The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 21, 2442

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Half a day into the trip that the Vellani Ambassador was programmed to go on, getaway driver Mateo returned to the timestream in 2441 to find the guard who recognized their charade awake, and sitting patiently in hock. “Report,” she said.

“We’ve been on a relativistic journey,” Mateo explained. “It’s been about twelve hours for us, but a whole year for everyone else.”

“Why?”

“It’s all part of the plan,” he answered cryptically.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

Mateo nodded, and prepared himself for the role of a couple lifetimes. He was still wearing his disguise, and hoping that she wouldn’t recognize him as the famous Mateo Matic of Team Matic. Some of the intel that Vitalie!613 gathered was paramount to their mission, while some of it was just anecdotal. She wasn’t interrogating the people on the resort world. She was simply getting to know them, and secretly logging everything that they said in case the team needed it later. One vacationer had a story to tell about how lucky she felt to end up at the resort after everything that happened to the rest of her family. Mateo recalled this story, and reworked it for this lie, embellishing certain parts for dramatic effect. “When I was a very young child, my parents were taken by the Empire. They wore uniforms much like yours. I remember the smell. I think they had just been involved in a fire, because they were sort of woody and rusty. I don’t know how else to explain it. I still don’t know what my parents did to deserve that, because no one will tell me. No one cares.

“For a long time, it was just me and my brother. We took care of each other. Honestly, I couldn’t even tell you which one of us was older. We didn’t really keep track of those kinds of things on my planet. Our cousin was around too, but he had all these responsibilities, so we rarely saw him. When my brother was still pretty young, he was killed in a factory accident. This could have been prevented if again, anyone cared about such petty worries as working conditions. If there’s one thing I’ve learned living under the loving Exin Empire it’s that life is profoundly undervalued. I grew angry. I stopped going to my own job, and started to steal what I needed; never from people who didn’t deserve it. I mean people like you. For years, they couldn’t catch me, until they did. I ended up 666, and that’s when my eyes were opened. I was a criminal. I broke society’s rules; the ones that ought to indeed be rules. For most people there, though, their only crime was disagreeing with the state. Your messiah, Bronach Oaksent, he’s a liar. Everything he’s ever said is just a misdirect. If he says he loves you, he hates you. If he says he wants to help people, he wants to hurt them. I don’t know what made him like this, but his reign of terror is over. Ex-666 has been freed...and we’re comin’ for him.”

The guard stood up from her bunk, and approached the bars. She wrapped her fingers around two of them, two at a time, like it was an intimidating dance. “How will you ever hope to defeat him, sir,” she began before a long pause for her own dramatic effect that ended with, “when you only exist for one day every year?”

Goddammit, that whole speech was a waste of time. Maybe he could save it? “What are you talking about?”

“Drop the act, Mister Delaney. I figured out who you were while I was knocked unconscious. Thanks for that, by the way. I was just telling my partner the other day how I wished for a little more brain damage.”

“There will be no permanent damage. We have medical treatment here.”

She stuck her face between the bars now, as far as she could go, stretching the skin on her face like a botched cosmetic surgery patient. “I’m going to be alone in here for the rest of my life. You’ve killed people, but you don’t execute them. You can’t let me go, because I know who you are, and I’ll tell anyone I meet that you have illusion powers now. A lifetime for me will be a couple of months for you.”

“If you knew that we might do that,” Mateo began, “why didn’t you lean into the lie? Why did you admit that you recognized me?”

“Because unlike you, I don’t like to lie. Maybe you and my messiah aren’t so different after all?”

Mateo wrapped his own hands around the same bars, just above hers, and placed his face a centimeter away from hers. “Maybe we’re not. The difference is that I only live for one day a year, and he’s been around for thousands of years. My ability to rule over you would be severely limited. So which is the lesser of two evils? And if immortality is possible, why are you so scared of death?”

She pulled her head back a little, so she could move her eyelids enough to narrow them at him. “What would society look like if no one ever died?”

“Why don’t you ask Earth? They figured it out, as did everyone in The Parallel.”

“Mateo, we’re gonna have to teleport!” Leona cried through comms. “Stop darklurking, and spark a flare! Don’t dock with the station! Just stay within range!”

He tilted his head away, and tapped his comms disc to indicate that he wasn’t talking to the guard anymore. “Understood.” He reached over to the button that would drop the blast door over the bars so no one else would know that he abducted a hostage.

“Wait,” she said. “The Oaksent isn’t the only one who can be immortal?”

A year later, after the whole team, and nearly everyone else, was rescued from the now completely vaporized Ex-467, the Vellani Ambassador was in the middle of another bottle episode. The next planet was within a light year away, but they were holding off on it so that Leona and Ramses could see if they could fix the reframe engine with something that they stole from the tech warehouse. “How come you don’t already have something like this?” Olimpia asked. She was twirling the topological modulating umbrella. “No offense.”

While Ramses ran simulations, Leona was scanning the nanofractures in the reframe engine, making sure that she had them all cataloged, so they didn’t miss a one. She didn’t want to apply the sealant until she knew exactly where it needed to go. The machine was built out of a metal-metamaterial composite that was practically indestructible. Obviously it wasn’t actually indestructible, though, or they wouldn’t be in this mess. This was always a possibility, however unlikely. And this antintropic nanosealant was going to help them fix it, as long as every spot was addressed. Missing even one could spell disaster for them. She didn’t pry her eyes from her work. “We never anticipated it, and until now, I had never heard of a solution to a problem such as this. The nanosealant, as long as it’s not a hoax, shouldn’t just fill in the fractures. A regular nanosealant would mimic the molecular structure of the target material to fill in the gaps that formed, but that would come with risk, because of possible imperfections that develop during the process, as well as impurities. The original molecules have since been lost when the structure was first damaged. What this sealant apparently does is summon those molecules from wherever they are in spacetime, and place them back where they belong. A normal human scientist would call that impossible, but of course we know better.”

