Spaghetti West: A Space Odyssey (Part IV)

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After the Atmospheric Kugelblitz Black Hole event, Sugar had to sit down with Liselot to understand what they lost, and why it was more important than it sounded. Near the equator of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida once lay a country called Eyrenland. They named it after the indigenous wildlife, or more specifically, what they produced. The uquira and uquirapods had an evolutionarily interesting dynamic.

They didn’t adhere to Earth’s rules of biology and taxonomy. Some were plants, and some were animals, but only as the closest analogs to human comprehension. Their reproductive cycle was multi-faceted, but what the locals and consumers cared about were the eyren. They most closely resembled eggs. They had a shell—which was iridescent and beautiful—a white—which was actually more tan—and a black yolk. The yolk actually kind of looked gross and rotten, but it was perfectly healthy, and irrefutably tasty.

When the yolk was touched by a tongue, it didn’t simply taste like whatever it tasted like. It reacted with the taste buds, providing them with whatever they preferred and desired most. It behaved less like a food, and more like a drug. It activated pleasure chemicals in the brain, creating a sense of euphoria and peace without limiting the user’s faculties, or inhibiting their judgment. It was a miracle food, and the most popular import across the stellar neighborhood. For centuries, philosophers believed exporting and importing would be irrelevant at interstellar levels, but people were determined to make it make sense, and the eyren trade was the result of those efforts.

Sugar asked why these special eggs couldn’t simply be reverse-engineered in a lab. Technically they were, but that defeated the purpose. Everything was composed of chemicals; nothing was made of magic. Anything that existed could be recreated from scratch. And to be sure, there were plenty of people who got their hands on the formula so they could do exactly that. But transhumans could also just flip a switch in their brains and release whatever hormones they wanted. They could literally trigger an orgasm with a single thought. That wasn’t the problem. Consumers wanted real eyren because they valued authenticity. The bounded source and finite supply were precisely what gave it its value. And now that was almost all gone, thanks to the AKBH.

Eyrenland served as the intake region for the whole world. They had a few space elevators for redundancy purposes, but the default was to come through here, specifically so they would be close to the uquira. They did it for the same reasons ancient museums often placed their exits in the gift shop. The refugees from Proxima Doma and Doma Tertia were given a patch of land to start their new lives here, so they lost their homes for a third time, which would be profoundly hilarious if it weren’t so sad. When they showed back up on the ship that brought them to this planet in the first place, they were pissed to say the least. They would have rioted had their numbers been greater.

That wasn’t to say the non-refugees were any happier. They just lost their homes, and they demanded to know why. The Interim Axiom of Eggs and First Axiom had to teleport up to Sugar’s ship to keep them calm so Axiom of Astronomy Liselot could explain what went wrong. Until today, they had no reason to believe that a KBH would enter the atmosphere. She strongly suggested that they be grateful for their lives. Not everyone there was streaming their consciousness to backups, and they would not have 

survived had Sugar not stepped in. Even then, some assumed that it was somehow her fault, only because of the suspicious timing.

There was a secondary source of eyren, clear on the other side of the world. Researchers were still trying to figure out how two separate populations of uquira/uquirapods managed to evolve so far from each other. Sugar could find out relatively easily with a bit of time travel, but she didn’t bring that up because she didn’t care and had more pressing matters on her mind. The Eyrenland farmers insisted that Sugar teleport them down to Quiratan, but that did not seem like the right thing to do.

Farmers were already living there, and were evidently more concerned with preserving the ecology. They harvested eyren too, and exported what they couldn’t consume themselves, but they didn’t scale to meet demand. They mostly stuck to themselves, and didn’t participate on the world stage. Vantu became extraordinarily protective of the Quiratani after being asked to basically use their immense power to kick the locals out. He took a shuttle down to show any would-be invaders that they would do well to stay out. For now, Axiom of Eggs Antinan and the Eyrenlanders were heeding the warning, but Van had to remain, leaving Sugar mostly alone on the ship.

It was fine, everything was automated. It wasn’t like Sugar had to babysit all the equipment. The KBHs were still arriving, but they were incrementally improving warning times, and none so far had appeared as close to the planet as the AKBH. They did not believe it would likely happen again. There was just too much other space, and while a pattern had not yet presented itself, lightning proverbially never struck twice. Fending them off had become routine to the point of monotonous, which was not good. That was why it was so important to complete that modified defense grid. Their ship was the only one capable of reaching the source, and it was now time to do just that.

While they were predicting and deflecting the onslaught, Sugar was also trying to track where they were coming from. She thought, with enough data, she would be able to determine the answer, but it wasn’t there. There was no interstellar signature, or anything. She had come to realize that the only way to locate it would be to push one back through its portal, like she did with the AKBH, but this time, follow it through.

“That’s suicide,” Liselot warned. “And don’t argue that you’re backed up like everyone else; it probably doesn’t work like that. We were recently discussing the signal interference that it was causing. You will not likely beam back here. You will simply die.”

Liselot did not know about the afterlife simulation, which could capture one’s consciousness from anywhere in the galaxy, and Sugar didn’t think it was wise to tell her. There was a reason the architects kept it a secret. People were only meant to go there if all else failed. Still, it meant Sugar couldn’t explain why she wasn’t worried about the mission. She would have to make her case another way. “I’ll be fine.” Oh, how clever.

“I’m going with you,” Liselot insisted, “and I will not be arguing with you. I know you have the power to magically send me back down to the surface, but that would violate my autonomy. I’m still upset that you tried to convince me that Van was a hologram when we first met. I want to go, and I want you to respect that.”

“I don’t want to argue with you either,” Sugar began, “but you literally just said that I was gonna die. So am I the fool for going, or are you for coming with me?”

“Both,” Liselot answered. “Where I’m from, we believe that every day past 120 years is a gift. Our ancestors could only dream of reaching such ages, and for the vast 

majority of human history, that was close to the hard limit. If I die now...” She shrugged. “Well, I’ve surpassed it many times over, so it’s nothing to cry over. If it’s my time, I’m ready.”

Sugar shook her head. “I won’t violate your autonomy, even though as captain of this ship, it is well within my rights to decide who boards and who doesn’t.” She looked over at the screen showing a KBH’s pending arrival. “You have a couple minutes to change your mind, though.” She tapped a button, causing a bridge escape pod to open. “This will teleport you clear of the event horizon through burst mode until it makes it back to the space station. The ship, meanwhile, will be so close to the singularity, that even when I push it back, the gravity will be too strong for me to escape.”

Liselot nodded and stepped towards the pod before turning around to face Sugar. “I made up my mind before you told me what you were gonna do. I knew you would do it eventually. Don’t think I came to this decision on a whim.”

“Very well.” Sugar teleported the whole ship to the next arrival point. While they were waiting, she walked around the console holding her new device. “It’s preprogrammed, but if you’re coming, you need to get in here too. It’ll be a tight fit.”

