The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 26, 2570

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Everyone was depressed after Romana was locked up. How had things spiraled so quickly, how did they miss the signs, and how were they going to get through this? Romana was comfortable in the VIP holding block, but she couldn’t leave, and keeping her there was only making her angrier. They would have to let her out eventually, but no one knew when. The elephant in the room was whether they would ever forgive her, and whether she would apologize for her own actions. It was complicated, because while many of her choices were clearly wrong—forcing them to go on missions against their will, and misappropriating dangerous equipment—was the end result wrong? Did she not deserve to be happy? More importantly, did Boyd 3.0 not deserve to live?

“Lock me up forever,” Boyd suggested when Mateo had no more options but to ask him for his own opinion on all this. No one else knew of a solution.

“We can’t. You’ve not broken any laws, and it’s not sustainable,” Mateo argued.

“I don’t have to have broken laws,” Boyd reasoned. “You’re thinking very much like a 21st century boy. Legal quarantine doesn’t always happen as punishment for something you’ve already done. Unlike in your time, it is entirely plausible that a dangerous entity’s first criminal act is genocide. Humans need time and experience to escalate their behavior. A rogue intelligence might skip right to complete annihilation, if only due to a missing proverbial semicolon in their code.

“Don’t get me wrong, you’re not living in a dystopia. They don’t just throw people in jail left, right, and center. You have to prove that they’re a danger to life and peace, but that proof doesn’t have to come from an irreversible past tragedy anymore. I’m too much of a wildcard. I must be dealt with.”

“It’s big of you to be saying all this,” Mateo admitted.

“Again, you’re thinking of a human. I’m not asking to die. I will live as long as you, if not longer. Virtual quarantine is considered the most humane response to an existential threat. Once the longevity escape velocity progressed into virtual immortality, life sentences became nearly entirely meaningless. What if the individual requires persistent longevity treatments? Are they entitled to those? Or is it better to let them die, rather than torturing them with an eternity of imprisonment? What if they were constructed out of code from minute one? Is it possible to kill them, or is it no different than deleting a blurry photo from your camera roll? What if they want to die?

“The legal system decided that the nuance was too much to bear, so they came up with the best singular answer for extreme cases. You keep them in an airgapped environment, where they’re free to do whatever they want, even if it’s destructive, because they can’t actually gain access to base reality, or other virtual worlds.”

“They stay there forever?” Mateo questioned. “Many law-abiding citizens live like that already. Most crabitat owners don’t ever visit networked simulations.”

Boyd nodded. “Yes, that’s why it’s humane, because it’s not about punishment. It’s about removing them from where they can do harm to anyone but an NPC.”

“It sounds like there’s no rehabilitation in this method. Is that an option?”

Boyd’s face dropped a little. “Not really. Hyperintelligences are more difficult to trust than baseline humans, believe it or not. Of course people like you are capable of deception, it happens all the time. That’s why recidivism is a legal term. But over time, you can learn to trust in a human’s future actions by their past and current ones. Something made of code, regardless of their origin, might end up with a bad over-the-air update which causes them to snap one day. And it will be completely unpredictable.”

“This is all sounding pretty dystopian to me,” Mateo pointed out.

“Some see it that way,” Boyd acknowledged. “There are alternatives but they take effort. A current proposal is that you can use a separate intelligence to audit every single character in a rogue intelligence’s code to track aberrations. This governor intelligence would keep an eye on them as they receive updates, upgrades, and interact with other code. But that comes with its own philosophical questions. What if the governor itself breaks? What if its charge actually corrupts its governor. Their systems have to interact, after all. And is it morally right to scrutinize independent beings like this? What does that mean for privacy? Is this not simply prison in a different form factor?”

Mateo frowned. “I didn’t realize how complex the universe was now. Everything people have been saying is that it’s more simple. You don’t have competing machines that do the same thing because information is shared and distributed, so everyone has the best model. But there’s all this underlying structure that I didn’t realize.”

Boyd nodded in agreement. “Possibilities are now endless, both good and bad. You have to do this. And you can’t have Ramses construct his own quarantine. It obviously failed when he tried that before. We need institutional insulation, and that can only be found in one place. Well, it’s only other planets, but these guys do it the best.”

“Where would that be?” Mateo asked.

“The virtual reality capital of the galaxy,” Boyd answered, “Varkas Reflex.”

“Makes sense. It’s a big rock. There could be an entire continent dedicated to it.”

Boyd chuckled. “It’s not quite that big. For the most part, crime isn’t much of a thing anymore. If it is, it’s generally beyond the stellar neighborhood, and they have their own laws. We don’t wanna be in the wild west. We want redundancies.”

“I’ll call a meeting,” Mateo decided with a heavy sigh.

“No, you have to do this on your own,” Boyd insists. “No one can know until after it’s done. Romana will forgive you...eventually. Not everyone is that safe.”

“I can’t go on my own. I mean, I could, but then I couldn’t come back.”

“There are ways,” Boyd says. “I won’t tell you, but I know you can figure it out. This won’t be the first time you have had to separate yourself from your family.”

Mateo didn’t use the base’s slingdrive to sling himself and Boyd to Varkas Reflex, but he did use its power. That way, there would be no trace of where he went, and no one could follow. As soon as he showed up, he dropped his name to the first workerbot he saw, who fed it up the pipeline where an old friend of Leona’s heard it. She came right away. She wasn’t in charge of the virtual quarantine sector specifically, but she had plenty of pull around here. She said she trusted Mateo’s judgment, and fast-tracked the process because knew that they would otherwise have to wait for an entire year.

Boyd was now leaning back in his upload chair, appearing calm and stoic. He didn’t look mad or vengeful, which was what Mateo was most worried about coming into this. He wasn’t sure he agreed with this form of imprisonment. It always left the door open for a return, not that the alternative was morally or ethically superior. Maybe it was a trick, though. Maybe Boyd set all this up because he knew of some way to escape it. Maybe Mateo was a fool by unilaterally deciding what would become of him. He chose to place his trust in someone he hadn’t always liked.

