The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 18, 2398

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Leona is sitting on a stool in her new lab. She normally just works in an office, or remotes in from home, but she’s waiting for the item to arrive. She’s been asked to make a preliminary assessment on a mysterious object that Ramses and a band of mercenaries “liberated” from a transport team just outside of Munich. As of yet, no one has been willing to tell her what this object is, or even hinted at what it could be. They just hope she can figure it out, and give them some scientific advantage. She’s bored, because she was required to leave all communication devices outside of the room. It’s actually a room inside of a highly insulated room with blast doors, which the executives hope will insulate the rest of the facility, should the object explode. When she pointed out that this was a way of telling her that it was a bomb, they seemed to not quite agree with that.

Petra walks in. Behind her are two military men in black uniforms, carrying a plastic grayish case between them. “Over there,” she orders, pointing. They set it down on the table.

Leona gets up to get a look. “Okay, now can you tell me what it is?”

Petra clears her throat suggestively. The military men leave, but even after they do, Petra hesitates to respond.

“Okay, I guess I’ll just open it myself.” Leona places a hand upon it. She doesn’t hear anything, but she can feel something inside click, and rotate.

“Good luck,” Petra says. “Let me know what you find.”

“Wait, what?”

“That’s your first task, to get the case open. We’ve already tried, and it appears to be impenetrable. That’s why you have so many tools and equipment at your disposal.”

Leona looks at her, and then the case. “You don’t even know what this is?”

“No.”

“Why did you steal it?”

She hesitates again, but gets on with it. “It appeared to be rather important to the people we recovered it from.”

Leona just stands there. “It could be a nuclear bomb.”

Petra nods. “Yes.”

“It could be a biological weapon.”

Petra nods again. “It could.”

“And you want me to just open it without question.”

“You’ll be handsomely rewarded.”

“If I live,” Leona amends for her.

Petra nods once more. “Correct.”

Leona sticks her tongue inside her bottom lip. “Thank you. You can go now.”

“Like I said...good luck.”

Leona scowls as her boss leaves the room, and then the other room. She places her hands on her hips, and looks around a moment when one of the observation cameras catches her eye. That’s what she’s calling them now, because they’re obviously not there for security. Petra and Senator Honeycutt are in a room right now, watching everything that happens. She’s not going to give them the satisfaction. She removes a giant freakin’ wrench from the wall, and smashes it against one of the cameras, and then another, and then most of the rest. She leaves the last one up for a second. “I’ll let you know what I find...if I feel like it.” With that, she destroys it, then sits down to wait for someone to arrive in anger, but no one does. So maybe they have a hidden camera that she can’t find, or they’re willing to take the L on this one.

Now that she’s alone, she can finally get to the bottom of all this. It could be anything. It could be dangerous. She’s just grateful that the thing didn’t pop open as soon as it found itself in her presence, because she doesn’t need any more questions. It is unlocked. It reacted to her touch as if she were always destined to have it. Wasting no more time, she goes back to the table, and lifts the lid. Inside is a large, blank piece of brown paper. Parchment, she might call it. “This is weird,” she says out loud. As she speaks, lines and colors begin to form on the page. In the top left corner is a square, displaying an image of this moment right here of Leona standing in her lab. Another square forms next to it, showing the observation room she predicted would exist. Petra, Honeycutt, and a few other people are watching her on a monitor, but they can’t see anything noteworthy, because the hidden camera is pointed at her back. The digital clock, that’s where the secret camera is.

She picks up the wrench again, and smashes the clock. When she returns to the parchment, a third square has appeared, illustrating that act, and then a fourth shows the Senator walking briskly down the hall. It looks like a comic strip, but that’s not the whole story. This...is the LIR Map. Lincoln Isaac Rutherford is a man from the main sequence with the ability to know everything about the universe, though not necessarily all at once. He has described time as a painting. Most people are standing very, very, very close to their little section of this painting. They can see some of the past, and blurred images of the future, but mostly only the present—their present. All he does is step back and get a better view, and then he can move over and look at a different section of the grand painting. A different section, kind of like a comic book panel?

Leona wasn’t around when Mateo, his brother, Darko, and Lincoln were charged with figuring out how to create this special map, which mimicked the latter’s ability, but reportedly, none of them ever actually saw it. They realized that the only way to get a clear picture of the universe was to leave it, but they were not asked to participate in this final step. Arcadia returned without showing them that it worked, though it obviously did. How it found its way to this reality, Leona couldn’t say, and neither could anyone else. If there’s one thing she knows about it, though, it’s that the map can’t be destroyed. Well, she doesn’t know that for sure, but due to its immense power, Arcadia probably demanded it to be made indestructible. So she folds it in half, confident that she’s not ruining a priceless relic. Then she folds it in half again, and again, and again, and again. When all is said and done, it’s the size of a quarter, and no thicker than it was before. She tucks it into her underwear just as the door is opening.

