The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 14, 2435

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If Vitalie went back in time, presumably to Ex-741, why didn’t she prevent the planet from being destroyed? Well, there was a logical answer to that, though there was no way of knowing whether it was the right answer. The world suffered a massive matter-antimatter reaction, worse than the one that decimated the refugee world that the team tried to stay on in the Fifth Division. This one was catastrophic enough to tear the whole thing apart, so there was no reason to believe that anyone survived it, and since the chain reaction was obviously triggered by their arrival, they had every reason to suspect that their deaths was the ultimate goal. Perhaps any vessel that tried to land would have triggered the reaction, but since the Exins would have proverbially gotten away with their oppressive ways if it weren’t for the meddling kids, the team decided to assume that they were the specific targets. So they were almost certainly dead, their means of survival being so outrageous that the Exins would not have even considered it as a possible outcome, and the best thing that Team Matic could do was to stay dead. To make that happen without just running away, or pointlessly orbiting a star for years on end would be to start hiding in plain sight.

The old ship that Vitalie apparently programmed to meet them on the asteroid was rather small. Perhaps old wasn’t the word for it...certified preowned, maybe? They didn’t find any auto history report in it, though, so they couldn’t tell what it had been through. Ramses found a database of information in the central computer, but it didn’t say anything about how the vessel was used in the past. It just provided him with the technical specifications, and the implication that it was very, very old. Oh, and they also knew that it was called The Dorsch. It was not a rustbucket, but as mentioned, it was small; smaller than the Dante, though still larger than the little unnamed thing they were using that was just destroyed a few years ago. Ram spent the rest of the day affixing the pocket dimension generator to one of the doors, as well as making some other retrofits. The rest of the team had school.

While the Dorsch was going to shapeshift using exterior holographics, the rest of the team needed to do the same. Fortunately, they were all capable of changing their appearances. The power was replicated from Alyssa McIver, though none of them had used it much. Leona was the most experienced, but the rest had only tried a few times, so she spent most of the day teaching them how to hold convincing and sustained false images. They couldn’t lose focus for a split second, or it would totally undermine the ruse. The next day, only Marie and Angela were excelling at the new skill, so it was decided that the others would not yet face any of the locals at their next destination. So only the three of them would be part of the outreach program.

Mateo and Olimpia went off to find Vitalie!613, but that didn’t take long at all, so they zipped back up to the Dorsch, where Ramses was working. The holographic projectors were not yet ready, but that was all right, because the idea was to always show up to each new planet looking different, and they had never been anywhere else looking like this, so it was fine to use for this trial run. They still didn’t know if their new modus operandi was going to work in the short-term, let alone the long-run. “How long are you gonna wait?” He was tweaking something on some device.

“I’ll wait several months,” Vitalie!613 decided. If she started butting into lives of the Ex-613 natives right after this mysterious trio of women showed up, they might make a connection between them, and if they did that, they may start to suspect some connection to Team Matic, which would invalidate this whole revised plan.

“What are you gonna do in the meantime?” Ramses pressed.

“I’ll just find an island somewhere, and have a nice vacation. That is, unless you can give me your little illusion power, so I can blend in with them.”

“It’s not that easy,” he said apologetically. The truth was that he didn’t want this power spreading like a virus. Eventually, everyone would be able to look like anyone, and then the entire concept of trust could be vanquished from the universe. Was it selfish to hoard the ability, and keep it just within the group? Probably, but he wasn’t going to apologize for it. He would only apologize for the other reasons. “I couldn’t just give it to you as you are. I would need to clone you, and transfer your consciousness, and I don’t know enough about your current powers to replicate those as well. It’s a delicate balance. You can’t just copy and paste powers. You would end up being more than the sum of your parts, and the consequences of that condition are too unpredictable.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Vitalie!613 said. “I don’t just have Andromeda’s, Saga’s, Camen’s, and Étude’s powers separately. They’re all mixed in with each other. Étude wasn’t born with the ability to teleport. She was given the ability to be teleported, by the powers that be. The fact that she retained any level of it always felt like a mistake to her. She thought that the PTB forgot to take it away, because they would normally pass it on to someone else, but she was last, so it slipped their minds. I bet if we compared notes, we would find that the way I teleport is different than your way.”

