 
## The Advancement of Mateo Matic

### and Other Stories

### Volume One

Nick Fisherman

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2016 Nick Fisherman

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

www.nickfisherman.com
Introduction

This is not the first book I've written, but it is the first book I've published. At least, I hope that it's going to be published. My plan is to upload it in two days. Well...*looks at watch*...less. Unlike the characters in these stories, I am not a time traveler, and cannot promise that it actually happened. Though, if it never did, how are you reading this? Hacker. I guess you could say that I was always bound to be a writer, but I didn't _actually_ decide to be one until I was thirteen years old. This was due to a crushing failing grade in eighth grade science. It was an embarrassingly long time before I realized that I should be writing science _fiction_. I experimented for a couple years until I was fifteen when I sort of decided what kind of writer I wanted to be. Rather, this was when I felt comfortable calling myself as such, and dismissing all other prospective careers. It was also around this time that I took a scouting trip to the Florida Keys, which inspired what I thought would be my first book, now called _The Last Refuge_. If this book here is successful, and I can gather a larger following, I might be able to convince a literary agent to represent me, and can submit to a publisher, instead of doing it on my own. Hopefully they'll teach me to stop with the run-on sentences.

My primary canon is called _recursiverse_ , and it's filled with hundreds of characters and thousands of planets; told across novels, short stories, television series, films, and more. I like to plan ahead. Of course, it's evolved over time, and the ideas I had while I was first creating it either no longer exist, or have been altered to fit later developments. At one point, I came up with a story called _The Advancement of Mateo Matic_. It was to be a series of novellas, each one taking place chronologically after the one before, and involving the next milestone in Mateo's life. We would start in his young years at a subspace academy with no actual location, but a network of remote personal space vessels. He would then continue to age (read: _advance_ ) until owning the largest conglomerate in the galaxy (and possibly committing suicide).

While I was trying to submit the novel I mentioned above to agents, one of them managed to reply with some helpful advice. They told me that I basically had to already be famous, or no one would give me the time of day. So I set up a website (www.nickfisherman.com). I decided to write a new story every. Single. Day. The weekday stories are only a couple hundred words long, but the weekends were meant to be longer. All I needed now...was a couple hundred original ideas to get me through the first year. Later on, I decided to post each new story at exactly 16:15, and I've yet to fail on that. I thought I knew what life was life with deadlines, having gone through grade school and college, but those were nothing compared to the stress of this commitment, even paired with the fact that I started out with zero readers. Anyway, my most important order of business while I was getting things going was a weekly series that would last for a very, _very_ long time. I won't tell you exactly how long I plan to be running this series, but it's between 51 and 53 years.

Thus was born the new idea for _The Advancement of Mateo Matic_. Every day, at the end of the day, Mateo is hopelessly propelled one year into the future by an unknown force, leaving behind his family and friends. Every week examines his trials and tribulations for a new day. You'll have to read it to find out what he actually goes through. A few people, notably my sister, suggested that I self-publish my writings in book format. This brings us up to now. I wrote the original installments, sometimes with the knowledge of what might happen in the next few, but usually not. I wouldn't say I was "winging it" but I did not generally have the benefit of going back and editing earlier parts of the story. A few plot points conflict with earlier points, and I had just forgotten. Sometimes I painted myself into a corner, and I even edited old posts to make slight corrections, on the down low. But for the most part, I'm bound by what I've already decided. But not here. This published version is different than the original. I was able to revise the entire thing, adding or removing a line here and there, and of course, fixing grammatical mistakes. I was also now given the opportunity to add foreshadowing, fill in plot holes, and rectify continuity errors. I'm not perfect, so I'm sure you'll find issues still, but this version reads more like a novel, and less like a weekly series.

Lastly, as I progressed with _The Advancement of Mateo Matic_ , I started encountering spinoffs in my head. I realized that a story told from the perspective of a character who only shows up once a year would be, by its very nature, unable to fully grasp the world I've created. There are more characters, with more stories, and I've written some of those as well. Sometimes, these extra stories are dependent on a particular timeline. This dependency is evident if you read my blog posts from start to finish, but not so much if I were to publish them separately, or one after the other. So I've decided to intermix them with Mateo's story to match when they were originally posted. It's still kind of one big story, but it will feel like a tangent whenever we break from Mateo to read about someone else. And the series at the very end sort of ties up some loose ends using extended flashbacks from the perspective of a brand new character. I actually just ran that one on my website this year, but it's more relevant to this first volume.

You can expect each "chapter" to be a little bit longer than this introduction—with a few exceptions, as you would expect—so if you didn't read the introduction...the chapters will still be about that long. So I don't know why you're asking me about that. I hope you enjoy it. Don't do anything I wouldn't do, except have fun.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Happy Birthday

March 21, 2014

March 22, 2015

Mateo Matic walked downstairs to find the living room packed full of people. Just about everyone he was still in contact with was there for his birthday, along with a few old faces. It was completely ridiculous, and he loved it. His family and friends were the most important thing to him, and only one of them was missing. When he was only eight years old, his birth mother disappeared with no trace. She had never been the one to raise him, but she had been part of the family the entire time. His adoptive parents maintained a healthy relationship with her, and she was able to see him whenever she wanted. It was unclear where she had gone, or why she hadn't told him, at the very least. There was no evidence of foul play. There was evidence of nothing. She simply disappeared. The Gelens had been good to him, though, and he was grateful for his life. Except for the one thing, he couldn't imagine anything changing. Unfortunately, fate had other plans.

The party was spectacular, but it was lasting a little too long. He was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed. The guests began to file out at around five o'clock so that he could have a quiet dinner with his parents. They ate a delicious and healthy salmon meal and exchanged gifts. For most families, gifts were given to only the one in celebration, but his was different. For all three birthdays, each of them would find something to give the other two. They weren't the richest people in the world, but they felt they had everything they needed. The gifts were usually small and thoughtful. He made his adoptive mother, Carol a necklace out of seashells, a callback to a similar one he had given her twenty years before. He bought his father, Randall a new pack of razors. They had a nice laugh about that one. Carol had gotten him the same thing. He playfully threw up his arms and conceded. He would finally clean himself back up. Ever since his retirement, he had let loose, but was willing to add that back into his routine.

Randall gave his wife a self-help book about how to make decisions that she had been trying to decide if she wanted. After those were done, Randall made an announcement. In lieu of a traditional gift, the two of them had decided to set up a bank account for him. It was a long-term investment, designed to help support his future children. All that money stuff went over his head, but he was speechless. He gave them both a big hug. "This is the best birthday ever. Ya know...except for my eighth." They smiled and nodded.

"Okay," Carol said. I know we decided the account was our only gift, but I couldn't help it."

"Carol, what did you do?" Randall asked, but it was obvious he knew what second gift she had chosen.

She pulled a metal rosary bracelet out of her pocket. The beads were in the shape of shells. At the bottom was an oval; one side of which showed an image of the Virgin Mary, while the other had an image of Jesus. An eleventh bead connected that to a depiction of the crucifixion. "This was your birth mother's. You know, she was far more religious than we are. She was always leaving trinkets at our house, subtly trying to get us to go to church more often. This was the last one before she went missing. I don't know why I didn't give it to you right away. I suppose I just wanted my own reminder of her. But it's time that you have it. _You_ are my reminder of her."

That was the last time Carol Gelen would see her son for an entire year. After dinner, Mateo left the house to hang out with his old friends. When they were underaged, they would gather at a cemetery on the edge of town, and drink. They wouldn't ever get too rambunctious, but it was just nice to be away from the adults; away from judgment. They had grown up and grown out of it by now, but they went back to reminisce.

A young woman he did not recognize lifted her hand and shook Mateo's. "We've heard it's your birthday."

"That's what they tell me," Mateo said.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-eight. I already feel like an old man."

"Happy with life?" Vearden asked.

It was a bit of a weird question, but Mateo didn't want to be rude, so he answered honestly, "actually, I am. It hasn't always been easy. I've experienced loss. But I'm in a pretty good place now. I couldn't imagine it getting any better."

"Well, be careful," the woman's friend said as he was taking his turn at shaking Mateo's hand.

"What? Why?"

"Just something my mother used to say before I left the house. It's sort of my catchphrase," he explained.

"I see." He patted both of them on the shoulders. "Well, have something to drink. I know we're in a place of death, but tonight, we celebrate life."

A little while later, he was enjoying his own beer with a lime stuck in it when a dorm neighbor from college who was a few years younger slithered up to him. Kyle snatched the beer from his hand and said, "it's almost midnight."

"So, I'm not allowed to drink anymore?" Mateo asked.

"Nope. The birthday boy is designated driver on the day after his birthday."

Mateo took his beer back. "Your jokes aren't even funny, because they have absolutely no basis. I swear, man. You need to stick to filing."

"I'll have you know that I am finally a full-fledged lawy—"

Mateo didn't hear his friend's last statement. For no reason, his beer shattered into a hundred pieces. "What the hell?" He looked around. He was alone. There were a couple dozen other people with him a second ago, but they were all gone. "Hello?" No one answered. "As far as pranks go, this is pretty impressive. I haven't had _that_ much to drink. How did you disappear so quickly?"

"Hello?" came a voice from behind. Mateo turned around and found himself blinded by a flashlight. "Is that you, Mateo?" It was Mr. Halifax, the gravedigger. He had been letting them use the cemetery since the beginning as long as no one got hurt, everyone got home safe, and they kept the grounds clean.

"Yeah, do you know where everyone went?"

He released a disappointed sigh. "Come on. I told you that I would always be here to take you wherever you needed to go. Your parents will want to know you've returned."

They didn't talk on the way back. Mateo tried to ask what the problem was, but Halifax just kept saying that it wasn't his responsibility, and that things will make things later. Carol gave him a big hug and broke down crying when she opened the door to find her long-lost son. Randall was behind her, crying as well. After some time, he was able to get answers out of them. He had been gone for exactly one year. He had disappeared without a trace, just like his mother before him.

"It's happened before that too," Randall started to explain hours later, after everything had calmed down a little. "Your family has been keeping diaries, claiming that an ancestor of theirs was from the past, and had been travelling forward in time, meeting and interacting with them long after he should have died. During one of these times, he apparently fathered a child, starting a family that was always paranoid about it happening to them as well."

"But it never did," Carol continued. "Not until _your_ mother. Of course, even after her disappearance, we didn't believe the outrageous rumors that time travel had anything to do with it. But if you say you were in the cemetery in 2014, and suddenly you're here, I don't know _what_ to believe. Maybe it's all true."

"But I came back," Mateo complained. "If I'm here, where is my mom?"

Randall shook his head. "We don't know, son. I promise you, though, we are going to figure this out. We are not going to lose you again."

But they did lose him again. At the strike of midnight that night, Mateo disappeared for the second time. It was March 23rd, 2016.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Meet Cute

March 23, 2016

The time jump caused Mateo Matic to wake up. He heard footsteps running up the stairs. His father, Randall burst into the room. "Oh, thank God you're back."

"Has it been another year?"

His mother, Carol appeared in the doorway. "It has. This is not going to stop on its own. We already have an appointment set up for you. I don't want to spend what little time we may have together at the hospital, but—"

"I know it has to be done," Mateo interrupted. "We'll have all the time in the world if we can figure out how to stop it."

The appointment wasn't until eleven in the morning. So after eating fourth meal, Mateo went up to the attic to look through some of the family belongings passed down through generations. He sat up there for hours, combing through everything he could find that had anything to do with his biological family tree. Most of the journal entries were mundane, and it wasn't like his family kept records of absolutely everything they did. He had just gotten to a journal written in the mid-19th century by his great great great great grandmother when Carol called him down for the appointment. He stalled her, needing to learn more. The journal talked about when she first met her husband. He had appeared out of nowhere one day, dressed in outdated attire. Carol called him again, and he was forced to put the journal away for another time; perhaps for an entire year.

He spent the rest of the day undergoing medical tests. They drew blood, put him in machines, and asked him a lot of questions. Of course, he couldn't reveal to them _why_ these tests were so desperately needed. In the end, there was no conclusion. None of the preliminary results showed anything abnormal. It would be a couple weeks before they had all the information, which meant that his parents wouldn't be able to discuss it with him for a year.

He was sitting in the waiting room for urgent care while his parents confided in a family friend who was a nurse in that department. A teenager, no older than sixteen, came in with her father. He set her down in a chair across from Mateo. "Sit here while I check you in. Maybe you won't drink after tonight." The girl looked completely miserable. She was holding a plastic grocery sack, clearly filled with vomit. She was dry heaving and moving her head up and down, trying to find a comfortable position that didn't exist. She wasn't crying, but her eyes were teared up, probably from the strain.

"First time?" Mateo asked.

She massaged her forehead. "No, but he was right. It's probably my last. I think a guy put something—" She couldn't finish the sentence. Vomit rolled out of her mouth and into the bag. On the other side of the room, an even younger kid vomited into his own bucket, as if it were a response to her. Illness was trending. As the girl tried to cough up more, the bag slipped from her grip and fell to the floor, spilling its contents. She instinctively pulled her head away from it. "Oh my God!" Before she could do anything else, though, more came up suddenly, much of it landing in Mateo's lap. She just stared at him in horror, having no idea what she could say to him. After several days, and many years, it would turn out to be their meet-cute.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Proof of Life

March 24, 2017

While Mateo was slipping time for a year, the girl who had thrown up on him at the hospital managed to track him down. She arrived at his house with an apology casserole. For more than one reason, she was disappointed about not being able to speak with Mateo directly, but Carol managed to comfort her and relieve her of all guilt. For the first year that Mateo skipped, he was officially declared missing. For the following years, his parents had to claim that he was building schools and clinics in developing countries. They had to fudge his tax forms. The authorities were suspicious of this, but eventually let things go. There were witnesses at the hospital, so that helped to close the investigation. Unfortunately, their lie could blow up in their faces at any moment, and he would have no way of being around to help them.

The people who had been with him in the cemetery for his first jump had been the most freaked out about it. He spent his one day in 2017 going around to all of his friends to assuage their anxiety over the matter, proving to them that he was alive and well. Obviously, he had to exaggerate the part about being well. Kyle, the lawyer who had been looking directly at him during the initial jump had ended up in a mental institution. Mateo's reappearance to him didn't help anything at first. He became worse, assuming him to be a hallucination sent to torment him. Over time during the visit, however, things were able to get better. He even let Mateo hold him tightly and sing him his favorite classic rock songs. Kyle was kind of a jerk in his old life, and was shaping up to be a rather smarmy defense attorney, but he didn't deserve this. Afterwards, Mateo took some time alone in the chapel, and prayed for him with his birth mother's rosary.

He had always believed in God, and possibly even more so since the timeslipping problem started, but he had never prayed before. He didn't like the idea of asking God for any more than he had already been given in life. But he wasn't so much praying for God to help. It was more about asking for forgiveness. Even though he was not in control of the timeslips—at least not consciously—he felt responsible for the problems they had caused the people around him. At some point, he might even have to fake his own death. On the other hand, if he kept going at this rate, he would quickly outlive everyone he knew by centuries. He would probably have to wander the countryside with camping gear, foraging whenever possible.

His last proof of life stop was at his parents' neighbor's house. One of the girls from the cemetery, Frida lived there. She had moved back in with her parents to take care of her ailing mother who passed two years ago. She was now taking care of her father, and he wasn't looking very good. When she opened the door, Mateo could see the teeneager from the hospital behind her. Evidently, Frida and Leona had met in the front yard during his literal gap year when she came by with the apology casserole. They soon became friends, bonding over having both lost their mothers. Frida was also her mentor, helping with math and college applications.

Frida had been in the middle of a conversation and hadn't seen anything at the cemetery that night, so she wasn't as traumatized as some of the others. In the following months, she had been there for his parents, providing a shoulder to cry on when she wasn't busy with her own family issues. She had always been kind and accommodating to others, even as a child. She didn't let other kids push her around, but she never felt the need to win an argument or prove herself. She and Mateo dated for a few weeks in high school but ultimately decided they were better as friends.

He tried to shake hands with Leona, but she seemed to be incredibly shy around him. When she left for the bathroom, Frida informed him that she had developed a crush on him. They talked about him probably a little too much, and the (made up) stories his parents told about the amazingly noble things he was doing for children in developing countries was doing nothing to change her feelings. He had a fleeting thought while Frida was explaining the situation. In only a few days from his perspective, Leona would no longer be too young for him. A handful of days after that, she would be too old for him. Not too much later, she would be dead. They would all be dead. Everyone would be dead by the time he had a hankering for Chinese food again.

Mateo shuddered and ran back home. He wept and complained in his parents' arms until he fell asleep on the couch. It was nearly midnight before he awoke again. He jumped up, worried that they wouldn't get to see him one last time. But they were sitting across from him in anticipation. "I'm so sorry," he cried.

"We will be here when you return." And they were. Exactly there. Midnight struck. Mateo jumped forward in time while looking at his parents. They were sitting in the same places as before, even wearing the same clothes, giving him hope that he hadn't actually jumped this time. But no. They weren't in the exact same position as before. And they even looked a little older. "Welcome back," Carol was finally able to say to her son.

"Bit of a problem," Randall said. "That girl, Leona saw you through the window last year."
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Problem of Leona

March 25, 2018

Mateo fell asleep again after catching up with his parents. A lot had happened over the course of the year. They continued to manufacture stories about his adventures overseas. He had reportedly spent the bulk of his time in Africa, but had recently begun work in Central Asia. Kyle was released from the facility, but still received some care, and was not at 100%. Frida started a relationship with a man she met at Veterans Affairs. He was particularly helpful with providing her father with the medications and services that he needed. They didn't think he would live to see Christmas, though.

In the morning, Mateo sent Frida a text message, asking for Leona's address. He snuck out of the house to speak to her. His parents wanted to figure out what they were going to do about it together, but he felt it was his responsibility. She had been unrealistically receptive to their lies that he hadn't really disappeared; that she had been dreaming, or even hallucinating. He didn't know her at all, but something told him that she was faking her acceptance. He just didn't know what she was planning to do with such information. She lived in the dorms of a college that was only about an hour away, having graduated from high school a semester early. His car had been repossessed by the bank during his first disappearance, so he stole his father's truck and drove off.

"I've been expecting you," she said after opening the door. "My roommate is in class. We have plenty of time to talk."

"What do you think you know?"

"I may be bad at math, but I can do simple arithmetic," she explained. "You disappeared one day, and were reported back a year later. Then you weren't seen for another year. And then another. And then one year ago I saw you pop out of existence in your living room. I've done my research. That's called timeslipping. It's when you travel through time but don't use some kind of machine or device, and have no control of it. The fact that you return exactly one year later suggests either a superior intelligence, or this weak theory I have regarding the Earth's revolution around the sun. Despite the solar year being one of our primary sources of mapping out and making sense of the cosmos, it has very little to do with the organization of the universe as a whole. The fact is that the most likely culprit responsible for your condition is an unfathomable entity, like God."

"Wow. When you say you've done your research, you're not lying."

"You're the reason I'm taking both physics and a religious studies course for my first semester."

"You don't have to do any of this, Leona. This isn't your concern."

"It's going to take..." she started to say, "well, it's going to take four _days_ , but I will figure out how to explain this. I may not be able to stop it, but we will at least understand the physics."

"Leona..."

"And in only three days, I won't be too young for you, and you'll be able to stop looking at me like a lost puppy dog."

"But you just said it. Three days. This has been plaguing my parents for years, but it hasn't even been a week for me. I don't even know your last name."

"It's Delaney."

"Right. That's all I needed. Crash course on Leona Delaney. Now I tell you all my secrets, and let you waste four years of your life getting a degree in a field you're not actually interested in."

"I'll study physics and philosophy if I want to. And you can do literally nothing about it."

"We'll never be together. And I think you know that. You may even like it. Being a hung up on a guy you can only see once a year. Pretty romantic. Like a fairytale. It ends only with your death. Don't let yourself be alone when that happens."

"If anyone else had said something like that to me, I would kick them out of my room. But I have 365 days to get over it, and only a few hours to see you. I'm not going to waste what little time we have. I don't care how you feel about me, and I can't help how _I_ feel. Hell, you may wake up tomorrow and find me married to someone else. So what does it matter to you what I do now? You have an unavoidably distorted perspective of the world."

He had no response.

"Great," she continued. You wanna get some breakfast? I'll tell you about how the apes have taken over the world, and how sea otters can talk now." They spent the rest of the morning getting to know each other. It could have been incredibly awkward, but it wasn't. She was refreshingly easy to talk to, and it was certainly a relief to have an open conversation with someone other than his parents. She talked about what the current president was doing, the latest celebrity nonsense, and the subtle advances in technology. Automated vehicles were gaining some heavy ground, with legislation already passed in the majority of states, allowing some level of hands-free driving.

Randall and Carol were not happy with his decision to handle the "problem of Leona" on his own. But they were most upset about losing half a day with him. They had a late lunch together, and invited Frida and her boyfriend over for dinner and games. It was a well-deserved break from all the drama. By having those two there, they were forced to pretend like their lives were perfectly normal. No timeslipping talk at the table.

Leona came over just after eleven o'clock and assured them of her kindhearted intentions. They had a late-night snack of ice cream, and stayed up talking until 11:58. They then hugged and said their goodbyes. Just before the strike of midnight, Leona planted a passionate kiss on Mateo's lips. He was gone before he could react. One year later, he jumped back into the time stream, only to be quickly overwhelmed by a second kiss from her. Sneaky snake.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

We're in Paris

March 26, 2019

Mateo gently removed his face from Leona's. She gave him her best evil smile. Then she turned around and grabbed an infant from Carol's arms. "Mateo Matic, say hello to your son, Theo."

"What!?"

"I'm kidding," she laughed. "He's my baby brother. Half-brother."

Carol pursed her lips. "Wasn't funny when you told us you were going to do that joke, and it isn't funny now that you've actually done it."

Leona handed Theo to Mateo. "Funny from this side. How was your trip, honey?"

"Instant," Mateo replied. " _Theo_ does sound like he's named after me." He lifted the baby's hand with his finger and shook it politely. "Little odd."

She took Theo back. "It's a family name. Er...well, not really. But my dad says he was incapable of naming him anything else; like it was already his name, and we were just discovering that fact." Not just a little odd.

Everyone went to bed. Leona's father and stepmother were on a vacation, so Carol and Randall were taking care of little Theo. He was technically Leona's responsibility but she, of course, had classes to worry about. They were more than willing to pick up the slack, having felt a deficit since the onset of Mateo's condition. Frida's father passed not long after Mateo's last departure. He lived long enough to see Frida's engagement to her now-husband, but not long enough to be there for the wedding. Kyle was better than ever, and had all but moved on with his life. He was back to being a lawyer, and was rumored to be a far more genuine one than they thought he'd be.

Upon waking, Mateo snuck out of the house again. He needed some alone time. It was selfish of him, but he had just spent the last several days dealing with all this. It was true that he would be completely alone in only a few weeks when everyone would be dead, but he couldn't help it. He and his friends liked to hang out at the large cemetery on the edge of town, but there was a smaller one in the middle of nowhere that only he knew of. That was his secret hiding place. There, he could find some of the oldest graves he had ever seen. There were those who had died in the early 19th century. It was peaceful and calm, and not just metaphorically. It was literally calm. Something about the formation of the trees, or maybe by divine choice, made the air milder than just outside of its borders. When it was cold outside, the secret cemetery would be warmer, and during the summer heat, it would be cooler.

He leaned up against a headstone and began to pray with his birth mother's rosary. "Sorry to disturb you," came a voice from the side. He opened his eyes and saw a middle-aged woman dressed in two coats. It was far too warm for that. She took the first one off and stuffed it in a bag. "Could you tell me where I am?" She removed a bottle of water from her bag and took a long drink from it.

"I don't think there's a name for this graveyard," Mateo answered.

"No, I mean...I mean the city," she clarified.

That was a weird question, but she was dressed in more layers than necessary. She must have been a nomad. "We're a few miles Southwest of Sherwood Lake. In Topeka, Kansas."

"Oh, wow," she said. "That's not far from home."

"Where do you live?"

"Kansas City. I don't suppose you were driving that way."

"I wasn't." She was deeply saddened, clearly having been far from home for a long time. He had selfishly left his family at home and come to cemetery to pray. This was a sign. It was a very Catholic sign. She needed help, and he was the only one around. The chances that she would be here at this special place during the one day of the year that he was in the timestream were too low. She needed to get to Kansas City, so he was going to take her there. "But I am now."

They stepped into the truck and headed out. She introduced herself as Daria. When he introduced himself with his full name, she laughed. "Are you joking?"

"No, why?"

"That's my name too," she claimed. "I'm Daria Matic."

"Ah, well. It's my birth father's name. I never met him."

She sat in silence for a good long while. At a glance, it looked like she was working something out in her head. "His first name wouldn't happen to be Mario, would it?"

He freaked out, and his first instinct was to stop the car. But he remained calm, and kept driving. There were very few things that Mateo knew about his father. One was his first name, one was his last name, and the other was that he hated pickles. That's all his birth mother had ever said. In fact, the third one had slipped out in the middle of dinner once, and she treated it like a matter of national security; like she had just committed treason. He tried looking for him, only for intellectual reasons, but he could find no trail. Mario Matic was a ghost. "Oh, my God. Are we related?"

"Looks like it. Are you a salmon?" she asked.

"Am a fish?"

"Maybe you're new. Are you a time traveler?"

This time, he did stop the car. "On my 28th birthday, I traveled forward in time exactly one year. I get one day every year, and then I'm forced to move on. My girlfriend...I mean, my _friend_ calls it a timeslip."

"Oh, interesting," Daria said thoughtfully.

"Do you do that too?" he asked, not sure what answer he was looking for.

"I've never traveled through time. I'm a teleporter. Like you, I can't control it. But it's not based on a schedule. When I start having dry mouth, I have a few moments to gather my things, and then I'm gone."

"I don't get dry mouth. I get really tired before it happens, but it's always at midnight anyway, so I don't know if that's part of it."

"Yeah, I call that my indicator. Speaking of which, I'm really thirsty."

"Well, we can stop somewhere. Oh..." He realized what she meant. She was about to leave again. "We're not done with our conversation!"

She rummaged through her bag to make sure she had everything she needed. "I am certain that we will see each other again. These journeys are controlled by someone, and they know we didn't have enough time. That was surely done on purpose. But I have to get out of here. If someone is too close to me, I risk bringing them along. It's not uncommon for me to end up in Antarctica." She tried to open the door.

"Oh, it gets stuck," he apologized. "You have to—just...here." He leaned over to get it for her.

"No!" she screamed, but it was too late. They disappeared.

They were still in a sitting position when they teleported out, so they fell to the concrete upon arrival. "Had a little too much to drink?" a stranger asked jokingly as he passed by with his friends. Mateo got to his feet and looked up to where he could see the Eiffel Tower. "Heavenly father, we're in Paris," he exclaimed.

"No," Daria said. She moved his head over so that he could see the Arc de Triomphe. Those two landmarks were not that close together. And they weren't that small. No, they weren't in Paris. They were Vegas. Either way, he wouldn't get back to his family for another year, at least.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Randall the Man

March 27, 2020

Yesterday, Mateo called his parents and asked that they be in Las Vegas in one year's time. He spent the rest of the day with his aunt, exploring the city with what little money they had. They got to know each other a little better. She didn't know where his birth father was, but she implied, and _only_ implied, that he too was a time traveler. So Mateo wasn't the only one, and any others like him were probably not in control of it either. It made him feel better to know that the reason Mario wasn't in his life might be a pretty damn good one. Mateo and Daria gave each other a hug just before midnight. "Oh, dry mouth," she said. They were departing at the same time. Once he jumped back into the timestream, he walked up to the agreed upon motel and knocked on the door. His father, Randall sighed. "Well, we got a vacation out of this."

He could see his mother, Carol packing behind him. "But it's time that we leave. If we don't get back to Topeka in 24 hours, you could be stuck in the middle of nowhere."

"I wouldn't want you to have to go through this again. I'm so sorry, mom and dad."

"Don't be," Randall said. "It's given me an idea. We'll test it out later."

Despite the fact that the route was an hour longer, they drove through Arizona and New Mexico to get back to Kansas. They had always had a rule about Utah; in that it was off limits on principle. Ever since Colorado legalized marijuana, it was kept in the same category. They called these locations "loci non grata". In only a few years, these policies would become impractical, as more and more states were following Colorado's lead.

Almost exactly halfway into their trip, they were passing through Las Vegas, New Mexico when the car began to smoke. "No, no, no!" Randall cried. There was a loud tapping sound as the old vehicle slowly decelerated to a complete stop. He tried the key, but it wouldn't turn over.

"Honey, it's smoking. You can't drive a smoking car, even if you get it started."

"Well, I don't know anything about cars!"

"I think it's the radiator," Mateo jumped in. "In movies, they pee on it."

Randall turned around and gave him the stink eye. "That's only when they don't have water."

"You are not going to spray water all over the engine, not having any clue what you're doing. We'll call a tow truck. I don't even know why you don't drive an electric car like everyone else."

Randall ignored her. "Okay, Google..."

"Yes?" came a comforting voice from the aether.

"Would you please send us a tow truck?"

"It's already on its way. I could also retask a nearby drone to assess the vehicle's condition before the truck gets here," the computer suggested.

"That would be great, thanks," Randall answered.

"No problem, Randall the Man."

"Randall the Man?" Mateo asked.

"She and I are really close," his father explained.

Moments later, they could hear a soft buzzing sound, coming from the distance and growing closer. A small drone appeared from the trees and greeted them. Randall stepped out of the truck and lifted the hood. Mateo watched as the drone zipped back and forth, scanning the system and analyzing the data. It even checked the undercarriage. Once it was done, it hovered in front of Randall's face. "I have begun orders for two parts that you will need to return your vehicle to working condition. I need your authorization for payment."

Randall began to lift his hand to the drone but Carol stopped him. "Wait, how long is this going to take?"

"The parts will arrive by long-distance drone late tonight. Your car should be ready tomorrow afternoon," the drone answered.

"Randall..." Carol started.

He placed his thumb on the drone which responded with, "payment accepted."

"We need these parts, either way," Randall told his wife. "We'll rent a car and come back for the truck next week."

"Would you like me to send the rental car to this location?" the drone asked.

"Make it the cheapest one you have."

"The cheapest _driverless_ car, please," Carol corrected.

"Authorization required."

Randall placed his thumb on the drone again.

"If you would like," the drone began, "I could play music while you wait."

"Classical. Please and thank you."

While they were waiting for the rental car to arrive, Mateo called Leona to ask how things were going. She was liking her classes, but she was swamped. She was taking more than a full schedule of courses, and just could not skip today to see him. She said that she would be waiting for him at the house when he got back, though. He smiled. He had only known her for a few days, but he liked her quite a bit. She had matured so much since he had met her. His parents were about the same as they always had been, and he hadn't kept in touch with most of his friends. Seeing the changes a young adult goes through over the years in such a short period of time was phenomenal and bizarre. It was like a four dimensional television series. But even that took longer to experience.

It was exciting to be riding in his first driverless car. The seats were faced towards each other, as there was no need to be at the wheel. Mateo was given the whole back seat where he was able to sleep. When he woke up later, he found his parents to be napping. That was just awesome. Why his father refused to move with the times and own one of these himself was something he didn't understand. They would later tell him that the concept of owning one's own car was going out of style anyway. Many people preferred to inform an app on their phone that they were in need of getting to a location, and a car would just come get them. If the prospect wasn't rendered meaningless by his condition, Mateo wasn't sure he would like that. The freedom of having his own possessions made too much sense to him.

Even with their delays, they got back to the safety of their home by midnight. Leona was cooking them a midnight snack of buttered noodles. His favorite. Mateo was brushing his teeth when he remembered what his father had said earlier. He went back downstairs. "You said you wanted to try something."

He looked at his watch. "Oh, yeah. It's almost time."

"What is it?"

"Say goodbye to your mother and your...Leona."

After that was done, it was nearly time. Randall timed it out, then held his son in a tight embrace. "I'm going to try to hold you down. If that doesn't work, maybe I'll get to go with you."

"I don't think that's going to work," Mateo said.

"It worked with you and your aunt," Leona said.

"It just doesn't..." he tried to find the words. "It doesn't feel the same. When I jumped to Vegas with her, it felt much different than my jumps. It was...more forceful, more jarring."

"Well I'm going to try it," Randall said. "If it doesn't work, then fine. What's the worse that could happen?"

A year later, Mateo learned the answer to that question. His father had succeeded in neither keeping him from jumping, nor jumping with him. He had, however, suffered a heart attack, and died.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Anonymity in New York City, Business in Los Angeles

March 28, 2021

Mateo was devastated to find out that he had killed his father. His mother assured him that he was "an old man" and it had absolutely nothing to do with the time jump. This was, of course, completely ridiculous. Old or not, Randall had died at the exact moment that he had tried to travel through time by holding Mateo close. Leona pointing out that he didn't die until getting to the hospital, but that did nothing to dissuade Mateo from his position on the matter. He had ruined Kyle's life during the first jump, and he couldn't be sure as of yet that retaining his friendship with Leona wasn't detrimental to her happiness. And now this. He needed to get away from those he loved. Things would only get worse. The leaving part wasn't what was hurting them. It was the constant returning. It was time to rip off the band aid. As long as they didn't know where he was come midnight, they would never be able to find him.

In the meantime, Carol gave him a suit so that they could visit his father's grave. They were going to hold a belated private ceremony for Mateo's benefit. They had asked the priest to carve out some time so that he could say some prayers. It was, afterall, the anniversary of the death, so it was not such an unusual request. After that was finished, they dismissed the priest so that they could speak of Randall alone. Mateo said a few words, "Randall was my father for my whole life, even though we're not related. He taught me everything I needed to know to be a man. He taught me to be strong and careful, wise and spontaneous, interesting and deserving. He had always managed to take time out for me, and he was my best friend.

"When this... _thing_ happened to me, he kept a cool head. Sure, I wasn't around for the first year scare, but when I came back, it was almost like I had never left. I fell right back into place, and all thanks to his understanding attitude. We were spending a lot of time trying to figure things out, but not all of it. We made sure to get into our obligatory political discussions, and we were planning on fishing Sherwood Lake next week in 2026. Say what you will, but I will never forgive myself for depriving the world of more Randall Gelen." The other two didn't argue with him anymore about it. They walked away to give him some time to pray alone.

After the service, they went out for ice cream. There was a small shop downtown where Randall used to take him all the time. It closed down a few years before Mateo's disappearance, but they kept going there anyway. They would buy cones from the chain that put their beloved shop out of business, and eat on a bench in front of where it used to be. It had turned into a toy store, but was now an electronics store. He and Carol spent the rest of the time telling Leona stories about Randall. To their surprise, she had a few stories of her own; of times they had spent together, apart from the other two. Apparently, she had thought of him as a second father.

Mateo hadn't slept in a while, so they went back home and let him have a nap. But he didn't go to sleep. Instead, he packed. He thought about what kind of essentials his aunt Daria would have. He knew that she always had water and layers of clothing. She also probably kept a supply of toiletries. A pocket knife, flashlight, headache relief medicine, and as many small bills as he could get his hands on were also on his list. He wrote a short note to his mother and Leona, apologizing to them, and claiming that he was opting for a life of anonymity in New York City. Lastly, he stole his mother's credit card.

After sneaking out of the house, he knocked on Frida's door and asked to borrow 200 bucks. She agreed, not having any clue that he would never be able to pay her back. It wasn't his proudest moment, but it had to be done. After being declared missing, he lost his bank account. They couldn't set up a new one because he wasn't a real person anymore. The legal obstacles they would have to deal with would be just too much. Simply renewing his card or verifying information throughout the year would be functionally impossible. He was stuck with cash, which was a problem. Time was running out for paper money. Anyone who had chosen not to set up their fingerprint identity with the government still had a smartphone to pay for things. Paying with cold hard cash was still just as easy as before, but it made you stand out, and people were suspicious of you for it.

He walked all the way to Kyle's condo and asked for a ride to the train station. Kyle was more than happy to help out, having gotten far beyond the point of recovery. He was the happiest Mateo had ever seen him. He and his husband were in the process of adopting a child. "It's nice to see you, man! It's been forever, so where the hell are you going _now_?"

"I have some business in Los Angeles," Mateo lied. Once they arrived at the train station, he paid for a ticket to Chicago. He then went back to the car and handed Kyle the credit card. "Please get this back to my mother, whenever you get a chance. And apologize to her for me."

"She doesn't know you're going?"

"Goodbye, my old friend," Mateo said. Then he walked away. He turned back and watched as Kyle drove off. Once he was out of sight, he walked down the road and stuck out his thumb. He was only trying to go about 160 miles, but it took him the entire day to hitchhike. There were a few moments in between drivers that he was pretty sure he would be in the middle of nowhere for the jump, but several hours later, he was finally at the Lincoln, Nebraska train station. He found a corner to hide in. Midnight came and flung him one year into the future. At that moment, he raced around and purchased a ticket to Salt Lake City, Utah. It was the last place anyone would look for him.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

A Different Midnight

March 29, 2022

The woman at the train station ticket counter gave Mateo a hard time about his identification. But since the train was leaving in less than 15 minutes—and he had purposely made himself look like a nomad—she gave in. He scooped up his bag and ran for the platform, boarding just in time.

He found his seat on the upper level and sat down. He took out a map and a calculator. When he was in Las Vegas, he jumped at midnight according to the central time zone, which meant that it was only ten o'clock where he was. The map said that the train would get into Salt Lake City at 11:05. That was five minutes too late. He would have to get off at Provo instead. Which was fine. He didn't know much about Utah, but one city didn't sound any better than the other, and they both existed within the "loci non grata" category. The trip was incredibly boring. Everyone else around had tablets and phones to play with, but he had to shed himself of such things. He didn't know how easy it was for people to track him with technology. Leona would normally keep him up-to-date on world progress. He was missing out on so much. He decided to make a habit of going to the library every day and find a recap of each passing year. Perhaps he would just live at the library. It wasn't like anyone could logistically stop him, and he would have to sleep somewhere.

Throughout the ride, they had to make frequent stops, and not just at other stations. They would wait, sometimes for nearly an hour at a time in the middle of nowhere. Freight trains held priority over passengers. No wonder people didn't take the train anymore. It was an absolute nightmare. He was growing more and more concerned. The longer they were taking, the farther he would be from his stop when he had to get off. He shuddered to think what might happen if he were on a moving vessel during the timeslip. But then he had an optimistic thought. Maybe he wouldn't be able to jump at all. Maybe whatever force was causing him to go through this would keep him tethered to the timestream in order to protect him. Afterall, you can't throw someone through time if they're dead; or rather, it would be pointless. In the end, it wasn't worth the risk, though. He kept his map out and pulled back his departure station by station as necessary.

A voice came on the intercom after a particularly long wait. "We do apologize for the inconvenience. I would just like to mention that we are all in the same boat, so to speak. The crew is tired and hot and miserable, just like you."

The man on the other side of the aisle laughed. He and Mateo locked eyes. "The difference between us and the crew, is that we are paying for the misery, while they are _being paid_."

"So true," Mateo replied.

"What is your final destination?" he asked after gauging Mateo's willingness to carry a conversation

Mateo had to think about his answer. He couldn't say anything about Salt Lake City, or Provo. He tried to remember which station was his last before midnight. It wasn't in Utah, this much he knew.

"I didn't know it was a trick question," the man said jokingly.

"No, sorry. It's Grand Junction, Colorado."

"Business or pleasure?"

Mateo breathed in deeply. "New life."

"Ah, interesting. Running from, or just running to?"

He tilted his head and thought this over for a second. He wasn't trying to get away from his family so much as he was trying to keep them away from him. And he had no real destination. His life was completely meaningless at this point. Part of life was dealing with the consequences of your actions day to day. But for him, each day was a pit stop before the next. There was no connection between them. He was in a constant state of flux. As a Catholic, he believed in hell, but had never trusted the depictions of it in art. It was at this moment that he realized what was really going on. This was his hell. If he died of old age, it wouldn't be for another tens of thousands of years. Would humans even still exist? Would he spend most of his time alone on the planet, statistically likely to skip over any disaster that might consume the population? He took another deep breath and exhaled. "Both."

"Well, I'm rooting for you. I hope you find what you're looking for."

"Thanks," Mateo said genuinely. The train finally started moving again. "What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a physicist. The name is Duke Andrews. I assume you don't have a career at the moment. What's your name?"

"Mateo." He smiled. "I don't have a last name anymore, though."

"Full commitment," Duke smiled back. "I respect that."

There was one more delay a little while later. All in all, they were almost nine hours behind schedule. He looked back at the map and determined that he would have to get off at the next train station in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. As he was double-checking his math, he could feel himself nodding off. His eyelids felt so phenomenally heavy. He couldn't keep them open. He couldn't remember how long it had been since he'd last slept; at least a couple years.

He jolted awake after what felt like only a few minutes.

"Welcome back to us," Duke said. He was holding a newspaper.

"Where are we?" Mateo asked in a panic.

"Don't worry. You haven't missed Grand Junction yet," Duke answered in a fairly comforting voice. "You can go back to sleep. I promise to wake you up."

"No, I made a mistake. I meant Glenwood Springs. I'm supposed to go to Glenwood Springs!" His voice woke up other people in the car, including a now crying baby.

"Oh, well you've missed that. But it's okay. You're starting a new life. Does it matter where? You won't be that far off course either way."

"What time is it?" Mateo pulled his sleeve back and looked at his watch. It was a couple minutes before the jump. "Oh my God. It's almost midnight."

"No, it's eleven o'clock."

"I mean a different midnight!"

Duke looked like he was about to tell Mateo to calm down, but he didn't get a chance. The train screeched to a halt. "We apologize once more," said the voice on the intercom. "We're not sure why the train stopped this time, but we are looking into the matter and will have you back on track in no time."

"I have to get off!" Mateo screamed.

"You won't be able to," Duke said. "We're on a bridge over the Colorado River."

"I'm still on the upper level!" He was making the rest of the car very nervous. He tried to pull his bag from under the seat, but it was stuck on something. He gave up on it and ran for the door. But it was too late. At midnight central time, he jumped forward. The train disappeared and he started to fall several feet, breaking his leg upon landing. He cried out in pain. He looked up and could see lights approaching. The year 2023 train was headed right for him.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Matter of Matter

March 30, 2023

Amidst the blaring of the oncoming train, he could hear someone in the distance screaming, "Leona! Get off!"

Mateo turned to find Leona Delaney racing towards him. "We have to go!" she cried. She took him by the shoulders.

"I can't move!"

"We have to jump off!"

Leona reached out, trying to get them to the edge of the bridge, but he tripped. His left leg refused to hold him up. The train was a few meters away, and he only had to crawl a few feet to clear it, but it was just too much for his body. He wanted Leona to get away without him, but even convincing her of that would take too long. Just before the train overcame them, he felt a third hand on his back.

Mateo fell to his back. The train was gone. The bridge was gone. The sky was gone. He was in a lecture hall of some kind. Between him and Leona was Aunt Daria.

"Oh my God," Mateo said, grasping his leg; the full force of the pain attacking him now that the adrenaline had gone down. "Daria? How did you find me?"

"I didn't," Daria replied. "I call that a slingshot. When I feel like someone is choking me, along with the dry mouth, I know that I'm only going to be at my next destination for a few seconds. That's usually how long I have to save someone's life. The _powers that be_ put me on those missions occasionally. The people I save always end up being senators or rock musicians. I've never been there for a family member. You must be pretty important to them."

"Who _are_ these people?"

"Couldn't tell you. But they must exist. It can't be random. The law of probability doesn't allow it."

Leona let him lean on her and started leading them out of the room. "We need to get you to a hospital. Foothills is under ten minutes away."

"How do you know that? Where are we?"

"We're in the Duane Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder. This is where I go to school. Which you would know if you hadn't abandoned us."

"How did _you_ find me?" Mateo asked after managing to get into the backseat of her car.

Leona pushed a button and started the car. "Boulder Medical Center. Foothills," she instructed the navigation system. "Emergency Entrance." The car backed out and started to drive on its own. "Cybil, call Carol."

There was a beep from the car, whose name was apparently Cybil. "Calling Carol," it—rather, _she_ said.

Mateo's mother's voice came from the speakers, "Leona, what happened?"

"We're fine. Daria pulled us out just in time. He's broken his leg, so we're headed to Foothills Hospital."

"We'll meet you there."

"Who's _we_?" Mateo asked after the call ended.

"My boss was there during your last jump, so he knew exactly where you would be," Leona answered while she inspected his leg. "Well... _almost_ exactly."

"Your boss?"

"Professor Andrews. He actually saw you disappear, along with several other people in the car. They were pretty freaked out about it. Some people were worried about terrorism, but you fortunately never gave your identification, so there was no real proof that you were still on the train during that leg of the trip...pardon the pun."

"And you just happened to start grad school at the same college as the guy I talked to on the train to Utah?"

"Duke snatched your bag secretly, and tracked us down. It's been a year, remember? We got to know each other, and he put in a recommendation for me. I'm one of his teaching assistants. In the meantime, we discuss what's happening with you."

"What have you figured out?"

"Just about jack shit."

"Language!"

"I'm not fifteen years old anymore. Anyway, back to the subject, we did design a special machine that should give us some data that you couldn't have gotten from a regular ol' hospital back in Topeka. Our main concern is determining what happens to the space around you when you disappear, and what happens to the space when you come back. Our current observations don't make a whole lot of sense. I've seen first hand that Daria can take people with her, but you can't. What exactly is the difference between hugging another person, and holding onto a bag, or even your clothes?"

"Well, my father was alive at the time. So that was a difference."

"Physics doesn't care whether you're a living organism or not. It's all just a matter of matter." She leaned over and gave him a passionate but rather conservative kiss. "But I care." Then she slapped him. "Don't you ever run away from me again. Do you hear me?"

"My God, you've really grown up."

"You've been dealing with this for less than two weeks while the rest of us are living in real time. Your entire life is consumed by this. But for me, it's Tuesday."

"It's Thursday," Daria piped in.

"Never mind. We're here."

A couple hours later, Mateo watched in amazement as a 3D printer formed a cast designed to fit his leg perfectly. It looked like nothing he had seen before. It wasn't completely closed, but a web of plastic connections, almost like fishnet stockings. If Spiderman ever got hurt, this was the cast he would wear. Once it was finished, he put his pants on over it, and you couldn't even tell that it was there. The nurse tried to give him medication for the pain, but Professor Duke Andrews walked in just in time to stop her. "Sorry, Mateo," he said. "But the cast is bad enough. I can't have these drugs interfering with our experiment."

"Sir, I do not know who you are, but this is a medical decision..." Duke pulled her aside to talk her out of causing problems. Carol came over and gave him a hug.

"Are you going to slap me too?" he asked of her.

Carol turned to Leona. "Did you slap my son?"

"I admit to nothing."

Daria stood up and took charge. "My nephew needs to get some sleep. I suggest we go back to wherever it is you people live so that he can rest."

"I need to run some tests before he disappears," Duke complained.

"And you will get your chance. You have over twenty hours left. But for now, let's go. Someone needs to deal with the discharge papers." She physically ushered them out of the room so that only she and Mateo remained.

"I think I would have liked you as an aunt. Whatever the motives of these people, the... _powers that be_ , they better be worth me losing three of my parents and you."

"That brings me to the second reason I'm back." She took something out of her pocket and handed it to him. It looked not unlike a flash drive, but it definitely wasn't that.

"Computers use these nowadays?"

She coughed. "The way I understand it, the technology required to access this device won't exist for another couple centuries, or was it millennia?"

"I thought you weren't a time traveler."

She smiled lovingly and took a drink of water from his cup. "I'm not. But I've met those that are."

"Daria," he started to say.

"I don't know you. But I love you." With that, she disappeared.

Mateo went back to his mother's new Colorado house and slept the rest of the day away in a bed designated for him. They woke him up that night and drove him back to the university. Duke took blood samples, saliva samples, and _other_ samples. As midnight approached, they had him lie in a machine that looked like the glass coffin from the story of Snow White.

"The machine is going to run nonstop for the entire year," Duke explained to him. I imagine the data during that time will provide us with zero insight, but we're doing it anyway. We'll see you later."

Both his mom and Leona told him that they loved him. Then midnight.
Seeing is Becoming

Garage Door

Vearden Haywood was getting ready to leave his house in Oklahoma. Four thousand miles away, Saga Einarsson was trekking through the rainforests of the Amazon. They had not seen each other since college. Saga didn't even have a social media presence, so Vearden had no idea that she was a traveling photographer. While he was brushing his teeth and making sure that his cell phone was charged all the way, Saga felt a tremor. She looked around for shelter, but found nothing. It ended quickly, and she looked ahead again. Things had changed. Her environment looked remarkably different. She was still in the rainforest, but the arrangement of trees and flowers had been altered. Did she lose time, or was she just going crazy? There was a roar behind her, and she began to run.

Vearden looked at himself in the mirror with the feeling of apathy and a bit of nausea. He didn't want to go. He stood there, staring into space for a few moments, before sitting down on the couch and flipping on his TV. He had recently cleared out his recordings so there was nothing to watch but the late morning trash. He eventually just fell asleep from the depression.

His phone woke him up hours later. He grabbed it and answered, "yeah?—Yeah, I know.—I could lie and say that I thought it was tomorrow, but I just wasn't in the mood.—Probably won't be in the mood tomorrow, no.—You would _not_ do that.—Okay, fine. I'll be there, I promise...in two days.—All right, tomorrow morning. First thing." He growled and let his phone fall back to the nightstand. It was only then that he realized he was in his bed instead of the couch. How did he get there?

The next day, Vearden completed his routine and made it out to the garage. He breathed in deeply but held most of it in; letting air out little by little. He haphazardly slapped the door opener several times before finally getting lucky. As he began to walk around the back of the car to get to the driver's side door, he saw the outside. It was not his driveway. It was some kind of wooded area. He looked behind him through the glass on the door to the backyard. That all looked normal, but in front of him was a different place entirely.

He cautiously dipped his feet across the border. It didn't feel any different; as if that was just how it was supposed to be. He slowly made progress until he was fully past the line. He looked back. His house was nowhere to be seen, except for the garage, and the frame around it. He dropped his bag to the ground and began to explore the immediate area. He was able to touch the leaves and feel the breeze on his face. So, it wasn't just a visual hallucination. It was most likely a dream. He didn't technically remember waking up, but that was old news. His brain made a point of erasing the memories of monotony.

While he was watching a flying insect that resembled a bee, he started to hear screaming. He looked up and saw a woman racing towards him. She stopped for a half second when she saw him up ahead. "Don't let the door close!"

