The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 16, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

It was annoying to spend a whole other day just sitting around, waiting to do anything to fix this problem. If even one of them had an identity in this reality, they could have gone to check on their friends, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Marie actually wasn’t sure if the authorities would ask for identification or anything, but they most likely would, so there was nothing they could do. They watched the news, which wasn’t reporting the incident. It was a minor infraction, all things considered, so they wouldn’t expect anything to be up there, but there was a small chance, so it was nice to see this was all being kept fairly quiet. The downside was they weren’t entirely certain where Heath and Angela were being held. Based on the location of the arrest, they could guess, but that wasn’t a sure thing either. It should all be resolved in the next couple of days, but they’re finding it hard to wait.

Marie is sitting at the kitchenette table, chin resting on the palm of her hand. “What do you think Olimpia is doing right now?” The two of them had a thing back when there was only one version of Angela. Mateo is unaware how serious it was, or if they had time to attempt to navigate the duplication that complicated matters. She has Heath now, but obviously still feels something.

“Hopefully she doesn’t exist,” Leona decides. “If Dalton accidentally created a shortlived pattern, then we were each delivered to our respective realities a year and a day apart. That would put Olimpia on April 9, 2398.”

“That was a week ago,” Marie laments.

“Yeah, but she should have only been alone for a day,” Leona figures. “We can try to retrieve her in 2399. That gives Ramses and me a lot of time to solve the issue. I think our main obstacle is a lack of accessible temporal energy. But we are still living in salmonverse, and salmoverse still has time travel. If somebody has a way of suppressing it, then they have to be using it for themselves.”

“What does that mean for us?” Mateo asks.

“It means that there is a source of temporal energy, be it a person, a special object, or even a location. If we find it, we can just take the energy we need for ourselves. We’ll have to rebuild the devices that Ramses got from the Parallel, but like I said, we have a year. We will probably want to try it on April 10, 2399.”

“How do we know that Olimpia isn’t on our same non-pattern, wherever she is?” Marie complains. “Maybe she’s been alone for as long as you’ve been here, or as long as I’ve been here.”

“We just can’t think like that,” Mateo tries to say in a comforting voice. “Let’s try to be positive.”

“Well, I’m A-negative,” Marie argues. She stands up, and tries to climb up the narrow steps, but Ramses happens to be coming back down.

When he gets to the bottom, he doesn’t realize right away that she’s trying to get past, so he just stands there for a moment, looking amongst the others to gauge the tone of the room.

“Please!” she says plainly in a raised—but not yelling—voice.

“Sorry.” He steps to the side, and watches her leave in a huff. “Is everything okay?”

“No,” Leona answers, “but...she just needs some time alone.”

“It is safe up there, right?” Mateo asks him.

“I didn’t see any activity. They chose this site well.”

Ramses sits down where Marie was, bored after his forest walk. “What are we gonna do now? We can’t even play RPS-101 Plus.”

“No,” Mateo agrees with a smirk, “but we can play regular RPS-101.” He pulls the wheel from his bag, unfolds it, and presents it to the two of them.

“Where did you get that?” Leona questions.

Mateo shrugs. “I had the industrial synthesizer print it out forever ago. That’s why it’s made of metal instead of paper.”

“How would one even go about playing?” Ramses asked.

“You search the wheel for the gesture you want. Then we pound and shoot just as we would for Rock, Paper, Scissors. Then we consult the outcome list to find out who won. It’s etched on the back.”

Leona stares at the wheel. “I can’t believe you’ve been lugging that thing around this whole time.”

“It’s made of graphene, so it’s light,” Mateo contends.

“That’s not metal.”

“Whatever. Do you wanna play a game?” Mateo offers.

She stares at it some more. “Whatever. Just be careful of choosing Sponge every time, like you usually do.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 15, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

Finding out where Heath and Marie live would be a trivial task for the authorities of the Kansas City Police Department. The rest of the team can’t go back there, and if they manage to break Heath and Angela out of the holding cells—or even if they fail in the attempt—they never will again. Fortunately, while Marie never had any intention of breaking the law before, she devised ways of protecting her assets. The two of them are basically survivalists, and they own a small patch of land on the outskirts of town where they buried a secret bunker. Once the other four reunited at the rendezvous point, they traveled there together to discuss recent events, and formulate a plan. Marie asked Mateo not to mention anything about feeling the pull of their pattern until they could solve this first problem, and he agreed to that with no controversy.