“What is it?” Senator Honeycutt demands to know.

“It’s nothing.”

He glowers at her, then steps over to look into the case. All he sees is the protective black foam, and an indentation that suggests that something the size of a desktop computer was in it at some point. “What did you do? What did you do with it?”

“Look around, my friend. Check the badge logs. I never left, and I couldn’t have hidden an object that size anywhere in here. That case is empty, and it has been this entire time. I don’t know why your enemies were transporting it so carefully, but it looks like you’ve been had. Maybe they knew you were coming?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 17, 2398

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Ramses was waiting for Marie and Mateo when they got back to the hotel from the hospital. He didn’t want to talk about the mission he went on for the senator and his daughter, but he assured them it wasn’t that bad. He made a point of telling them that he didn’t have to kill anyone, though people did get hurt, and he’s not sure if they’re on the right side of this. They stole an object in a luggage-sized grayish box, but no one would tell him what it was. Leona is being coerced into working on it once it arrives in Kansas City, so while there’s a chance it’s a weapon of some kind, they’ll know the answer soon enough. She’ll take the appropriate actions when she learns more information. Both she and Ramses asked that the away team continue on, and perhaps they should extend their trip to continue throwing off any suspicion of their true goals.

Their next destination is Prague, Czechia, which has fairly strict airspace policies. The only reason they want to go there is because heading for Croatia now would practically draw a straight line on the map. This is all highly calculated to insulate them from any prying eyes. It’s not perfect, and they could always get caught, but it’s the best they can do. Going to Croatia is dangerous. They have to be sneaky. There are underground systems in place once they near its borders, but reaching those systems in the first place is a delicate dance. Prague is just a distraction. Its traffic laws are strict too, as it is in Germany, which means they won’t be able to drive as fast as they want. That’s fine, it will only take them about five hours with one stop in the middle to cross a border. Marie will probably want to hide for that part.

Ramses pulls over at a rest stop an hour in. They get out to stretch their legs and grab some local food, then get back in. But Ramses doesn’t move. He just sits in front of the steering wheel, and stares into space.

“Are you okay?” Marie asks.

“Winona wants us to go to Türkiye,” he says.

“I know, you told us that,” she says. “Apparently there’s an even more important mission there?”

“The border is stronger than it is for Germany-Czechia, but she says she can sneak us across.”

Mateo flinches. “Okay, but we don’t want to go to Türkiye—that’s Turkey, right?”

Ramses nods, “we may want to go there.”

“Rambo, what are you talking about?” Marie asks.

He sighs. “You and I weren’t around when Mateo and Leona were dealing with the immortality waters. You were dead yourself, and I hadn’t even been born yet.”

“What does this have to do with anything?” Mateo questions.

“The Constant, the Bermuda Triangle; they both generated unusual amounts of temporal energy.”

“Stonehenge didn’t,” Mateo reminds him.

“First of all, we don’t know that there was ever anything special about Stonehenge. The Delegator always implied that he just liked the way it looked. He was the one with the power to transport people through portals. He used the walkways between the stones, because hell, why wouldn’t you, but that doesn’t mean the stones mean anything. Secondly, if the British Isles sank, this reality’s version of it might just be too deep underwater for this baby.” He pets the dashboard.

“You wanna make another diversion? There’s nothing special about Turkey,” Marie claims.

Mateo looks away. “Yes there is. There’s one thing.”

“What?” Marie presses. When no one answers, she repeats herself. “What? What is in Turkey?”

“Death,” Mateo answers cryptically.

“Then maybe we don’t go there.”

“No, I don’t mean death, I mean Death. Death water is in something called the Pools of, uhh...”

“Pamukkale,” Ramses helps.

“Death water?” Marie is still indignant about the whole thing. “Why is there an immortality water called Death?”

“I don’t know,” Ramses answers honestly, “but it’s the only water you would take if you want the full experience. If you drink Youth, it will make you young. If you drink Longevity, it will extend your lifespan. But if you want one hundred percent no-death, no injury, immortality, that one must be included.”

“What happens if you take it by itself?” Marie asks the obvious question.

“Well, it’s poison...you die,” Mateo replies bluntly.

“So again, why do we want that?”

“Because the reason we’re here is because one of us has to die,” Ramses says, also bluntly, but much more somberly.

Marie takes a long time to respond. “That one is a part of me at the moment. How could the fetus ingest it without me also ingesting it?”

Ramses takes a long time to respond as well. Then he takes something out of his pocket, and holds it up. “We teleport it.” It’s a time bullet.

“You’re gonna shoot me with that thing?” Marie asks in a no-thanks kind of way.

“No, that would defeat the purpose. I would transport the bullet itself, into the fetus, which would open upon contact, releasing the Pamukkale water.”

“You’re talking about just having a developing baby dying in my body.” She looks back and forth between the two of them.