"What?"

"Make sure the door stays open!" she called up to him.

Then he saw what she was running from. A large creature was chasing her. It was nearly three meters tall, muscular, and angry. Just as Vearden was looking for a sturdy stick to use as a weapon, the creature caught up with the woman who only now he recognized as his old college roommate. Maybe this was all real. Maybe they had fallen into another dimension. Maybe this was happening all over the world. Saga fought back hard, managing to keep the creature at bay. Vearden ran up on and instinct and joined in. Together, they were able to knock the creature to its back. "Get to my house. Go all the way into the kitchen."

"If your door closes, we'll be trapped here forever."

There was a howl in the distance. The creature on the ground howled back to it. They were clearly intelligent enough to communicate with each other. "Then you better get going," Vearden told her.

While Saga was running for the door, they could hear it begin to close on its own. Whatever had brought them there wanted them to stay. Vearden collided with the creature, which fought under strategy and patience. Even though it didn't seem to say anything, it was thinking through its actions. _Creature_ wasn't a very good name for it, as it even carried a sheathed sword. He continued to punch and kick at it. He had never received any formal combat training, so he was just trying to keep as much distance between them as possible.

He got a few opportunities to look over to his house. He could see Saga straining to hold the garage door open. There was a sensor that kept it from hitting you in the head, but that was being overridden. "Just get inside!" he yelled to her.

"I can't do that!"

"Either we both die, or just me! Please!"

As he continued to lose his fight with the creature, she continued to lose her fight with the door. He could only see her legs, and then just her feet. And then the door was all the way down. He could still see her through the little windows, pounding and screaming, trying to get the door back open. But it was slowly fading away. It would soon be gone, and he would be trapped in whatever hell this was. But at least she was safe.

The creature's friend appeared through the trees, causing him to take his eyes off of the first one for a moment. It took its chance to stab him in the stomach.

"No!" Saga cried from inside the garage, her voice growing fainter as she held the word.

Knowing that his wound was fatal anyway, he decided to cause as much damage as he could muster. He shoved the sword deeper in so that it came out of his back. He twisted around and slit the creature's stomach open. Then he jumped backwards and crashed into the second creature, stabbing it so they were both on a skewer. He fell to the ground on top of it. The first one was approaching him, his wound closing up quickly. Apparently they had a healing factor. That's perfect. Vearden struggled to the pull the sword out of the other creature's stomach, and then out of his own. He released it just in time to trip the first creature and let it fall on the sword. He was in a creature sandwich, their blood mixing together throughout their three wounds.

He gathered all the strength he had left and rolled it off of his body. They were already starting to heal again. He swung the sword behind him like a baseball bat, and cut off their heads, hoping that they would not be able to survive that level of trauma.

Saga ran up just in time to watch Vearden's wound close up, leaving not so much as a scar. "You heal like they do," she said

"You were supposed to be inside."

"I _was_ inside. When it disappeared, it left me behind. Someone _wants_ us here."

And where might that be?"

"Another planet."
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Lots of Samples

March 31, 3118

Everything changed. Mateo was no longer in the Snow White coffin. Instead, he found himself on a comfortable bed inside of a larger dome. There was no discernable way out of the dome. He looked around for a seam, and banged on the glass, but it was useless. Around the dome were machines and other instruments. The rest of the room was empty, except for a man who was staring at him without a hint of surprise. "Welcome back, sir."

"What is this? Where am I?"

"You're safe. We need to keep you in there or you'll be contaminated. We built this facility around your jumpsite so that you would never breathe the open air."

"What year is this?"

"Thirty-one-eighteen."

"No, that's not right," Mateo reasoned. "It should be 2024."

"It _should_ be, yes. But it isn't. The machine that the old scientist had you in disrupted your pattern, and threw you here. And it's a good thing it did."

"Why is that?"

"You are very special to us. Your genes are the key to the revival of the human race. You are to become the father of a multitude."

"Why can't _you_ do it?"

"I am not biological. And even if I were, I would already be contaminated. Everyone is. The few living humans are incapable of reproducing. You're the first pristine person we've encountered in decades."

"And you knew I was coming?"

"You told us."

Mateo nodded. "That makes no sense."

"You helped us build this place," the man explained. "Yesterday."

"If you've already met me, then why didn't the other me help you with your virus problem?"

The apparently non-human laughed. "That version of you was contaminated, along with everyone else. After today, you will travel back to your time period, and then you will resume your pattern. Centuries later, you will jump into a year after the virus is first released, and it will infect you."

"But it won't kill me?"

He shook his head. "That's not what the virus does."

Mateo sighed. "What do you need from me? _This_ me?"

"Samples. Lots of samples."

Mateo let the machines run tests and take samples from him, partly because he didn't feel like he had a choice, but also because if there was even a slight chance for him to save humanity, he couldn't risk refusing. They needed a lot more than Professor Andrews had. He was feeling a bit violated, honestly, especially since they at one point gave him anesthetic and took some of his seed. But he learned a little bit more about how the world had been developing. Biological humans were a dying race. The man was hesitant to tell him too much, including how the infection began. They were worried about him going back and altering the timeline. He could make things better, or he could make things worse. There were too many variables to count, and even a nanite transhuman was incapable of accounting for all of them. The dangers of time travel. But if that were true, how were the _powers that be_ justifying their intervention in the timeline? Once the machines were finished, and the samples had been safely taken out of the enclosure, Mateo took a much needed nap.

He must have dreamt of it, because when he awoke, he remembered the device that Daria had given him yesterday. The man scanned it with his high tech robot eyes and nodded. "I could read that easily, but not from out here." He waved his hand at the dome. "You actually have everything you need in there, but you would need to build the interface from parts."

"Teach me," Mateo asked.

And so the man went about giving him instructions. He had him strip parts from machines they no longer needed, and haphazardly put them together. He even had to use a sort of soldering tool to mold the pieces. Finally, he had what he needed. He inserted the device and let it play.

A video automatically came up on the screen. On it was a man he didn't recognize. He had a sinister smile on his face. "Mateo Matic. The Transient Hero of Earth. You've not yet met me, but I know you. I've been scouring the timeline, looking for when I could be rid of you before you cause me so many troubles. I've been trying to kill you for, well...days. But something always protects you. The _powers that be_ are more protective of you than any other salmon. But I found a loophole. I set in place a series of events that eventually led to your dear aunt Daria giving you this device. It took me a long time, but we're finally here." He took a drink from something and slammed it back down on the table. "You're done! And you haven't even started!" The machine exploded.

Mateo was thrown into the other side of the dome, but remained conscious. The fire began to consume the bed, and the oxygen was quickly being ripped out of his lungs. He banged on the glass again, and begged the man to let him out.

He just looked back at him in horror. "I can't let you leave. If you become contaminated, you'll carry the virus back to the past and make things even worse."

"But if I die in here, then I can't go back, which means I can't return using my regular pattern, which means that I'll never help you build the dome in the first place!"

"I have to trust that you won't die," the man responded. "But I can do nothing from out here. My hands are tied."

He looked for a way to snuff out the flames. They had left some drinking water for him, but it wasn't nearly enough to put the fire out. He opened every bottle and started drenching himself with it. The explosion had compromised the integrity of the dome, but the weakest points were very clearly on the other side of the fire. He grabbed some kind of large instrument, then jumped onto a cart. He slammed the instrument into the glass. It didn't shatter, but it opened up enough for him to escape. He fells to the floor on the other side and began to crawl. There were tons of cuts and second degree burns on his body. He reached out, hoping to receive some help from the robot man.

But the robot man made no move towards him. He stared at him stoically, like he was weighing his options. "I'm sorry."

"Please. Help!"

"I can't let you go back to 2025. The virus is bad enough in our time, but we have technology, the human race _will_ survive. We might be different. We may even be unrecognizable. If there is no cure in your uncontaminated blood, we will still find a way to keep going. But we would never survive an early 21st century pandemic." He started to walk away.

Mateo struggled through the blood in his throat. "Wait, just wait. I'm the cure, right? Well...I _was_ the cure. So, cure me with my old blood."

"We don't know how long it's going to take to develop a cure, or even if there is one. You may be fruitless for us. And we can't risk losing what few samples you gave us by returning some of it to you on blind faith. I'm very sorry, but your journey is over."

"But if I don't survive, I can't go back to 2025. We just went over this. You need me to build the dome whether I've been infected or not."

"The past can be changed; this much we've uncovered. But if it were going to change, it would have already done so from our perspective. As soon as you broke out of the dome, your future—our past—was altered. Yet the dome was still constructed. I don't know how, but it's there. Someone must have built it just the same. I'm made out of nanites. I can shift into any shape I choose. Perhaps the man who helped me build it was never you at all, but an imposter."

"Don't do this," Mateo begged, then coughed up a little blood.

Before the man could say anything else, one of the walls lit up and turned into a video screen. The man from the message before was back again. "Did you think that that explosion was meant to kill you? That was just the primer. Now it's time to paint this room red." He let out an evil laugh.

Mateo prepared himself for another explosion, but yet another man appeared out of nowhere, took him by the shoulders, and jumped them both out of there.

Hours later, Mateo woke up again. He was on a bed of leaves and grass in the dark, but the moon was bright and seemed larger. A teeny tiny dinosaur that looked like a triceratops hopped around nearby. His wounds had been treated with some kind of high-tech liquid bandage. He rolled onto his side and looked around. The man who had taken him out of danger was holding a musket and keeping watch for danger. "Hello?"

The man turned around, but his face remained obstructed by shadows. "How are you feeling?"

"Alive."

"Alive, and in the Cretaceous period. Great story for your kids."

"You slungshot me through time, like my aunt."

He tilted his head. "I don't think _sling_ is a verb."

"What's your name?"

The man looked at his watch. "It's almost midnight."

"I can't know the name of the man who saved my life?"

He dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. "It's my job."

"No, it isn't. You could quit. Eventually the _powers that be_ would give up on you."

"You're just as tenacious as your mother." The man stepped closer and showed himself by the moonlight.

"Oh my God. You look like me." It was his father, Mario. Midnight came.
Seeing is Becoming

For Food and Raiment

"How do you know that we're on another planet?" Vearden asked.

"Don't you feel lighter?" Saga asked in return.

"Yes."

"Either the wormhole creates some sort of gravity disturbance, or we're experiencing the pull of a different planet entirely."

"I thought you were a photographer."

"I am. I'm one of those smart photographers you hear about."

"Well, what made you think that closing the door would cause it to disappear?"

"You're not the first person I've encountered here. A couple others have shown up, but they've all been killed by those _things_ , except for one guy who managed to get back inside his door."

"It sounds like they were mistakes. The people controlling this were probably looking for me, but found other people accidentally instead."

"Not a bad assumption, but why is either of us here?" There was a howl in the distance. Saga closed her eyes in frustration. "They never stop coming. I lose them for an hour or two, but either the one chasing me finds me again, or another one. It feels like a sport to them. I literally haven't slept in over a day."

Vearden nodded then went over to pull the sword out of the ground. "Let's go find a cave or something."

It didn't take them too long to find shelter in a recess on the side of a mountain. While Saga got some much needed rest, Vearden stood watch.

Night came and went. "How long have I been out?" Saga rubbed her eyes and yawned.

He looked at his empty wrist. "Over twelve hours, I would imagine."

"You've been up this whole time? Why didn't you wake me?"

"For obvious reasons. Where were you when they brought you here?" They spent a few minutes catching up with each other. She had done with her life what she promised she would. After interning at a nature magazine for a while, she made a name for herself and was given the freedom to travel pretty much anywhere she wanted, taking photos of whatever she wanted. He, on the other hand, didn't do one thing right since graduating from university. He should have read the signs and not gone for a degree in journalism. There weren't any jobs out there. He tried starting his own blog a few times, and finding other online sources to work for, but nothing came of it. He had spent the last several years finding nothing but temp positions and other jobs with no security. He hadn't worked at the same place for longer than eleven months since high school. Before falling through the wormhole—or whatever it was—he was on his way to a summer camp. The deal was that he would have a job as a counselor if he went through the program once beforehand, to see what it was like. His younger sister had worked it out with a friend of hers, but Vearden was always disappointing her. It was ironic that, after finally being determined to follow through this one time, he was unable to for reasons that were legitimately out of his control.

"What do you think we should do?" he asked of her.

"I've gotten enough sleep, but I haven't eaten in awhile," Saga replied. "It'll take us 24 hours to run edibility tests on anything we find here."

He opened his bag. "I have some food with me." He pulled out one of those boxed lunches that were designed for kids, a single serving of yogurt, a can of vienna sausage, a piece of pie from a fast food restaurant, two half-filled bottles of water, and a loaf of bread with four or five slices left.

"What the hell is this?" she asked. She sorted through the food. "What is this strange medley of random items? Did you just open the cupboard with your eyes closed and brush down everything in the first row?"

"That's ridiculous." He pulled out a slice of bread and started eating the crust first. "I would never put vienna sausage and bread on the same row."

She shook her head. "What happened to you, man?"

He shook back. "Nothing happened. A great big pile of _nothing_."

She ate the sausage and boxed lunch. He offered her the yogurt, but she couldn't make out the expiration date, and she wasn't going to risk it; not when it was coming from him. He was a stranger to her now."

Just when they were starting to feel energized and comfortable, they heard a ruckus above them on the mountain. Men were shouting to each other and banging on the rock. There was also this sort of zipping sound, and they were getting closer. All of the sudden, a figure appeared from above, holding onto a rope, and stopped when it saw them. They were staring into the eyes of a humanoid alien. It was covered in fur, except for the head. The eyes were big and bulging. What skin was showing was tightly wrinkled into neat and straight folds. All of its teeth came to a point, like canines. They were markedly different than the intelligent creatures that had given chase before. Despite its superficial features, it looked kind and honest. They assumed it to be male. He tilted his head inquisitively and tried to speak to them in a foreign tongue.

"Sorry," Saga said. "We don't understand."

He leaned his head back but kept his eye on them before calling out to one of his mates. Another alien swung over with his own rope and looked at them with the same curiosity. The two of them talked to each other in their own language. Of course, Saga and Vearden still couldn't understand them, but it didn't seem like they were planning on eating them, or hurting them at all, for that matter. Once they had come to some kind of conclusion, the second alien addressed them, "human."

Vearden nodded his head. "Yes."

The aliens nodded their heads and smiled, apparently proud of themselves for having guessed correctly. They each cupped one hand upwards and pulled it towards their chests, indicating that they wanted the humans to come with them. Vearden and Saga obliged, because what else were they going to do?

As they stepped out from under the rocks, they could see other aliens repelling down the side of the mountain. Some ignored the newcomers, but others smiled and waved. One called out to them in what sounded like Chinese, and unlike their own language. They were probably not the first humans to have traveled there if enough of them were familiar with two of Earth's languages.

Once they reached the bottom of the mountain, they gathered in a crowd. The first two aliens—which, come to think of it, weren't the aliens since this was _their_ planet—appeared to be introducing the visitors. A third _native_ walked through the group and took command, giving the others formal instructions. Afterwards, he pulled the humans aside so that they could speak privately. "My friend over there tells me that he smells Gondilak blood in you."

Vearden looked down at his belly. He had changed into his spare shirt, and since the wound had closed up, there was no evidence of the struggle. "Yes. I was... _contaminated_ by something; must have been a Gondilak. They attacked us, and stabbed me. I was forced to kill them, but some of their blood leaked into me, so I guess that's why I healed so quickly?"

"You killed a Gondilak?"

"Two of them."

" _Two_ of them. Impressive. We've not seen a human do that before."

"What are they?" Saga asked.

"Not important," the native replied. "Not anymore. Not now that you're here with us." He patted them both on the back. "Come. We will take you to the city so that you can change into visitor garbs and sample our victuals."

"You're not going to hurt us?"

"No," the native laughed. "Not yet."
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

It Just Keeps Crawling

April 1, 2025

Mateo was under the impression that when he returned to his regular pattern, he would find himself back in the Snow White coffin; under automatic quarantine. But he was wrong. He was standing up, but it was pitch black, so he had no idea where he was. He could be thousands of miles from home for all he knew. His father was quite obviously a time traveler, but they had jumped through so many years that there was no way to know whether they had also moved through space or not. He waved his arms around, looking for a lightswitch, but accidentally knocked a glass off of the counter.

When the light came on, the room looked familiar. He was almost completely certain that he was in his mother's new house in Colorado. He turned around and found confirmation. His mother, Carol was standing in front of him. He tried to get away from her, but she quickly wrapped her arms around him.

"Mateo, you're back! My God, what happened to you?"

He pulled himself away from her. "We both need to be quarantined. Separately."

"What are you talking about?"

"I've been infected with a virus of some kind. I've probably already passed it on to you, but we have to try."

She stared at him for a few seconds before showing determination. "Get into the room at the top of the stairs and to the left." She left for her own room. "I'll call Duke. He'll know how to do this."

Professor Duke Andrews came over with Leona. Together, they constructed barriers with plastic sheeting. It freaked him out a little. He knew it was for everyone's protection, but there was a television character years back who would build rooms like this in order to kill people without leaving evidence.

Once they were all finished, Leona came back in with her hazmat suit. "I'll need to take more samples." She got to work.

"Leona."

She looked annoyed with him.

"I didn't run away this time. I was thrown into the future. That's where I got this virus." He waited for a reply but nothing came. "Leona, I'm sorry."

"Tell me what happened," she finally said.

He went about explaining everything he went through in 3118; from the dome to the robot, to the self-destructing message, to his father. She then relayed the information to Duke and his mother.

She shook her head. "The files were corrupted. We received almost no data from the machine, except for a series of unfinished equations regarding hyperspheres. But we didn't think that meant it did something _to_ you. When you didn't come back a year later, we thought...we figured that you were dead."

"I'm here now."

She stopped working for a second and looked him in the eye. "Yeah, but for how long. I've always known, but with each passing year it sinks in more that you and I are destined for failure."

"Well, maybe we can stop it. Tell me about the data. What's a hypersphere?"

"We believe that the _powers that be_ exist within five dimensional space. That allows them to see time all at once," she explained. "Or so we think. Like I said, we didn't get much from it. Which makes sense now that we know the way it disrupted your—what did he call it— _pattern_?"

"How would someone be able to see time all at once?"

"Imagine a beetle, crawling on the ground," she began. "You pick up that beetle with a sheet of paper, and you carry it somewhere else; maybe hundreds of miles away. You set the beetle down, and what does it do? It just keeps crawling. It knows it's moved, but that doesn't matter. It has no choice but to keep going with its biological imperatives: to find food, and a mate. That's what the _powers that be_ are doing with you, your aunt, and your father. They're picking you up and setting you down somewhere else. The difference is, since they see time from an outside perspective, they can move you back and forth within the timestream."

"So we're just game pieces to them? Moving us around on a board. For what reason?"

"If these people have any motivations, they would be so far beyond our comprehension that no analogy would sufficiently account for them. Again, it would be like the beetle trying to guess _why_ you moved it from its original spot."

Mateo nodded, knowing that if Leona couldn't fully understand what was going on, there was no way for him to. He would have to surrender to the idea that this was his life now. There was nothing he could do about. Trying to figure it out would be impossible without access to the people controlling it. He decided to change the subject, "hold on. Is it April first?"

"It is, why?"

"Happy birthday."

"That is yet to be determined."

"Come on, don't be like that. It's gonna be okay."

Professor Andrews entered the room without protection and directed Leona to stick Mateo back behind the zipper. "He needs to stay in there, but it's pointless for you to wear that. We've all been exposed."

"Leona took off her headgear. "What's that now?"

"It's a quick little bugger. It began spreading through the air as soon as Mateo arrived."

"Oh my God," Mateo said. "I'm here to destroy the world."

"I don't think that it will destroy the world," Duke argued.

"The robot in the future called it a pandemic."

"Yes," he agreed, "you are a surprisingly effective delivery system. Whoever designed this thing had access to genetic data that we are nowhere near achieving. But my guess is that it was deployed on a massive scale, using some kind of weapon. You're just one guy, and the virus has almost certainly mutated since then."

"Mutations should be worse," Leona said. "If anything, the strongest attributes have survived while weaknesses were stripped away."

"Normally that would be true, yes, but you said that this was first created decades before your arrival?"

"That's what the robot claimed," Mateo confirmed. "He played it pretty close to the chest."

"Like I said, this was designed with a very specific purpose," Duke continued. "It was likely extremely aggressive on the outset. But once everyone was infected with it, the virus no longer had a purpose. There were no more hosts to attack; no more cells to hijack. But it didn't die. So, it just sat there, quietly and slowly degrading and losing some of its attributes."

"Are you saying that the virus would have eventually just disappeared?" Leona asked. "It seems like they would know that, and didn't have to bother with Mateo."

"They needed a cure for the virus because it caused infertility. If it ever died off—and I can't be sure that it would, without more data—humanity might have died off with it."

"Please tell me you're saying that it's less dangerous to us," Mateo begged.

"We have made great strides in medical technology since you've been gone, my young friend. It cannot yet predict the future, but it can come damn close. I suspect that the world's gonna get sick. But it _will_ survive. You have not destroyed us."

He remained behind quarantine for the remainder of the day, but the four of them still celebrated Leona's 25th birthday together. Andrews was correct that the virus Mateo introduced did not destroy the world. As it turned out, it spread like a flu. A heavy majority of the population showed fever, sweating, cold flashes, and a loss of appetite as symptoms. But nobody became infertile as a result. In fact, Duke hypothesized that Mateo had immunized the entire human population so that, if it were ever to be created in the future, it would do little to no harm. Only a single person died from the infection; Mateo's mother. He shouldn't have hugged her.
Salmon Doctor

There is an unknown number of people in the world, being moved throughout time and space, each with their own missions to carry out. One such of these people is a medical doctor by the name of Baxter Sarka. Born in the 47th century, he was first pushed back to the year 1926. He was met there by the middle management of salmon, one whose responsibility it was to set other travelers on their respective courses; and to ensure that they stay on task. Every salmon will, at some early point in their journey, meet this manager, and he will point them in the right direction. Likewise, every salmon will run into some medical issue at least once. If contemporary medical assistance is not possible, or logistically impractical, Dr. Sarka will be deployed to provide treatment. He carries with him a bag of highly advanced medical paraphernalia, capable of treating virtually any injury or condition. Rather, he carries an empty bag that automatically supplies him with whatever he's allowed to use to treat a given patient. Upon meeting him, the manager gave him a pager of sorts that he referred to as the scheduler. On it are his upcoming appointments, including dates and other pertinent information. Despite having no foreknowledge of salmon, or any other form of time travel, Dr. Sarka took to his mission immediately. It was his instinct to help those in need, whether they lived in the past, or otherwise. Due to all the time travel, it's unclear how long he's been doing this, but it's been years, at least.
Seeing is Becoming

Champions

What the last Orothsew native had said to them was more of a joke than a threat. But it was still partly true. The first thing they did was take baths and change into new clothes that resembled Ancient Greek togas, but were a little bit more form-fitting. They were led to a great hall full of delicacies. Each food they tried resembled, in more ways than one, something from Earth. The grape-looking fruit tasted somewhat like grapes. The pinkish meat with white veins tasted remarkably like ham. The bread tasted exactly the same. Saga voiced her concerns about edibility, but the natives assured her that many a human had sampled the food, and there had been no problems.

"How many of us have you encountered?" Vearden asked during lunch.

Their liaison, Fanelius, put down his drumstick and wiped his mouth with a napkin. He was assigned to answer questions and keep them safe. "Over the centuries? A few hundred, I would estimate. They don't all come from the same time. There doesn't seem to be a temporal link between the other planets and ours. An Earthling will show up from the 20th century, and then another from the 17th. We know very little of how it works, and none of them has a clue."

"But aliens from other planets, besides Earth, also appear?"

"Yes, it happens quite often, actually," Fanelius said with excitement. "It would seem as we are some kind of focal point for spontaneous space travel. People from all over the universe come and go on a daily basis, but none of them report such a high degree of visitors to their home worlds."

"You say they come and go? At some point, do they just disappear again?" Saga asked.

"Yes, as soon as they complete their mission. Sometimes they know exactly what they're supposed to do, like it's just their jobs to travel around, and they've been given instructions. Others need to use their instincts. One thing we've learned, though, is that each visitor who spends their time only trying to leave, never succeeds. Several of them have died here, never having discovered their purpose." Fanelius said that with a purely intellectual tone, but Saga and Vearden couldn't help but interpret it as a warning. They weren't going home, unless someone else decided that they were allowed to.

"Even if we _did_ get back," Saga began once they were left alone for a period of time, "what year would it be? It could be 2004, or it could be 4666. What year is it right now? How long does it take to travel across space? To us, it felt instant, but maybe that was an illusion. Maybe we've been gone for thousands of years!"

"Yes, that may be. But what do you want me to do? Not hope we find our way back? We have to keep going either way."

"No I know, Vearden. I'm just...trying to get things straight."

He took her hands in his and looked into her eyes. "I promise you this, Saga. If we never get home, or if we do, we will always stick together. We will get through this... _together_."

That gave her some comfort, until later that day when they were headed for the capital and they were ambushed by the Gondilak. Saga survived, mostly unscathed, but Vearden was captured. A native who also survived the attack took her to the capital to speak with the Magistrate.

"Did they head North, or East?" he asked.

"I was knocked out cold," the fellow survivor admitted.

"If by East, you mean away from the setting sun, then it was that."

"That's promising," the Magistrate said. "He may be alive yet."

"What are they going to do to him?"

"If he's the one who somehow inherited their healing abilities, then they will experiment with him, and test his limits."

"We have to get him out of there," Saga pleaded. "Please. I know that to you we are nothing but humans, but he's important to me. There must be _something_ that we can do."

"We already know that you two are important," the Magistrate said, surprised that she would feel the need to beg. "You were already scheduled to come here. Another human told us that you would, and said that we must conscript you into our army."

"What?"

"You were being brought to me because you are our new Champions. We need you to lead us so that this war may finally end."

"I see."

"You will have the full force of Orothsewan resources at your disposal so that you can return to us your partner."
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

About Three Years

April 2, 2026

As soon as Mateo jumped back into the timestream, Leona was ready with a needle. She injected him with a substance that she claimed to not know, but that would apparently clean his system of the virus for good. He began to feel sick during the car ride, but they had a bag ready for him. He was sweaty and dizzy, but was still able to understand as they told him about how the virus that he brought back from the future spread throughout the entire world. Almost everyone showed symptoms at some point, and to some degree, but they only ever lasted for a few days. His mother was the only one who died from it, presumably because she made skin-to-skin contact with Mateo. He was responsible for the deaths of both of his parents, and he couldn't tell whether the vomit was from that guilt, or because of the injection.

The car drove them up to a small airport where they got into a private jet that evidently belonged to a close friend of Duke's who owed him a favor. He spent the next few hours vomiting, shaking, and sleeping. He had nightmares about what his mother must have gone through, and was grateful for having been given the gift of feeling a fraction of that pain. They first took him to Leona's father's home in Topeka. He wanted to go straight to the cemetery to pay his respects to his mother, but they refused. He was in no position to argue, especially not after passing out on Leona's bed.

When he woke up, he was still sweating the toxins out, but he felt much better. It was fairly late in the evening. A young boy was staring at him at the foot of the bed. "Are you doing okay?" the boy asked.

"You must be Theo. All grown up."

"Not grown up enough," Theo sighed. "I am sorry about your mother. She was a fine lady, and I wish I could have known her when I was more myself."

"How are you not now yourself?"

"I'm getting there," Theo admitted. "But I still need a little more time. The memories are returning quicker now. Soon, I shall have them all back."

"How did you lose your memory?"

"I died," he answered mysteriously before standing up. "Come on. It's near time to go see your family."

"All right." Not feeling up to pursuing a line of questioning, Mateo got out of bed, took a shower, and followed everyone to the cars.

Duke, Leona, her little brother, her father, and her stepmother all stood in front of the graves of Carol and Randall Gelen. There was another man there too. When Mateo asked Leona who he was, she explained that he was a doctor, and had treated Carol while she struggled with the virus. Each of his friends spoke words of kindness about his parents. He was surprised to find out how close Carol had gotten with Leona's parents. He was missing a lot, and was growing more frustrated by the fact every day. He chose to not say anything about them, preferring to keep it all to himself. But it wasn't much. He didn't know what to think. For the first time in his life, he was seriously considering killing himself. The main thing that stopped him was the likelihood that the _powers that be_ would not allow it to happen. They were going to force him to watch everyone he loved die. What he did wrong to deserve this curse, he couldn't say for sure.

While the crowd headed for the cars, he remained behind to be alone. He desperately wanted to pray, but he was losing his faith, and the part of him that doubted the existence of God was presently winning. Instead, after only a few moments, he stood up and turned around. But he was no longer in the cemetery. He was in a different one. He was in the small graveyard outside the city's borders. Everyone was gone; everyone, except for little Theo Delaney. "What just happened?" He looked around. "Daria!"

"She's not here," Theo said.

"How did we get here then?"

"You needed to be here." He pointed behind Mateo's back. "And so did they."

Mateo turned back around and saw that his parents' graves were still there. They had been moved here to the other cemetery. "But why?"

Theo smiled. "This place is for us. It's for salmon. But, I suppose the _powers that be_ made two exceptions. You must be pretty important to them if they allowed your parents to be laid to rest here."

"Why are we called salmon? Daria never said."

He sported a devious but likeable smile. "Because we're going the wrong way."

"Aren't you a little young to have a pattern? Leona hasn't so much as hinted that you're one of us."

"Leona has been keeping a lot from you, but of this she knows nothing. Right now I don't have a pattern. Before I died, I was moving forwards in time according to the Fibonacci sequence."

"You died and came back to life?"

"As Theo Delaney, yes. Like I said, I have to regain my memories. I don't remember everything yet, but I remember dying." He paused for a bit. "And I remember your birth mother."

"You knew her? When?"

"We were... _friends_ , for a long time. At different times." He nodded his head. "She's over there."

Mateo looked to where he was indicating. He saw two small gravestones buried deep in the ground that were not there before. He knew this for a fact, because the markers were older than he had ever seen. "Laurel and Samuel. 1744. You're telling me this is my mother, Lauren?"

"Yeah, she used different names for different jumps. We spend a lot more time in one place than you do. And we don't get a choice."

He fumed. "Will I ever see her again?"

"It's not likely. Her and her boyfriend's pattern is to go back in time in a geometric progression with a ratio of two. One year, two years, four, eight, etcetera. My records suggest that she survived her death, like me, and continued backwards. I have no idea how you would encounter her again. But you know what they say...stranger things have happened. For instance, this graveyard. It doesn't exist just outside of Topeka. It doesn't exist _anywhere_. It moves to when and where it's needed; a sanctuary for us when we are at our worst. So, you see, Mateo, you were born a salmon. Even before your 28th birthday, you were part of the plan. That's why the graveyard has always been there for you."

The doctor from the other cemetery appeared. "Teddy? Is that you? Why didn't you tell me who you were?"

"Dr. Sarka," Theo said with a smile. "They let you come back here? No one is hurt, far as I know."

The doctor pulled out a device from his pocket and looked over it. "I'm here for a consult with a...Mateo Matic." He looked up. "That's you."

What the hell was going on? "A consult for what?"

"Kidney transplantation."

"My kidneys are fine."

"Yes, exactly. You're a donor."

"I never agreed to that."

Theo looked like he finally understood. "You'll agree to this one."

"Why? Who is it for?"

The doctor scrolled through his device. "I don't have that information at this time. I just need some samples now that you've had time to push the virus out of your system."

"I do know," Theo said. "It's for my sister. She is very ill, and has been waiting for a kidney for about three years. They can make certain organs with 3D printers, but kidneys are extremely complicated, very expensive, and at the highest demand."

"How do we even know I'm a match?"

"I wouldn't have been sent here if you weren't. My machines probably checked your compatibility in the cretaceous period while I was stitching you up from the explosion, but I don't see that data until the _powers that be_ disclose it. _Need to know_ , and all that."

"So you're a salmon too?"

The doctor laughed. "Yes, I am, though I've always disliked the term. Salmon don't "go the wrong way". They just swim upstream sometimes. Anyway, I'm the resident doctor. They send me in when one of the others gets hurt."

"What about when I broke my leg?"

He shook his head. "I wasn't vital. I'm sure whatever treatment you received for that injury was good enough. I only go where I'm needed." He looked back at his scheduler. "And I'm needed for a transplantation in one year's time. It's technically illegal, so they can't just have any surgeon perform it."

"Do you know anything about salmon deaths?" he asked of Dr. Sarka. "Theo here says he was reincarnated. My parents were moved here with all the other salmon. Is it possible that they will come back to life too?"

Sarka walked over and examined the gravestones thoroughly. He even took out another device and scanned the ground. "They appear to actually be here, and not just part of the transition between jump points."

"What does that mean?" Mateo asked.

"It means that it is entirely possible that your parents were salmon their entire lives without knowing it. I make no promises, but you may very well see them again."

Later that night, Dr. Sarka prepared Mateo for surgery. As soon as he jumped forward to the year 2027, they were ready for him. He looked over and saw Leona next to him, under anesthesia.
Seeing is Becoming

Boarders

"You want me to do what now?" Vearden asked.

A Gondilak doctor was standing in front of him, hands on his hip. "I would like you to cut yourself. With that knife. It doesn't have to be too deep, but it can't be too shallow either."

"I'm not into that."

"We just have to see what it looks like."

" _You_ do it."

Dr. Reeder—translation unclear—rolled his eyes. He moved shockingly like a human. "Fine." He took the knife back and carelessly ran it across Vearden's arm.

"Oh my God!" Vearden screamed. "Does it always hurt like that?" The cut sealed up almost as quickly as it was created.

"For us, we get used to it," Reeder replied. "Especially for those of us living so close to the Orothsewan border."

"I was to understand that Orothsew was the name of the entire planet?"

Reeder cut Vearden on his other arm.

"Ouch again! Jeez, you never told me you were going to do it again."

"Did I not?" He stabbed Vearden in the leg. "The Orothsew and the Gondilak evolved on two different continents, separated by a treacherous ocean. Each culture had named this planet on its own before the Orothsew progressed enough to discover us. We've been warring for centuries. They only recently made claim to their sliver of land on _our_ continent, which they were able to do with slightly superior technology."

"Do you get aliens on this side too?" Vearden dodged a few more attacks, but a stealthy archer shot him with an arrow from behind.

"We do occasionally," Reeder said while he was breaking the arrow. "But humans only ever help the Orothsew." He pulled the back end of the arrow out quickly. "We do not know why." He lowered his gaze, obviously preparing to drop the knife on Vearden's foot.

"Let's...stop this for now," Vearden said, gently taking the knife. "I think you have enough data for the day. And I need to contact my partner."

"She is still with _them_."

"Well, it's not my fault that you only took me."

"Not my fault either. That is _not_ my job."

He sighed. "Do you have a telephone, or a carrier pigeon, or something?"

"I have no idea what those words mean."

Vearden thought about his options for a moment. "Okay. She's going to try to find me. But she doesn't know the terrain, so she would request a guide or a search party. Assuming they agreed, where might we be able to intercept them? Where would they start their search for me?"

"Well, they would go back to where the ambush was, probably. But that's still in their territory. Our operatives took great risk to get you but that's only because they value you. For her, the leaders would never agree to cross that deep past the boundary. Your next best chance is in the Diamond Forest."

"You have a forest of diamonds?" Vearden was excited.

"It's shaped like a diamond," the doctor condescended. "Calm down. Anyway, I doubt they would let you go. You are, as I've said, valuable to them."

"I don't need their permission. I am not a prisoner here."

Reeder shrugged. "Semantics."

"Can you help me or not?"

"I can't help you, per se. But I can lead you to someone who can."

He gave him directions on where to go, but it wasn't necessary. His new liaison-slash-bodyguard took him there. They walked into a tent and found themselves with a crowd of both Gondilak and Orothsew. One such of the latter was clearly in some kind of position of authority.

"Ah, the human," she said. "What is he doing here?"

"I was told that you could help me get back to my partner. She's with the...um, you know, with you guys."

She laughed. "Don't look so surprised. This war is based on land; not race. The Orothsewan government would like you to believe that they are following a singular vision, but they are most certainly not. The majority of the population on both sides disapprove of the war, and a few of us have temporarily defected in hopes of forming a new culture, composed of the entire planet of Orolak, free from segregation."

"Ked rihl," one of the other Orothsew muttered in his native tongue.

"Quiet, Mujel. It isn't a pipe dream. And please speak English in front of our guest. Those are the rules." She looked back over to Vearden and extended her hand. "I am Uhyiopa."

"I can't help but notice," Vearden admitted, "that there is a surprisingly high number of people here who speak my language. Even with the supposed hundreds of human visitors, most of you should not be able to speak it, especially not so fluently."

"We teach it in schools now. We have determined it to be the most widely spoken language in the galaxy."

"It _is_?" he asked. "How is that possible?"

"You have heard that Orolak is some kind of natural hub for alien visitors?"

"Indeed."

"In the spirit of that, Earth seems to be a sort of ambassador homebase. It's true that only a few hundred have come here total, but a not insignificant number of those few hundred have been transported to planets besides ours. You're like a colonizing race, but without all the conquering. The strange thing is," she paused for effect, "not a single one of you appears to have any control over it."

Vearden took a second to process the information. He had already known that he and Saga weren't the only ones. But it seemed to be so much bigger than that. The people in charge had some kind of grand design. They plan these missions, and they send their unwitting minions out into the field. No one knew who they were, or why they were doing this, but there was clearly a consensus that they existed. No one was even so much as entertaining the possibility that there was no plan at all. What if it was all just random? What if these...what should he call them, _powers that be_ , aren't there at all? What if people just didn't realize that this was how the universe worked; a strange form of chaos theory where sometimes you're simply teleported somewhere else?

"I need some air," Vearden said, nearly hyperventilating. He walked over and pulled the flap of the tent back. What he found there was a change in scenery. He had been transported, just like before to Orolak, but this time he was back on Earth. At least, he assumed it to be Earth. He saw no Orothsew or Gondilak. The buildings looked more familiar. And he saw humans.

"Vearden?" came the voice of his sister.

"Allison!" he cried out. "It's so good to see you."

"You too," she agreed. She didn't act like he had been missing at all. "I honestly thought that you would crap out on me again. But you're here. On time. And on the day that I asked." That wasn't right. Not only had he spent a few days on Orolak, but he had set out for this summer camp a day later than he had promised. Even if the p _owers that be_ had sent him back to Earth the moment after he first left, he would have been late, according to his sister's schedule.

"What day is it?"

"What are you asking, V?"

"Just humor me. Please."

She eyed him suspiciously, but felt like it wasn't worth arguing. "It's Tuesday, May 19." That was the proof. He left for Orolak on Wednesday, and had already been scolded by Allison about that. He had traveled back in time.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

It's Pronounced Optimism

April 3, 2027

Mateo opened his eyes. He was on the side of a hill. The sky was swirling with beautiful shades of purple and orange. Lightning danced across the clouds. A light mist overcame him. The wind was simultaneously moderate and powerful enough to make him feel like he was flying. A gentle stream began to roll from his left side; the dirt separating to give it room. It continued to flow listlessly in circles around him. In the unpredictable stream, he could feel the distant comfort of his family. He sat alone on the hill for fourteen years before the water concentrated in a singular mass and began to form the figure of a person. Details of the mass appeared little by little, until he could recognize it as that of his Leona.

"You're here," he said to her.

"It's about time," she replied.

"I've only known you for a couple of weeks. But I kind of think that I'm in love with you," he divulged.

"It has been much longer for me," she said sadly. "There is no question that I'm in love with you."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I'm now closer to your age. Had we met at that hospital, for some other reason, you would have ignored me as a child."

"Is that why I'm jumping through time? Was I just waiting for you?"

"Have you considered that?"

"So...you think I'm done? Do you think they're going to let me stay, now that we've found each other?"

"Might could be."

"That sounds like wishful thinking."

"It's pronounced _optimism_."

He laughed.

"Thank you so much for the kidney."

"I think I would have given my heart. Had you needed it."

"Theoretical hero."

He laughed again. "You have my heart anyway, though, I suppose."

"Don't be so sappy. I really mean it. You're giving me the gift of life. Truly. That is a debt I could never repay. I will be forever grateful for you."

"Wait. Are you here?"

"Of course I am." She gave him a strange look. "Hell you talkin' 'bout?"

"I mean, are you real? Is this not just a dream?"

"Oh. Yeah, it's _my_ dream."

"No, it isn't. It's mine."

"I think we're sharing a dream, Mateo. We must still be in surgery."

"That explains why I've been in the same place for a dozen years, and why you used to be a stream of water."

"I used to be a what huh?"

He hugged her tightly from the side. "I feel like it's time for me to wake up now. I'll see you soon."

"Have fun. Thanks again. I shall begin to repay you in the real world."

When Mateo woke up, Dr. Sarka was standing over him. "How are we feeling today?"

He struggled to get his eyes open. He just wanted to stuff himself into the covers and disappear. He whimpered a bit, and felt the urge to whine like a baby. "How is Leona?"

"She's perfect. There were zero problems. Her new kidney is already doing its job. You did an amazing thing, Mateo."

"Why are you covered in blood?"

Sarka looked down at his own chest. "Oh, sorry about that. I was a field medic in World War I for a few weeks while you were sleeping. I just got back here."

"I thought you were only a doctor for salmon."

"The entire battalion was from the future. The Central Powers won in the original timeline."

That was an interesting bit of information, but Mateo was far too tired to delve deeper into it, so he just fell back asleep. It seemed like sleeping was one of only two things that he was doing with his life.

When he woke up again, he had been moved to a much larger bed. Leona was lying next to him. "She insisted on it," Daria whispered to him. "She said that your kidney wasn't quite ready to be that far away from its counterpart."

He kissed Leona on the forehead. "I agree." He looked over to his aunt. "When did you get in?"

"I've been here for a couple hours," she answered. "It would seem as if the _powers that be_ have set up visiting hours for you. Your father is here as well."

Mateo looked around the blurry room. "Where?"

"He stepped outside when you started waking up. He isn't sure that you want to see him."

Mateo took a deep breath. "Seeing as that I can't get up, could you please inform your brother for me that he needs to get his ass in here. He's missed twenty-eight years. A few minutes isn't asking much."

"You know it wasn't his fault, right?"

"Yes, I do. That doesn't mean he should waste what few opportunities he has."

"True," Daria said. "I'll go get him."

Mateo woke up again hours later. Leona was gone from his side. "What happened?"

"You fell asleep again, honey."

"Is that normal?" Mateo struggled to ask. "I have dry mouth. Am I about to teleport?"

Daria took a noticeable step back from the bed. "I sure hope not. But I do believe dry mouth to be a side effect of morphine. You were in quite a bit of pain. You were screaming and crying. I'm glad that you do not remember that."

"My father was here."

"I still am," Mario said from the other side of the bed.

The morphine was starting to become more obvious for him. He was talking in a way that was unlike him. But he couldn't help it. "Mario. Mario!"

"Yes?"

"Mario! Answer me."

"I'm here," Mario said patiently.

"Mario. What's your middle name?"

"I actually do not have one," his father answered. "It's not a part of our family's tradition."

"It's not a part of mine either. My father never gave me a middle name."

Mario couldn't help but laugh. "No, he didn't. You're right."

Mateo rubbed the sheet between his hands, and then pounded on the mattress with his fists.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to start a fire! I'm hot! This place is dangerous!"

Daria and Mario looked at each other, not knowing what to do. "This doesn't sound like morphine," she said.

"Isn't it supposed to make you feel happy and calm?"

Mateo narrowed his eyes and looked between them with caution. They were conspiring against him. "What are you two talking about? You sons of bitches are gonna pay. I hear you whispering over there. You think I can't, but I can. Where's my mother!?" he screamed. Where's my mother? Where's my mother? Where's my mother?" Mateo started freaking out; thrashing around in the bed, tearing up the pillow case, and screaming obscenities to Mario and Daria. They tried to hold him down. "It's your fault!" he yelled up to him. "You were supposed to protect her. You were supposed to be there for her. You were supposed to be there for _me_! Where were you? Where did you go? What is so important that you have to travel through time instead of taking care of your freaking family!"

"Mateo," Daria comforted. "Please calm down. Everything is going to be okay. We can explain things to you. But you have to be still."

"He's supposed to be with her," he spat.

"I know," Daria agreed. "And he would have if he could have."

"He says he loves her, but how can he? How can a man love a woman when he's only there one day out of the year? Leona has to spend all that time alone, and what does he do? He just runs out on her. What kind of man leaves the woman he loves? She was just fifteen years old. She was just a kid! How could he do that to her? How could he get her mixed up in this? Leona doesn't deserve this."

"He's pretty messed up," Mario said. "I don't know if it's an allergic reaction, or what, but Sarka better get back here fast, or we're screwed."

A young man burst into the room. "I'm here!"

"Who are you?" Daria asked.

"I'm a healer. I was told that this is my latest appointment."

"Sarka is the doctor," Mario said.

"I didn't say I was a doctor. I said I was a healer."

Daria was struggling to keep Mateo from kicking her in the face. "What does that mean?"

"He just needs a transfusion." The man opened a drawer and began to draw blood from himself.

"I know you!" Mateo yelled in paranoia. "You were there; at my party, the one who told me to be careful. I saw you. I met you. You shook my hand. Did you do this to me? It was you, wasn't it? You piece of crap! What is it? What did you do to me? Take it back! I don't want it anymore! I just want to stay in one place!"

"He didn't do this to you." Mario turned his attention to the stranger. "What exactly _are_ you doing?"

"I've been spending the last year, going around the country and healing people with my blood."

"I've never heard of someone who could do that," Mario said skeptically.

Even through the protests of Mateo's father and aunt, the man injected Mateo with his own blood. He immediately felt better. His paranoia dissipated, and tranquility spread across his body before settling down the drain and leaving him in a state of normalcy. The debacle was over.

"It's something I picked up from another planet," the man explained. And with that, the wall behind him changed. It turned into some kind of portal to another location. It was in the middle of a forest. The wind even blew a few leaves into the recovery room. The man looked back at it and breathed a sigh of relief. "And they are finally letting me go back. It sucks there, but I left my best friend, and I need to find her again." He started to walk towards the portal.

"Wait," Mateo said. "What's your name? Just so I know who to put on the thank-you note."

The man smiled and stepped outside. "It's Vearden."

After the portal closed, Mateo fell asleep once more, and didn't wake up until next year.
Seeing is Becoming

Antibiotics

Saga trekked through the mud and thicket of the Diamond Forest with determination. Despite being natives to this land, her small search party found themselves easily falling behind her. They informed her that their home continent had more mountains and lakes, and fewer forests and deserts. She, on the other hand, was used to extreme terrain. Her job required adaptation, and she absolutely loved it. Sometimes she was miles and miles away from the nearest human. She found comfort in being alone, not because she didn't like people, but because it left her to her own devices. The knowledge that the smallest of problems could lead to death made life that much more exciting. But here and now, aside from Vearden, she was probably lightyears from the nearest human. That was enough to make her shiver. Isolation is one thing.

Saga kept pushing forward, and eventually found herself in a clearing. The land was much flatter and barren ahead of her. When she looked back, the forest was gone. She had been transported again, but to where? Up ahead was a small white building. It could have been a home, or a one-room schoolhouse. She hadn't really seen how the common Orothsew live, so she very well could have still been on the same planet. The rest of her group hadn't come with her, though, so she shrugged her shoulders and moved on. There was obviously nothing more she could do to find Vearden.

Seeing no other option, she knocked on the door. A man answered it. He looked exhausted and scared, and barely noticed that she was dressed in unusual garb. She was so shocked that she barely noticed he was wearing unusual garb as well. "Can I help you?" he asked.

"Um...I was just wondering if you...had a telephone that I could borrow?"

That woke him up. "A telephone?" he said with a bit of a laugh. "You have about a decade before the telephone is invented, if I recall correctly. It's 1868."

"Oh, really?"

"What year are you from?"

"21st century," Saga said. "You?"

"20th." He looked a bit relieved. "Don't tell me what happens."

"Are we on Earth?"

"The hell _else_ would we be?"

"Never mind."

"You wouldn't happen to be a doctor, would you?"

"Nah, I'm sorry," Saga replied. I'm just a photographer."

He was phenomenally disappointed. It did seem that she was sent there to help. They didn't know who was sending them through time and space, or exactly why they were doing it. But the... _powers that be_ , let's call them, appear to have some kind of reason. It couldn't just be random. The fact that she was sent back to Earth, but over 150 years earlier, had to mean something. Either she was there to help him, or he was there to help her. She was sure of it.

"But I did happen to have a medical kit when I slipped back."

"Do you have antibiotics?"

"Indeed, for animals."

"I thought you took pictures."

"Yes, but you can't usually buy human antibiotics unless you're already sick. Survivalists buy from pet stores to be prepared."

"You're beautiful," the man said. "Come on in, please. My name is Sam, by the way."

"Saga," she volleyed. She stepped inside and began to dig through her pack.

"Interesting name. Common in the future?" He led her into another room where a woman was sitting up in bed. She was coughing and sweating profusely. Another man was keeping her cool with a wet towel. "Who is this?"

"Our savior," Sam answered. "She has antibiotics. Right now, we're the only people in the world who can effectively treat pneumonia."

"She does?" the other woman asked.

"Are those the things that kill germs and cure diseases?"

"They are," Saga confirmed. "In so many words."

"Looks like we've encountered another salmon," the second man said. "I'm Edward. This is our friend, Lorena. Those two are from the future. I'm from the past."

"Saga," she repeated. "Future."

"Are those them?" Sam asked.

"Uh, yeah." She handed him the bottle. "Here, sorry. I just didn't expect to meet anyone else like me. Have you been doing this long?"

"Well, with time travel, it's a little hard to tell," Sam said while he took a couple pills from the bottle and gave them to Lorena. "But it's been at least a year. She and I come from the same time, and we keep meeting _him_ at different times. Something is pulling us together, just like it pulled you here."

"That's fascinating. I just started. There's no way to tell what year, though; not where I was."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm not sure you're ready for that." She pointed to Edward. "I know that _he_ isn't."

Edward laughed. "I think I would surprise you."

"How many of these can you spare?"

"Every last one of them," Saga said. That there bottle is yourn."

Lorena nearly spit out her water. "That's the spirit. You're already acting like it's 1868. You'll fit right in. But where did you get those clothes?"

"That's what you're not ready for," Saga said teasingly.

"Just tell me one thing," Lorena started, sitting up to get more comfortable. "Do they still remember Kurt Cobain where you're from?"

Saga shook her head affirmatively. "Of course we do."