The laws in this reality are very different. It’s been a long and deadly road that got civilization to this point, and they’re paranoid about going backwards. Many separate religions have similar ideas. In fact, a cursory glance at each one might lead an outsider to believe that they all originated from the same few ancient events, and branched out from there. This may be true, but it’s caused hostility either way. One might think that these cross-denominational similarities would help people find common ground, but historically, they’ve only stirred up resentment. It would be unthinkable and impossible to combine their faiths into one, so the fact that they all think they’re right, and they’re right about the same thing, just means that this town ain’t big enough for the both of us. Because one of the major things they have in common is that a select few elite should be in charge of all others, and the crux of the competing religions is that everyone thinks they’re that elite.

While Heath works in information technology, religious studies is a passion of his on the side, and he dedicates his free time to finding a way out of these conflicts. WWVII is perpetually around the corner. Each peacetime is met with another war, and a lot of people want to put a stop to it. Even significant instigators of war don’t really want to do it anymore, they always just feel compelled to compete against the others, who they think aren’t as enlightened and peaceful as them. Scholars came up with a term to describe it, which is Radical Defensivism, noting that it leads to some form of offensivism if left unchecked. But don’t let anyone hear you say that, because suggesting to an individual or group that they’re morally wrong for wanting to protect themselves is considered, on its own, an act of offensive aggression, and will only give them the excuse they were looking for to retaliate.

According to current religious laws, freedom of religious pursuits is protected above all else, but there are limits. Religious practice cannot involve speaking ill of someone else’s beliefs, nor overly promoting one’s own beliefs. That’s what Heath did that has got him in so much trouble. And because he is known in certain circles as someone who attempts to solve the antagonism from a practical and academic standpoint, it’s going to be so much worse for him. And it could put his scholarly peaceful movement in danger, so if his colleagues don’t denounce him and his actions as ironic, they risk destroying their own reputation. They can’t allow one of their own to be labeled a hypocrite, so they have to excise him from all association. Whether he is freed or not, his dream of being a meaningful force for good in this way is over. But there is some hope, because there’s a way to get him out, and it has to do with that first class of religious laws.

By arresting him in the first place, the authorities also risk their reputation. They are not meant to be above the laws, so if they deliberately antagonize someone for their beliefs, they enter a gray area. In fact, the entire thing is a gray area. It might be one’s belief that they ought to be able to demean and argue against other people’s beliefs. There is no way to satisfy some kind of moral imperative when it comes to something like this. The concept itself is self-contradictory. You can’t be intolerant of religiously intolerant people that claim their intolerance is a tenet of their religion. The team could make the case that the cops were being the hypocrites. Heath was shouting his intolerance in the middle of the night in an industrial area where no one else was around. Only the authorities heard his words, so they would have to testify against him in a personal capacity in order to make the arrest stick. If they choose not to—which would be in their best political interests—he should be free to go. He’ll still have to be shunned by his community, but he’ll be able to go home. Angela should be able to go home too, as long as she can successfully convince them that she’s actually Marie.

“So, we’re not breaking them out?” Leona asks.

“We should do this the right way,” Marie replies.

“There’s a problem,” Ramses points out. “None of us has an identity. That’s why Angela took your place, instead of claiming to be herself. You can’t argue on behalf of either of them, because one of you isn’t supposed to exist.”

Marie nods, “that’s why I’m not going to be the one going down there to argue on their behalf. We’re going to need outside help, from someone I hope we can trust.”

“Hope?” Mateo questions.

“Nothing in life is certain, Mateo, not even death or taxes. We should have all learned that by now. I will say that this guy is our best chance, and he has a...”

“A what?” Leona presses.

“He and Heath have history.”

“What kind of history?”

Marie takes a breath. “They were married before us. He believes that I stole Heath from him, and he’s been trying to steal him back ever since. He won’t want to help me, but he’ll want to help Heath. I just hope that side of him overpowers the other.”

“Great,” Leona declares, “let’s go now.”

“He travels during the week for work,” Marie explains. “I don’t usually know where, but I know he won’t be back until Friday.”

“What happens to our friends in the meantime?”

“The holding cells are actually rather comfortable; it’s a religious thing, so they’re not being tortured in there, or anything. This reality does not guarantee speedy due process. I doubt the pigs will do anything with them until next week. You take the good with the bad.”