Ramses was working this whole time, but he stopped now to look up. Then he turned to face her as he was lifting the lenses of his magnifying specs. “That’s a good idea. Let’s compare notes.”

“That sounds time-intensive, and it doesn’t look like you have time. I’m not leaving this planet, and you’re not staying.”

Ramses flicked the lenses back down. “Well, we’ll see. Leona may determine that this world is a two-dayer.”

Meanwhile, down on the planet, Leona, Angela, and Marie were pretending to be three survivors from the north. They found two major settlements on the surface, which were on the same continent, but thousands of kilometers from each other. They were not connected by any roads, and the level of technology that they exhibited did not suggest that air transport was a thing here. In addition, multiple mountain ranges separated them, making foot-traffic unlikely, albeit not impossible, which would explain how these three strangers made it all the way here. The northern settlement was in ruins. They found bones, but no evidence of an attack. They probably died out in an epidemic of some sort. All of this gave them a hopefully believable reason why the southern settlement had never seen them before.

“So, you don’t want a parade?” the Director asked them.

“Why would we get a parade?” Leona asked him.

“We always put on a parade for new arrivals,” the Director explained. “The only person who never got a parade was the first one here. She’s the one who planned the parade for the second person. But I guess if you’ve been living here, you already got your parade...unless they don’t do them up north.”

“Uh, we’re not sure,” Marie responded. “We never arrived here,” she lied. “We were born on this world. Our parents might have had parades, though.”

He narrowed his eyes. “We were sterilized. We’re not supposed to have children.”

“It must not have worked for them,” Angela reasoned. “The two of us are twins. She’s our younger sister.”

“Really? She looks older.”

“I’ve had a harder life,” Leona said. They couldn’t make themselves look like one of their friends from the stellar neighborhood, because any of them could be just as famous as the members of the team. But they each knew plenty of people from their pasts that had no connection to salmon and choosers. The easiest way to form a skintight hologram of someone like that was to let your subconsciousness do it for you. Leona didn’t even remember who this person was that she looked like now. She could have been a fifth grade art teacher, or a mother she stood behind in line in the grocery store once. If she looked older than the inspirations that Angela and Marie’s subconsciousnesses chose, it was nothing more than a coincidence.

Marie sighed. “Here’s what happened. She and I were born, and we lived up north. Before we were old enough to keep memories, our parents had to leave. The theory is that everyone else died. We don’t know how. Along the way, she was born, which meant that she was always on the move, and never benefited from the stability of a true home. That could be why she’s aged a little faster. We have been heading this direction our entire lives. Our parents died along the way, and now here we are.”

“Did you see any other resorts?” the Director asked them all.

“Resort?”

“Yeah, that’s what this is. It’s a resort. I am the Resort Director.”

“Oh.” Marie faced Leona. “It was a resort. If it was anything like this place, our parents lived in a resort.”

Leona nodded. “They were so cagey. They refused to tell us much about where we came from. That’s why we’re so confused and uninformed. Please forgive us.”

“What is the purpose of this resort?” Angela asked, doubling down on their excuse to be ignorant.

“It is a reward for a job well-done. We all came from different planets. Every year, the Empire evaluates the merits of every planet under the domain. One planet is selected which has exemplified the values and spirit of the Exin Way of Life. At the same time, a potential winner on each planet is found after its own rigorous evaluations. If the planet wins that year’s round of evaluations, the planet’s winner is transported here from there. On the planet where I’m from, the local winner receives consolation prizes if that planet is not chosen as the above-all winner. On some planets, if the planet doesn’t win that year, the individual winner wins nothing. They just go on with their lives.”

“I see. So you’re all just living here together. All of your needs are provided?” Leona asked him.

“Absolutely,” the Resort Director replied. “We always suspected that there were other resorts, but we have no communication with them. This is big news.”

