The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 15, 2559

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When no one else stepped up, Marie decided to choose their next destination. She consulted the bulk map, and cross-referenced it with an updated copy of the central archives, landing on a colony once more thanks to its funny name. The database listed it as the Patsy Richelieu Best First Quarter Star. Not even Ramses or Leona understood why it would be called that, and they decided not to bother trying to figure it out before they left. It seemed innocuous enough. They weren’t going unprepared, however. Ramses designed a go-bag filled with essential survival items, like multitools, a first aid kit, and a dayfruit starter pack. It also contained hardened, but dormant and shielded, electronics in case they ran into another issue. The chances of what happened on the last planet happening again weren’t high, but they were not zero. He wanted to be prepared. Romana wanted to carry it, still feeling guilty about last time.

They slung to the coordinates, finding themselves falling towards some kind of planet. “Not habitable,” Mateo announced, looking at his sensors. “Not naturally.”

“I’m not picking up any artificial structures on the surface,” Leona said, “but we can’t see the other side. Still, there are no radio signals, which makes some sense. It’s a super-terrestrial. The surface gravity is highly variable, but about 8.7G.”

“Maybe we ought to jump to that manmade object up there,” Angela warned, “unless we want to plummet to our deaths in the atmosphere.”

They jumped to the ship, but not inside of it. Leona cleared her throat after she opened a channel. “Orbiting vessel. This is Captain Leona Matic of Team Matic. We mean you no harm. Could we have permission to board?”

A woman’s voice replied, “come on in! I made bundt cake!”

An airlock opened. They floated inside, and waited for the hatch to close behind them, then for the airlock to repressurize. The inner door opened.

The woman was waiting for them, holding her plate. She was wearing a white tank top and a tennis skirt, like an off-duty college cheerleader. “Welcome to our home, new friends. My name is Patsy Richelieu. I’m in charge around here.” She took another bite. “How did you arrive? My logs didn’t record someone using the quantum terminal, though it is open to public access, so maybe I set the preferences wrong. I’m not an engineer.”

“I can check it out for you,” Ramses offered. “You probably have it set right. We came in through a nearby terminal, then flew here manually.”

“Oh, what fun,” Patsy decided. “Hungry?”

“We could eat,” Mateo answered. Everyone out here just wanted some intelligent connection, didn’t they? No one needed saviors or rescuers. Just good old fashioned human conversation. “Could we ask...the name of your star?”

“Oh, haha,” Patsy began as she was leading them down the corridors. I started a new job as a saleswoman in July of 2026. I had no experience; even fibbed a little on my résumé, but I was a natural talent. I had the best first quarter on the job of anyone in company history at the time. My boss awarded me with this star at the company retreat.”

“Oh, it was one of those name-a-star scams. I mean—sorry,” Leona apologized. “You obviously managed to convert it into a real claim after five hundred years.”

Patsy giggled. “Don’t you fret. I thought it was stupid at the time too, but it did mean something, because the company didn’t approve it. My boss had to pay for it with her own money, and the closer stars are much more expensive. They made me feel at home, which I honestly didn’t expect. I had been searching for a job, not a career. I ended up retiring from that same position after 44 years of service. Do you know money? Were you alive back then?”

“We were,” Marie answered.

Patsy nodded, then went on, “then humanity invented AI, net positive fusion, and anti-aging technologies, and it started to feel less ridiculous. Over the centuries, I kept this place in the back of my mind, and once Project Stargate reached this far into the galaxy, I decided I might as well lay claim to what a piece of paper and a $250 bill said I already owned.” It didn’t validate the entire scam, but at least this one person got what she paid for. Pretty cheap for an entire solar system. It looked like there was nothing for them to do here either, though. Their new paradigm of not being useful would continue. They could eat cake, and that was about it. Nevertheless, if this woman was lonely, maybe that would be enough.

As they were following her down the corridors, they started to hear chatter. A set of doors slid open, revealing a huge crowd of people in a mess hall, also wearing surprisingly sexy outfits, and also eating cake. They started cheering, and saying things like “hey, Patsy! and “Patsy’s back!”

“Forgive me,” Leona began, “but are they NPCs? I don’t mean to be rude.”