“One day it will all be the good,” Mateo muses. He didn’t mean to say it, it just came out, and no one has the heart to dispute it. Though many strange things have happened over the years. It could happen again.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 14, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

He felt it. He felt that pull he was so used to, and even the nausea he eventually got over. He had almost forgotten it was even a thing, but yeah, back when Mateo first became an unwilling time traveler, he could sense it coming when his stomach felt a little upset. It was always brief, and of course, not usually useful because of a little invention they call a clock, but it was specific to him, and later Leona. He stops running, but doesn’t let go of Marie’s hand. “Did you feel that?”

“Feel what?” she asks.

“Ah, you didn’t.”

“No, I felt something, but you need to tell me what you’re talking about, so we can compare.”

“I felt like I was about to jump to the future. I was a little queasy, and—”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I felt that too,” she elaborates. “I figured it has something to do with how shitty I feel about leaving my husband with those pigs.”

“You call them pigs here?”

“Not the point, Mateo!”

“Sorry. I don’t think you ever felt the nausea, though, once you became one of us?”

“No, is it because I had a resurrected body before this, and now Ramses’ upgrade? I think I kind of remember Leona mention in passing how it once felt in the beginning.”

He slowly turns back towards that empty parking lot. “There is something about this place. If we come back here, I think we’ll jump. I think it’ll happen. I just think we have to be closer. It is midnight, right?”

“Yeah.” Marie double checks her watch. “Yeah.”

“We have to come back. We have to get the other two, break Angela and Heath out of jail, and then return to that lot just before the following midnight that comes. I did that once. I broke out of a holding cell, and—well, I tried to run into the treeline so they would never catch me, but then my cousin caught up to me; it was this whole thing.”

“Mateo, I wouldn’t be able to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because Heath isn’t one of us.”

“Crap. Oh, no. You’re stuck here forever. This...this is the only world where you can be happy now.”

“I think so, yeah. It was uncomfortable at first, but now it’s a gift. I’m not a time traveler anymore, and I don’t wanna be.”

Mateo breathes deeply, and sits up against a mostly fallen tree.

“We have to get to the rendezvous point. You can still do what you want. You can still get out of here, if that’s even what’s happening. Maybe it’s just a glitch, so don’t get your hopes up. But I’ll be fine. You’ll still have Angie.”

“No, we’re a team. We keep having to promise you that you’re part of that, and so is your husband, and so is that baby...”

Marie reacts to this reminder in a way that shows she doesn’t know how to feel about it.

“I’m sorry that’s...that’s a private matter. I can’t speak to it.”

She sits down next to him. “It’s okay. I found out right before you showed up, and I was going to tell him, but then we were dealing with all of this, and...”

Mateo sighs again, but more contently this time. “We’ve been looking for a home. We keep saying that that’s what the main sequence is, but who cares? I mean, I have people that I love back there, but I haven’t seen most of them in ages anyway. My own mother doesn’t remember me. Most of the people that I love are right here, and that can be enough. We always wanted to be free, which is why we sent our alternate selves to Havenverse. Why can’t we just make this our own haven?”

She stands back up, brushes the dirt off her hands, and extends one back down to him. “We can, but we have to get out of here before they find us, or we won’t be able to tell Ramses and Leona what happened. We’ll need them to put the team back together.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 13, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

The whole gang is here, but with different jobs. Ramses and Leona are affixing the secret cameras to the lamp posts, while Heath is assisting them. He’s not as educated or experienced as they are, but he works in IT, and has a better grasp of this reality’s technology. It’s not too different from what the other two are used to, but there are some key learning points. Marie is on lookout. She’s listening to a police scanner with her headphones, and literally walking the perimeter, looking out for activity all around them. It’s the middle of the night, so there’s no one around, but every car they hear zipping down the highway less than a kilometer away freaks them out. They’re wearing black, because they have to assume that at least one night security guard is doing periodic rounds in the surrounding buildings. The installers are switching off each light that they work on so they won’t be seen by such an individual, but they’re worried someone will notice that this keeps happening, so the risk is nowhere near zero.

Mateo and Angela are not here for the cameras. They’re just hunting for clues. Every manhole cover, every oddly shaped tree, every unique rock, could be some way into a secret underground base run by time travelers who are in control of this reality. There is something special about this spot, and they want to know what it is. “Anything yet?” he whispers loudly.

“I can’t see a goddamn thing,” she whispers loudly back.

“Well, we can’t do this during the day,” he reminds her.

“Yes, we can,” she argues. “They can’t do what they’re doing in the daylight, but we could probably get away with it.” She tosses a stick back to the ground. “We could kick a football around as cover.”

“What’s a football?” Heath whispers to them.