Mateo takes a long time to speak. The Death water, as Zeferino once explained it to me—”

“Oh, he’s such a reliable resource,” Marie says sarcastically.

“I don’t know if he was telling the truth, but sometimes, the man could be sincere, and I remember the day he taught me about all of them. He looked like he was being honest. After the conversation, we didn’t talk about it again, so if he was trying to trick me, he was doing it in a weird way. Plus, this was long after all that Tribulation stuff.”

Marie shakes her head. “Go on, what did he say?”

“There are many reasons why people don’t just all take the immortality waters. They’re hard to get to, especially the last one, but one in particular is...unsavory.”

“Keep going,” she urges.

“It’s Health. Both Death and Health come from the pools of whatever. The former creates the latter when used.”

“It’s a sacrifice,” Marie says. “It’s a human sacrifice.”

“Yes.”

“Why would death make health? Maybe it would make life, because they’re opposites, but...” She doesn’t have an end to her sentence.

“Death isn’t really the end of life,” Ramses tries to explain. “It’s just the end of health. We’re proof of that. We all lost our bodily health, but kept our lives.”

Marie begins to pace. “So, under the assumption that the Pools of Pamukkale in this reality serve the same purpose as they do in the main sequence, you want to take a sample, and fill a time bullet with it. Then you want to teleport that bullet into my fetus—which would require phenomenal precision, by the way—which will poison it, and transform it into an elixir. So I get an abortion, and the cure for cancer at the same time.”

“Well, if you have cancer, then yeah. If you don’t, then at the most, you might just skip the flu this year. It doesn’t last forever if you don’t take Activator afterwards, and I believe it only works once if you don’t take Catalyst beforehand.”

“So you want to forgo Czechia, and take a detour all the way down to Türkiye, where we’ll be expected to complete an espionage mission we know nothing about, then steal a sub-detour to a tourist attraction to get a sample of water that authorities probably don’t want you to steal. I assume you’ve confirmed that the site even exists on this Earth.”

“It does,” Ramses promises.

“Well, that’s one complication down.”

“We don’t have to choose this,” Ramses tells her, standing up from the driver’s seat. He presents it to her. “But whatever we do, you have to be the one to make that choice. That’s what pro-choice means.”

“Thanks for mansplaining that to me,” Marie snaps back.

Ramses doesn’t respond, so Mateo decides to do so in his place. “He’s not telling you it’s your choice so that you will know that it is. He’s telling you so that you know that he knows...that it is.”

“You two have really thought a lot about this,” Marie realizes.

“Mateo didn’t know a thing. He didn’t even know about Türkiye.”

“Actually, I did,” Mateo clarifies. “Winona lamented that we chose to come here, instead of there. I didn’t think it would come up again, though.”

Marie considers the information she’s been given, and the profoundly difficult choice now laid before her. Deciding to get an abortion was hard enough, but now she has to determine whether she’s going to go through with it using the conventional, scientific method, or if she’s going to depend on the complex nature of temporal magic. “Wait, if the water in Pamukkale is poisonous, wouldn’t lots of people know as much?”

“It has to be infused with temporal energy,” Ramses says. “Such was its natural state on November 13, 1622. That’s the date most people travel to when they’re on the quest for it. Using the data I’ve gathered by studying the Existence water from the Bermuda Triangle, however I believe that I can synthesize what we need.”

Agreeing that she has to be the one to make the choice either way, Marie sits down in the chair, and starts The Olimpia back up. She keeps going on the selected route. A part of her just wants to do the normal thing, and not hope that the time bullet works. So she passes what might have been their exit, and heads for the border, for an hour, until they’re nearly there. She comes to a stop. They can already see the border checkpoint far off in the distance, but they can still choose to go elsewhere. They have to choose now, though. Either they get back on the highway and head Southeast, or stick to the original plan. Or they can open Door Number Three.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 16, 2398

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Mateo is finally getting out of the hospital today. The detective asked him all sorts of questions about who stabbed him on the street, but Mateo was prepared for this. He came up with a lie about how he didn’t know who she was, or what she wanted. She seemed pleasant enough at first, but when he tried to explain that he didn’t speak German, she grew irritated and impatient. Her anger with him continued until she just took out a knife, and shoved it in his stomach. She must have been wearing gloves, which would explain why only his fingerprints are on the weapon. It was a ridiculous story, but nothing that the authorities could disprove. He obviously wasn’t at fault here. Bystanders they managed to reach out to didn’t say anything that might corroborate his statement, but they didn’t say anything damning either. After all, he’s the one who got injured here, they’re all on his side.