“Do you have any problems? Any crime?”

“No. Like I said, we’re all chosen after rigorous evaluations. No one with poor psychology, or proven bad behavior, is allowed in. Everything’s perfect. I see no reason why you can’t join us. No one can be here if they don’t belong, so you must belong.”

“Thanks. We’ll, uh...can we talk in private?” Leona asked.

“You may have the room,” he offered before leaving.

“I think we just got our Vitalie back,” Marie determined.

“Why?” Angela asked.

“They don’t need a Caretaker,” Leona figured. “This place is...inconsequential. No one needs to be saved. They don’t need to be stopped from doing anything bad.”

“Leona, Angela, Marie,” Olimpia began through the comms. “Get back up here.”

They all teleported back up to the ship.

“We’ve been listening,” Olimpia went on. “What were you gonna say, Vita?”

“I think I should stay,” Vitalie!613 believed.

“What would you do here?” Leona asked her.

“I would gather information. That’s what you need, right?”

“Well, yeah, but...”

“You have a star chart. You know the numeral designation of every planet you go to, but you don’t know anything about it, do you? They might need your help. They might be trying to destroy the galaxy. You just don’t know. Let me find out for you, so you can prepare for the mission. There could be one person from every single planet in the Empire here. I’ll talk to them, gain their trust, and then relay information to you. Just give me one of those little communication discs.”

“That’s not your mission, though; your self-appointed purpose. You replicated yourself to take care. You’re the Caretaker.”

“Eh, things change,” Vitalie!613 mused. “Have you noticed when you’ve met other versions of me that we all act a little bit differently? Because of stasis, it hasn’t necessarily been very long since we diverged. Before the OG Vitalie started replicating herself through time travel, she prepared herself psycho-emotionally. She essentially trained herself to be flexible, adaptable. Every one of me that you meet is different because the situation is different, because you’re coming at me with different attitudes, based on your own background, which shifts with every new experience that you have. Yes, I came here to be a caretaker, but now as you’ve pointed out, Ex-613 doesn’t need that. It needs a spy.”

“I dunno,” Leona said. “You’re not invincible. People train in spycraft for years. You don’t just wake up one day and start doing it. Infiltrating one person’s life is difficult enough, but you want to infiltrate—and gain the trust of—an entire population. That is a tall order for anyone. Forgive me, but on Dardius, you operated primarily on brute force, because no one could stop you. Subtlety is not something that you needed before.”

“Okay, so let’s start small. I’ll insert myself into the life of one person. What’s the designation for the next planet you’re going to?”

“I have the list,” Olimpia announced. She pulled up her tablet. “The next one over is Ex-666. Hm. Does that have the same connotation for you as it did in my time?”

“Yes,” Angela and Marie answered simultaneously.

“I’ll find someone who lived on Ex-666, and tell you about it,” Vitalie!613 continued. “I’ll have months to get the information out of them gradually before you come back into the timestream. Give me a chance. I can take care of myself. Pun very intended.”

Leona thought about it, and eventually agreed. “But don’t forget that we can come back for you. Not at any moment, but...”

“Thanks.”

The next year, they learned that no one on Ex-613 originally came from Ex-666, and later that it was not given that number randomly. It was a penal colony. Maybe the numbers did mean something.

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Starstruck: The Price of Doing Business (Part VII)

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Mirage stared at Honey for a moment. “You understand that I’m not human, right? I’m not going to die. When Lilac comes back into the timestream, I’ll be waiting.”

Honey shook her head, and sighed. “Your friend is not where you think she is.”

Mirage frowned, and darted her gaze back over to Ashlock, who held his hands up defensively. “Hey, I sent her to 2180, I promise.”

“He did,” Honey agreed. “My guy tracked her there, and sent her somewhere else. Don’t worry, she’s safe. All you need to do is hand me the stone, just as you promised.”

“Your prices are too high,” Mirage argued. “I took my business elsewhere. As a customer, I have the right to do that. You do not have a monopoly on time travel.”

