,” Leona said sarcastically. “We could sell tickets.”

“Well, that’s why I want to land the ship, so that doesn’t happen!” Ramses argued.

Leona’s eyes widened in frustration. “The field isn’t teleporting teleporting objects, Ramses. It’s teleporting anything that falls into the field. Why would our ship survive that where the probe didn’t?”

Now he smiled. “Because our ship also has a teleportation field, which we can use to counteract the effects. We can force them to cancel each other out, and make it all the way through. I’m sure of it.”

“I assume we don’t have these fields ourselves?” Olimpia asked.

“No,” Ramses answered. “That’s not a bad idea—we would basically be bulletproof and punch-proof—but no.”

“I say we leave,” Leona voted. “It looks great down there. A real smorgasbord of amazing technology that we could salvage, but it’s not worth risking being ripped apart inside the Roche limit of two conflicting teleportation fields.”

“It’s usually more than two,” Ramses corrected.

“Oh, well, in that case...”

“Leona, I can do this. I’ve done the math already.”

“When did you do the math? We just freakin’ got here.”

Ramses put on a pompous face. “I’m fast, because I’m just that smart.” He reverted back to normal. “You can check it yourself, if you want. We have a little time, but I do want to get started. I’m sick of these cramped quarters. Pocket dimensions just don’t feel real to me. The AOC was designed to get you and your friends to the next planet over. It was never meant to house a full crew for the long-term. We made-do, but technology has progressed since then, and I want to create something better now. This world gives me that chance, and I don’t want to pass it up. We’ll survive, because we always do. That’s our job.”

Leona sighed again, but more patiently this time. “Okay, I’ll trust you, and won’t check the math. But I’m not making the decision for everyone. We vote, and it has to be unanimous.” She looked over at the rest of the team. “You all understand what’s at stake here if we do this?”

Everyone nodded, including the dummies, Mateo and Olimpia, because they were indeed able to follow the conversation. When Captain Matic called for an official vote, they all raised their hands, except for Vitalie, who seemed distracted by her thoughts.

“What is it?” Ramses asked.

“If she’s voting no, I won’t let you bully her,” Leona argued.

“You didn’t ask for nays yet,” Ramses reasoned. She’s not voted at all. She could be abstaining.”

“I’m not—” Vitalie was stammering. “It has nothing to with—” She huffed, and raised her hand. “Never mind, let’s go. I vote yea, or aye, or whatever.”

“Vitalie, you’re a part of us now,” Leona told her. “You have every right to express your opinion. We should have made this a blind vote,” she added when Vitalie didn’t respond.

“No, it’s not that,” Vitalie continued to stammer. “I agree, we should risk it. It’s just that I’ve realized that there is no hope for us finding Vitalie!741 down there. The only way we’ve ever done it is by triangulating it with your makeshift stasis pod communicator. If we can’t even teleport.”

“It’s not impossible,” Ramses began to explain to her. It would just take longer. When you get close enough to the pod with the locator, it will detect that there’s a pod somewhere nearby. When you jump again, if you get another ping, that tells you that you’re going in the right direction, or at least that you’re not farther from it. With enough jumps, you can eventually determine its position. But you don’t have to jump. You could take a car. You could even walk.”

“Then I’ll do that,” Vitalie decided. “I’ll walk.”

Ramses chuckled, a bit rudely. “I meant that you could technically, possibly do it. But not in practical terms. You could potentially have to walk across the entire surface. We can’t stay here that long.”

“You don’t have to stay here,” Vitalie said. “Just leave me with a locator, and I’ll work on it as long as it takes. Just promise me you’ll build another locator, and keep using it on the other planets, assuming this teleportation field mess doesn’t continue.”

“I already have multiple locators. That’s not the problem.”

“The problem is we can’t leave you here alone,” Leona said to her.

“And also that you still can’t be expected to walk the entire surface,” Marie added.

“Well, I could build her a car,” Ramses declared. “Hell, I’m sure one of those ships down there works well enough.”

“We’re not leaving her alone!” Leona insisted.

“It’s my choice,” Vitalie fought. “We voted on going down to the surface. But all of the sudden, you want to make an executive decision?”

“We could vote,” Leona began, “but it’s never gonna be unanimous, because I’ll always be a nay.”

Mateo placed a hand on her arm. “Lee-Lee. You’re the Captain; not the King.”

“Well, she—”

Mateo stopped her from continuing to argue with a simple jerk of his head. “Captain,” he whispered.

Leona looked back over at Vitalie with puppy dog eyes, hoping that she would change her mind, or maybe just show some sign of reluctance, but Vitalie was steadfast. Leona hung her head. “Okay. But we’re staying here for two days at least. Right, Ramses? You need that long to build something good?”