The upload was complete, the body was destroyed, and Mateo left. Without a slingdrive array to latch onto, there was no way back to Ramosus. He accepted a reframe ship which Loa lent him, and began the journey back to Earth.

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Extremus: Year 144

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It’s near the end of year 2413, so it’s been 24 years since the latest captain took the seat. Around this time people are expecting Waldemar to announce his successor. To quell the rumors, he has decided that he is indeed going to make an announcement, but for many, it won’t be what they expect. They’re not going to like it either. The original plan was to simply say nothing, and coast on the chair, but Waldemar keeps forgetting how inquisitive and curious people are. They want to know, and they want to know now. They’re about to find out that it’s not happening.

At one point, they were planning on holding this event in the grand auditorium, but they have decided against that. It’s too dangerous. Even though Waldemar has since taken steps to protect himself, he doesn’t want to give an assassin or an angry crowd the opportunity to attack. If they get mad, they’ll do it within the confines of their quarters. What they don’t know is that they will not be able to leave unless the AI security system detects that they’re friendly to the Captain.

He is sitting in front of the camera, preparing himself mentally for this. It’s not nerves or fear. He wouldn’t know how to feel those things. What he’s feeling is concern for the future. He doesn’t care for uncertainty. That doesn’t mean he’s gonna use time tech to see the future, but it does make him nervous. Hm...maybe he does feel that too.

At any rate, it’s time to get started. His inner circle is behind him, figuratively and literally. It’s important that the audience sees that he’s not alone in this, and that he will have people protecting him, even if it’s only these few dozen men. They will know what to do. “Begin recording,” he orders the camera. It’s already on a five-second delay. “My fellow Extremusians, I sit here before you, humble but powerful. For the last twenty-four years, I have led you into a period of unprecedented peace and personal success. I ended the war with the True Extremists using my covert away teams. I reformed the contribution point system so that all must work to help make this the greatest colony in the universe. I am not the most popular leader you have ever had, but your lives are better thanks to me and my administration.

“I know you’re all wondering who is going to pick up the reins next year. You’re confused, because no one appears to be on the shortlist. There’s a reason for that. Unlike my predecessors, I didn’t limit myself to the few who desperately wanted the job. I didn’t ask for a list of everyone graduating from the academy on the captain’s track. I looked at every single one of you. Everyone who would be at least 21 years old by January 1 was on the table. I didn’t even cap it at a maximum age.”

Waldemar approximates a smile. He’s not good at smiling because it’s an emotional response, but people know when that’s what he’s doing, and they’ve grown used to it by now, so it has the same effect as it would for a feeler. “That’s right. Nearly every adult had the chance to take my place. I was incredibly thorough. Unfortunately, I was unable to find anyone suitable for the job. I looked at that comprehensive list, and I looked at what still needs to be done to make Extremus great again, and I realized that there is only one person who can do what I do.” He clears his throat. “It is for this reason that I am respectfully declining to step down. Twenty-four years was always an arbitrary number. Every crew position here has changed the length of service according to new laws, except for this one, and I see no reason for it to remain an exception.

“I want to make it clear that I’m not declaring an authoritarian state. You are still represented by your civilian government. It is my job to run the crew, and protect the vessel itself from all threats. Your daily lives will not change...except for the better. I have the support of my advisors, most of the crew, the police, and the military. I ask that you remain calm during this non-transitional period. You do not have to do anything. But you do have to recognize that this was never a democracy. You never had any say in who would be your captain. I’m changing the rules because I am the only one here with the experience and vision to continue down the correct path.

“I am not guaranteeing twenty-four more years. I will step down when it is time; when I know that you’re going to be okay without me. And when I do, I will not be an admiral. That was a travesty of a tradition. Admiralcy is something that you earn. It’s not something that you should simply fall into at the end of your useful career. When I have accomplished all of the ship’s goals, someone will take over for me, but not a day sooner than that. In the coming week, I will be scheduling press conferences, interviews, forums, and debates, but I will not be changing my mind. Thank you.” He taps the correct finger gesture under the desk to shut off the camera.

“That was amazing, sir. You were brilliant,” Faramund points out.

The rest of his loyalists agree.

“Show me the unit feeds,” Waldemar orders, ignoring the compliments.

The big screen starts with an establishing shot of the entire ship from the outside. Quickly, the hulls, bulkheads, and walls begin to disappear. The new cameras he installed don’t just record what’s literally happening. They paint a broad image of the room. The AI can then compile all of these feeds into a collective video of what’s happening at the ship. It’s like opening a dollhouse, and viewing the cross-section, except it’s real and in realtime.

He was shockingly right about nothing changing about their daily lives. They’re barely concerned. He can’t hear what they’re saying specifically, since there are thousands of them, but the AI is providing him with a summary. They’re mostly apathetic about it. They don’t think it really matters. It’s not that they love him, but that they think no one else will be able to do a better job. Is that what he wants, for them to not care? He doesn’t want power for the sake of it. He wants prosperity. No, he wants prosperity and enthusiasm. His next term will have to be different. Now that he knows no one is going to stop him, he can definitely arrange that

One thing he forgot to explicitly mention is that laws aren’t simply something you write down, and expect people to follow forever. They’re fluid, they change, and if the people at the top want that change to happen, they shouldn’t have to cross out what someone wrote before, and write a new one. All they need to do is make sure everyone knows about it. They sure as hell know now. He clearly could have been more direct about it, though, because some of their comments suggest that they’re not sure how far this will go, and whether he is lying about their daily lives.

“You’re right, Tensil. If you say something with the sense of authority, people will either believe it, or believe that there’s nothing they can do to stop it. They’re not rioting, they’re not organizing. They’re not even calling each other to talk about it.”

“Is that what you wanted, sir...indifference?” Faramund presses.

“For now.” Waldemar stands up, straightens his uniform, and prepares to leave. Something catches his eye, though. The collective feed has been orbiting around the ship slowly and randomly. There’s one dark spot that he can’t see. It’s completely black. He points. “What’s this? Why can’t I see this?”

“Council chambers,” one of his sycophants explains. “The civil government didn’t allow us to install the cameras there due to the sensitive nature of their discussions.”