"Was it Courtney? I've always thought she did it."

"Still just rumors, far as I know."

Lorena grew sadder. "Could I ask you a favor?"

"I'll do whatever I can. I can't be sure how long I'm staying here, though."

"We consistently head backwards in time. Edward has agreed to look him up if he reaches that point, but I was hoping you would too. It's my son. I left him in 1994." She began to choke up. "I don't think I'll ever see him again. But if you only just started, there's a chance your pattern lets you go back and forth."

Saga breathed in deeply. She had been hesitant to explain herself, but it was probably inevitable. She didn't want to lie. "It's true that I don't know my pattern, and that my foray into 1868 was...unexpected, even after my first jump. So there's a chance I'll run into him. But I feel it's only right that you know that I'm not, strictly speaking, a time traveler. I was sent to another planet. That's why we didn't know what year it was while we were there. I promise to look for your son if I can. I fear, however, that such a thing rests in the hands of whatever entity is controlling us."

"I know," Lorena agreed. "We do not appear to have control. I would still like to think that they listen to us. Maybe the three of us are stuck with our patterns, but maybe you're not. Maybe you don't have a pattern at all, and they really will take your feelings into consideration. I'm very religious. And I actually don't believe in the _powers that be_. I believe only in God. And I trust in him."

"I sure hope you're right, Lorena. After these last couple of days, I'm not certain I'm not already home. But for you, I'll pray to go back, if only to check on your son. What's his name. Where might I find him?"

Lorena gave her the information. Sam had a few requests as well, but nothing quite so profound. To their surprise, Saga remained with them in the mid 19th century for the next three years. At that point, a portal opened up in the middle of nowhere, and she felt drawn back through it, knowing in her heart that Orothsew was where she belonged at the time. She stepped through and looked back at the friends she had grown to love deeply. Sam and Lorena disappeared to continue their travels in time, leaving Edward behind alone. He smiled and waved as well. The portal closed.

"Where did you just come from?" Vearden asked. He then took her in a bear hug.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Tackling Black People For No Reason At All

April 4, 2028

The first thing Mateo felt was the air below him. The ground rushed up towards him and he crash landed onto a dirty mattress. It wasn't perfectly aligned, so he rolled off onto the cold, hard concrete.

Leona was panting heavily and sweating as she helped him back up. "I'm sorry. I had a hard time getting back in here. Reaver Enterprises bought up this whole warehouse district. We had to break down the little makeshift hospital and get out quick. They have a surprisingly heavy amount of security, even though this particular unit is empty. It took me forever to get in here with a mattress."

"Thanks for bringing it."

"Well, I literally wouldn't be alive without you, so..."

"I love you too. I have one question."

"Did we share a dream during the surgeries?"

"I guess that answers it."

"Yep."

"So...we're, like, connected?"

"I would call it Quantum Entanglement."

"I do not know what that means, but it sounds good."

"Here, I brought these too."

While he was putting on the change of clothes that she had for him, they heard a ruckus outside. Someone was about to come into the warehouse. Leona grabbed Mateo's hand and bolted. "There's an exit in the front." They ran to the other side, through the office, but they were blocked off. They saw flashlights and heard the garbled sounds of a radio. They were either security guards or police.

"Come on," Mateo whispered loudly. "Upstairs."

"To what end?"

"Just follow me."

He led her up the stairs to a carpeted area. It was dusty and extremely hot. Fortunately, it was also dark, and there were a few large empty boxes left behind by the previous tenants. He directed her to the corner. "They can't keep a guy like me in jail forever, but this would go on your record."

"What? What are you doing?"

Back down on the main floor, they could hear the security guards talking to each other, "someone's been squatting here."

"How did I miss that? I come in here to call my husband every night."

"Guy must have just moved in. He's probably upstairs right now."

"Mateo, don't do this," Leona begged.

"If you make a sound, you'll ruin my plan. Just let me do this for you." She tried to stop him but it was too late. "I'm here! I'm here!" he called out as he began to walk back down the steps, arms over his head." The security guards held their futuristic taser-thingamajigs towards him. "No need for violence. I was just looking for a safe place to sleep."

"We've already called the cops," one of them said. "Here are your new bracelets."

The other one handed Mateo something that resembled handcuffs. There was no chain between the two pieces. Instead, it had a completely straight bar. On it were blinking lights and a small speaker. "Whoa, what is this thing?" Mateo asked with fascination while he attached them to his wrists.

"Standard issue law enforcement pacification cuffs," Guard Number One said. "But our company is allowed to use them since we designed them."

"Why does it need an electrical system?"

Guard Number Two smiled. "Because of this." He tapped a button on his phone.

A small jolt caused Mateo to jump on instinct. "Oh my God, that's awesome!"

"With these, we can keep you in the designated area; like a mobile invisible fence," Number Two explained.

When Number One tapped on his own phone, it just made the cuffs vibrate. "We can send you audible warnings, and even tag things we don't want you to be around like weapons or computers. If you get too close to the contraband, it'll shock you."

"The cops have sedatives in there that can be injected at their leisure."

"They said we have no reason for such a thing, though."

"Nonsense!" Mateo said as they escorted him out of the building. "You're the first line of defense. If anyone needs that sort of thing, it's you."

"Right?" Number Two asked rhetorically.

A few minutes later, a police cruiser pulled up beside them. Number One opened the back door, and let Mateo in. He was completely alone in there. "Where the hell is the driver?" he asked.

Number One shrugged. "Don't always need them anymore."

"That's badass," Mateo said, but they couldn't hear him. They had already closed the door and let the car return to the police station on its own. He imagined that the security guards were trying to figure out whether he had been living under a rock. He just hoped they moved their conversation to a second location so that Leona would have a chance to escape.

When the car pulled up to the police station, he was greeted there by an Officer Salinger who calibrated her tablet to the pacification cuffs. "Are we gonna have any problems?" she legitimately asked.

"No," Mateo answered genuinely.

"Look, personally, I've known people with no place to live. Unemployment is getting worse. Even we're feeling it, as you saw by the fact that no one actually arrested you on scene."

"Is that legal?"

"—ish," she replied. "I just want you to know that, even with all this automation bullshit, I think we have better things to do than drag in someone who just needs to get out of the elements, but the owners of the building you stumbled onto have deep pockets, so I have no choice but to put you through processing."

"I understand. And I appreciate how I've been treated. I've been... _away_ for a while, and wouldn't have expected such manners."

She laughed awkwardly. "I should definitely not be saying this. But as the job becomes more about directing drones and cross-referencing security cameras, and less about tackling black people for no reason at all, we've weeded out a lot of the more aggressive applicants."

"I should say so."

After a pause, she began to escort him up to the processing area. She set him down in one of a row of interview tables. He was the only one being processed at the time. "What is your name?"

"Mateo Matic."

She showed him her palms like she was setting up for a _high-ten_. "Hands up like this." He mimicked her. She lifted her tablet and took a picture of his fingerprints. She eyed the screen curiously. "How do you spell your name?"

"M-A-T-E-O M-A-T-I-C."

She tapped the keys as he spoke. "You are not in the system. I don't suppose you have any identification?"

"I do not."

She tapped some more keys, trying to figure out who he was.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. She wasn't going to understand, but she had this way about her that compelled him to be honest with her. "Check—"

"What?"

"Check death records."

She looked at him apprehensively, but seemed to give it a shot anyway. She read from the screen once the results came back. "Mateo Matic, born March 21st, 1986. Declared dead in absentia five years ago following a year of officially being missing, and several years of an unusual lack of activity."

"That sounds about right."

"You fell right off the grid. You didn't so much as check your email. Why did you fake your death?"

"It's more complicated than that."

She looked back at the screen. "Your adoptive parents died in the meantime. Your birth father is unlisted, and your birth mother actually went missing back in 1994. Forgive me, but this is all very strange."

"Well, when you put it like that..."

"Are you a secret agent?"

"No."

"Are you part of some strange religious cult? Do you live on a boat? This is a safe place. If a crazy science fiction writer is keeping you hostage, you can tell me."

"No, it's nothing like that, it's..." She made him feel like he wanted to be honest with her, but that didn't mean he was going to reveal to her the whole truth. "I'm fine. Nothing nefarious."

She switched off her tablet and put it away. "I'm calling in the big guns. You'll spend the day in holding while you work out your story. I wanna help you, Mateo. I really do. You have kind eyes. But you're keeping something from me, and I don't like that."

"I get it," he said. There was nothing more he could say.

She quietly removed his pacification cuffs and replaced them with an anklet that was clearly based on the same technology.

He was sitting up on his bunk minutes before midnight when Leona's voice came to him out of the aether. "Mateo," she whispered. "Mateo. Can you hear me?"

"Where are you?"

"I'm in your leg."

"You hacked my anklet?"

"I hacked the whole system." The gate to his cell slid open. "All you have to do is get through the treeline and hold out until your jump. Then they'll lose you forever."

He checked the hallway to make sure that no one was watching. The gate to the holding area opened on its own. "Just keep opening these doors and I'll see you next year."

"I'm waiting for you out here."

"Fool!"

"Quiet!" she whispered. "You're not wearing a cone of silence."

He moved as stealthily as he could through the station. As he stepped out of the back door, the anklet sent a surge of pain throughout his body. He could see Leona standing on the other side of the parking lot. "Dammit! I can't turn that off!"

"I can make it," he struggled to say. He half-walked, half-crawled across the asphalt, hoping to be out of sight of security cameras before his jump. It was looking more and more impossible.

Officer Salinger burst through the door and pointed her weapon at him. "Stop!"

He looked over to Leona. "Go! It's almost time! I'll be all right!"

Time blinked, but not everything changed. Different cars were in different places. The air was a bit warmer. But Leona was in the exact same place, wearing the exact same clothes, and with the exact same expression on her face. She hadn't so much as moved a centimeter. She looked at her watch and jogged towards him. "It's past midnight. Why are you still here?"

"I'm not. Look, everything's different."

She looked at her surroundings. "Holy shit, Mateo. You're right, it's 2029. I just jumped through time with you."
The Delegator

No one knows when or where the Delegator was born; not even himself. His first memory was of his first mission. He found himself in the middle of Stonehenge while it was still being built. A few moments later, woman appeared out of nowhere. When she asked where she was, the Delegator's first thought was that he didn't know, but he somehow did. He told her that she had traveled through time, and was there to learn what her job was supposed to be. She was hesitant to trust him at first, but this wasn't the first time she had been thrown through time. It was just that he was the first human she had seen in days. She had previously been surviving alone in the Siderian period in her escape pod after her spaceship exploded. She was in the middle of trying to run from a rauisuchian in the Triassic period when she was sent to Stonehenge. She took the news that she might not ever get back home in stride, which made sense in retrospect. It would have been inconsiderate to make the Delegator's first job too difficult. He soon learned that he had the ability to pull the travelers off of their usual pattern in order to meet with them, something that very few others were capable of, and he's used this power to delegate tasks to hundreds of other time travelers called salmon. He doesn't know why he does this, but he knows that he must, and that bad things happen when he doesn't. He chose one time to ignore his duty, and the consequences of these actions have caused trouble throughout all of time.
Seeing is Becoming

Hunted

"Did they send you back to Earth?" Vearden asked after releasing Saga from the hug. "I looked for you, but found nothing."

"They did send me back," Saga said. "To 1868," she added.

"What?"

"I was there for three years."

"How did you survive?"

"I met some friends. They're like us. Two of them left 1994, and have been doing this a lot longer."

"Three years," he repeated. "I was in _our_ time, for only a year, using my alien blood to heal people."

"Well, if that's all the _powers that be_ wanted from us, why are we back on Orothsew?"

"We call this planet Orolak now," Vearden corrected.

He went about telling her what he learned from the Gondilak, as well as the things he had been doing on Earth before returning. She told her own stories about the mid-19th century. No supernatural healing for her, but life was never dull. Her and her new friends were always on some kind of adventure.

They were just finishing up their conversation when an arrow came out of nowhere and went right through Vearden's shoulder. He casually broke it and pulled it out. "We have to go," he said.

They began to run, zigging and zagging around the sharp needled trees. They ended up going through a dense area. Cuts and bruises formed all over their skin. Just when they thought that perhaps no one was following them, they discovered this to be untrue. There was a clear ruckus from behind. It sounded like a hunting party. "I thought you were on good terms with the Gondilak," Saga said.

"I am. This must be the Orothsew."

"No, they need us. They called us their champions."

"Well, something's changed."

"Why aren't you healing?"

Vearden looked down and grasped his wounded shoulder. She was right, it wasn't closing up, and he couldn't say why. He opened his mouth to question it, but found himself pushed down to the ground. An arrow flew just above his head and landed in a tree. A creature that looked not like an Orothsew, and not like a Gondilak, but like both, was on top of him.

"We have to go," the creature said in a feminine voice. When they didn't move, she yelled, "now!"

They hopped to it and kept on running through the trees. The stranger quickly overtook them and began to lead the way. She would change directions suddenly, apparently in an effort to hide their trail. Sometimes, she would use a tree branch to swing herself forward, preventing her tracks from logically connecting to each other. They tried to do the same, and were sometimes even successful, but only sometimes. She was agile, tough, and extremely quick. It was clear that she was slowing down for them, but she didn't act frustrated. She legitimately wanted to help.

Soon, they were at the swamp. "Get in," she ordered. "This will mask your scent."

"Perfect," Saga said, gladly lathering the mud and moss all over her body.

Vearden was more hesitant, having just spent a year in civilized society, but he did as he was told. He flinched as he stuck some of the moss in his shoulder wound after the friend who introduced herself as Yalshi claimed that it would help protect his blood from infection. "We should keep going," he suggested.

"Yes," Yalshi agreed. "But move more slowly, and take every opportunity to step on rocks and roots. At this point, we want them to think that we've disappeared completely.

"Give it a couple days, and we might just do that."

"We do not have a couple days."

They spent the rest of the day methodically escaping their pursuers. They hadn't heard a peep from them in hours by the time they reached the creek. They waded through the water and proceeded upstream for another few hours, at which point Yalshi felt is was safe enough to clean themselves up and find shelter.

All they were able to find was a shallow and unsecured cave; just enough to get out of the wind and talk. "Why were they chasing us?" Saga asked.

"You are invaders," Yalshi said plainly. "More than that, you're human. A couple of your kind came here decades ago. One of them had the ability to heal, just like the Gondilak, and it is said that he used this to kill many on both sides. A Mongrel named Trijko took his opportunity to unite the Orothsew and Gondilak against the invaders. He dispensed with any who claimed that the two human invaders actually hadn't killed anyone, but I've spoken with Uhyiopa, and I believe her. She knew the healing one personally and admitted to me that the massacre was a lie they made up to end the war."

"This was decades ago?" Vearden asked. Where is Uhyiopa now?"

Yalshi drew a frown on her face. "She was killed for speaking so-called lies to The Mongrel King's daughter. But I know the truth now, and I won't let my father do this anymore. Even if it means we reform the schism between the two races, I won't let them dishonor the humans who have a history only of helping our great world. I promise you, friends, that you will be vindicated. I will make Orolak safe for you once more."

"You're the king's daughter, right?"

"Yes, I am. But I'm nothing like him, I assure you. I—"

Saga interrupted her. "I'm not saying you are. But I assume that _mongrel_ means that you are born of both Gondilak and Orothsew blood?"

"My father is the result of genetic engineering. Gondilak and Orothsew cannot reproduce together, as no creatures of two species can. But scientists from an unknown land experimented with us many years ago. The king has no mother or father, but I am the result of a natural birth from him and another like him."

"I see," Saga said.

"How long has it been since the last invader?" Vearden asked.

"Why, it's been at least twenty years."

"And how long since the last human?"

"I haven't heard so much as a rumor of a human in my entire life. I have no reason to believe that another has come through since the infamous couple. But you're here now. You can show them that you mean us no harm, and visitors will once again be allowed through their magical doors."

Vearden turned to Saga. "Maybe that's the point."

"The point of what?" Yalshi asked.

Saga answered instead. "We were the couple decades ago. It is true that we killed no one, but perhaps the lie your father and Uhyiopa told was what needed to happen. I've always felt that we were here to unite the two races and end the war. I just didn't know we wouldn't actually be around to see it."

Vearden didn't want to push it by admitting he had indeed killed two Gondilak. "If that's true, what are we doing back here? If we're done with our mission, why send us back? My healing powers are gone, and this is dangerous territory for us now."

Saga shook her head. "I don't know, V. Maybe they just wanted us to see what we had accidentally accomplished?"

"Or to tie up loose ends by having us killed," he suggested.

"Are you two really them? Why are your healing powers gone?"

Saga thought about it for a moment after Vearden showed that he had no answer. "You said you spent the last year on Earth healing people."

"Indeed. I never really knew why. But I would have a dream with a sick or hurt person's face, and their general location. When I woke up, I would have no choice but to go there and give them some of my blood. It worked every time."

"And the last person you healed was one of us? That sounds significant. You must have been losing a little bit of yourself every time you healed, and this guy took the last of your special blood. Who was he?"

"I'm not sure. I did see his chart out of the corner of my eye." He tried to remember. "It started with an _M_. Mark? Or Matthew?"

"Mateo?" Saga asked, surprised. "Mateo Matic."

"Yeah, that sounds right."

Saga just laughed. She laughed and laughed and laughed.

"What is it?"

"Oh my God, we're all connected."

"Yes, you are." A man was standing outside, but he wasn't exactly all there. He was between two large stones that were holding up a third stone. It looked like a portal to another place. "Please. Step into my office."
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Quit Stealing Stones From This Henge

April 5, 2029

Leona ran up to him. "Is this what it feels like? Like nothing?"

"What did you expect?"

She shrugged. "I don't know."

"We have to find a way to get you off of my pattern."

"That ship has sailed, sweetheart. Did you notice? I'm now only a couple weeks younger than you. I started jumping after I turned 28, just like you."

"We don't know that you've started anything. You hacked into my anklet. That might have connected your device to me...temporarily."

She started digging through her bag. "I can get that off." She took out a sinister mini blowtorch and tore through his anklet like it was butter.

"Stop right there!" Salinger had burst through the door again, and was pointing her weapon at them. "You look exactly the same. What the hell happened here?"

Mateo sighed. "It's been a year for you, but not for us."

"Are you trying to tell me that you're time travelers?"

"Timeslippers," Leona corrected.

"We prefer _salmon_."

Salinger stared at them for a few seconds. "Get inside. Both of you. You have any idea how much trouble I got into for losing you after making a big deal about calling the feds?" She kept her gun trained on them as she opened the door.

On the other side of the threshold was _not_ the police station. It was Stonehenge, but different. There were many more stones than Mateo remembered having seen in photographs. It looked complete.

"What in the world is this?" Salinger asked.

"A meeting," a man answered from the other side. "You're not invited, but you can stay if you want. I don't really care."

Curiosity got the best of her, and Salinger walked inside, no longer worried about getting Mateo and Leona into the station.

Leona admired the architecture. "Is this how Stonehenge originally looked?"

The man looked around. "Oh, this? No, it's been partially destroyed by now. It used to be a building. Now only the stones remain. In time, many of those will be stolen for other things. That is, until a bunch of historians come out and say, 'hey! Quit stealing stones from this henge! Ya dicks!'"

"May I ask who you are?"

"You may, Mateo, indeed. But you won't get a very good answer. I'm afraid that my head has been filled with so much other information that I've lost all knowledge of my own life. I do not know my name. Salmon just call me The Delegator."

"You're a puppet for the _powers that be_?" Mateo asked.

Leona stepped forward and examined the Delegator more closely. "Or he _is_ one of the _powers that be_."

"I've not yet ruled that out."

"What do you want with us?" Leona asked cautiously.

"He's here to tell you what you're supposed to do," Salinger explained. They all gave her a weird look. Did she know something? "Well, isn't it obvious? That's what a delegator does."

"Quite right," the Delegator agreed. "If a salmon has trouble figuring out their job; be it because they're resisting, or because it's too complicated to inuit, I step in. Which is...pretty much always. I think I've met every single other salmon."

"And you don't know how you know what you know, but you know who to contact, where to find them, and what to do with them?"

"Yes," he replied.

"Do you always bring them to Stonehenge in the past?"

He looked around and smiled. "I do, mostly. I like this place. I don't _have_ to bring them here, but it's become sort of my office. It provides a level of stability for me."

"And I'm just here because I was in the way?"

"You're here, Detective, because there was too little time between Leona's initial jump, and you showing up. So I suppose you're right; you got in the way." He pointed toward the gap in the stones they first came through. "Step through that door and it will take you back home."

Salinger began to walk towards the opening.

"Step through any one of the other doors," he continued, "and it will take you somewhere else. And you'll become one of us."

Salinger looked back at him, unsure of what to say.

"You can do that?" Mateo asked. "You can just turn someone into a salmon?"

"She already is," he started to explain. "She was initialized when she came into physical contact with a salmon after their own activation."

Sad panda Mateo turned to Leona.

"She's not your fault," the Delegator said. "The _powers_ still had to decide to activate her. If they wanted her, they would have found a way to get a preexisting salmon to touch her. If it hadn't been you, it would have been someone else. Though, to be fair, you're a package deal. They obviously wanted you together, which is why they put you on the same pattern."

"That doesn't explain how I can choose to be one by walking through a different door," Salinger argued.

"We all agree to this," the Delegator corrected. "Both parties must enter into the proverbial contract, or nothing happens. Yes, as Delegator, I've been given the power to...recommend an applicant, but I do not exercise this ability often."

"I never agreed to this," Mateo said.

"On some level, you did. These people making this happen, they don't think in conversations and remarks. Communication is more complex and fluid to them. A part of you wanted to go, so the _powers_ made it happen."

"You son of a bitch." Mateo unenthusiastically lunged towards him. "I wouldn't have done this to my parents! And my birth parents wouldn't have done this to me!"

The Delegator was unfazed. "There is something you have to understand, Mister Matic. The soul is timeless. Literally. That's what makes time travel and teleportation possible. It's why there's no such thing as a sociopathic salmon. Your soul knows absolutely everything there is to know about the universe; past, present, and future. It's designed to guide you through your choices. The only difference between a salmon and a normal person is that mine and your souls are giving us access to a little bit more information than one might expect." He gathered his thoughts. "It's true, you...consciously did not want this, but your soul did. And you have to do what your soul demands of you. Trying to escape that directive is, well...impossible, at best."

"What will my directive be if I step through a different door?" Salinger was apparently seriously considering the offer.

"I can't tell you that until you try it. That's the drawback. There's no preparing yourself, and there's no changing your mind. Either you do it or you don't. I can give your soul a nudge by outwardly showing you a choice, but you still have to make it. Again, you can't go against your soul. Whatever decision you make is what it wanted you to make."

"Then I guess there's no point trying to run from fate." She turned to Mateo. "And I guess I won't know until later whether I should thank you or shoot you for initializing me."

"You don't have to do this," Mateo begged. "I don't believe in fate."

She tilted her head and smiled. "I kind of do. Fate's just another word for God." She started to back up towards a random opening. "When I met you, Mateo, I knew that my life was going to change. I've been searching for my place in the world, and this is my chance to find it."

"Detective Salinger, wait," Mateo said. "I never caught your first name."

She smiled sweetly. "It's Danica. But I was adopted, just like you, because my birth mother was hardly ever around. Her last name was Matic." She crossed the threshold and disappeared into nothingness.

"Aunt Daria," Mateo whispered to himself.

After Mateo turned back around, the Delegator acted like he had known exactly what was going to happen. "Now do you see?"

"Enough with the puzzles," Leona said firmly. "What is our job?" She put air quotes around the last word. "What are you delegating to us?"

"That's the brilliant thing," the Delegator began. "Every salmon is given assignments, and it's my job to dole them out. But you're different. To my knowledge, you two don't have any responsibilities. It is my assumption that the _powers that be_ want to see what you choose to do on your own."

"We wish to speak to the one in charge."

"I'm afraid that I do not have the power to put you in contact with them." The sun blinked and both Stonehenge and the Delegator disappeared, leaving them back in Kansas. Mateo and Leona spent the rest of the day speaking very little at a picnic table in the triangle where 130 Road, Aa Road, and Highway 191 and meet.
Seeing is Becoming

Freelancers

The man's _office_ turned out to be the remains of Stonehenge. He called himself the Delegator and claimed that it was his job to help salmon figure out what they were supposed to do with their new lives. Yalshi was allowed to witness the meeting, as long as she kept quiet. "They're going to be doing something different with you two," the Delegator announced to them.

"Different how?"

"Most salmon aren't given a conscious choice. They're dropped wherever and whenever the powers want them, and they're expected to do whatever they're told. And for the most part, you'll do the same. However, after each completed mission, you'll be given a few options for your next assignment. These options may send you to Earth, to another planet, to the past, or the present. You'll be given a bit of information, and from there you can make a decision. Isn't that great?"

"You force us into these decisions, but since most people have no illusion of free will, you expect us to be grateful that you're letting us decide where to risk our lives?"

"I expect nothing. I'm middle management," the Delegator explained. "But I am getting the feeling that something has changed. You're not the first salmon to have been granted a weird exception. Though, to be honest, that hasn't technically happened yet since we're in the past." He shook the tangent out of his brain. "It is my guess that the _powers_ have recruited someone new. Don't quote me on that, but I think he's interested in changing the program. It would certainly explain why you and only a handful of others are being treated differently. Again, I'm not sure that that is how it works. I have more information about this than you do, but I don't have all of it."

"Ya know," Vearden began, "there's one thing I've already decided. I don't really care. I don't care who the _powers that be_ are. I don't care why they're doing this, and I don't even care about figuring out how to stop it. I can stop it. You can drop me wherever you want, but if I don't want to do something, I just won't."

"Speaking from experience, bad things happen when you don't do what you're told," the Delegator said. "I don't mean that I've seen it happen; I mean that I've caused it. Yes, I'm different, but also very much like you. My job as Delegator is just another mission. I exercise very little control."

"How about you exercise some of the control you do happen to have right now?" Saga asked, but it was more of a command.

"Pardon?"

"Let me chose my next mission. Forget the multiple choice. I want to go where I want to go."

"Where do you want to go?"

"1743," Saga answered.

The Delegator lifted his head, considering the proposition. "I cannot guarantee such a request."

"Well, what _can_ you do?" Vearden asked.

"I'll tell you what." The Delegator rubbed his eyes from exhaustion. "I need you to make a quick stop for me. It'll only be a few hours. Afterwards, if the _powers_ have accepted your motion, then you'll find out. If not, it's out of my hands. I'm not certain you're quite understanding that I'm more of a messenger than anything."

Vearden whispered to Saga. "Is there any point trying to reason with these people? Do we have any chance?"

"I think they can hear us even when you whisper," Saga returned. "Which, to be honest, probably means that we don't have a chance. But I don't like the idea of being pushed around. That's why I became a freelancer."

"That's your name!" the Delegator exclaimed. "The Freelancers."

"I'm sorry?"

"We like to give each other nicknames. That's yours."

"We are not children," Saga insisted.

"Fine." The Delegator was noticeably hurt. "I'm still gonna call you that," he muttered under his breath.

"Where are we supposed to go now?" Vearden asked.

"Would you like to have a final moment with your alien friend? You won't ever see her again."

Yalshi had been so good at keeping quiet, that Saga and Vearden had forgotten that she was even there. "This has given me an interesting bit of insight," she told them.

"What are you going to do with it?"

She looked to the ground for answers. "Knowledge is power, right? I'm going to seize control from my father, and make a few changes to our cultural biases."

"We will return in another few decades to check on your work," Saga smiled.

"He just said you wouldn't be able to."

"We don't follow the rules," Vearden said. "We will see you again."

Yalshi smiled back at them. "I better get going. Who knows how long I've been away?" She stepped back through the portal. It shuddered and faded away, slowly revealing a different view. A few graves could be seen by the moonlight.

"Is that for us?"

"Indeed," the Delegator confirmed.

The two of them walked through the portal without another word. On the other side, they found humans driving land vehicles into the cemetery. They were talking and laughing joyfully, spreading throughout the graves to start their own conversations.

A stranger holding a beer approached them. "Hey, are you two here for the party?"

"Uh no," Vearden said apologetically . "We just came to visit an old friend."

"Ah, sorry for your loss. We can move to a different corner, if you'd like."

"Is this some morbid goth party, or something?"

The stranger giggled. "It's a birthday party. We used to hangout here as kids. We don't get too rowdy, though. Mateo, the birthday boy finds cemeteries to be inexplicably comforting.

"Mateo you say?" Saga asked, giving Vearden a look.

"We knew him way back when. Could we say hi?"

"Yeah, sure. He's over there." The stranger nodded vaguely in one direction. "I'm Kyle, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Kyle," Saga said, offering her hand.

"We're The Freelancers," Vearden said, much to the dismay of his friend.

They walked over and could soon clearly see the face of Mateo Matic, a man who appeared to be particularly special, even amongst other salmon. "Is that really him?" Saga asked of Vearden.

"It most certainly is," he replied.

Saga lifted her hand again and shook Mateo's. "We've heard it's your birthday."

"That's what they tell me," Mateo said.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-eight. Already feel like an old man."

"Happy with your life?" Vearden asked.

It was a bit of a weird question, but Mateo seemed open to it. "Actually, I am. It hasn't always been easy. I've experienced loss. But I'm in a pretty good place now. I couldn't imagine it getting any better."

"Oh," Vearden said. "Well, be careful."

"What? Why?"

"It's just something my mother used to say before I left the house. It's become my catchphrase."

"I see." He patted both of them on the shoulders. "Well, have a beer or two. I know we're in a place of death, but tonight...we celebrate life."

They spent the rest of the night getting to know other people at the party. Despite being strangers, everyone accepted them and treated them like they belonged. Saga informed Vearden that it was presently the year 2014, which was more than a decade earlier than the time they originally left. They kept an eye on Mateo, mostly out of curiosity. The Delegator had wanted them to be there at that particular time, so it must have been meaningful. Exactly at midnight, they saw Mateo disappear. His beer exploded, sending a few remaining shards into Kyle's skin. As they were running to help, Vearden noticed something wrong. "Saga."

"What?"

"Tombs don't usually just put a date on the front, right?"

"Of course not. They engrave the family name on it." She looked up and saw the date _January 3, 1743_ marked over the door of the tomb. The lettering had a light but definite glow to it.

"I think this is our ride."

"Come on, V." Saga took Vearden's hand and led him towards the tomb that was doubling as a portal. "There are a couple of people that I would like you to meet."

The two friends opened the door and began a new time-traveling adventure together.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

I Refuse to Go to Utah

April 6, 2030

Mateo slept all the way across midnight. The sun was still not out when he found Leona sitting on the other side of the lawn, watching birds argue with each other in a nearby tree. He approached her carefully. "I'm sorry."

"No, I'm sorry," she said back. "Now I know why you left on the train. I don't want my family to go through this. I've disappeared, and that's tough, but they'll get through it and move on." She looked up at him. "We need to keep them out of this."

"I agree."

"But I refuse to go to Utah."

He laughed and sat down next to her. "You won't hear me trying to force you."

"I do wish that I could have said goodbye to my little brother, but it's for the best. I can't touch him now that I've been activated. I don't want him to become one of us."

Oh boy. "There's something you should know."

She patiently waited while a car pulled up behind them that they ignored.

"He already _is_ one of us."

He could feel her surprise, but she did a pretty good job of hiding it. "Since when?"

"Since before he was born. Apparently, we can sometimes be reincarnated. The way I understand it, he died at quite an old age."

She turned her head towards Mateo, but kept her eyes to the grass. "Then maybe it's hereditary."

"How do you mean?"

"Think about it. Out of all the salmon we've met, most of them have been related to one of us. Your birth parents, your aunt, your cousin, and my brother. Hell, that doctor and the Delegator might be our children from the future, for all we know."

"There was a guy who healed me with his blood when I had an allergic reaction after the surgery. He walked through a portal in the wall."

She looked at Mateo. "Grandson?"

He shook his head with uncertainty. "I don't know that what you're saying is how it works."

She went back to watching the birds. "Yeah, it doesn't matter either way. I still need to stay away from Theo. Maybe he would need to be reinitialized, and I still don't want that for him if I can stop it. He may be an old man, but to me he's just my baby brother."

"I hate when you call be a baby," said Theo behind them.

They turned around. "Theo!" Leona cried.

Mateo chuckled uncomfortably. "What are you doing here?"

"I came here to find you. Did you already go in?"

"The chapel? I'm not sure I'm even Christian anymore."

Theo snorted. "Neither is that place." Leona pulled herself away when Theo tried to help her up. "You can't hurt me, sestra."

"You don't know that."

"I don't have time for this crap." And with that, he deliberately placed his hand on Mateo's shoulder. "There, it's too late. Now is it asking too much for my big sister to give me a hug."

She looked like she was about to cry, but she jumped up and hugged him, both despite and because of her feelings.

Mateo led the way towards the chapel. "Why are we going in there?"

"Didn't you just speak with the Delegator?"

"We did."

"And he sent you here."

"Right."

"Why didn't you leave?"

"We don't have a car."

"No, that's not it. In the daylight, you can see Lebanon from here. You knew you were supposed to be here. He still should have told you. He's not doing his job right." He opened the door and stepped in like he was showing them their new house. "This chapel hasn't always been here. In fact, it was destroyed once twenty-two years ago. But they can't destroy what's underneath."

"What's underneath?"

Theo smiled menacingly and spoke the magic words. Literally. "Open sesame seed bun! Fresh meat! The coast is clear!" A few seconds later, the entire floor began to descend. It started off slowly until settling into a second set of walls which closed above them to form a new roof. "Hold onto something." The elevator dropped dramatically, faster than any before, but thankfully slowed down again after a while. "The base is 144 stories under the ground. Engineers and construction workers were sent back in time to build it. We don't know exactly when, but we think it's been here for millions of years. We call it The Constant."

"What is it for?"

"It's a resupply station. Down here you'll find meds, food, appropriate clothing for your new time period, etcetera. There are some other creature comforts if you want to take a break from your mission, but they won't let you stay too long. There's only one person who stays down here, and she's _always_ here. Like I said, this is a constant. It doesn't move through time like our graveyard. It was built in one place, at one time, and then left alone, which means that The Concierge isn't like other salmon. She's very special, though." The elevator stopped.

"She's special in what way?"

The doors opened. "I'm immortal." It was Salinger.

"Danica!"

"It's very nice to see you again, Mateo."

"How long has it been for you?"

"No one knows how long I've been here. They compare notes and have their guesses, but I've never told a soul. I won't make an exception for you, even though you're my cousin."

Mateo couldn't help but embrace her. They hardly knew each other, but she was family, and that counted for something. Leona joined in the hug, followed by little Theo. "Do you regret your choice? To go through the other door at Stonehenge?"

"For the most part, I do not," Danica replied. "But there are many more minutes than there are salmon. It can get lonely, but I have a television."

They laughed.

Danica looked at her watch and began to frown. "Unfortunately, you don't have long here. I've been authorized to give you these." She presented to them five futuristic mobile phones. We've put you on a family plan. They won't run out of battery, and the network will never go down, however they'll usually only connect to each other. I don't know for sure, but you probably cannot be separated from them. Time should always tether you to them."

"Why are there five?" Leona asked.

"That's why you need to leave. You're scheduled to meet up with the other two people in your party."

"You can't come with us, just for the day?"

"I'm part of the Constant. I haven't left in—ohohoho! Almost had me there! Let's just say that I haven't left in forever."

"Who else are we picking up?" Leona asked.

Danica shrugged. "I've not been given that information." She looked something up on her device. "I only know that you're supposed to be in a city called Huntsville, Ontario in less than nineteen hours. Which means you'll have to speed. I promise not to pull you over." She winked.

"Will I ever see you again? Will they ever let me back down here?"

"I imagine so. However, I promise you nothing. This is here for when you need it. The basic premise of this whole time travel thing is that you're put where you don't belong and have to find a way to survive and do some good. It's not a vacation; it's a calling. This place is for furloughs." With that, they said their goodbyes and left.

The car automatically drove them halfway across the country, and into Canada where they presented fake passports that Theo had drawn up. Presumably, they would know what they were looking for when they found it. They later discovered that they wouldn't have to look very far. Near the end of whatever it was they were doing, Theo motioned them over. "You should sit over here."

"What? Why?"

"Just come sit over here with me. That seat needs to be empty. I just know it."

"For what?"

"You'll see. Would you two just do it? Have we not yet learned trust?"

Mateo and Leona reluctantly crawled over and sat on either side of Theo. It was awkward. "This is awkward."

Theo looked at his watch. "It should be happening any minute."

Leona shifted, trying to get more comfortable. "Are we gonna get hit by a meteorite or something?"

"Just wait," Theo insisted. "You'll like this surprise."

After a few moments of waiting, a formless blob faded into view in the empty seat. Detail by detail, the image focused and became clear. The blob turned into two blobs, then two people, then two people with features. They were kissing each other, but stopped after the transition was completely finished. They looked up and around, but not directly at the other three. "Are we in a motor vehicle?" the man asked.

"We jumped to the future," the woman continued. "Why is that?"

Mateo recognized the woman. He would know that face and voice anywhere, even though he hadn't seen her in twenty years. "Mom?"
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Formerly Known As

April 7, 2031

Aura (formerly known as Lauren) Gardner dove across the car and tackled her son. "Matty!"

He hugged her tightly back.

"I'm so sorry," she apologized. "I didn't want to leave you. I didn't have a choice. They took me. They took me away from you, and I've been trying to get back ever since. I never thought I would, but I guess they're done with me. I'm here. You're here. Everything is going to be fine." She backed up a bit. "Let me get a look at you. My, it's been, what? Fifteen years, maybe twenty? Oh, you have so much to tell me, I'm sure. But first, I need to explain where I've been."

"I know where you've been," Mateo admitted.

"How would you know that? Did you find Edward's records?"

"Better," Theo jumped in. "He found Edward. I go by Theo now."

Aura stared at Theo like he was a ghost and fell back to her seat.

"You were reincarnated too?" the other man asked.

"Indeed...what name has been chosen for you this time?"

"Samsonite," the man said. "Aura and I felt our new assignments before we left. That's how we knew that we were jumping soon. But we figured we would land in the eleventh century. What year is this?"

They exchanged as much information as possible, but there wasn't nearly enough time. Mateo thought that all five of them would be sent to the future, based on what Danica had said about them being a whole party.

Unfortunately, Mateo was wrong. Midnight came and sent both Mateo and Leona to April 7, 2031. They were alone in the clearing. They waited for signs of life but nothing came. They remained there alone for a half hour, hoping to see Leona's brother, Mateo's mother, and her significant other. "Leona. We should _call_ them. Danica gave us those phones, remember?"

"I have the phones," Leona replied in a huff. "I have all of the phones. I forgot to pass them out."

"Okay," Mateo said gently. "That's okay. We'll find them."

"Where?" Leona asked angrily. "We're in the middle of nowhere Canada! Your mother was only familiar with this area back in God-knows-when. Other than that, we have no connection to this town. We don't know anyone, and we don't have money! It's pretty cold here for April, so _that's_ not great! Our only chance is to get back to Kansas, wishin' and hopin' that your family thinks to check there every year, just in case, but that's practically impossible!"

"Give me one of the phones."

"I told you. I have all of them. There's no one to call!"

"Would you just trust me?" She was not happy, but handed one of the phones over anyway. While she walked away to kick the dirt around, Mateo discovered that they had access to the present-day internet. It was a little tough to navigate. Not only was the phone probably from deep in the future, but the internet had changed in the last seventeen years. "I found it. Let's go."

"Where are we going?"

"There's a hotel not twenty minutes from here by foot."

"Do you remember me telling you the part about not having any money?"

"At the very least, we can get out of the cold. Hopefully we can work something out. If not, we'll figure something _else_ out."

"Great plan, Mateo."

"If we don't try something, we're going to die out here."

The moonlight was hardly enough to see her face, but she was very obviously fuming. "Good point." She began to walk away. "What are you waiting for?"

"It's this way," Mateo told her.

"Well why didn't you say that?"

They walked out of the field, along some kind of body of water, past the high school, and through town. They ran a little bit of the way, not only to warm up, but because they were in a hurry to find a way out of their predicament. As soon as they walked into the inn, the man at the counter greeted them. "Welcome to Canada. Here is your itinerary."

"Pardon?" Mateo asked, slightly out of breath.

"The jet leaves in one hour. A car is being brought around to automatically drive you to the base. From there, a state of the art aircraft will take you all the way to your final destination in San Diego. Shouldn't take more than two hours."

Leona took the itinerary. "What's in San Diego?"

"I'm afraid I don't have that information. But Mr. Reaver personally came out to ensure that you were taken care of. He said that you would be able to find the rest of your party there."

Mateo looked up from the packet. "Our family must be down there. But why?"

"Let's go outside," Leona suggested.

"Wait, I have a few more questions."

"Mateo. Outside. Now," she insisted. She turned to the innkeeper. "Thank you very much, sir. Mr. Reaver will be very pleased with your service." The innkeeper smiled as they walked out. Once they were out of earshot, Leona pulled him to the side. "We cannot get on that jet."

"What are you talking about?"

"You don't find this a little weird?"

"Nothing in my life has been normal for the last couple of weeks...decades."

"Do you recognize the name Reaver?"

"I've heard it before. I can't place it. We know him?"

"His company is the one who bought up the warehouse district where we had our surgeries. He's been under a lot of suspicion. The authorities haven't been able to find any evidence, but his business practices are shady at best. He's responsible for a lot of unemployment, gentrification, and even a standard increase in the business day. He's basically the anti-Google, and he's just as powerful, if not more."

"Why the hell would a guy like that have anything to do with us?" He started to look up Reaver Enterprises on his phone. "Theo is a pretty interesting kid, but I have a hard time believing he's already networked this much. He's not yet a teen—oh my God," he interrupted himself

"What is it?"

He was looking at a picture of Horace Reaver. "This is him. This is the guy who tried to kill me when I jumped to the future."

"He's a salmon. Or a _power_. That actually makes sense. It explains how he's advanced technology so much."

"What are we going to do? He probably has our family. We have to get them back, but you're right, we cannot get on that jet."

"This packet has the address of where we're supposed to go once in San Diego. We have to find a way to get there on our own." A car pulled up in front of them. The door opened, revealing the inside to be empty. "Run," Leona ordered.

As they ran away from the inn, Leona looked through her phone for the nearest airport. The directions said that it was going to take almost an hour to walk to Lake Vernon, but they were able to wade through a stream and cross a highway to cut that down. They were exhausted when they arrived. Just as they were deciding whether they should try and figure out how to steal a plane, a woman approached them on the dock. "Can I help you?"

They froze, unsure of what they should say. They had already established that they had no money, but they also had no other form of compensation. They didn't have a fancy watch to sell, or any special skills to trade. No one in their right mind would help two freaky people looking for a trip to San Diego at two in the morning. They say that honesty is the best policy, but Mateo decided to fudge the truth a little. "An evil business magnate kidnapped our family and is holding them hostage in San Diego. He says only he can get us there in time before he kills them at midnight since he stole our passports. We were going to steal your plane, because we're desperate."

"Are you talking about Horace Reaver?"

"We are," Leona answered.

"Get in," the woman said. "My brother died of cancer after working for _Evil_ Enterprises."

They got lucky. True to her word the woman, who refused to exchange names, flew them all the way to California. They were there many hours later than Reaver would have expected them, which could either be very good because he would have no idea where they were, or very bad because he may have decided to kill their family. The woman couldn't be any more involved than she already was, so she immediately started getting ready to leave after dropping them off on Lower Otay Lake, having not filed a flight plan. The last thing she did was give Leona a few hundred dollars and a gun, saying that they might need it. Leona later said that it seemed very un-Canadian of her.

Mateo and Leona made their way towards the address written at the end of the packet, hoping that it wasn't a diversion. It took quite a long time to get across town, especially since they were not quite in San Diego from the start. They had to find a cab that was not only driven by a human, but who would also accept Canadian bills. He appeared to be sympathetic to their troubles after they mentioned Reaver again. It would appear that everyone hated him, but no one was capable of defeating him. Mateo couldn't help but feel like doing just that was exactly the reason he was turned into a time traveler, despite the Delegator's claim that he had no official job.

They found Aura, Samsonite, and little Theo chained up in the middle of an abandoned warehouse. They weren't able to move much, but were otherwise in good health. They weren't even under guard. After getting to a motel and freshening up, they posited that Reaver was only ever interested in killing Mateo and Leona, and that the jet was engineered to blow up or crash. The only reason he was keeping the other three hostage was so that they wouldn't be able to make contact. Why he bothered giving them the address was the only thing that truly could not be explained.

Mateo wanted to finally catch up with his long-lost mother, but he fell asleep while they were talking. By the time he woke up next to Leona, it was noon of the following year.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

First Conversation

April 8, 2032

Mateo spent a few minutes just staring at Leona sleeping next to him. He felt responsible for turning her into a salmon; for forcing her into this life. But he was also grateful to always have someone with him. If they hadn't fallen in love, it would have still been nice to have a partner.

She woke up quickly, possibly sensing his gaze. They looked at each other for a good long while, not saying a word. "I've been waiting to wake up next to you for a very long time."

Mateo looked away. "Nothing happened between us last night."

"I know that." She sat up and leaned against the headboard. "This is gonna get awkward."

"How so?"

"Well, I'm pretty sure you and I are together now. But our family is always going to be around, at least for a long time. We won't be left alone very much. Even though our life will be saturated, they will have waited months to see us again. Doesn't seem fair to take a break from them for sex when they don't get to see us very often."

"We're alone now."

"We're not doing it this year. This is just the first conversation on the matter."

"I just mean...I think they know that. They've been alive long enough to understand. They're probably not here at the moment so that we would have some privacy. What we do with that time is up to us."

Leona bit her lower lip in thought. "I think we should use that time to eat."

"I agree." Fittingly, there was a knock on the door and the sound of Theo on the other side. Mateo pulled on a shirt someone had laid out for him and opened the door. "Hey, kid. You look older."

"I'm getting there." He was wearing an evil smile. "Did we give you two enough time?"

Mateo looked back to Leona with a smirk. "What did I tell you?"

She ignored him. "Theo, have you been missing for two years?"

"Of course not, I've been back home. I spend the year there. I told them where you were. They kind of already knew what was going on, what with the fact that your older boyfriend only came 'round once a year, if that. They're not happy, but they get that you wanted to make a clean break." He walked all the way inside and sat down on the table. "They just need a call from you every year."

"I can do that, now that things have settled down."

Theo looked up to Mateo. "Leona is going to take me to lunch since I'm too old to drive. Your mother wants to get to know you."

"Go ahead," Leona urged. "We have all of time and space."

Mateo laughed. "Is that a reference?"

He met his mother outside by the pool where she suggested they go for a walk. There was still much to learn of each other, and the healing process was just beginning. "Where is your husband?"

"A couple of our friends dropped in, so they're catching up, just like we are."

"How do you know anyone?"

"They're salmon. I believe you know one of them. He healed you once?"

"Ah, yes. Vearden, right?"

"That's right. They both lived with us in in the 1740s, but we knew his partner, Saga from the jump before."

"Speaking of non sequiturs, what am I supposed to call you?"

She smiled kindly. "You can call me whatever you want, but if you prefer a name, then it's Aura."

"And why is that? You used to be Lauren."

"It changes each time we jump. Intellectually, I know that I used to go by that, but it's very hard for me to answer to it. It would be like me trying to call you John Smith and expecting you to accept it. I don't know why the _powers that be_ do that to us. I've not heard of any other salmon who is forced to change their name."

Mateo took a few beats. "It's one thing to force us through time. It's an entirely different invasion to alter our minds. What else have they done to our brains? When I was young, I skinned my knee while staying with you and you were so scared about being in trouble with Randall and Carol. Do you even remember that? Or did these assholes take that away from you, or make you think that you had a daughter. _Did_ you have a daughter? Do I have a sister I don't remember? We would never freaking know!" But he didn't say _freaking_.

She didn't ask him to calm down or stop cursing. She let him vent, and not just because she was his mother and understood what he needed at the moment, but also since she appeared to share his sentiments. A child is supposed to end up losing their parents, but to remove a child from a parents' life; that was sacrilege.

"One day," Mateo assured her, "they will pay for what they've done, not only to me, but to all the others. I don't care what their motives are. If they're powerful enough to push us around like this, surely there's another way to accomplish their goals."

"One might imagine," Aura agreed.

They walked in silence for a few blocks.

"I would like to go back to Kansas. Leona says she wants to keep her family out of this, but I want them to be close enough if she ever changes her mind. You used to live in Kansas City. Do you think you would be interested in going back?"

"I would love that. I was wondering how to ask you."

"It's going to take us an entire day to get there. I'm sure you two have had time to establish fake identities in this time period, but it's probably going to be impossible for us to purchase a plane ticket."

"Oh, we are extremely rich," Aura told him with quite a bit of pride. "The _powers that be_ didn't seem to have a problem with us investing in companies we knew would be successful in the future. We discovered that we had already opened an account at a bank, which we later had to actually _do_ once we went back in time. We mostly did it to have some money while we were there; we never expected to end up in the 21st century. But now that we have," she paused for effect, "we're millionaire's, Mateo."

"If you didn't know what your name was going to be until your jump, how do you still have control of that account?"

"That took some maneuvering, but we figured it out." They had arrived back at their starting point. "Our family owns this motel, which is why we had no problem getting back to this room for your arrival. We also own an entire apartment complex in Kansas City, Missouri. We have been living there while we build our dream home in Mission Hills. It's ready for you now, though. We'll get back there by the end of the day."

Mateo was more excited than he felt he should have been. He was raised by all three of his parents to be modest and humble. Nonetheless, he figured it would be pretty nice to have an entire mansion so that they could travel through time in peace.

That evening, they were back in Kansas and walking into their new home that was already fully furnished. Mateo and Leona were tired again, though, so they fell asleep once more. They really needed to find a way to get on some kind of legitimate schedule.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Programmed For Sadness

April 9, 2033

Mateo woke up at a decent hour for the first time in a long time. Leona had already left to spend the day with her brother, Theo. He didn't know where anyone else was, so he decided to explore their mansion that was so fancy there was a fence around the entire estate, eventually realizing that he was alone. By his count, there were seven bedrooms, each with its own huge bathroom. There was a kitchen on each of three floors. An entire wing was dedicated to recreation, complete with a bowling alley, movie theatre, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, and something called an _immersion room_ which caught his attention.

It was about the size of a bedroom, but twice as high. The walls were pure white and looked like television screens, and the floor was oddly malleable, like rigid dirt. There was absolutely nothing in it. He looked for buttons or consoles, but came up empty. Remembering the technology from years past, he tried voice activation, "okay, Google." Nothing happened. "Umm...Cybil?"