“Well, why wouldn’t you at least have had the regular sealant?” Olimpia pressed.

“I don’t know. It’s not my ship, we took it from someone else. We had something useful in the AOC, but we ran out of it a long time ago. The reframe engine is one of the strongest objects out there so it can survive the stress of full operation. It was obviously well ahead of time when Hokusai designed it. It can also be protected by the overlying structure of its vessel, because it’s not a propulsive drive, so it requires minimal contact with the exterior. What this all means is that if the reframe engine is damaged, so is probably everything else, rendering repairs essentially pointless to attempt. It’s also important to note that I’m not in love with the design of this ship. It’s not as protected as it should be, which we might be able to fix given enough time. I think that Mirage just wanted to create more living space for its passengers, which is not a problem for us, since we prefer to live in pocket dimensions anyway.”

“You think that you can actually rebuild this thing with a new design?”

“Maybe,” Leona said. This was when she took a break, and looked at her conversation partner. “Are you playing with that?”

“It’s fine, it’s not even open,” Olimpia defended.

“Are you sure that that’s how it works, it has to be open? Rather, are you sure that it doesn’t do anything while it’s closed?”

Olimpia cautiously set the umbrella on the table. “Yeah, you’re right. Ram should study it first. I don’t even know what I’m still doing with it.”

“Well, it’s yours,” Leona reasoned.

“How do you figure? I stole it from the vault.”

“Yeah, that makes it yours,” Leona insisted. “We’re certainly not going to try to give it back any more than I’m gonna give this sealant back.”

“I know we weren’t going to do that, but...mine? Really?”

“Absolutely! We’ll even name it after you. Let me think on that.”

Ramses walked into the room. “I already have. It’s the Sangster Canopy.”

“You can’t name it after me,” Olimpia contended. “Like I said, I just stole it. You’re acting like it’s the HG Goggles, or the Rothko Torch.”

“Not all temporal objects are named after the people who created them,” Ramses explained. “Jayde Novak stole the Jayde Spyglass too.”

Olimpia frowned just a little, embarrassed at the thought of being happy that her name and reputation may one day precede her. She didn’t want to seem so egotistical. “I dunno...”

Ramses shrugged. “I’m thinking about calling the thing that I stole the Motherbox.”

“No,” Leona and Olimpia rejected in unison, as did Marie who happened to be passing by in the hallway.

He smirked, having hoped to get a rise out of them for that. “I came in here for a reason. Take a break, there’s something you should see.

Leona followed him to the security room, and then went to find Mateo, who just so happened to be exactly where she needed to talk to him. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

“Um. Your hair looks nice. Did you go to the salon this morning?”

“Matty.”

“You were right, I was wrong, I’m sorry,” he recited.

“Matt. Say it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She pursed her lips, deciding that she was going to have to drive the conversation. “Why are the hock blast doors down?” She looked over at them.

“These are doors? Huh, interesting. And we have a hock?”

“This is a diplomatic detachment, originally designed to serve the needs of two competing parties. Yes, there’s a hock. You know that, and you put someone in there. And you thought I wouldn’t find out, because of the blast doors, and because I don’t have much reason to come back here. But you forgot one thing...do you know what it is, Mateo?”

“Did Ramses figure out how to make us psychic?”

“The security cameras still run.”

“Oh. Right.”

“It’s been a year, and we weren’t traveling at relativistic speeds. I hope you programmed a stasis pod for her, or she’s gonna be dead when we open it. I didn’t watch enough of the footage to find out.”

“I’m not a total idiot,” Mateo replied. “Yes, she was in stasis for the year.”

“Why did you put her in there?” Leona questioned.

“Well, I couldn’t hide her on the station, could I?” Mateo argued. “She would be found by the time we finished the heist, and the whole plan would fall apart.”

“It wouldn’t have,” she contended. “They could have spent months looking for us, and would never find anything, because we weren’t in the timestream anymore. A year later, we would have come back, but they would not have expected anything. Their guard would be lowered.”

“Not true. She knows who we are. She knows that we are Team Matic. She’s really smart, you’d like her.”

“Well, I didn’t know that she would figure that part out.”

“I think you meant to say, thank you, husband. You made the right call.”

Leona rolled her eyes, and walked past him to punch in the code for the blast doors. The guard was sitting on her bunk, leaning against the wall behind her, and staring at the one in front of her. “Report.”

“May 21, 2442,” Leona answered. How are you feeling?”

“Physically fine, socially unstimulated, emotionally scattered, and psychologically disturbed. How are you?”

Leona took a couple beats. “I’m fine.”

“Great,” the guard sarcasticated.

“I’m sorry this happened to you. This was not our intention. We didn’t want anyone to get hurt. I don’t think I’ll ever convince you that Oaksent is not the savior that you’ve been indoctrinated to believe him to be. I could try to tell you my side of the story, like how he destroyed a gas giant from light years away just so he could kill everyone living on the moon orbiting it, but I’m sure you would just argue that they were heathens who deserved it. I could show you footage from the world that kept people as slaves, or the one whose only purpose it is to suffer countless attacks from the military outpost. I could show you the numbers from Ex-811, where all food is grown and raised, which proves that resources are being distributed unfairly, and according to Bronach’s own personal whims. He starves people on purpose to keep them dependent on him. But none of this is going to resonate with you, because he’s taught you that he knows the way, and there is no other. There are, of course; many other ways, but you’ll never see them, because they don’t match your impression of reality as he has forced you to trust without question.”