“Why am I getting the feeling that something in particular is happening in that room right now?” Waldemar asks. He sighs when someone tries to come up with an answer. “That was a rhetorical question.” He shakes his head and tries to teleport there.

He finds himself literally bouncing back, and falling on his ass against his desk. “I’m fine!” he shouts at the men who try to help him up. “There’s an anti-teleportation field around it, which shouldn’t be there, because I didn’t authorize it.”

“You can teleport to just outside the room and—”

“I know the trick, Tensil. I’m not an idiot. “Waldemar tries again, this time only trying to get close to his final destination, but again, he’s thrown back. This time, the men are able to break his fall, but it’s still humiliating. “Argh!”

“Sir, it’s really not that far. We could just walk. Or I can get you a hoverchair.”

“I’m not old!” Waldemar complains. “Just shut up and leave me alone!” He teleports away again, but this time to his stateroom.

Finally, this works. If he’s going to be forced away this time, it will remain private. He teleports yet again, trying to get close to the council chambers, but not even as close as he tried the second time. He falls down once more, but instead of boomeranging to his room, he ends up back in the speech room. Oh, someone is messing with him. When he finds out who, they’re gonna die. They’re literally gonna die.

“I’ll walk,” he says, holding a finger up before Tensil can reiterate what he said before, “but I’ll do it alone.” He looks back at his people. “Disperse.”

Waldemar steps out of the room and takes the long way through the corridors to the council chambers. An odd sensation emerges in his stomach. It feels like bugs are crawling around in there. No, more like dull knives. Is this nerves again? What the hell is wrong with him? He tries the door, fully expecting it to be locked, but it opens.

He walks to find that the entire council has convened. His girlfriend, Sable is standing on the dais. To her left is a screen. It’s currently paused on a frame showing his speech. No, it’s after his speech was done, when the camera should have been off. He’s mid-blink, but due to his advanced age, his right eyelid always falls ever so slightly faster, making it look like he’s trying to wink here. Sable obviously did that on purpose. “What is the meaning of this? You knew I was giving a speech. Why meet today?”

“We’re here to discuss the future of the ship,” some dumb bitch council chairperson says.

“That’s what I was trying to do, as you can see. Again, why did you schedule it for the same time?”

“We were watching your speech,” the chairperson goes on. “We have not completed the vote, but enough have voiced their concern that I’m confident in the way it will turn out. Captain Waldemar Kristiansen, you will be free to continue as captain of this ship for as long as you are able. Your job will be to remain on the bridge, and supervise the monitoring crew. You will have no jurisdiction over the rest of the crew, nor anyone else on the ship. You say laws can be changed? Well, you’re right, they can be, and they are. This is a civilian vessel now. You have no authority here.”

Waldemar sneers at Sable. “You did this. You orchestrated all of it.”

“You’re out, Waldy. Buh-bye.” She gives him the old four-finger baby wave.

He points aggressively. “I’m fighting you on this. It may turn violent.”

Sable sports that evil grin she usually only does in bed. “Bring it on, honey.”

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Microstory 2760: Heave Ho

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The way Laise described the traditional means of lifting a sunken ship sounded exhausting and time-consuming. Their ancestors would have sunken barrels and tied them to the bottom. To make them buoyant, they would push buckets down and transfer air pockets little by little until the last barrel was enough to lift the boat. They didn’t have time for that. They had no freshwater, and as it turns out, no food. The barrels weren’t airtight. Each had a hole on the side, presumably to let air through, but when the boat sank, they all flooded with seawater. Most of the fruit had spoiled before they even showed up. The coconuts were okay. They floated on their own, so once that barrel was opened, they were easy pickings. That was what they ate during their break periods.

The first thing they did was rip all of the heavy metal and other unnecessary pieces off of the vessel. They pushed them over the side, and let them drop down to the shelf that the boat was on. This made it as light as it could possibly be.

After clearing the spoiled fruit mush, they tied ropes around the barrels one at a time, and created a makeshift pulley system around the bulwark and other parts. Then they stood on the crow’s nest and pulled the barrel up. Once it was on the surface and full of air, they closed it back up and plugged the bunghole securely. Now they had to reverse the process, which was even harder. The air-filled barrel wanted to float, so five of them had to stand on—or even hang off of—the crow’s nest. That was as many as they could fit before they ran out of leverage. The sixth person freedove down with the barrel, and held it in place so it didn’t wobble around like a watermelon.

While the pullers tied off the rope to hold it in place, the freediver came back up to recapture air for themselves. Then they would go back down with the seventh person to tie the barrel to the bulwark, and untie the original rope. Each barrel took about an hour, factoring in break times and errors. They were so tired, blistered, achey, hungry even with the coconuts, and absolutely thirsty. Rain would make their job harder, but it would at least give them something to drink to survive another day. They were able to learn from their mistakes and get into a good rhythm, but they were also losing energy with each one, so they never ultimately sped up the process. It took them two days to get through the lifting phase, but man was it worth it. As soon as that sixteenth barrel was in place, before the pulley rope could even be removed, the boat let go of the shelf, and rose. The people who were on the crow’s nest all jumped off to make it that much lighter, and watched the mast fly up above them. It was  glorious to behold.

Now the boat is close enough to the surface to stand without drowning. It’s still totally filled with water, but bailing it out will be the easy part. At least they think it will. They obviously start with the wet deck, which is the most appropriate term for it today. They think it’s going pretty well. Some water is splashing back in since the surface is so close to the railing, but it seems to be working. Then they realize their mistake. The boat didn’t simply sink on its own. There must be damage. Sure enough, when they swim down to a small storage room, they find the hole. It’s not particularly big, but it has to be patched first. That isn’t even their biggest problem, though. They’re about to tip.

“Three people on starboard side and three people to port side!” Rage orders.

Five of them run to one while Elise is alone on the other. Rage stays in the center.

Rage points. “That’s starboard, and that’s port. Minotaur, Zelda, join Elise. Okay. The water is out but the boat is unstable. Does anyone have any idea why?”