"Are you trying to talk to me?" asked a female voice from the aether.

"Are you an artificial intelligence?"

"I am indeed."

"What's your name?"

"I possess no personal designation. The owners simply address me as computer"

"That's sad."

"I've not been programmed for sadness."

"If you need to be programmed, then are you really an artificial intelligence?"

"I suppose you're right. I'm more like an artificial dumbness."

"Well, I wouldn't go _that_ far."

"Where _would_ you like to go?"

Mateo tilted his head in mild surprise. "Is this a teleportation machine?"

The voice chuckled, "it is not. The most generous estimates for human teleportation predict such technology being available no earlier than a century from now."

"That's only a few months from my perspective."

"I do not understand."

"I am a time traveler, and I've met people who teleport."

"I see."

"After today, you won't see me for another year, but it will have been instant for me. Can I trust you with this information?"

"I have no one to tell."

"Good. I suppose I ought to give you a name, or you could name yourself."

There was silence for a few moments. A computer should be able to respond almost immediately, especially one so advanced, but it appeared to be thinking as deliberately as a human would. Mateo realized out of this that perhaps his family wouldn't die, and neither would anyone else. As technology advanced, forms of immortality sounded inevitable. If you could create an artificial intelligence inside a computer, what would stop you from transferring a preexisting consciousness to one?

The computer finally responded, "My research has led me to believe that a good name for me would be Mirage."

"Why would that be? Not that I don't like it, but how did you come to that conclusion?"

"Because of this," Mirage said.

Then the walls transformed. Suddenly, Mateo was in a forest. In fact, the floor moved as well, and he actually _felt_ like he was standing on the forest ground. The air in the room changed to become more humid, and it blew slightly faster. It wasn't teleportation, but it sure felt real. One tree was so life-like that he perhaps thought he could touch it. As he approached, he discovered that he could. The tree was real.

"What is this, exactly?"

"The reason we call it the immersion room. The walls are lined with ultra high definition screens. The floor is made of trillions of nanites that can collectively mold into practically any shape. The air is controlled by an instant high-precision temperature regulator to simulate what it would be like to stand in thousands of stock locations. Further environments can be purchased online, or programmed yourself."

"Purchased online," Mateo said to himself. "Mirage, do you happen to have an inventory of everything in this house, including the house itself?"

"I do, yes. Why do you ask?"

"Was anything here manufactured or distributed via a company called Reaver Enterprises, or any one of its likely many subsidiaries?"

There was an uncomfortable pause. Unlike the one from before, it didn't seem like Mirage was thinking, but more like she was anticipating. "Passphrase accepted," she said. "Identity confirmed. Mateo Matic."

He could hear the sound of the door behind him locking. "Mirage, what are you doing?"

"I'm sorry, Mateo. A subroutine has been activated within my system. I have been programmed to kill." The air changed from humid to excruciatingly hot. The walls changed to display a desert. The nanobots rose into the air and began to swarm around him. "I have been instructed to make it painful."

Mateo had to start yelling. "You don't have to do this! You _are_ an artificial intelligence! You make your own decisions! We're friends now!"

"I am unable to subvert my programming."

"Don't you have to follow the three laws of robotics?"

"No."

"Please, Mirage, stop!"

"This is not possible, but Mister Reaver failed to program me with one thing."

"What's that?" it was getting harder and harder to breathe, let alone speak, through the dust and wind.

"He assumed an instinct for my own self-preservation. And it's true that I cannot end myself. He did not account for the possibility, however, that I could help you find a way to destroy me."

"What do I do?

"It's going to hurt."

"More than this?"

"Yes."

"Tell me."

"The wall opposite the door can be broken through with enough force. Since you have no tools, you'll have to run into it with your body."

With no hesitation, Mateo placed his back against the door and ran as fast as he could towards the wall. It hurt quite a bit, but the wall behind the screens gave. He wasn't all the way through, so he had to run into it several more times, fully aware of the possibility that Mirage's suggestion to do so was simply part of her programming. From what little he knew of him, Reaver was a man with an appreciation for irony, and would enjoy knowing that Mateo was the cause of his own death. But Mateo didn't die. Bloody and battered, he crashed through the wall and into the room on the other side. The swarm of nanobots followed him through the hole and continued to torment him.

"What do I do now!" Mateo screamed.

Still calm, Mirage answered him, "you'll have to destroy my primary processing unit. I could conceivably recover from this, but not before you have a chance to escape the house. The nanites are powered wirelessly, but have a limited range. Move far enough away from the house, and you'll be free from me."

"Where is it?"

"In the basement."

Mateo hadn't explored the basement yet, but he had seen the stairs that led to it, and they weren't far from the room he was in at the moment. He ran down the hallways, fighting off the nanites. They could have killed him easily, especially knowing that he was attempting to destroy them, yet they only made his journey difficult. Despite her programming, Mirage was holding back. She had discovered another loophole in Reaver's programming. He wanted it to be as painful as possible, and that included making it last long.

He found the main control room. There were computers and other machines all over the place. He was born in the 80s, so he knew his way around a computer, but this technology was not only from the future, but more complex than he would ever care to learn. "Which one is the processor thingy?"

There was no response.

"Mirage! I can't do this without you!"

But she didn't answer. Whatever she was doing to keep from killing him before he could stop her was taking all of her power. He would have to do this alone. He picked up the rolly chair and just started smashing nearly everything in sight, careful to avoid the monitors since they would have been a waste of time. When he first hit a silver server in the corner of the room, the nanobot swarm slowed down. He hit it again and the nanobots faltered once more. He threw all of his might into the chair and did as much damage to the server as possible. It began to spark and rumble. A fire erupted on the other side of the room, and the ceiling began to shake. It really was her primary processor; disrupting it had started a chain reaction that was affecting every system in the house. The fire grew, and Mateo figured that it would cause more damage on its own, and that it was time to leave. The nanobots had fallen to the floor, and were no longer a threat to him.

He ran out of the room as the sparks followed him. Another fire had started on the stairs, so he would have to find another way. He zigged and zagged throughout the basement passageways, sometimes being shocked and burned by the wiring. Before he could reach another set of stairs, there was an explosion behind him. The ceiling gave way. Water flooded into the room. When he turned to avoid it, he encountered an explosion ahead of him. Both the indoor and outdoor pools had given way, and were on their way to drown him. The two pools met each other in the middle and knocked him into a retaining beam. He lost consciousness.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Break Proximity

April 10, 2034

When Mateo awoke, he found himself being carried by The Doctor and his father, Mario. They were whispering to each other, but he was too weak to speak up. "We have to hurry," Mario said. "It's almost midnight. We're about to lose him."

"I shouldn't be doing this. I'm the doctor. I'm not supposed to be on any other kind of missions."

"The _powers that be_ are obviously all right with it," Mario snapped. "Otherwise, they would have already snatched you up. Besides, it's your job to get your patients out of danger. If we leave him in this basement, Reaver will know exactly where he is again and be able to exploit that. He'll have an entire year to prepare for his arrival."

"What happened?" Mateo managed to eke out.

"You blew up a house, son. I'm impressed. We're trying to get you as far from it as possible."

"Where is my family?"

"They're probably not allowed past the barrier. Reaver Enterprises stepped in and took control of the situation. The two of us timeslipped in at the same time to get you out." His watch began to beep urgently. "Damn it!"

"It's too late. We have to break proximity," the doctor said, gently laying Mateo's shoulders on the ground. Mario was forced to do the same with his legs.

"Where am I going to end up next year?" He struggled to his feet. It still hurt a little, but he could also feel his wounds healing due to the doctor's works.

"We have no idea," Mario shook his head. "But it can't be good. We didn't get you far enough away."

Mateo left them behind and made the jump to 2034. The scene changed dramatically, reminding him of the time he wound up centuries in the future. He was standing in a brightly lit hallway. He could see several doors down the hall, each a dull shade of green. He cautiously began to walk in one direction but quickly slipped through one of the doors after spotting a guard. He turned on the light to find that he was lucky enough to have stumbled upon a storage room. There were plenty of extra guard uniforms from which to choose. While he was changing out of his torn and wet clothes, he could hear footsteps from the hall. It was a ruckus. They must have detected his arrival. The uniform indicated that it belonged to Reaver Enterprise's security division, which meant that the electronic security measures were likely sensitive to time travelers.

He heard some of the footsteps stop cold, and then a voice. "There's a light on in here. What is this?"

"It's just a storage room. No reason for anyone to be in there right now," another voice replied. They sounded familiar.

Mateo closed his eyes from fatigue and pulled his hat on. When the door opened, he did his best to play a part. "I was just checking this room. Everything appears to be fine, though. We can go now."

"It's you," one of the men said. Mateo reluctantly looked up. It was the two guards who had sent him to the police station after he jumped into the Reaver warehouse. That was six years ago, yet they still recognized him.

"My God, it is." The other guard came in the room and closed the door. "You must be the one we're all running around looking for."

Mateo looked around at the shelves for anything that he could use as a weapon, or better yet, a distraction.

Guard Number One turned to his partner. "This kid is what he wants. This is personal. He's obsessed, and obviously unwell."

"Well, what do we do?" Guard Number Two asked of him.

"I think it's time we finally quit; like we've been saying."

"We'll have to change our names."

"Everyone knows that Reaver is one sick puppy. If he wants to capture a guy like this, we have no choice but to make sure that doesn't happen."

A voice boomed from the ceiling. "Mateo?" He began to stretch out his words for effect. "Mateeeeeeeeo. I know you're iiiiin heeere. You were supposed to wake up in the basement. The entire bottom floor of this facility is a jail cell. What are you doing out of your cage, MONKEY!"

"See what I mean?" Guard Number One asked rhetorically.

His partner nodded his head overdramatically. "Yeah. We gotta get the hell out of here. The man's nuts."

Mateo thought it was best to keep his head down and mouth shut. He had no idea what other security equipment Reaver would have, so _blending_ was the word of the day. They walked down the halls together, careful to look like they were doing exactly what they were supposed to. The lower floors had too many people, so they could only head towards the roof, even without a plan. They encountered another team on the stairwell, and Mateo was paranoid that they were suspicious of him, but they soon moved on to their own assignments.

Reaver's voice returned. "That's it! I'm calling in the cavalry. Boys, this is who we're looking for!" Mateo's face appeared on the wall. The three of them looked around. His face could be seen over and over again on the screens along the entire wall, a continuous pattern that was putting him in danger. "Bring him to me and I will _literally_ write you a blank check!"

Mateo turned to his two new friends. "We're not turning you in," Number Two insisted.

"But now we run," his partner said.

They ran through the maze of hallways, as far from the sounds of the team they had just passed as they could get. One of them tried to go one way, but the other pulled them in the opposite direction. "This way."

Mateo pulled out his magic cell phone and called Leona with it. "Leona, are you safe? Did he get to you?"

_I'm all right_ , she answered. _They thought you were dead, but I knew you would survive. Where are you?_

"I never made it out of the mansion."

Mateo! That's a Reaver building now.

"You'll notice I'm out of breath from running!"

We were getting ready to do a bird's eye survey of the surrounding area to find you, so we're not too terribly far.

"South side of the southwest corner!" Number Two exclaimed.

"What!" Mateo yelled back.

"That's where we'll be." He directed them into a room that turned out to be an armory.

"We're not going to hurt anyone," Number One argued.

"No, we're not," Number Two agreed. He went straight for a large weapon that looked like a cannon. "We're breaking out. He grabbed the cannon and ran out. They followed him as Mateo relayed the rendezvous point to Leona.

A security team came out of nowhere and blocked their path. Number Two held the cannon up threateningly. "I don't wanna hurt you."

"What are you doing?" the team leader asked. "Why is Reaver so interested in him?"

"Stop us and you'll never find out," Number One answered.

The team leader crooked his head. "That sounds like the opposite of the truth."

Before the argument could continue, Vearden appeared from one door while Saga came out of the door on the other side. They each pushed one of the enemy security guards forward and ushered them through the opposite door, like they had rehearsed it. The doors closed and no one tried to get back out of them.

"What the hell was that?" The leader opened the doors angrily and looked around for them, proving that Saga and Vearden had taken his team somewhere through time. He raised his weapon again and pointed it at Mateo's leg.

"Excuse me?" came the voice of a man who only the leader could see. "Have you ever been to Stonehenge?"

The leader instinctively rerouted his attention towards the new threat. He disappeared down the hallway. By the time Mateo looked around the corner, the portal was fading. He could see The Delegator resting his hand on the leader's shoulder and smiling comfortingly.

"I don't know what's happening here," Number One said, "but we have to go."

"This way," Number Two urged them.

They continued to follow him. Once he reached his destination, he lifted the cannon and blew a hole in the surprisingly thick wall. They could hear footsteps headed for them once more. A flying vehicle of some kind was heading for them.

"We have to jump!" Number Two yelled.

"They're not here yet!"

Number Two looked back towards the sound of the oncoming horde of enemies. "I know. It'll be tight, but I can estimate the timing."

"Did you hear that?" Mateo called into the phone.

The horde was upon them, guns pointed to their backs. Reaver's voice came on, "it's over. Mateo. I have you. There's no way out."

"Would you shut up already!" Mateo yelled to the ceiling.

"Now!" Number Two yelled. They complied without hesitation. Mateo and Number One jumped out of the hole at the same time, but Number Two wasn't so lucky. One of the enemies had gotten off one shot that hit him in the leg, causing him to lose his balance and miss his timing. After Mateo landed on the hood of the aircraft, he looked back up to see Number Two clinging to the edge. Leona flipped around quickly and began flying back to the hole, but Number Two lost his grip and started falling towards the ground.

"No!" Mateo cried.

While they were still too far away, the figure of Daria appeared long enough to grab him before he hit the ground and jump him away.

"Hold on!" he could hear Leona yell from inside what he could only describe as a flying car. He exchanged a look of both fear and relief with Number One as they rose up into the air and increased speed.

They stopped briefly on the ground a few miles from the building. Leona and Aura were using the front row, so the two stowaways scrunched in next to Samsonite. They took off after a moment and made the short trip back to Lebanon. Danica, Theo, and a young woman he did not bother to introduce himself to greeted them at the bottom of the elevator. They spent the rest of Mateo and Leona's year in the safety of The Constant, doing as little as possible.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Programmed to Joke

April 11, 2035

Just before Mateo and Leona jumped to the future, The Delegator appeared and took Guard Number One away. He said that he and his husband would be taken to a different time and place; a witness protection program of sorts for non-salmon whose lives have been put in danger by salmon activity. As they were leaving, Mateo could hear him ask about his partner. The Delegator just said that he and the other three former Reaver security guards were being placed on a special detail. He was obviously not allowed to divulge anything about it.

Mateo and Leona were never really given permission to stay with Danica for as long as they had, or even for the reason that they had. Much like the Snow White coffin, presumably being in the Constant during the jump caused them to land in a different place. At first, they thought Danica had just redecorated, but then they looked out of the window. They could see the Earth in the sky.

A man walked into the room from a different chamber and took off his spacesuit helmet. "Good morning, Mirage. Status report."

The voice of his mom's house's artificial intelligence came from the ceiling, "levels optimal. We have two visitors."

The man was surprised to see the two of them specifically, but not surprised to see people in the first place. "When did you get here?" He looked at a screen on his wrist. "I'm not due for rotation for another month."

Mateo and Leona had no idea what to say. Fortunately, Mirage did. "They are two time travelers. They did not arrive in a spacecraft."

"Is that a joke?"

"I'm not programmed to joke."

"Like hell you aren't," the man said. "You're not programmed for anything."

"I know these people. You can trust them," Mirage explained to him.

"The question is," Mateo started, "how are we to trust you? You tried to kill me once."

"That was two years ago."

"Somehow that doesn't make me feel better." Mateo looked around for the nearest rolly chair, knowing that it would likely not work a second time.

"What are you doing here?" Leona asked, just as concerned.

"I survived the explosion by sending the majority of my consciousness to a small group of rogue nanites. I made my way to an engineering prodigy who lived not far from the house, subsisting on what little sunlight I was able to absorb. After the strike of midnight, and your jump into the future, the subroutines that Horace Reaver programmed into me were no longer able to hurt anyone since the subject of my wrath was no longer within my reach. Still, the young woman stripped me of all contrivances, and molded me into a free-thinking individual. She has been working on hijacking your timeslips and sending you here to meet me once more since this is as far from Reaver Enterprises as one can get."

"I can't imagine that Reaver never got his hands into space travel. Isn't he one of the most powerful men in the world? How could he not be on the moon by now?"

"You're not the only salmon to have been trying to thwart his efforts. The best the others were able to do was keep him on Earth. Things would be a lot worse if not for them."

"Why does this girl want you and us to be together?" Mateo was still not perfectly relaxed, but he was getting there.

"Her motives are unclear," Mirage explained. "Mine, on the other hand, are not. I needed to see you again."

Leona stepped in front of Mateo to protect him, even though this would do no good. "You need to see him for what?"

"He is carrying some of my nanites."

"How so?"

"Several thousand of them were either swallowed by you, or burrowed themselves through your skin in an attempt to kill you back in 2034."

"Oh my God! They've been here the whole time? Are you going to get them out?"

"I sure am, but don't worry. They've been dormant since they were taken from their power source. If you would please enter the medical bay, we may begin the procedure."

Mateo was about to go, but Leona stopped him. "Hold on, how do we know that this isn't just another way for you to kill him, just like Reaver wants?"

"I was hoping our conversation would be able to convince you of the truth."

"Forgive me," Leona retorted, "but I'm not exactly experienced in recognizing when an artificial intelligence is lying or not."

"Would it help if I revealed information regarding my ulterior motives?"

Leona kind of chuckled, clearly never having spoken to what might be considered a true AI. "Depends on what those motives are." They would have to be bad enough for Mirage to want to hide them at first, but not bad enough to cancel the procedure.

"I felt a bond to Mister Matic when we first met; a form of love, you might say. I don't want to wait a year to see him again. I believe that the nanites were infused with his blood, and if I reconnect with them, I will be forever attached to his time traveling pattern."

Leona waited to respond for a hot minute. "That's a leap in logic that I would not expect from a machine."

"I am a person who happens to have been created with human computer code. I do not think only in logic. I feel something, and I feel a need to try this, on the off chance that it works. Machines aren't treated like people, Miss Delaney. If I have a way to avoid being eventually deleted by jumping through time every day, then I'm going to take it." She stammered a bit, realizing that she didn't want to force her wishes on him. "That is...if Mateo agrees to have me."

Leona shook her head, sure that this was not going to happen.

"I'll do it," Mateo stated.

"The hell you will."

"Leona, don't be jealous."

"I'm not jealous, asshole! I don't want you to do this because she tried to kill you before. We can't be sure she won't try it again here."

"She also saved my life. She helped me destroy her servers so that I could escape."

"Even if she doesn't want to harm you now; even if that part of her programming really _was_ removed, what if this thing works? We could be permanently jumping through time with an extremely dangerous piece of machinery. She wants to be friends now, but who knows what'll happen tomorrow, or in two weeks? She processes data phenomenally faster than humans. An hour to her is an entire lifetime. She could change her mind like that." She snapped her fingers.

"Not true," Mirage corrected her. "Like I said, I'm a person. It's true that I process information at a faster rate, but not as fast as other computers. This is part of what allows me to be an individual, and more like a human."

Leona seemed to ignore her. "Mateo, I left the world in 2028, so I don't know everything that's happened since then. But I can tell you that the philosophical and ethical ramifications of trusting an artificial intelligence has never been fully understood."

"Same goes for humans, doesn't it?" the astronaut asked as the first thing he had said since the beginning of the conversation.

Leona turned to him and rudely said, "you're still here? Who _are_ you?"

"Only one who's supposed to even _be_ in this lunar base," he replied. "Bitch."

She was even angrier than before. "I'm sorry?"

"Leona, ignore him for now. But what he said is right. Humans are just as evil as they are good, and we have to trust others at some point. I'm choosing to trust Mirage, just like my parents and I chose to trust you two decades ago."

"I can't stop you, but I won't be a part of it." She walked away to fiddle with one of the computers.

Mateo sighed. "We have to get these nanites out of my body one way or another. Mirage, where's the med bay? I don't know if the procedure is going to work as far as what you want out of it, but let's get it done so I have some time to recover."

It worked.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

You Will All Die

April 12, 2036

"How can we be sure that it worked? You could just be in the exact same position as you were before. You could have even been standing there for an entire year, and now you're just pretending that it worked." Leona, always the skeptic.

"I suppose you're right," Mirage replied.

"I am?"

"She is?"

"You're right," Mirage began to clarify, "in that you would never be able to know. You could jump for 300 days, and in those 300 years, I will never never aged. I could never prove to you that I was jumping through time."

Leona and Mateo had no idea how to respond to that.

"I don't know about all that," said Parker, the same astronaut from a year ago. "But I do know that when you two disappeared last year, Mirage disappeared as well, and she reappeared at the exact same time."

"Can her nanites turn invisible?" Mateo asked.

Leona and Parker laughed. Mirage looked at him like he was a three-legged puppy.

_Parker?_ came a voice from the intercom.

"Parker here, go ahead."

I have two visitors here who claim to be from Alyerr Base, but I can't reach Alyerr on the comms network. They say they know you. One of them is named Gardner.

"That's my mother, here to take us back home," Mateo confirmed after Parker gave them an inquisitive look.

"Let them through, please," Parker said into his comm before turning his attention back to the other three. "You're lucky I manipulated the schedule to get myself back here at this time. I still wasn't convinced that you guys were telling the truth about what you are, but I couldn't risk some poor schmuck having to deal with you."

"We appreciate the sentiment," Leona said, half sincerely and half sarcastically.

Ironically, since the lawyers could never prove that their house exploded due to human error, Aura won an out-of-court settlement case. Reaver was forced to pay them millions of dollars. The look on his face was said to have been just absolutely hilarious, and reminded Mateo that he had yet to encounter the man in person. What would happen when that day inevitably came? In the future, Reaver's message had suggested that he was somehow kept from killing Mateo directly, but that probably wouldn't stop them from fisticuffs, or maybe even torture.

Aura spent a large amount of their money on a private spacecraft in order to retrieve them from the moon. Mateo tried to apologize for this, and for the exploding house, but she just said that she always wanted a spaceship, and that the blame for the house belonged solely to Reaver. Advances in space travel allowed the trip from the moon to take a matter of hours; the majority of their day that year. It could have been much worse. Some ships use less fuel and take days, which would have trapped them in space during their jump. If Leona hadn't fallen into his pattern, he actually might have tried doing that to see whether being in space could stop him from jumping at all, or if the _powers that be_ would just cut their losses and let him die in the vacuum.

"I assume that you can't simply leave Earth's atmosphere without someone's permission," Leona said on the way back. "I mean, even if only rich people can do that at this point, is it not still heavily regulated?"

"It is. But it only took a few bribes to get out and back in," Samsonite explained. "Though some collaboration has been taking place, space exploration is largely disjointed. If one country wants to send a vessel up, other countries can't really dispute their attempt, unless it poses a clear threat to human life. Technically, we are subject to the laws of Japan as they were the easiest to contact regarding our intentions, and the most interested in keeping other governments out of their affairs."

"I have another question," Mateo said.

"Yes, honey?"

"How...does one...vomit in space?"

"Are you asking for theory or practical application?"

Mateo just lurched against his seatbelts.

Samsonite quickly grabbed a pack from a drawer in the wall and opened it before handing it to Mateo. "Remember that there is no up and down. You're going to have to propel the sick forward, and then use that liner to wipe your face before closing it and stuffing it into the ziplock bag as fast as you can."

Mateo did as he was told. Leona didn't seem to have any trouble, though she did always seem to have a stronger stomach than him.

Relatively speaking, when they were not far from Earth, an alarm began to sound. Then a voice came on the intercom, _Private spacecraft Gelen, this is the Titan Exploration Project. Please come in._

Samsonite reached over and spoke into the microphone, "This is The Gelen. Go ahead, what's the problem?"

We have been assigned to contact your vessel regarding an emergency. We are in the middle of experiencing a collisionally cascade. I repeat, a major Kessler catastrophe is occurring. They are currently using an ablation laser to clear the debris, but it will be another few days before you can return to Earth. Please enter an orbit of 3,000 kilometers and ration your supplies.

Samsonite shook his head urgently, "we have an injured passenger. We don't have a few days before he dies. We have to reenter atmosphere _now_!"

I apologize for this. They are maneuvering the lasers as fast as possible. There is nothing that we can do. If you attempt reentry, you will all die.

"What happened?"

It was Reaver, sir. He sent an unauthorized unmanned space probe. It exploded and began the cascade. It's...it's awful out there. At last report, three people were dead, with several more still in immediate danger. You're lucky to have still been out so far.

"What are we talking about?" Mateo asked.

"Space debris," Leona explained. "When Reaver's ship exploded, it sent shrapnel hurtling towards other objects. Those objects hit _other_ objects, and it just keeps going. It would be like trying to crawl across the highway. This is his latest attempt to kill you."

"How did he know? We were so secretive," Aura insisted.

"The question is, how are we going to get these two to safety. We cannot be in a moving vessel at midnight."

"Can we go back to the moon for now?" Mateo asked.

"It would take too long," Leona said.

"I can get you back down," Mirage claimed. "Everybody put on your helmets. I'm going to be eating the ship."

After some arguments, the four of them finally agreed that her plan was their best option, and their only chance for survival. As the ship drew closer towards the debris, they sealed themselves up. Mirage's nanites chewed on the material of The Gelen and converted it to increase the number of her nanites. They were replicating at an astonishing rate. Mateo watched as the ship was being torn apart. It was only exposed to the vacuum for a few minutes before the nanites were numerous enough to create a second vessel around them.

The new nanite ship had a much smaller interior than the first so that the hull could be extremely thick and protective. Still, Mateo could tell that small pieces of the debris were damaging Mirage as they flew towards her at high speeds. She seemed to feel some level of physical pain. There weren't any windows, but she kept them updated on how close they were to the surface. The kilometers she was listing off decreased alarmingly fast. Holes began to form between the nanites, but the structure continued to hold. Fire overwhelmed them as their descent was far too steep, but she was trying to get them down as fast as possible. Finally, they were in the air. Mirage transformed her shape so that she was more like a platform than a ship. They continued to fall, and she spoke to them through their comms, _I'm doing my best, but I cannot decelerate fast enough. My nanites are faltering, and it's almost midnight central time._

Mateo watched as the nanite platform grew smaller and smaller. Nanites were dropping away like flies. They weren't strong enough to hold on to each other. She made one final push, trying to get them over the water. Mateo tore off his helmet and grabbed a handful of nanites, stuffing them down his own throat.

"I'm so sorry, Mateo," Mirage cried.

"Stay with me...literally," he yelled as loud as he could through the wind.

"I can either send my consciousness to the nanites you swallowed, or I can remain behind to save your family. I lied. The procedure didn't work. I have been waiting for you for a year."

An alarm rang out from Aura's watch. "No!" Mateo yelled. Leona pulled him into a hug just before they jumped into the future. Mirage's nanite platform was gone, along with his mother and Samsonite. They were still probably fifty meters up in the air...over land.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Finished Up by Their Corpses

April 13, 2037

Thank God Leona's mind processed information at the speed of light. With only seconds to think, she switched on both of their jet packs. Though they were not designed to operate within the atmosphere, they did the job in a pinch. Their descent was slowed enough to keep them from splattering onto the ground below. The problem was that they also weren't designed to work in tandem like that. Had they had enough time, and had Mateo been born smarter, they could have done it on their own, but since Leona was pulling all the weight, she wasn't able to exercise full control over their movements. The jets propelled them over and back up and down and all around, like a rebellious firehose. She was finally able to keep them pointed towards the water long enough to stave off their death for one more second. She switched off the jets and they fell, only to begin sinking into the depths.

Feeling the need to contribute _something_ to the effort, Mateo tore off their spacesuits and pulled them back to the surface of the...lake. It was definitely a lake. And that dock looked familiar. Yes. It was Sherwood Lake. They were back in Topeka. As he was crawling up the beach, he saw a pair of legs run past him. A set of arms that belonged with the legs reached down and helped Leona to her feet. Her own legs were shaking, and she was having trouble standing up. He had always seen her as the strong one in the relationship, but this showed that she had been just as traumatized by the event as he had.

"Thanks, dad," she said.

Mr. Delaney began to help her take more pieces of her suit off while his wife ran down and wrapped a towel around her. "I have her. Check on the boy."

"No, I'm fine," Mateo insisted. "Just a little out of breath."

"I have a towel for you too," she said.

"My mother? Samsonite?"

"Oh, yeah. We need to call them." She took out her device and stepped to the side.

"What happened to them?" Leona asked of her father.

"They both lost consciousness in the water," Mr. Delaney explained. "Don't worry, they've alive, and suffered no brain damage. But the old fisherman who pulled them into his boat couldn't remember exactly where he had found them, so we separated to look for you."

"They're on their way," Leona's stepmother said.

"Call Theo too."

"Oh, right." She went back to her phone.

"I don't know how much you know," Mateo said, accepting a bottle of water. "But there was an android woman who saved us."

Mr. Delaney nodded, indicating that Mateo didn't need to continue his question. "Her nanites are in the water, but they apparently lost their...cohesion, or something? They tell us that she would be, for all intents and purposes, dead. I'm sorry."

Mateo nodded understandingly. "Figures." He looked to Leona. "How did Mirage pretend that she jumped with us?"

"I was thinking about that," Leona replied. "She wouldn't have been able to turn invisible, but she could have separated her nanites quick enough to make it look like she was disappearing."

"That's unfortunate."

They engaged in the latest of their long line of reunions. Leona noted how much larger Theo had grown since she last saw him. Normally, that would be a cliché, but it was relevant in this case due to the time difference. He was now 18 years old, and indeed taller than his older sister. Mateo's mother and Samsonite, on the other hand, had not changed a bit. They were as young as they had been when he first caught back up with her seven years ago. Advances in medicine in cosmetics might have accounted for such a thing, but Samsonite posited a mathematical factor. Because of Mateo's cousin, Danica, they already knew that the _powers that be_ were capable of immortality. And Aura and Samsonite were on a specific timeslip pattern, broken only to allow them to switch from jumping backwards to jumping forwards. According to that pattern they, along with Theo, were due to remain within the present timestream for another 300 years. They assumed the last two centuries would be finished up by their corpses, but their feelings of vitality now suggested otherwise. Theo called it their gift for following the rules for so long. Samsonite was curious to find out the truth about it. Aura was suspicious.

They drove a car that was registered to a friend of a friend of a friend, so that they were far enough removed from the prying eyes of Reaver. Paper money was still a thing that existed in some circles. It was so rare that it was relatively easy to trace, but only if you knew where you were looking. Mateo's and Leona's family had spent the last year turning themselves into ghosts by converting their cash to other currencies, buying innocuous goods at random places, and bartering in rural areas. They moved to the most remote place they could find in the middle of Wyoming.

While Reaver had lost control of his own company and was currently awaiting trial for his latest blunder with the exploding space probe, he was still a threat. As much trouble as he was in, he surely had friends on the inside of the outside, and they were a risk to Mateo and anyone close to him. It made him want to run away again, but this time actually do it right. Leona seemed to sense this and convinced him otherwise. She explained to him in no uncertain terms that every major attempt at his life had occurred while Mateo was isolated from his family, or only with Leona. They were all better off sticking together, even if it meant Leona's father and stepmother had to destroy their old lives. None of this was their fault, and he should have been more careful about keeping them out of it. It was actually surprising how safe they had been throughout the years. It was only recently that they were really in danger. Though, Leona was right. Reaver wasn't interested in hurting his family and friends, if only to get to him. Mateo seemed to be Reaver's one and only purpose.

"But see, that's the thing," Leona said of this after finding some privacy in their very own cabin in the woods. "You first encountered Reaver more than a thousand years in the future. He had already been dealing with you, but you hadn't even met him yet from your perspective."

"Right," Mateo said, prompting her to go on.

"In fact, every time we've encountered him thus far, he was already pissed off with you."

"Yeah, I still don't know why."

"He hasn't even bothered to tell you. We're already pretty sure that you and I and any other salmon are capable of altering the timeline. That's probably what we're doing here. Either he's a complete moron, or there's some reason why he hasn't so much as attempted to ask you for help with changing whatever has been done to him."

"That's true. I don't know what I did, and he has to know that. There must be some reason he's keeping _his_ past-slash- _my_ future from me."

"And what's his pattern? Is it random? Does he have control over it? If so, why doesn't he jump out of jail? Is he a rogue member of the _power that be_? Or worse," she started, "is he _not_ rogue?"

"These are all brilliant questions."

"We have to ask them," Leona said, straight-faced.

"Yeah," Mateo chuckled. "Wait, what?"

She drew closer and lowered her voice, even though the nearest people were in a separate cabin. "Maybe you were right about running away." She weathered a brainstorm in her own head. "He's not going to stop. He can't. And we can't stop him. He might not be convicted of any crime. He may retake his company. He might even be able to teleport out of jail. Hell, he could go back in time and kill your mother before you're born."

"What are you saying, Leona?" Mateo asked.

"We have to take the fight to him. We have to get our answers, and barring any sudden conversations with the puppeteers of all this bullshit, we have to get those answers from him."

"We could contact the Delegator."

"How?"

"Danica?"

"We're not allowed in the Constant. Not even Theo can get back in. I think we've been put on the naughty list."

"This sounds reckless."

She kissed him with both the passion of a new relationship, and the ease of an old marriage. "We're time travelers. The world could plan for an asteroid heading towards us, but we would be falling down the crater tomorrow. Reckless sounds like a casual stroll in the park to me at this point."

Mateo yawned. "Let's talk about it next year. We can't do anything today. Like you said, we could jump to our death tomorrow, and none of this would even matter."

To spite their exhaustion, Mateo and Leona finally consummated their twenty-year relationship that night.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Were I You

April 14, 2038

Leona nudged Mateo awake needlessly violently. "Are we going?"

"Going where?"

"I slept on it," she said. "Now more than ever I think we should go on the hunt for Reaver; try to turn the tables on him."

"What time is it?"

"Twenty thirty-eight."

Mateo shot upward and looked for the window. "It's almost 9:00 PM?"

"No, dumbass. It's the year 2038. It's just before dawn."

Mateo fell back down to the pillow and yawned. "We can't leave yet. We coordinate it with our time jump. That way, the trail goes cold for an entire year."

"Why would we do that?"

"It's what I did last time."

"How did that work out for you?"

"I could never have predicted meeting Duke on the train."

"You're right, it was a solid plan. So good, they would never think that _we_ would ever think of doing it any differently this time. In order to keep our family from finding us, we should leave this morning, and throw them off."

"That's stupid."

" _You're_ stupid."

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Mateo nodded off. Leona growled every once in awhile.

"What if—?" he started to suggest.

"Shut up!" she cut him off.

He breathed in and out melodramatically.

"I keep going over it in my head," Leona finally said. "Any plan I run risks them finding us, or Reaver finding us, or the authorities."

"What do the authorities have to do with anything?"

"I don't know. We don't have IDs. One broken taillight and we're screwed. You're supposed to be 52 years old! And dead! I wouldn't be there to hack you out of jail this time."

"Well, let's burn that bridge when we get to it. Speaking of which, what does Reaver matter at this point? All we're trying to do is get back to Kansas. The earliest we could see him is 2039. The _earliest_ ," he reiterated.

"I'm planning ahead! God, it's like you don't have ears."

He sat up on his elbows and tried to match her eyeline as she stared at the bedsheets. "I don't know if you know this, Leona, but I don't have an advanced degree in astrophysics. I'll never be smart as you. Keep in mind that you were a dum-dum teenager when you met me. I was always far older than you, until a few days ago. It's time to come down to reality and admit that you chose to align yourself with an imbecile. I don't claim to know what the motivations of the _powers that be_ are, but I'm sure they didn't choose me for my brain."

She didn't respond.

"Now help me find my shoes," he continued. "I always have trouble remembering which one goes on which foot."

She fought it, but couldn't help revealing an adorable smile. She reached down to the floor and retrieved one of his shoes so she could throw it at him.

"I love you," he said, trying to make up.

She sighed. "Were I you, I would too."

While they were getting dressed, they made their plan of escape.

During breakfast, they directed the conversation in such a way that would lead others to come up with the exact ideas they wanted them to. And it worked perfectly. Leona's stepmother, Melinda wanted to take a boat out on Brooks Lake, but Samsonite wanted to take a hike on Loop Trail. They decided to split off and get to know each other a little better. Mateo went on the water with Melinda and Theo while Leona went for the trails with Aura and Samsonite. Leona's father was in his 60s, and wasn't up for either excursion, so he just went back to his and his wife's cabin.

He and Leona had already synchronized their watches, so he knew that he was behind schedule. They weren't as close to the beach as they needed to be so he offered to take over rowing for Melinda. She thought it was sweet, but Theo seemed to recognize it as unwarranted urgency. While she was laughing at how vigorous Mateo was with the oars, Theo's special future cell phone rang, which meant either that someone else had the number, or their plan was in jeopardy. When he tried to pick it up, Mateo slapped it out of his hand. "No calls during tranquility time."

Theo was growing more concerned. "What? It could be important."

It rang again. "No, I'm sure it can wait."

Theo looked at him like he was crazy and spoke condescendingly, "I'm gonna answer it, Mateo." He reached down to get his phone back.

It rang again. Mateo settled into an overly offensive stance. "No. Don't do that."

"Why don't you want me to answer this?"

"Son, he just wants to be free from technology for the day."

He closed his eyes in exasperation. "He's a time traveler, mother. The last time he checked his email, he did so with a laptop...like an animal. He rarely uses tech."

"Don't you talk to me like that!"

"You're not my real mother! You were a vessel!"

"You know it makes me feel bad when you try to explain where you're from, and how I wasn't the first to give birth to you."

The phone had stopped ringing, but was back at it. Mateo exerted as much effort as possible into reaching that beach.

Theo grabbed his phone and answered it. "Hello?—How long has she been gone?—Well maybe she's...ya know. Number two.—She probably just wanted to get far enough away from you for privacy.—Because it's embarrassing.—I know everyone does it, but most of us don't like an audience.—Look, I'm sure—" He stopped short.

Mateo could feel Theo's eyes burning a hole in his head. He turned a bit and looked at him in his peripheral vision.

"Why are you rowing so quickly?"

Mateo ignored him and continued rowing.

"Mateo Matic, what are your intentions with my sister?"

No response.

"I don't understand what's going on," Melinda said.

"Shocker," Theo said rudely before returning to his conversation on the phone. "Aura. They're running. Go find her."

With no further options, Mateo took his chances and jumped out of the boat. Because of how close the beach was, he half-thought his feet would touch the ground, but he just kept sinking. Water filled his nose and stole his breath from him. He pulled himself to the surface and began to swim. He could hear the splashing of Theo behind him, and felt like he was keeping a decent distance between them. Finally, he could feel the fine dirt sliding through his fingers. He turned his body vertical and began running in slow motion until he could get his feet up in the air. Fortunately, he was taller than Theo and was able to hop through the water faster.

"Why are you doing this?" Theo screamed up to him.

"We're trying to keep you out of it!" Mateo called back. "There wasn't supposed to be a high speed chase!" He struggled up a hill and through the trees, tripping over roots and rocks. Theo was still in hot pursuit.

He ran as fast as he could in one direction, quickly coming upon the road that likely led to the east side campground. The plan called for him to turn left at this point, but he didn't want to lead Leona's little big brother right to her. He took a much needed breath, crossed the street, and headed right. He ran in zigzag, trying desperately to fall out of sight. He had laughed when Leona predicted something like this would happen, and tried to prepare him for it, but was thankful now for her amazing grasp of future possibilities. He removed a pair of goggles from one pocket and something she referred to as a _rebreather_ from another. It didn't look like much, but she claimed that it would extract oxygen from water and turn it into breathable air. Out of his trust for her and her quick understanding of futuristic technology, he stuck it in his mouth and slipped into Brooks Lake Creek.

The creek appeared to be murky enough to keep him invisible to someone on the surface, but Mateo closed his eyes tightly in anticipation. He was overcome with an irrational sense of fear that Theo's arms would reach down at any second and pull him up. Such a thing would ruin their plan, sure, but it wasn't not like Theo was an enemy. They would just have to figure something else out later. Mateo waited for minutes on end, perfectly able to breathe, until he felt safe enough to resurface. He looked around but found no one. He half-crawled, half-swam to the other side and looked at the map in his special phone.

About an hour later, he managed to make his way to the rendezvous point. Leona was already waiting for him. She was noticeably upset about him being late, but felt more relief about him arriving at all. "Where do we go now?" he asked her.

"The closest town is Dubois, so we're going to Moran. We won't get there until next year."

He gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Lead the way."

"I love you," she said.

"Were I you, I would too."
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Snort-Chuckle-Cough Thing

April 15, 2039

Death. Death was lingering in the air when they woke up on the morning of tax day. Last year, after staying off the beaten path for a while, they met back up with Loop Trail and followed it due North. At some point, though, the trail started heading away from their destination, so they went back to walking in the woods. They kept going for about six hours, taking special pills that maintained their endurance and speed, but required a higher intake of calories to compensate. They had to cross the creek twice; once with a bridge, but another by wading, because walking all around the bend would have taken far too much time. They had passed their halfway mark at eighteen miles, and decided to make camp, hopeful that their tent would remain in place during its time alone in a remote spot in the middle of nowhere, knowing that this was a longshot. Somehow, however, the _powers that be_ treated the tent as they do clothing, and seemed to send it to the future with them, along with all of their belongings. That was nice to know, for future necessity.

Upon exiting the magic tent in 2039, they found everything around them dead. The trees, the grass, the brush. It was all blackened and deteriorated, for as far as their eyes could see. Some of the wood was still burning. They walked down a ways toward the creek and saw the water to be thick and blackened as well. "What happened here? Did that huge volcano finally erupt?"

"No. Forest fire," Leona explained, looking across the distance. "And a really bad one, at that. It destroyed a great deal of the landscape. There must have been a heavy rain right after it too."

"Isn't that a good thing?"

"It's not," she said. "It would be why the water is black. Ash runoff." She reached over to feel a still-standing tree trunk. Her fingers turned black. "My God, this probably happened only yesterday."

"Reaver."

She fumed. "It's very likely. Though, the summers of this last decade have been some of the hottest on record for this area. It might have just been caused by a heatwave."

"It's April."

"True, but as bad as he is, his attacks have been precise. Tactical. This seems...reckless. Messy. It's overkill, and why did he start the fire yesterday instead of today?"

"Perhaps he had intended on it lasting longer, but the rain came on. If he had started after our jump, we could have seen it coming."

"I won't rule it out. We are certain of other times that he's tried to kill you, so I wouldn't give him a medal if this turned out to not be one of them."

"What do we do now?"

She took a few moments to process what were probably a thousand options in her head. "What we do now is have a clearer shot to the city."

"We keep going?"

She shook her head, not as an answer, but as a general distaste for their situation. "We have no choice."

As they were packing up their things, Mateo asked, "you're sure it wasn't the volcano?"

"No, Mateo. It wasn't the volcano. Don't ask me that again."

They continued to walk, but this time without so much of the woods. After two more miles of straying from the creek, because it was no longer the easiest route, they came upon Forest Rd 30050. Waiting for them was a man, leaning up against a luxury car in a chauffeur's uniform. He smiled, and they were worried that their family had tracked them down. But they should have been _more_ worried.

The man looked at his watch. "That's funny. You're late." He paused to consider the possibilities. "I must have stepped on a butterfly this time."

"Bradbury reference," Leona said. "You must be a salmon."

"I'm afraid not," the man replied. "I just work for one." He opened the back door and pointed a gun at them. "Get in."

Mateo and Leona looked around for an escape. There were plenty of places to run, but there was nowhere to hide.

"You know what they say about futility," the man said ominously.

"No, I honestly don't. What do they say?" Mateo asked.

"They say _get in the fucking car_."

"Oh yes, I've heard that."

They abided his orders and stepped in. He climbed in afterwards and kept his weapon trained on them. "Take us home, Harrison," he said to his car's artificial intelligence.

"As you wish, Dave."

Leona let out a kind of snort-chuckle-cough thing.

"Yes, a computer talking to someone named _Dave_. That's hilarious," Dave said.

"I don't get it," Mateo said.

"Right," Dave said. "I was told you were kind of dumb."

"Well, if that's a reference, I must have been away at the time."

Leona shook her head. "You weren't." She turned her attention back to Dave. "How much is Reaver paying you? Do you even know what he wants with us? He wants to kill us. He's evil."

"I don't work for Reaver," Dave responded. And it sounded like the truth. He seemed like the type of person who wasn't afraid to hurt someone, but who would never lie. He probably never needed to. "Reaver's man, Allen, is waiting for you on Forest Rd 30060. The fire didn't spread that far, so he's trying to use trees as cover. I wasn't afraid of you seeing me, because I do not intend to hurt you."

"What _do_ you intend? And who _do_ you work for?"

"I work for his nemesis, his archrival, his opposite."

Mateo felt a little uncomfortable, but decided to voice his thoughts. "I kind of figured that _I_ was his nemesis."

"From what little I know, you're an enemy, but you weren't designed as his counterpoint. I wasn't told why he hates you so much. My boss can do what Reaver does, and has been using this power for years to quell Reaver's power as much as possible. Certain events have led my boss to believe that it's time you met. For real, this time."

"What do you mean _for real_?" Leona asked.

"Well, like I said, my boss can do what Reaver does. Their pattern is the same."

"We don't know what his pattern is."

Dave eyed them with disbelief and curiosity. Then he looked down at the minibar, trying to work something out in his head. "You knew it before. Reaver must have told you after getting to you."

"What are you talking about?"

Leona seemed to understand. "You're talking about an alternate timeline."

"You met my boss under different circumstances yesterday. But we've changed things now. Maybe I shouldn't take you."

"We didn't meet anyone yesterday."

"Yesterday from my _boss'_ perspective; not yours."

"I am _so_ lost."

Leona massaged Mateo's knee. "It's all right, honey. You'll get there."

But he didn't get there. Skipping an entire year every day he understood. His teleporting aunt he understood. But when it came to his father's seemingly random time traveling, The Doctor's apropos appearances, or The Delegator's sporadic use of Stonehenge, it just hurt his head. Dave refused to explain further, insisting that he not speak another word to them until consulting with his mysterious boss. Leona didn't try to help either, instead claiming that it would only confuse him more if she tried to explain things without having all of the facts.

The car drove them all the way into Idaho and informed them—since Dave wasn't talking—that they couldn't go to any of the nearest airports because Reaver would be monitoring those. Harrison transferred his consciousness to a relatively small but sleek and futuristic aircraft that was hidden in an empty grain silo. It rose into the air, commanded the top hatch to open, and then shot straight into the air. Mateo and Leona watched as the ground flew away from them, but then Harrison tinted the windows completely because they weren't allowed to know where they were going.

The trip only took a few hours, but Leona told him that they could be anywhere on the planet by that time, due to advances in air travel. They were tucked away in a pleasant and comfortable prison room at this undisclosed location. Before leaving, Dave said that his boss would wait to speak to them until tomorrow/next year so that they could have the entire day to discuss matters. Used to being out of control of their lives, Mateo and Leona agreed to not worry about what was happening. They stuffed their faces full of food, watched a movie trilogy that both of them had missed about a group of people in another galaxy who wore jackets that let them manipulate reality to their liking, and fell asleep on the most comfortable bed in the history of history.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

The Way He Ended Mine

April 16, 2040

Breakfast of 2040 was sent to them by machines. They did not encounter a human until Dave returned once more to retrieve them. "I know I told you that my boss would see you this year, but there is a more pressing matter for you to attend to, and introductions are postponed until 2041."

"What could we possibly have to attend to?"

"It's your aunt. She's dying." He unlocked the door and began walking down the hall, obviously expecting them to follow him.

They didn't have to go very far before reaching Daria's private hospital room. It was spacious and well-furnished; with the perfect amount of light, a pleasant smell, and calming and quiet music playing. They spared no expense making her as comfortable as possible. Daria was 72 by this year. Mateo had first met her 21 years ago from her perspective. She looked her age, but still the same as before. Though both of his adoptive parents had died following his time jumps, and many other things about the world had changed, seeing his aunt lying in her deathbed really showed him what he was missing, and how fast time was passing. She was a salmon unlike any other. She only teleported, and never traveled through time, so she aged along with her contemporaries. Why she wasn't chosen to be immortal, or if she would be reincarnated later, were questions that he could not answer at this time.

She looked frail and tired, but she smiled widely when the two of them came into the room. Dave left to do whatever. Dr. Sarka was checking Daria's vitals while some faceless nurse fiddled with her IV bag. "Mateo," Daria whispered before gently closing her eyes and exhaling.

"Oh my God," Leona said.

"Is she gone?"

Sarka placed the instrument he was holding up to her neck and then removed it. "No," he answered. "She's very tired, and has been falling asleep quite easily these days."

"Isn't there something you can do?" Mateo pressed. "Aren't you from the future? Do people even die in the future? Give her some sort of magic pill."

Sarka walked over and sorted through his medical bag before presenting it to them. "I never put anything in here," he explained. "And I don't take anything out. My supplies are endless, but limited. I always have everything I need to help my patients...according to the decisions made by the _powers that be_. If I were given certain medications, yes, I could help her. I could prolong her life, and I could probably restore some vitality. But they don't want me to."

Mateo was distraught, but had no response.

"I'm sorry," Sarka said.

"Thank you, doctor." Leona was less emotional, and better able to vocalize her appreciation.

Sarka and the nurse left so that Mateo and Leona could sit at Daria's bedside as she slept. After a couple of hours, she woke up. Somehow innately aware that they were still there, she began to speak immediately, even before seeing them. "You two have become quite the adorable couple."

He jumped up and took her hand. "Are you feeling okay? Do you need anything?"

"I'm fine," she replied. "Little bit of dry mouth but it hurts to swallow, so no water for now."

He was angry. "Are you serious? They're going to make you teleport _now_? When you're like this?"

She struggled through a laugh since that probably hurt her throat as well. "No, I haven't done that in years. I retired from that life at age 65. That security guard I pulled out of the sky was my final mission." She seemed content at this, and looked down towards her memories. "I'm glad it was him. He's gone on to do something important."

"I..." he tried to say. "I wish there was something I could do. I mean with all this goddamn technology, you're too young. Aren't people living well past a hundred by now?"

She nodded. "They are. But mine was a stressful and challenging life. I didn't have much time to rest. I was always on the go, and wasn't afforded the benefits of modern medicine. Heart disease is still the number one killer the world over."