“What is it?” Liselot asked, looking at the unfamiliar gizmo.

“Personal equilibrium generator.” Sugar attached it to her arm, activated it, then hugged Liselot tightly. The small egg-shaped energy field began to emanate from it. She held Liselot even tighter once they saw quite how small it was. They held onto each other and watched as the KBH appeared out of nowhere, and the ship began to shake around them. They couldn’t feel a single thing; it was like they weren’t even really there.

Sparks flew as inessential systems crashed under the weight of the gravitational disturbance. The ship lurched forward as it fell towards the center. Attitude control worked overtime to make sure the particle beam continued to focus on its target, with a little bit of leeway compensated with a gyroscope. The black hole fell back into its portal, dragging the ship along with it. Within seconds, they were in the wormhole. It took a surprisingly long time. Wormholes weren’t instant—they both obviously knew that—it was just taking longer than expected.

At last, they flew out of the tunnel, back into normal space. The ship stopped shaking, so Sugar deactivated the equilibrium generator. Sensors which had been gathering data the whole time were blinded for a moment while they recalibrated. Once they determined that it was safe, the viewscreen turned itself back on, and showed them where they were. They were entering orbit around a planet. The sensors still didn’t know where it was, or how far they had traveled from Tau Ceti. That was odd too, because a simple star chart reference should have come up with an answer rather quickly. It was picking up infrastructure, though. Whatever world this was, it was clearly inhabited.

An unknown vessel came up and matched the ship’s vector. The strangers opened their weapons...and fired.

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Microstory 2780: Nothing Will Stop Her From Leaving Him

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At the moment, the two most popular planets in the galaxy are Varkas Reflex and Castlebourne. The former handles virtual simulations very well while the latter is the only place with extensive and comprehensive base reality sims. Earth is special because it’s the seed of civilization, but its population is still decreasing. Some are leaving because they want what those other worlds have, others because they want to return Earth to the wild. Incidentally, Gatewood is technically popular too, but only as a pitstop for other colonies. Most other colonies are niche or family-owned; not central hubs.

That leaves Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. It is the only other Core World which naturally supports complex life. A human can survive on the surface in the open air with minimal bioengineering. A baseline human can survive with the right life support tech. That used to be a huge draw, but other breathable worlds have since been found, and it’s just not that important anymore. Life under a large enough dome is indistinguishable from a genuine sky. Virtual constructs are perfect, and can be programmed with any environment imaginable. Bida, despite its recent gravity problems, simply isn’t that special anymore. And those gravity problems are pushing it over the edge.

Everyone is leaving, including possibly Jande’s sister, Laise. She is missing, and it’s highly unlikely that something went wrong with her consciousness transmission. Bida may be known for its minimal use of tech, but they’re not backwards like Proxima Doma. They’re efficient, and death is an inefficient use of thought. That was engraved on the arch over the entrance to the Welcome Center below the primary space elevator, and above the door to the central substrate inventorium. Laise should be back by now.

In the weeks following the destruction of Eyrenland, the community has suffered from all sides. The whole planet has been wrecked. The people survived, but many are choosing not to rebuild their lives here. They’re going to those other places to live out their dreams. Some may end up doing exactly what they were doing before the cataclysm, just elsewhere. Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida is dying. It started quick, but it’s gonna end slow. Their way of life is being threatened by something that was entirely out of their control, and their own laws. Even Jande’s wives can’t take it anymore.

“Evers, please. Don’t leave,” Jande begs. “We’re building a life together.”

“This world is no longer safe,” Evers argues. “The black holes are still opening up all over the star system. I don’t want to be here when the next one shows up. What if it’s in the core of the planet? What if it’s in our backyard?”

“There’s a fancy ship up there,” Jande reminds her. “The Axiom of Astronomy is on it. The galaxy’s top scientists have cast themselves here to figure this out.” He sighs. “They’re gonna figure it out. The farm needs you, more than ever. I need you.”

“I’m not going to ask you to leave with me. I know that you have to stay, especially since your father...” She trails off just so she doesn’t have to finish the sentence. “You have your ways, and I thought I knew what I was getting myself into when I joined this community and married you. But I didn’t sign up for this.”

“There are ways around this,” he insists. “We can get a long-range backup relay. If your body dies, you can be on the other side of the solar system in seconds, clear of any black hole that may or may not open up here. This doesn’t have to be the end.”

Now Evers is the one to sigh. “And what if that deep space backup is destroyed too? I’m not going to risk it. This is an unprecedented threat.”

“Please, just give it another few days. They’re gonna announce something—”

“What are the divorce procedures?” Evers interrupts.

Jande doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t want to answer that question.

“Come on, I know they’re different when the marriage ends entirely, instead of remaining partially intact after only one leaves, so I can’t just utter the dissolution line, like Suki. You either come with me, or it’s over. What do I have to do to divorce you?”

Jande shakes his head. “You’re the one ending the marriage, and I’m the victim. You have to cut down a tree with an axe, and I have to cut one down with a knife.”

Evers stares at her still-husband for a minute. “Is that even possible?”

“Eventually, yes. It will take time out of my extremely busy life, but you can begin leaving before that. It will take hours, if not a day, for you to finish your own tree, get to the elevator, ride it up, and fly off. I promise to be done by then. The tree isn’t gigantic.”

“The trees we planted on our wedding day. We have to cut those ones down?”

“They symbolize our union, so yes,” Jande confirms.

“So older couples have a harder divorce. What if one of the trees is already dead?”

“Well, ours are still alive, and you’re leaving the culture completely, so what does it fucking matter?” Okay, he has shifted his emotions away from sadness now.

“I want to understand what’s happening to us, and I have the right to. I won’t push it, but I do want to know, what of Suki’s tree?” Evers questions.

“I have to take it down at some point, when I have time,” Jande explains. “It doesn’t have to be ceremonial or grueling, though. I can use a laser saw, or whatever.”

Evers frowns at him. “I was hoping to cast my mind to Varkas Reflex. I mean, if I’m gonna become incorporeal anyway, I might as well travel there without this body—”

“Goddammit!” Jande pushes past Evers and walks around to the back of the house. He pulls out his sheath knife and starts to slice against the trunk of his tree, at the narrowest section he can find, grateful that it doesn’t have to be at a particular height. He’s already making good progress, fueled by his adrenaline.

Evers walks up next to him. “I never wanted it to end like this.”

“But you wanted it to end,” Jande points out. “Good, that’s great. I’m so happy for you, you’re finally getting the life you wanted. I’m so sorry that I trapped you on the most beautiful planet in the universe. You must have been miserable.”