“Prove it,” the guard spit.

“I’ll try,” Leona agreed. “I’ll get you a tablet with a copy of the central archives, so you can start learning what he’s been lying to you about. But first, what’s your name?”

“Korali.”

“It was nice to meet you, Korali.”

“Was it?”

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Fluence: Cass (Part VI)

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The four of them reached out for each other, and took hands. They were totally in sync, and were able to make the jump without saying a word. They were back on Earth, but roughly 542 million years ago, standing on the beach of an ocean. They lingered for a moment or two before letting go, and awkwardly turning away from each other. Weaver walked over to a rock a few meters away, and stuck her arm into a deep hole. They heard a click, which served to split the ground apart, and reveal a stairway leading down into the earth. Lights began to switch on automatically, revealing that the bottom was only a few stories down. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll be safe down there. I built my own mini version of the Constant to be alone.”

“You’re not alone,” Goswin contended.

“We’ll see.” She stepped down, and never looked back to see if they were following, but they were anyway.

They landed in a decent-sized foyer with a mostly homey feel, but also laboratory-like qualities. Weaver continued to lead them down a hallway until they came upon the main room where they found an aquarium that took up one entire wall. The glass barrier curved inward, which would let creatures swim right up to investigate the humans, if such creatures were anywhere to be found. There was a lot of underwater life to admire, such as algae and a seaweed of some kind, but no fish.

After Weaver tapped something on a control panel that the others assumed was a security passcode, she watched them watch the prehistoric creatures floating around soothingly. “Those aren’t plants, if that’s what you’re assuming. They’re not animals either. They’re unlike anything you’re used to in the modern age.”

“Protista?” Eight Point Seven guessed. She was more knowledgeable than the other two, but still didn’t recognize these organisms.

Weaver shook her head. “Some people think that there are eight kingdoms, including Protista and Chromista, but there have actually been eleven throughout history and prehistory. Two of them went totally extinct long, long ago. These right here belong to Ankorea, which came this close to surviving to our day. They exhibited traits from all of the other modern kingdoms. Their frond right there shows the first inkling of photosynthesis that we’ll later see in plants. It doesn’t convert sunlight directly into energy, but it does power the decomposition process that the organism uses to break food down like fungi. It’s what makes them brown, instead of green. Despite being multicellular, they reproduce via splitting, like bacteria, which sounds insane, though I’ve never witnessed it up close. This area is really calm and hospitable, but they’re extremophiles, like Archea, able to survive in both high and low temperatures. They can nearly all transition from one to the other if need be, making them unique. But unique isn’t the right word, because they’re quite diverse, like protists.

“All of these that you see belong to Ankorea, despite how different they look, and that explains why I built my constant here. You see, their defining characteristic is that they all have this anchor that can anchor them to the seafloor. This allows them to catch food as it floats by from one spot while saving energy. Once they feel that the area has been stripped, they pull the anchor up, and move on. They can swim or drift, depending on their energy reserves. Some of their anchors extend, like the majority of the ones you’re seeing, but that one there isn’t a rock. It has a nonextendable anchor. When it’s released, this thing will kind of start to roll around until it finds a better source of food. I don’t see it here, but one of them actually has two anchors, so it can walk like an animal. It’s crazy to watch, I wish you were here for that.”

“They sound so resilient,” Goswin pointed out, “how did they go extinct?”

“No one knows. I’ve brought a few experts back to study them, but we don’t understand it yet. Of course this is all before whatever ended them, but the current theory is that they were outcompeted by stronger organisms. They might have overgrazed their own environment. As you can see, there’s not a whole lot here. That’s pretty indicative of the world right now. The food cycle is difficult to maintain in the Ediacaran period. The ones that survive are the kind that thrive with less.”

“You brought other people here?” Eight Point Seven asked. “Did that not risk paradoxes? If they had published papers regarding what you know to be facts, but which were lost to the fossil records for the majority of the population, I would have it in the repository of knowledge.”

“I erased their memories,” Weaver explained. “They weren’t happy about it, but I promised to credit them for any work published after a point in the timeline when I felt like this information could be shared. Honestly, I’ve not even decided whether that moment will ever take place. There’s no decent way to explain how anyone could possibly know this much about organisms that never fossilized. Unless time travel becomes public knowledge, this is just for me. And for you now, I suppose.”

“Are we going to keep talking about something dumb and meaningless, and sidestepping the real issue, which is why we’ve come here?” Briar questioned.

“He’s right. We have to address the elephant in the room.” Goswin looked around the room, and took a half step back as if he were searching for a literal elephant. “It’s no coincidence that we all agreed to jump to this place without exchanging a single word. We all wanted to leave where we were so we could unpack recent events and revelations.”

“The question I have,” Briar began, “is which of us are real?”

“We’re all real,” Weaver reasoned. “There’s just a slight possibility that we’re shifting timelines without realizing it.”

“Not only a possibility,” Eight Point Seven argued. “I don’t belong with the three of you.” She frowned. “This isn’t even my body.” The cut on her forehead had since healed into a scar, which perhaps alternate or shifted versions of her would be able to use to tell each other apart, but it meant nothing to the other three members of the crew.

“We don’t know that it quite works like that,” Weaver tried to clarify. “Time is a weird thing, and it’s getting weirder. The laws of causality are breaking down, and we are at the center of it. Remember what I told you about the river of consciousness. That’s not just a metaphor that applies to us because of our bizarre situation. All conscious beings experience this on the quantum level. Your mind is in a constant state of flux. Eight Point Seven, you’re considered a true artificial intelligence because when you were first created, you passed a series of rigorous tests meant to determine this very thing. Classical computers do not flow like human minds. Their alterations are quantifiable, and even reversible. They can be codified as a series of rapidly changing states. No matter how rapid the change is, each state can be pinpointed and recorded. Humans do not exist in states, and neither do you. Not simply knowing, but understanding, this phenomenon was key to advancements that led to things like mind uploading, digitization of the brian, and total immersive virtual reality.”