He did make one mistake, though. Most victims of violent attack are known to seek justice after what happened to them. Mateo failed to hound the detective with calls regarding the progress of his investigation, probably because actually finding the forger from Kansas City would make this worse for him. He wanted to get away from her, and get out of whatever mission she had planned for him. He doesn’t want her in jail. She clearly has friends in high places, and they would not take kindly to that development. The self-stabbing wasn’t great for them either, but hardly enough to trigger some kind of retaliation. Even so, it’s not like the detective can arrest him for being too patient.

As it turns out, Ramses screwed everything up. They weren’t able to communicate with each other too much, and only had the opportunity to exchange a few ASL signs. Mateo wanted Ramses to keep an eye on the forger using the tracking device he planted on her, in case she tried to come to the hospital. He didn’t mean for Ramses to go off and infiltrate her little gang of mercenaries, or whatever they are. When Ramses asked the question of stay?, Mateo thought he was offering to stay nearby. Ramses apparently meant to ask whether Mateo wanted to stay. Which, of course he did, he was stabbed! Due to this misunderstanding, Ramses has been missing for the last few days, though according to a recent interaction Leona had with a higher up at her company, he’s not really being held against his will. He’s just Mateo’s substitute, which defeats the whole purpose of the stabbing, but hopefully it will all work out in the end. Time will tell.

For now, Mateo just has to leave before someone else finds out that there’s something unusual about him. He healed from the wound incredibly quickly. It wasn’t superhero before-your-eyes rapid healing, but it was much faster than a normal person should take to recover. He’s only waited this long to skidaddle so that people don’t ask questions. He had an ally in this endeavor. The nurse who was responsible for him most of the time saw how quickly he healed, and protected him so that no one else would see that there was something different about him. Something different indeed, though still not quite up to standards, and perhaps they’ll soon have to do some self testing to expand on what they know so far. So Ramses’ bodies are still working for them, but in a limited capacity. He was so fortunate to have gotten her as a nurse, because someone else probably would have alerted the hierarchy. It’s also a good thing doctors are just as hands-off as anywhere. She wheels him out to the back of the building, where Marie is waiting with a less flashy rental car. But they don’t part ways before sharing contact info.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 15, 2398

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Leona is about to leave after a long day at work when the internal investigator from a couple weeks ago steps into her office. He exhales, lowers her head, and pinches the bridge of her nose, wishing that she had just made her way to the elevator when she had the chance.

“I’m not here to take up your time,” he claims. “In fact, I’m here because I want to give you a heads-up about something that will be happening in the future.”

“What is your authority here again?” Leona asks, not expecting a direct answer.

“Authority Zero.”

“That is a band where I come from.”

“Where I’m from, it’s the freedom to do whatever I want,” he replies.

“Yeah. What do you want?”

“I have a team in Munich as we speak, who have been charged with acquiring a certain object under...shall we say, special circumstances.”

“They’re stealing it.”

“Well, yes...”

“They’re stealing it violently.”

“I can neither confirm, nor deny, the nature of the operation.”

She clears her throat, not wanting to give away the fact that three members of her team are presently in Munich, and they may or may not be involved in all that.”

“There are no more secrets between us,” the Authority Zero Internal Investigator lies. “We know your husband is there. We tapped him for this assignment, but he declined...also violently. We had to come up with an alternative.”

That’s why Ramses isn’t answering his phone. Mateo doesn’t know where he is, but he expressed his theories. “If they get hurt...”

“I take care of my team. I can’t guarantee their safety. We would have to put them in a padded room for that, and even then, nothing is perfect. The point is, Mister Abdulrashid—”

“Abdulrashid.”

“Abdulrashid.”

“Abdulrashid.”

“Abdulrashid.”

“Why can no one in the world pronounce that man’s name?”

“It’s because people in this country are...less enthusiastic about Arabs—”

She interrupts again, “he’s not an Arab, he’s from Egypt.”

“The point is that people around here do not generally associate with people from that part of the world. Pronouncing their words is just not something we find necessary to learn.”

“Ramses hasn’t experienced any racism in this country,” Leona notes.

“There’s a political reason for that. It’s a lot to explain, but people most likely assume he was relocated from the slums as a child. There was a huge push for that a few decades ago. Tens of thousands of children—mostly infants—were rescued from their parents, brought to civilized regions, and assimilated into the culture. Your friend is the right age to have been part of that. It’s interesting he seems to have kept his name, though. That’s not common. Or did he adopt it later out of reallocated loyalty?”

“I knew there were religious issues, but I guess I didn’t realize how widespread the racism was.”

“It’s not racism,” he defends. “It had nothing to do with race. Now, I’m not saying what they did was right, per se, but those kids were living in utter squalor. Their lives are better now. They’re better here. Our culture—across all religions—teaches scientifically proven idealistic life values, which they were lacking in their home country. Again, I didn’t participate in that, but you can’t argue with the results.”

Leona blinks. Racism. What he just described is racism, and he can’t see it. It’s xenophobia too. Because of Marie and Heath, the team was mostly prepared to just live here forever, but every day comes with at least one more reason to get the hell out. “Oh, I certainly can. You give me enough information, I’ll argue until the cows come home.”