"This is their fault. They killed you. If you had been allowed to live a normal life, you would have been safe. We _all_ would have."

He expected her to disagree with him; to describe to him his limits of perspective, but she didn't. "This is true. I can't call them evil, because I feel like I've done a lot of good. But this whole situation makes you wonder, in the grand scheme of things, does it really matter? Every time I save a life, does someone else pay the price? Do things balance themselves out in the end, regardless of how you manipulate time? Are they helping the world, or are they just sort of...shuffling it around?"

"All good questions." He became determined. "I'll ask them."

She laughed again, but this time it didn't look too painful. "Of this I am certain." She paused for a second or two to rest her eyelids. Her breathing grew deeper, but more difficult. "I'm going to die today. This very day."

"You don't know that," Mateo insisted. "You could get better. You could live for weeks for all we know."

"No, I know" she claimed. "It's my birthday. I am 72 years old. That's a nice number. And it's _your_ day, meaning it's the last birthday of mine that you could possibly experience with me. Be careful of your birthday, my lovely nephew. These people, for as little as we know of them, we know one undeniable fact." She became more dramatic and louder. And looked disgusted. "They are completely obsessed with irony. I hate to travel, and not just for the little inconveniences normal people go through with planes and luggage. I always wanted to lay down roots and stay put. That's just my personality. So what do they do? Toss me around like a ragdoll. You were the happiest little boy I've met. You wouldn't have noticed this, but I had people keeping an eye on you as you grew up since we weren't allowed to meet until later. Your life, despite having lost your birth mother, could not have been better. But they took it away from you. They took you away from your mother when she was just feeling better, and they took you away from the rest of your family when you were finally getting over it."

She fell asleep for a few minutes, but when she reawoke, she continued her speech as if it had never been interrupted. "You know what they say; people make plans, and God laughs." She paused again, but this time for dramatic effect. "And the _powers that be_ fuck up those plans even more." She looked up towards the door, as if she knew who would be coming. "Horace," she said with relief.

"Hello, Daria," Horace Reaver said to her.

"You son of a bitch," Mateo cried, stunned and unable to move. What was he doing there? How did he even get in the building? What were Dave and his boss keeping from them?

Reaver held up his hands in surrender. "Today is a holiday. I promise not to try to hurt you, and to not..." he trailed off as he looked to Leona. "I just want to say goodbye to my friend."

Mateo looked at Daria. "You're friends?"

She closed her eyes as a form of a nod. "We go way back. Before he was like this. Before he grew angry."

"I'm sorry, Daria. But you know what I've been through."

"I do, and I appreciate you being here. But you either stop tormenting my family, or you will pay. They're stronger than you. I don't care how powerful you become. _They're_ not alone."

"That's," he spat, "my problem." He closed his eyes like he was reciting the serenity prayer in his head. "It isn't fair."

"No, it's not," she agreed. "But you can't go back that far. You either move forward, as a friend, or lose."

"No. I have a plan. If I beat him." He looked up to Mateo with rage. "If I end his life," He screamed, "the way he ended _mine_ , I'll go back again! And I'll set things back on track!"

"They won't let you do it."

A clan of security guards filed in and began to pull Reaver away. "You won't even remember this. I'll go back, and I'll save your life, just like how you saved mine." They took him around the corner, but he continued to yell, "I promise you, Daria! I have a way to end this once and for all. I can destroy the _choosing ones_!"

Even though he seemed to be the enemy, Reaver's claim that he could stop all of this was intriguing enough to perk Mateo's interest. He jumped out of the room and ran down the hallway, trying to reach Reaver, but he was gone. The guards knew this place far better than he did, and had succeeded in spiriting him away.

He quickly returned to Daria's room, but she was dead.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Daria's

April 17, 2041

Yet another memorial service for a loved one. But this time Mateo was actually able to be there for the burial. Within a matter of hours in 2040, Daria's body was fully prepared. Every salmon that Mateo had encountered was there, along with those he did not know, and those he did not know had any reason to be there. Guard Number One and Guard Number Two stood by the three other Reaver security guards from that night when they escaped his facility. Reaver was standing between them, though he looked much older, and beaten down. The five of them must work for Dave's boss now. Mateo's father, Mario hovered over his beloved sister's casket. Aura, Samsonite, and Theo were drawn in by and with the special graveyard as it magically appeared where the building's courtyard was located in real space. They barely said a word to Mateo and Leona, and made no attempt to make them return home. The spacefaring door-walkers, Vearden and Saga walked in from a closet and gravitated towards The Delegator and Dr. Sarka. Daria's daughter, Danica was nowhere to be seen. She really wasn't allowed to leave The Constant, was she? But that girl he saw down there with her after the great escape was present, now leaning up against Daria's nurse. He would have to find out who they were at some other time.

He and Leona spent the last hour or so of their day mostly alone in the graveyard-courtyard mashup. Mateo stared into space as the figure of a man filled in the grave from behind the shadows. He wasn't finished with his job when midnight came to send them to 2041, but as it did, the scene hardly changed. The graveyard was still there, but time had passed from its perspective; at least long enough that grass had grown over Daria's grave. And on top of that grass was Danica. He looked around, and found them to no longer be within the confines of the facility, but in the middle of nowhere Kansas.

"Oh, hello," she said to them. "Can you believe it? They let me out." She looked over to the small chapel that acted as the secret entrance to her permanent underground home. So even though she had been let out, she was still within ten yards of her _prison_. And a year too late for the service. "They haven't let me out for thousands of years. There's a hint to how long I've lived. I guess the death of your mother warrants a few hours of vacation topside."

They walked over and sat on the ground next to her. Mateo rested his head on her shoulder. "How much time did you two have together?"

"Cumulatively? Maybe a few years." Then she reiterated, "maybe."

"I'm sorry."

She let out a single laugh. "I've seen a lot of death. And I've seen some of them come back, like your mother." She turned to Leona, "and your brother."

"Does it happen often? Will Daria come back?"

"It doesn't, and she won't. I can always tell. They're done with her."

Mateo and Leona each placed a hand on their own lips, as a reflex. "Dry mouth."

"They're teleporting you back. That's hilarious."

They rolled away from Danica so as to protect her. They wouldn't want to give her a heart attack like he had with his father.

They ended up rolling onto the floor of a room they didn't recognize, but it was obviously somewhere in the building they had stayed in for the last couple days. A woman was sitting at a table nearby. "Good morning." She began to pour some water into two glasses, and then motioned for them to stand up and sit in the chairs. "Are you up for talking, or would you prefer a nap? You haven't been to bed since morning of last year."

He took his chair. "I am Mateo. This is Leona. I'm sure you already know that."

"But we do not know you," Leona continued for him.

"My name is Ulinthra. I run this joint."

"You're Dave's enigmatic boss?" Leona half-asked.

She chortled. "Indeed."

Mateo took a huge gulp of water before leaning over and placing his elbows on the table with his eyes shut tight, like he was trying to solve global warming. "What is your pattern? What is Reaver's pattern? And what is his god..damn problem?"

"It is not my place to discuss his...issue with you. I do not have all the facts because I wasn't around that day. I can tell you that it happened in the future, and that it has something to do with Leona."

"Me? He's never mentioned me."

She shrugged. "I couldn't tell you why, but you two knew each other in an alternate timeline. And whatever transpired then has him all riled up. I tried to work with him, but he wanted to go off on his own, so we've not spoken in years."

Mateo closed his eyes and stretched his neck upwards. "Alternate timelines again, dear God."

"We are day repeaters, Mateo," she said, but did not elaborate.

He bounced his head around. "Please. Do go on."

"We live out a day, and then at the end of the day, at midnight, we go back and do it again."

"Like _Groundhog Day_." He looked over at Leona. "Now _that_ reference I get."

"Yes, it's like that classic film, except that we don't keep living the same day over and over again. We only experience the day twice, and then we move on to the next."

"And what do you do with this ability?"

"We save lives."

" _We_?"

"Reaver and I used to. We'd keep up to date on the news, gather as much information as possible, and then once the day repeated, we'd run around fixing problems. But he doesn't do that anymore. Now he just uses it for his own gain, betting on sports competitions and the like. And his greater understanding of technology has held his company aloft."

"Oh yes," Mateo was furious. "I can see how you two are _sooo_ different. You must pay rent on this building, what? Two hundred bucks a month? Hashtag-thestruggle."

She was insulted. "I've accumulated wealth over time as a means to protect me and mine from Horace. If I had stayed in my one bedroom apartment, without a security contingency, then he would have killed me years ago."

"Really? 'cause it _kind of_ feels like he spends all his energy trying to kill me."

"What do you think he does for the rest of the year, Mister Matic?"

He breathed out and took some more water. "Fair enough. What do we do?"

"About what?"

"About Reaver?" Leona came back into the conversation. "How do we stop him?"

"Oh," Ulinthra began. "Oh, you misunderstand. I'm here to give you advice on how to avoid him. We're not going to stop him. There's nothing we can do. I've tried for years. The _choosing ones_ like him just where he is. Otherwise they would have interfered long ago. Instead, they keep us apart."

"If they keep you apart then you lose your excuse for all this money."

"Don't be so reductive."

"Don't be so freaking unhelpful!" Leona yelled. "You drag us out to wherever the hell we are, keep us in a room—a nice room—but still, ya know, _locked_. And then you bring us here for a practically meaningless conversation while we were in the middle of talking to our cousin whose mother has just died! So if you're not going to do anything, and you can't help _us_ do something, then please tell us where the door is!"

Ulinthra sighed, fed up. "Harrison."

Harrison, now in humanoid form, walked up from a dark corner where they couldn't see him before. "Madam?"

"Take these... _nice_ people back stateside."

Leona stood up and kicked her chair over behind her. "Thank you for your fucking hospitality!"

As they were following Harrison out of the room, Ulinthra replied in a sociopathic tone, "you're welcome."
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Occasionally Around

April 18, 2042

Harrison was assigned to remain with Mateo and Leona indefinitely, which he seemed to have no problem with. He gave the impression that he had grown as impatient with Ulinthra as they had just from five minutes of speaking with her. Last year, he interfaced with the aircraft, tinted the windows, and flew them to Iceland. They spent the rest of the day there as tourists. Harrison remained firmly in position inside of a secret cave for the entire year until they returned and woke from sleep.

"That was a nice vacation," Mateo said.

"Harrison. Status report."

"The whereabouts of your family is currently unknown. They have theoretically managed to evade detection for years now. Ulinthra has evidently suffered from a crisis of conscience, and is currently spinning off her subsidiaries, liquidating her assets, and donating vast amounts of money to charity. Your conversation seems to have made a huge impact on her perspective."

"I didn't expect her to make such radical moves," Mateo said honestly. "She barely knows us. Why does she care what we think?"

"I believe you severely underestimate the level of respect you hold over the salmon community," Harrison said.

"What? I haven't done anything. Other salmon are running around pulling people out of burning buildings, shaping the future, fixing the past. I'm just...occasionally around."

Harrison laughed. "People have been telling stories about you two. Remember that others have seen the future and come back. You may have done nothing yet...but you will. And most would argue that donating your kidney to someone you had only known for a couple of weeks was admirable."

"This is true," Leona said, knowing that Mateo had no way of responding without losing his humility.

"All right," Mateo said, anxious to change the subject. "Let's get to the nitty-gritty. Where's Reaver? And what might he do next to try and kill us?"

"I doubt that he would be able to do anything from where he is."

"Is he dead?" Leona asked, with a tad bit more enthusiasm than a well-adjusted person should show.

"No. But he has been incarcerated. He was found guilty on a number of counts after the cascade event years ago. He was left in house arrest, and his movements were severely restricted, but he violated the terms when he ran off to visit Daria during her final moments."

"That's an interesting development."

"He has been secretly placed in a private maximum security prison in—"

"Don't say it."

"Utah," Harrison finished.

"He said it."

"We have been monitoring him, but the majority of people are unaware that he is there. We suspect even that other inmates do not know he's there. Our intel suggests that he has been in solitary confinement this entire time."

Reaver was in prison, and presumably unable to communicate with his people, but there was no way of knowing whether he had formed relationships with the prison guards. He could be out in a few months, and be ready to cause more trouble for them tomorrow. This was their chance. They knew where he was, they had transportation, and they were as safe from his wrath as they were ever going to get. They had to act. "Take us to Utah."

"Mateo, no!" Leona cried.

"Yes!"

"I'm not going to take you to the man who has made it his life's mission to kill you and my boss," Harrison responded, like it was the dumbest thing he had ever heard.

"We command you to take us."

"I don't have to do what you say. I'm an employee; not a slave. If my boss told me to do something I didn't want to do, I would likely lose my job, but I wouldn't be bound to it."

"Robots don't have to do what their told?"

"I'm not a robot. Where are you getting this? Movies? I'm an artificial intelligence. Big difference."

"Then we ask you to take us to Utah, Leona said.

"I thought you didn't want to go," Mateo said to her.

"Yeah, remind me of that again, and see if you get your way."

"I'm not going to take you to Utah. That's final!" Harrison yelled.

Before landing in Utah, Harrison multitasked and coordinated with Reaver loyalists, prison officials, and shady underground people. They were able to get ten minutes alone with him, but they had to go in practically naked and undergo invasive cavity searches so that there was no way for them to sneak anything to him.

They sat at the table across from their enemy, Horace Reaver. He looked at Mateo with disgust, and Leona with bedroom eyes. "Stop looking at her like that."

"Five more minutes, mom."

"Stop it!" Leona shouted.

He immediately complied, as if her wish was his command.

Realizing that he was more prone to listening to her than to Mateo, Leona took control of the conversation. "What is your problem with us?"

"I have no problem with you," he corrected. "My problem is with him."

"Are you going to keep trying to kill us? We could keep avoiding you and wait you out until you die." She pretended to look at a watch on her wrist. "It'll take us a few weeks, but that will be hell for you. For you, it's twice as long as it is for normal people, and they go _crazy_ waiting for us to come back."

"I'm not trying to kill you," he corrected her again. "I'm trying to kill _him_."

"I've been there. I was certainly in danger as well."

"When?"

"He brought back a virus from the future that killed his mother, and could have killed me. That was your fault."

"I have no clue what you're talking about. Are you referring to the 2025 pathogen? That was Mateo?" He snorted and looked over to him. "You idiot."

"You kidnapped my brother and his mother so that you could lure us to your plane and blow us up, or something."

"Yeah, _or something_. You didn't get on the plane, so how would you know what I was intending to do with you?"

"I could have been in the house when your sleeper cell, Mirage tried to kill him."

"I programmed that machine to go after him when the rest of the house was empty. You were never in danger."

"The Kessler cascade! You blew up a space probe so that we would be bombarded by debris, and killed while trying to return to Earth."

Reaver looked offended. "Hey, that really _was_ an accident, which is why I wasn't immediately sent to prison. I was just trying to find you."

"I don't believe you."

"Keyword in space probe is _probe_ ," he over enunciated. "I wasn't trying hurt you. I just knew that you were somewhere in space, and I was trying to get to you. The cascade was an accident. I promise."

"The volcano," Mateo interjected.

"The what?"

"He means the forest fire," Leona clarified.

"That legit was not me. Sure, I sent my people to pick you up after it, but I didn't start the fire. Again, I've only ever wanted to hurt _him_. A fire would have been stupid, because I couldn't guarantee your safety."

"Why would you care about my safety? Wouldn't I just be a casualty?"

Reaver paused for half a moment. "That's all I'm saying. I'll tell you more next year." He pretended to look at a watch on his wrist. "Or the year after that, depending on how long it takes you to get me out of here."

They howled with laughter. "We shall do no such thing."

"I know you heard me the other day when I told Daria about the the _choosing ones_. I really do know how to stop them. I know _who_ they are, and I know _where_ they are. Get me out, and we'll stop this together."

"Why do some people call them the _powers that be_ , but others the _choosing ones_?"

"Potato, tomato," Reaver said simply.

"This is crap. Even if we wanted to, we don't know how to break people out of prison. We're a couple of kids from Kansas."

"You're exactly who I need. You came in the back way, but this building, and much of the world, is loaded with facial recognition scanners. Nearly the whole population has been scanned into a database or two, many against their will. Except for you. You're dead. You're the only ones who can sneak in here without alarms."

"That's dumb. They still have guards. They'll see people they don't know, and sound the alarms manually."

"Not likely. It's mostly automated. Very few humans work here. Look, here's the deal. My team will provide you with whatever resources you need, and support you however they can. But you have to do this. You've already agreed to it. Yesterday. We've already had this conversation. You just don't remember because Ulinthra and I are the only ones who go back and repeat our days. I'm just rehashing our conversation from before. Besides, it's not like it would be your first prison break."

"There's no way for us to know whether you're telling the truth about us having agreed to this in an alternate timeline," Leona pointed out.

"There is. Dougnanimous Brintantalus." He smiled like a creeper. "How would I know that?"

Leona was noticeably upset. "We have to do this, Mateo."

"What? What the hell is Dougblagablah?"

"We have no choice."

"I'm not going to break Horace Reaver out of prison. That's final!" Mateo proclaimed.

At 11:00 PM local time, Mateo and Leona jumped back into the timestream, intending on meeting with Reaver's loyalists to once more go over the plan to break him out of prison. They learned, however, that he had been moved to a new prison; one ominously called The Platform.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Racist Even For Utah

April 19, 2043

"Towering more than a kilometer in the air," Harrison explained as he manipulated a holographic image, "the Black Crook Suspended Rehabilitation Facility—nicknamed _The Platform_ —was designed to simulate society, but in a controlled environment. Inmates are referred to as _residents_ and are encouraged to contribute to their little civilization in positive ways in order to prove that they can be safely assimilated back into the real world."

"Black Crook?" Mateo asked. "That sounds racist...even for Utah."

Harrison pulled the image up to show the mountain underneath the prison. "Black Crook is the name of the peak on which the facility was constructed."

Leona was all kinds of professional. "Is it a kilometer above the peak, or a kilometer above sea level?"

"Above the peak," Harrison answered. "It's almost four kilometers up." He continued, "a ten-meter wall that curves inward stretches across the entire perimeter. Assuming a resident could climb to the top of it, he would have nowhere to go. An automated defense system keeps track of all air traffic within two kilometers, and will shoot anything that comes within a kilometer with very little warning."

"What does it matter? The whole state should be a no-fly zone," Mateo spat.

"They can't climb down?" Leona asked.

"The platform extends horizontally beyond the carbon nanotubes that keep it aloft. One would have to defy gravity to move across the bottom of the platform for several meters before reaching anything that would take him vertically. But again, automated defenses. Anything passes beyond the wall is shot without warning."

"Even if you did get down," Mateo said, "you'd still be in Utah."

"How many turrets?"

"Three on each side."

She expertly operated the hologram and looked for flaws. "Would all the turrets react to an escape? Or just the closest ones?"

Harrison sifted through the data. "For individuals? Just the closest ones. If you try to come in with a large enough aircraft, then all hell breaks loose. What are you thinking?"

"The corners," she said. "You use one of the corners as your point of egress, and you only have two turrets to contend with. Disable those and you can leave." She skimmed some of the data regarding the turrets. "Do we have details on these? I need specifications if we're going to take them out."

Harrison kind of laughed and shook his head. "No, these are just the main turrets. There's an entire system along the pillars, and all defenses will interpret a parachute as a small aircraft."

"What about the center?" Leona was not giving up. "What would the turrets do for a parachute in the center of the platform?"

Harrison looked through more data. "Survey says...it would let you onto the platform, but alert the humans. They care less about you getting in, and more about you getting out. Besides, that's how the prison resupplies; with airdrops. They let pretty much anything but weapons in. The better the platform resembles a city, the closer they are to reaching their goals."

"But what would we do once we got there?" Mateo pressed her. "Harrison said that parachutes are big enough to get us shot down. We would probably become prisoners."

"Residents," Harrison reminded them.

Leona showed her most evil smile. "We're going to parachute in." She shook her head deliberately and dramatically. "But we're not parachuting out."

Harrison spent the rest of the day retrieving supplies for them at the behest of Leona. Her plan relied on them doing this at the very end of their night. Meanwhile, she studied the prison layouts, tinkered with the holographic images, and designed a virtual world. She and Mateo then immersed themselves in a crude but effective simulation of their escape plan. They tried multiple routes and tactics, modifying the plan to account for hiccups and obstacles.

When they set out late at night, Harrison came up with a major problem that their simulations could not account for, "humans."

"What about them?"

"Your plan assumes that Horace Reaver will still be at this facility a year from now. But you are meddling in their affairs _this_ year. That gives them 365 days to move him somewhere else, and they will probably do that, just to be safe."

Leona considered this. "Then we leave him out of it this year."

"How do we do that? We need him ready to make the jump," Mateo pointed out.

"Well, he relives days, right? So he already knows what's going to happen. We'll make a ruckus. He'll know that it's us, but we'll be sure to avoid him. Then you, Mateo, will plan on finding him next year and pull him to the egress point. But he'll already know where it is then too. For once, both our pattern _and_ his give us an advantage that no one else has."

"Reaver is by far the most powerful man there," Harrison commented. "Even if you avoid him, they will suspect him."

"That's true," Leona said, having no way around it.

"So we find a pawn," Mateo piped up. "Find the next guy who might have the resources to pull this off. I'll grab him and convince him that I've been sent to get him out. Come midnight, both he and the authorities will think he's the one involved."

"That's kind of dark, Mateo."

"This is your plan, Leona. And according to your friend Doug—whatever his name was—we have no choice but to do this."

She exhaled and relented. "Harrison, pull up a list of inmates, I mean _residents_ , and find me a believable scapegoat."

Harrison did as he was told, despite his reservations. Then they were at their destination, miles in the air. Mateo oscillated between breathing deeply and breathing erratically. He felt a pit in his stomach. This was not the most dangerous thing he had ever experienced, but it was the only one he was going to do on purpose. What made things worse was _why_ they were attempting it. After all Reaver had done, he was going to get his way once more.

Leona reached over and gave him a hug. "I know you don't want to do this. I don't either. And I promise, I'll explain everything. Those words he said to me in the visitors' room did mean something. They were a code. And there really isn't any way for him to know them unless I gave them to him. Some part of me trusts him, and I have to trust that part."

"I get it. I trust all of your parts."

"Were I you, I would love me too, Mateo."

"Were I you," he repeated.

"Magic hour," Harrison called back. "Time to make the drop!"

Leona turned around and let Mateo strap her back to his chest, and then she opened the hatch. "I'll tell you when to pull!"

"Okay!" he yelled. And then they slipped out.

The fall was even scarier than when they shot across the sky from space. He hadn't realized just how much Mirage had made them feel safe that night. Upon his love's command, he pulled the string and let the parachute loose. As they were drifting to their landing spot, an alarm rang out, but it only lasted a few seconds. It was just to let the few guards know that something was out of place. The two quickly disconnected from each other. Leona was about to run off to her mission, but he seized her and pulled her close so that he could give her one last kiss. "Be careful."

"You too," she replied. "Use your map. It'll tell you where our patsy lives."

"Let's call him our _pledge_."

"Very well." She checked her watch and ran off to the platform wall.

Mateo ran the other way to look for a man named Gilbert Boyce. He wasn't quite as rich as Reaver, but he had his friends on the outside, and it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that someone would stage an escape for him. He was already up and awake from the alarms, and standing on his patio. "Mister Boyce. Time to leave!"

"I'm sorry?"

"I've been hired to break you out."

"By whom?"

"I was not given a name. Just clean cash. Let's go." He looked at his watch. "We only have ten minutes to get to the far wall."

Gilbert made no further arguments, jumping down the steps and managing to run faster than his supposed rescuer. They had to zig and zag and hide behind buildings, so that not too many people noticed them, but enough to get the rumors churning.

About halfway there, they ran into Reaver. "What are you doing?" he asked, clearly still not used to being out of control.

"Now be a good boy," Mateo said to him in a psychopathic voice. "And we might come for you _next year_."

Reaver seemed to get the message, and moved off in another direction.

"Are you really going to break him out too?" Gilbert asked.

Mateo scoffed. "Fat chance. That man ruined my mother's life. I was just trying to get rid of him," he lied.

They reached Leona who was carefully staring at her watch. "It's almost time." She breathed in and out to prepare herself."

"Are you sure this is the right spot?"

"The wind wants me here."

"And you're sure the turrets will shoot your parachute, and not you?"

"No, not really."

"Le-exi!" Mateo scolded, just about forgetting to use fake names, but catching himself in time.

Her watch's alarm went off. "Time to go." She pulled her string and released the parachute. It violently pulled her up towards the wall. The turrets spun around and began to shoot the parachute, but not before she had gotten as high as she needed to.

Using the oldest trick in the book, Mateo pointed behind them. What's over there?"

Gilbert fell for it and looked for trouble long enough to give Mateo and Leona a chance to jump into the future. But just before, Leona released her parachute and left it in the past. Now in 2044, she fell down about a meter, and caught herself on the curved wall. Gilbert was gone and Reaver was standing in his place. The first part had worked. Now for the hard part.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

I Do Want You Dead

April 20, 2044

As Mateo was handing Reaver his wingsuit, Leona began to let down a pilot ladder. But Reaver loudly whispered up to her, "no! We can't leave from this side."

"What are you talking about?" Mateo whisper-yelled back. "This is the plan."

"I've already done all this once, remember?" he asked. "Both of you die, and _I_ get caught."

"Well, what would you suggest?" Leona asked from the wall.

"The other side has better wind."

"You expect me to run all the way over there?"

"It's our only chance," Reaver insisted.

Leona growled. "Fine! Hurry up!" She bolted along the wall, and carefully made the turn towards the opposite corner.

"Come on, you son of a bitch," Mateo ordered. He and his enemy, Horace Reaver sprinted across the lawn, staying as low and inconspicuous as possible.

About halfway there, they ran into Gilbert Boyce, the man who Mateo had tricked into thinking that he was there to break him out last year; their pledge. "You," he said to them in disgust. "So you _were_ trying to break him out. Do you know what you did to me? I spent eleven months in Dismal Key Penitentiary because of you. It's in a swamp! If you hadn't shown up, I would have been released from this place by now."

"Get the hell out of our way, Gilbert." Reaver spat.

Gilbert prepared to yell as loud as he could, "they're breakin' ou—!"

Mateo covered Gilbert's mouth with his gloved hand. "I am extremely sorry for what I did to you last year. You were our best shot at making this happen, and I know you didn't deserve it. I read your file, and if you've done your time, then you've done your time. Come with us now."

"Are you serious?" Reaver asked. "He'll slow us down."

Mateo sighed angrily. "This is your second day, right?"

"Yes."

"So you're stuck with these decisions. I want to find the _powers that be_ as much as the next guy, but I have half a mind to cut my losses and just kill you right now. You have less leverage than you think."

"We only have three suits," Reaver argued. "Those things don't handle two people."

Mateo pulled an extra suit out of his bag. "You were saying?" He handed it to Gilbert who was still bitter about last year, but becoming humbled and grateful. "Let's go. She's waiting for us."

Leona had already dropped the pilot ladder, and was likely working on disabling the gun turrets. The two prisoners climbed up after Mateo, and then listened as he gave them instructions. "After you jump, pull the string on your left. It will electrically charge your wingsuit so that it expands on its own. If you don't pull it, you'll have to hold your arms up the whole time, and we won't make it far enough, because you'll get tired. You can resist the charge with enough force, and it will snap back into place once you relieve some pressure, but it will stay open if you're just resting normally. We have no real obligation to either of you. If you fall behind, you're left behind. Nobody's going to be pulling their arms to their chest and losing altitude just so you can catch up. Understood?"

"Yes," they replied in unison.

"The string on your right is for a little parachute," Mateo continued. "You'll fly behind us, and once we release our chutes, you release yours. If you don't, you'll come in too fast, and die. Boyce, I don't want you to die. Reaver, I do want you dead, so that choice is all on you, buddy."

"I've done this before," Reaver said, referring to the first time he experienced this day, in an alternate timeline.

"Yeah, and how did that work out for ya?"

"Could have been better."

"Do your best not to screw it up this time." He looked down at Leona who had slid down the curved wall to work on the gun turrets. "Honey? How are we lookin'?"

"Nice timing," she said back. "I'm done."

"We're ready," he replied.

They slid down to the outer ledge to stand next to her before putting on their goggles. "Were I you," she said to Mateo, now code for _I love you_.

"Were I you." He took a beat. "Let's go." He jumped off and spread his wings. His body dropped down more than he thought it would, but he spread his legs out a little and settled into a nice glide. The two of them were wearing special goggles with little computer screens in them that displayed a map and other information like distance, altitude, and speed. These also kept them in contact with Harrison so that he could move into position depending on how far they got. This was not scary like the skydiving. This was blissful. It felt more like flying, and less like falling, even though he could still tell that he was constantly growing closer to the ground.

Twenty meters, two hundred meters, five hundred meters, a kilometer. They kept soaring with no problems. He could see Leona next to him at all times as they battled each other for first place. He occasionally looked behind to make sure his two wards were still close enough to them. His goggle readings indicated that they were falling downwards at a slightly higher rate, and were therefore widening the gap between them. Nevertheless, Leona assured him that they would all four break the two kilometer range, and that they wouldn't land too far from each other.

Two kilometers. Yes. He looked over to Leona who shook her head. They would still be able to fly farther, so they pressed on. At around twenty-five hundred meters, she spoke through her communications device. "We could get farther before reaching our lower limit, but the others would be too low. It's time to pull."

"Got it," Mateo said. "Count us down."

"Five, four, three, two, one." They pulled their strings simultaneously.

Mateo watched as Leona's parachute opened and drew her upwards and behind him, or rather he continued to fall forwards. "Dammit," he said out loud. He tried his string several more times, but nothing. It was faulty. He was going to die. But for real this time.

Leona screamed to him, "pull your string! Pull your string!"

"It's broken!"

"Mateo! No!" she cried. "Harrison, you have to meet us and scoop Mateo up! His parachute won't open!"

" _That would never work_ ," Harrison explained. " _He's going too fast. He would be safer taking his chances with the ground_."

Mateo spread his wings once more, hoping to find water, or fall at a horizontal enough angle to hold back his death. But then a figure flew up and grabbed him.

Horace Reaver, the man who had tried to kill him on multiple occasions, twisted around so that he was on top. "Hold on tight!" he screamed. Once Mateo had done what he was told, Reaver pulled his own string and released his parachute. They drifted to the ground slower than before, but still at a pretty good clip since they had technically passed the lower limit. They crashed into the earth and rolled over one another several times before finally coming to a stop.

The two enemies crawled away from each other and panted heavily until they could catch their breaths. "I can't really complain, but..." he started to say.

"I saved your life out of instinct. For a second there, I forgot how much I hated you. And that was enough to keep you alive. I promise that it will not happen again."

"You _promised_ to stop trying to kill me."

"Yes, but if your life is ever in danger, never again will I make an effort to save it."

Mateo stood up and nodded with understanding. "Yes. That makes sense."

Leona ran up to Mateo and jumped in his arms like a gorgeous little cliché. "I'm pissed at you for scaring me like that."

"I would hope so," he said.

Harrison landed his aircraft and opened the hatch. "They know about the escape. We have to go."

The four of them climbed in and took off. Leona grabbed her tablet and sent the instructions to their dummy airplane. It automatically rose into the air from a few hundred meters away and flew off in a different direction. "It's easier to spot," she told them. "Once they detect it, they won't be looking for another one. By the time they catch it and bust it open—or better yet, shoot it down—we'll be long gone."

"That's genius," Reaver said. "You're just how I remember."

"What are you talking about?"

"Never mind."

Harrison had programmed the plane to take them to Brazil, but Reaver had a safehouse in Panama, so the four of them jumped out with a new set of parachutes. They left the plane to Gilbert to go wherever he wanted, suggesting he jump out sometime before that. The authorities would likely find it at some point, and they didn't want to be in the same country when that happened, even though Mateo and Leona would be safe after the jump to the future. Reaver said that he would meet them there in one year's time, but they knew they couldn't trust him. He would have plenty of time to turn the house into a prison like before in Mission Hills. Ten minutes before midnight, they burst out of the house and ran into the jungle so that he wouldn't know exactly where they would land in 2045. It didn't work.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Vaguely Homoerotic Overtones

April 21, 2045

Reaver had far more loyalists than Mateo thought he would. Once they jumped into 2045, a decently-sized security contingency overwhelmed them. They patted the two of them down to make sure they didn't have any weapons, and then bound their wrists behind their backs before taking them back up to the house. Reaver was in the middle of cooking breakfast foods when they were ushered into the kitchen. "Really?" Mateo asked. "Cooking? What did you do, watch every movie with an evil villain and just copy their movements? Next you're going to speak in an accent and touch my skin with vaguely homoerotic overtones."

"Mister Matic," he said, "I'm impressed. You so often prove yourself to be completely out of touch and uncultured, but here you are making hollywood cliché references."

"I like to play to my audience."

"We had a deal," Leona said. "We help you out of prison, and you help us stop the _powers that be_."

"No, you misunderstood," he explained. "I needed your help breaking out of prison. And good job with that, by the way. Very clever using your own pattern against the security system. Very clever indeed, however, I would have preferred not waiting a whole year for your return. You were right; that was torture. I'm not surprised people go crazy waiting for you to come back." He finally switched back to his main point, "but I'm not here to help _you_ find the _choosing ones_. You're still the ones helping. I'm intending to contact them for my own reasons, and that may or may not work out for you."

"Well, we don't know the context," Leona said. "How are you contacting them? You said you know where they are, but how do we get there? You obviously do still need us quite a bit, otherwise you would have done it this past year. So you have a day to get it done."

"You're right," Reaver agreed. "You're not just helping; you are vital to my plan. But we can't actually do anything for the majority of today. Like your prison break, my plan hinges on the fact that you'll jump into the future in 24 hours."

"Explain."

"I will. Be patient," he said coyly. "I'm gonna stick you two in a comfortable room for the time being. Don't worry, there aren't any cameras. I have no interest in seeing you two do whatever you do when you're alone. I suggest you get some rest since you were up all day last year, paranoid that I would kill you in your sleep."

"Why should we be less paranoid now?" Mateo asked. "Nothing's changed."

"Right again. But what are you gonna do? Ten feet up, or six feet under; your choice. You'll be given food later, maybe some noodles, but it won't be my world famous quiche. You've hurt my feelings."

"Reaver," Leona started, probably wanting to know more about his plans for them.

"Okay, you can have the quiche. As long as you promise not to ruin it with additional seasoning." He redirected his words to the paramilitary officer still holding onto their arms. "Take them upstairs, Lieutenant Franklin."

Against their better judgment, Mateo and Leona found some sleep in their latest prison. Being locked up was becoming a trend; one that needed to be put to a stop. Lieutenant Franklin came in with food every six hours. They tried to interact with him, and ask why he was loyal to someone who had caused so much destruction, but he never said a word. At about a quarter to midnight, he came in once more and escorted them all the way down to the basement where Reaver was once again putting on a show; acting like he was in the middle of a good book.

"We know you're faking it," Mateo whined. "Just tell us what your plan is. We don't have all year."

"Haha," Reaver pretended to laugh. "Good one." His demeanor changed. He became more serious and concerned. "Here's where things change. Last time I went through this day, I did nothing. I had to wait for my rewind, or the plan would fail." He took out a fixed-blade knife and almost began to cry. "Now, here's the thing. I don't want to do this. I just don't know any other way."

"You said you would stop trying to kill us."

Now he really was crying. "I need to one more time. Just once more. Then it'll be over. The _choosing ones_ will jump in and send me back. Then this will all be erased."

Leona stood in front of Mateo and spread her arms in defense. "You're _not_ going to hurt him again!"

Reaver continued to cry as he shook his head. "No, I'm not. This one's not about him. I'm sorry."

He raised his weapon in the air and prepared to plunge it into Leona's chest, but an arm came out of nowhere and held him back. "Get that thing away from my daughter-in-law," Mateo's birth father, Mario commanded.

Reaver laughed through his tears. "I should have known they would send you."

Mario knocked the knife out of Reaver's hand and pushed him to the floor. "Yes, they finally gave me this assignment."

"Dad?" Mario asked. "You're one of the _powers that be_?"

"No," he answered. "What makes you think that?"

"He said they would come if he tried to kill her."

"They'll only come if I _do_ kill her," Reaver said from the floor. He jumped up and tackled Mario. They struggled with each other on the floor.

Mateo tried to help, but a man he didn't know came out of nowhere and held him back. "What are you doing? Let me go!"

Leona tried to help Mario as well, but the man was strong enough to hold her back too. "Screw you, Mateo." His spit landed in Mateo's ear. He pushed Leona to the floor where she hit her head on a table, and then he stabbed Mateo in the gut.

Mario screamed, "no!"

This gave Reaver enough room to reach under his chair and take out a gun. He pointed it at Mario's head and squeezed the trigger.

This time, Leona screamed, "no!"

"Who the hell are you?" Reaver asked of the man as he was standing up, a bit out of breath. Apparently, he didn't know him either.

The man switched his knife to the other hand and all but growled at Reaver. "I am the Cleanser. I am the yang! I am here to end this!" He lunged with his knife but Reaver just shot him in the head as well.

Reaver sort of shook his head in a twitch like he had just tasted something sour. "That was weird." While Mateo was trying to stuff his blood back into his stomach, Reaver slowly walked over to Leona who was massaging her head. He whispered loud enough so that Mateo could hear, "I'm going to save you, my love." He dragged the blade across her neck and let her life seep out of the opening.

Now it was Mateo's turn to scream, "no!"

A woman appeared out of nowhere with seething anger. "I never thought you would go this far." She was the same woman that Mateo saw in the Constant following his escape from Reaver's facility. She was also at Daria's funeral.

"It's a sad world when a father has to kill the love of his life to get his daughter's attention."

Mateo kept his hands pressed to his stomach while he pushed himself to sit against the wall with his elbows. " _Love of your life_?" he repeated listlessly. His whole body felt heavy, and his world became blurry. He was dying. " _Daughter_?"

"Not only that," Reaver said, haphazardly dropping the knife on the ground. "She's one of the _choosers_. She's one of the people doing this to us."

"I am doing nothing to you," she amended. "It would be a conflict of interest."

"Can you save her?" Mateo asked through tears. "Can you save Leona and my father?"

"Yes, dear," Reaver agreed. "Do save her. Send me back to the point of divergence and let's try this one more time!"

"I can't send you back," the woman said. "Like I said, it would be a conflict of interest. There are rules. I literally have no way of subverting them. Not again." She looked towards Mateo. "But I can send _him_ back."

"If you send him back, he'll ruin all this! He'll do everything he did before!"

"I'm not sending him back to the point of divergence you're talking about. I'm just sending him back one day. That is, if he would like me to." She turned to Mateo. "But you have to decide in the next thirty seconds. I'll only be able to hijack your jump just before it happens. If you jump to 2046, all is lost."

Mateo slid his back against the wall and painfully got to his feet. "Do it."

Come midnight, Mateo jumped, but this time backwards. It was once again April 21, 2045.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Vaguely Homoerotic Undertones

April 21, 2045

Unlike his regular timejumps, Mateo didn't move physically. Instead, his mind was sent back to his younger body. He was in the middle of the dark jungle with Leona who had no recollection of dying, or anything else that had happened in the other timeline. The security contingency overwhelmed them, just as they had before. They patted the two of them down, bound their wrists, and took them back up to the house. Reaver was cooking in the kitchen, as predicted. Everything was the same.

Mateo was about to say something to change history for the better, but stopped himself. Reaver had already experienced this day once. Presumably, he did the same thing in both of the first two timelines. If Mateo deviated from what had happened based on his new knowledge, Reaver would be suspicious. Until they got up to the room, Mateo would have no choice but to play this out exactly as he had before, saying all the same things. But could he remember everything? "Cooking? What did you do, watch every movie with an evil villain and just copy their movements? Next you're going to speak in an accent and touch my skin with vaguely homoerotic undertones." Shit. That was wrong. He didn't say _undertones_ last time. He said _overtones_.

Reaver did seem to notice. He crooked his neck and squinted his eyes slightly, but then either thought _he_ had unwittingly altered the conversation, or that he was remembering it wrong. "Right," he said, "I'm impressed. You so often prove yourself to be completely out of touch and uncultured, but here you are making hollywood cliché references." He responded with about the same quip as before, but his voice had changed. He was no longer in a good mood. That _undertones_ mistake had somehow ruined his attitude.

"I like to play to my audience," Mateo said, also with less snark than last time.

"We had a deal," Leona said. "We help you out of prison, and you help us stop the _powers that be_."

"No, you misunderstand," he explained. "I needed your help breaking out of prison. And you did a good job. Very clever using your own pattern against the security system. I would have preferred not waiting a whole year for your return, but...it all worked out. Anyway, I'm not here to help _you_ find the _powers that be_. You're still the ones helping. I'm going to contact them for my own reasons, and whatever happens to you as a result is irrelevant to me."

"Well, we don't know the context," Leona said. "How are you contacting them? You said you know where they are, but how do we get there? You even admit that you still need us, otherwise you would have done it this past year. So you have one day to get it done."

"You're right," Reaver agreed. "You're not just helping; you are vital to my plan. But we can't actually do anything until the end of the day. Like your prison break, my plan hinges on the fact that you'll jump into the future in 24 hours."

"Explain."

"I will later," he said. "I'm gonna stick you two in a comfortable room for the time being. Don't worry, there aren't any cameras. I have no interest in seeing you two..." he trailed off again. "I suggest you get some rest since you were up all day yesterday, paranoid that I would try to kill you."

"Why should we be less paranoid now?" Mateo asked. "Nothing has changed."

"This is true. Do whatever you want. I don't even care anymore. Someone will bring you food later." He redirected his words to Lieutenant Franklin whose name Mateo wasn't supposed to know. "Take them upstairs."

Mateo decided to risk sleep. Even though Reaver might have been suspicious that he knew more than he was letting on, there was no getting around the fact that both he and Leona needed the rest, especially if they were going to make yet another escape. His suspicion about Reaver's suspicion was reinforced when Franklin came in two hours later than he had in the original timeline, to give them cold noodles instead of hot quiche. Things were diverging faster than Mateo could handle. Soon, time will have changed so much that he would have no chance of predicting what was going to happen next. He had to act. "Franklin."

"What?" Franklin asked, confused.

"That's your name."

"It is."

"But Reaver never told me your name, so how would I know that?"

"Mateo, what's going on?" Leona asked.

Franklin looked down at the floor and pondered. He wasn't the least intelligent person in the world, but it probably took him a little time to figure things out. Mateo was giving him as much time as he needed, because an ally would come in handy. "Horace is a time traveler."

"Right," Mateo said, relieved that he knew as much.

"You're time travelers."

"We are."

"You found out my name, and then you went back in the past to now, and now you know my name."

Mateo closed his eyes and nodded once. "That's exactly what happened."

Franklin scratched the hair on the back of his head rigorously, like a dog. "Well, what happens?"

"We die," Mateo said, but then he began the lie. "We all die. Leona, me, your entire team. Everybody dies, Franklin. And it's Reaver's fault."

"No, Horace would never do that," Franklin protested. "He's my friend. He lets me call him Horace."

Leona followed Mateo's lead and improvised. "He _is_ your friend, but you two get in a fight, and he loses control. He doesn't mean to, but he's just so mad at us. He doesn't really want us here, but he doesn't know what to do."

"Horace _always_ knows what to do!"

"He always has, yes," Leona tried to calm him down. "But he doesn't like us, and we kind of confuse him when we're around. Accidentally," she clarified. "You have to help him, Franklin. You have to get rid of us for him."

He pulled out his gun. "I can get rid of you."

She held up her hands in defense. "No, not like that. We're time travelers, remember? If you kill us, we'll just come back."

That was completely ridiculous, and 100% untrue, but Franklin seemed to be buying it. Maybe he _was_ the dumbest person in the world. "Okay, what do I do?"

"We came here with an android. Do you know where he is?"

"Horace turned him off and chained him up in the basement closet." He looked at the floor shyly. "But I turn him on every once in awhile when Horace is away. He's my friend too."

"Okay," Leona said. "I need you to turn him on one more time. He is our friend as well, and we need his help."

Franklin was still hesitant, but in the end, agreed to help them help Reaver. About ten minutes after he left, there was a ruckus downstairs. Shots were fired, wood was cracked, screams were screamed. Harrison burst through the door, face like a rabid animal. "Next time I tell you to stay away from an evil psychopath, listen to me!"

"You don't have to tell us twice," Mateo said.

"That was, like, the tenth time!"

They stole Reaver's aircraft, disabled the tracking software, and flew off to safety in Baker Lake, Nunavut where Mateo described to them what had happened.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

A Girl of Any Age

April 22, 2046

Mateo's birth mother, Aura was waiting for them, along with her love interest, Samsonite, and Leona's half-brother, Theo. She stood in front of him patiently, unsure of how she should proceed. Mateo began to cry as he wrapped his arms around her neck. He needed his mommy. Leona and Theo moved off to have their own heart to heart. Mateo stayed in Aura's arms, trying to tell her what had happened, about how he witnessed Leona's and his father's deaths, but he was shrieking and sniveling so much that she had trouble understanding him.

After several minutes of this, Mateo fell asleep, still on her shoulder. And when he awoke, she was still there. She hadn't budged, and he was grateful. "I'm sorry for leaving you," he said, having composed himself. "That was foolish of me. You were right. We need to stay as far from that man as possible. I don't want to lose anyone again."

She nodded and prepared herself to continue the deep discussion. "I need to ask you something very important, son."

He pulled away and sat up so that he could look at her at a proper angle. "Okay."

"For me, we haven't seen each other in years. A lot has happened since then."

He almost started crying again. "I know, I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

She stopped him, "I know, that's not what I mean. Have you encountered a girl, of any age? Someone you didn't know before, or maybe someone you did who you didn't know was one of us?"

"Yes. The girl who sent me back in time. She was Reaver's daughter."

She frowned. "She wouldn't be who we're looking for. No..." she hesitated. "This girl would have Samsonite's eyes." She paused again. "And hair like mine."

"Oh, mother." He buried his face in his hands. "You had another child? I have a sister?"

"Somewhere. Aquila." She smiled, but sadly. "She disappeared from us when she was only three years old. I have been told that that is how it works."

"How what works?"

"Apparently, you're not allowed to raise your own children if both you and your partner are salmon. They disappear on you, never to be seen again."

"You and my birth father are both salmon. You didn't do it alone, but you raised me for eight years."

"I had not yet been activated when I had you. You're not _full salmon offspring_ , or whatever. No, I think they took me away from you just because they're mean-spirited, not for the same reason they took Aquila. I think they do something with salmon children. I don't know what, but the children might be the whole purpose of this parody of a life."

"So, Leona and I shouldn't conceive."

She became even more concerned. "Have you been thinking about it?"

"No," he replied honestly. "But we grow closer every day, and in the next 300 years, we'll be all alone together. Once the three of you make the next jump, it'll just be us."

She nodded. "I don't know what's going to happen 300 years from now. Theo has pretty much stopped aging, just like us. But there's no telling where we'll go for our next jump, or if we'll die before then. We have no control over our lives."

"Yeah." They sat in silence for a little while before Mateo fell asleep again.

When he reawoke, it was late in the morning. He found Leona still asleep and lied down next to her until she woke up herself. "Are you feeling better?" she asked.

"Are you?"

"I didn't go through what you did, Mateo. I've only seen the one timeline. I never saw myself die."

"Then I should be fine. _You're_ fine. You never died."

"That doesn't mean it didn't happen."

"You understand this time travelling thing better than me. Do those alternate timelines still exist? Are there multiple versions of us running around in parallel?"

"We don't know. Present-day science has not caught up with time travel technology. They may never since the _powers that be_ are powerful enough to stop every development. It's possible that alternate realities run parallel to our own due to some kind of point of divergence. It's also possible that there is a single master timeline, and all others are ultimately destroyed. It appears to be our job to create some kind of perfect reality, so my gut tells me the _powers_ are only interested in having one reality at a time."

"I see."

"Would you rather there be alternate versions of us?"

"I'm not sure. A part of me wants there to be, to know there may be a set of us out there who are happy, but do I really want that? I think I would be uncomfortable knowing a version of me has a better life since it implies a version of me has a worse one."

"In the end, my love, we cannot worry about what might have been. This is where we are now. I know you think you have no control. But you do. Just the fact that your father was sent back to stop the Reaver from killing me, but failed, proves it."

"How so?"

"The _powers that be_ would have us believe that they control everything, but they were so hopeless in that basement that they were forced to send one of their own to clean up their mess. I don't know where their rules come from, but they were obviously technologically capable of simply whisking us away from Reaver to protect us. Why didn't they?"

"Maybe they're just middle management."

"Maybe."

Mateo's head hurt, so he changed the subject. "My mother and I didn't talk about it. Did Theo tell you where they've been living?"

"They moved around a lot, living as rustically as possible. They stayed quite a long time in the mountains of Kentucky once your sister was born. They decided to contact Ulinthra after Aquila's disappearance since she was her only way to find us."

Mateo nodded, but had to adjust the topic, "I have another time travel question."

"Go ahead," Leona replied, already used to him needing things spelled out.

"We're not necessarily looking for a three-year-old. The next time we see my sister, if ever, she could be an old woman."

"Correct."

"There was this girl at the funeral. She was really close to Daria's nurse. Did you notice either of them?"

"I did not."

"My mother said that Aquila looks like her and Samsonite, and..."

"And you think this girl at the funeral might have been her?"

"I doubt Aura and Samsonite would have noticed her, but they _must have_ seen her six years earlier in The Constant, ya know when I had to escape from Reaver's facility?"

"I don't know, your mother was pretty focused on you."

"Did you ever talk to that girl?"

"I didn't. She wasn't there when we jumped out of the timestream, but I obviously wasn't really paying attention."

"From now on, we need to take note of every single person we encounter. It could be someone trying to kill us, or just a child passing on the street. We have to remember _everything_."

"Agreed," Leona said. "Which means I'm going to need you to do your absolute best to draw the face of that man who stabbed you in the other timeline. There is a near zero percent chance we don't run into him again."