“It’s a kind of bird,” Mateo jokes. It’s not everyday he meets someone who isn’t orders of magnitude smarter than him.

“Heath, I need more of that tape,” Leona requests.

“Right.” He hops to it. “Here ya go.”

“Look,” Angela tries to begin again. “I’m just saying that we’re probably not gonna find any—”

“Beetlejuice,” Marie announces. She’s whispering too, but louder than the others. “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice,” she adds. Once means trouble is on the way, pack it in. Twice means they should run. Three times means it may already be too late.

Leona and Ramses scoop their parts and equipment into their bags, and prepare to take off, but they wait for the others.

“No, just go,” Mateo orders. “If they catch you with all that, we’ll have no excuse, and the whole thing will have been a waste. We’ll meet at the rendezvous.”

She and Ramses take off.

“You three need to go too,” Heath says, stepping towards the corner of the parking lot facing the most likely direction the cops would come. “If they come here and find no one, they’ll just keep investigating.”

“The guard reported seeing multiple figures in this lot,” Marie explains.

“Then I’ll stay too,” Mateo decides.

“You don’t even have a real identity yet,” Heath argues.

“I do,” his wife reasons. She takes off the police scanner, and hands it to Mateo. 

“So do I,” Angela states. “I’ll take your place.”

“What difference does it make?” her alternate asks.

“The difference is I’m not pregnant,” Angela says.

Heath perks up, clearly unaware of this claim.

“How did you...?”

“Go!” Angela almost screams.

Mateo takes Marie by the hand, and leads her into the trees at full speed. The police cruiser pulls up, and hopefully doesn’t see them. As they’re continuing to make their escape, they hear Heath screaming some nonsense about Daltomism being the only true path to God. They’re going to get in big trouble, but at least he’s diverting attention away from what they were really doing here. It’ll be okay, Mateo decides. They’ll figure out how to break their friends out of jail. They always do.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 12, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

They could spend a lifetime comparing every little difference between the Third Rail, and the main sequence. The Beatles don’t exist, just like a certain movie, except no cognizant singer is going to revive the catalog. Geography is shockingly similar after considering how deep in the past the point of divergence must have taken place. They have evidence of this from the completely foreign botanical world. The trees and plants may look like the kinds they could find back home, but upon closer inspection, they’ve clearly evolved and been bred differently. Even the buildings have a slightly discrepant architecture. It took them a little time to recognize this, because they’ve seen variations before. Every world they go to—be it a planet, a virtual construct, a parallel reality, or even another universe—has had unique design schemes, and this one is no different in that it’s also unique. Now that the team has been here for a few days, they see that technology isn’t as stilted as they once thought. The people here seem to have advanced in some ways faster than others. You couldn’t call it steampunk, but it’s in that same vein.

As far as energy goes, the culture managed to pretty much skip over fossil fuels, and focus on renewable sources. Different regions have different strengths, but wind power is pretty popular. They also have no apparent problem with nuclear power. You’re never more than fifty miles from the nearest nuclear power plant. Despite these developments, space travel is practically non-existence. There are tons of satellites in orbit around Earth, but they haven’t even put a rover on Mars. From what little Angela was able to gather in her capacity as self-appointed team historian, war has been the number one issue globally. Civilization just survived World War VI not thirty years ago. Why haven’t they destroyed themselves in a nuclear holocaust? Religion. Yes, it’s religion that saved them, if you can believe it. All ancient religious texts speak of some kind of sun that’s compressed and trapped in a box, and the venerated few charged with containing and protecting it from evil. While atheism and agnosticism are recently on the rise, superstition regarding these sunboxes only increased once scientists realized that real sunboxes were within their grasp. Never before had a faith been so spot on in regard to something that might happen in the future, with certain sects being eerily detailed with their descriptions of how a sunbox might work.

Unfortunately, there was a major downside to this. Even though multiple religions provided people with the same prophetic warning about nuclear bombs, they failed to generate any other reason for unity. Different kingdoms, nations, and races glommed onto different denominations, and dig their heels in deeper when they perceive a threat from some other. That’s why they keep fighting, and why racism may be worse today than it was in the main sequence circa early 21st century. Angela and Mateo are even more convinced now that they are not the only time travelers here. At least one of them either created the reality itself, or capitalized on an opportunity to mould it to their liking. They may have always wanted society to be like this, or things just got out of hand. Regardless, the team feels compelled to fix it. It’s going to take them longer than any mission has, so they better prepare themselves, do their research, and take their time.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 11, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

Anxious, and needing to feel useful, Mateo took time in the morning alone, coming up with plans. He reorganized his list of all the places he had visited at some point, in some timeline, into a list by proximity to the team’s current location. Some of the more distant places would be more difficult, but surely doable. Then again, he didn’t know that much about this reality, so maybe they would turn out to be impossible. Now that it’s complete, he’s presenting it to Leona.