“I was never miserable,” Evers begins. “I’m just scared. I don’t think you see how dangerous this has become. Our ancestors prepared for everything—everything!—when they started to explore outer space, but they never thought of this. I know you think what you’re doing is important, but it’s not worth your life. It’s not worth mine, and there was a time when you would have agreed with me. Just...think about it.”

Jande stops working for a second to catch his breath. He looks over at her. “I don’t have time to cut down my tree and help you find the axe in the rubble that was our shed. You better go look for it so you can finish this quick enough to cast away in time to catch that sweet VR wave, dude. Hang ten.” He goes back to cutting.

He can see her nod quietly before she walks off.

She is so inexperienced with the axe, he almost finishes his tree before she finishes hers. They don’t say another word to each other for the rest of time. She takes a shuttle to the temporary Welcome Center tent, and leaves him forever.

Microstory 2779: Nearly Everyone Dies

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Jande Ter Avest wakes up and yawns, louder than he wanted to, which serves to wake up his wives. They were going to have to wake up soon enough anyway, though, so it’s fine. He rolls over and gives Evers a kiss, then lifts himself up and over her to kiss Suki. Second Autumn is coming to a close, so it’s the first morning that it’s still dark out when it’s time to get to work. He starts to leave the house as he is, as he normally does.

“Jan,” Evers says. It doesn’t even look like her eyes are open. “You need clothes.”

“It’s not cold enough, I’ll be fine,” Jande assures her.

“Put on clothes,” Evers reiterates. She’s still drowsy and annoyed.

“Put on clothes,” Suki echoes.

“Put on clothes, put on clothes, put on clothes.” They know he hates chanting.

“Fine, fine. I’m putting on my clothes,” Jande reluctantly agrees. “God.”

“Yay,” Suki replies as she buries her face in her pillow.

“Yay,” Evers concurs, just as exhausted and grumpy.

Jande does as they ask, then goes outside. He can never admit that they were right. It is unseasonably cold already. He didn’t bother to check the forecast, but they must have. He ends up stepping back inside real quick to grab a coat too.

He shivers as he’s walking towards the barn. Across the way, he sees his sister walking towards it from her own house. Her pet uquirapod is waddling alongside her. They wave to each other and smile, but don’t speak. It’s too early to speak. He doesn’t hate his life, but he doesn’t love it either. One day, when his parents’ bodies are old enough, they’ll retire, and it will be up to him and Laise to carry on the legacy.

As long as Laise doesn’t run off to find her own way, Jande’s workload will only double, and if he doesn’t have kids eventually, it could last indefinitely. He doesn’t mind doing it for the duration of a legal lifetime if it makes his family happy. He has his whole immortality ahead of him, which he can spend doing whatever he wants. It’s not that hard of a job anyway, it’s just kind of silly to him. One day he’ll look back, and this will only be a blip. His mind lives in that future. He thinks Laise’s mind does too.

She holds the door open for him, and they both walk in. Their father is leaning back in his chair, fast asleep. If he’s not careful, he’ll tip over and fall on his head.

When Laise clears her throat, Father is startled awake. He instantly looks up at the two of them, and says, “you’re late!” like he had the complaint in the chamber.

Laise gets on her knees and rests her hand on Father’s knee. “It’s time, Father. It’s time for you to leave this body behind, and move on.”

Father winces and looks down at himself. “I’m still young enough to beat you.”

“Beat me in what?” Laise asks him with a chortle.

“Name a challenge. A foot race, a milking race; whatever you want,” Father urges.

Laise smiles at him. “You’ve been doing this for a hundred and ten years. You suffered through a lot of harsh winters, and if we’re being honest, your body wasn’t designed perfectly. There is no shame in retiring early. You’ll head west and start a new life. We can take it from here, we promise. Mother wants to be done too, I know it.”

Father shakes his head. “Neither of you married invested workers. You underestimate how hard this job is. You will not be able to handle it just between the two of you. Our way of life must be upheld. You both need to find new partners.”

“We married for love, Father,” Jande explains. “They still help, they just also do other things with their lives. That’s what I love about Evers and Suki.”

“That’s why I love Adora,” Laise agrees. “Our generation doesn’t believe in hard work simply for the sake of it, but that doesn’t mean we’re not committed. It’s no secret that we plan on integrating slightly more technology into the processes. Father, you have not tried to dissuade us from this. We’ll still be farmers, just more modern ones. Holding on for ten more years will not preserve tradition, it will just make your joints achy.” She gently removes the tablet from his hands. “Why don’t you let me handle assignments today? You go take a nap to sleep on it.” She looks down at the device. “Jande, you’re on eyren duty. I’m doing carrots and parbread.”

“Oh, I thought I was gonna do carrots,” Jande says. “Evers was asking to learn more about eyren harvesting, but I told her she could sleep in today.”

“Go ahead and prep the harvesters,” Laise decides. “I’ll get Evers for you.” She looks back at Father again. “Is this okay with you, that I supervise the workers? It’s late in the season, there’s no need for you to get worked up. It’s okay to take a break.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll take it slow today,” Father relents as he’s yawning.

While Laise is walking across the lawn to Jande’s house, Jande walks over to the shed to retrieve the equipment for harvesting eyren. As he’s loading the supplies on the cart, he sees both of his wives following Laise to the barn. They’re in the middle of a conversation, so he doesn’t interrupt them. He would later wish he had stopped them.

As soon as they step foot inside, the whole barn collapses. Jande does too. He lands on his hands and knees as the gravity pulls him down harder than usual. This happened a couple decades ago, but it was more gradual, and most buildings were reinforced in case it happened again, but they left the barn alone, because it’s just a barn. The shed buckles too and crashes down on top of Jande, pinning him against the soil. It lets up a little bit, but then the ground begins to shake. Jande tries to get up, but his spine has presumably been severed. He tries to crawl out, but he can’t move.

This body is wasted, it’s not going to heal; certainly not in enough time. It hasn’t killed him, so he’s going to have to do it himself. He doesn’t want to transfer his consciousness to a normal backup, though, because they’re too far away. Without telling anyone, Jande programmed a failsafe in his brain, which allows him to jump to the neighbor’s service bot. They are also farmers, but they use more advanced tech to make their lives easier, allowing them to focus more on the crops. Jande closes his eyes and triggers the suicide protocol. Everything goes dark for a few seconds. He’s not sure how long this is going to take, though, because he never tested it.

He doesn’t have to open his eyes again. The image simply renders in front of him. He finds himself carrying two little children in his metallic arms. It’s the neighbor kids. The four parents are running alongside him, trying to get out in the open space while the bidaquakes continue to stir up the ground. Jande looks around. This area is as good as any. The surface is solid, and nothing can fall upon them. Jande sets the kids down. “I must check on the Ter Avests too,” he requests.

“Yes, we’ll be fine, bot,” one of the mothers says. “Go help the community.”

It’s a kilometer away, but this substrate gets him back home in no time. He races into the barn, and starts carefully pulling debris away. Other than his mother, everyone he loves turns up dead, but his sister is the only one who never comes back to life.