“I’m having trouble following,” Briar said nervously.

Weaver faced him. “Time travelers tend to think of reality in terms of clearly definable timelines, which you can destroy when you create a new one by triggering a time travel event. We call this a point of divergence. But that’s not really how it works. Time is constantly shifting through an array of equally probable potentials of superposition—”

“You’re getting technical again,” Goswin interrupted to warn her.

Weaver sighed, frustrated at having to figure out how to dumb this down. “There is no real you, or fake you. They’re all you, and you are all them. Even without this thing that happened to us, you may be jumping to different realities all the time, which exist simultaneously in parallel. That’s what we’re all worried about, right? We’re afraid that we don’t belong together, because we can’t know whether someone’s been replaced. Think of it this way, it may be true that you’re always being replaced, no matter what you do. You step into a new reality, don’t realize it, and move on like nothing happened. That could simply be how it works for everyone. It may be an inexorable characteristic of existence. There’s still a lot about the cosmos that even I don’t know. So the question is, if that has been happening to you your entire life, why worry about it now?”

“Because some of us appear to be shifting back,” Goswin noted.

“Yes,” Weaver conceded. “We’re encountering ourselves, not as fixtures at different points in the timeline, nor even as alternates from conflicting timelines. They’re just us, copied to possibly infinite numbers, looping back on ourselves, and criss-crossing each other’s paths. It’s chaos. It’s chaos incarnate. That’s scary, I get it. We can try to fix the issue, or  we can try to ignore it.”

“Wait.” Goswin stepped farther away, and peered around the corner of another hallway. “If we thought to come to this place, how come no one else did? Our other selves, that is. Or...whatever we should call them.”

“Shifted selves,” Eight Point Seven suggested.

“They should not be able to enter the premises,” Weaver assured him. “I placed us in a temporal bubble. We’re currently moving through time at a speed that is only nanoseconds slower than outside, which is more incidental than anything. The purpose is to erect a barrier that cannot be breached, even by another me. It’s a safeguard I put in place, not to stop my...shifted selves from coming in, but any alternate. If another Weaver shows up, she’ll see the bubble, and know to jump to a different moment—perhaps a year from now—to avoid running into herself. When you travel this far back in time, precision is implausible at best. I have labs all over the timeline, but this is more of a vacation home to get away from people.”

“Maybe this already happened, and they went back, instead of forward,” Goswin proposed. He had wandered over to the kitchen table where he found a piece of paper. He lifted it up, and turned towards the group to read it out loud. “Shifted Selves Visitor Log. Weaver, Goswin, Eight Point Seven, Briar, Six Point Seven, Ellie Underhill, Holly Blue...” He stopped at the last name on the list. “Uhh...”

“Are there tally marks next to each one?”

“Uh, yeah,” Goswin confirmed. “The usual suspects are about even. Holly Blue is here three times, as is Six Point Seven, and Ellie came once. I guess she decided to join us on the X González in one timeline.”

“At least one,” Briar added.

“Right,” Goswin agreed.

“What is it, Gos?” Weaver asked him. “You’re balking at something, and it isn’t the tally marks. Those are interesting additions to the crew, but not wholly shocking. Who’s on the list that shouldn’t be?”

Goswin looked up from the paper. “Misha Collins.”

“The Misha Collins?” Eight Point Seven asked.

“Who’s Misha Collins?” Briar asked, having lived his whole life literally under a rock, or cave, rather.

“Misha Collins is an actor from the 20th and 21st centuries,” Weaver explained. “I would like to hear the story that led him to show up here.”

A shadow appeared out of nowhere next to the refrigerator. It was sliced up in segments, which were shimmering, and moving from side to side like Pong, as molecules worked to coalesce into full form. It started with the shoes on the floor, and began to work its way up as the traveler struggled to find his place in this point in spacetime. Pants, trenchcoat, narrow tie over a white shirt, and finally the neck and head. It was none other than Misha Collins. He only took a few seconds to get his bearings. “What is it this time? Uh, I mean...report.”

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Microstory 2120: Expect Me to Be Grateful

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My Rehabilitation Plan ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be. I just kept thinking of more detail that I wanted to include, and one of my biggest weaknesses when it comes to writing is cutting out what I’ve already written. That’s why these posts are usually so short, if you can believe the irony. If I wrote everything that happened to me in a given day, then it would end up two or three pages long. The only way to produce it with only the relevant information is to make my cuts before I even start writing. I try to think about only what’s important, and ignore all the little things that readers won’t find interesting anyway. I guess I end up going overboard with this, since it’s not that hard to refrain from transcribing the unnecessary thoughts when I focus so much on just the important stuff. But, so you have an idea, my basic plan is to attend weekend jail for about the next five months until I’ve completed my thousand hours. I’m going to focus on finding and keeping a job on the weekdays, which means putting the community service off until I’m finished with jail. That will make the schedule much simpler, and less stressful. Plus, the therapy isn’t something that I can put off, because it’s crucial to my consistent progress, so I’ll be signing up for evening sessions, depending on what my work hours end up being. I don’t think that it will be that difficult to find something this time around. My readership is growing day by day, and people are already contacting me about open positions. Some are from people who are just aware that such jobs exist, but a few are actual employers with the power to fill those positions. It’s weird to see these messages. I’ve never been recruited before. In the past, companies would always expect me to be grateful just that they gave me the time of day. I don’t have time to look through them yet, so the job hunt starts first thing Monday. Until then, I’ll be in jail. In fact, my ride is waiting. See you on the other side.