“Well, Antarctica is going to have to wait.”

“Why?” Mateo asks.

She stares at him in that face she displays when she wants him to figure it out on his own.

“Because it’s cold.”

“Because it’s cold,” she confirms. “You really can’t go until the summer, which for the southern hemisphere...”

“Is winter for us.”

“That’s right. That being said, maybe there are different rules here. It doesn’t turn into the moon, it’s just more treacherous. As for Easter Island, I dunno. For these people, it may just be another random island in the middle of the ocean, or a nature preserve. These are all special temporal locations for us, but who knows what things are like here? Think about what your life was like before you became a time traveler. These were mounds of dirt, and grass, and flora. There were animals, and roads, and precipitation, and bodies of water. It really feels like this is the manifestation of that original assumption about the world. Nobody here knows that time travel exists, partially because...it doesn’t.”

“Somebody knows something,” Mateo reasons. “Obviously what we need to do first is go to Lebanon.”

“I think you should go back to the parking lot.” Heath has entered the room, holding a tray of assorted breakfast beverages. “At first, it seemed random that Marie should show up there, but your arrival at the same place changes the math. Maybe it’s special. Maybe it is for your reality too, but you never knew it.”

“Maybe,” Leona concedes. “It’s certainly closer than the Center of the U.S.”

“The center of the U.S. isn’t in Lebanon,” Heath declares as if it should be obvious.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s Gothenburg.”

“Is that a band, errr...?” Mateo jokes.

“It’s a small town in Nebraska,” Heath tells them.

“Lee-Lee, how is this possible?” Mateo questions.

She thinks about it for a moment, then faces Heath. “Could you show me a map of the United States?”

“Yeah, here.” He takes a phablet out of the pocket of his cargo shorts, and pulls up a map service neither of them are familiar with.

“Whoa,” Mateo notes, staring at it. “What the hell am I looking at here?”

“It’s just a south-up map,” Leona explains.

“But why? It’s freaking me out.”

“Why would north have to be up?”

“Because most of the world is in the northern hemisphere,” Mateo reasons, thinking he’s so clever.

“Eh, whatever. Besides, that’s not even the point here. Look at that. Most of Texas belongs to Mexico. Some of Canada is in the United States. Geography is a human construct, not an inherent one. These incongruent borders are more than enough to change the location of the center of an arbitrary geographic mass.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mateo says. “My cousin lives in The Constant, which is underneath Lebanon. They didn’t move it two centuries ago, or whenever the borders were created. It’s been there for billions of years. That’s still where we need to go.”

“I would check both places,” Heath suggests. “Might as well. You’re gonna be here for a while. Money’s not an issue, if that’s what you’re worried about. We can support everyone here, in whatever venture you need.”

“Thanks,” Leona says. “I do have one question, but I’ll probably have more.”

“Shoot,” Heath allows.

“Ya know what, I have two questions actually,” she amends.

Heath nods

“What is this drink?”

“Hagadesfām juice. It’s a fruit from the Arabian Garden.”

“I’ve never heard of it. Have you ever heard of The Beatles?”

“Is that a band, errr...?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 10, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

The six of them had a lovely dinner. They tried not to think about the fact that Olimpia wasn’t there to enjoy it with them. When most of the team was missing, it was sad, but at least they could fight to get them back. And at least there was more than one. Now that there was only one outstanding member, it felt like a betrayal; like they were excluding someone on purpose, even though of course, they weren’t. Leona still had trouble being convinced that they would not jump forward at the end of the day. As she saw it, it was programmed into their DNA, and their neurology, and the only way they could suppress it was with the Cassidy cuffs...until now. This place, this whole layer of reality, suppressed all nonlinear time. It was more than that, though. Not all of the upgrades that Ramses designed for their bodies had anything to do with the manipulation of time. Their strength, their ability to convert sunlight into energy; it was highly advanced, but not time travel. Not even their form of immortality was time-based. He used more traditional forms of cellular regeneration that were common throughout human civilization in the main sequence. For these reasons, Ramses and Leona are pretty confident that a person, or a group of people, were responsible for the state of things here. No natural phenomenon explained it...not in this universe, anyway. It was not time to investigate it, though. It was time to rest, and sleep, which they needed more of these days.