Microstory 2778: The Agenda Comes Out in the End

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There’s a knock at the door. Interim Axiom of Eggs Antinan Witt taps his fingers in the right sequence to signal the security AI to open it. “You must be Vantu Hidayat.”

“You can just call me Van,” he answers.

Antinan nods. “Thank you for coming, Van. You were in the Teaguardian that rescued everyone from Eyrenland, correct?”

“It’s not a Teaguardian, it’s a stateless vessel, but yes,” Van replies.

Antinan nods again. “Firstly, as a citizen of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, I would like to thank you for that. You saved a lot of people. As the Interim Axiom of Eggs, I would like to explain our needs moving forward. Vonearthan lives are not all that is at stake.”

“Can I ask,” Van begins, “why are you the Interim Axiom? We rescued the Axiom of Eggs. I remember seeing her on the manifest. She is alive and well.”

“This is our way,” Antinan says. “When a leader’s life is threatened, or their substrate is destroyed off-schedule, their consciousness goes under review. During this waiting period, they are not allowed to make any state decisions. I will only hold this position for a few weeks at most, at which point I will undergo the same review. We like to be extra thorough here. As I was saying, my responsibility is to the eggs.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to catch me up. What kind of eggs are we talking about?”

Antinan takes a deep, reverent breath. He almost ceremoniously approaches the egg locker. This was the Axiom of Energy’s private stash. She graciously donated it back to the Egg Department to support restoration efforts. But there’s only one place they’ll grow now, and it’s not here. He carefully slides the opaque lid up and over so Van can see what’s inside. The eggs are still protected in the transparent preservation chamber.

Van chuckles voicelessly and lightly as he looks into the chamber. “They do look like eggs.” He looks up at Antinan. “I’m guessing that’s a misnomer, though?”

“They’re literally eggs.” Antinan recloses the opaque lid. He wants to preserve them for as long as he can. Even when they manage to seriously increase the yields at the secondary location, they won’t be the same. They are technically the same species, but epigenetically different enough for a dedicated expert like him. There will never be another Eyrenland egg once the last remaining ones in storage are consumed or spoiled, and that’s nothing that can be undone. He almost tears up just thinking about it.

Antinan composes himself and turns on the presentation. It starts with a video of a cute little creature. It’s bulbous and green, with stumpy little legs that can move surprisingly fast. Small plates are protruding all along its back, resembling a stegosaurus—they’re even called stegs, but they’re not hard, nor even made of bone. They’re soft and rubbery, like mushrooms, but stronger. “We call this the uquirapod.” He jumps to the next image. “And this is the uquira. Now, don’t try to call one an animal, and one a plant. Our Earthan terminology holds no water here.”

Antinan continues through the presentation, showing various footage of uquirapods wandering the uquira fields, but no mating shots yet. “Our taxonomical structures create rigid divisions between the branches of life, and to be sure, Bida has that too, but they’re not the same. Many creatures blur the lines between plant and animal. Some move but photosynthesize; some are rooted, but have a digestive tract. One ecosystem basically has a form of marine snow, except it’s in the open air, thanks to extremely tall tree-like specimens which shed their waste from the top.

“The uquira and uquirapods are more like two genders of the same species, but also not exactly. We sometimes call it a symbiotic relationship, but it’s hard to accept that with all the nuances of their practices. They can mate within their gender, or with the opposite gender, and they do both. Again, don’t try to attach assignments to these things. Neither is male, neither is female; there is simply no obvious analog.

“Now...for reasons that we still don’t understand, when two uquirapods mate, each partner will drop fertilized seeds on the ground. They’re very social creatures, and more intelligent than they look. One will press their partner’s seeds into the ground, and once they’re done, they will systematically travel together up to eleven kilometers to switch roles. We believe they do this to prevent inbreeding. The seeds will germinate into uquira. They will not breed more uquirapods, because that’s not their job.

“Similarly, the uquira are sexual beings, which connect via wind dispersal. In a fascinating process, they communicate with each other remotely, sometimes across several meters. They utter a mostly subsonic frequency, though, that’s in relation to the range of hearing for baseline humans.” Antinan shrugs. “Many can hear it just fine. In fact, you can’t work in this department if you don’t modify yourself to hear it, assuming you can’t already. Anyway, once two uquira match each other’s resonant frequencies, they will shoot their unfertilized seeds towards each other in an attempt to find cross-purchase. If a seed does not reach its target, it will usually die in the soil. But more on that later. Is all this making sense so far, or do I need to slow down? Because I can.”

“No, I’m fine; I’m following you,” Van assures him.

“Okay. Continuing on then. Once the seeds find the right mates, they will communicate success to each other, and reproduction begins. They will produce eggs, which will grow into uquirapods, not uquira. We do not call these eggs eyren because they are fertilized, and we obviously don’t eat those, because we’re not monsters. It’s okay, it’s very easy to tell the difference. They’re just kind of a plain tan color. Eventually, the uquira stops being able to care for its eggs—which usually come in clutches of three or four—so a uquirapod has to retrieve them, incubate them, and raise them. But they will always be able to find their parents. They frequently return to them out of respect, and we think, even love. They talk; they have language. They use the same language. It’s not anywhere near as complex as ours, but they convey ideas.”

“So where do the unfertilized eggs that you eat come from?” Van asks.

Antinan smiles. “The wind is unpredictable. Uquira have gotten pretty good at aiming, but they can only do so much, and they all mate at the same time, which means they end up with a lot of seeds that don’t belong to them. Since they resonate at the wrong frequency, the mismatches will not be fertilized, but will grow an egg; a proto-eyren. When the uquirapods sniff around for eggs to care for, they will find these proto-eyren, and eat them whole. They will lay a clump of cells on the ground. They won’t typically stomp them into the soil, but we can do it for them. And what comes out of it is a sort of sterile third-gender; more plantlike, not intelligent. The process is fragile; eyren are now endangered, thanks to the black hole cataclysm.”

“This is as interesting as it is sad,” Van says. “What does it have to do with us?”

“Eyrenland was our largest source of eyren, but not the only one. They are endemic to one other, tiny region on the other side of the world. We need you to protect it...even if that means removing the stubborn, narcissistic farmers who live there now.”

Microstory 2777: Fewer Deaths Than It Looks

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There’s a knock at the door. Elty Fenstermacher opens it quickly. “Come in, come on, hurry,” he urges. He tugs his friend inside, then looks around to see if anyone is watching. They are. He has to smile and wave at a small group of people gardening against their own abode. The battle may be over, but the war has only begun, and he doesn’t know who he can trust anymore. This is a test...a test of his resolve.