“That may be,” Honey replied. “Why don’t you call the time police, and see what they say about it, hmm?” Time police didn’t exist. The closest equivalent was a prison that housed people who exposed the existence of time travelers to the general public. That was the only crime they cared about.

“I’m going to find her,” Mirage assured Honey. “The only question is whether I kill you to do it, or not.”

“I think you’ll find that my husband and I are more difficult to kill than we look.”

Mirage was more than willing to test that claim, and that was the problem. She was created to be a killer, but she transcended that when a man of good heart taught her how to overcome her own programming. What would he do in this situation? He wouldn’t kill them, she knew that much, and he wouldn’t approve of her doing it either. He would find a way, and not because he was any smarter than his opponent, but because he had friends. He always won, because he always had friends. It was his greatest strength. “You’re never getting this homestone.”

“Then you’re never getting home,” Honey spit right back.

Mirage turned to walk down the concourse in the opposite direction.

“Wheh,” Honey exclaimed. She looked down at the buzzer. “That there pager’s yourn. You go more than ten meters from it, or leave realtime with it, you’re gonna start to feel a lot of pain. Even your kind can feel pain. We may look dumb, but we’re in the business of knowing things. Do not underestimate us. Even if you can take the agony, can your friend? She’ll feel it too from where she is.”

Mirage grabbed the pager. “I’m going down there, though.”

“That’s quite all right,” Honey told her. “You know where to find me when you’re ready to talk again.”

“I’m sorry,” Ashlock said.

“It’s fine, Ashlock. Go home and get sober.” She walked down to the post office.

Obviously, this was unlike any regular post office. This was here to send messages across time and space. Only The Courier had any power here, and he could go anywhere he wanted. He was so powerful, in fact, that while Mirage was in the Gallery dimension, she could detect that he existed, but could gather no information about him. He wasn’t a choosing one, but a salmon, which meant that he answered to the mysterious powers that be, though there was reportedly some leeway with that. “Hi. Dropping off, or picking up?” He spoke in a genuinely polite voice, unlike the Travel Agents.

“Mr. Patton, do you do read receipts?” Mirage asked him.

“Ah, I believe I know where you’re going with this. You’re looking for someone.” Apparently, he was smart too.

“She’s been taken.”

“I see. Well, normally, no, but I will make an exception if I can verify your relationship. Do you have an undoctored photo of yourself with the recipient?”

“I do not. We just met.” She could synthesize one, and he probably wouldn’t be able to tell that it was fake, but she wanted to be honest. She needed him on her side.

“Then, I’m afraid—”

“Wait, yes, I do.” She was being an idiot. All of her conversations were being recorded. She switched her eyes to output mode, and projected a hologram of them eating lunch together at Allen and Richard’s restaurant. Well, Lilac was eating anyway.

“You two look happy,” Ennis noted.

“Please, I have to find her. I don’t know how I’m going to get to her while I’m lugging this thing around, but...” She showed him the pager.

“Oh, I can take care of that.” He took the pager from her briefly, and flipped it over. He mouthed the serial number on it, then handed it back, and stepped through a door. While he was gone, the pager started to blink lights, vibrate, and play a little melody. As he was walking back out, the melody stopped. A few seconds later, the buzzing stopped as well, but the lights kept going. “There. Your waiting period is over. Now you can do whatever you want with it. Give it back, destroy it...”

Mirage crushed it to death with her bare hand. “Why could you do that?”

“That’s my partner, Susan’s technology. We just loan it out to the Travel Agents.”

“You are as kind of a man as I’ve been told. Though, it seems out of character for you to include a pain feature in such a thing.”

Ennis was taken aback. “There’s no pain. No, if you go too far from it, it will just follow you, and if you travel too far with it, its activation will send you back to the agency. All I did was reroute it to Susan’s control block. Jesus, is that what they told you, that it would hurt? We may need to reassess our business relationship with them.”

“They really want this homestone.” She showed that to him as well.

“I suppose I understand the appeal, but it’s no excuse for their behavior.”