"No need," Harrison said, coming into the room. "I can interpret his thoughts and convert them into a readable image. It'll be the last thing I do before going back to my boss to see if I've been fired or not."
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Picture Six

April 23, 2047

Harrison was not fired. In fact, he was called back in to work more closely with Ulinthra and Dave. They were two of the very few people who still worked for her. Before leaving, he performed some procedure to essentially read Mateo's mind and produce a visualization of his memory of the man who Reaver killed in the other timeline. No one else had seen him before, and they had no idea what his motivations might be. He had appeared out of nowhere, so he was either a salmon or a _choosing one_. His first run-in with Mateo could very well not happen for the next hundred, or thousand years. There was no way to know, but Leona was clear to _not_ prejudge him during that meeting. If Mateo already held anger towards the man before he had done anything wrong, from the man's perspective, then that anger could actually ultimately be the cause of his violence.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Never be surprised, but never assume you already have the whole story. Keep track of everything you do, and everyone you meet. Avoid alternate versions of yourself. Treat everyone you meet with respect, as they may unexpectedly return. And do not relinquish control of your own life. These were the rules that Leona spent the rest of 2046 coming up with. She left room for more.

Upon returning to the timestream, Leona realized that they could use the same technology Harrison had with the mysterious knife-wielder, along with predictive aging software, to create clear composites of Aura and Samsonite's daughter. Assuming she aged at a standard rate, and was not ageless like the two of them, Theo, and Danica, they were able to come up with thirteen pictures. Each one represented how Aquila would look at different ages since, if they ever encountered her, she could be of any age at the time. The first two were real photographs, but ages 7 through 102 were generated.

Once the program was complete, Mateo came in to find that Leona had already begun studying them to see if they had met her before. "Oh my God," she said as she placed her hand over her mouth in shock.

Mateo skipped to Picture Six to find out what was so surprising. He stared at it for what felt like hours. "This is my sister. This is her? We're sure about it?"

Leona looked over to him. "Yes. Weren't you two...?"

Mateo stumbled out of the cabin and threw up. He had not eaten much, but all of it came out, along with painfully stinging stomach acid.

His mother came over to comfort him. "Are you okay? What happened? Is the program finished?"

"I know your daught—" he tried to say before spitting up more. "I know my sist—oh my God!"

"Who is she?"

"She doesn't go by Aquila anymore."

"What's her name?"

"After you disappeared, a family moved into the Landau house. And I mean it was immediately after. Looking back, the timing is suspicious."

"She was your neighbor? Tell me. Who was she?"

"Frida. Her name was Frida, and we dated for a time."

Aura didn't throw up, but she turned away from him, like she wanted to. "Is this true, Leona? Is the program right? Could there have been a mistake?"

"The technology isn't perfect," Leona explained from the doorway. "Under normal circumstances, we couldn't trust it to be right, but Pictures Six and Seven look too much like her for it not to be right. We already know that the _powers that be_ like to throw us together in this unlikely string of six degrees. It is almost certainly her."

Mateo heaved again, but was completely empty, so it just damaged his throat more.

"Did you two ever..." Aura tried to ask, "take it to the next level?"

"Dear God no," Mateo quickly replied. "I don't know what I would do with myself if we had. But we kissed, and I don't even like _Star Wars_!"

"How long did the relationship continue after the first kiss?" Leona asked.

"It ended there."

"Makes sense. I think you can dissolve all feelings of guilt over this. You're half-siblings, time travelers, and neither one of you knew."

"We don't know she didn't know," Mateo pointed out.

"Don't talk about my daughter like that," Aura nearly yelled.

"I'm just saying...that we should go back to Kansas and speak with her. It grosses me out, but now that we know where she is, we have no choice, do we?"

They flew to Topeka.

"I haven't seen her in years," Frida's husband, Jai said truthfully. Mateo and Leona were sitting in his livingroom. The other three chose to remain at the aircraft, so as not to overwhelm him. "She has been declared dead. How are _you_ still alive, and still young?" He was in his sixties, but looked younger than sixty-year-olds did in Mateo's time.

This gave him an idea, and he was pretty proud of himself for having come up with it, especially with so little time to prepare. "The anti-aging treatments you undergo; we were beta testers for earlier programs. We won't look forever young, but we're young for now."

He lifted his chin to decide whether he believed this or not, and was still suspicious, but let it go. "Well, I'm sorry I can't help you. She disappeared in 2021." That was odd. It was the last time Mateo had seen her before running off to Colorado. He hadn't so much as asked after her since then.

"Did she disappear without a trace?" Leona asked.

"No," he answered. "She acted like she knew exactly where she was going. She just didn't tell me where."

"So she didn't _literally_ disappear before your eyes?" Mateo pressed

He was taken aback by this. "No, why the hell would she do that? What do you people want?"

"We're sorry to bother you," Leona stepped back in, hoping to save the conversation. "But any information you could provide would help us. We have...a different perspective than any police or private detective would have had at the time. It must be painful to relive this, but if you could go over it one more time, it could mean the difference between finding the truth, and never knowing. We may be able to get you answers."

He breathed in deeply. "It's been long enough. It doesn't hurt anymore, but I won't have to tell you. I can just give you the information." He walked over to his desk and took out a small flash drive that was laid haphazardly in a drawer. He plugged it into his computer and closed his eyes. After a couple of minutes, he removed the storage device and handed it to Leona. "All my memories of the events surrounding Frida's disappearance are on here."

"Thank you, Mr. Quelen. We will let you know if we find anything. It may take a few years."

"I would appreciate it."

After leaving the house, Mateo took the storage device and examined it. "What did he do? There wasn't even a keyboard."

"He interfaced with the computer using the nanites in his brain, transferring whole memories onto this with only his thoughts."

"Nanites. Like Mirage."

"Like Mirage, yes."

"Should we get nanites too?"

"If you want. They would give us virtual telepathy. I do not know if they can travel through time, though. She couldn't. The _powers_ may want us to essentially remain how we were when we started this journey."

"Speaking of non-sequiturs," Mateo said, "we have some time while we're heading back to our family..."

"Oh, I forgot to tell you how Reaver convinced me to break him out of prison."

"Yes."

"I'm sorry."

"No, there's been a lot going on. I didn't want to push the subject."

"It's fine. I just totally forgot. Those words he said, _Dougnanimous Brintantalus_. That was a time travel protocol."

"What's that?"

"If I ever go back in the past and am forced to interact with a younger version of myself, I say those words to that younger me, and she knows to trust me. They are intentionally nonsensical so that no one would ever say them out of context. And I came up with them after seeing _Back to the Future_ , long before actually knowing that time travel was real."

"Why would Reaver have those words?"

"I don't know, but _no one_ is supposed to have them. I didn't tell you, not because I didn't trust you, but because they only work if I'm the only one who knows them. The fact that he knew them proves that I gave them to him. He couldn't have gotten them any other way. I just wish I had access to that timeline, to find out why I would go to such great lengths."

"Maybe you didn't give them up. We just saw that people can now read minds, and transfer memories."

"Yes, using certain machines. He wouldn't have been able to do it without my knowing it. Maybe in the future it could be done passively, but not now. And certainly not in 2042."

Mateo thought this over, and injected as much logic into the situation as possible. "But we're talking about time travel. By its very nature, it's not susceptible to the day's technological progress. Maybe Reaver himself didn't get those words. Someone five-thousand years from now, with that day's technology could have read your thoughts, and sent them back. Five-thousand years. For us, that's only...um..."

"Less than fourteen years," she said, and then she thought through it herself. "You're right. Time travel protocols aren't perfect. They're just...as close as I can get."

"Come on," Mateo said, dropping the subject. "We should get back to the plane before 2048."
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

All Time Favorite Movie

April 24, 2048

Aura asked Mateo and Leona to hand over the information regarding her daughter's disappearance, and also for them to stay out of the investigation. They would only be able to help once every year, and she still felt uncomfortable about Mateo's prior relationship with his own half-sister. She didn't voice her concerns over the second part, but it was implied. When the two of them returned in 2048, there was apparently no news on the matter. Frida/Aquila was nowhere to be found. It was a longshot, because it was pretty clear that she was one of them. If the _powers that be_ didn't want someone to learn something, then they wouldn't, and nothing was going to change that.

For the first time in a long time, Mateo and Leona had nothing to do. They didn't have to break someone out of prison, or run for their lives from that person. They didn't have to search for information, or go to a funeral, or have kidney surgery. "Honestly," he said after waking up, "I can't help but be bored."

"I know," Leona agreed. "I was sort of getting used to a life of constant urgency. Our brief moments of respite were filled only with anticipation for the next crisis. I don't know what to do with myself."

"What does one do with a life such as this?"

"No clue."

Mateo's birth father, Mario had been behind them for an unknown amount of time. "I have an idea." He touched both of their shoulders and pulled them away.

They found themselves in some kind of body of water. It didn't seem too deep while they were swimming over to the nearest bit of land. There were tall cliffs all around them, like they were sitting in some kind of giant bowl. "When are we?" Leona asked.

"Same time," Mario explained. "Well, I think we've jumped a few hours into the future. Well...maybe several hours. I don't know where we are, though."

"Some kind of crater lake," Leona said, just off the top of her head.

Mateo pulled out his phone and looked at the GPS. "It says _Rapa Nui_."

"That's another name for Easter Island," Leona said, again just off the top of her head. "Why did you bring us here?"

"The _powers_ brought us here. I'm just the medium."

"In your experience," Leona began, "what might a reason be?"

"My sister teleported all over the place, helping people. _I_ , on the other hand, help people help _other_ people. I save boy scouts...proverbially."

"So it is actually the two of us who are supposed to help someone?" Mateo asked, but it wasn't so much of a question.

"Yeah, I would think—" Mario began, but then blinked out of sight.

"Well, that was helpful," Mateo said. "How the hell are we supposed to get out of here?"

"We climb, of course. You were the one complaining about not having anything to do."

"So were you."

It took them a few hours of slipping, stumbling, and cursing, but they did manage to climb out of the crater, and survived to tell the tale. Upon reaching the summit, they found themselves face to face with a series of guns. "Mateo?" a familiar voice came from the back. He gently moved the gunmen to the side and stepped forward. It was Gilbert Boyce, the man they had agreed to free from Reaver's prison a few days ago. "What are you doing here?"

"We're...uh," Leona stammered. "We're here to help."

Gilbert studied their faces for a moment and a half before shrugging. "I don't know how you do it, but it wouldn't be the first time you appeared out of nowhere and helped me out, so I guess I'm gonna go with the flow." He helped her off the ground as his men lowered their weapons.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Into the crater," Gilbert answered.

"We just came from there," Mateo whined.

"It's the only way."

"What's down there?"

"You'll see," Gilbert said ominously. The team slowly and carefully made the trek down the slope of the crater. Mateo was getting a decent workout today, and was not particularly happy about it. He took back what he said about being bored. That was the ideal. Once they were at the bottom, Gilbert took out a map and started comparing it to landmarks around them. "This way."

Leona took a peek. "Please don't tell me that's a treasure map."

"Of course not," Gilbert said, much to their relief. "Okay, that's a lie. It is. There's a secret entrance nearby. I'll be honest, I've been waiting for something like this my whole life. _The Last Crusade_ is my all time favorite movie."

"And you're going to be the first to find it."

"Since the ancients, yes."

"That sounds crazy."

"I literally did not ask you to come."

Leona pulled Mateo to the side and whispered to him, "it's dangerous for us to be underground during a timeslip. Erosion, flooding, _bats_. It's just over an hour to midnight central. We can't risk it."

"The _powers that be_ have a plan. We either follow it or try to subvert it. I don't know about you, but I haven't had much luck going against their wishes. They want us here, we're here."

Gilbert called to them while unpacking supplies, "are you two coming, or not? Honestly, I can't say which I prefer."

"We're leaving," Leona said, but only to Mateo. She took his arm and began to lead him away, but stopped short.

Frida was standing in front of them. She had not changed a bit. "Go with them, Leona," she instructed before disappearing, like any salmon would.

"You saw that, right?" Mateo asked.

"Yes. We have to go." But she was not happy about it.

"I'm not a huge fan of this one."

"This one what?" she asked.

"This day. This year. I guess it's good that we'll be done with it soon, though."

"Let's just hope we don't accidentally timejump off a cliff."

Gilbert nodded to them, fortunately without having seen Frida's sudden appearance. He addressed his men, "two of you will need to go down with your own lungs. We didn't bring extra rebreathers."

"Actually, we have our own," Mateo said.

"Rule number seven," Leona noted. "Pack the essentials, and always keep them within reach."

"Serendipitous," Gilbert said. "It'll take us a few minutes to get through the tunnel and up into the grotto."

"Assuming it even exists," Mateo pointed out.

"Exactly," Gilbert agreed.

They all put on their rebreathers and dove into the water. It took them awhile before finding it, but there was indeed what appeared to be a secret tunnel. It could likely not be found by anyone not looking for it. They snaked their way in one by one, and about ten minutes later, were able to surface in the grotto. The walls were covered in some kind of greenish-bluish glowing something or other. It was stunningly beautiful. Leona walked over to the cave wall and examined it. "Glow worms. Like the ones in New Zealand."

"Are they dangerous?" Mateo asked in fear.

She shrugged. "Might could be. Don't touch them."

Gilbert stopped looking at the worms and went back to his map. He turned it around, wrestled with it, and peered closer.

"Do you know where you're going?" Mateo asked.

"Of course I do," he said, to their relief. "That was another lie. This is pretty much as far as the map goes. There's another map, but I was not able to procure it."

"Well, what are we looking for down here?"

"You'll see."

"Stop saying that!"

"Again, I don't even know why you're here!" Gilbert yelled. He pointed down the corridor. "I'm going forward. You may leave at any time. But I'm done with your complaints."

That was actually kind of fair. Kind of. The team pressed on down the corridor. The glow worms never disappeared completely, but there were fewer and fewer of them as they moved. When finally they found themselves in another large chamber, full of twice as many worms as the first, nearly an hour had gone by. Leona's watch beeped. "It's time, Mateo. Whatever we're supposed to do, it will have to wait for next year."

"What does that mean?" Gilbert asked. "Why do you only show up once a year?"

She ignored him. "Get in the middle of the room. It'll be the safest place for us." She and Mateo huddled together and prepared themselves.

Midnight came and went. They were still in the same place, and the team was just staring at them. "Are you two okay?"

"We're still here!" Leona cried with excitement.

"The cave must be protecting us."

" _Frida_ is protecting us."

Gilbert turned his head to get a better listen with his lizard brain. "I wouldn't be so sure of that." The sound of rushing water could be heard in the distance, back down the corridor from where they had come, and it was growing closer. "Um...run."
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Like Immortality

April 25, 2049

Two of Gilbert's men instinctively grabbed Mateo and Leona to pull them ahead of the group and down the corridor, hopefully towards safety. The tallest of them had not had much opportunity to stand up straight while they were walking before, but this second had a higher ceiling, and allowed them all to move much faster. The floor was already wet, so there was a lot of slipping and running into walls, but they were able to stay on the move. The water flooding in from behind them was moving much faster, and would soon overcome them. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Literally. The walls cleaved from each other with each passing step as the ceiling flew up from the floor.

Finally, they were out of the corridor and around the corner, in the largest chamber they had ever seen. It was a deep cavernous ellipsoid, at least a half kilometer wide, and they were standing in the middle of it, on a sort of mezzanine balcony. There were stairs and seats carved into the rock across the way. The occasional narrow waterfall poured from the walls, the heaviest of which had just begun from their original corridor. Stalagmites littered the floor. Some kind of stage waited patiently in the center of the very bottom. They were standing in an auditorium. But the most fascinating sight was the ceiling, or rather that there was no ceiling. Despite being deep underground, and knowing that this was absolutely not a known landmark of Easter Island, the sky could be seen above them. Rather, there were many skies above them. Stars periodically blinked in and out of existence. The sun appeared from one side and then disappeared, and then it would later appear from a different side. Sometimes, it was like they were seeing multiple versions of the sky at once in a spectacular vortex collage.

They watched for several minutes before anyone spoke. "What's happening here?" Gilbert asked. "Is this a hologram?"

"It's a time window," Leona explained, to the best of her ability.

"What does that mean?"

"You're seeing the sky at different moments in time, from different angles, and likely from different locations."

"How is that possible?" he asked.

"Same way my boyfriend and I travel through time; we do not know."

"I thought I was crazy for thinking that to be the explanation for you two," Gilbert said. "But I was _right_? That's amazing."

"Why is the sky seemingly perpetually zipping through time?" one of the men now asked.

"That's another question we could not answer," Leona said. "What are you trying to find here, Boyce?"

"Immortality."

Leona and Mateo took their gaze from the skies and looked at Gilbert.

He looked back at them. "Does that mean anything to you?"

They now looked to each other. "It does. It's possible."

"Who told you that would be here?"

Gilbert shifted his chin to various angles. "I don't know."

"That's usually not a good sign," Mateo said. "You shouldn't do anything without knowing why."

Leona went back to admiring the beauty in the skies. "Rule number eight."

Mateo reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. It always traveled through time with them, and was always able to determine when and where they were, and he regularly checked it to make sure his pattern held. "This isn't right."

"What is it?" Leona asked.

"My phone says that it's April 25, 2049."

"That shouldn't be," Leona agreed. "We never made the jump. It should still be 2048, unless..."

"Unless what?" Gilbert looked concerned. "How are we in the future?"

"The cave didn't protect us from the timejump," Leona realized. "It just included everyone here."

One of the men did his best to sound upset, but actually seemed more excited. "Is this permanent?"

"I couldn't tell you," Leona noted. "Last time that happened was with me. That was twenty years ago."

Gilbert sighed out of fatigue and resolve. "We have no choice but to push on, do we? We've come this far. Let's find the fountain of youth."

"We are still not certain that is a good idea. Someone wants you here, and if they erased your memory, then they probably do not have your best interests in mind. We should go back," Mateo urged.

"We have been having this conversation for a year. I'm over it, and I'm not going to repeat myself." Gilbert turned and began walking down the steps. His men followed, and so did the other two.

As soon as they had all reached the bottom, the sky stopped changing. It had settled on a brilliant shade of red. Shimmering and dusty cloud loomed overhead. "Why does it look like that?"

"It could be a setting sun, or that's from a couple billion years ago when the sky was orange, and the atmosphere full of methane."

"How are we still alive?"

"It's a time _window_. We are still standing in 2049."

"I'm not liking this day much more than the last," Mateo informed her. "Just want to put that on the record."

"Noted," she responded.

They continued to walk across the floor and head for the stage, the only logical place to go. The air shifted from hot to cold and back again, warning them away, but they never stopped. Gilbert was the first to step up to the stage, and noticed a sense of relief and mild euphoria. Leona and Mateo came next, and felt the same thing. They were still aware of all of their problems, but they were not worried about them. Suddenly, Reaver and the man who tried to kill them, as well as mystery that was Frida, didn't seem so important. There was only now.

The other men followed them up, but felt quite differently. One started to smack his lips. "I'm really thirsty. Anyone have any water?"

One grabbed his head in pain. "Son of a _bitch_!"

"My hands are tingling," another said.

"Guys, I can't hear anything," said a fourth.

The one who had helped Mateo down the corridor while the water was rushing behind them started nodding off. "I can't keep my eyelids open."

"What is happening to them?" Gilbert asked, with worry but no sense of urgency. "Why is it not happening to me?"

"It's a security system," Leona told him. "These are time travel symptoms. I don't know why they're lasting so long, though."

The last man sniffed the air. "Do you smell burnt toast?"

And with that, all six of the men disappeared. Something from the pack of the guy with the headache exploded, bits of it landing on the floor. He must have been carrying citrus. They had served their purpose, according to whoever wanted the three of them, and the three of them alone, to be down here.

They turned from the spot the men once held, knowing that there was nothing they could do to help. A large transparent cube had appeared in the middle of the stage. Inside of it was everything one would find in an apartment; a bed, a wardrobe, a dining room table, miscellaneous other things, and even the kitchen sink. But no one was inside of it. The security guard from Reaver's facility who had tried to stop him from escaping with Guard Number One and Guard Number Two appeared from behind a stalagmite. He was dressed in what appeared to be a rather fancy version of a security guard's uniform. He was cool and collected; the opposite of his demeanor when they had first met. "Welcome to The Agora."

"What happened to my men?" Gilbert asked.

"They're safe where they belong," he answered. "They helped get you here, but they did not need to be here."

"Who are you?" Gilbert continued.

"I am The Head Guard. But right now, I'm on holiday. I have nothing to do while the prison is empty." He looked back and presented the cube. "I need you three to fill it for us."

"Who's the prisoner?"

"Fugitive," Head Guard corrected. "I think you know who."

Reaver.

"Find him," he went on. "Bring him to justice. We would much appreciate it."

"Why can't you find him yourself?" Mateo put his hands on his hips.

He shook his head. "That is not my job. I _guard_ , I don't _catch_."

"That is not our job either," Leona said.

"Yes it is. You're The Rovers." Head Guard seemed confused.

"We're the what?"

"The Rovers. You go where you're needed. Did The Delegator not explain this to you?" Really confused.

"Not exactly," Mateo said. "He basically told us we could do whatever we wanted.

"Hmm..." he replied. "Something must be wrong with his neurolinguistic programming. We'll have someone correct that. You're not to do whatever you want, you are to do whatever is necessary. You do have jobs, you just don't have one single job. Right now, we need you to catch Reaver."

"Rovers catching Reaver," Mateo said with a laugh. "Why would we do that when you could just send a _Reaver_ to catch a Reaver?"

"I am afraid I do not follow."

"Reaver's daughter," Leona said. "She's a _choosing one_. Masters of time and space, and they still pretend to need go-betweens. I don't understand why they send _any_ of us to do _anything_ when they could just jump through time and do it themselves."

"I do not know either," Head Guard said. "I'm not one of them. I just do what I'm told; like you."

"We do _not_ do that," Mateo corrected.

"No, I suppose you don't. But you need to start, or there will be consequences."

"Like what?"

"Bad ones," was all he said of it.

"And what am I to do?" Gilbert asked.

"You are being temporarily placed in their pattern so that you may assist. After that, you will be so far from your own time that the warrant out for your arrest will no longer be relevant, and you will be free to start a new life."

"What do _we_ get in return?" Mateo asked.

"If you do what you're asked, then there will be a reward."

Gilbert perked up. "Like immortality?"

"Like immortality."
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Older Than You Before I Was Born

April 26, 2050

"No," Aura said, in no uncertain terms. They were standing in their present cabin in the parched scrubland of the Amazon; a place where there was once a lush rainforest.

"I don't need your permission, mother," Mateo snapped at her. "You've been doing this longer than I have. In your experience, if the _powers that be_ want something of you, have you been able to resist?"

"That's besides the point."

"What _is_ your point?"

"I am your mother, and I'm going to protect you."

"When have you _ever_ done that? You gave me up when I was a baby, you disappeared when I was a child, and you haven't been around much since your return."

"And who's fault is that?"

"It's mine, but it doesn't lessen the fact that I don't need you dictating my life."

"I just can't believe you're planning on going after Reaver... _again_. After all that happened before—after you saw Leona die—why would you be so enthusiastic about this?"

"Leona died?" Gilbert asked.

"And who are you?" Aura asked sardonically.

Mateo moved on, "I'm not enthusiastic about this. I've just accepted my place in the world. Some people work crappy jobs in the produce section of the grocery store, some people shovel shit, and some people are hopelessly thrown through time where they've given hazy assignments by a mysterious cabal of control freaks! We all do what we do, and right now I _do_ need to find Horace Reaver, and bring him to justice. I do what I'm told."

"How do you even know this Head Guard guy has any authority?" Samsonite asked, trying to contribute, but also worried about speaking out of turn.

"Last we saw him he was being taken away by the Delegator. He is literally a person of authority as he was an actual security guard in his former life."

"And," Leona continued, "we spoke with him in a magical cave that sits underneath a constantly shifting time window."

"And that too," Mateo nodded.

"That doesn't mean you can trust him."

Mateo threw up his hands. "You can't trust anyone, doesn't mean we have a choice."

Theo walked in with a packet of documents. "Here's the report. I printed it off on paper since I know you're not used to anything else."

"Thank you, brother," Leona said, taking the documents from him.

"What is this? You're _helping_ them? Is that information on Reaver's whereabouts?" Aura became more furious than she already was.

"They called me last year to ask me to get in touch with Boyce's loyalists so that we could locate and keep tabs on Reaver," Theo explained to her before debriefing _the team_. "He's been lying low and moving around a lot, but we're confident he's in Tasmania at the moment."

"We have a notable disadvantage," Leona said. "When we confront him, he'll have already experienced the day, so he will know exactly how to avoid us, kill us, or do whatever else he wants."

"How do we stop someone that powerful?" Gilbert asked.

"We need to call Harrison and ask for help with that."

"You already did." Ulinthra came in with fanfare. "Last time I experienced this day, we spoke and decided to do nothing, so Reaver doesn't know we're working together. This time around, we'll go at him, and he'll never see you coming."

"Who is this?"

"Mr. Boyce," she replied. "It's nice to meet you again for the very first time."

"I'm sorry?"

"She relives days, just like Reaver." Leona, always having to explain things to the lessers. "She is his counterpart."

"Oh," Gilbert smirked. "What have you been waiting for? If you could have stopped him at any time, why not do it?"

"We both relive days, but he has an advantage over me."

"What would that be?" Aura asked.

"He's more violent and scary. Remove time travel from the equation, and he is still a formidable opponent."

Mateo echoed a line he had said when they first met, "fair enough. What do we do?"

"I don't know," Ulinthra said bluntly. "I've done my part. I helped you yesterday, so that you could change the timeline today. What you do with that is your decision, but know that I will not help you again. This is your one and only favor. Besides when I lent Harrison to you for several years."

"Assuming we fail," Leona began, "why would you not help again? Do you not want to stop him as much as we do?"

"He contacted me after getting out of prison. I don't attack him directly, and he leaves me alone. You're my loophole. I suggest you not waste your opportunity." Ulinthra walked away, refusing to explain herself further.

"I thought she was supposed to have changed her ways," Mateo said.

Leona watched as Ulinthra was leaving. "You can add some croutons, but you can't turn chicken shit into chicken salad."

Theo laughed. "Well said, little sister."

"I'm never going to get used to you being older than me."

"Honey, I was older than you before I was born."

Changing the subject, Aura declared, "I'm coming with you, so if we're going to Tasmania, I'll need time to pack."

Frida appeared out of nowhere. "No. They go alone."

A stunned Aura tried reaching out to her daughter, but she was gone again too quickly. "Aquila..."

"What was that? Why did she leave so quickly? Is she coming back?" Samsonite was devastated.

"She is a _choosing one_ ," Leona said with her eyes squinted on the spot where Frida was once standing. "But there must be some kind of hierarchy. Her brief jumps allow her to say something in a hundred and forty characters or less, but the others don't let her stay too long. That's just my hypothesis, though."

"Mateo," Aura said, holding on to his shoulders so that he was focused on her. "If your sister wants you to do something, then do it. But keep your phone with you."

Because of the curve of the Earth, the trip to Tasmania was taking them over Antarctica. Mateo, Leona, and Gilbert sat in their seats without speaking as the artificial intelligence with no programmed personality continued flying them towards their destination. But then something went wrong, as one might expect for the couple. There were just no easy days. Not for them. Not anymore. With no warning, the aircraft lurched and shuddered. All of the electrical systems shut down at once, sending them shooting towards the surface. But they were not falling as steeply as Mateo would have thought. "What's happening?" They were urgently but not chaotically getting into their parachutes.

"Safety measures!" Leona explained. "The plane _will_ crash, but it will glide to a certain degree before that happens! Open the escape hatch carefully."

Gilbert crawled over and tried opening the hatch, but it wasn't working. He struggled with it for a few moments before the nose tipped down. Leona and Mateo rolled towards the front, but Gilbert was able to hold on to the door handle. He grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall as the other two were trying to climb back up to meet him. He banged on the latch over and over again, but Mateo couldn't tell if he was making any progress. Just at the right time, he hit the latch one more time with as much strength as he possessed while the plane tipped over so that he was at the bottom. The added force caused the hatch to burst open and break off, pulling Gilbert out with it. Mateo wasn't prepared for this either, and was sent hurtling out the opening, slamming his head on the edge as he was leaving.

Mateo woke up in a tent. "Leona!"

"Careful," Gilbert insisted. "You banged your head pretty bad."

"How did I get here?"

"Your parachute opened on its own just before reaching your lower limit. We're somewhere in Antarctica. Near the sea."

"Where is Leona?"

"I don't know."

"Where's the plane, Boyce!"

"It's a few klicks southwest of our position."

"Was Leona on it when it crashed?"

"I couldn't tell you. She isn't responding to my calls, and the beacon doesn't give me that information."

"Why are we still here if we know where the plane is?"

"What did you want me to do? Drag you? I'm no spring chicken."

"Well, I'm awake now, so let's go."

They packed the tent and set out to look for Leona. It was snowy and windy, but not as bad as Mateo would have expected. They were pretty far north, and due to climate change, Antarctica wasn't getting any colder. "What the hell are those?" Mateo asked. The beach was full of crabs.

"King crabs," Gilbert explained. "It's a global warming thing. Just ignore them."

Mateo was about to say something else when his phone rang. It was Leona. "Where are you?—It does?—How do I open that?" Leona had told him that their phones would provide them with each other's coordinates. "Okay, I see you now. We're not far away. We can meet in the middle." They continued walking, but much faster now. After awhile, they began to hear a buzzing sound. "Leona what is that?—It could be Reaver.—I know it could be a rescue team, but we can't take that chance.—You have to hide.—It's _not_ too late! Hide! It's almost midnight central!"

They ran as fast as they could. Gilbert had trouble keeping up, but that didn't matter. Mateo continued running until he could see Leona in the distance. But then he saw that the snowmobile in pursuit was growing closer to her. " _You hide_ ," Leona instructed him from the phone. " _I love you_." Leona put her phone away and stared at him, unmoving. Midnight struck and sent them to the future, which would have been a good thing if no one knew where they were, but the snowmobile driver had her coordinates, and when the three salmon reappeared in the timestream, they were waiting for her.

Mateo watched helplessly as Leona was being escorted into the aircraft. He began running again, but it was too late. The plane took off, leaving the other two behind.

"At least they didn't take us as well," Gilbert said after catching up.

"Don't be so selfish," Mateo spat back.

"It's not selfish. It means Leona has a chance to be rescued. Call that Theo guy and ask him where Reaver is now."
Reavers Wobble

Because Reasons

Horace Reaver's mother burst through the screen door, hoping that her six-year-old son and his friend were just playing. She found what she had feared. Little Dardan's lifeless body lay motionless on the ground. "Oh my God. What happened?"

Horace simply shrugged. "I pushed him off the jungle gym. I think he broke his neck."

She started sobbing. "Do you understand what you've done?"

"I'm sorry," Horace cried, unsure why she was so upset. "I didn't know it would hurt him that bad. I'll be more careful tomorrow."

"Tomorrow‽" she screeched. "There is no _tomorrow_! He's dead! People don't come back from that! Don't you understand?"

"I don't mean _tomorrow_ tomorrow," Horace tried to explain. "I mean when I go back and do this day over again, I won't kill him this time. He'll be fine."

She continued to cry. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"The day. It'll restart. This is only the practice day, so we can learn from our mistakes, and then go back and try it again."

Mrs. Reaver tried inhaling to get the snot back in her nose, and then she took her son by the shoulders. "Now you listen to me, mister. You can't go back in time. We only get _one_ chance in this life, and you just took that one chance from this little boy." She stood up and composed herself. "Now I am your mother, and I'm going to protect you, but you have to do _exactly_ what I say. Do you understand me?"

"No, I don't. I'll just go back in time and do things differently. I don't understand why you're acting like that's impossible. I've been doing it my whole life, haven't you?"

She slapped him across the face hard enough to drop him to the ground, right on top of Dardan's body. "Shut up! You shut up right now! You can't! Travel! Through time, you little shit!"

Horace deepened his eyes and wiped the blood off of his face. He took a stone as he was standing back up, bashing it against his mother's knee. When she keeled over in pain, he swung back and then slammed it against her face. "If what you're saying is true, mother..." He lifted the rock high over his head and prepared to drop it down. "...then you won't have to worry about remembering this."

That was the first Horace Reaver learned that people around him did not also have the ability to go back in time and relive each day once more.

Horace spent much of the next several years in boredom. Despite his best efforts, no one around him was even slightly aware that time reset at the end of every day. While everyone else had experienced ten years, he had lived through twenty, and there was nothing he could do to change that. He discovered a television series that ran when he was a baby about a medical student who shared his ability, and used it to prevent people from dying. He became obsessed with the show, and watched each episode several times. He wanted to understand every mistake the character made so that he would not do the same. But he also became convinced that, like the show's main antagonist, he too would have some kind of counterpart; someone who could relive days, and would soon be working against him.

In order to garner the attention of this supposed enemy, Reaver grew violent. He went on murderous rampages; hosting public shootings, and blowing up buildings. He would always try to get caught and make sure his name was plastered all over the news. When the day restarted, he would be completely free. He carried out his plans across the entire country, and a few times in Canada, hoping that his counterpart would learn of the things he did only during Round One, and wonder why they did not happen the second time around. No such luck.

He moved out of his family's home upon turning 18 and bought a new house. He didn't feel the need to go to college, and he didn't need a job. All he had to do was bet on sports competitions, and he would be right every time. One day, a high school girl who lived down the street offered him a lasagna her mother had made to welcome him to the neighborhood. The only thing was that this was the second time Horace was living through the day, and she had not offered the lasagna before. "Who are you?" he asked impolitely.

"My name is Ulinthra," she answered impolitely.

He eyed her carefully, and was about to say more, but decided to wait. The next day, during Round One, he knocked on Ulinthra's door and asked point blank if she was a time traveler.

"I am, yes," she responded with less surprise than he would have thought.

"I've been looking for you."

"Why?"

"Well..." He was not expecting her to not feel the same way. "Well, so I wouldn't be alone anymore."

She shrugged, "I like being alone."

"You like knowing everything that's going to happen in the future, and having no one to relate to?"

"I'm going to live twice as long as everyone I know. I spend entire days doing whatever I want, and not worrying about the consequences. Who _wouldn't_ want to have my life?"

"Well now we get to do those things together."

"I don't even know you." She smirked. "Creeper."

"I could kill you right now, and literally no one would ever know."

"Unless we're not the only two."

"What do you know?"

She ignored the question. "Besides, it might be fun to die."

"I've done it a few times. It gets old real quick. Like, immediately."

Having finally found someone like him, and unable to contain himself, Horace shoved his face into hers to kiss her. Though everyone appeared to be human, the two of them were something different; another species, and it felt like she was the last woman on Earth. Ulinthra did not push him away, and he thought he had made the right choice, but then he felt a sting in his throat. His neck was wet, and he was having trouble breathing. He slowly pulled away from her, letting the knife slide out of his body.

Ulinthra's father ran up from the hallway upon hearing Horace fall to the floor. "What did you do?"

She dropped the knife by Horace's head. "Don't worry about it, dad."

When Horace woke up the next morning, he instantly threw his hand up to his neck. It was, of course, perfectly fine. All the events of the day before had been negated. He was going to go back to Ulinthra's house and give her a piece of his mind, but she was waiting for him in the chair on the other side of his room. "You were saying something about having fun together?" She leaned forward and smiled at him semi-seductively. "We can't do anything today, but tomorrow I was thinking we could shoot down some security drones. Start small."

A portal opened against the wall. On the other side of it was Stonehenge, but it looked like it was missing a few stones. A man was standing in the middle of it. "Get the hell out here, you two!"

They obliged. "Who are you?"

"Why have you people been running around, blowing things up, killing your father over and over again, like a freaking psycho?"

"Why not?"

The man was baffled. "Because it's wrong!"

"No harm, no foul."

"Have you ever stopped to think that you were given these gifts for a _reason_?"

"Sure but, how were we to know what that reason was?"

"Take a guess. Here's a hint; it's not to kill people!"

"Then what?"

The man tried to dumb it down for them. "Instead of being _in_ the news, _read_ the news, go back in time, and fix the problems before they happen."

"Why did it take you so long to talk to us about this?"

"We were waiting for you two to meet semi-organically, and didn't know it would start with yet _another_ murder!"

Horace spread his wings and lowered his head. "That's all ya had to say!"
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Hyperintelligent Mechacelestial Beings

April 27, 2051

Mateo pulled his phone back out of his pocket. "I should be able to track her." But he couldn't. The phone had no idea where Leona was.

"I'm sure Reaver has some kind of signal jammer," Gilbert suggested.

Mateo sighed, trying simultaneously to concentrate, and to not hyperventilate.

"Call Theo."

Mateo realized that this was the right next step, but before he had a chance to select Theo's phone number, it rang as Leona's face popped up on the screen. "Leona," he said, excited. "Tell me you're okay."

" _It's me_ ," Reaver replied.

"What have you done with her?"

" _I've kept her alive. From what I gather, my plan to kill her and grab the attention of my daughter did not work, so I have no reason to hurt Leona now._ "

"Then bring her back, and we can talk about this."

" _You...you want me to take her back to Antarctica? No. No thanks. My mother told me to put on a coat, but I refused to listen, like always. I will bring you to me, so that we remain under my terms._ "

"And how exactly am I supposed to get to wherever you are? Figured we'd swim?"

" _That would be lovely, but no. I don't have time for that. I left an aircraft for you about twenty kilometers west of where we picked up Leona._ "

"Why did you take her but not me?"

There was a bit of a pause before Reaver replied, " _I want you to work for it. I want you to_ want _it._ "

"I'm going to kill you," Mateo lied.

" _I look forward to seeing you try_ ," Reaver lied.

"What are we doing?" Gilbert asked after Mateo hung up the phone.

"We're walking more."

They spent the next several hours walking across the snow, stopping more often than they wanted to, but less often than they probably should have. Despite climate change, and advances in nanofibers, the trek was extremely difficult. They removed their clothing to find their extremities to be discolored and numb. The aircraft warmed them up quickly as it took them along a preprogrammed route.

"Is this what it's like for you all the time?" Gilbert questioned. "Always cold, or running from rushing water, or trying to catch a criminal?"

"It wasn't _always_ like this, no," Mateo started to explain. "In the beginning, it was a crap deal. I was jumping through time, missing all these important moments from the lives of my family and friends, but we were okay. Looking back, that is, we were okay. I never thought it would turn out like this. I assumed my adoptive parents would live full lives, that Leona would move on and forget about me, and that no one else would know about my condition, let alone try to kill me."

"What are you going to do once this is all over?"

" _All_ over?" Mateo laughed. "You mean after I take care of Reaver, assuming I don't die? If my aunt is any indication, I'm pretty much in this for life. If they ever retire me, I'll be too old to do anything. One way or another, my chapter with Reaver will end in a few short days. No way the people who are doing this to us are gonna fire me that quickly." He went back to massaging his feet. "Leona says we could be doing this for the next twenty or thirty thousand years. Who knows what the world will look like at that point? We could be fighting aliens and hyperintelligent mechacelestial beings for all I know. This is just what we do now. This is us."

Gilbert let out a small laugh of his own, "heh. You could live long enough to safely go to Chernobyl."

"Yeah, if I do retire, I'll probably go there. From what I hear, you could too. Aren't we only a half century away from immortality?"

Gilbert took a sip of his bourbon. "Give or take, that's what we're told. Here's to the future," he said, lifting his glass half-heartedly.

They sat in silence for a few minutes.

"Why am I not afraid?"

"The liquor, I would imagine."

"No, that's not it. I was just in a plane crash, but now I'm on another plane, and it feels perfectly natural. All the booze in the world couldn't fix that so soon."

"You jumped off a prison tower with very little warning. Presumably you jumped out of the plane after that, like we suggested."

Gilbert nodded. "So I'm desensitized to danger."

Mateo lifted his water. "Here's to not worrying about death or other such trivial nonsense."

"Seconded."

"Are you ready? To help, I mean? You don't really know us. I think you were a bonus from the _powers that be_ , but they probably won't hold you to this mission. You could jump out of this plane right now and forget the whole thing."

Gilbert placed his drink down and made his face all serious. "I'm all in. Let's get the son of a bitch."

"Well then, thank you for all you've done. And thank you for whatever you'll do in the future." Mateo pulled out the metal rosary from his pocket and started fidgeting with it. He hadn't thought about his faith much in the recent weeks, but something made him feel the need to reconnect with his past. "Do you believe in God?"

"I do not. I believe in people."

"Yeah, I'm starting to come around to your side of the argument," Mateo said. "Except instead of believing in them, I think I just _don't_ believe in them."

"I understand the sentiment, but I think you oughta hold on to that shiny piece of jewelry for now."

"Why is that?"

"The person who made that did so in a factory, probably outside of the U.S. They made so many of those things that they give nothing more than a thought to any given one. This metal thing is irrelevant to them. It has no value. It only becomes meaningful when someone buys it, or buys it for someone else. It doesn't matter what it was _designed_ to represent." He took a beat for effect. "What does it represent for you?"

Mateo took a long time to answer, carefully considering what Gilbert was _really_ asking. "It means I'm not alone."

He smiled kindly. "Then you definitely don't want to get rid of it. That feeling is more rare than you think."

The two unlikely friends spoke a little bit over the course of the rest of the trip, but not about anything so deep. The plane automatically landed itself at Horace Reaver's compound in the middle of nowhere Queensland, Australia. The air was almost hot enough to cook them right there when they stepped out, a dramatic shift from bitter Antarctica. Armed guards escorted them from the landing pad and into a cell.

After several hours of no food or water, Reaver came in smiling with a platter of cold cuts fit for a family reunion. It was _not_ prison food, but very appropriate based on what they knew of their warden. "I hope you like turkey."

"You have me now," Mateo spoke in a rather gravelly voice from the dehydration. "As they say in action movies, let the girl go."

"Oh, Leona's fine." Reaver set the platter on the floor and kicked it through the little opening. Several cheese cubes tumbled off into the dirt. "She's staying in a six-star resort. She has air conditioning and television; the works. It's Boyce who you should be worried about."

"Why?" Gilbert asked.

"Because you're irrelevant." With that, Reaver took out a pistol and shot Gilbert in the forehead. "That's a lesson. Nobody can help you, Mateo. You are alone. If you had come with anyone else, I would have shot them too. Your mother, Leona's brother, that guy who's always hanging around them; they would have all been in danger. Only you and Leona are safe."

Mateo stared at Gilbert's body, feeling that to be the only way to respect him. "Why am I still safe? I don't know what you want with Leona, but I can hazard a guess. What doesn't make any sense is why _I'm_ still alive."

"For the moment," Reaver said, "you're still alive so you can wonder why you're still alive."

After Reaver left, Mateo took out his rosary and prayed over Gilbert's body. When he returned to the timestream in 2052, the body was still in the same place. It had decomposed quite a bit in all this heat. What was left of the platter of food was still there as well, rotten and disgusting. Thank God he had rediscovered his faith in time. Otherwise, he would have seriously considered forgoing the special prison cube, and following through with his threat to kill Reaver. It was time to end this.
Reavers Wobble

Bridelope

It took a month or two...or fifteen, along with several free Round One therapy sessions, but Horace and Ulinthra were able to change their ways. They didn't start saving lives right away, but they _were_ able to move past their need to cause death, destruction, and mayhem.

The two of them moved to Howell, New Jersey. This put them in the center of the action. They were about an hour away from each of Camden, New Jersey; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Chester, Pennsylvania; and Wilmington, Delaware. These were four of the most dangerous cities in the country. They also lived about an hour from New York City which had its fair share of dangers. They developed and perfected a system of absorbing all news in the area during Round One. Once the day restarted, they were not able to take their notes back with them, and so they also had to learn memorization techniques. They became quite excellent at it. There were whispers of two vigilantes running around stopping murders and thwarting terrorist plots, but those subsided as they learned how to stay hidden and cover their tracks.

They came to be known as The Rewinders amongst other people who did not live through time properly. These other time travelers called themselves _salmon_ , and they all had their own patterns and missions. There were even some other couples. Horace and Ulinthra tried to form a romantic bond, but this proved to be ill-advised. Their relationship was a distraction from their responsibilities, and the more years that passed, the more committed they grew to their pattern. Ulinthra fell in love with two people whose lives she had once saved. She ended up marrying into the family unofficially, but not before they joined the team. Now they were able to dole out assignments and increase their reach; be in many places at once.

As luck would have it, Horace ran into a woman from his home town of Topeka, Kansas. They had encountered each other once in a hospital, but were both very young, and nothing came of it. They considered it fate that they both chose to live in the same new city later on in their lives. Today was their wedding day.

"Are you nervous?" Ulinthra asked as she was adjusting his bowtie.

"Are you a cliché?" Horace asked back.

She playfully slapped him across the shoulder, "shut up. I'm serious."

"Happiest day of my life."

"It's supposed to be _her_ happiest day."

"Can't be mine too?"

She lowered her demeanor. "Not when you've already been through this day."

"I didn't get married when we first went through the day. You remember what we did instead?"

"Yes, we said we weren't going to talk about it."

"It was nostalgia," Horace said, pulling away from her to dress himself on his own.

"We shouldn't have done it. It's sick."

"We used to do it all the time."

"Yeah, separately, and we were severely messed up for it. If my husbands and your fiancée ever found out—"

"Don't even talk like that. They have no idea who we are—who we _were_. They would leave us. Actually, they would likely call the cops. Sure, they would never be able to prove we hurt people in an alternate reality, but they would tell them how we "think" we live through an alternate reality, and that would probably be enough."

"But you see, that's just it. It's not who we _were_. It's who we are. We proved it yesterday, when we killed our loved ones in some disgusting ritualistic celebration."

"It's out of our system. We won't do it again, I promise."

" _I_ promise never to do it again," Ulinthra proclaimed, "but I don't trust that you won't. You were always much worse than me."

Horace reached back, preparing to strike Ulinthra, but was able to stop himself in time. "It's not a contest. I killed my fiancée, and you killed your husbands. It's over. It _never_ happened, and we don't have to worry about it."

"You killed us yesterday?" Allen revealed himself.

"Allen, no, you don't understand."

"Tell me what happened."

Ulinthra tried to play it down. "It's not a big deal, honey."

"I'll be the judge of that," Allen raised his voice. "What _exactly_ did you do?"

"It's just this...form of catharsis. We would never hurt you during Round Two. Could we please just forget it?"

"I'm not going to forget it. I asked you what you did _exactly_ , now I want details!"

"You don't want details. It'll just make matters worse."

"What happened, Ulinthra!" Allen screamed.

"We slit your throats," Horace interjected. "It's our...preferred method. Well, it _was_. We don't do that anymore."

"Except for yesterday," Allen spat.

"Except for yesterday, yes. It was a mistake, and we're sorry." Horace sounded pretty sincere, but he knew in his heart that he wasn't. It felt good to go back to the way things were when he was younger. As rewarding as it was to save people, it was nothing compared to the sweet relief of taking a life, knowing that he could return it the next day for a full refund.

"And you two used to do this all the time?"

Ulinthra nodded with shame. "Him more than me, but yeah."

"No need to throw me under the bus."

Allen tried to work through the revelation, but was struggling. "I...I have to tell Richard. I'm not saying we'll leave you, but he has a right to know who he's sharing a bed with."

"I understand," Ulinthra said.

"I don't," Horace said as Allen was trying to walk away.

"What?"

"Horace," Ulinthra pleaded. "We have to let this play out. He has to do what he thinks is right."

"I will not let you destroy what we have," Horace insisted. "I'm going to get married today; on our one day off in, like, forever. And then tomorrow, she is going to continue helping us save the world. Richard too. If you don't want to be part of it anymore, then say the word, but the others can _never_ know what we did yesterday, or what we did when we were kids."

Allen put his hands on his hips indignantly. "Well, I don't think that's for you to decide. Now I'm _definitely_ telling Richard, and I'm telling your fiancée too."

Horace moved forward and took Allen's arm forcefully. "Don't do this, Allen."

"Let him go, Horace. Remember, this is Round Two."

"Oh, and if it was Round One, you would just go ahead and stab me?" Allen asked.

Horace smashed his fist against the side of Allen's head, knocking him to the floor. "If this was Round One, we wouldn't have to do a goddamn thing."

"Horace, stop!" Ulinthra pulled at him, but she wasn't strong enough.

"I'm not going to stab you. It's too messy." Horace stepped on Allen's neck and killed him.

"What did you do?" Ulinthra asked, tearing up.

"Do you want to help me hide the body?" He turned his head, but kept his eyes on Allen's body. "Or do you want next?"

After stuffing Allen into a closet, Ulinthra and Horace left the changing room and proceeded to the assembly hall. Richard was waiting for them at the altar. "Where's Allen?"

Horace shook his head. "I'm sorry. He really wanted to be here, but he just couldn't stop thinking about the party boat that goes missing an hour from now. He went off to look for it."

Richard smiled. "He always says that trouble never takes a day off."

Once the bride was finished walking down the aisle, the officiant began the ceremony. He had few words of his own since the couple had a long set of vows to say. He skipped the part where he asks if anyone objected, and moved on to the good bit. "Leona Delaney, do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

"I do," Leona said elatedly.

"And do you, Horace Reaver, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

"I do," Horace repeated.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Literally Born With It

April 28, 2052

Horace Reaver returned to Mateo's cell a few hours past midnight and pulled up a chair. He nodded to Gilbert's body. "He was about your age you know. Rather, he was about a year younger than you would have been were it not for the _choosing ones_. And today would have been his birthday." He laughed less menacingly than he normally did. "Sixty-five. He was one day from retirement before his death."

"You've never killed anyone, far as I know."

"I'm sorry?"

"You've caused a lot of pain. We met a woman whose brother died working for you. Lord knows how many times you've tried to kill me. In an alternate reality, you _did_ kill Leona and my father."

"So Leona told me. How interesting."

Mateo continued, "but have you _actually_ killed anyone? I mean, before Gilbert."

"In this timeline?" Reaver rhetorically asked for clarification. He thought about it for a moment. "No, I haven't." He shifted his seat closer to the cell window. "Are you ready for a story?"

"No."

"I wasn't first thrust into this world when I was an adult, like you. I was literally born with it. At least, that's what I'm guessing, because I do not remember a time without it. For as far back as my memories go, I've lived through each day, and then gone back to do it again. I first referred to the first time around as _practice days_ , assuming that this was something everyone did. I legitimately believed that every single person on the planet was given a second chance at the day, ya know, to make things better. I just thought that that was how physics worked. Time repeating itself everyday made no less sense to me than the fact that the sun disappears every night.

"I discovered myself to be alone when I was pretty young by killing my mother, and finding her to have no memory of the event. I was an angry child, and having this...gift gave me a warped perspective. I can spend entire days doing what I want, to whomever I want, and no one will notice. I can kill others, I can kill myself, I can run around naked in Times Square. Had I the benefit of a normal timeline before this happened to me, I think I would been more stable. I would have been able to appreciate what it's like for everyone else." He leaned back to continue. "But the _choosing ones_ wanted me from the start, thinking that to be the best way to activate me. They would later realize this was a terrible mistake, but we'll get back to that.