“What did you want to show me, Elty?” Streamer asks. Elty can’t remember what his real name is anymore. Everyone calls him that because he’s the only one in the group who has a digitized brain. He never needed to escape with them. He shouldn’t be a part of the rebellion. But he is, and Elty respects the hell out of him for it.

Elty steps over to the other side of his little lab, and presents the chamber.

“What is it?” Streamer asks him. “A time machine? Please don’t tell me—”

Elty rolls his eyes. “It’s not a time machine. It’s an equilibrium chamber. This is what they use on Varkas Reflex to keep their users in spatial stasis.”

“I don’t understand,” Streamer says. “I went to VR, I never saw this.”

“Well, this is a modified design, and they’ve not always had equilibrium drives,” Elty explains. “When you’re in this, you’re basically floating. Every single square millimeter of your body experiences an equal amount of pressure. They use it because some log in to VR for years at a time, and that comes with health problems.”

“What are you trying to tell me, that you digitized yourself?” Streamer questions.

Elty shakes his head. “I don’t care about VR. I don’t even really care about equilibrium.” He bends down and switches it on. As the power starts running through, he smiles and looks back up at Streamer. “You hear that? You feel it? If you disable the privacy field regulator, the equilibrium stays in the chamber, but the signal jammer escapes. If we install one of these things in every house, the Teaguardians and Bidans can’t spy on us. Nor can anyone else, for that matter. It’s there so users can have private virtual sessions without worrying about someone sneaking in and finding out what they’re doing. We’re gonna use it to live in peace, which is all we’ve ever wanted. I’m not happy that we have to settle for Bida, so if we’re here, let’s make it our own.”

“Hm. That’s interesting,” Streamer notes, but he doesn’t sound enthusiastic.

“I thought you would be more excited,” Elty says. “You’re the one who taught us how to hide our location on Doma Tertia. I just upped our game.”

“Yeah, and I appreciate that,” Streamer agrees. “I just...the Teaguardians agreed to leave us alone. What that Delgado chick did for us in Gatewood was her responsibility, and we’re not at fault for that. We have a good thing here, Elty. I don’t want us to risk that. I’ve kind of given up my anger. Our home was destroyed, and honestly, people have bent over backwards to find a new one for us. This is that, man. Just be happy. Or are you mad because Shimizu left us, which places you in charge, but we don’t need a rebel leader anymore, because we’re not rebels anymore?”

“Don’t make me out to be so petty. I’m just trying to help,” Elty contends. “Something is happening in the sky that they’re not telling us. I’m still trying to figure out what it is, but in the meantime, I’m gonna do what I must to protect us, and our way of life. These people aren’t our heroes. They’re assholes, like everyone else.”

Streamer sighs, and jerks his chin towards the window. “You see those people out there? They still need leadership. Are you gonna step up, and help them settle down once and for all, or are you gonna hole up in here, and tinker with your machines?”

Elty looks through the window. The gardeners are still out there. They’re so bloody happy, it makes him sick. This is not what they wanted. They wanted a planet to call their own. They could have come to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida right after Proxima Doma fell apart, but they choose to go for something greater. Now they’ve all given up.

As he’s watching them toil away, totally content, they suddenly disappear.

“Whoa,” Streamer exclaims. “Did you see that?”

“Yes,” Elty replies. “It’s happening.” He rushes into the equilibrium chamber. Pushing himself down so there’s enough room for the both of them. “Get in here.”

“Why would I do that?” Streamer questions. “It looks uncomfortable.”

“It is,” Elty yells, “but it’s better than the alternative! Now get in!”

Streamer shakes his head, and misses his chance. The ground shakes. The roof flies off the house and soars into the sky, taking Streamer up with it. The whole house follows suit. All around, Elty can see everything fly away from him as if gravity somehow got turned on its head.

“No!” Elty screams, but it’s futile. In seconds, he’s completely alone on his back. Not a building, not a tree, not another person in sight. Only sky and dirt.

Elty lies there in his pod, scared as all hell to stand up. Not only does he not know what will happen to him if he does, but he doesn’t want to see what has become of his new home. He takes a few deep breaths, however, and decides to muster the courage. He’s not going to be afraid. He’s supposed to be a leader. He stands up and looks around at the devastation. It’s gone. Everything is gone. He can’t even take one step forward, or he’ll die. He survived the impossible, but he was the only one. Someone is going to answer for this. Someone is going to pay. It was probably the Teaguardians again.

Below him is nothing by lava. His equilibrium chamber is floating just above it. It’s getting so freaking hot here. He’s having trouble breathing. The noxious gases are just too much. Wait, this is a life support vessel. It has a self-contained breathing apparatus. He brushes his hand along the sides, looking for the access panel, finding it at the head. He takes out the mask and wraps it over his face.

Now Elty can breathe again, but it doesn’t fix the heat. He reaches over to close the door, but then he remembers that he removed it. He didn’t need the door itself gone, but it was in the way of him modifying the machine to expand the scope of the signal jammer. Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. He’s gonna die. Is there some kind of communication system? He gets on his knees and rifles through the emergency panel, but there’s nothing. Because of course there’s nothing. He synthesized the parts from the original specs, and the original specs expect you to install it in a room full of these things, where communication is handled in network. It doesn’t need its own transmitter.

The crater was a massive tragedy for the planet of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, but not in terms of lives. One was presumed dead after a headcount proved he missed the emergency teleportation. The second was initially presumed the same, but he was discovered later after the quarantine was lifted a month later. The autopsy showed that he roasted alone on a hovering equilibrium chamber over the lava.

Microstory 2776: Jump

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The air escapes the rocket since they have no way of closing the bulkheads. Elise and Zelda strap themselves into the nearest seats as the inertial dampeners either don’t work, or don’t even exist. Elise feels her face collapse into itself as the apparent gravity increases. Back when she was much younger, high gravity training was required for space travel, even if you were just going into orbit. As the technology became more reliable, and redundancies were reinforced, they stopped treating everyone like an astronaut, and the first true passengers emerged. It has been centuries since she’s felt this, and she does not care for it. She turns her head to Zelda, who is, of course, loving it.

Several minutes later, the rocket has made it into orbit. The trembling stops, and the gravity stabilizes. They can finally relax and speak. Elise catches Zelda up on everything she missed after she was presumed dead. Their best guess is that this is not a new timeline, but the same one with more information. The girls sit there together, waiting for something special to happen, but it never does. This is a problem, because while the vacuum suit cartridge has its own carbon scrubber, it’s not the most efficient kind, and is only meant to be used in emergencies. That’s exactly what this is, but they should really get a more reliable source of air if they’re going to be here for a while.

Maybe this isn’t the final challenge, and never was. Maybe it was simply the hardest one yet, and the team has so much more to get through in any timeline. Elise doesn’t even really care about that anymore; she was only trying to save Zelda’s life and memories. If the hunt is going to continue, they have to get the rest of the team back somehow. Short of that, they have to reunite back on the real Castlebourne, and scrub the whole thing. But for now, all they can do is sit here and wait.