“What cows?”

“It’s obviously just an expression. Is that all?”

“Ah, right,” he says. “The object that Mister—uh...what your friend will be securing for us will need to be reverse engineered when it gets here. That’s what you’ll be doing, probably at the start of next week.”

“What is it?”

“You don’t need to know that just yet.”

“Does it pertain to my work, or will it just be a distraction?”

“We hope it will help, actually,” he decides.

He has her by the balls, as Mateo once said. He knows about the team, and he knows about their connection to timey-wimey stuff. Or at least, he knows that they have a connection to something weird. The forger is aware of all this too, and God knows who else. Their only option now is to play ball. It’s the only way to protect Marie. She just has to hope they don’t know about that aspect of their lives. “What’s your name, if not Shady Corporate Authority Zero Interrogator?”

“Honeycutt. Senator Melville Honeycutt.”

Crap, that can’t be good. “It’s nice to formally meet you.” Now she really is going to have to fake being polite to him.

“I assume Leona Matic isn’t your real name?”

She adds more belongings to her bag. “No, it is. We didn’t think there would be anyone we would need to hide from.”

“Why did you need forged papers, then?”

“We required identities, not names.”

“I see.”

“What’s her name, the forger?” she presses, even though she really just wants to leave. “The one who is endangering my friends overseas?”

“Winona. Winona Honeycutt. I call her Winnie.”

Double crap. What is the wife or daughter of a senator doing as a forger in the seedy part of Kansas City? And what is a senator doing interrogating a suspect in what’s meant to be a semi-academic, semi-private laboratory? And how did they find out anything about them in the first place? “If you’re related, then you must know that I’m now pretending to work for SD6, and also that I’m apparently in charge of investigating her forging den?”

He dismisses this with a wave of his hand. “We set it up so that you would become the de facto lead investigator. They won’t find anything at the alleged crime scene, and you won’t implicate my daughter at any rate, will you?”

“No, sir. She’s safe. I just don’t know what to tell the agent and detective. I reached out once to tell them that my lead evaporated, and they have been calling me ever since.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of somethin’. Try to keep them out of it. They’re not part of the inner circle; you are.”

“Very well, sir.” She’s becoming more respectful by the minute. But of course, she still doesn’t trust them, so when she finally makes it home that night, after updating the group chat, she asks Angela to begin running some countermeasures.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 14, 2398

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Upon learning that this reality does not have the same sign language inventory as the main sequence, Marie thought it might be a good idea to teach it to Heath in case they ever needed to communicate with each other on the down low. It was a perfect idea, because under normal circumstances, such a language might not be viable. You either come up with a new language on your own, or somehow find one so dead, no one but you and your people know it. Drawing from a history completely removed from the current timeline is a pretty good workaround. The more the team learns about this world, the stranger it becomes. It makes no sense that the majority of the North Atlantic Isles don’t exist, yet English does. Yet American Sign Language doesn’t. Yet something called North American Sign Language does. Someone has to be making these decisions; mixing and matching parts of reality that they like, and leaving out the ones that they don’t. That begs the question, what the hell do these people have against the United Kingdom? And also, how does everyone in the U.S. explain the fact that the language they use is called English? Where does that word come from?

Anyway, Marie taught the rest of the team a few basic signs once they were sure that their superhuman group empathy was no longer a thing. They all now know the alphabet, even Mateo, and a few other words, like yes, no, and pasteurized milk. That last one is even better, because Louis Pasteur was never born, so these people just call it thermal sterilization. They also don’t have the Global Positioning System, instead opting to call it SatNav, which is ironically, the British term for it! So even if this detective figures out that Mateo is using some form of sign language to communicate with Ramses in the hospital hallway, and even if he somehow recognizes the letters to be G-P-S, he will have no appreciation for their combined meaning, nor be able to follow it as a lead.

Ramses flicks his finger in the air to let Mateo know that he understands, but he does it just as the detective is turning around, because he actually does notice something strange about Mateo’s finger movements, and his gaze. Ramses covers by itching his temple, and looking away coolly. Once he’s confident that the exchange has remained sufficiently secret, he takes out his phone, and logs onto the tracking system. Yes, one tracker is unaccounted for. It’s one of the microdots, and it’s presently on the move, which suggests that it has not fallen off onto the sidewalk. That is the problem with them being so tiny. To be hard to find, they have to be easy to lose.

Ramses makes two fists, but keeps his thumbs and pinkies out. He holds them in front of his stomach, and drops them down. Then he holds his palms upwards to make it a question. Stay?

Mateo makes a gesture, almost like he’s knocking on a door to reply with yes.

The detective sees this motion too, but by the time he turns around once more, Ramses is already walking away to track the location of the microdot. He doesn’t know who has it, or why, so he’s going to have to make a few educated guesses—and he’s going to have to do it all alone, so he doesn’t place Marie in danger—but he’s sure that it will all work out in the end.