“So, will you help us reunite, me and Lilac?”

“Well, if what you say is true, that she’s been taken by someone, I’m worried than any message I attempt to send will simply be intercepted. My birds have been killed by those who did not like the messages we delivered.”

“Then can you just...take me to her? I know you have that ability. You deliver large and heavy packages, don’t you?”

“I never take anything organic,” Ennis said apologetically. “That is a rule I refuse to bend, and I will not explain why.”

Mirage cut into her lower arm, and peeled back the artificial skin that housed her non-organic android parts. The skin was alive, but she only used it to better blend in with regular people. “That’ll be fine.”

“I was wondering how you crushed that pager so easily.”

“Plus, my film projector eyes.”

“I thought that they were just advanced contact lenses.”  He inhaled deeply, and held it in for a long time. “Okay, I guess you are a walking exception, though I imagine you’re from a time when such a body is not surprising. I don’t want a bunch of other robots asking me for rides, so I would kindly ask you to not tell anyone how you got to where I’ll be delivering you.”

“I have no problem with that. I’ll erase it from my own memory, just to be safe.”

He smiled excitedly. “That’s cool.” He squinted as he was framing Mirage’s body with his hands.

She smiled, and crouched down to wrap her arms around her shins. “I can get pretty small, and I’m lighter than the androids you see in movies.”

“I never ask a lady her weight,” he quipped before he went over to the backroom to retrieve the appropriate box. He assembled it, and then she crawled inside. Yeah, there was plenty of room.

“You have enough to find her? It has to be when and where she went just after I last saw her ten or fifteen minutes ago.”

“I got you covered.” Ennis flipped the lids over, and taped them up. “And now I got you covered,” he joked. “But also, you’re about to not be covered. My non-organic rule is not just something I choose not to do. The way I move through time, it just doesn’t work. Your skin will...come off, like a damaged Terminator.”

“That’s fine. It’s inert,” Mirage explained.

“All right. Let me calculate the route, and then we’ll be on our way.”

She felt the box being lifted and carried away, and while it didn’t hurt, she also felt her skin shed off of her as she passed through the time vortex.

Moments later, the movement stopped. “What’s this?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

“Package for Lilac,” Ennis announced.

“I’ll sign for it,” the voice responded.

“No need to sign. Just be careful when you open it,” Ennis warned.

Before the man could start slicing through the tape, Mirage punched through the lid, and took hold of his throat. “Where’s Lilac?”

Eyes bulging, he turned them to point to her right.

“Mirage?” Lilac asked. “Is that you?”

“Losing my skin was the price of doing business,” Mirage explained. “I’ll be able to grow it back eventually.”

“I see. Well, I’m fine,” Lilac said “You can let him go.”

“What are we going to do with him then?” Mirage asked, still not letting go.

Lilac shrugged. “Let him leave. We’re where we need to be. I’ve been waiting for you for the last couple of days.”

Mirage gently set the man back down. “You better do what she says before I decide to override her decision. I don’t ever wanna see you again in my whole life, which should be about...forever.”

As he was running away, he waved his arm in front of him to create a black hole in the ground, which he jumped into, letting the hole close back up above him.

“He must be related to The Overseer.” Mirage emulated a sigh. “What year is it?”

“It’s 2183,” Lilac answered. “He jumped us a few years into the future to hide.”

Mirage nodded, and looked up and to the right to access her memory archives of the timeline. “Its 2183,” she echoed. “I know where to go. There ought to be a ship here that has everything we need, but I’m not entirely sure what it’s been through so far, because my knowledge of this time period may be quite literally outdated. It’s called The Elizabeth Warren, and no one else should need it at the moment. It’s not that fast, but it has stasis technology, and I could retrofit it. How would you like to see your son again?”

Lilac sighed too, but for real. “I think I’ve waited long enough.”

Mirage took her by the hand, and teleported them both to Panama.