Jolanda raises her hand. “I don’t have any sailing experience, but I’ve been on more than one boat. One thing they all have in common is this thing called a ballast. You don’t actually want it to be super light, unless it’s a speedboat or jetski. You want some weight to keep it in the water so you don’t tip over. Modern boats use water itself. Don’t quote me on this, but I believe in the olden times, they used metal.”

Rage looks over at the water. “We just sank our metal to make it lighter.”

“I did not want to do a seventeenth barrel,” Minotaur contends. “Dumping our heaviest stuff was the right call. We just need to bring some of it back up. I wouldn’t mind having some chains anyway. Chains come in handy in mazes all the time.”

“Well, I’m glad we dumped everything onto the shelf, instead of the depths.” Rage sighs and centers herself. “Okay. We did this once, we can do it again. Zelda, Colley, please stay on the boat on opposite sides to maintain balance. Hopefully that will be enough. The rest of us need to get in the water so we don’t literally rock the boat.”

“Our pulley rope has been through quite a bit by now,” Laise says. “I don’t think it’s gonna make it. It might snap. We need to use a different rope.”

“We don’t have more rope,” Rage points out. “We’ve already snapped two.”

Elise looks up. “Take it from the sail. It’s long enough that we can double up and distribute the stress. Then we’ll put it back up where it belongs.”

“So many concessions and compromises,” Rage laments. “Very well. Do it.”

So they add another phase to the work even though they thought they were done. They pull up the bars and grates, but they leave the cannons. Their combined strength isn’t enough to make that happen, and the rope probably isn’t strong enough either. They’re into their third day before they feel like they’re ready to learn the ropes, so to speak. Laise knows some history of sailing, as does Colley, but none of them knows how to sail. They spend the rest of the day trying to figure it out methodically. They still don’t have any regular water, but they’ve been drinking coconut water, and it won’t matter how long it takes to find land if they sink or crash before they even get there. It’s smarter to take their time, and do this right. Everyone is drained, but they’re not stopping.

“We don’t even know where we’re meant to go,” Minotaur reasons. “I’m not used to that. I mean, of course I’m used to being lost, but I always have something to orient myself. This dome has a diameter of 3,300 kilometers, and we could be in the very center of it. Sure, if we sail in one direction, we’ll eventually hit the wall, but that’s assuming we don’t die of thirst, starvation, or exposure before then. Everything else is ocean or an island, and those are notoriously hard to target, even with a map.”

“I have a map.” Jolanda is climbing up from below deck holding a piece of paper.

Colley doesn’t have to ask, she hands it to him. He examines it a little before looking up at the sky. “We’re gonna need to orient ourselves again. For that, we need the stars back.” He returns to the map. “Narratively, I know where this thing set sail, and I know where it’s going, but it may have gotten knocked off course. Even if it didn’t, I have no idea how far the original crew supposedly made it before they sank.”

“Rest up,” Rage instructs. “We set sail tonight. Once again, I hope it rains.”

It doesn’t rain, but that night, they are given an opportunity to find out what happened to the original crew when their ghosts appear. Or they’re zombies, or something else like that, because they can make physical contact with the living. That’s exactly what they do by attacking too, because as one might expect, they were pirates.

Microstory 2759: Sunk Cost

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Elise is the last person to emerge from the depths. She practically begged one of the other hunters to come with them, but they refused. They said they didn’t want this anymore, and would be finding a way back or out. The implication was that they would kill themselves, but Elise didn’t ask any more questions. It is not her job to protect strangers. Suicide isn’t impossible these days, but it’s much harder for most than it used to be. A version of them will survive out there somewhere unless they don’t want it to.

So she went into the fountain behind the others. She didn’t have to put any effort into swimming. It was like the water sucked her down before pushing her back out at full speed. It was really hot for a minute there too. Now she’s in the torrent of the open water with no land in sight. She appears to be completely alone.

She feels a pair of hands on her chest. “Elise! We thought you were lost!”

Elise can’t even tell who it is amidst the chaos of the storm raging above them. She turns around to find Colley. “Where are we? Where are the others?” she cries.

“Get on my back!” he shouts back. “We found something!”

After she climbs on and straddles his hips, he breaststrokes away. They end up traveling pretty far. It’s a wonder, really, how he managed to find her at all.

At last, she sees the others. They’re huddled together, and staying together, which must mean they’re holding onto something. It’s too dark to see it. Only when Colley pulls her right up and helps her get a handhold does she realize where she is. Or she can guess, anyway. It appears to be the crow’s nest of some kind of wooden ship. Minotaur and the Bidan girl are standing in it, on either side of the pole thing. Everyone else is holding onto the railing thing so they at least don’t have to waste energy treading.

The irony is that Elise was just about to start learning how to sail one week after Rage found her in Skilldome. She saw underwater basketweaving as a cute transition to it. After she mastered a regular basket, she was intending to weave a model of a ship, and then she would take it with her to the docks. It was going to be this whole thing. To be fair, she was going to learn 21st century sailing at first, and only maybe make her way down the centuries after that, but it doesn’t matter, because now she knows nothing. It’s a pole thing and a railing thing until someone tells her exactly what they’re called.

They spend hours there, because there’s nothing else they can do. Before Elise arrived, Zelda reportedly climbed up to the very tippy-top to get a look around, but the waves were too big and the moon too obscured by clouds. There are some waterfronts in Treasure Hunting Dome. There are plenty of challenges to be completed involving the water. But it doesn’t have anything like this. Elise knows that because Rage made them memorize as much of the layout of the dome as is publicly available. You need space to make the kind of storm and angry sea that they’re dealing with right now, and where they were before simply doesn’t have it. But two domes have exactly that. One is called Polar Tropica. It’s a gargantuan resort. The other...is Aquilonian Deep.

Miracle must not have been lying. Time travel is real, and they just came out of a portal. They didn’t simply jump into the fountain and sink to another level of Treasure Hunting Dome, or even the next dome over. They were sent halfway across the planet in the short amount of time they could hold their breaths. Now anything’s possible.