By the time he catches up with the dot, it has pretty much stopped for the last ten minutes, suggesting that the target has made it to a destination, and is now moving about minimally. He looks around. This particular building appears abandoned, though none of the ones surrounding it are. It’s a relatively busy part of town. He feels all right just opening the door, and walking inside to do a little recon. He sneaks around slowly and quietly. Just because the dot is still a ways away, doesn’t mean there isn’t someone else closer. This place could have been packed with ne’er do wells, for all he knew. As he draws near, he starts to hear voices talking to each other. He can’t make out what they’re saying, but he can tell that at least one of them is upset. The rest are staying calm, so they’re not arguing against each other, per se. He will have to get closer to hear the conversation. Fortunately, he can make out a few words, so it’s not in German. Mission, contingency, and night shift stick out to him. Unfortunately, that’s all he gets.

He feels a blunt object pressing against the back of his head. He built these new bodies with a sort of spidey-sense, so it’s really annoying how this reality didn’t let him keep it. “Go forward,” the voice behind him demands in a transatlantic accent.

“Move ahead,” Ramses responds, still not complying. “Try to detect it, it’s not too late.”

“Huh?” she questions.

He can feel the gun drift from his head slightly, indicating that she’s loosened a little tension in her hand. He spins around, and pins her wrist to the wall. She tries to punch him in the face, but he blocks it, and kicks her in the chest. As she’s falling to her back, her arm slides out from under his hand, and he manages to snag the gun from her. He doesn’t point it at her on the floor, though, because he knows the ruckus has alerted the others. Instead, he backs up to get himself into a defensible position. The group runs in with their own weapons drawn, preparing to fire, but waiting for the go-ahead from someone.

The forger from Kansas City comes in from behind, not holding a gun. “Mister Abdulrashid.”

“It’s Abdulrashid,” he corrects.

“What did I say?”

“Something stupid.”

She sighs. “Lower your weapons,” she orders her team, all of whom comply immediately, without question. “It looks like we have the substitute we’ve been looking for. Thank you for coming, Mister...”

“Abdulrashid,” one of the men pronounces for her in a perfect accent. It’s nice to hear, even coming from a presumed enemy.

The forger smiles. “This operation is back on,” she announces to her people. She redirects her attention to Ramses. “You’re lucky we don’t need an NMA agent for this one, or we would have had to take Mateo out of the hospital while he was still trying to recover. This one does require skill, though. How are you with a sniper?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 13, 2398

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As far as anyone knows, there are no special temporal locations in or around Munich, Germany in any reality. This is just one more step towards their goal of Croatia. They don’t want to be spotted in this area at all. It would defeat the purpose of having Angela pretend to be Marie, safe and sound stateside. This is just part of a contingency plan. Yes, maybe Marie Walton was in Europe, but it’s not because she was having an abortion. She was just enjoying some time off, and maybe she and her husband are having some marital problems, and this was just a little break from each other. Again, hopefully no one finds out, which is why she’s walking around in a sort of casual disguise, but there may come a point where fessing up to one lie is the only way to protect the true lie.

The trio checks into the hotel, where they’re given a three-room suite this time. They agree to do their own thing for the rest of the day. None of the landmarks interest any of them. Actually, Marie already had a vacation here two years ago, and saw just about everything she wanted to. She’s remaining in her room, meditating on what she’s about to do. Ramses is buried in his work, analyzing the data from the Bermuda Triangle water, and whatever else he has up his sleeve. That leaves Mateo to wander the city, hoping to get lost for a few hours. That’s precisely what happens, but just because he’s lost, doesn’t mean he can’t be found. Across the street, he spots a familiar face, staring back at him with serious eyes. For half a second, as a bus passes between them, threatening to spirit the vision away, he questions his own sanity. Then the vehicle moves on, and the light turns green.

She maintains eye contact as she crosses, and approaches. “How was your flight?” she asks him in a suddenly British accent. “Or did you stay on the water?”

“What happened to your voice, forger?”

“This is my real voice,” she responds. “Not many hear it. I never needed anyone being able to narrow the search for me using superficial characteristics, like my place of origin, or natural hair color.”

“Why would you let me hear it?” he questions.

“Because it’s time you learn the truth about who I am, and why you’re here.”

“Why I’m here has nothing to do with you,” Mateo insists. “Please leave.”

“No, you chose the location, and I respect that. We were hoping you would end up in Türkiye, but we can work with this. There’s an important enough mission in this area too. I would like more prep time to pull it off, but based on your experiences with the traffickers, I believe you can get up to speed quite quickly.”

He rolls his eyes. “You’re intelligence.”