“No, they’re independent,” Patsy assured them. I have a lot of friends. I’m very friendly. I met most of these people on the quantum boards. They all wanted to do something weird, and there’s nothing weirder than living around a star called Patsy Richelieu Best First Quarter. Like I was saying, I have an open-door policy.”

“So, you don’t need anything?” Mateo pressed. “Everyone’s okay?”

“Yeah, why? What did you hear?” Patsy asked as she was licking the last of the frosting off of her fork.

“Nothing. That’s just what we do, going around making sure the colonies are all right,” Mateo answered.

She smiled, as she twirled the fork against her teeth. “Why, you’re even friendlier than I am, aren’t ya?” She faced her people. “Hey, everyone! These guys are part of some kind of volunteer colony outreach program! Isn’t that sweet!”

They cheered again.

“Well, we don’t need anything,” Patsy explained, “but we could always use a few more smiling faces. That’s the only rule. You have to smile.”

The seven of them kind of already thought they were smiling, but they forced themselves to make it more blatant.

“We’ll work on it,” Patsy decided. “Go, sit down. It’s time to eat!”

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Extremus: Year 133

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It has been months since the paradigm shift, and the Extremus is thriving like it never has before. Waldemar has been living as a completely different person than he was. His ability—or curse, rather—to absorb other people’s psychic darkness is entirely gone. He only trusted one medical professional with this information, and it’s because he had to. She said she doesn’t know what caused it. She doesn’t know if it’s permanent either. They checked the sensors. If anyone did this to him on purpose, they did it remotely, perhaps remotely in time, or in space. He wants to be mad. He wants to call it a violation, but that’s the old him. He doesn’t want to hurt people anymore. He doesn’t want to throw people in the brig. And that is what he’s calling it still. What happened to him, it doesn’t change the fact that the traditional word has always been more logical. It doesn’t change who he is in every single sense. He still holds many of the same beliefs.

Waldemar is not reversing every decision he’s made, but he’s trying to put things right. He’s better—he believes that now—but he doesn’t hate who he once was. He understands it better, and unlike in the beginning, he is no longer actively trying to go backwards. He accepts his new reality, even though it’s scary every day just to wake up.

Some people are upset. They’re not all entirely upset about the decisions themselves, just that they’re reversals. He’s basically putting the ship back to how he found it. No, he’s almost putting it back to the pre-Jennings days, when Tinaya was captain. Oh, Jennings. Waldemar has killed people. Here’s the thing, if was totally cured of his problem, he would confess to his actual, unambiguous crimes, wouldn’t he? But he has no plans to do that. He’s not even telling anyone about them, even though it might be pertinent to his new situation. He used to have a drive to kill—not like some serial killer, but it was always an option if he needed it. Now he doesn’t want it at all. Now he has a strong aversion to it. A part of him regrets those past actions, but he still remembers why he crossed those lines. He was protecting himself, and honestly, the Extremus. What good would it do to throw himself in the brig now, and risk someone even worse than him coming in as a replacement. No. Stay in charge, just do better.

He is no longer trying to figure out what happened to him, or if it can be undone. He mostly fends off his critics. That’s a big downside. He has lost a lot of support, which he’ll need if he decides to move forward with the secret master plan. The people who didn’t like him before were either in the brig or better about hiding. Just because he’s let them out doesn’t mean they’re grateful and happy. And the people who agreed that the old critics should be there are now mad that they’re not. He can’t win; not since he didn’t start out this way. It’s his mother’s fault. She made him this way. If you have a curse, you don’t risk passing it on to a kid. You leave it as it is. That’s really why he killed her, and if he regrets nearly all of his kills, that one will remain an exception. She had to go. She was hopeless. But then again, so was Waldemar, and look how that has turned out. Every once in a while he grows terribly curious about who might be responsible.

Sable may be a good candidate. She’s special. She’s special and powerful. He doesn’t know how, but there’s definitely something different about her. He has a strong memory of killing her too, but then she was totally fine the next day. He wrote it off as only a dream, but what if it wasn’t? What if she has actual temporal powers, and is the one who changed him? Now his curiosity is returning. Should he confront her, or simply continue to accept the gift? He has to be strong. If he starts playing with fire, he will get burned. He doesn’t want to change now anymore than he wanted to change before, even though that change was good. Stay the course. Save lives. Thrive.