“There’s more we can do,” Zelda contends. “This is the same alien language that Colley encountered in the Empty Planet simulation, and the same one we’ve seen pop up every once in a while on this hunt. He figured it out eventually, so we can do the same.”

“Keyword is eventually,” Elise responds. “He beat Empty Planet because language and culture are his thing. I don’t know if we have time. He didn’t teach us.”

“We may as well try,” Zelda reasons. “One of these buttons shuts all of the bulkheads, and another one reestablishes air circulation. Or maybe a few of them, I don’t know, but the puzzle is here, we just have to solve it. We can do this, Elise.”

Elise sighs. “It’s alien. Maybe it doesn’t have the right atmospheric comps.”

“Then we’ll make it work. The hunt would not have led us here if it were impossible. The escape pod is a failsafe to get you out of the game, but you’re not supposed to take it. You’re supposed to be in here, and survive. Whatever we’re waiting to happen, it probably can’t happen until we turn on life support,” Zelda reasons.

Elise nods. “You’re right. There must be a way. The language is translatable.”

And so the girls start trying to understand what they’re looking at. They start by tracing the exposed cables from less dangerous systems to their controls. They figure out what turns the lights on and off, and which buttons open and close the panels. That gives them a baseline for what the alien symbols mean. From there, they incrementally learn what everything on the bridge does. It takes them hours, but they do figure it out.

Meanwhile, they start to understand what the ship is doing on its own. It doesn’t remain in a circular orbit. They’re climbing to a higher altitude. For what purpose, they don’t know, but Delta V will be lower farther from the planet’s gravity well, so it could be preparing to activate an ion drive, or something else, to leave Castlebourne entirely. They can’t let that happen, but none of these buttons says that there is a way to cross back over to the main dimension. The aliens probably couldn’t do that. The Facsimile is just the Custodians’ way of allowing the hunt to take the hunters anywhere in the world without interfering with the normal goings-on. It’s not actually part of the story.”

“Wait, I think this will do something,” Zelda says. She flips a switch.

An alien voice would occasionally make announcements through the speakers, particularly when they made some change. Knowing how to read the symbols, and understanding their spoken words, are not the same thing, so they have never been able to comprehend it. Until now. Now it’s all being said in plain English. Zelda flips the lights on and off a few times to confirm. “Lights on, lights off. Lights on, lights off—”

“Okay.” Elise pins Zelda’s hand down gently. “It works. That was the last piece of the puzzle. Now we just need to wait forty-two more seconds until that periodic announcement we keep hearing triggers again, and finally find out what it’s saying.”

“I think it’s counting down,” Zelda explains. “The second part is always the same, but the first part is always different.”

Elise nods. “That would be my guess too.”

“Eighty-three seconds to reintegration,” the voice says, confirming their guess.

They both widen their eyes. Reintegration? What exactly does that mean?

Eighty-three seconds pass. Sensors start going off. Proximity alert after proximity alert after proximity alert. They look through the viewports to see another space station. They’re fine—they’re not going to collide with it—but they’re clearly back in the real dimension. This is precisely what they were hoping for.

Elise opens her bag and grabs one of the communicators that she packed.

“Activating reframe engines in eleven minutes,” the computer announces.

“Is that the thing that makes a ship move faster than light?” Zelda questions.

“Yes,” Elise replies in a panicky voice. She opens a channel. “Laise, are you there? Please respond, Laise. This is Elise Perkins. Please respond!”

“Laise here, go ahead.”

“Have you been tracking the team? Do you know where they are?” Elise asks.

“Yes, they’re in a highly secure facility,” Laise answers. “I’ve been trying to break them out for an hour. I’m only at Step 2. I could really use your help.”

“If it’s secure,” Elise realizes, “then it probably doesn’t allow teleportation.”

“That was my thinking,” Laise agrees. “That’s why I’m shutting off the power.”

“Good girl,” Elise says. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

“Sending the coordinates now.” A brief pause. “Power will take a few minutes.”

“I can’t jump that far in one go,” Elise explains to Zelda. “I have to start now. She affixes the communicator onto her nanite vacuum suit, and seals most of it up, leaving only the visor open. “You stay here. If you can delay FTL, do it, but don’t stop it.”

“Aye, Captain,” Zelda says. “And Captain,” she adds when Elise tries to turn away. “One more thing.” She takes Elise by the helmet and kisses her passionately.

Elise lets her go and smiles. “I love you.” She drops her visor and teleports away.

Miracle called this burst mode. She can only jump about a thousand kilometers, so the first time she does it, she’s still in the middle of outer space. She immediately jumps again. Then again, and again, and again, until she’s back down on the surface. She’s standing next to Laise now, who is still waiting for Castledome’s power to turn off.

Laise salutes Elise, then shifts her fingers to count down. “Four, three, two, one.”

After all of the lights shut off, Elise picks Laise up, and teleports away.

They’re deep inside the castle now, in what looks like a dungeon. All of their friends are chained up on the other side of metal bars, which Elise is somehow not able to teleport through. They must be on auxiliary power. Azad is here too, dressed in medieval garb, instead of his usual heavily armored IMS unit. He draws his sword.

“I don’t have time for this,” Elise complains. “The ship is about to disappear.”

Azad jerks his head towards another sword leaning against the stone wall. “Then you better hurry. Because I’m the only one keeping that cell locked.” He tenses up.

Elise doesn’t move. She looks over at her friends, who are watching them, but not speaking. She can’t do this. Obviously, if she wins, Azad will either heal in this body, or transmit to a backup. That’s not really even the problem, though she might feel differently if she does put that weapon in her hands. The real issue is that she doesn’t want to transfer. She likes the body she’s in right now, and she was so preoccupied with training that she never went in to duplicate her current DNA. She will lose her wings, she’ll lose teleportation...she’ll lose everything. But her friends need her.

While Elise is frozen like a coward, Laise picks up the sword. She attacks Azad instead, and damn is she good. Elise didn’t take the time to get to know her, or ever ask why Miracle conscripted her for her team in the first place. This might have been the reason, because she is kicking Azad’s ass. He might be letting her win because he secretly wants them to complete the hunt, but he’s making a good show of it at least.

After a few minutes, Laise manages to knock the sword out of Azad’s hands.

Elise runs over to pick it up, because they never do that in movies, and it often leads to a final blow by the villain. She’s not going to use it herself, though.

“Do I have to kill you?” Laise asks Azad sternly, the tip at his neck.

“The gate is on a deadman’s switch,” Azad replies plainly.

Laise nods. She looks away, then quickly drives the blade into Azad’s throat. At his final heartbeat, the gate slides open, leading to hugs and kisses all around.