“Not exactly. You’re intelligence, and so is your wife. I’m just adjacent, which is why I was able to place the two of you in your respective positions of authority. I have my own background, though, which prevents me from making certain moves—”

“Blah, blah, blah, you needed an outsider. Blah, blah, expendable. Something, something, something dark side.”

She smirks. “That’s a reference, isn’t it?” She sticks her tongue under her upper lip. “You’re from the future.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s why you don’t have an identity. That’s why you struggle with pop culture, but seem to have a set of your own. You and your friends are from the future.”

Mateo drops into a paranoid demeanor. “Clever girl, not many have found out. Timey-wimey, wibbly wobbly. But if you know, then you’re now in more danger than you can imagine. I’m one of the good ones, but we’re not all like that. If they find you, they will kill you, or worse...erase you from existence.” Okay, this is all actually somewhat plausible. Such forces are real, but it’s just that they don’t seem to live in this world. “I can get you to safety, but you have to do exactly as I say. Do you have any aluminum foil?”

She looks down her cheek at him. “Oh, you had me for a second, you sly dog. You sexy, sly dog, you.”

“Sexy?”

“What? Did you think my attraction to you was just part of the act?”

“One can always hope,” he replies.

“It is you who should come with me and learn the secrets. We have a job for you to do, and there is no time to waste. You will meet the team.”

“Yeah, you seem to be pretty convinced that what you say I should do is just what I’m going to do, as if choice has nothing to do with it.”

“It really doesn’t,” she says.

He stands there a moment, considering his options.

“We really must go,” she urges.

“You have a man on the inside.”

“Inside what?”

“That merc team who had the plan to free the refugees. Either they’re all your people or at least one of them is.”

“Yes, that’s how we know what happened to you. You didn’t think that a bunch of ex-soldiers randomly approached you, and forced you to help, did you?”

He shakes it off, “fine. My point is that you read a report. You know what we did.”

“Okay, yeah...” she trails off.

“But you don’t know how.”

“No, we were hoping to debrief you, perhaps after this next mission.”

“Oh, I can just tell you right now.”

She’s intrigued. She’s very intrigued.

He tips his forehead towards her, and beckons her to do the same with one finger. When she leans in, he looks around to make sure they’re not being watched, and drops into a whisper. “We’re willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done, even if it’s unsavory...”

“Yeah,” she presses.

“Even if it hurts.” With that, he slides his pocket knife into his gut where his left kidney used to be before he gave it to an alternate version of Leona. He gasps, but doesn’t scream. He leaves the blade in, and applies pressure. He turns around, arches his back a little, and stumbles away from her. It’s not long before passersby begin to notice that something is wrong, and then they see what is wrong. Good samaritans try to help, a couple of them catching him by the shoulders as he collapses to the ground. The crowd grows and grows. Somebody calls emergency services. He can’t see it, but he assumes that the mysterious forger-but-not-really is executing an exit strategy.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 12, 2398

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Angela rolls out of bed at 7:59, and right into the chair. She wheels over to the desk, and switches on her computer. She’s logged on by 8:01, making her technically on time, which she can prove with the little green dot next to her name that shows her status as available. She rolls her eyes when her co-worker sends the first message immediately. It’s a little flirty, but she’s centuries old, so she knows what real flirting looks like. He’s just pretending to be interested, when really he’s trying to micromanage her. The other guys around the office are just trying to get into Marie’s pants, but he couldn’t care less. He likes to know when people are screwing around, so he can get them in trouble. Instead of trying to excel at his own job, he figures the best way to win is to just get rid of everyone else. Unfortunately for him, Angela has a secret weapon. She removes the memstick from its case, and unleashes it on the machine.

There are two sides to Marie’s job. One is the major jobs, which often involve writing entirely new programs for clients. The others are smaller scripts, which link to preexisting programs, and automate various tasks. She uses a workflow application, where clients send her these small jobs that ask her to simplify their jobs. For instance, a data entrist has been tasked with cross-referencing datestamps on a social log with fluctuations in consumer behavior. That is, he’s the first step in a team that’s looking for possible causes between what people are talking about online, and what people are buying in the stores. The synthesis of this data may require higher-level thinking, which nascent AI cannot yet fathom, but the cross-referencing itself is really just about brute force. The requestor is hoping for an easier way to input this data, and adjust it to account for the time lag between social media posting, and real world purchases. It’s now Angela’s responsibility to make those two programs talk to each other, and dump all relevant information into a well-made report. At least, that’s what her alternate would do. Angela has it even easier, because she has also outsourced her work.