This unit was made with three bedrooms, which allowed Marie and Heath to keep the master, and Mateo and Leona to have the medium-sized one. Angela had the smaller one all to herself, while Ramses slept on the couch. Everyone was comfortable and content. Come midnight central, Leona was proven wrong. They were still there, having not missed a second. This might only last another day before they solve the problem, or they’ll have to wait four years, just like Marie did. There was no way to know right now. When they woke up, Ramses and Heath went to the store together to pick up some supplies. The former needed parts to build his own tiny cameras from scratch, and that wasn’t not something the latter could help with, but he wanted to be involved. Meanwhile, the two Angelas spent the day together, talking about secret things. They probably needed to figure out what they were going to tell the friends that Marie made here in this world of muggles and mundanes. They looked exactly alike, which she could probably explain away by saying they were estranged twins, but Marie also looked four years older, and that might be easy to spot for eagle-eyed viewers. The Matics decided to take a tour of the city, going to all the spots that they were familiar with, including the Forger’s original den, Aura and Samson’s house in Mission Hills, and even the warehouse where Mateo gave Leona her kidney. Nothing. Everything was normal. Mateo suggested they broaden their search, and try looking for answers in far away places, starting with Lebanon, Kansas, and even to Antarctica, where the Nexus should be. These were good ideas, but they would all have to wait for another day.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 9, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

They teleported into the portal just as the time hit midnight, which they hoped would confuse the jump enough to send them where they wanted to go. This way they didn’t have to wait an entire year for something to go wrong with the reality hopper, and extraction mirror. It wasn’t the perfect situation, because it meant they couldn’t use the friend detector in tandem, but if the pattern held, either Marie or Olimpia would be waiting for them in The Third Rail. Neither Omega nor his partner, Valencia had any idea what it was, or what they would find there. Way out here in intergalactic space, there wasn’t anything to do but try to survive. It hadn’t even occurred to them to travel to other realities. They didn’t have much time to discuss it either way; Team Matic just needed to take a leap of faith.

Immediately, Mateo felt differently. He felt more normal; like he did when he was first alive. As for the jump itself, it wasn’t as jarring as the other ones. They all just landed softly on the ground in a big empty parking lot, and began to look around for clues. They were somewhere in a city that looked strikingly similar to early 21st century Earth. His initial thought was that it didn’t work, and they just went through the mirror to the past in the main sequence, but there wasn’t anyone here to extract, so that was unlikely.

“Spread out,” Leona ordered, “but don’t go too far. Let’s just figure out where we are first. Rendezvous point is that corner over there.”

“Do you feel that?” Mateo whispered to her. “That is, do you not feel it?”

“I do. We’re not connected anymore. Our superempathy is gone. That is not a good sign, I’m not gonna lie.”

“Guys?” Ramses asked before anyone else could walk too far from the group. “I recognize this from history class. I feel like it was in San Francisco?”

Leona walked over there, because she could no longer teleport either. A large structure could now be seen between the trees. “No, you’re thinking of the Coit Tower. We have one like that too. It’s the National World War I Museum and Memorial. This is Kansas City, and it’s not midnight. Though, you wouldn’t know it by my watch, which is not working.”

“Where can we go to get help?” Angela asked. “Where would one go?”

“The Salmon Civic Center,” Leona answered. “We’re probably a few miles away, assuming we’re in the right time period. Since I’m sure you’ve all realized by now that we can’t teleport, we’ll have to walk.”

“Poor you!” shouted a voice from a few meters away. “Walking, like a bunch of mortals! No beaming up here!”

“I’m sorry, sir, are you a traveler?” Leona asked.

“Yes, Captain, I am from the U.S.S. Enterprise. Reporting for duty. Beep boop, beep boop boop.”

“The robot is from Star Wars,” Mateo corrected.

“Whatever, nerd.” He started to walk away with his friends. “Don’t cross the streams!”

“I don’t think he’s one of us,” Angela pointed out.

They started their walk too.

“Anything on the friend detector?” Mateo asked Ramses.

“Dead silence, which doesn’t surprise me. Powers and time tech don’t work here at all, which worries me. This place is...”

“Wrong?” Mateo suggested.

“Unsettling, I was gonna say, but that too.”