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Microstory 2085: Passing a Hat Around

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We’re all pretty bummed at work today. Like I told you, I have a co-worker who has gone missing. I actually never had the pleasure of meeting him. He wasn’t on the schedule on my first day. He was on it for my second day, but he never showed up, which is why it was so crazy and hectic for me. You never wanna be short-staffed when you’re trying to train someone new. For the last couple of weeks, the police have been investigating his disappearance, though investigate is probably a bit of a strong word. The way I hear it, he wasn’t the most responsible dude, but he wasn’t the type to just skip town, and not tell anyone. My boss believes that he might—might—be the type to skip town, but make contact afterwards to apologize, but even that’s a stretch. He reportedly loved working at the nursery. They think he may have had some debt issues, though, which is why they’ve decided to drop the case. Their current theory is that he just decided to leave at the beginning of the month, and start a new life somewhere else. He doesn’t appear to have any family; in the area, or otherwise, so he would have found it easy to leave everything behind. The rest of us aren’t so sure. It’s not just that he wasn’t showing signs of wanting to run. He was looking forward to a party last weekend, and he was a month away from finally paying off his car. His friends don’t think that he would miss out on the satisfaction. It doesn’t add up. I’m pretty upset about it myself. I don’t exactly know why. It could be that I have a general disdain for injustice and unfairness, or because I had to call the man a million times to try to get him to come into work. Even though I had no way of knowing, I feel bad about the whole thing. Knowing what I know now, it seems so petty to have been so anxious about his absence. I’m thinking about passing a hat around to collect money for a private investigator, but I do not want to overstep. I’m still so new, to the company, and to the world itself.

Microstory 2084: Pardon My Language

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Pine seeds. I’m allergic to pine seeds. I always had trouble eating pesto, but I never felt like that meant that I could be allergic to the stuff. I wasn’t feeling perfect after the meal I cooked, but my landlord said that she was totally okay, so I didn’t think too much of it then. It wasn’t until I had my leftovers that I started to question whether there was some issue with it. I sent her a text, and again, she reported no issues. Work was really hard to deal with today, so my boss practically ordered me to go to the doctor. They ran an allergy test on me at the clinic, and that’s what they were able to determine. I’m also allergic to eggs, which I find hard to believe. They think that I’m a bit sensitive to gluten, but—pardon my language—that’s bullshit. The only way you’re gonna stop me from eating bread is if you kill me first, so good luck with that, buddy. Nevertheless, I’m okay, and I’m going to be back at work tomorrow, regardless of how I feel. The way I see it, the only reason not to push through the pain is if you’re contagious, and I know that I’m not. I’m the only one who has to suffer here, but don’t you worry about me. I’m sure you were, right? On that note, a few people indeed seem to be reading my blog, at least in Boreverse. I think my alternate self reposts them in his own universe, but still no one reads it. Yikes. Things were like that when I was starting out here. I obviously had zero clicks, except for my own, but now I get a couple visits a day. That’s when you know you’ve made it, when two people go to your website, or one person goes there twice, or a bot does it instead.

Microstory 2083: For Free Candy

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Today was pretty much exactly as it was yesterday, except I worked second shift, instead of the first one. We hung out in the greenhouse while the boss stayed in the main building to greet customers. She would call us up whenever she needed help. I could practically copy my post from yesterday, and paste it here, and it would hardly be inaccurate. The weather is still crap, though it’s not as windy or snowy, which is nice. I thought maybe that there would be just a few more customers, but it was the same. We keep track of the number of people who come in, and the number of parties. Somebody smart wrote a computer program that logs this stuff for us using the main entrance security camera. It doesn’t have any facial recognition software built in, so it’s not totally accurate. For instance, if you realized you forgot your wallet, ran back out to get it, and then opened the door again, it would log you twice, because it wouldn’t know that you were the same person. Anyway, that doesn’t happen a whole lot, so we’re not worried about any auditing issues. The total number of visitors today was nearly identical to yesterday. I’m not good with numbers, but I like to explore trends like that, to see if I understand them. It reminds me of how my parents would always log visitors on Halloween. Oh, that’s right. You don’t have that holiday in this world. It involves children going door to door to ask for free candy. I wonder whether they still do that.