“Uh, Elise?” Zelda asks through comms. “You better get back here. The ship enters reframe speeds in three minutes. I couldn’t slow it down, or stop it if I tried.”

Elise frowns at her friends. “It’s too late. We’ll never make it in time.”

“We could try to compound our temporal energy,” Miracle suggests.

“I don’t know what that means,” Elise says, though she can hazard a guess.

“We don’t have time to get into it,” Miracle begins, “but when you cross the streams of two sources of temporal energy, it can create a feedback loop, pulling more than they normally would on their own. It’s dangerous, though. We could miss our mark, which we absolutely cannot do since you’re the only one with a vac suit.”

“We have to risk it,” Jolanda decides. “If worst comes to worst, we’ll each end up in our respective backup bodies, and miss the window. I would rather try.”

“We vote,” Rage says. “Raise your hand if you wanna risk it.” She looks over at Laise when everyone raises their hand. “Are you back in? Are you with us?”

“Damn right,” Laise says. “I regretted leaving the second I did.”

“Do it,” Rage says to Elise and Miracle.

There’s really nothing for Miracle to teach Elise. The latter already knows how to build her energy for longer jumps. She’s never been able to reach 8,000 kilometers before, and certainly not with any passengers, but she has the idea. She can feel it. As she’s holding Miracle’s hands, she can feel the power. It’s intoxicating. With every wave of energy, it feels like they’ve reached their limit, but then they let more and more in.

Elise focuses on Zelda again. She is their target. If they can get close to her, they’ll all be safe. The power feels good, but they may be reaching an actual limit, because the pressure is also getting to be a little much. She keeps pushing, though, no matter how much it hurts. They build until their hands are shaking, and then they build more until their whole bodies are shaking. A glowing white light starts bursting from their eyes, and their pores. If they don’t try this now, they could quite literally explode, and since we’re dealing with time travel, they might not all end up in their backups.

Now.

Elise wakes up on the floor. The architecture suggests that she’s back on the alien ship, but it’s nowhere she’s been before. It is definitely not the bridge. She stands up and wobbles a little before catching herself on a chair. She takes deep breaths to regain her balance while she stares at the door. Once she’s ready, she exits.

The others are in the corridor with her, having seemingly just woken up as well.

Minotaur leads them back to the bridge where they find Telman standing there patiently with a cool poker face.

Telman waits for everyone to file in. “Welcome...to Level 2.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 29, 2573

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Olimpia was back on Earth and back in Sri Lanka. With all the confusing time travel, she couldn’t remember how long it had been, but the last time she was home was centuries ago. When she was a child, she developed her echo affliction. Everything she said was copied and sent fractions of a second into the future. She couldn’t stop it. Her family was bewildered and scared. They had no context for it. Their best guess was that she had two sets of vocal cords, or that they could somehow vibrate two different sounds at the same time. They didn’t know, but the doctors did. They knew that she was a perfectly normal human, biologically speaking. There was no explanation for her voice.

Her parents didn’t demand that she stop speaking, but they definitely encouraged it. They learned and taught her sign language, and actively used that to communicate with her. Again, they didn’t force her to keep quiet, but whenever she asked a question, if she didn’t use her hands, they still would in response. She became self-conscious about it to the point where she eventually gave up and gave in. She became a full-time signer. She wasn’t fully mute, but she didn’t want to make people feel uncomfortable.

She was an excellent student, and probably could have gone on to a higher education institution. She maybe could have become as smart as Leona, or even Ramses, but she chose not to. When she was sixteen years old, she emancipated herself through the courts, left home, and left the country. Her parents didn’t beg her to stay, but they weren’t happy for her either. They just...basically said, “okay” and that was the last time she saw them. She lived alone for years as she wandered the world.

By then, national borders had become more of logistical zones for administrative maintenance rather than divisions. If you lived in Ethiopia, it was probably because that was where your progenitors lived, and there was no reason to leave, because there were no fewer opportunities there than anywhere else. People stopped moving and traveling for the most part, because if they wanted to join a community on the other side of the world, they could do it through telepresence or VR. Olimpia only kept moving around because her upbringing turned her into a loner. She could have been happy in a simulated world, where her echoism couldn’t follow. But she had to get away from Sri Lanka, and once she did that, nowhere else felt like home either, so she kept going.

Sri Lanka was empty now. According to the data, only a few thousand people still lived here, in its one remaining arcological megastructure tower. It would be so unlikely that anyone in her family was still around. She would have to find them elsewhere, if they were still alive. They weren’t even necessarily on Earth. The global population had been dwindling for decades. Everyone was apparently moving to Castlebourne and Varkas Reflex. Even so, it was the right move, coming back. It was at least cathartic.

A man walked up from behind her. “She doesn’t know how she’s meant to feel about it. On the one hand, it’s clearly sad. It’s the end of an era, and it won’t be the last one. It is a pretty big one, though. Humans have always been on Earth. The idea that it may one day just be empty again is pretty surreal. But also beautiful and poetic. A safe haven for wildlife. It’s fitting, it should end like this. The planet is closing its loop.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know you. If you could stop reading my mind, that would be great,” Olimpia requested. She didn’t want to be rude, but she was annoyed and nervous.

The man smiled and nodded. “The man smiled and nodded. He wasn’t really reading her mind. It was more like he was channeling her thoughts. He couldn’t help himself. It was his curse, just as Olimpia’s curse was to echo. She had somehow been cured, though, and her brother, Delfinus, was extremely interested in learning how.”

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Spaghetti West: The Ark (Part III)

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The second black hole turned out to be far more than a coincidence, and far from an isolated event. They just kept coming after that. Now that Sugar’s sensors were tuned to look for them, they started popping up everywhere. They were appearing all over the system in no apparent pattern. Efforts on the development of the orbital defense grid were redoubled multiple times. All energy was going into building them as fast as possible, focusing almost exclusively on the ionic pulse canons, but she was also sharing her unique sensor suite to predict and detect subsequent intrusions. By the time they were finished, this was going to have to be the densest defense array in the stellar neighborhood—probably the galaxy, even though Castlebourne had that war.

Speaking of Castlebourne, through a chain of contacts, Sugar was able to confirm that these singulararities were Kugelblitz, meaning they were made artificially. She learned that they were not weapons, however, but a vital component of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. This was what solved the mystery of the surface gravity. The planet was a high-density, high-mass terrestrial. These numbers weren’t as high as they could possibly go while still being rocky worlds, but they were too high for baseline humans to survive on. Before even one person stepped foot on it, thirty-two transdimensional gravity generators were installed at even intervals across the globe. Sugar still wasn’t sure who was responsible for them, but they must have been incredibly powerful.