Microstory 2119: A Rehabilitation Plan

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Without proceeding to a full trial, I’ve been sentenced to 1,000 hours of jail time, and 1,000 hours of community service. There’s a lot of flexibility with this that I did not expect. I can go to jail for 42 days straight if I want, and then start doing my community service. I can stay in jail every night, but spend my days performing acts of service. I can spend six months in weekend jail while I work during the week, which will allow me some time to volunteer in the evenings, but I can also put it off until I have more time. I could even put jail itself off completely for six whole months, which I don’t really want to do. I would rather get it over with. That doesn’t mean I’ll be serving my time straight, though. I still want to work on my blog, and keep up with the world, which I won’t be able to do if I’m stuck in there for all that time. I first have to draw up a Rehabilitation Plan, which includes these two things, plus therapy, an active search for gainful employment, and of course, a detailed strategy for nonrecidivism. It’s not like I can do it one way, and then change my mind later. I have to decide now, which is what I’ll be working on for the next couple of days before I have to report to jail for the first time. Regardless of what I end up choosing, I’ll be going inside tomorrow night at exactly 19:00. They have to process me first, and then release me on Sunday at the earliest, if I’ve opted to go for an intermittent plan, which I will. I already have some ideas involving finding a home that’s close to where I work, and not still not buying a car, which will make it difficult for me to leave town again. As you know, I didn’t have a car before, but I was able to make it work with public transportation, so this isn’t like a perfect solution, but it’s a start. The state is trusting me with a lot of freedom, and I’m not going to do anything to suggest that it was a mistake on their part. Once I’m finished with my plan, it might be fun to post it here, even if only a truncated version of it. It could be pretty long. The court is actually encouraging me to stay online, to document my journey, and to garner public support for my recovery. I certainly don’t have a problem with that. If I can gain enough followers, I can actually start making money off of this site from the advertisements, which could really help if I really struggle with finding a regular job. So, as I think I’ve said before, read my ish! Early and often.

Microstory 2118: Tiny Little Baby Boy

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I had a physical examination today. Some laws in this world are weird, and some of them are better than they are where I’m from. For others, I’m not sure one way or the other. I think my world would do this sort of thing sometimes, for when there were specific reasons to believe that the accused was in need of it, but here, they do it for everyone. There is an entire branch of medicine dedicated to making sure that people like me are fit to stand trial, or even just this small hearing. They call it Judicial Fitness, making this my Judicial Fitness Evaluation. I’ll go through more by the time this is over, and maybe more while I’m being monitored by a parole officer. This Earth, and this country in particular, is very concerned with the physical and emotional stability of their accused and convicted. I would be interested to learn what happened in history to turn this into a common practice. Were there too many bored doctors? Were there a ton of patients who were later discovered to have been unfit for legal proceedings, which resulted in severe damage to their welfare? Or maybe there was one highly publicized case that shifted perception. Either way, I don’t have a problem submitting to it. I have nothing to hide. Y’all already know, I don’t mind admitting to my medical issues; I’ve done that in multiple instances on this site. I believe in medical privacy, but I’ve personally never run into a situation that I felt I couldn’t tell anyone about, even if it would be “embarrassing” for a neurotypical. I’m trying to think of a story like that to prove to you that I don’t care, but nothing comes to mind. Perhaps I just don’t understand what other people’s threshold would be. I’ve had a few ingrown toenails, which required minor surgery, does that count? They sent a scope up my urethra to try to figure out my digestive issues. That’s not great, a normal person would probably keep that to themselves. Let’s see, I used to vomit from anxiety whenever I did something new. I guess that can still happen, it’s just that less is new than it was when I was a tiny little baby boy. I just called myself a tiny little baby boy, should I be embarrassed by that? You tell me. If those aren’t juicy enough for ya, I’m afraid that my current condition isn’t gonna help you either. I earned a clean bill of health from my physician, which means that I can attend my hearing tomorrow. What exactly the purpose of it is a bunch of legalese that I don’t understand, but I’ll try to recount it tomorrow, unless they throw me in prison right away, and don’t give me access to a computer. If that happens, my blog will just end. I don’t have any backup posts waiting on the schedule this time. Welp, it’s been real...or rather it hasn’t, because I’m making all of this up, ain’t I? Or am I? I am. Wait...oh no, I was right, this is all fiction.