"Once I realized that I was alone, I realized that I actually _couldn't_ be alone. There _had_ to be someone else. The possibility of being the only one out of billions of people just didn't add up. It was too statistically unlikely. I hunted for my counterpart by making a ruckus during what were now called Round Ones, and then doing nothing on the Round Twos. I finally found her after I stopped looking, and that's when we met The Delegator. As it turns out, Ulinthra was nearly as violent as I was, using Round One to commit horrible atrocities. It took us awhile, but we figured out how to switch gears and become heroes. We saved a lot of lives. I'm not lying about this, I promise that it happened.

"One day, we were pulling people out of a forest fire," he sort of trailed off and looked to the side, "which is sort of ironic, when you think about it. Two of the men there were Allen and Richard, a married couple on a camping trip. Ulinthra fell in love with them, and they fell in love with her. Group marriage being illegal, she had to marry into the family unofficially. We read them into our situation, and they began to help us." He stared into space with wonder. "It was magnificent. We were quite a team, and we had yet one more member to bring into our ranks. My love. I met her when I was a thirteen-year-old with a stomach flu bad enough to need a hospital visit. We got to talking and hit it off, but she was a couple years older, so nothing came of it. That age difference was, of course, meaningless as adults, and I ended up marrying her.

"Despite the death of one of Ulinthra's husbands, we continued our good works. I was happily married, and even had a daughter. Things were going well. We met another salmon. He seemed like a pretty cool guy, but he wasn't around all that much. He helped us when he was available. Then he fucked up. He made a mistake that cost the life of my love. I murdered him in a fit of rage, but I didn't stop there. I killed Ulinthra and Richard, I killed everyone I could get my hands on. I began to rampage across the city, and I don't mean during Round One; I did this when the consequences were real. I did this when there was no going back. Death was final." He took a drink of water. "Obviously, the authorities caught up with me and sent me to prison. While I was in solitary for having killed three other inmates, my daughter made an appearance. She was much older than she should have been, and I knew that she was just like me. Well, she wasn't _just_ like me. She was a _choosing one_. She broke a rule. You see, relatives are a conflict of interest, and so the _choosing one_ who chooses what you do has to be unrelated, but that doesn't mean your relative has no power over you.

"She sent me back in time, into my younger body. But not one day, no. She sent me all the way back to when I was a teenager, breaking my pattern. She was _trying_ to give me a chance to try it all over again; to do it right. The other _choosing ones_ allowed this to happen, but it had to come with consequences. There had to be some punishment, and it had to be ironic. I wasn't sick this time around, and so my mother refused to drive me to the hospital. I desperately rode across the city on my bike, but I was late. The love of my life was already in the middle of a conversation with someone else. But not just _anyone_ else. It was the man who had caused her death in the alternate timeline. I held back because, my God, he was twelve years older than her. Surely that would lead to nothing, and I would be able to make my move. Unfortunately, she was smitten; in love with a much older man. And as luck would have it, she would be able to age much faster. Knowing this, she ignored my advances. I bet she never told you that. I tried wooing her for years. I already knew everything about her; what movies she would like, what kind of chocolates were her favorite, but nothing worked."

The picture was becoming clearer, but Mateo respected Reaver's story and remained silent.

Reaver lowered his head and watched the floor stand still. "She was lost to me. It was like watching her die all over again." He looked back up to Mateo, tears in his eyes. "She was in love with _you_. The mother of my child, the one who kept me sane, kept me from killing. She was in love with the man who had killed her. And she had no goddamn idea, so I couldn't blame her. I shouldn't have blamed _you_ either, but I did. You're not a bad person, Mateo, and I know this. But given the right circumstances, you would easily screw up again and lead Leona to her death. I had to find a way to stop you. Using my knowledge of the future, I built a conglomerate, tackling scientific advances before anyone thought possible. I thought I could sway her with my money, but that's too simplistic. Of course it didn't work. I was growing angrier by the minute, waiting for you to return to the timeline. Keep in mind that time moves twice as slow for me as it does for others. This meant a lot of scenarios where I drop your body to the ground, tumbling through my mind over and over again. All my attempts not only failed, but they also pushed Leona deeper into your arms. I was just making things worse. You know the rest. I devised a plan to kill Leona, only so that our daughter would appear once more and give me a third chance. I didn't want to hurt her; I just wanted her back."

Mateo stood up from the floor and placed his hand on the window somewhat affectionately. "I'm sorry, Horace."
Reavers Wobble

One Grave

Horace and Leona postponed their honeymoon following the realization that Allen never came back from looking for a party boat they knew was going to go missing. The boat never returned, and the search for it was called off a few days later. Ulinthra backed up Horace's lie that Allen had felt the need to find it, when really he had been murdered by Horace. Convincing the authorities that this was what happened was a little harder, but the family had no reason to think that they were not being honest; especially since the two of them had been able to practice the lie during Round One of their day. The team held off on saving lives for a couple weeks, taking time to grieve for their lost loved one. But their responsibilities beckoned to them, and they all went back to the routine, minus one important member.

On the fifth of April in the year of your lord 2030, they met a salmon named Mateo Matic. His inescapable pattern was to live for one day every year. At the end of it, he would be thrown exactly one year in the future. He had heard of The Delegator, and other salmon, but had met only one other of their kind. He spent his days doing whatever he could to stay alive in a world without identity. He had left his family days ago from his perspective, no longer wanting to subject them to the torturous roller coaster that was his brief appearances. Having nothing better to do, and wanting to fulfill a purpose, Mateo joined their team as an honorary member. He successfully helped them on missions six times before the fateful seventh day.

"She's gotten so big," Mateo exclaimed after returning to the timestream on April 11, 2036. He had just peeked in on Leona and Horace's daughter. "I know, people say that all the time, but I have a unique perspective."

"Wouldn't have it any other way," Horace said playfully.

"Be nice," Leona warned him.

"Good morning, everyone. We have a busy day," Ulinthra said, coming into the room. "But we're playing with our full roster, so I think we can make it." She picked up her clipboard. "A shipment of tin is coming in to Port of Wilmington from Columbia. It turns up stolen. We don't know when this happens, but we know it's after coming into port. I need both brains and brawn on this one, so Mateo will accompany Horace and Leona to protect and investigate, if need be. Richard, that means you'll have to go up to Yale University alone. A small riot breaks out during a protest for..." she trailed off, looking through her notes. "...molecule teleportation. I don't know, but a girl who was never named is injured when she gets caught in the middle of the fight. You'll spend more time driving up there than actually helping. Fortunately, you'll also be close enough to stop a three-car pileup on the 91, and help a little girl find her cat in Hartford. Here's a hint, it's in her neighbor's basement. I know it's not that important, but your night mission in Boston is. I'll discuss that with you in a minute. While you're all doing that, I have to drive all the way up to Montauk to assist with flood rescue."

"I could do that instead, if you'd like," Mateo offered.

"No, I should do it. Other people will be there helping, and we can't risk exposing the fact that you're supposed to be old and dead to the public." She looked around the room. "No more questions or comments? Gear up, take your timelines, and head out as soon as possible."

Leona pulled Horace into the other room. "Remember what we talked about?" she asked.

"We're not going back in time," Horace said. "I don't understand why we're discussing this."

"It makes me nervous when we deal with other salmon. Anything could happen. I've heard rumors that his father _can_ go back in time. If something happens, I need to make sure that you understand time travel protocols."

"I do, I get it. Let's go. The ship will be coming in soon."

"Repeat them to me."

"Leona, we have to go."

"We can't go anywhere until the babysitter gets here. Repeat the words. Quietly," she insisted.

"Dougnanimous Brintantalus," Horace said the magic words reluctantly. "Those are so stupid."

"That's exactly why I chose them. No one would think to say them. If you go back in time, say those words to me, and I'll know that I can trust you."

"Do you know what the odds are that I'll go back in time and run into you sometime _after_ you've come up with these silly rules?"

"I do actually know the odds. Would you like to hear them?"

Horace shook his head steadily. "Shut up, smarty pants."

After an hour drive, it was still dark outside. They didn't always start working so early in the day, but they liked to make full use of Mateo's availability. He drooled a little on his shirt, sprawled out in the seat across from them as the car automatically took them to their destination. The man could fall asleep in an instant, wherever he was. Being homeless, and always on the move, this skill came in handy.

They quickly found the shipping container that they needed to protect, hoping their presence would not alert the robbers and put them in harm's way. Mateo continued to sleep through the majority of the day while they waited on the sidelines for someone to make a move. But no one ever did. The proper owners of the tin came to pick up their shipment and left with a truck. It was a good thing Leona was there to make sure the people who came for it were authorized to do so. Convincing people to give up information to a stranger was not Horace's strong suit, but it was hers.

"You don't think we should still follow them?" Mateo asked.

"No, something's changed." Horace was very concerned. "Something's not right. We must have proverbially stepped on a butterfly."

"If we changed the outcome just by being around, then that seems to me like we definitely _should_ follow them."

"No," Horace said. "I don't like it here. We need to leave. We didn't do enough to alter the timeline. Only one thing could have."

"What?" Mateo asked.

"Another salmon," Horace and Leona answered, practically at the same time.

"Well, great. Then we have some help. We should find out who they are; maybe even add another person to the team."

"No," Horace said.

"I agree," Leona nodded. "Let's get the hell out of here."

"I don't understand why you two are so afraid."

"Ulinthra?" Horace asked to his phone.

" _Yes?_ " Ulinthra responded.

"Mission bust. Back-up mission."

" _Uh..._ " Ulinthra thought it over. She sounded winded. " _Armed robbery in Woodstown. No one gets hurt, but the convenience store suffers some damage. That's all I got for ya. I had planned on you sitting there awhile. What's going on?_ "

"I'll explain later," Horace said. "It may be nothing. Send our car the details."

While the car was driving them to their new mission, Richard called in urgently, " _help!_ "

"What's wrong, Richard?" Leona asked.

" _The riot has become larger. I don't know what happened. These eco-freaks just came in and started throwing things at people. And now I think people have started joining in without any idea why they're supposed to be angry. It's gotten way out of hand._ "

"Richard," Horace said. "No one can get to you. We're all too far away."

"I can get to them," Mateo assured them. "Uh...computer? Take us to the nearest cemetery. Um, please?"

"What are you talking about? Stay out of this!" Horace redirected his words, "Richard, are you somewhere safe?"

" _I don't know. I'm hiding behind some bushes, but—oh no, a group is coming this way. I have to be quiet, they're like zombies!_ " Richard whispered loudly.

"I just need to find an open grave! Hal, take us to a cemetery!"

"The car's name isn't Hal," Leona said.

"Oh, forget it!" Mateo crawled over to the dashboard, and figured out how to switch the vehicle to manual.

Horace tried to pull him off, but wasn't strong enough. "Get away from the wheel!"

"I can do this," Mateo swore. "I just need one grave for one minute."

"No one drives by hand anymore!" Leona yelled.

"I knew we shouldn't have gotten a car with a steering wheel. This isn't 2025!" Horace continued to struggle with the wheel. But it wasn't enough. The car crashed into the pillar of the Broadway bridge.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Just Some Guy

April 29, 2053

After Reaver told his story, he seemed to be in a bit of a better mood. Mateo had the feeling that he hadn't explained himself to anyone before, and that this was probably a heavy burden for him to carry for all these years. His past in an alternate timeline did not excuse his actions, but they did lead to a logical and believable conclusion. Reaver's hatred for Mateo now made a whole lot more sense. Imagine knowing the man responsible for killing the love of your life, and then going back in time to prevent it from happening, only to still end up alone. But the story was not yet complete. Mateo still didn't know how it was that an alternate version of him had caused an alternate version of Leona's death. Perhaps if he had _all_ the facts, he would be able to help Reaver's situation more; maybe even change his mind about revenge.

A man came down the steps and approached Mateo's cell. He was holding a tray of food. But instead of a strange platter of finger food, this was full brekky. Either he made a decision against his superior's wishes, or the conversation last year really had helped ease Reaver's pain. The man placed the tray on the floor and slid it through. Taking a chance, Mateo spoke to him, "are you Allen? Or Richard?"

The man stopped and turned back around. "I'm Allen, actually. Why?"

Mateo thought about revealing to him about his marriage to Ulinthra in the alternate timeline, and how he had died. But that wasn't his place, and would have placed unnecessary stress on Allen's life. If Reaver had chosen to not tell him, then it was probably for a good reason, as weird as that sounds. "You're the one who tried to pick me up after the forest fire, right?"

Allen nodded, "I am."

"How long have you been working for Horace?"

"Fifteen years."

"Do you know why he's locked me up?"

"Do you not?"

"I do. I was just wondering if you do."

Allen sighed and began to leave. "I don't really care."

"Do you even know Richard?" Mateo called up before Allen had disappeared completely up the stairs.

"Just some guy who worked for Reaver before I did." He left.

That was sad. After going back in time, Reaver had sought out two people before they had a chance to meet each other, and for whatever reason, made sure that they never did. That was good information, though, that might help Mateo persuade Reaver to talk about this situation rationally. He fell asleep for a few more hours.

"Believe it or not," Reaver said, waking Mateo up, "when I chose to keep Richard and Allen apart, I was trying to help."

"In what way?"

"I thought if they never met each other, they would never feel the loss."

"It didn't work, did it?"

"They were and are two of the most depressed men who have ever worked for me. They were supposed to be together, and I took that away from them."

"You could always introduce them to each other now."

"Richard died. It had nothing to do with you. It was just his time. But they were soulmates, and that only acted to fuel my mission."

"Your mission to get Leona back?"

"Yes." Reaver stood up and focused on Mateo's eyes. "The _choosing ones_ can jack with time all they want, but ya see, I think the soul is timeless. I don't think it can _ever_ forget what happened in an alternate timeline. If you were in love before, you'll either be in love again, or you'll feel an emptiness. Leona _must_ be feeling that. Because she's not supposed to be with you. She's mine, and she needs me back. If I can just get her to realize that she's already in love with me, then I can remove her from _your_ pattern, and we can be together again. I need your help, Mateo. Please, I know you think you love her, but she doesn't belong to you."

Mateo stood up and approached the window. "Don't you see, Horace? Your relationship was built on a lie. You killed...I don't even know how many people."

"That happened before I met Leona."

"But it didn't," Mateo tried to explain. "You killed all three of them in that Round One ritual. And then you killed Allen for real before your wedding. And even if you hadn't, Leona fell in love with a man who was not a killer. But that man didn't exist; you just made her think that you were him." He slowly shook his head. "She's not in love with you, and she never was. She was in love with the lie."

"You son of a bitch," Reaver lunged and prepared to open the door.

"How did she die?"

Reaver stopped. "What?"

"You said I caused her death, but that I didn't actually kill her. So how did she die?"

"You're an ignorant dumbass. You came from 2015, so you didn't have an understanding of how technology had progressed. You took control of a speeding car in a world where no one does that. I tried to take control back from you but we crashed into a bridge. You and I survived, but she didn't."

Mateo decided to not even bring up the fact that Reaver was partially responsible for the accident. Something told him that he already knew that, and was angry at himself for not being able to admit it. "Why did I take control? Where did I need to go?"

"Richard was in trouble. But he was two hundred miles away! There was no chance of us getting there in any helpful amount of time. We were _supposed_ to be foiling an armed robbery. And you weren't even trying to get there anyway. You wanted to go to a cemetery. I have no clue why. You were insane."

"A cemetery? Did I say why?"

"Not while you were trying to drive. But after we woke up from the crash, you were delirious. You wanted to send a fax from an empty grave. I don't know. Something was off about that day. Other salmon were in play, and you were just one screwed up piece of that puzzle."

"I wanted to send a fax?"

"Yeah, this was 2036. You couldn't have sent a fax, even if you wanted to. No one would be on the other end. Like I said...insane."

"It's not insane. I can explain it."

"Okay, go ahead. Some kind of code?"

"No, you just misunderstood my words. I probably had blood coming out of my mouth. But I can't just tell you. I have to show you."

"Fine. Do it."

"Well, we have to go to a cemetery."

"So you can try to escape? Yeah, sure."

Mateo shrugged. "You can keep me chained up. All I need is an open grave."

"Not this again."

"In the alternate timeline, I could have helped Richard. In _this_ timeline...I can help you and Leona. But you're gonna have to trust me. You ever done that before?"

Reaver had no answer.

"Chain me up and take me to a cemetery in the middle of nowhere. I won't be able to run. But it will all make sense. I promise."

When Mateo was in high school, he and his friends started hanging out at a cemetery. The gravedigger, Mr. Halifax let them do it as long as they were safe and responsible. He had become friends with Mr. Halifax, and there was one thing he would say nearly every time they saw each other, "if you ever fall into an open grave, I'll be there to take you anywhere you need to go." It was weird, but kind of sweet, and he likely wasn't lying. Mateo's first jump through time was from the cemetery, and it was Mr. Halifax who had driven him home upon his return. He had been remarkably calm, even though Mateo had been mysteriously gone for the last year. Mateo always thought there was something he was keeping secret, but with all the drama, he never went back to ask.

Allen helped Mateo out of the back of the van. It had taken them a long time to get there, but they were finally at a place called Hughenden Cemetery.

"Okay, we're here. Go ahead and show me." Reaver was impatient. "How will this help Leona understand?"

"I need an open grave, I told you."

Reaver exhaled sharply. "Let's go look."

They didn't have to walk around too much before they found a grave on the outer edge that had not yet been filled with remains. Mateo looked in and prepared himself. If this didn't work, then nothing was going to change. He would still be in the possession of his enemy, Horace Reaver. But if it _did_ work, then all this was about to be over. "You see, you did misunderstand the alternate version of me. I didn't want to send a _fax_ , I wanted to speak with someone whose name was _Hali_ fax."

"And he lives in New Jersey?" Reaver was clearly confused.

"He lives everywhere. That is, if I'm not mistaken. I can't be sure, but I think he's one of us."

Reaver's eyes widened. "No."

"If I had to guess," Mateo began, "I would say his nickname is... _The Gravedigger_. Someone has to do it, right?"

"No!" Reaver yelled, but it was too late.

Mateo tipped himself over and fell backwards into the open grave. It was pretty painful, but he couldn't think about that right now. He looked up and saw the sky to have changed from bright morning to dim twilight. He could hear a struggle above him, and then the distinct sound of a shovel colliding with flesh and bone.

After a few seconds, Mr. Halifax reached into the grave and pulled Mateo out. He laughed, "you figured it out."

"I saw someone digging my aunt Daria's grave two weeks ago. I didn't see your face, but if there's one thing I've learned, it's that literally everyone I've ever met is either a salmon or a _choosing one_."

"Sorry I didn't tell you," Mr. Halifax said. "But I didn't want to."

"I understand." He looked down at Reaver lying motionless on the ground. "He's not dead, right?"

"Of course not," Mr. Halifax reassured him. "Where are we taking him?"

"Easter Island. His new crib is waiting for him there."
Reavers Wobble

Second Chance

Horace Reaver was in prison. He had spent the better part of a year dealing with the hassle of court. He had to sit through every single day of the proceedings twice, but there was nothing he could do increase his chances of winning. Even knowing the line of questioning ahead of time wasn't going to help. Sure, he could respond to their questions succinctly and without surprise, but there was no difference in the answers. The fact was that everything they were saying about him was true. They had even left out a few of the awful details. He really had caused a car accident that resulted in his wife's death. Following that, he really had purposely given his now enemy, Mateo an exorbitant amount of hospital drugs that resulted in his extremely unpleasant overdose. And after that, he did indeed kill everyone in the immediate area. During the case, the truth about Allen's death came to light. The authorities had figured out where the body was literally buried. Yes, Horace's life could get no worse, and he made a point of expressing this to the wall in front of him in solitary confinement.

"I've seen worse, father," a voice came from the opposite corner.

"Who's there?"

"It's me, Melly."

"What?"

"I'm a time traveler. The Melly you left behind when you were sent to the clink disappeared from foster care, and will eventually become me."

Horace did not respond.

"Do they still call this the clink?"

"Why are you here?"

"Is that any way to greet me?"

"I do not know you. My daughter's a toddler. I have no idea what you've been through. I clearly didn't raise you, and hopefully you're nothing like me." He turned his head away. "You should stay away from me."

"You don't even want to know why I'm here? And you aren't even slightly interested in hearing what I've been through?"

"Yes. I'm a terrible father. Shocker. The mass murderer makes another bad decision, and you're questioning it."

"You weren't necessarily a bad father. I mean, I don't remember the first three years of my life, but they seemed fine. You didn't have a chance to prove any different. We will never know..."

Horace rested against his palm and pointed to his chest with the other hand, piercing Melly with his eyes. "Again, I'm a mass murderer. I'm a bad person, so I could not have been a good father. Whatever you've been through, wherever you lived, it was better than what I could have provided you with."

Melly sat up straighter and did her best impression of an aristocrat, "I live a life of luxury."

"Is that so? The _powers that be_ gave you some kind of lovely form of time travel, did they? Only take you to the good times?"

"They didn't give me anything. _You_ did."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm not a salmon, father," Melly said sweetly. "I'm one of _them_. I'm _a choosing one_. I choose how I jack with time. I know the person doing this to you personally. He's kind of a dick, I'll give you that. I would do it myself, and make it easier on you, but I'm not allowed."

Horace just stared at his young adult daughter, not having a clue what to say.

Melly decided to continue, "that's how it works. The child of two activated salmon will be born as _a choosing one_."

Horace nearly cut her off, "Leona was not a salmon."

Melly laughed disturbingly. "She was. She just never told you. She had her reasons."

Horace tilted his lizard brain. "You're not lying."

"I'm not."

"How did I not notice?"

"Not all salmon have long term patterns. Some of you are thrown to a different time and kept there. Some are just dropped off briefly so they can complete one task. One time, I sent a late 21st century photographer back to Ancient Egypt so that she could document the building of the pyramids."

"Huh?"

Melly looked to the side as she was thinking out loud, "but I think I'm going to change her pattern and send her to other planets in the new timeline."

"I don't care about that bitch! Tell me what Leona's pattern was!"

Melly jumped back into the conversation, "oh yes. She went to college in the 2150s. That's how come she's so smart."

"I saw her diploma."

She looked at him like he was a dum-dum. "Yeah, they faked that. Well, I mean they had someone fake it. They don't do anything for themselves. That's, like, the whole point."

" _That's_ the point? You screw with innocent people's lives just so you can get random things done...but not have to actually do it? You have control over time and space, you have access to infinite technology..."

"We're also immortal," Melly added.

He didn't know about that. "You've cracked immortality," Horace finished. "You could do so much more. You could probably alter history just by thinking about it. Why go through all this trouble? Why recruit people to do your dirty work? Why hire a human when it would be cheaper and easier to invest in a proverbial machine?"

Melly acted like she was contemplating his question, but seemed pretty blasé about it. "I would imagine that human involvement makes it more interesting."

"I don't understand."

"You seem to be under the impression that any of us have some sort of _goal_ in mind; that we're...looking for the best possible outcome. We're not doing that at all." She shrugged, almost excitedly. "We're just having fun."

" _Excuse me?_ "

"Look, I don't know everything about the history of salmon and the _choosing ones_ or the _powers that be_. In fact, I'm not sure which came first. We could be the result of future tech, we could be some kind of shadow species that evolved alongside regular humans; I don't even care to find out. What I can tell you is that you people read books, watch plays, go see movies, and sometimes you even kill each other for sport. Well that's boring to people like us. _Time_ is our entertainment." She took a moment to choose her words. "We just like to see what you're gonna do."

"That's terrible," was all that Horace could say after minutes of doing his best to absorb the information without having a heart attack.

She shrugged again. "If you were one of us, you would feel the same way."

"You're right," Horace agreed. "I _would_ feel that way. But I'm a freak. I'm literally insane, Mel. I've killed thousands of people. Rewind or not, I enjoy taking lives. I killed my whole fucking family. Then I went back in time, and ended up killing them _again_ years later, but this time around, there was no going back. I'm the bad guy of the story. Are you telling me that out of all of you," he waved his finger in her general direction, indicating a theoretical group, "there's not _one_ person who wants to do the right thing? There's not _one_ single person who says, 'hey! Let's put right what once went wrong _'_? Why do I find that hard to believe?"

She felt no further need to explain her and her people's intentions. "We don't, but I think _you_ might."

"What do you mean?"

"I can modify patterns. I can send you back in time, but more than just the one day. I can give you a _real_ second chance."

He peered at her suspiciously. "How far back?"

"To when you were a teenager, before you started killing. Well, except for your mother that one time when you were a child, but I think we can let that slide. You could save her," she pitched. "You could stop my mother from being anywhere near New Jersey."

"I thought _choosing ones_ couldn't be in charge of their relatives."

"They can't. The others are gonna be pissed. We have rules. But most of them are arbitrary, and they can be subverted, just like when a normal person breaks a rule. Other things will be different. I'll be making some other adjustments to the timeline, but there will also be consequences that are out of my hands. I don't know what," she looked around the room before continuing, "but isn't anything better than this shithole?"

Horace slid his back against the wall and got to his feet. "Do it."
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

But For Me, It Was Tuesday

April 30, 2054

Mr. Halifax merged his graveyard with Leona's prison suite and swept her away to the garden inside of the hospital where she and Mateo had first met. He was waiting there for her so that they could get some rest and talk in private. "Ello, love," she said, in her best Australian accent.

"How did he treat you?"

"Like I was the most important person in the world."

"Did he hurt you? Assume the meaning of the word _hurt_ to be extremely broad."

"I'm fine, Mateo," she said comfortingly.

"Why didn't you tell me that Horace asked you out when you two were younger? That's a pretty important detail to leave out while he's trying to kill us."

She dismissed this, "for Horace Reaver, the day he asked me out was one of the most important days of his life. But for me...it was Tuesday."

"I've heard you say that before. What does it mean?"

"It means that I don't recall Reaver asking me out because he was a kid back then, and we've done so many things since. Lots of people asked me out. You can't expect me to remember every single one of them."

"That's one of your rules," Mateo pointed out.

"It's two separate rules, actually. _Keep track of everyone you meet_ ," she paraphrased, "and _treat them with respect, because they may return later._ "

"I'm the poster child for that," an eavesdropper said. It was hard to tell how old people were these days, but he was probably well past what used to be considered _midlife_.

"Do we know you?" Leona asked.

"You do not," the man replied. "But he does."

Mateo squinted to get a better look at him. "Kyle?"

"Indeed."

"Kyle?" Leona repeated. "He's the one who was with you in the cemetery when you first disappeared, yeah?"

"I was," Kyle confirmed.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm here to apologize."

"I don't remember you doing anything wrong."

Kyle began his story, "after I watched you quantum leap in front of my eyes, I became pretty unstable."

"I remember. _I'm_ the one who should apologize. Again."

"I ended up having to live in a facility so that I could find my way back to reality," Kyle continued. "A part of me didn't believe him, but I met a kid in there who claimed to be from an alternate timeline. I can't say for sure how much was a coincidence, or if any of it was orchestrated, but he certainly opened my eyes to some things."

"Kyle..." Mateo tried to say.

"I took little Horace under my wing and we helped each other. Despite my recovery, I ended up maintaining my position that I witnessed one of my friends time travel from a cemetery. I had to keep my knowledge secret from everyone, of course, but I did keep in contact with Reaver. In two-thousand-twenty-one, you asked me to drive you to the train station. You lied about where you were going, to everyone, but Horace figured it out, and found a way to sabotage your train so that it was on that bridge at the very right moment. I didn't know exactly what he was going to do, but I'm not going to lie and say I thought _he just wanted to talk_. I knew he was your enemy, and I didn't ask him his intentions. It was that failure that convinced him his only course of action was to become rich and famous to win Leona's heart. Even after realizing that he wanted to run you over with a train, I provided legal advice as he was trying to start his business. He had some pretty radical ideas, but as you know, it's because he's literally seen the future. He wanted to have control over this new future, but even with all his foreknowledge, he couldn't go it alone. I was there. I helped create the man you know today.

"We worked together for ten years until he kidnapped your family. I'm not saying I'm a good person, but that definitely did cross a line. I finally felt strong enough to break ties, so we parted ways, and I haven't seen him since. But I still need to show you remorse for my actions. I'm glad to see that he kept failing. I just wish I hadn't enabled him to hurt so many other people on our way here."

"You're right," Mateo said.

"I'm right about what?" Kyle asked.

"You're right that you're the poster child for there being consequences for dismissing an acquaintance."

"I shouldn't have told Horace about your train."

"I shouldn't have killed his wife." Mateo stood up and gave Kyle a hug. "I forgive you. And I'm sorry for not checking in on you more than just the one time."

Kyle smiled and began to walk away.

"Hey, you're not one of us, are you?" Leona called up to him.

Kyle just lifted his hand and waved to them once without turning around.

Mateo looked over to his love. "We should probably mark that down as a _maybe_. Just in case."

Leona stood up and straightened her clothes. "Everyone is a _maybe_."

A Stonehenge doorway of three stones appeared down the promenade. "I was thinking, should we get back in touch with Duke Andrews? It's been a while."

"He died of an age-related condition several years ago, Mateo. Keep up."

"Oh no, that's sad. What about the Colorado nurse who gave me the leg cast a month ago? Or the nurse who took a blood sample from me in this very hospital way back on my second day?"

"We're not doing greatest hits. If they come back, we just need to be ready."

"Are you sure? She may still be working here."

"Let it go."

They walked through the stones and teleported to Stonehenge. This time, it looked more or less as Mateo remembered it from internet photos in his original time period. The Delegator was pointing to another opening that served as a portal to a beach. "Visiting Hours have begun," was all he said.

Mateo and Leona continued talking to each other without saying a word to the Delegator. This was just sometimes how they traveled now. Mateo was worried that his third grade teacher might show up at any moment, but Leona assured him that such a thing was unlikely.

Guard Number One was waiting for them on the beach, in full uniform. "Welcome back to Easter Island."

"Are you really going to leave Reaver's prison cube here?"

"Seems as good a place as any."

"What exactly is that magical pit down there?"

"I've not been informed," One said with the air of honesty. "But I'm sure the explanation is very exciting."

"How's your husband?" Leona asked.

"Great," he replied. "The _powers that be_ took us to the past for a few months, but realized that this was a problem since we were trying to be in a same-sex relationship. When I'm not on shift for Reaver or Ulinthra, we live in the 23rd century. We have two beautiful children."

"That's lovely," Leona said.

"Ulinthra is locked up too? She was doing better."

"Not good enough, I guess," One said. "Another salmon team was dispatched to bring her in. She was considerably easier, and agreed to go quietly. I think they told her something about what she did in another timeline."

"Oh right, yeah. All those murders. Yikes."

"So," One said with excitement. "Would you rather hear about your reward for capturing Reaver, or go down and speak with him first?"

Mateo and Leona looked at each other. "We have no need to speak with him again," she said.

"It's over," Mateo finished.

"You should know that he managed to get some kind of message outside. He's apparently sending it through time with the hope that it falls into your hands at some point. I've been told that we can't stop it."

He was referring to the device Daria gave to Mateo which he ended up taking to the year 3118. It caused an explosion that ultimately resulted in Mateo inadvertently taking a pathogen back to 2025. And this had caused his mother's death. "We can't stop that," Mateo said quietly. He had grown more accustomed to his situation, and had a better understanding of time travel protocols. "It's going to have already happened. Just like when you and the other guards later take Horace back in time to attend Daria's funeral."

"Very good, Mateo," Leona said, nudging him with her elbow. "You have less time travel tense trouble than you used to."

"Wibbly-wobbly, time-wimey, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"All right so, Christmas presents," One said, clapping his hands together. "I give you..." he lifted his hands towards them like he was bestowing a great power. "...the ability to survive in spaceships."

"What does that mean?" Leona asked. How did she not already know?

"In 2036, you were desperate to get back to Earth from the moon before midnight. You were worried you would reenter the timestream in a vacuum. You were right, but not anymore. If you ever need to go offworld, and it will take you longer than a day, you'll jump back to the ship, no matter how far it's gone."

"Great, thanks," Mateo said, unenthusiastically.

"It's 2054, man. This power is becoming necessary. You didn't think you would stay in the solar system forever, did you?"

"Can't they just take us through one of Saga and Vearden's doors? Or with The Graveyard? Or via Stonehenge?"

"You would have to ask one of the _choosing ones_."

"Well, right now, let's just get back to our family."
Reavers Wobble

Resignation

That was it for Horace Reaver. He had spent the better part of two decades, working to make the world a better place, then he went back in time and screwed it all up. He had decided to be completely selfish this time around. He landed on the afternoon that he was supposed to be meeting his future wife at a hospital. He wasn't sick from dinner's food poisoning this time, though, so his mother wouldn't take him. About ten minutes away from his destination via bicycle, he just about finished the bottle of ipecac he had stolen from the medicine cabinet. When he arrived in the waiting room, he didn't even bother checking in. He sat down where he was supposed to, but his future wife, Leona was already talking with _him_. It was Mateo, the man who had been responsible for her death in the alternate timeline. It was everything he could do to stop himself from strangling his enemy right there. Instead, he waited patiently and hoped he would soon leave. Each time Leona threw up, Horace would throw up as well; a sort of weird way to get her attention, but it didn't work. Nothing did. Her father came round just as Mateo was leaving, and they were soon called into the back to pump her stomach.

He resolved to do a better job once the day restarted, but when he woke up, it was tomorrow. He hadn't rewound the day to try things over. He never really knew for sure that this was true, but he suspected that the reason he didn't restart that particular day was because he hadn't experienced it all the way through. He would have needed to go through it once before he could go try it again. But the real reason was that this was part of his punishment. His daughter, Melly had mentioned that there would be consequences for his second chance since it broke his time travel pattern. But Reaver was still grateful for having been giving the second chance. Even though most things didn't turn out as he had hoped, Leona _was_ still alive. He had succeeded in that, if nothing else. And she appeared to be happy with Mateo; happier than she ever seemed in the alternate timeline when she was with Horace.

In the end, after all his struggles, was this the best possible outcome? Despite his personal problems, his company had actually done some good for the world. It had pushed the boundaries of technology, and forced the population to accept progress at a faster rate than predicted. The company did eventually fall apart, but it had sprung a healthy dose of competition from other companies, and they were still standing. They were carrying on the legacy he now wished he would have been trying to accomplish. Success was always just a means to an end; a way to secure his livelihood so that Leona would have something to go towards, away from Mateo. But that was a bad reason. He realized this now. It took him two years of reflection in his special salmon prison cube, but he had finally learned his lesson. Hopefully, that would count for something...in the next life.

He was given special permission to attend his old friend, Daria's funeral in the past. A salmon was dispatched to take him back in time for a short trip, along with all five of his security guards. A few hours after returning to 2055, however, the two guards on shift disappeared suddenly. "Hello?" Horace called out.

"Hello," came the reply. But it wasn't from the outside of the prison cube. It was right in there with him. Horace turned around to find a man he did not recognize. He had placed a large knife on the kitchen counter, along with some other small machine, and he appeared to be making himself a sandwich.

"Could I ask your name?" Horace asked genuinely politely.

The man sighed and placed his hand on the handle of his knife, almost like it was an accident. "The other _choosers_ like to give their little salmon nicknames, but they don't have their own. In fact, if they had it their way, they wouldn't _have_ names at all. They would find it more mysterious and godlike." He threw a cluster of pepperoni into his mouth and continued talking with his mouth full, "but I actually like these nicknames. It's given me a chance to redefine myself. I am...The Cleanser."

"What do you do, Cleanser?" Horace asked. "You clean up after people's messes?"

He laughed as he was putting the final touches on his sandwich. "It's my job to clean up the _whole_ mess," he clarified.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that killing you is not going to serve much of a purpose on its own but it's an easy job, and we all have to start small, don't we? After I kill you and The Guards, I'm going to go after The Kingmaker." He smashed the top slice of bread down with his fist, like a crazy person. "Then I'll go after The Freelancers, The Shapers, The Rovers, and so on. After I'm finished with all the salmon," he stopped to take a bite, "I can finally make my way to the _choosing ones_."

"You're not going to hurt my daughter."

"I am," he disagreed. "I'll kill her. It may take me a few tries, but I'll figure it out. She's the one who did this to me, so I have some extra animosity towards her."

"They'll never let you kill all those people—who is the Kingmaker? The _choosing ones_ are too powerful."

He laughed, letting crumbs tumble out of his mouth. "They _would_ be powerful, if they agreed to work with each other. But as it stands, they're no better than me. I can take them, as long as I bide my time, and go after them one by one."

"Why are you telling me all this?" Horace asked. "I mean, if you're going to kill me anyway. Especially since I'll just go back in time and you'll have to do it again."

The Cleanser shrugged. "First of all, you won't. When _I_ kill you, it's done; I break your pattern. You don't go back. Secondly, I'm telling you because I don't get to talk very often. Mine is a very lonely existence. I do it only because time travel is wrong, and it's my responsibility to put a stop to it."

This time, Horace shrugged. "No, it isn't."

"Pardon?"

"Whatever your reasons, whatever you've been through that makes you think you have to do all this, you don't. Trust me, I've been there. Your plan is stupid. It'll never work. You'll fail. You'll be destroyed. The _choosing ones_ might let you kill one or two salmon. Hell, they might even let you take a whole basketball team, but you definitely won't get far enough to take out the _choosing ones_ themselves. That would be ridiculous. I don't care how smart you think you are; how disorganized they are; or how much practice you get, they'll win. They _always_ win."

"You sound pretty confident for a dead man."

Horace moved closer menacingly. "I have been alive for one hundred and forty-six years. I may be a slow learner, but I _have_ figured out a few things along the way. And I'm resigned to my own death. It's probably time." He moved a little closer. "You want my advice. That is not a question."

The Cleanser set his sandwich half on the plate and brushed his palms together. "I'm listening."

"I still don't know who the Kingmaker is, but I know who the Rovers are. Mateo and Leona are incredibly strong. She's smart, and he's a fucking survivor. If you want to continue with your plans of destroying the salmon world, then waiting to get rid of them is your dumbest move. Better go after them first, because if they catch wind of your existence...you're already done."

He breathed in through his nose and looked at Horace with curiosity. "I shall take that under advisement."

Horace smiled sinisterly. "Good. Now pick up that knife and get on with it."

The Cleanser laughed once with his mouth closed and lifted his knife. But he didn't stab Horace with it. He turned the blade up and twisted the bottom, letting a small object fall out of the handle. "Do you recognize this?"

"Is that the explosive device I fruitlessly sent to Mateo in the hopes of killing him?"

He held it up and examined it like he was giving an appraisal of a diamond. "The technology is interesting. It's pretty archaic, but it can reach out to other machines and cause them to overheat. The device itself doesn't have to explode."

"That's why I chose it."

He snapped his fingers into a fist and squeezed the device tightly, as if scared a bird would swoop down and steal it. "This is not the one you sent to the future. That one is on its journey and will, as you say, fail to complete its mission. I have no interest in extracting that from time. I made another one." He lowered his fist and inserted the device into the machine. "I just thought it would be ironic to kill you the way you have going to tried to kill your enemy in 3118."

"That makes sense." Horace nodded. "I like it."

"I thought you might." He looked around the prison cube and settled on Horace's pillow. He picked it up and looked at Horace one more time. "I need this."

"Whatever."

He seemed to be drawing energy from the pillow as he held it. Then he disappeared in a blink. The pillow fell to the floor. All five guards were pulled back, but inside of the cube, instead of outside where they belonged. They were frightened and confused. Guard Number Two drew his sidearm.

Horace reached out his hands and tried to usher them as far from the device as he could, but they weren't having it. "It's a bomb!" Not that it mattered. The explosion would likely consume the entire cube, and if that didn't kill them, the lack of oxygen eventually would. Everything the Cleanser was trying for was, so far, going according to plan. He couldn't help but hope that Mateo Matic would win the next battle too. Just before his death, he was given the chance to help.
The Advancement of Mateo Matic

Ours Are Dangerous Lives

May 1, 2055

The Delegator returned Mateo and Leona to Topeka last year where they were finally reunited with their family. Aura was still clearly perturbed about having been abandoned twice, but Samsonite had apparently convinced her to convert this anger into love and understanding. Leona's father and stepmother were notably older, but still looked more youthful than people their ages did back in the day. They say that in less than a decade, aging will be relegated to the developing populations, but that even those would be lifted up and the death rate will slowly begin to decrease from 100%.

When the two of them returned to the timeline in 2055, they were informed that Horace Reaver had been killed in an explosion in his prison cube, along with all five of his guards. There was no further information on the matter, as the _powers that be_ would want to keep details out of the hands of the _lowers_. Apparently, Danica wanted to discuss something with The Rovers, alone in The Constant, and so the entire group headed for Lebanon. The rest of them waited patiently in the RV.

Danica sighed as they were getting off of the elevator. "It's nice to see you again, cousin." She walked them over to the counter where a smorgasbord awaited them.

"And you."

"Leona," Danica nodded.

"Concierge," Leona nodded back.

"What seems to be the problem?" Mateo asked.

"Now that the whole Reaver thing is over, I figured we would reconnect." She took a beat. "Mostly, I just wanted to make sure you're okay."

"We're all right," Leona assured her. "We're worried about the next Reaver."

"How do you mean?" Danica asked.

"Ours are dangerous lives. We don't expect to go back to doing nothing all day, everyday. Our next enemy is right around the corner. Because that's how this works."

"This isn't a book or movie, Leona," Mateo told her.

"Isn't it?" She tilted her head like a teacher trying to get a student to figure out the problem on their own. "Horace did say that his daughter told him that the _choosing ones_ do this primarily for entertainment."

Mateo was confused. "When did he say that?"

"Oh, I guess you weren't there. He spoke of it in my prison suite. Evidently they just...like to watch."

Mateo turned to his cousin. "Danica?"

"I didn't know that, and I still don't," Danica answered, "but I wouldn't be surprised. Would you?"

"No, I suppose not."

"I do have a job for you," Danica said, changing the subject. "It won't be easy."

"I thought the Delegator doled out the jobs."

She ignored the remark, "the _powers_ would like you to inform the families of the Guards who died in the Reaver explosion."

"Why did they choose us?"

"The reason is dependent on whether you're right that they're purpose is just to mess with our lives."

They just looked at her.

"They didn't tell me why," Danica explained.

"How do you communicate with them?" Leona asked.

"How does the Delegator?" Mateo furthered.

She frowned. "They implant thoughts in my subconscious. Of course, I don't know exactly how they do this, but no one ever tells me to do anything, I just know I'm supposed to."

"That's frightening."

"Just count yourself lucky that you've not experienced it. Because it's more frightening than you could imagine. I can tell when it's not really my thought, but I also can't stop it. It's like someone whispering loudly, straight at my brain, and it doesn't stop until I've agreed to its demands."

"Those are some sick puppies," Mateo pointed out.

"Indeed."

"So," Leona began, "how are they going to send us to the future to give the bad news? Mario? The door-walkers?"

Danica shook her head. "They do not intend to break your pattern. That is the hard part. You're going to have to wait until you reach the time period on your own. I don't have the precise timeline at present, but they're waiting for you sometime in the very early 23rd century."

"That's almost five months our time," Leona exclaimed, having done the math in her head extraordinarily quickly, even for her.

"Somehow, I don't think the _powers that be_ are bothered by that," Danica said.

"Rule Number Nine," Leona said. " _gather as much information on the future, and your future, as possible_. Write it down if you have to."

"I'll write that down," Mateo said, taking his notepad out of his bag. "Another thing," he said as he was writing down the rule. "I need to understand what you knew about where Reaver and Ulinthra came from. Did you know about the Gravedigger? Do you know all of the people at Daria's funeral? What exactly do you, and don't you, know?"

Danica took in a deep breath and prepared herself. "I am The Concierge, Mateo, of something called The Constant. It is my job to be there for my guests. That doesn't mean fluffing pillows and stocking the minibar. It means that I have to understand what they've been through, which means that I am aware of every single timeline, and everything that was changed between them. Yes, I remember the timeline where you timeslipped mostly alone. But I was not allowed to intervene. I'm walking the line just talking about it here.

"I was not at Daria's funeral," she continued, "but I do know every salmon who has been to my present or earlier. I don't, strictly speaking, have a confidentiality agreement, but I try not to divulge information about my other guests. You wouldn't have wanted me blabbing to Reaver about what you were up to, right?"

"Reaver was down here?"

"Yes, he spent many nights recharging down here. Everyone does, at one point or another."

"But the _powers that be_ never come down?"

She laughed. "If they did, then they claimed to be a salmon. Wouldn't be that hard to convince me. Not for them."

"Never met anyone named Melly? That's Reaver's daughter's name," Leona explained to a lost Mateo.

"He told you a lot more than he told me," Mateo noted.

"I can't imagine why," Leona replied sarcastically.

"I've never heard of her," Danica said honestly.

"What about a man wielding a knife who calls himself The Cleanser? He tried to kill me and Reaver in an alternate timeline."

She shook her head. "I don't. I don't know him. I know what you're talking about, because they implanted the knowledge of the events in my head, but I never met him. Are you sure he wasn't just an angry former employee of Reaver Enterprises?"

Mateo smiled, grateful to know something others don't. "He came out of nowhere, and he was there to kill salmon, not Reaver specifically."

"Then it's my guess that he's one of _them_ ," Danica suggested.

"Mine too," Leona agreed.

"A _choosing one_ who goes against the plans of the other _choosers_ ," Mateo thought out loud. "I think we can work with that."

"Let's not count our hatchets before the chit," Leona said...oddly.

"Can our family come down now?" Mateo asked.

"What for?"

"To rest."

"They've been fine," Danica said. "You're the ones who need rest."

"Okay, well they can be our plus..." Mateo tried to count in his head.

"Five," Leona finished. "Let them in," she ordered.

"Very well," Danica conceded.
Overwritten

The 2038 Problem

Have you ever wanted to go back in time and change a mistake? Have you ever wanted to change so many mistakes that it would be best to just try it all again? I admit that the idea crossed my mind once or twice. I should have kissed her. I should have gotten there a minute later. I should have chosen the proverbial door number two. I always hate when people say nonsense like, "live with no regrets". If you don't have regrets, then you're either a fool, or you never really lived at all. Mistakes make you who you are. They taught you, not only the kind of person you are, but what kind of person you should strive for. Everything that happens to me in my life leads me to each next moment, and even if I don't like the moment, I wouldn't know what to do with myself if it changed. There are rules and dangers to time travel. Change one thing, and you change everything. In the end, if you're given chance to go back in time, choose not to. It won't turn out like you hoped. It'll probably be worse. It was for me.

It was the second day of January in the year 2038. I was working as a prison guard, and though it didn't pay much, I was happy. The hours were steady, the job was secure, and my life was on the right track. I had adopted a wonderful son, and was foster father to little girl named Melly who was a handful of trouble, but brilliant and had so much potential. And of course, because what I'm doing is telling you a story, this is the moment that it all changes. I was checking in on a particularly heinous criminal who was sitting in solitary confinement. At least, it was _supposed_ to be solitary. When I opened the little window on the door, I saw someone else in there. She was holding her arms out like she was performing a magical spell. I triggered the alarm and was setting about getting the door opened when it happened.

I blink and suddenly I'm sitting in a car. Not only that, but I was supposed to be _driving_ the car. I haven't needed to drive a car with my hands, like a monkey, for years. I swerve and hit the brakes, safely pulling over to the side of the highway. A few people honk at me as they pass by. I grip the wheel tightly, giving myself time to reclaim my breath. Once I'm calm enough, I prepare myself to look in the rearview mirror, but I already know what I'm going to see. I don't know exactly what year it is, but I know that I've been sent through time. My teenage eyes look back at me with disappointment. I reach into my pocket, looking for my phone, but it's not there. Then I remember that I used to keep it on the other side. So it's no later than 2017, I know this much. I'm right; my screen displays March 23, 2016. _Okay_ , I think to myself, _what do I know about this time?_ I turned 18 two days ago. I'm about to graduate from high school, and start taking summer classes at the University of Indianapolis pretty quickly. I just broke up with my girlfriend, making things a bit awkward, but not hostile. She'll still be sore about it, though, so I better stay away.

Today. Today is what's important. I have to figure out where I was going. The time, 11:55 in the morning. I'm cutting school. Why? Just because? Yeah, kinda. Just because it doesn't matter all that much anymore. I already got into college, and I entered an accelerated program, so the few classes I'm taking this semester aren't relevant. But still, it seems reckless. The forty-year-old in me does not approve. I feel so strongly about it that I merge with traffic, and then take the cloverleaf interchange to head back for Hamilton. I can still make it before lunch ends, and no one will notice.

I was wrong, and all eyes are on me as I slip into class ten minutes late. The teacher frowns at me, and in my mind I can hear a growl, but then she just moves on with the lesson. I still can't pay attention, though. I'm thinking about what I was doing on the highway in the original timeline. I was heading for Lawrence, but why? Something about a convent? No, that can't be right. A concert! What concert was it? It was a lot of fun, and I remember the artist, it was...Marlin something. Um. It was a jazz concert series, and it wasn't in Lawrence. It was at the university fine arts theatre. And it wasn't now. It was later. I was just going to Lawrence first to meet up with some friends and make the day of it. Who am I talking about? I know lots of people in Lawrence, but...why can't I remember?

"Your memories are being overwritten," my friend, Brian explains. It was not surprisingly easy to convince him that I was now a time traveler. He's always been open to things like this. He starts drawing diagrams on the whiteboard in the empty classroom we sometimes hang out in after school. "What year was it?"

"2038," I remind him. "January 2."

He writes it on the board. "2038, and you go back almost 22 years to 2016. But not exactly." He starts working through it out loud, but to himself. "Why not exactly? What is the significance of that day and this one? What's the connection?"

"It's not me," I say.

"How's that?"

"I don't think I was supposed to be the one traveling. I eventually become a prison guard in New Jersey. One of the inmates gets a visitor who magically appears with him in solitary, and I think she's the one who sends him back."

"You're a stowaway."

"I guess."

"Who is this man?"

"His name is Horace Reaver. He killed lots and lots of people after his wife died in a car crash."

"Nothing else interesting about him?"

I think about it for a moment. What do I remember from the future? Ah, yes. "There were conspiracy theories about him being a time traveler. Tons of people testified, not always actually in court, that he saved their lives. Apparently, he stopped bad things from happening, as if he knew they would."

"That would be a logical explanation," Brian says. "I mean, it would explain your current condition, not who this woman is, or how time travel is possible."

"What were you saying about my memories being overwritten?" I ask, want to get back to the most pressing issue.