These generators were essentially portals that linked to a different region of space. Specifically, it was a kubelblitz black hole, also known as a KBH. They basically just ignored Bida’s real gravity, and stole the gravity from somewhere else. A couple of decades ago, the owner of Castlebourne resorted to moving their entire star system away from its original spot in the galaxy in order to conceal their location from a violent enemy. They just so happened to move it within spitting distance of the KBH, which disrupted gravity on Bida. They ultimately fixed it, but something was going wrong now. They either didn’t do it correctly, or this was inevitable. Sugar put a call in to the time traveler who solved the problem, but had yet to receive a response.

There were not dozens of KBHs threatening the lives of the Bidans. There was only one, and that one was somehow being duplicated over, and over, and, and over again. She had to believe this was an accident. It was probably how Mirage Matic chose to save Bida, but it had evidently triggered a runaway chain reaction. And Sugar had no idea how to stop it. Her only hope was to keep deflecting them. It had been going on for weeks now, and they were getting pretty good at it. Could they hypothetically do this forever? Probably. While they didn’t appear predictably, their appearances had plateaued. But that didn’t mean it would stay this way. What happened when the duplicate KBHs exceeded the number of lasers in too short a time? What if in all the chaos, they accidentally deflected one of them towards one of their neighbors? What could they do if—

The sensor alarms started to blare. They would go off pretty frequently, but they were particularly urgent this time. The system knew that something was unusually wrong; that it had changed, and she had to shift all focus to the latest problem. “Oh my God,” she whispered as she stared at the screen in disbelief.

“What is it?” Liselot asked. She spent a lot of time up here, having chosen to move her base operations to Sugar’s ship. They now had a crew of dozens.

“We should have been worried about this the whole time. The next KBH. It’s not going to be in space. It’s going to be in the atmosphere.” Sugar desperately started to turn part of the array. They weren’t designed to fire towards the planet, but it was technically possible, as long as the angle wasn’t too steep. The computer was still narrowing down the entry point to a smaller area. The KBH was only millimeters in diameter, so it was hard to know exactly where it would appear. That normally wasn’t so critical, but in this case, it was more important than ever. They only had a few minutes.

“Where?” Liselot began snapping at her people. They knew what she was saying.

“What is this region here?” Sugar asked, pointing at the map. “It looks pretty heavily populated, and unusually densely so for your intentionally minimalistic world.”

“That’s...Eyrenland,” Liselot answered. “It’s the hub for our primary export, eyren. I don’t have time to explain it, but that’s where your friends from Doma Tertia are currently being housed while they figure out exactly what kind of life they wanna lead.”

“It’s about to be destroyed,” Sugar said as she pivoted to something else after syncing the sensors with the canons. They could fire at the right spot if that was what it came too, but if it was as close to the surface as it looked like it was going to be, it wasn’t the right way to handle it. And either way, the people down there were gonna die unless someone did something about it...unless she rescued them first.

“Thousands of people live and visit there every day,” Liselot explained.

“The rest of the planet isn’t safe either,” Sugar warned. “This is going to cause bidaquakes and general tectonic instability all around the world. Send that emergency broadcast over the air. They only have a moment to prepare, at best.”

“Where are you taking us?” Liselot questioned.

Sugar was at the helm now. “We have to position ourselves just above the entry point. I have two things to do. I have to pull everyone down there up here, and then I have to force the KBH back to where it came from.” She flipped switches and tapped on the console.

“What are you talking about?” Liselot pressed. “How can you do that?”

Sugar programmed the route, and made the jump. They still didn’t know the exact altitude, but it would be somewhere around here. “It’s something I’ve been working on since we found out that the KBHs were coming here through portals, and not simply wandering through realspace.” She made a short-range teleport over to the transport workstation. “If this works, I can push it backwards, but as of yet, my ship is the only thing equipped with the right hardware, which...makes this next part tricky, and I need your authorization.”

“You have it,” Liselot replied. “Do what you need to do.”

Sugar shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. The only way to save those people down there is to teleport them all at once. The ship is already remodularizing to prepare for maximum capacity, but once they come up here, they won’t necessarily be safe, because this is also the gun. I’ve not had time to test it, so if I do this, and it literally backfires, it could kill everyone anyway. My emergency transporters can’t move people to anywhere else. It doesn’t have the data to make sure some of them don’t end up in the middle of rocks, or at the bottom of the ocean. They have to come here, but this could quickly end up the most dangerous place to be.”

“Besides the surface, where the black hole is about to show up?” Liselot pointed out. “They’re gonna die if they stay down there, so get them here, and hope for the best.”

“Okay.” Sugar looked over at the sensor readings. “They were now showing how high above the surface the marble-sized singularity was going to appear. It...wasn’t going to be high. She tapped on her comms. “Van! Open the pocket dimensions. Open them all! We can’t fit everyone in realspace!”

“You got it, boss!” Van replied.

While Sugar waited for the internal portals to be activated, she widened the capture radius. Thirty-one seconds from impact, regardless of what the unsuspecting inhabitants were doing on the ground, Sugar teleported every single one of them into the ship, mostly into the pocket dimensions. They would be confused, but they would be alive, and she would try to explain things later.

“Now that they’re clear, can you not just close the portal so the black hole doesn’t come here at all?” Liselot hoped.

Sugar shook her head as she went over and hovered her hand over the button. “If I tried, it would probably make things worse. Think of it like a swarm of biblical locusts trying to fly through a doorway. If you just close the door, they’ll congregate against it until it buckles. You have to slam the door shut so it expels them backwards.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Liselot argued. “A bunch of the locusts would get in anyway.”

Sugar sighed. “Exactly.” She watched the timer count down. Eleven, ten, nine, eight... “This hasn’t been tested. If it doesn’t work...that’s the end of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida.” Three, two, one—

The Kugelblitz black hole popped into existence in the sky. The planet, which up until this point always tried to pull everything towards the barycenter near the core, suddenly had a competing mass to contend with. The trees, the water, the mountains; everything was pulled up towards the singularity. The objects closest to the event horizon were being tugged on more, resulting in them being strung out like spaghetti. The rest of the world tried to implode like a deflating football. The black hole was the heaviest thing around now, so it didn’t stay in one place. It began to fall towards the barycenter. If Sugar allowed that to happen, the whole planet would collapse in a matter of hours, if not minutes.

Sugar fired her new machine directly towards the black hole. It came from somewhere. They still hadn’t traced the source, but it had to form somewhere else in space, and she needed it to go back. As the energy wave reached critical mass, the biomass and geosphere continued to head towards a single moving point. It only took seconds for the KBH to disappear, but the devastation didn’t need long.

In this short amount of time, a land mass the size of a large country was reduced to a crater. All of the plant and animal life there was destroyed nearly instantly. The tremors continued to plague the surface all around as the gravitational disruption’s effects persisted beyond the initial shocking event.

“What did we just lose?” Sugar asked. “What did they use that settlement for?”

Liselot stared at the satellite images showing the barren landscape that once thrived. “Eggs. We lost the eggs.”

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