Microstory 2117: Cosmic Frequency

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Since I have nowhere else to live, I’m still in the hotel room that the government is paying for. I spoke with my lawyer yesterday—the one that my former employer is paying for—and also this morning. It looks like this thing isn’t going to be going to a full trial. The FBI and my benefactors are going to be vouching for me to the judge, as will reportedly my social worker. I’ll most likely serve some time in prison, but not in the way that you think. Have you ever heard anyone on a police or lawyer procedural say that a convict is being sentenced to consecutive time? Have you ever wondered if that means that there’s such a thing as nonconsecutive prison time? Well, yes, young Padawan, there is! It’s often called weekend jail, and it’s generally meant to allow people to continue working throughout the week, and/or take care of their families. I’m currently in between jobs, so I’ve been advised to start working closely with my social worker to change that. He’ll probably have ideas on an employer who would be willing to deal with what will become an unusual schedule. Or maybe it’s not that unusual. My frame of reference isn’t perfect, but I do believe that intermittent confinement is more common on this world. That reminds me, I’m a visitor from another universe, and people are very interested in that. That’s why they’ve been so helpful, because they want to understand if it’s even a little bit true. They don’t believe me entirely, but who could expect them to? I have no proof, and no way to prove it. A science fiction story would suggest that people from different universes have different quarks, or something, but I’m not sure if that’s true. I wrote a story once where a character was in a similar situation. He ended up in a highly advanced galaxy, where a group of doctors were able to run a “cosmic frequency” test on him to confirm his alien origins. I’m not sure how difficult it would be to do that here, but if researchers want to know how I tick, I guess I’ll suggest that, and see what they say. This is all in the very early stages. The military isn’t going to spend too many resources studying me until they have some real reason to believe that I’m telling the truth. For now, everyone’s playing this by ear, including me. Not everyone is gonna believe me at all, or be on my side. They’ll expect me to pay for my crimes, and won’t let the FBI, a private organization, or anyone else exonerate me, even under special circumstances. Weekend jail sounds like a good deal to me. I’m not a partier, so it’s not like I’m known to do anything special with my days off. Plus, that would allow me to stay online throughout my sentence. That would be cool, wouldn’t it? I am getting the sense that they want me to keep up with my blog too. My view count has been skyrocketing lately. Word is spreading about my life story, and people are catching up on my previous posts. It’s surreal. I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Microstory 2116: Law is Clear Enough

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I spent two nights in jail after they processed me. I’ve always had pretty good luck with law enforcement, probably because I easily pass for white, yet I’ve always disliked them, because of the things that happen to people who can’t pass for white. Of course, they shouldn’t have to pass for anything beyond being living creatures who deserve to be respected, and to feel safe around the people who have literally sworn an oath to serve and protect. As far as I know, there’s no oath to attack and kill unprovoked, but you wouldn’t know it reading about the coppers on my homeworld. Anyway, processing went fine, and the jail cell wasn’t that bad. I shared it with five other guys. The toilet wasn’t in a separate room, but there was a partial concrete barrier. We could still see each other, but we couldn’t see anything private unless we deliberately walked up closer, which fortunately, no one ever did. Sunday morning was a whirlwind of activity that I did not expect. I made a lot of friends on this planet, but none of them was in a position to help me with this situation. My family doesn’t live here, and I’ve not been around for long enough to form strong bonds. As it turned out, I didn’t really need them. The FBI surprisingly had my back. I helped them by luring that teenage girl’s kidnappers away from the trail while they rescued her, which was a really nice thing for me to do, but we weren’t exactly investigating terrorists. I’m not even sure if they’ve even managed to catch the criminals yet. What I did was not that big of a deal. All I had to do was drive to Alabama, and leave breadcrumbs for them to follow. The hardest part of that was having to spend time in Alabama. Boom.

Normally, I don’t think a federal agency will spend taxpayer money to bail an individual out of jail, but they were able to expedite paperwork to make me a CI. Obviously, the C in that initialism is supposed to stand for confidential, but past events have already been recorded in this regard, so who cares? Luckily for the taxpayers, my bail wasn’t all that high, because the judge knew that I wouldn’t be able to afford more than a few bucks. I’ll say, the wheels of justice seem to turn faster here than they do where I’m from. They do hearings on the weekend, did you know that? That’s so weird, but I’m grateful for it. I’m staying in a hotel right now, which the feds are allowing me to tell you, but I can’t say which one. It’s pretty nice, though. They’re treating me like an important witness, which I may be. They may ask me to testify against the ID makers whenever they catch them, and start turning the wheels of justice over them too. Don’t get too excited for me, though. They’ll probably cut me a deal for a lighter sentence due to my help in the bigger investigation, but I’m not getting off scot-free. I’ve still committed my own crimes, and the law is clear enough on that, so I’ll have to pay for my sins one way or another. The government can’t pay my legal fees, for obvious reasons, but I don’t have to worry about that either. They’re not the only friends that I unexpectedly made.

When I first left Kansas City, and hid out in Iowa, I quickly hooked up with the ID makers to generate my new identity. I still can’t tell you how I managed that, but perhaps one day. Sorry, but it’s not my secret to tell. Soon after that, I was able to find a job. It was a weird place where I worked, but I didn’t ask any questions. I just cleaned where I was told to clean, and kept my head down. They were dealing with very secretive information, but I never found out what exactly all of those documents were for. I still don’t know, but they noticed me, and they’ve decided to help out too, for reasons I couldn’t tell you. They’ve promised to cover all of my legal fees, including whatever it might cost if I decide to countersue the state, the federal government, or anyone else. I don’t think that I’m going to do that. I’m not sure what my case would be, and I’m not greedy. I knew what I was getting myself into. Well, I didn’t know that I would encounter a kidnap victim, but as far as my own dealings go, I made my own bed. Here’s what I’m worried about—and I’m fully aware that they have access to my blog—maybe they think that I saw something while I was a janitor in their offices, and don’t want me telling others about it. Honestly, I didn’t see nothin’, man. All of the regular staff members were always really good about keeping their stuff locked up, and I was really good about not letting my eyes wander. The truth is, I’m a curious person, but I’m not investigative. I could never have been a detective, because I generally don’t want to get into other people’s business. If I walk up to two people who are laughing together, I don’t ask them what’s funny. The way I see it, if they want to tell me, they can. So I don’t know what interest my former employer has in my legal issues, but I’ve decided to accept their help until they give me a reason to stop trusting them. I’ll fill you in on more tomorrow. Things are changing every day now, so I’m sure I’ll have a lot to catch you up on. This could all be a game, or a ruse, though, so my declaration stands; no matter what the autopsy says, it was murder.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 20, 2441

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While Mateo was taking a trip away from the station, the rest of the remaining team was trying not to get caught. When they first entered this station in 2440, they didn’t want to rely solely on Marie’s excellent impersonation skills. At some point, someone may realize that she couldn’t be who she said she was. Not everyone who worked here was in the hangar bay. As word spread, the chances of somebody catching on increased. The first guard who realized it could have just been the tip of the iceberg. Besides, they didn’t know anything about what objects were being stored here, or how vast the collection was. They needed time to download the manifest, analyze it, and make a plan. Still invisible, Olimpia walked straight to the primary security room too upload a computer worm that would take control of all management systems, but lay in wait during the interim year, so that no one would know that it was even here. Leona, Ramses, and Marie snuck into the main office to find the information that they were looking for. There they uploaded their own worm to gather all data on the warehouse, which they would redownload once they came back.