Ya know, I don’t think I’ve mentioned my family yet. Bulk travel is a form of time travel, but I’ve not seen them in over 25 years. So if I were to return to a point in their timeline that matches my own personal timeline, they would be in their eighties. They could be gone by now. But again, the timelines don’t match up, so I could also go back, and not a second will have passed. Or I could go back to before I even left, or before I was born, or before they were born. Heh, time, right? Back to the weather, why were the numbers about the same, even though it wasn’t precipitating as hard? It’s because of the roads. I always forget about the roads. It was really bad last night—even worse than it was to drive while it was still happening during the day before—so people did not want to go out after that. All schools in the area were canceled, which is why the high school student who works here picked up an extra shift. I think she’s my favorite out of all the humans I’ve met on this version of Earth. She seems to be the only other person who recognizes how unexciting it is, besides maybe those people who answered my weird ad. Though to be fair, they didn’t appear to have any strong feelings about the nature of the world. They were just behaviorally divergent. Speaking of which, I should probably reach out to them; make sure they’re doing okay.

Microstory 2082: Too Happy Here

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The meal with my landlord went great. I’m glad I went with the easier recipe, though I may try to challenge myself more next time. We’re going to try to have dinner together twice a week from now on, though when I get my own place, that may change. I made enough so we could have leftovers today, and I couldn’t wait to eat it because it meant that I could sit in the break room for thirty minutes. It’s heated. The nursery is a mostly outdoor spot, as you can imagine. There’s a building, but it’s chock full of plants, particularly ones that I’m allergic too. I try not to spend too much time in there. I seem to be okay outside, or when I’m in the greenhouses. That’s where we spent the majority of our time. It’s snowing and blowing, so it sucks to have to work outside, but it also means that not many customers show up, so we don’t have to do much outside. The boss doesn’t like us to just be sitting around doing nothing, because there is always a plant in need of attention, but she exempts us from that rule on days like this. She volunteered to stand guard while we hung out, but we had our radios on hand. All she had to do was press the button three times, and one of us would run up to help. If she had clicked it four times, that would have meant that two of us needed to go. It didn’t happen much, but when it did, I always agreed to go back, since I’m still the new guy. She’s not going to spend too much time training the temp, because he doesn’t seem to be too happy here, so we don’t think he’ll ask for a permanent position. She’s still looking for someone new while the authorities are looking for our missing coworker.

Microstory 2081: Half a Surprise

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I didn’t have to go to work today. I worked eleven days straight, so it’s time for a break. I’ve not just been sitting around, though. I got out, and did stuff. First, I walked back to the bike shop, where they let you rent for the day. The first time is free as long as you sign up for their emailing list, and promise to seriously consider buying something at a later date. They have a few used ones, so instead of exploring my options online, I think I’ll just end up choosing one of these. I’ve gotten my first deposit, but I’m not exactly a millionaire yet. I would like to get a couple more before I start making any big purchases. I did spend a little cash on some food. I am not much of a cook, but I can get by if I plan it out, and I’m very careful. My landlord happened to have the day off too, so she planned something with a friend. She’ll be home for dinner, though, so I’m making something for her. I told her that I wanted to pick something up for the two of us to thank her for everything she’s done for me, so shh, it’s still half a surprise. She’s a vegetarian too, which is great. Do you know what the most important part of cooking is...? [...] Give up? It’s eating. Eating, of course; what else would be the point. The second most important thing, however, may be timing, and it’s one of the hardest things to learn. That’s what I’m struggling with now, but I think I’m gonna be okay. Something that really helps is having a bunch of little bowls ready with the individual ingredients. This is how they do it on all the cooking shows. My landlord doesn’t cook much herself, because she’s too busy at the clinic, but she inherited a lot of kitchen stuff from her grandmother, so there’s enough here for me to be ready to go. Wish me luck, I’m making a Mediterranean bowl, which shouldn’t be too terribly hard for an unskilled, perpetual novice like me. I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow.

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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