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Microstory 2705: Going Home

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The majority of the reasons that people in history had to commit crimes, or otherwise do harm, are now obsolete. The only truly valuable currency in the 26th century is energy. It’s not technically impossible to steal. It’s just very hard. It’s much easier, actually, to earn it by laying claim on one of the quadrillions of sufficiently sized small celestial objects in the galaxy, or one of the hundreds of billions of stars. There are other motivations, however, particularly ones sourced from the way a person’s brain happens to be wired. Some people are simply aberrant, and training them to improve is difficult. You can’t just reprogram an independent entity. Maintaining someone’s right to self-determination is a fundamental tenet of existence. There are many classifications of intelligence, but once you cross that threshold of self-consciousness, it is profoundly unethical for someone to take it from you. But coupled with the ease of immortality, how do you deal with someone who breaks the mould in harmful ways? Virtual reality.

Specifically, virtual quarantine. It’s essentially just a private server where you can do whatever you want, even if it would be considered awful in base reality, but you can’t leave. You’re not causing any real harm, because you’re technically alone. The only other people around you are NPCs. They don’t think. They don’t feel. They’re just ones and zeroes, ordered in such a pattern that makes them behave incredibly life-like. You can hurt them if you want, because you’re not actually hurting anyone. Or you can grow and learn. It’s up to you. It’s your world, you’re stuck in it. The question is, is even this ethical? By defaulting to immortality, you’re still stripping them of choice. The reasoning is that they can always choose to end themselves later, whereas if they first choose to die, they can’t change their minds. But not everyone agrees, which is why the debate rages on, even after centuries of having consciousness transfer technology.

Since there’s no clear answer to that, it’s one of the few major laws that are handled on a regional basis. Some say an eternity like this isn’t punishment, and some say it’s cruel and unusual. It really depends on whether he’s monitored or not. And if your pocket of civilization has opted against it, any overarching governmental body can’t override it, as long as your alternative punishment isn’t overtly unethical too. Many of the colonies, even those in the Core, have banned it. Earth employs it, as does one particular planet where it’s not only available for the locals, but also welcomes charters from others. Varkas Reflex was trying to become Castlebourne before Castlebourne existed. They were trying to build a massive theme park. But they weren’t ambitious enough and failed, so they pivoted to something smaller in design, but grander in scope. They perfected virtual simulations. That is where Talus is going, but there’s a snag.

Again, when dealing with an immortal population, people can swap bodies nearly as easily as clothing. It’s the consciousness that holds value. The substrate is only a sleeve. Which means the court is within their rights to destroy any and all of these substrates. They can always simply make another if something were to change in the future. Talus is too young. He has not had time to digitize his mind himself. He grew up in an ancestor simulation that prevented him from even knowing that was a possibility. He only has one substrate. He only ever had one. It’s therefore both unethical and illegal to destroy it, even if his mind is preserved in the virtual construct. So when he goes there, he gets to take his body with him, even if he’s not allowed to use it. But that’s also a security risk. Fortunately, that’s not Ronan’s problem anymore. He’s going home.

Microstory 2704: What Truly Matters

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Ronan is frustrated. After the initial run-in with Mayumi, he goes back to his temporary housing, and tries to get some sleep. He wakes up realizing that none of it matters. It doesn’t matter that Mayumi let her avatar die on purpose. It doesn’t matter that she cheated on him, or that she’s been living with the man Ronan thought he was raising as a child. The only concern is young Talus. While Mayumi is executing her testimony, he begins divorce proceedings. These days, it’s easier in some ways, but harder in others. When people live as long as they do, they have time to accumulate a lot of possessions. Someone could potentially own an entire colony planet. Redistributing that after a legal separation is complex, but they don’t have to worry about liquid wealth.