All of the personnel were so busy trying to find the fake missing item that no one came to bother them, and as midnight was approaching, they held their breaths, hoping that they would jump to the future without anyone realizing it. The staff would be very confused about what happened to their messiah, the godking Oaksent, but they would have no reason to believe that it was really Team Matic in disguise, right? They opened the door to a storage closet so they wouldn’t suddenly appear next year in front of other people when someone actually did show up. “I think I found it.”

“What?” Leona questioned. That should be impossible. They told these people that they deliberately misplaced a warehouse item at an earlier date, and that whoever discovered it would be rewarded. But nothing was actually misplaced. It was just to keep everyone busy while they executed the heist. They didn’t consider the possibility that an artifact was genuinely misplaced without their intervention, probably accidentally. A flaw in their plan.

The young man, whose job in the station was not immediately clear, held his palms out before them. On top of them was a lighter, and it was one that they recognized. This was the Muster Lighter, which could be used to summon people from distant places as a mass teleportation object. It was lost centuries ago, but it wasn’t entirely out of left field that it should end up here. This region of the galaxy was seeded with life by someone who once lived on the generational ship, Extremus, which launched from the Gatewood Collective, where the lighter was last used and seen. They didn’t think that Bronach was alive at the time, but perhaps a relative stole it, and he ended up with it. Or it was someone else on Extremus, and he procured it later. “This wasn’t in the Time Vault, where it belongs. It was hidden behind a box of scissors by the door to an auxiliary maintenance airlock that doesn’t get use.” When Ramses reached towards it, the young man pulled away. “No. I shall hand it directly to the Emperor.”

Marie nodded appreciatively, and accepted the lighter as ceremoniously as she could while so pressed for time. “Thank you, my child.”

“It’s legit,” Leona said to Marie before turning towards the young man, “but, uhh...this isn’t it. We hid a different item. Someone else must have left this where you found it. They probably just use it to smoke in the airlock, because then they can easily vent it all into space when they’re done.”

He frowned, and hung his head low.

Leona’s watch beeped, as did the other two. “Shit, we gotta go.”

The three of them slipped into the closet, and hoped that the boy would give up, and leave. He didn’t. He opened the door behind them. “Wait, can I still be sent to—”

They didn’t hear the end of his sentence before midnight central hit, and sent them into the future. But they heard it once they came back, “...the resort planet.”

Leona looked at her watch to confirm that they had indeed jumped forward. It was May 20, 2441. She looked over at Marie and Ramses, who now appeared as themselves. They were unable to hold illusions across the time jump. Good to know. “You’ve been waiting for us this whole time?”

“Yes,” the young man answered. “People underestimate me, but I am smart. I had a whole year to work out who you really were, Leona Reaver.” Odd choice for a surname that she technically remembered having, but never actually used in this timeline.

“Who did you tell?” Ramses questioned.

“No one. Something that you probably don’t know about the Corridor is that most don’t give much thought to who the Emperor is, or how the Empire is run. We just deal with our own lives. I have no strong feelings about him. I just wanna get out of here.”

“You want us to take you with us so you don’t have to work anymore?” Leona guessed.

“I think I deserve it. I kept your secret, and lured everyone away for a party that I’ve been planning for months. I don’t know why you’re here, but I know that you won’t stay here forever. You don’t have to keep me, or even take me to Ex-613. You can just drop me off on an uninhabited world where I can live the rest of my life in peace.”

“What do you think?” Leona asked the other two.

“I’m fine with it,” Marie replied. “We’re here to help people, right?”

“Rambo?” Leona pressed.

He was busy studying his tablet. “Oh, I don’t care. The worm has delivered the data. The algorithm found what we were looking for. We were kind of misled. This warehouse is predominantly for banned and restricted tech. As he said, there’s a Time Vault, and that is the only place that stores temporal objects.”

“All right, let’s go there. You’re coming with us,” she said to the refugee.

They made their way along the corridors, up the elevator, and down the people movers. The Time Vault was heavily guarded, as they expected it would be, though their new friend whispered that it was usually worse. The party was a banger. Marie took the initiative to speed up, and approach first. “I see that you are all dedicated to your work, and I would like to thank you for your loyalty and devotion. The winner of last year’s contest has finally found the missing object. That is why we have returned. She would like to attend the party now. Please proceed to the mess hall to offer your joint protection. You will be rewarded for your efforts as well.”

“Sir!” one of them said with intense respect. And then they all left.

“I could get used to this,” Marie mused.

They entered the vault, and started to look around, each of them being drawn to something different. Most of the objects were generic, like teleporter guns, spatial tethers, and wall breachers. These were all lining the walls. Unique and rarer objects were on pedestals in the center of the room, a few of which they didn’t recognize. The Muster Lighter pedestal was empty, which made sense, but so was one labeled for HG Goggles. It was never clear how many pairs of those existed, but like the lighter, these were probably being unlawfully used by some rando who worked here.

“Hey kid, what are ya doing?” Ramses asked as he was inspecting a teleporter rifle.