The walk shouldn’t have been so hard with their new bodies, but they were quite quickly exhausted and hungry. Fortunately, they were headed towards Allen and Richard’s restaurant, and if they found it didn’t exist in this reality, they would find somewhere to eat. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any money. Mateo’s magical wallet was completely empty, the pocket dimension inside of it probably having been destroyed when they came here.

That first group of bullies weren’t the only people they encountered that looked at them funny. Everyone was wearing tee-shirts, jeans, slacks, business suits, dresses, and pant suits. Their crew uniforms stood out here more than anywhere they had ever been. They were going to have to find some new clothes too. There was a slight chance they could remedy this soon. While Téa Stendahl’s clothing shop was technically located in The Hub on Tribulation Island, a branch sometimes reached all the way back to Earth in the Bran safehouse on the top floor of the Ponce de Leon condominiums. If such an intergalactic branch existed before whatever destroyed time tech happened, maybe that branch was simply severed, instead of retracted. Some of the clothes might still be in the safehouse. Mateo didn’t like their odds, though.

Around an hour later, they were at the spot. Richard and Allen’s restaurant had two sides to it. One was located on the inside of a secret little mall, where one could also find the club, the post office, the forger’s den, the bank, and a few other things. The outside, however, was accessible to the public, and should be right around—nope, not here. They were beginning to think this reality was generated through some other means besides a recognizable point of divergence. It may have resembled some point in history, but it wasn’t historically similar. They may not be able to find anyone to help them here.

“Excuse me, could you tell me the date?” Ramses asked a random passerby.

“It’s April 9,” she replied.

“And...the...?”

“You wanna ask me the year? Jesus, it’s 2398, cosplayer.”

“Is that a joke?”

She took out her phone, and showed them her homescream. April 9, 2398. Where the hell were they?

“Thank you,” Ramses said, politely, but with a frown. “There’s something very wrong with this reality. I’m starting to understand why we’ve all been warned never to come here. We may be stuck forever.”

“It’s not so bad,” came a familiar voice from behind them.

They turned around to find Marie, holding a bag of clothing in each hand. She didn’t seem surprised to see them, but relieved. They rushed over to her to engage in a group hug. “I can’t believe we found you,” Leona said happily. “You could have been in China, for all we knew.”

“Nah, I stayed around,” Marie explained. “I bet we had the same idea, to look for help in the Civic Center. It’s not there, by the way, nothing is. Someone was living in the Bran safehouse too, but I saved up enough money, and convinced them to sell a couple of years later.”

“A couple of years?” Ramses questioned. “How long have you been here?”

“Since 2394,” she replied. “Realtime. No time jumping here.”

“Do you know why?” Mateo asked her.

“Nope. Don’t know how I could find out. There aren’t any other travelers. This place is clean. I imagine that’s the point.”

“It also explains what’s happened with the technology here,” Leona said. “Without travelers, advancement slows. It doesn’t halt; we didn’t build the pyramids, or anything, but our people have contributed in small ways, and that adds up.”

“That’s basically what I surmised,” Marie agreed, “though I first died in the 19th century, so I’m not cognizant of very much of our secret history.” She looked from each face to the next. “Where’s Olimpia?”

“We don’t know yet,” Mateo told her. “There was a pattern forming, with each of us showing up a year after the one before, in another reality. As it turns out, you were sent to the past, so...Olimpia could be anywhere and anywhen.”

Marie frowned sadly. “Oh.” There was silence for a moment. “Well, you can stay with me, it’s a pretty large unit. We’ll figure something out later, and we’ll do it together...at last.”

“So, we’re not gonna jump to 2399 at the end of the day?” Mateo asked as they were walking across the street, towards the park.

“I don’t think so,” Leona answered.

“You’re not,” Marie clarified with a high level of certainty.

“Mateo and I might,” Leona said.

“I sincerely doubt it,” Marie contradicts. “I’ll give you a million dollars if you do.”

“Is that hyperbole, or do you have that?” Ramses asked. There was still a little bit of capitalism in his soul that came out every once in a while. He was indoctrinated into the belief and trust in it from birth, and that was not something that could just be cured, or surgically removed.

“Oh, I have it,” Marie said. “No powers, no pattern, no time tech, but I retained all of the skills we picked up in the afterlife simulation over the centuries. I can get any job I want. So could you, Angie.”

“I’m sorry you were alone,” Angela finally said something after reuniting with her alternate self.

“I’m not alone,” Marie contended sharply, and without elaboration.