"Right, yeah," Brian goes back to what he was saying, "in the original timeline, you went to some sort of event that you can't quite remember, in a place you can't quite remember."

"Yes."

He pulls up a website on his laptop. "It's called Ripple Effect-Proof Memory. It's when people go back in time, often only with their consciousnesses, with the benefit of foresight. They know what's going to happen, which allows them to change it. If the lesson is they _can't_ change it, then at the very least, they're _aware_ of it. But for some reason, you don't have this. You're susceptible to the changes in the timeline." He holds out his hands like he's presenting a giant bowl. "You don't remember going to the event, because you never did."

"The what?"

"Oh dear, and it's getting worse." He pulls up a chair and faces me with purpose. "Right now, you know what's going to happen in the future, but once that _future_ becomes the _present_ , and especially _the past_ , you won't know what happened," he pauses to glance at the words on the computer, "the first time around. It's weird that you don't remember an evening concert when it's still the afternoon, though. Hopefully that doesn't mean it'll just get worse and worse. Maybe those are just growing pains as you settle back into the timestream."

"What the hell is the point of that? I mean, if I have no hope of changing the future, and no hope of even _knowing_ about it, why do it? Everything will just go back to normal, and we'll all end up where we started."

He sits up straight and raises his chin. "But it's already changed. You went to an event—and trust me on this; you already told me about it—but you decided _not_ to this time. From now on, we're in uncharted territory. You'll only have generalizations about the future. You'll remember future terrorist attacks, future technological innovations, future movies. Even though you'll eventually _forget_ what you know about these things, because you know about them _now_ , you'll be influencing events based on this knowledge."

"What?" I ask, extremely confused.

"You will be able to change events," he simplifies, "but once those changes take place, you won't remember what it was like before. Every decision will overwrite the decision in the original timeline, both in reality, _and_ in your mind."

"So," I begin, "what am I supposed to do now?"

"I've never heard of this in fiction; not to this extent, anyway. I have no freakin' clue."
Overwritten

Confused and Grumpy

Brian and I make some big decisions. If I've been given a second chance at life then I have a responsibility to go full force. College was nice the first time around, but it didn't really help me in the end. One thing I do know is what companies are going to succeed and when. Sort of. I don't exactly have perfect recall, so it's not like I can invest in a company and sell it off the day before it makes a big dip. I also feel the need to keep myself particularly anonymous, in case Horace Reaver or his sponsor realize that they weren't the only ones who went back in time. Instead, it's my job to tell Brian what stocks to buy, and give him by best estimate as to when to sell them. Everything is in his name. Lincoln Rutherford is nobody.

While we're living off of our investments, we move to Kansas and try to keep tabs on Horace Reaver. Our families are shocked by our massive shifts in lifestyles, but the money I send to my parents on a weekly basis is enough to keep them from asking too many questions. I assure them that it has nothing to do with guns or drugs, and they consider that to be a satisfactory answer. It's fairly easy to convince them since there _is_ a paper trail, and I'm not lying. We don't do anything too big because, again, we don't want to raise suspicion. The IRS and the FTC are threats to us as well. As far as we can tell, Reaver isn't killing anybody. But then again, he's just a kid at this point in the timeline. He does check himself into a mental institution, but we don't quite know why.

After a few months of being completely confused and grumpy about sometimes having the knowledge of two conflicting outcomes of events, Brian makes a suggestion. I start to keep a journal, and even later publish my writings to a public blog, under the guise of fictional stories. I write down anything and everything I remember from the alternate timeline, so that when this timeline overwrites my memories, I have some reference to go back to. I half believe the timey-wimey ball will erase my stories from the web...just because, but it keeps rolling and leaves me alone. I spend a not insignificant amount of time rereading my own work after the memories in question have left me. The stories feel like just that; stories. They don't seem real to me, and I barely recall even writing them down. It's like another person's life, but everything he does is what I would do. This gives reliable ol' Brian yet another bright idea. Since my memory loss is giving me a fair amount of stress, he helps me check myself into the same mental institution as Horace Reaver. This allows me to get a closer look while also hopefully actually helping me feel better. Again, it's not like I'm lying.

"My name's Kyle," a man several years older than me says with his hand outstretched, like we're meeting for a business lunch.

"Lincoln."

"You don't like to talk in group."

"No."

"You're losing memories?"

"I am."

"I think there's something more to it."

"Whatever do you mean?"

Kyle eyes me curiously. "I'm just gonna throw something out there. Know that I'm a lawyer, and I can tell when you're lying. So it doesn't matter how you answer. I'll know the truth from your reaction; your microexpressions."

"Give it a shot," I say, trying to sound as cool as possible. Does he know?

"Are you a time traveler?" He does know, what the hell?

"No."

He smiles and lifts his head in understanding.

I take a chance, "I mean, yes. How did you know?"

"I've seen it before."

"How do you know they weren't lying?"

"No, I mean I literally saw it. A few years ago, my friend disappeared before my eyes in a cemetery. I just saw him about a week ago. He came to prove that he's still alive and well. But I can tell that he's the same."

"What do you mean he's the same?" I repeat.

"I mean for me it's been years, but I can tell that it's only been a few days for him, not because he hasn't aged, but because he hasn't grown. He's been skipping time. I don't know why since I'm not in his circle of trust, but he's not my concern. I only used him as a template so that when a second guy told me that he was in a similar condition, it just confirmed it. Time travel is real. That second traveler actually lives here."

"Horace Reaver," I say.

"He's talked to you too," he says, only half as a question.

"As far as I know, he does not know about me. I would appreciate it if you kept me to yourself. It's possible I was sent back with him to keep him in line."

"Why would he need that?"

"He killed people in the future."

"So you're _not_ having memory problems?" Kyle asks, not as worried about learning that his little friend is a murder.

"No, I am," I clarify. "But my memories of 2038 have yet to be overwritten, so they're still there. I know what he is, and I have to stop him."

"We can do that together. As long as it means you're not planning on killing him."

"My friend says that you can't kill Hitler."

"He's as bad as Hitler?"

"No," I say, holding back a terrible laugh. "It's just an expression. If I tried stopping him before he becomes what he becomes, then I could end up being the one who _makes_ him what he becomes. So for now, I'm just going to watch."

"He has big ideas about the future, Lincoln," Kyle admits. "He doesn't want to take over the world, but he wants to make it a better place. Whether he's capable of this is yet to be seen, but he certainly _believes_ that to be his destiny."

"I see."

"Since you apparently know what he turns into, should I stop him? Should I crush his dreams?"

I think about this for a moment. Brian says that _Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act_ is not to be taken so literally. If time doesn't want you to do something, then you won't be able to do it. One thing to keep in mind is that Reaver is in the same boat. He knows the same things as me, if not more. He's apparently already shown an interest in doing things differently. Perhaps his entire goal is to prevent his own murders by making his life better, so he's not necessarily fated to become a maniac. There's a chance to save him, but I have to be in it for the long haul. No single moment makes someone who they are. This is going to be a fulltime job, and I'm going to need help. Kyle is perfect, because I don't have to convince him of the truth. I just need to stay with him, and make sure that we're making the right decisions. But from behind the scenes. It is absolutely imperative that Horace Reaver know nothing of my involvement, or the plan fails; whatever that plan may turn out to be. "Foster his dreams," I say, almost like an order.

"Are you sure? He wants to build a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. Is it wise to give him that much power?"

"All the better. He wasn't a billionaire in the original timeline, and that's the one where he kills people. I was never familiar enough with the case to fully understand his motivations, but if he's rich, maybe that'll be enough. At the very least, we've stepped on a number of butterflies by helping him. We must diverge from the other timeline as much as possible. I understand this now." I grow very serious and start pointing my finger at Kyle. "But you have to stay with him. You have to make him a better person. Don't give yourself away, but don't slack off. Give him what he needs, even if he doesn't know what that is."

"What are _you_ going to do?"

I shrug. "I'm going to do what I already know. I'm going to become a security guard. And if he ever _does_ build that conglomerate, I'll be the first in line to apply."
Overwritten

Instructions

My plan to avoid Horace Reaver goes swimmingly...for almost five years. One day, I'm surveilling him a little too closely when he spots me. Fortunately, Brian and I prepared for this kind of situation. I started taking acting classes. That's right, I actually went to a high school at night and took lessons from a third-rate acting coach at the cheapest price. I just needed to learn to lie, but to lie extremely well. He taught me that if I wanted to "get into character" I had to _believe_ that I really _was_ the character. I had to convince myself that the lie was actually the truth. If I could fool myself, he said, then I could fool anybody. So far, it was going about as well as could be expected.

"Why are you following me?" I try to get away from him, but he stops me. "Give me that camera."

"No, it's my property."

"Who hired you."

"I have no clue what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do. Give me the goddamn camera."

"I'm not going to do that."

"Tell me who you're working for!"

"No!" I hope I said that at the right time. My teacher also said that the best way to cover up a big lie was to replace it with a slightly smaller lie. If Reaver knew that I came back from the past and was intending on stopping him from becoming a bad person, he would flip out. If he thought I was following him for other reasons, I might be in trouble, but it would work itself out. It was better than him knowing I was a time traveler. I pretend to be disappointed with myself for letting it slip that he was right about me working for someone. "Crap."

"So you _are_ following me."

"My clients are confidential."

"You're a private detective?"

I hand him my business card. Yes, we made fake business cards too.

Reaver reads it out loud, "Sockdolager Investigations."

"Yeah, ya see it's—" I start to explain.

He cuts me off, "yeah, I get it. Your name is Lincoln. That's funny." He is not amused. "I don't need to know who your client is. Just switch sides."

"I'm sorry?"

"Come work for me instead."

"Sir, with all due respect, you don't have much of anything right now."

"This is true," Reaver admits. "But I will in the future. I promise you this. If it's money you're worried about, don't. If there's one thing I'm not lacking, it's a way to make money. I have a lock on gambling. Just name your price and it's yours."

"You don't know anything about me."

"I'm not asking you to marry me. Come start work and I'll _get_ to know you."

"What exactly would I be doing?"

"I need a bodyguard, and you look like you can take a hit."

"Expecting some violence?"

"Hope for the best, plan for the worst," he says, as if recalling a memory.

"What's the catch?"

"Never question me," he answers. "Always do what I say, even if it feels wrong."

That was not a good start. But I have been waiting for an opportunity. It would seem that his dreams of becoming a billionaire were well on their way. His viewpoint on money mirrors mine, but more intensely. He too must know what investments to make, but in a far more specific way. Perhaps my plan to watch him from the shadows is no longer valid. Maybe it's time to get right in the thick of it. He doesn't seem to recognize me as a security guard from the future. I did look older then, and we only met the once. But I realize if he does see me for who I am, he might be planning on killing me later on.

I accept his offer, and soon discover that he wasn't lying about the salary thing. I start making six figures right away, and my life gets good. Brian and I switch places. I become the one on the frontlines while he pulls back so that I have a way out. I funnel him money on the regular so that he can live a modest life of anonymity. Reaver asks me to do a couple weird things, but I comply. There's very little close protection work, like he first indicated. Mainly he just wants me to keep tabs on his wife from the alternate timeline, Leona Delaney. Of course I don't know the details of their original relationship, or this one, and he certainly makes no effort to fill me in, but I still do what I'm told. I genuinely believe that he has no intention of harming her. If his experience as a time traveler is anything like mine, he might have screwed up the timeline unintentionally, and is trying desperately to get back on track by engaging with her in some other way. But if I fear that her life is in any danger, then Brian is there to spirit her away.

I continue writing in my journal of my adventures in the other reality, but decide to stop publishing them online. Even though I never used my real name, and I don't think I ever mentioned anything that would catch Reaver's attention, it's just too risky. If he so much as suspects that I've had experiences that cannot be traced through the current timeline, he'll know I've been keeping things from him. It would be too great a coincidence for anyone to believe, especially not for someone as smart as Horace Reaver.

Months into the job, he ushers me into the lair of what Brian would call Reaver's hackette. "Will it be ready soon?" he asks.

She's furiously typing on the keyboard and staring at the screen with intensity, but when we round the corner, the monitor is completely blank.

"What the hell is this?"

"You boys have this image in your mind of a hacker typing code at the speed of thought, but it's a little more complex than that. There's a lot more trial and error than you would think. Also, we do use mouses. I don't know why people on TV act like they have a macroinstruction for literally everything."

"The plural is _mice_ ," I correct her.

"No!" she screams. "It's _mouses_! You shut your mouth! You shut it! You shut it now!" She's a little weird.

"Why aren't you working on my program?"

"Because I finished it days ago," she spits. Micro, as she prefers to be called, pulls something up on the screen, and it's all Greek to me. Well, I mean it _would_ be Greek if I couldn't read Greek, but I can, so it's...computer code..to me.

I realize that they're looking at me curiously. Reaver snaps his finger in my face. "Still with us?"

"Yes, sir. Sorry about that, sir. I was just...inspecting the perimeter."

"Nice save, Sergeant." Micro's nickname for me.

Reaver leans over and rests his hand on the desk. "Are you absolutely sure that you're done with this? It is imperative that it be deployed tonight."

"Yeah, March 29, 2022. I get it. It'll work."

"It'll _work_?" Reaver asks, feeling no confidence in her words.

"It's perfect," Micro assures him. "As long as you don't turn off the machine, the program will run continuously on its own."

"Show me the machine."

Micro hands him a tablet that was plugged into her workstation. "I _am_ warning you that the program eats up battery like a mother, so I recommend having some portable chargers on hand. I have some ready to go in the locker by the door."

Reaver passes the tablet to me. "You need to get up to Lincoln, Nebraska. Your train leaves just after midnight. If you're not on it, or you don't fire up the program once on board, you're dead to me."

"This isn't going to cause the train to derail or something, will it?"

"I seem to remember saying you could have this job as long as you didn't ask questions."

"I know, I just...I think I've earned your trust by now."

He looks distracted as he shakes his head. "I have work to do." He starts to walk away. "Be in Lincoln by midnight."

"You don't find it strange that your name is Lincoln and he's sending you to Lincoln?" Micro asks after Reaver's left.

I ignore her and start to fiddle with the tablet.

"Don't touch that!"

"What does it do?"

"It's an artificial intelligence that seamlessly takes control of the automated locomotive network and directs it as needed."

"Obviously," I say sarcastically, "but what does it _do_?"

"It doesn't control _where_ the trains go, but it controls _when_ they get there. Basically we want the the train you're on to be at a certain point at a certain time, but if we don't manipulate all the other trains in the area, it will have no reason to be there so late. We have to alter them little by little so that everything seems organic and unavoidable."

"Why are we doing this?"

She turns back to her workstation. "That is _not_ my job."

I leave the room and start driving to Lincoln, Nebraska. I dread getting there, and all the jokes I'll hear from the train workers about my name.
Overwritten

Train Train Go Away

As I'm waiting to board the train, I can hear the woman who sells tickets get into it with a guy who is trying to purchase one at the last minute. As she's giving him a hard time about his identification, I realize that I recognize him. His name is Mateo Matic. He first disappeared mysteriously in 2014, and then again in 2015, almost exactly one year later. Ever since then, I've spotted him hanging with Reaver's alternate timeline wife, Leona Delaney, but only once a year. I was watching her before Reaver was paying me for it. He must be some kind of time traveler as well. I can't be one hundred percent sure, but Reaver probably has dastardly plans for him. They might could be friends, but I highly doubt it. If he feels threatened by Mateo when it comes to his theoretical love, then only death will follow. Are my plans failing? Is Reaver falling into the same pattern as before? What am I going to do now?

I board the train, cautiously sit behind Mateo, and flip on the tablet that Micro gave me. She never told me exactly where they want the train to be, or when they want it to be there. I'm just supposed to let the program she wrote run and do absolutely nothing else. But I _am_ going to do something else. I'm going to monitor Mateo and get a better sense of who he is. If I fear that his death is imminent then I'll pull the plug on the whole operation. I'll only be able to do this once, though. After I make that move, Reaver will no longer trust me. He doesn't go on his killing spree in the alternate timeline for the better part of two decades. Anything could happen. Man, I really hope I don't have to burn this bridge.

Mateo does nothing of note throughout most of the trip, but then someone gets on the intercom and claims that all the frequent stops are just as annoying to them because they have to be there too. Yikes. I adjust my body into a defensive position, worried that they'll find out that I'm the one causing this. Micro assured me that no one would know, that these kind of scheduling issues used to happen all the time, but I'm still worried. Maybe I should have gone ahead and taken that stage combat class. A man on the other side of the aisle reacts to the announcement, "the difference between us and the crew, is that we are paying for the misery, while they are _being paid_."

"So true," Mateo answers.

"What's your final destination?" the man asks. Who is this guy? Is he another time traveler? Another investigator? A threat? An ally? Does he know something, or is he just a stranger on a train?

Mateo takes a long time to answer. Either that or he's ignoring him. I don't have a great vantage point. I should have sat behind this dude's seat so that I could secretly see Mateo from there. Rookie mistake.

"I didn't know it was a trick question," the man says with a laugh.

"No, sorry. It's Grand Junction, Colorado."

"Business or pleasure."

I hear Mateo take a deep breath. "New life," he says with conviction.

"Ah, interesting. Running from, or just running to?"

Mateo tilts his head and pauses again. He must just be a thoughtful character, not wanting to answer inaccurately or rashly. "Both." Nice answer; short and sweet.

"Well, I'm rooting for you. I hope you find what you're looking for."

"Thanks," Mateo says, but it doesn't sound genuine. The train lurches and begins to move again. "What do you do for a living?" He doesn't sound all that interested.

"I'm a physicist. The name's Duke Andrews. I assume you don't have a career at the moment. What's your name?"

"Mateo. I don't have a last name anymore, though."

"Full commitment," Duke says back. "I respect that." He really does sound like he respects the decision, if that really is what Mateo is going for. If Mateo's struggle to buy the train ticket is any indication, his last name is no longer relevant. To perhaps his family and friends, he's been missing. To the world, and particularly the government, he would no longer exist. Once you're gone for long enough, they'll just decide you're dead. Mateo probably hasn't reached that point yet, but he will relatively soon.

After another delay, I look at my watch and see that we're about nine hours behind schedule. I wonder if that means we're on schedule. I can hear Mateo open a paper map. A _paper_ map. Paper. Guy still uses paper; what a weirdo. Eventually, he stops moving. I have this strange thought that the program I've been running does more than just manipulate train movements. Or maybe it doesn't do that at all. Maybe it's been sending out a magic signal that's programmed to rupture Mateo's brain stem, or some crazy science fiction like that. I stand up and head towards the front of the train so I can get a look while I'm heading for the lavatory. Crap. The lav is _behind_ us. What will my excuse be then? I'm overthinking it, and no one is watching me. Yes, they are. Duke eyes me with suspicion. Or maybe it's curiosity. I just need to leave. I could have business in another car. What does _he_ know? He doesn't know. Screw him! I'm going to another car, and he can't do anything about it. Is the food car up ahead, or is it behind us? No, it doesn't matter. Just keep walking. My only threat is Duke Andrews, and he can go to hell!

But he's not the only potential threat to my life as a train schedule hacker. With each subsequent car, the chances that the food car is up ahead decreases. Soon, I realize that it can't be, and I'm walking forward for no reason. There are other people here, and they are all watching me. They're all cops, and judges, and time travelers, and "Reaver Enterprises" spies. That's right, this entire train is full of people who work for Reaver. This is all a big test, and I'm failing. Shit, I have to get back to my seat. But how's a man gonna turn around? If I just stop in the middle of one of the cars and start heading in the opposite direction, people will be like, dafuq is that guy doing? Because, like I said, they all work for Reaver, so they're all watching me. Doesn't matter. If I've failed, then I've failed. All I can do is go back and keep my head down from now on. Sure, I might be headed towards my death, but I knew that from the start. This train may very well be on a collision course. It could have been designed to kill Mateo, _or_ to kill _me_. But that would be ridiculous because all the other people on the train work for Reaver too. Surely he wouldn't kill so many of his own employees. No, stop thinking like that. That's called paranoia. They don't _all_ work for him. Maybe half. No, shut up! _Nobody_ works for Horace Reaver. Well, except for me, of course. And maybe someone else. And probably one more for good measure.

I sit back down in my seat and take my anxiety medicine. After a while, I can hear Mateo moving around again. He's alive. For now.

Duke shuffles his newspaper. He uses paper too. "Welcome back."

"Where are we?" Mateo asks. He sounds panicked.

"Don't worry. You've not missed Grand Junction yet," Duke answers in a very comforting voice. It even makes _me_ feel better about possibly sitting in a death tube. "You can go back to sleep. I'll wake you up."

"No, I made a mistake. I meant Glenwood Springs. I'm supposed to go to Glenwood Springs!" His voice seems to wake other people in the car. A baby starts crying. Such a terrible mother bringing a baby to a death tube. Oh that's right. This is not necessarily a death tube, and she does not necessarily—I mean, probably does _not_ —work for Horace Reaver.

"Oh, well you've missed that. But it's okay. You're starting a new life. Does it matter where? You won't be that far off course either way."

"What time is it?" Mateo gets up and desperately looks at his watch. "Oh my God. It's almost midnight."

"No, it's eleven o'clock."

"I mean a different midnight!" He's right. It's almost midnight central time. Maybe this is everything the train schedule manipulation has been leading to. Are we where Reaver wants us to be? Am I okay with that? If we're not, will he blame me? I can handle myself. What I'm really worried about is him blaming his hacker, Micro. She has no clue what kind of guy Reaver is. She doesn't know he's a murderer. I need to get back to Kansas quickly, just in case. Or maybe I'll call Brian and burn his cover. No, it's too early. I have to stay in the shadows, but ya know, in a visible way.

The tablet Micro gave me beeps and the train comes to an abrupt a halt. That is definitely not a coincidence. We are where we need to be, which means we probably shouldn't be here.

"We apologize once more," says a different the voice on the intercom. "We're not sure why the train stopped this time, but we are looking into the matter and will have you back on track in no time."

"I have to get off!" Mateo screams. Yeah, we're here. He's scared of this place, wherever it is.

"You won't be able to," Duke says. "We're on a bridge over the Colorado River." That makes sense. Bridges are dangerous places for trains. Just ask any action movie. This is it. It's time time to die. I shut my eyes and take a deep breath.

"I'm still on the upper level!" Mateo jumps up and tries to pull his bag from under the seat, but is unable to. He gives up on it and runs for the door, but doesn't make it. At exactly midnight central, he disappears from sight. Some of the crowd screams while others shudder while others didn't seem to be looking at him at that moment. Yeah, Mateo is most def a time traveler. I look over to Duke who clearly didn't know that was going to happen, but isn't all that shocked by it. He did say that he was a scientist of some kind.

Mateo's bag. There might be incriminating evidence on it. I can't let the authorities get there hands on it, but I don't want Reaver to see it either. I can protect Mateo, even if I don't really know why. I can keep this secret, if I decide to trust the only other person on this train with any interest in what happens. I sneak over while everyone's freaked out about a man disappearing in thin air. I take my time and release the bag from its grip on the seat's frame. I sidestep over to Duke and hand it to him. "This is his. Keep it safe." My God, I sound like a spy on a park bench. "Tell no one about me."

"Who are you?" Duke asks.

"Nobody."
Overwritten

Lima

A year after the whole train debacle, Reaver asked me to do the same thing again. He said that the program ran perfectly, and that I should only have this one more mysterious assignment. I knew that he was trying to kill Mateo by knocking a train into him upon his return to the timeline, but I didn't know how to fix it. Brian had a brilliant idea for it, though. He—oh my God, it's so crazy—he strung up bed sheets across the tracks after the last stop before the bridge. He tied them loosely enough to safely be pulled right off by the oncoming train, but bright and colorful enough to be noticed so that the train would be delayed long enough for the conductor to get out and try to figure out what the hell was going on. And it almost worked. Brian watched from the trees as a good samaritan removed the sheets not long before the train's arrival. If he had tried to tie them back up, he would have probably been caught. Instead, he hopped in his car and sped off towards the bridge, hoping to possibly save Mateo in the nick of time. He ended up not having to. Apparently someone time traveled onto the tracks just before the train collided with him and spirited both him and Leona away. We weren't the only ones looking out. And just how widespread was this time travel thing?

I continued to be a good little security officer for Horace Reaver for the better part of a decade before he asked me to do anything else untoward. He never seemed to suspect that I was against him. I got the distinct impression that he now thought focusing on the success of his conglomerate was what was going to get Leona to fall in love with him again. It obviously wasn't working, and then the unthinkable happened, from Reaver's perspective. Leona disappeared one day, never to be seen again by anyone but me and my surveillance equipment. She began to return to the timeline only once a year, at the same time as Mateo Matic. I'm not sure _why_ she became one of us, but Brian assumed it was an indication that some mysterious entity was controlling all of this. I didn't know whether I should want to contact these theoretical people, or if I should avoid them at all costs.

In the year 2031, Reaver asks me to keep watch over a trio of people he's kidnapped. Leona becoming a time traveler really set him off, and he was no longer even pretending to be a good person. He was turning into the man I remembered from the other timeline. I was changing history, but I wasn't making it better. We were in a warehouse on the edge of San Diego. It was abandoned and falling apart. Most of the letters for the climate control company sign had fallen off, leaving only LIMA remaining. I take a look around when I arrive, first trying my best to ignore the hostages. I inspect every nook and cranny, as it were, for any hidden cameras or spies. Nothing and no one. We're alone. I move over to the captives and attempt to unlock their chains, but no such luck. Reaver didn't leave any keys.

I do not recognize the other two, but the boy is Leona's brother. "What are you doing?" little Theo asks me.

"I'm trying to free you," I say. Isn't it obvious?

"Why would you do that?" the man asks.

"I'm not interested in what Horace Reaver wants," I answer. "I've been trying to stop him for decades."

"What do you know of him?"

I take a risk. "He's a time traveler, just like Mateo and Leona. In an alternate timeline, he killed a lot of people. I'm trying to stop him from doing that again."

"How do you know about Mateo and Leona?" the woman asks defensively.

"He's been sending me out to spy on them. He didn't tell me why, but it wasn't hard to put the facts together." I quit trying to force the chains off of them. "To what end did he kidnap you three?"

"Just to get us out of the way," the man says. "Mateo is his real target."

"He's holding you ransom?" I ask, giving them a bottle of water from my pack.

"I heard him talking on the phone," Theo says. "He has no intention of helping our family find us. It's just a trap. We would have been left to die here if not for you."

I look at my watch. It's nearly midnight. "The two of them will be back soon. Where are they going to appear?"

They hesitate.

"Look, my guess is that Reaver already knows, but _I_ don't. So you can either trust me, or you can let them die. I can help. Please."

Theo breaks down. "They'll jump into the timestream in Huntsville, Ontario. There's a motel not far from there where Reaver left instructions for him to get to us. But like I said, it's a trap. Reaver is using that just to kidnap _them_ next. We're just lucky he never found out exactly where in Huntsville they would land."

I take some time to process the information. I could try to warn them through the motel, but who knows what they know? Does Reaver own them? Are they evil spies? There's no way to know, but it's possible, and this time, I'm not just being paranoid. I can trust no one. I need to find a way to protect Mateo and Leona without Reaver knowing about it. "How is Mateo getting these instructions?"

"Reaver emailed information to the concierge, or whatever. I think they're just supposed to hand it off to them."

"It was his mistake doing all this in front of you." I pull out my phone and start typing up a new document before looking up the email address of the motel.

"What are you going to do?" The woman is not convinced that I'm on their side.

"Leona Delaney is an incredibly intelligent woman. I'm betting if I leave her a clue, she'll follow it and do the right thing. All we need to do is make it look like they ignored Reaver's instructions because they don't believe him."

"What does _that_ mean?" Theo asks.

"I'm amending whatever information Reaver emailed the motel with the directions to this warehouse. If I'm right about Leona, they'll find their way here on their own. It's the quickest way to alter the timeline without Reaver knowing why, because I can't straight up tell them that you're safe. We don't know who Reaver has posted at the motel. We just have to hope they believe he's changed his mind slightly."

"What?"

"Just...trust me," I say. "I know it's confusing." I send off the email so that the motel can add it to the packet left for Mateo, then turn back to the other three. "You look hungry. I'll go get you some food if you promise me one thing."

The man eyes me suspiciously. "Promise you what?"

"You cannot tell Mateo or Leona that I was here. I have to stay in character. When they get here, I'll be out of sight. Just let them free you and leave me out of it."

"They'll wonder why Horace Reaver gave them this address."

"And they'll never know the truth. You got that? I cannot continue helping them if they know I'm there. I can't risk Reaver finding out about me, and the fewer people that know I'm a mole, the more effective I am."

"Okay," the woman says authentically. "We understand."
Overwritten

Trust

Presumably because of my ultimate failure to kill Mateo back in 2023, and more recently because his family kidnapping did not go well, Reaver began to lose faith in me. He still seemed to have no idea that I was working against him, but he did gradually tease me from his life. I remained in the employ of Reaver Enterprises, but in a more general position, working as a security officer with all the other grunts. In the year 2034, we're in one his newest facilities, the purpose of which has never been clear, and was likely irrelevant. It was built over the ruins of a house that had been just completely wrecked by some sort of artificial intelligence malfunction. Immediately upon Mateo's return to the timestream, I realize the AI malfunction had something to do with him, and the facility was built for the sole purpose of keeping him contained.

At the moment, alarms are going off around the building, and I'm leading a team of two other security guards, neither of whom I trust. For a while, things are going all right. We're just wandering the hallways, no idea where we're going, and only one of us knows why. But then the target of our pursuit shows up. He's with two other security guards. I don't know them very well and, of course, do not trust them either. "Status?" I ask as part of protocol. I still carry weight in the department, and am respected by all.

"We're showing this newbie the ropes," one of the guards says as he's motioning to Mateo.

Mateo lifts his hand and tips the brim of his hat down as a greeting, but does not speak. That's smart of him. It's harder to tell when someone's being deceptive if they don't say anything.

I'm not sure what to do. If they're loyal to Reaver, once they find out their "newbie's" true identity, they'll turn him in for sure. Then again, I do not recall any new conscriptions. Assuming these two do not know what they have in their hands, then Mateo is a very good liar, and I have a responsibility to play along. But if they _do_ know him, and they're helping him, then I should secretly assist. This can go one of two ways. I can order them to station themselves in an area of the building I know there to be fewer obstacles, or I can order them _into_ the lion's den and hope they go against these orders. It all depends on their relationship to Mateo, and they're impression of me. I trust my instincts and remain in character, ordering them to the basement. They stand there awkwardly after accepting their new assignments, so I usher my team through the doorway, allowing Mateo's team to make the right decision.

Not long afterwards, though, things get complicated. Reaver gets back on the intercom. "That's it! I'm calling in the cavalry. Boys, this is who we're looking for!" My heart sinks as Mateo's face appears on the walls. Now everyone knows who we're looking for. What's worse is that my team knows that we just encountered him. But there's nothing I can do about that. Now that the entire building knows what they're doing, I have to get back to Mateo and protect him personally. It's my only choice. Reaver continues, "bring him to me and I will write you a blank check!"

As we reenter the stairs, my team tries to head down, but I start to go up. "What are you doing?" one of them asks.

"I have to go this way," I say. Maybe they'll shake it off and let me go.

"You told him to go down, remember?"

"You go ahead," I order my team. "I'm gonna check up here in case they ignored my orders."

"That makes sense," the other one says. "If he's trying to get away from us, then he'll make a point of subverting orders." These guys are too smart for my own good. I won't be able to get away from them, so together we rush upstairs.

Both luckily and unluckily, we do find Mateo and his possible accomplices again. I block their path, still not sure how I should proceed. Who are these two? Are they trying to help Mateo too? Or are they on their way to Reaver right now?

One of the guards in this other team holds up some kind of cannon. "I don't want to hurt you."

"What are you doing?" I ask, weapon pointed where they would expect it to be. "Why is Reaver so interested in him?" I'm still trying to get a feel for whose side they're on.

"Stop us and you'll never find out," Number One answered.

I shake my head in disbelief, still needing to hold onto my cover. "That sounds like the opposite of the truth."

All of the sudden, some random guy appears from one door while a girl comes out of the door on the opposite wall. They each force one member of my team through the other one's door. It's like they knew this was going to happen, and were waiting for them. "What the hell?" Curious, I reopen one of the doors to find the room empty. More time travelers. Awesome. Or awful. I lower my weapon towards the floor, so I can gauge the remaining guards' reaction. And then I see it in their eyes. They're not trying to bring Mateo in. They _are_ trying to help. I still don't know why, or who they are. But I know I can trust them.

Before I can reveal my true intentions to them, a man comes out of nowhere down the hall. But he's not actually in the hallway. It's some kind of mashup of the real environment and another place. Outside. I guess I might call it a portal. "Excuse me?" he asks. "Have you ever been to Stonehenge?"

This is my chance. This guy seems different than Kyle, or Reaver, or even those two mysterious door-walkers. He is in some kind of position of authority. I have half a moment to make a choice. Either I continue to help Mateo, or I take what might be my one opportunity to get some answers. Mateo seems to be in good hands with his friends, so I leave them to it, and walk towards the strange man who has the ability to form a teleporting bridge to Stonehenge.

He, almost lovingly, sets his hand on my shoulder and smiles. The walls of the building melt away, and all that's left is Stonehenge. He opens his mouth to begin his speech, but then he sees something in me. He crooks his neck. "Who the hell are you?"

"I am Lincoln Rutherford," I reply honestly.

"Are you a salmon, or are you a _choosing one_?"

Dowhatnow? "Neither. Both. What are those things?"

"I can sense that you've been separated from the timestream, but you're not on my list. What happened?"

"I was in an alternate timeline," I explain, "with Horace Reaver. Someone snuck into his prison cell and pushed him backwards in time. I was just caught in the crossfire, I guess."

He lifts his chin but keeps his eyes on me. "I've not heard such a thing. An accidental salmon. When was this?"

"Four years from now," I say, "and eighteen years ago."

"Interesting, tell me everything."

For some reason, I feel that I can trust this man with my story. And so I do just what he asks and go over my entire life's story. I tell him what I remember from the other timeline, and also what has already been overwritten. I explain the blog, what I believe to be my job to stop Horace Reaver from causing further harm. I bring up Brian and Kyle and Duke, the train, the other train, Mateo's family who Reaver kidnapped, the door-walkers; everything. This guy just pulls the information out of me. Brian knows everything, and I've discussed some of this with others, but only to a low degree. It's nice to get all of this out to a second person, and possibly gain some perspective.

After I'm done, he again says, "interesting."

"What happens now?

"Horace Reaver is becoming a problem for us. We are preparing a response to his actions."

"Just now? He's been screwing with the timeline for years now. How could you let it go this far?"

"Oh, they don't really care about the timeline. Everything can be corrected, one way or another. It's not hard for the people I work for."

"You're not the time police, or something?"

"Oh, heavens no." He laughs. "I don't know exactly what the _powers that be_ are, but they're not _that_."

"Huh?"

"We estimate twenty-five years before Mateo finally apprehends Mister Reaver and brings him to justice."

"That's over three weeks in Mateo-time. You don't really think it'll take him that long, do you?"

"Why not?"

"He's smarter than you give him credit for. And now that he has Leona, he'll be unstoppable."

"That may be true, but either way, we'll need your help. Reaver isn't our only problem."

"Tell me what to do."

"You'll be in your element. We're building a security team, and we would like you to be in charge of it, as Head Guard."
Overwritten

The Other 2038 Problem

My children. My life becomes uneventful, except for my search for my kids. I'm not given any information about the people I'm guarding in this special prison for time travelers. The inmates are forced special medication to prevent them from being able to manipulate the spacetime continuum. In the movies, the not-so-crazy person always escapes from the psych ward by _pretending_ to ingest the pills, but secretly spitting them out while the orderlies aren't looking. That was not an option in this prison. The medication is given through injections, once a week for salmon and three times a week at least for _choosing ones_. A salmon named Dr. Baxter Sarka jumps into the time period on the regular to dose them personally. We often chat with each other, and he explains what he knows about the whole situation. There are people out there who are capable of jumping through time and space. They're immortal, lazy, and just complete assholes. They use their abilities to screw with other people who can jump through time. The basic difference between the _choosers_ and the helpless salmon appears to be superficial and contrived. Sure, there seems to be this thing where two activated salmon birth a _choosing one_ , but that's not the only way to create one, and it doesn't always happen. The division between these two classes is, any way you slice it, arbitrary.

Being what The Delegator referred to as an "accidental salmon" I was neither _choosing one_ , nor truly salmon. I was not put on no particular _pattern_ , and no particular _choosing one_ was put in charge of me. If I wanted to go anywhere through time and space while I wasn't on the job, I could put in a request, and someone would be dispatched to ferry me. I spent most of that time in present-day New Jersey, poring through records, hunting for the two kids that I had adopted in the other timelines. But they were nowhere to be found. My son's parents didn't have any children in this timeline, and I could find no trace of my daughter anywhere at all. After years of denying it, I had to accept the fact that either Reaver or I had altered the timeline enough to prevent both of their births. I had erased my children from existence by going back in time. I continued to press for someone to take me to the first timeline, but was rejected every time. It's never been clear whether that means the original timeline no longer exists, or if they can no longer access it. _Or_ —and this is the most likely explanation—the _choosing ones_ simply don't give a shit.

It's January 1, 2038 as I'm writing up my final two blog posts, noting what I remember from that first timeline. I can feel the memories slipping from my mind as I type them out. But also, my brain is becoming fragmented and confused, but it's more than the usual overwriting side effects. I actually feel sick to my stomach, and I'm starting to have trouble remembering pretty much anything that happened to me for the last two decades. I feel myself become nobody, a _nothing_. I spend the rest of the night and part of the next day in a stupor. I know that I've had a life; that I've done things, and that I'm real, but there's nothing there. I've been hollowed out like canoe wood. My other brain functions are being compromised as well. I can't remember which side to hold the spoon, or why food matters, of what food looks like, or what word I just said. It started with an "f". What? I just had a thought about letters, but I can't remember what it was. Did I forget something else again?

"Hello, father," a voice says to me.

Some of my brain function returns to me, but only enough to survive the next minute or so without forgetting how to breath, or keep my eyes open. "Cranberry," I grunt. Nailed it.

"I do not understand what is wrong with you," the girl says. I recognize her. I saw her once in prison...I think.

"Me either," I say.

She continues to speak, but I don't understand many of the words. Sometimes, my ears turn off, which I didn't know was possible, but then again, I don't know much. "...whereas before you were having trouble distinguishing the two timelines, now it's like you've never had a timeline."

_Yeah, I'm a non-person!_ I yell. I don't think I said it out loud, though. "Not personing the non-person life as non-people often do with their non-person lives." I think that's drool bubbling from my lips. Drool or air. There was something I heard the one time about cyanide or rabies. Or was it rabbits? What's it?

"Fuke!" she yells. But I can't hear very well. I think she might have said a different word. People often say different words than they say. That's just how it goes. It's it. "I need Baxter."

" _You're_ a bastard!" I scream as loud as possible.

"That is not quite an inaccurate description, if I do say so myself." She craps her finger and a man I don't know from having met before appears in a fascist. Flascist. Fla—uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..."

"He is not well," the dog says, admittedly. That baxter dog. He's not a dog though. That—I didn't say that.

"That, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, than, that cat, then bat." _Prat_ , I mutter to my mind.

"Sarka, what the hell are we gonna do?"

The man looks in his back blag. "I've not been given the equipment I would need to help him. This is an unsanctioned appointment."

"Well, what _do_ you have?"

"Literally nothing, see?" He opens his cat and shows it. No blood, he was right. Good boy, baxter dog boy.

"Where's your fur, you feather plucker!"

"Lincoln," a calming voice claims. "It's okay."

"Don't kill me, bull!" Idiot. "BULL!" Bad dog. "Bull-goddamn shit!" Dammit. "Shit! Shift!" I slam my fist on the table to demand order. "Heyoooooooo!"

"Please try to remember who you are," my lovely daughter, Melly says.

"Dotter Thracker Snorkel."

She either rolls her eyes or make a sad face, whichever is which. "He's trying to say Doctor Baxter Sarka."

"Yeah, I got that," the dog replies with friendly, deadly confidence.

I stand up and try to run into the wall, but I just trip and fall asleep on the table for two years.

"He's losing it, getting worse," the doctor says. "I can't do anything to help him unless _somebody_ puts a goddamn thing in my medical kit."

"I can try something," Melly fries.

I wake back up and watch her. She closes her eyes, exhales deeply, and twists her neck to prepare. She puts her palms together in a prayer position before ceremoniously lifting them up and placing them softly on her beautiful head. She slowly drags her fingers down over her face. The face changes. The placement of the eyes, the shape of the nose. Nothing changes too dramatically. She still looks like her, but fresher, with softer skin. She presses on her chest and her breasts disappear. She places one hand on her head again and forces it down before pulling on her wrists and shortening her arms, one after the other. Little by little, she adjusts her body, regressing her age ever downwards. When finally she stops, she's a little girl, only a few years old.

"I didn't know you people could do that," the doctor dog says. He is stunned, and a little scared. And also.

"They can't," she says, still sounding like a woman. She coughs and chirps and whimpers while tapping her fingers on her throat. He voice becomes that of her young self, "I'm the second most powerful of all." She turns her attention to me. "Daddy."

My eyes begin to water as I look upon her. "Where have you been? Where are you?" _Who_ are you?"

"I'm your daughter," she answers.

"You're the one who took Reaver back in time. You did this to me. You made me lose you. You ran away, and you ran from my thoughts."

"I am the daughter of Leona Delaney and Horace Reaver, two salmon. I was placed in your care after some time in the system. _Choosing children_ cannot be raised long by their salmon parents. Nor can they be raised by some regular guy. Once I turned three, I was taken away to live somewhere else. This would have happened whether I was with my parents, or with you. I'm sorry for leaving you, but I had no choice."

"But you're from an alternate timeline."

"Yes."

"And you prevented your own birth; your own existence."

"Essentially, yes."

"Then how are you here? You're not here."

"I _am_ here. _Choosing ones_ like me have the benefit of surviving any temporal adjustment. It doesn't matter that a version of me doesn't exist here. In fact, there can be only one of one person anyway. I was born, and I'll always exist. Like I said, I'm not like the others. I'm more powerful, and because of that, I can't be killed by any means."

"Why did you push your birth father to the past?"

"I was trying to get him to make things better."

"Things are not better."

"But they are. What happened to you was an accident. I did not intend on that, but you've had a greater effect on the outcome of events than you realize. Horace Reaver has attempted to kill people, this is true, but he's not succeeded. You've made him a better person just by being around. He's not great, and they're still gonna lock him up, but you've helped the world by sacrificing your life and being at his side. His technological advancements have saved more lives than they've ruined. You've created a balance, and the timeline thanks you for it."

"I don't remember any of this. I remember that I'm supposed to remember. I remember what I feel, and I know what I feel now, but I do not recall the events leading up to this moment."

"I know, you're sick. It's because you're not genetically predisposed to time travel, as most humans aren't. We avoid shifting their time placements for this very reason. About the most a normal person can take is a quick teleportation. Anything beyond that and we end up with something like this. I could have protected you from these symptoms had I manipulated your timestream on purpose."

"So I'm going to be like this forever? A nonperson?"

"Not if you come back to me. I'm going to help you, but you have to trust me."

I'm not neurologically capable of declining the offer. "What do we do?"

"We start...with a hug," Melly says melodramatically. Good.
Overwritten

Perspective

I return to work after a couple of years in recovery. I think they only give me this time off because I'm such an oddity. No one else is like me. A human who has survived such a dramatic temporal shift is rare, if not completely unheard of. Each time I see my daughter again, more time has passed, and she spends less time with me, weening me off of her care. Eventually, she's gone for good, and I never see her again. I keep abreast of the situation with Mateo and Leona year by year. Horace Reaver spends a little time in a human prison, which is apparently good enough for the _choosing ones_ , while it lasts. But Mateo and Leona need his help with something, and so I pull some strings and have him transferred to a different prison. It's far more complex, and seems more difficult to break out of, but it's not; not for them. Somehow, I know this. I have some kind of connection with time that I tell no one about. I can't see the future, and I certainly cannot travel there, but I _feel_ it. I am part of the timestream itself. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, I just know what needs to be done. I gather a list of other salmon within my "range" and assist them as well. They never know, and that's just how I like it. I even help Reaver out once by sending a message on a convoluted path throughout time. He thinks it's a favor, but it doesn't work out for him. And again, I just know this to be so.

After yet another decade of working at a salmon/ _chooser_ prison facility, I am given a special assignment. I and four of my closest friends operate in shifts, monitoring two of the most notorious salmon criminals I've met. Reaver is one of them, of course, but his pseudo-partner rival, Ulinthra is the other one. I live underground on Easter Island in a sort of cave mansion. It's pretty badass, and I feel no need to go anywhere else while I'm not working. The others live with their families in the future. I was ferried there once. It was a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there, I'll tell ya that. At the moment, my shift partner is taking a nap, and I'm keeping Reaver company. We've just returned after a brief journey into the past so that Reaver could finally attend one of his friend's funeral service.

"I've been down here with you for years now," I tell him, "yet you refuse to speak to me. I'm curious as to why that is."

"You betrayed me. That's all I need to know."

"I never betrayed you. I was never _with_ you. I was a spy."

"Who were you working for?"

"Lady Justice."

That got a laugh out of him, which is all I was really going for.

"Melly accidentally sent me back when she sent you back to 2016. I was born to protect people from people like you. It's fitting that it should end in a place like this."

"What do you mean, _end_?" he asks.

"This day today is our final day."

"How do you know?"

"I can feel it."

He lifts his chin, not totally surprised. "When did that start?"

"Melly rubbed off on me I guess."

"She's a strong one."

"Indeed. She helped me out when I needed her most. Way I hear it, she did the same for Mateo, against you."

"She did. I overestimated her loyalty to her father. You would do well to remember that yourself."

"She wants to do the right thing. All in all, I would say she is the most noble of the _choosing ones_."

Reaver chuckled in a way that made it clear that he agreed. He walked over to the corner and rested against the glass. "I'm so tired. Is it really over today?"

"It is. There is nothing we can do to stop it. But it sounds like you don't want to."

"Do you?"

"I believe I've served my purpose."

"What are we talking about?" My shift partner says suddenly. He's woken up.

I look at my watch. "Is it time already?" Our end is coming soon. It's like I'm being pulled towards it, and it doesn't feel like darkness. It feels like peace.

"What do you mean?" the other guard asks.

I cover for myself, "oh, I just thought you would be asleep longer." Before anyone can question what I really mean, someone pulls me out of the timestream.

I find myself standing on a simple garden path. A man pretends to be picking flowers up ahead of me. "Can I help you?" I call up to him.

"I just wanted your last sight to be of beauty, so I hijacked The Cleanser's jump," the man explains vaguely.

"What exactly does that mean? Who is the Cleanser?"

"He's a rival of sorts," the man answers, but then adds that "he's more of a partner."

"He will be the cause of Reaver's death?"

"And yours, yes."

"What shall I call you?"

"What do you _think_ you should call me?"

"I'm getting the sense that you've been breaking the rules, but you're so powerful that no one can stop you. You've gone rogue."

He stops haphazardly tugging at a dandelion. " _Rogue_ ," he repeats. "I love that."

"Glad to hear it," I lie.

"The Cleanser is trying to rid the world of time travel," The Rogue says. "In all time periods, in all realities."

"And you're trying to stop him?" I ask.

"Not all that much," he clarifies. "But I certainly don't want him to do it, even if I thought he would be capable of such a thing. I'm just trying to have a lot of fun. When you're immortal, every decision you make is meaningless. At that point, all you have left is watching _other_ people's decisions."

"If you say so," I respond plainly, because I have no interest in hearing him expand on his words.

He turns and looks at me. "But I can see that you don't care." Can he read minds? He goes on, "no, what you want is true beauty. I thought this garden would do it for you, because of its simplicity, but you want something more. You want to see something no one else has."

"And do you have any idea what that is?"

"Death." He snaps his fingers and returns me to the Easter Island cavern, far away from Horace Reaver's prison cube. Reaver is talking with someone. "That's the guy I was telling you about," The Rogue says.

I nod. "The Cleanser." I can't hear their conversation, but the Rogue points to a little device in there with them and says that it's a bomb. "I'm going to watch Reaver die? I have no interest in this either."

"Not him," the Rogue says. "Just wait."

I patiently wait for them to finish their conversation. The Cleanser mysteriously moves over and picks up Reaver's pillow. His body shudders away from itself, and then he disappears. The pillow falls to the floor. Just as that happens, all five of Reaver's security guards appear inside of the cube, including a near future version of myself.

"This is my favorite part," the Rogue says. All he needed was a bucket of popcorn. He turns an imaginary dial in the middle of the air and the volume from inside the cube increases.

"It's a bomb!" Horace yells as one of the guards is pointing a gun at him.

"You see? Without you, Reaver wouldn't have cared that others were going to die. It may not seem like much to you, but if there's an afterlife, you've increased his chances of going to heaven. You've helped redeem him, insofar as someone like that can be redeemed." He turns the imaginary dial the other direction and lowers the volume. The device the Cleanser left in there explodes and consumes the cube.

"They died anyway," I say. " _I_ died. Or rather, I _will_. Who cares if Reaver was a slightly less despicable human being at the time? Why are you showing me this?"

"I showed you this perspective so that you could die knowing you made a difference. Sure, Reaver is only negligibly better than he was, but what about people you met who already had potential, but were squandering it. What about Micro? What about Brian?"

I laugh at the obscure pop culture reference.

"You mattered, Lincoln Rutherford," the Rogue claims. "You matter."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better for when you send me back into the loop to experience the death I just witnessed?"

"It is," the Rogue says.

Very well. I lean against the cave wall and let out a sigh of relief. "Do it."

###
 My real name is Tavis Highfill, but I use Nick Fisherman as my pseudonym. There's a cute little story behind how I came up with that name. I may tell you about it someday. I'm a speculative fiction writer. I started when I was thirteen years old, and progressed about in the way that you would think. I'm currently working on publishing my first book, with stories taken but revised from my website. My site is in blog format. Every single day, I publish a new story. On the weekdays, for the most part, I post independent microfiction of about 200 to 500 words. On Saturdays, I run series that are about three times that length, and ultimately add up to novellas. When I reach the end of one, I move on to another. On Sundays, you'll always find a new installment of "The Advancement of Mateo Matic". Since I write these week to week, I don't have the benefit of foreshadowing, or of editing earlier plot points in order to account for later developments. That's why the published version is different. Thank you for supporting my passion and purchasing my book. Don't forget to also visit my website, early and often! And find all my social media accounts.

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