Ronan has his own energy credits, and Mayumi has hers. Credits can be given as a gift—governments don’t care how they’re distributed after they’re earned; it’s not like they can be stolen—but the two of them never had any reason to do this. By design, they don’t own much overall, and Ronan doesn’t care about what they do own. They have a small storage unit back on Bungula, where they lived before coming here, but as far as he’s concerned, she can have it all. So that’s what he puts on the forms. There is no point in commissioning a lawyer for either side. He hopes Mayumi feels the same way. But he won’t let her stay married to someone she doesn’t love. He’s quickly falling out of love with her too, after all this shit. He has Gia now.

It feels like these proceedings are taking forever, even though he knows it’s not true. As Earth became a post-scarcity society, there was a profound dropoff in crime. Why steal someone’s TV when you can get a free TV of your own, built by automators, which were built by other automators, all powered by the sun? A lot of the justice system is automated as well, though there is still a naturally-created component. You don’t have to be human to be an adjudicator, but you can’t have been programmed. You have to have either been born, or otherwise created as a blank slate. Then you have to develop in realtime. That is a key distinction which may never be changed. Even so, the process is a lot faster than it used to be. Still, he has mixed feelings about the current state of affairs. He just wants this to be over. He wants to return to his family in Danmörk, and put this all behind him. He is only stuck with Talus because Mayumi abandoned them both first. So now he can’t abandon Talus too, or he’ll look like a massive jerk.

Mayumi showed up because she is technically the boy Talus’ mother and had an obligation to attest, but she hasn’t been the one to raise him. Like the changes to the legal system overall, parentage is now determined more by nurture than nature. Leaving your offspring behind doesn’t automatically cause you to forfeit your rights, but the more deliberate it was, and the longer it lasts, the less likely it is that the court will see you as a rightful custodian. Obviously, this cuts both ways. If someone were to abduct a kid, and hold them for years, they wouldn’t likely maintain their parental status. It’s all about intent and action now; not blood. They don’t care about blood. Which is what makes this so difficult, because Ronan is genetically not young Talus’ father. But he is by circumstance, which is precisely how Mayumi wanted it. The older Talus is probably the real father, and this is just a regular kid who grew in Mayumi’s womb. It was perfectly timed to the Nordome trip. Had she long-conned him into that timetable? How long has she been trying to escape? No. Remember, none of that matters anymore. It’s time.

It’s time for the sentencing.

Microstory 2703: Miscommunication by Evasion

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Ronan cries foul. He doesn’t care about the rules. He doesn’t care if this is a separate issue entirely. When he first exited the Nordome Network to deal with this Talus problem, he looked Mayumi up. They have a protocol for this. She has a contact card. He should have been able to get a hold of her. He’s been too wrapped up in the trial that he hasn’t worked too terribly hard, and he certainly didn’t file a restraining order, but if she had entered another simulation, she should have left a message for him. That was what they agreed upon, and she knew that. She obviously didn’t die permanently, or something, or she wouldn’t be here now. He demands that she tell him where she’s been, and why she didn’t make sure to leave a trail for him.

“I wanted out,” Mayumi explained. “I never wanted the Norse experience as much as you did, and honestly, I was sick of us.”

“You could have just talked to me,” Ronan reasons.

“I couldn’t. I tried. Not in so many words, but I did try to work on us, and you just kept pretending that everything was fine. That just made it worse.”

“So, what, you killed yourself? Or did you just capitalize on the opportunity.”

“I installed a suicide inducer,” Mayumi explains. “I just jumped to a new body.”

“That’s enough,” the court agent says. “We’ll let the adjudicator decide what happens here. She’ll know if any of this is relevant, or if they need to change anything.”

They spoke with the adjudicator. As it turned out, Mayumi was indeed rather difficult to find, even for Castlebourne. Smartdust only gets you so far, and it’s possible to hide out in certain dark corners, if only for a little while. The judge is very interested in understanding what Mayumi did, and only grows more interested when Mayumi is rather evasive about it. She abandoned her child, which the adjudicator sort of knew already, but what she didn’t know was that Ronan was not cognizant of her whereabouts, or her apparent attempt to hide. “Where were you?” she pressed.

“I was home,” Mayumi finally clarifies. “I was in my new home. We were in the outer lands, in a small dome which my new husband built for us.” This planet is inhospitable, except in the domes, and the outer lands refers to any space outside of those. You can’t just go and build your own dome, though. When the adjudicator points that out, Mayumi continues to evade, until she finally lets slip, “Talus has experience working with diamond. It’s really not that hard, as long as you find a place. We’re not the only ones.”