“It’s true,” Ramses confirmed. “I didn’t mention that before, but the construction will last beyond today. Vitalie, you’ll probably want to go into stasis, since we won’t be traveling at maximum fractional speeds. You don’t have to be awake for the locator to start trying to triangulate Vitalie!741’s pod. I can program it to wake you up if it finds her during that time. If it does, you’ll both be able to leave with us, no problem.”

They discussed the details a little more, and then made the jump. Instead of leaving their ship in orbit like they usually would, the whole thing dropped down. It was impossible for Ramses to predict what would happen with certainty, but they did survive the ordeal. They were sent teleporting all over the place before they found and island of stability, but once they did, everything was fine, and they were all in one piece, which was what they were really worried about. Their own teleportation field protected them without issue, or excessive power drain. They climbed out of their little ship manually one at a time, which made them feel like animals, but it worked. The industrial atmosphere wasn’t pleasant, but it was breathable. Vitalie wore a filter mask for added safety, but the rest of their substrates handled the task on their own. 

“All right,” Leona said, “get what you need. We’ll help with whatever, I guess.”

Ramses pulled out his tablet. “I have a list.”

“Do you guys hear that?” Angela asked. Their hearing was heightened, but they couldn’t hear everything on the entire planet, so they all tilted their respective heads to get a better angle on the soundwaves. Something was definitely sounding off in the distance, and it seemed to be getting closer. It was a sort of screaming noise. Angela took a couple steps forward. “What is that?”

Leona reached into her bag, and pulled out a pair of digital binoculars. She started to scan the sky. “Run.” She dropped her arms down, but kept looking in that direction. “Run!” she cried louder. She took off, and so did everyone else.

“Remember, you can’t teleport!” Ramses reminded them. “The field generators actually do react to each other! That’s why they’re kind of evenly spaced!”

They ran as fast as they could, the ones in front looking over their shoulders to make sure the ones in back were still coming. They could move pretty fast, but they were still within range of the blast when the missile crashed down, and exploded on impact. Mateo could see a piece of shrapnel flying towards him, but didn’t know what to do. Before he could try to escape, someone’s arms were wrapping themselves around his body. They teleported away, but they didn’t just make one jump. The teleportation field generators all around them started pinballing them every which way several times, until one of them managed to throw them clear of any other vessel. They fell from several meters up, and crashed onto the ground, just like the missile, but with no explosion.

Only then did Mateo see that it was Vitalie who had rescued him. “I’m sorry. I know we weren’t supposed to do that.”

“No, no, no, thank you. Leona, can you hear me?” Mateo half-expected the trauma to have fried his communicator, but it was still working.

“Yeah,” she replied. “We’re all fine. You and Vita?”

“We’re okay. I don’t know how far away we are.”

“We have locators, remember? You’re only a few kilometers away. You see that giant blue crane?”

“Yes.”

“Jog towards that. We’ll meet in the middle.”

“The ship? Our ship, that is?”

“Gone. You were right. It was a trap.”

Just as they were starting to run towards each other, the ground began to shake. It shook, and it shook, and it didn’t stop shaking. Gargantuan explosions began to rage in the distance. The blue crane that Mateo and Vitalie were using as a reference point suddenly sank below the horizon. Cracks were forming in the ground.

“A really good trap!” Marie shouted into the comms.

“Leona, everyone, jump.”

“We can’t!” Ramses complained.

“You can! Just come to our location. There’s a reason we finally stopped moving in this spot. This spot is safe!”

The group appeared in scattered formation around them. Mateo and Leona hugged and kissed each other. They all began to huddle together instinctively as the tremors and explosions intensified. “If there’s any antimatter in those ships, it will be devastating. Ramses, do you remember where the biggest open area was?”

“That might not be good enough either.” Ramses slipped Angela’s bag off of her shoulders. “Thanks for carrying this for me.” He reached in, and pulled out a dimensional generator, but it wasn’t the same one they used in the ship. That one would still have been in there when the missile struck. That one was destroyed. “This one is smaller, barely enough room to walk past each other, but it’s stocked with supplies, and it’s all we got.”

“Then what?” Marie asked.

“Once all of you are inside, I’ll jump into space, and join you,” Ramses explained.

“I’m the Captain, I’ll do it,” Leona volunteered.

“That’s why you shouldn’t.” Mateo stole the generator for himself. He pointed it at Vitalie first, because she was the only one not equipped to survive in space, so she absolutely had to be inside. Then he started to shoot everyone else as well. 

No one argued, except for the last one, Leona. “Stop!” She breathed deeply, and looked around at the planet as it was being ripped apart. She laid hands on the generator. “We’ll go together.”

“Were I you.”

“Were I you.”

They jumped.

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