The seven of them take turns standing up while everyone else holds onto the sides. They are able to yell a few things at each other, but it’s too loud to have full on conversations. Elise explains that she stayed behind to try to convince the other hunter to come with them. Zelda confirms the time travel when she explains that she was here alone for a few minutes before the next person bobbed up. Each time someone new appeared, they reported that only seconds separated them at the fountain, even though minutes passed for those already here. They ultimately waited almost an hour before Elise came. When she asked them how they knew she was there in the first place, they said lightning would strike the spot where they were just about to come up. But Elise knows the truth. The lightning wasn’t marking the spot. They were riding the lightning.

The storm passes, and the sun rises in the sky, no doubt programmed or controlled by Hrockas or his Custodians. They’re dead tired, but still alive, and everyone here still wants to fight. This whole time, ever since the locker room, no one has brought up the fact that only one person can win. What’s the point? Except for one person now, they’re all friends. And the Bidan, Laise LeMaire, is quickly becoming part of the team too. Whatever the prize is, they can surely share it one way or another. It doesn’t help to become cutthroat now, especially not since it will take all of them to survive this.

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” Laise says. “I’ve been trying to remember the stories I was told from my home planet. I lived in a particularly advanced region, but many others were intentionally rustic. Some had boats like whatever we’re on top of right now. They never sank, because while they looked antiquated, the underlying structure was more modern. But I used to date one guy who grew up on one of these ships, and he talked about the real past—I’m giving you way too much background. I’m saying they had ways to lift sunken boats. It wasn’t easy, but it didn’t require gizmos or gadgets either. But we do need a lot of barrels, and even more patience.”

Without even asking for Laise to elaborate, Zelda volunteers to dive down to see how many barrels the boat has, if any. They don’t know this woman yet, but they trust that she wants to survive as much as they do, even if she has stopped caring about winning. Elise volunteers to go down too, because while she never had the chance to learn to sail, she absolutely knows how to freedive. It was one of the first things she practiced when she came to this planet. They search all over, but only find twenty.

“That’s not enough,” Laise says, shaking her head. “You said there were cannons down there too? That’s not enough. We would need at least twice that.”

“What if we got rid of the cannons,” Colley suggests. “While we’re at it, get rid of the chains and the big metal grate thing. Take out everything unnecessary.”

“I am not good enough at math to know whether that would work,” Laise admits. “The guy said forty. I guess I don’t really know what kind of boat he was talking about.”

“What exactly do we do with these barrels?” Rage asks her.

Laise sighs. “We attach them to the bottom of the boat, and then we pump the water out. Once they’re all filled with air, they should lift the boat out of the water.”

They stare at her like they can’t believe their ears. It sounds insane, and insanely grueling. Elise saw where they are, though. They’re sitting on the edge of a sea shelf, and there is no other land in sight. Their only hope is to get this bucket out of the water so they can stand. They’ll figure out how to move it after that. If this doesn’t work, they could die from exposure. But not starvation or scurvy. The barrels are evidently filled with fruit. There’s no drinking water, though, so they take a vote. Either they go for it, or let themselves die just to escape and give up. It’s unanimous.

Microstory 2758: Headwater

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The survivors look up at the sky, expecting Hrockas to reappear to announce Miracle’s death, like this is some kind of dystopian survival game. He doesn’t do that, though, and doesn’t need to. They all saw it. Miracle’s first teleportation could have been a weird trick of the mind, but it’s harder to explain it away this time. It looks like various forms of time travel are possible, and that one of these forms killed her. She will survive, or at least one version of her will. She will have no memories of her life after she was taken from her hotel room, and thrown out the window at the start of this. It’s unclear what she’ll think happened, or what she’ll do now. She may try to fight her way back, but if they really are in another dimension, that might be impossible.

The stakes have officially been raised. Death is plainly on the table, and the traps might be unpredictable, and even inexplicable. They have no idea where any other mines could be hiding. Hrockas wouldn’t have let them get this far if there were no way out, though. If he actually didn’t want them to find the treasure, he probably would have simply erased their memories. That’s not illegal here in the Charter Cloud of the galaxy.

“This is another escape room,” Rage determines. “I’ve even played one very similar to this before. They were regular land mines, of course, but the trick is finding the only safe path between them. We need to get to higher ground.”

“I will take care of that,” Zelda volunteers. She tries to jump up to a beam attached to the outside of the dome, but she can’t get that high in her tiny frame.

Minotaur helps her up. They’re taller, so they follow on their own with less issue.

They can’t climb up too far because they’re constantly curving away from the street, eventually reaching a point where they would lose the perspective advantage.

“See anything notable?” Rage shouts up to them. “Darkened squares? Anything?”

“There’s nothing!” Zelda cries back. “Minotaur is getting nauseated!”

“Come on back down!” Rage tells them. “It’s not safe!”

Everyone has been looking up at them, of course, but Elise has just now realized that Colley has been looking in the wrong direction. His eyesight is darting back and forth across the sky, and he sometimes turns completely. “What is it?” she asks.

“Has anyone here been to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida?” Colley asks.

“I have,” says one of the only two remaining hunters from Miracle’s team. Elise has not even gotten the chance to learn her name yet, even though it would have been plastered on her locker at the starting line. “I was born on a stasis ship that was part of the original fleet because my parents were awake the whole time as Shepherds.”

“Do you know Bida’s constellations?” Colley presses. “Because I don’t...except for that one.” He points. “That’s the feather duster, which is how I know this is a clue, because we’re a hundred light years from Tau Ceti. It has to be on purpose.”

The girl looks up as well. “Umm...I think you’re right, but I’m not much into the astrology. Unlike Earth, my ancestors never needed stars to navigate. Colonists contrived constellations for fun, according to what I remember. I think that might be the River Dhel, though. It’s the most important one for many of the world’s superstitions because it reflects the real river for a brief window every night.”

“When is the window?” Elise asks her. “And does anyone have a watch?”

“I have a watch on my multitool,” Minotaur says as Jolanda is helping them back down to the ground. “Why do we need it? What did we miss while we were up there?”