The refugee was standing before a pedestal near the back, blocking the others from seeing what was sitting upon it. He turned around, holding what resembled a Fabergé egg, though not so intricate and pretty. “They never would have let me in here, but I know that when the Oaksent learns of my heroism, he’ll reward my family with riches beyond imagining. I killed Team Matic.” He turned two sections of the egg away from each other, then another two sections, and then he pressed the plunger that popped up on the top. The egg began to disintegrate, followed quickly by the boy.

“It’s a Lucius bomb!” Leona shouted. “Get out!” As she ran for the hatch, she grabbed a tube of concentrated antintropic nanosealant while Ramses was swiping a clear box. “Olimpia, where are you!” She screamed into her comms.

Olimpia came into view next to her as they were running. “Right here, buddy!”

“Mateo, we’re gonna have to teleport!” Leona cried. “Stop darklurking, and spark a flare! Don’t dock with the station! Just stay within range!”

“We can’t just leave!” Marie yelled, still running. “These people are innocent enough! We have to save them!”

“We can’t!” Leona argued. “There’s too many, and the bomb is too fast!”

“Yeah, we can!” Ramses and Olimpia replied in unison. “I took something!”

“Okay, we’ll try, but I make no guarantees. Ram, where’s the party?”

“A few life signs are scattered throughout the station, but most are right here!” He showed her the dots on the floor plan.

“Tap into the public address system!”

“Go ahead.” Ramses handed her his tablet.

Marie ripped the tablet out of her hands. “This is your emperor, Bronach Oaksent! The station is suffering from a cataclysm! If you are not already at the party, go there now! That is the only safe location! Go! Go!”

“Whatever you two stole,” Leona began, taking the tablet back to keep an eye on the dots, “get ready to use them!” The live sensors were actually pretty smart, and well-distributed. She could watch the dots running for the party, and unfortunately, she could also see dots disappear from the screen, along with the wall boundaries that they were between, indicating that the bomb had already reached that section of the station. All sensors that had yet to be destroyed remained in operation throughout.

They made it to the mess hall, and started funneling people inside until they could do so no longer. The blast was approaching them quickly, and they had to get inside. Leona still didn’t understand how they were going to stop it, though. A Lucius bomb didn’t start working until it reached sufficiently dense matter, and once it did, it didn’t stop until all reachable matter was consumed. It didn’t really matter how thick the walls were. Olimpia had that covered, though. She was the last inside. She immediately turned around, and opened and umbrella, tensely holding it up against the wave of energy trying to kill them. The wall continued to disintegrate, but slower now, and then slower still. They watched as the last remnants of the station disappeared, ripped apart molecule by molecule, until everything but this room was gone, and the tumult ceased. They were now floating alone in outer space. This weird umbrella that none of them had ever heard of before was keeping the atmosphere from escaping into the vacuum.

Olimpia held fast, and smirked at the team. “Topological modulator umbrella. I can’t hold this forever.”

“You won’t have to.” Ramses spun around, and stepped onto the nearest table to address the crowd. “Workers of Ex-467, I know that you’re all scared and confused right now, but we are here to help you! The four of us have the ability to teleport out of here!” He pointed to the Vellani Ambassador, which was hovering over them now. “We could save ourselves alone, or we could save all of you as well! If you would like to die today, stand over by that far wall! If you wanna live, stand on this side, and wait to get into this tiny little box!”

Everyone stood still for a moment before all moving over to the rescue side.

“What the hell is that?” Leona asked him.

“Subdimensional Crucible. It should be able to shrink people.”

“Should?” Leona echoed.

“Hey, I’m just goin’ by the name.” Ramses removed the teleporter rifle from his pants, and began to program it.  “I can get everyone in. All you have to do is wait patiently, and maybe give Olimpia a break.”

“I’ll give her a break,” Marie volunteered. She now looked like herself as well. She took hold of the umbrella, and they shared the burden for a minute before Olimpia felt comfortable letting it go.

Ramses used his tablet to interface with the box, and also the rifle. There was enough charge in it to pocket all of these people away. The problem was figuring out how the box worked. If he didn’t understand the mechanism well enough, all he would do was send the first person as a mangled mess of blood and viscera into the box. Everyone else would die when the umbrella stopped working. The survivors eventually started to sit down to wait, trying not too look up at the rippling force field above them, which threatened to fail every few minutes when the current holder of the umbrella got a little tired. It shifted hands periodically amongst the three ladies. A few members of the personnel volunteered to help, but it wasn’t safe. Even if Leona chose to trust them, they did not necessarily metabolize temporal energy. This thing might not work without it. Ramses needed time to investigate it, which of course, he couldn’t do right now.

After half an hour, Ramses was finished with his work. One of the section leads agreed to go first, and report back if anything went wrong. Ramses shot him in the chest, and then Leona used the box’s built-in microscope to check on him. He was standing in a miniature furnished living room in the middle of the box, and waving up at them in all directions. He was so small that he couldn’t even discern the shadows, shapes, and colors above him as people. “All right, he’s fine,” she announced. Who’s next?”

Ramses continued to shoot people with the rifle. It took longer than they would have liked, because the remainders always wanted to be sure that that last person also survived. They were apparently worried that each time was a fluke, and the next one after that may have resulted in disaster. The girls had to keep holding onto the umbrella the entire time, but eventually, everyone was shot and safe in the box, and they could drop it. The atmosphere vented around them as they teleported up to the ship together.

“Long day?” Mateo asked them, perhaps with a little too little sensitivity.

“Let’s just go. I don’t know what the hell we’re gonna do with these people.”

“Did you bring me a present?” Mateo asked.

Leona showed him the nanosealant. “Yes. I think I can fix the reframe engine.”

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