When they arrived at the Bran safehouse—which surely shouldn’t be called that in this version of Kansas City—they discovered what she meant by that. A man was waiting for her in the kitchen, preparing them a meal. “Is this them?” he asked, unsurprised.

Marie smiled. “It is, they finally showed up.”

He wiped his hand on a towel, and shook theirs consecutively. “Very nice to finally meet you—there are supposed to be five,” he said to Marie.

“One’s still missing,” Marie said.

“Ah, I’m sorry to hear that, but at least you’re here, and that’s a start. Forgive me, I’m Heath Walton.”

They all looked at Marie, who snickered. “It’s a coincidence, but...I admit, it may be what drew me to him. Don’t worry, we confirmed that we’re not related. Though a version of me does appear to have existed long ago.”

“I’m glad you skipped over that time.” They nuzzled each other, and then kissed passionately, but comfortably. They had obviously been together for a while.

“Are you married?” Angela asked.

“We are,” Marie answered her. “We’re very happy.”

“How did you two meet, and how did you broach the subject of where you’re from?” Angela pressed.

The lovebirds looked at each other like they knew something special, which they probably did. “Do you want to tell it?” Marie asked.

“You better start,” Heath answered.

She giggled.

“Sorry, we’ve just never been able to tell this story before,” Heath added before it began.

“Well, when I first landed in this reality, I assumed that I had traveled through time. But that was fine, because I knew you all would be showing up soon. I was in the middle of a parking lot, though, and I felt very exposed, so I walked over to a building that had some stairs going down to the basement, or whatever. I sat there and waited. I waited for hours before another soul came by. It was Sunday, and he told me this wasn’t a good place to panhandle. I told him I was waiting for some friends, but he didn’t believe me, so he handed me twenty bucks. I couldn’t leave to go spend it, so he decided to go buy me a sandwich. I was dressed like a spaceman, of course, so he must have thought that I was just crazy. That food gave me enough energy to spend the night, so that’s what I did. Come morning, a couple of people who worked at that building didn’t take kindly to my being there, so they called the cops, who tried to remove me from the premises.”

“We’re so sorry,” Leona said.

“It’s not your fault. I don’t even blame Dalton anymore. It feels like destiny now. I admit, it was rough that first night, but then Heath found me.”

“How?” Ramses asked.

“Well,” Heath began, “my nephew came over, and started telling us a story about how a lady appeared out of nowhere in the parking lot. He was the only one who noticed and he was, uhh...eight at the time, so nobody believed him. He’s always had such a great imagination, and everyone assumed he was starting to realize that about himself, and make up stories on purpose. I don’t know if I fully believed him either, but he saw someone in that lot, and I just had this feeling that she needed help. I went out there looking, not thinking she would still be there, but I could see a ridiculous number of cop cars out there, and figured it had to have something to do with it.”

“He waltzed right through them and demanded they release me into his custody. He said I was his unwell sister, and thanked them for finding her. They still wanted to take me to a facility, but he insisted. He was so brave.”

Heath laughed. “I wouldn’t call it brave, but when your skin is even this dark, it can cause problems.”

“In the late 24th century?” Mateo questioned.

“Yeah, I think we’ve developed slowly in many ways,” Heath proposed.

“Anyway, I didn’t want to leave, but there was no other way,” Marie continued. “Now we know that you didn’t show up that day either, but we had always worried we missed that small window, because we had a couple years covered since then.”

“What do you mean?” Angela asked.

“I bought a camera,” Heath answered. At night, I snuck over there, shimmied up a lamppost, and attached it to the top. We could see the whole lot where Marie first showed up, and more. We kept an eye on the feed for a long time before somebody noticed it, and took it down.”

“By then,” Marie went on, “I had basically given up. I mean, it had been years, so we didn’t try to put another camera up. I’m glad I ran into you. I should have thought to always check on the days that fall on our pattern.” She shook her head. “So stupid.”

“Again,” Leona said, “we’re so sorry. Fault or no, Heath or no, I feel bad.”

“We need to put that camera back up,” Angela determined, “just in case Olimpia does happen to show up. And hell, maybe every traveler who gets stuck here comes in at the same place. It would be prudent to keep an eye out for them.”

“I can rig something up that will be virtually invisible,” Ramses offered. “You’ll be able to see it if you’re looking right at it, but it should be rather concealed. We could put one up on every lamppost.”

“Okay,” Marie agreed. “For now, Heath, we’ll refrigerate our planned dish for tonight. We’re goin’ out to celebrate; my treat. You should get changed, though.”

« < » > Table of Contents