“The window depends on what day of year it is,” Colley explains. “We would need a Bidan calendar, and we would need to know what time it is—”

“We don’t need a Bidan calendar,” the Bidan girl argues. “I know we don’t need it because we don’t have it, and had no chance of taking one with us. I just need to know what time it is right now. It doesn’t even have to be the right time according to anyone in the outside world. Hrockas would have accounted for that when programming it.”

“She’s right,” Elise agrees. “You have a timekeeper because he wanted you to.”

“It’s 20:42,” Minotaur answers. “It’s true, I don’t know what planet.”

“For now, it’s Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida,” the Bidan decides, “and we’re too late. The reflection happens at the same time as the lunar culmination every year on the same night between 20:24 and 20:31. It’s a holiday. We took too long to figure out the clue.”

“Point out the river again,” Colley says. He moves over to stand next to her. They quietly work out exactly which stars make up the constellation while he looks down at the ground, a little off to the side, away from Miracle’s still dead body. “We got it.”

“You remember where the stars were fifteen minutes ago?” Rage asks him.

Colley clicks his tongue and taps on his head. “Hrockas can force me into any substrate he wants, but he can’t stop me from having an eidetic memory,” he echoes Miracle from before she hit an apparent teleportation mine and fell to her death.

Rage takes a breath. “Okay, we’ll draw for lead. Colley, you’re out of the running this time since you have the map. Our new Bidan friend is too for the same reason.”

“No, please don’t draw,” Jolanda says. “I’ve not been contributing anything to the hunt, and need to feel useful. I’ll take lead. I had a conversation with myself shortly before my consciousness stream was cut. I’m prepared to wake up without memories.”

“Okay, we have a volunteer.” Rage looks around at the group. “Any objections?”

No one objects, so Jolanda stands in front. Colley stands behind her, but far enough away to be hopefully safe from the blast of a land mine. It will hopefully not happen at all, but they’re not too naïve to be prepared for it. Everyone else walks in a single-file line behind him and the Bidan. Colley directs Jolanda slowly. The assumption is that the river mouth ends at the fountain in the center of the square. It’s less likely that they would have to walk the entire length of the river in order to perfectly replicate what the believers on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida would do during their special annual holiday. They seem to be correct once they reach that fountain and no one has died yet. Assuming this will lead them further down the path to their prize, there’s now another puzzle to solve, though. And they don’t know where to begin.

Zelda sticks her face in the dark water. She then slowly starts diving deeper and deeper until only her feet remain, which Rage and Elise have to hold onto so she doesn’t sink to the bottom. After a few more seconds, she taps on her own hip, which they take to mean it’s time to pull her up. “It’s bottomless.”

“You don’t know that,” the other non-team member contends.

“I think we’re supposed to get in,” Zelda figures. “A leap of faith.”

The Bidan nods. “In my planet’s origin story, which we all know someone made up, the creator God takes a leap of faith in the River Dhel where she finds the energy she needs to conjure the star.” She points to a sculpture. “She is represented by a fish.”

That’s all Zelda needs. She jumps in headfirst. Nearly everyone else follow.

Microstory 2757: Point of No Return

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Jolanda tries to walk out the door into the empty city, but Rage warns her off, saying that something is still wrong. They must have assembled the puzzle incorrectly. Perhaps it poisoned them and caused them all to lose time, or there’s just something weird going on that none of them can explain.

“I can explain it,” Miracle says as she walks right outside. “We are in a Facsimile.”

“I don’t know what that means.” Rage is in the doorway to protect everyone else.

Miracle rolls her eyes, and waves her arms like she’s parting the Red Sea. “Would you please? I need everyone to see and hear me.” She sighs. “I didn’t know we would encounter time travel on this journey. I thought it was possible, but I guess I gave Hrockas too much credit. I don’t have the time or bandwidth to explain everything, so let’s just go over the basics. Has anyone seen an old show called Stranger Things?”

A few people raise their hands, including Colley.

“There’s an evil world in that show that looks just like ours, except there aren’t any people in it, and it’s horrific. There are all sorts of vines and mold covering everything, and toxic particles float around all the time. Spoiler alert, what they eventually discover is that this copy of the world was created on a particular day in the past, like a snapshot of a single moment. That is basically what this is, but without the horror overtones. Well...there was that one time when zombies and other monsters were fabricated here in secret so they could be let loose on the populace—”

“I remember that,” Zelda jumps in. “I was trying to relax in Mildome when a serial killer from Bloodbourne suddenly attacked. They weren’t too hard to kill, though.”

They all look at her like she’s crazy.

“What? I don’t only spend my time in Adrenadome. I like bees and butterflies.”

“Well,” Miracle continues, “now you know, this is where they came from. I can’t tell you not to worry about lingering monsters, but let’s hope not. The person who controlled them no longer has control over this place. He was sent away. We actually fought alongside each other against a bigger threat, but he never returned. I’m just trying to give you an idea of where we are, and what we’ll find. Any questions so far?”

“Yeah.” Rage raises her hand. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Miracle sighs again. “Hrockas can force me into any substrate he wants, but he can’t stop me from using my powers. Those are based on my neurology, so he would have to kill me to get rid of them.” She squares her shoulders and makes sure that everyone is watching. She disappears, simultaneously reappearing on the ground a few meters away. She screams in agony as she holds her head. “Ah, you son of a bitch, what did you do?” More screaming.

A gargantuan holographic screen resolves in the sky. It’s Hrockas again. “Nuh-uh-uh. No time powers. You think I didn’t plan for that? This world is littered with temporal suppression fields. Good luck turning them all off.” He blinks away.

Elise helps Miracle back to her feet. “Don’t do that again. We get the idea.”

“I’m still not sure I believe it,” Rage reasons. “I can think of four major explanations off the top of my head for what she just did.”

“I have seen people do what she just did before,” Jolanda admits. “I was born on Proxima Doma. Before you ask, I wasn’t on the surface or in low-orbit when it was destroyed, but I did become a refugee. They ferried us to Gatewood where we could choose our final destinations for free. I ultimately opted to transmit my consciousness here, but not before I witnessed a riot that had to be quelled by a bunch of teleporting cops. I don’t think they were faking it. What would have been the point?”