When the team was down in The Constant, looking for any information they could find on what happened to The Concierge, Ramses found something. He discovered the source code for the artificial intelligence inside the system that was programmed to serve guest needs. Other AIs were in charge of controlling lights and life support, and whatnot, but this particular one had to be smart enough to understand personal requests, and seek solutions. If somebody asked for a fried egg with a square yolk, the kitchen devices could handle it, but only if an intelligence explained it to them. This AI is complex and adaptable, which is vital to any situation it might have never encountered before. That’s what makes it perfect to do Angela’s job for her. It’s the thing that she plugged into the external memory port. The AI will read the workflow manager on her behalf, understand the script requests, and write the code itself. All Angela has to do is test it out, and her work is done. Even though this greatly increases her productivity, she’s intentionally making it a slow process, because no one can know that it’s happening. Only Ramses knows the truth; they didn’t even tell Marie that Angela has been using it since training ended. She would probably not approve of the risk.

Now that the AI is running, she gets back in bed. But then another message dings. It’s that guy again, claiming that the bosses would like to speak with her immediately. She growls, puts on some pants, and practices her smile. Then she activates her camera.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 11, 2398

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Eleven hours later, the away team was over eight thousand kilometers away. Ramses performed a water landing, then kept The Olimpia in boat mode so they could dock at the marina. A taksi took them over to Bishopsworth Resort, where they spent the night. The concierge was insistent on knowing what time they would be fully awake and dressed in the morning. They were already feeling jet lagged, so they chose 10:00, and when the clock chimed ten times, a crew of waiters burst into their room unannounced, and began to serve them their welcome breakfast. It was shocking, and annoying that no one thought to tell them what would be happening. Perhaps they just assumed everyone would know. They failed to do their research, or rather, Heath did. No matter, the food was good, and they needed to fuel up before the mission. When it was over, they opted to walk back to the marina, where they climbed into their boat, and headed Southeast.

Three hours later, they have made it to reform.belief.paint. They can see all around them forever, but there’s nothing but water, water, and more water. “Does anybody feel anything?” Marie asks. “Do we get the sense that we can teleport again?”

“Not in the least,” Ramses answers.

Apparently the one with the strongest connection to any source of temporal energy, Mateo shuts his eyes and tries to jump all the way back to the entrance to the boat, but he doesn’t move. “Nothing.”

“Hm,” Ramses says. “If anywhere in the world would have it, I would have thought here.”

“Why is that?” Mateo asks. “It’s not really any more special than the pyramids, or Easter Island.”

“Because most of the British Isles are just gone?” Marie says. “That’s weird. It sure as hell sounds like some kind of temporal anomaly. The Great Pyramid of Giza is just sitting there, where it’s supposed to be. We’re not even really sure why it’s special in the first place. But the fact that most of Great Britain doesn’t exist, but some parts of it do...that doesn’t make much sense.”

“True,” Mateo agrees.

“Well, we can’t have come all this way,” Marie begins, “and not at least try to find some clues. There’s only one logical next step.”

Ramses nods, and takes them down as far as this thing can go, but still don’t reach the bottom. If there’s any temporal energy tied to the location of Stonehenge, it’s under too much pressure. It looks like this little side mission is just a dead end. Leona drew a border on the virtual map, so they can maintain their proximity to their target. Mateo keeps trying to jump every once in a while, but nothing happens, not even a hint. The trio keeps thinking that maybe something will surprise them just before they give up, but they continue to sporadically utter defeatist phrases at each other—like “there’s nothing here” or “this is dumb”—yet still nothing changes.

It doesn’t even necessarily have to be time-related. They could resurface to find a band of pirates who want to take them hostage, or a shady government helicopter who has been following them around since the parking lot. But when they break the surface, they find it just as it was before. Water, water, and more water. “I think I’m gonna call it,” Marie declares. “This was a waste of time.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Ramses contends. “We had to come here. If we hadn’t, we would have wondered about it. Now we can check it off the list. That’s the whole point of these little missions. We only have to find one thing that helps us get home.”

Marie nods, appreciating the sentiment. “Let’s go back to the island. We might as well be able to tell Heath that we did the bike tour. He was pretty excited about the prospect of us doing some real vacationy stuff”

Mateo heads towards the stern as Ramses is turning the Olimpia around. Recessed in the walls of the two back cubbies are footholds that lead up to an emergency exit in the ceiling. He opens up the hatch, and climbs outside. He stands on the roof, and continues to look around, hoping to see an ominous dark shadow of a giant creature as it swims underneath them, or a brilliant green whirlpool, or maybe a beacon in the distance. That would be satisfying enough, to rescue a random castaway. But as before, he finds that there is nothing special about this place. It’s just the middle of the ocean on the most boring version of Earth yet. He’s not yet lost hope, because they still have many other locations to test, but it’s sure not a good start. Though, to be fair, it’s not really a start. Magic exists here; The Constant proves it. As Ramses was saying, they have to keep trying, and keep checking things off the list.

After they’re sufficiently far from awaited.passively.landings, he climbs back inside, and hangs out with the other two until they get back to the resort. There they stay for two more nights to finish out their reservation. Island culture is a little bizarre and confusing at times, but overall a lovely experience. Next stop, Munich.