“I’m sorry you went through that.” Minotaur gives Jolanda a hug from the side.

Miracle nods. “The faster-than-light technology some ships use now? Researchers didn’t simply finally figure it out. People like me gave it to them. They had this big meeting in the year 2400 with the, uhh...sort of council. I had nothing to do with it because I’m not on the Shortlist, but there’s a very low chance that your life has not been impacted directly by a time traveler one way or the other, for good or bad.

“Miss Shin, if you were a refugee, you probably spent some time on The Tangent, or at least you saw it. Their artificial gravity was a gift from that council. Hrockas has a number of friends with powers and patterns. A team of them was instrumental in making Castlebourne what it is today, and he continues to employ others. For the most part, they try to keep the tech more conventional, but there are some things normal physics can’t handle.” She gestures at the world around them. “This is proof of that. I’m betting they keep it up and running just in case they ever need it, for times like these.”

“So, what are we facing?” Zelda asks Miracle. “How dangerous is this tech?”

“You’re not actually listening to her,” Rage complains. “We can’t trust her.”

“I’m not trying to be your leader,” Miracle defends. “I’m only giving you the facts. What are we facing? No way to know, but throw your rule book out the window, because it no longer applies. Time travel is a very loose term, and a misnomer. Many who can manipulate spacetime don’t simply move forwards or backwards. Some can turn invisible by basically showing you what’s behind them instead of them. Some can duplicate themselves by pulling from microrealities. Hrockas may only be using this dimension to separate us from gen pop, but he also might be planning to throw temporal obstacles at us. Rage, you can listen to me or not, but if it’s that second option, I have an incredibly unfair advantage, because I’ve seen this stuff before.”

A deafening silence falls, making this city even more a liminal space than it was when they first set foot out here. Miracle could be wrong. The people they saw before might have been volumetric images. Or the dome they were in simply spun around to the other side, which was made to be a replica of this, but never populated. There are other explanations for what happened to them, but on the off-chance that Miracle isn’t mistaken or lying, they have to pay attention to her. Trust, but verify.

Elise stands over by her friend. “Rage is the leader. That’s not changing. Miracle, let’s call you the advisor.” She gestures to her main teammates. “We’ve been working together for weeks, and we know what each other has to offer. We’ve settled into our respective roles, so that can be yours. But until further notice, we must all be in an alliance together. Do you disagree, Miss Brighton?”

Miracle smiles. “I do not. Like I said, I don’t wanna lead. Advisor feels right.”

“Rage?” Elise asks, hoping that the tensions don’t escalate.

“Very well,” Rage decides. “I’ll listen to you, Miracle, but I promise nothing regarding my actions. If I want to make a different call, that’s what I’ll do.”

“Sounds good.” Miracle turns around. “Now. First thing we need to do is check for—” She takes a step forward, and suddenly disappears. A few seconds later, they hear her screaming from the heavens, right before she splats on the ground. “...Time mines.”

Microstory 2756: Skull and Bones

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The conveyor belt is heading for another void. This game has had so many chances already to kill them. If this is another attempt, it would be difficult to avoid. There is no way off this ride. Still, there may be a non-lethal obstacle in the darkness, or on the other side of it. Elise gets on one knee, and plants her other foot firmly on the belt. She holds her hands up defensively, prepared for anything. Well, almost anything.

She passes through the darkness, and catches a glimpse of the opaque dome they’ve entered before the belt ends, and sends her over the edge. She falls a couple of meters before landing on her feet on a mound of human bones. The others are starting to help each other up from the piles of thousands and thousands. It’s maybe a hundred meters wide, dimly lit, and getting dimmer. It’s noticeably cold, but not deathly so.

Elise spins around and opens her arms so when Zelda falls too, she can catch her.

“My hero,” Zelda says in a breathy voice from Elise’s arms.

“Just doin’ my job, ma’am.” Elise is really coming out of her shell now.

“Are these the previous secret hunters?” Minotaur asks, picking up a skull. “Does everyone die in here? From what? More acid rain? A deluge? A furnace?”

“Hold up,” Colley says. “Here, help me push these bones out of the way.”

Jolanda and Rage pull the bones between their legs to give him some space.

Colley gets on his hands and knees and examines the floor below. He then grabs a random femur, and snaps it in half. He puts on his loupe specs to examine the inside.

“Wait, how do you still have those?” Elise questions. “Isn’t this a new body?”

“They were in my locker,” Colley explains as he’s changing lenses. “They’re not my regular ones. They upgraded me.” He looks carefully. “Fake. They probably all are.”

“Plastic, or something else?” Rage picks up another bone and breaks it.

“No, they’re organic,” Colley answers. “The layering is asymmetrical, which is how the best machines do it, but it’s definitely bioprinted. They forgot to include the tendon entheses, and there’s no remaining viscera on the floor, or even residue.”

Elise wades through the bones to get to the wall, not grossed out anymore. “Look for an exit, or signs of Miracle’s friends. They may have already escaped.”

“Those bozos?” Miracle questions. “Not a chance.”

“I found a door!” Jolanda shouts. She’s on the far side of the dome.

“Don’t open it until we’re all over there!” Rage commands. “Elise, take safety.”

Because any door has just as much chance of being a trap as being their salvation, one player is always chosen to stay behind as the designated survivor. It’s also possible that they’ve been doomed, if the door has a time limit, and can’t be reopened, so the role is risky, rather than necessarily safe. Rage has a plan to cycle through the roster fairly.

Elise climbs up to a particularly high bone hill to have a better vantage point, and give her more time to survive if opening the door, say, also opens a drain in the floor.

Once everyone is in place, including Miracle and the strangers, Jolanda waves her hand in front of the entry panel. The door slides into its pocket, revealing...a second door. This one is different, though. Even from here, Elise can see that there are indentations on the door face that are vaguely in the shape of a human body.

“It’s a puzzle,” Colley decides. “We have to fill in the gaps with a full skeleton.”

“Rule number three,” Rage begins. “Don’t try to unlock a door that’s already unlocked.” She nods at Jolanda. “Go ahead, Jo.”

Jolanda takes hold of the knob, turns it successfully, and opens the door.

On the other side is what looks like a city square. Elise climbs down to get a better look. People are milling about, preoccupied with their own lives. They’re dressed in traditional early 21st century garb. Only two things look out of place. A man and a woman wearing the same blue shirt are balancing two bananas each on their head while they sing a song quite poorly. Two other women wearing the same purple shirts are running past them, and opening a mailbox that is conspicuously sitting out in the open.

“Other hunters,” Elise determines as she draws nearer. “This isn’t right.”

“This is obviously our way out,” one of Miracle’s people says.

“Hrockas Steward said that we wouldn’t be hunting around other people,” Minotaur reminds him. “Why break one of his few rules right at the beginning?”

“Who cares?” he asks. “I’m exiting and checking that mailbox for our next clue.”

“I don’t think we have clues,” Colley postulates. “We’re not racing, we’re not being eliminated per leg. I think we only have one goal, and we’re supposed to go straight to that. No, Elise is right. This is a red herring, or some kind of trick.”

“It’s a choice,” Miracle corrects. “If we walk out this door without solving the skeleton puzzle, we’re forfeiting the game. That’s probably where those two assholes ended up. They don’t know what they’re missing. Don’t follow in their footsteps.”

The guy sighs. “Okay, boss. We solve the puzzle.” He steps back in.

Jolanda closes the door back up, and everyone spreads out.

The puzzle is harder than it looks. They’re not just looking for a single copy of every bone. They’re all slightly different sizes, just like they would be if these once belonged to living beings. Each puzzle bone can hold in place on its own on the board, even if the one below it hasn’t been found yet, but only if it’s the correct one. Otherwise, it just falls out. Elise deduces that they used magnets. She turns out to be right.

Like Colley with his spectacles or Zelda with her parachutes, Minotaur never goes anywhere without their multitool. They found it in their locker too, and it includes a very small magnet. It’s not powerful enough to sweep the area for the right bones, but it’s easy enough to test one quickly and toss it aside before moving on to the next.

They created an open space kind of near the door, where they carefully stack the duds. That way, they don’t accidentally test the same ones multiple times. It’s Elise and Jolanda’s job to keep the used stack away from the untested piles by pushing bones around, and maintaining enough space between them at all times.

It starts getting dark in here, and no one has a light, so they open the door just so the natural light comes in for them. Unrelated hunters periodically come up, thinking that it’s important for their race. It’s Rage’s job to back them off by simply saying, “parallel play”. This is a known phrase that warns players that their games are intersecting, and that if they try to find a clue here, they will end up on the wrong track.

After several hours, they finally have the last piece. Fittingly, it’s the skull. It’s a good thing they’re done. The streets are still bustling, but it’s now dark outside too.

“Colley, you do the honors,” Jolanda offers since he served as their puzzle master. She closes the door again, allowing him to ceremoniously place the skull in the last slot. The whole skeleton glows, and they hear a whirring sound. Once Jolanda reopens it, they see the same street again, but now, even though it has only been a few seconds...it’s completely empty.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 25, 2569

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Romana had gotten out of control. Her father, and everyone else, fully understood where she was coming from—she was lonely, and she needed companionship—but she was playing with fire. They blamed the progression and simplification of technology. A lot of what Ramses did involved temporal manipulation, which most researchers and users didn’t have access to, but a lot of the rest had become ubiquitous. Their advanced substrates were quite common these days, except for the bit about being able to teleport, and their attached pocket dimensions. The computing power and the detail of simulations; the whole galaxy had it, or at least it was available to them.

Downloading what began as a programmed intelligence into a mobile body was nothing new, but it had certainly become easier over the centuries. And that was what a lot of the development focused on now. All everyday problems had been solved, so the primary changed involved removing friction from the processes. You used to have to know how to program a dayfruit with the right ingredients. Now you just told it what you want, and it grew. It even did it faster than the original species could be produced. It used to be that if you wanted to give a digitized consciousness a body, you had to have the education and experience for it, and to account for all sorts of variables. Now you pushed a button. All Romana had to do was push a button, and Boyd 3.0 was just there.

But Boyd was not perfect. She wanted him to be just like them, which meant he had to skip a year at the end of every day. That was time tech, and not in the central archives, so she had to come up with a workaround. According to her, every day at midnight central, his brain went dormant, and didn’t come back online until midnight 365 days later. This was the only way she could do it. If she had asked, Ramses would not have helped her, so she probably made the smart call in that regard. That didn’t mean it wasn’t a problem, though. If his mind could be switched off like that, he could be switched back on. Where were the safeguards? What if someone else showed up during their interim year? What if Boyd got tired of skipping time, and turned himself back on in the middle of a cycle? Did he even want to skip at all, or did he want to leave this planet, and go find his way elsewhere? Romana still hadn’t thought this through.

“I have thought it through,” Romana insisted. “You are just not listening.”

“No, you’re not listening,” Ramses argued louder when Mateo tried to. “Sorry, Matt, but I’m gonna have to take this one. She’s old enough to make her own choices, and suffer the consequences beyond a scolding from her parents.” He looked back at her. “This is dangerous stuff. There was a reason I was quarantining him, and I know you knew that. This was reckless, childish, and stupid, and there will be consequences.”

“Oh, you’re just mad because you’ve become irrelevant,” Romana contended. “Now suddenly the great Ramses Abdulrashid isn’t the only one on the team who can create life. I’m sorry science caught up to your genius, but it was inevitable. Get over it.”

“No.” Ramses was generally a chill guy. He usually only had anxiety over his own insecurities, but he was livid today. “You may not have used my personal lab, but you used equipment that I fabricated.” He stopped her before she could interrupt, “don’t bring AI into this. Of course I didn’t program them character-by-character. They are still mine, and you abused my trust in you by doing this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to you and your parents, but there may be something seriously wrong with you, so you’re going in hock.”

“You can’t do that.” She laughed it off. No one else was laughing. “No, he can’t do that. I’m an equal member of this team!” No one said a word. “Dad! Moms! Stop him! Stop him!” They didn’t. The time bullet hit her, and sent her straight into lock-up.

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