The adjudicator is shocked by this. The trial will have to be placed on hold while they run this new investigation.

Ronan doesn’t care about that. This is personal. If the simulation that Ronan is trying to get back to were real, he would have the right to kill the lover, and divorce and disgrace his wife. Is that why she lied, because he’s so fixated on the culture that she thought he would exact revenge? He’s more enlightened than that. He went under the dome for the experience, not because he genuinely wishes he had been born a thousand years ago. There are some lines that he won’t cross, game or no—backup substrates or no. He also straight up doesn’t feel the same way about infidelity as his character might. He doesn’t want to be with anyone who doesn’t want to be with him. All she had to do was be honest, about the whole damn thing. What an idiot. What an absolute incomparable moron. How did he ever see anything in her, and why did he waste so much time keeping them together?

He takes a deep breath, and focuses on Gia, and his whole real family. Vith and Isavet need him, so he needs to leave. But wait. If she’s been with Talus the whole time...who has he been raising for the better part of a decade?

Microstory 2702: Alternate Arrangements and Agendas

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It’s time for Ronan to speak. In the old ways, a witness would be assigned either the defendant or the plaintiff or prosecutor. They were on one side or the other. Over time, this started to feel too combative. Society decided that the point of the justice system should be to uncover the truth, and balance fairness. There were different variations for the setup, but the changes were sweeping. A whole new vocabulary was created, which alone, made everything seem less partial. Lawyers became advocates or adherents to more clearly define their roles. Defendants became accused, and were considered pending so as not to bias the decision from minute one. Even juries changed. Half of the arbitration panels deliberated in one room while half did so in another. If they came to the same decision, maybe it was more likely right. Ronan still remembers the old ways and the old terms, and since this is the first time he’s ever been in any court in the centuries he’s been alive, he still frames everything he’s seeing through that lens. It’s jarring when they contradict it.

He must remember that he’s an attestant, not a witness. Attestant, not witness. Because he didn’t witness Talus do anything, he can’t attest to it. He can only tell the court what he knows, and what he knows is that Talus is not right in the head. As he’s sitting up here, not answering the most recent question that he was asked, he’s thinking about who else could be blamed for his son’s behavior. He keeps coming back to the implantation procedure. Something must have gone wrong. They must have made some mistake. They...spliced the wrong genes, or—he doesn’t know, he—

“Mister Truett. Mister Truett,” Jericho Hagen urges. “Have you seen any other behavior out of the accused which you might categorize as abhorrent?” he repeats.

Ronan was zoning out, but now he’s more sure of what he wants. He waits to answer again, but this time, he’s looking the attorney—no adherent—dead in the eye. “I wish to make an alternative accusation.” He looks up at the judge—adjudicator. “Did I do that right? Am I supposed to say it another way?”

“There is no formal syntax,” she replies. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes, I—” Ronan begins to say.

“This is not the place for that. We will have to schedule a new inquisition to formalize your accusation. Until then, you cannot be expected to attest further at the current proceedings. But I must warn you, people have used this as a delaying tactic in the past. I will not stand for it in my court, so you better have a plausible accusation.”

“I do, your honor.” What Talus did was wrong, but it may not be his fault. Ronan is not going to try to stop Talus from being dealt with accordingly, but those bot doctors need to answer too, and he doesn’t want to continue until they do. He stands from the chair, and begins walking back towards the attestant waiting area.

“Agent, please prepare the next attestant for a round of assertions,” the adjudicator orders. They changed it from bailiff to fit all the other A-terms. So stupid.

The agent escorts Ronan back into the joint chamber, where he is supposed to go into his own little private room. They keep attestants separate, again to maintain impartiality. Something has gone wrong here too, though. The next attestant is out of her own room already. She seems as surprised to see him as he is to see her.

“Mayumi.”

She doesn’t speak. She picks her jaw off of the floor, and slips back into her room.

Microstory 2701: This is the Beginning, and This is the End of the Sentence

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It’s not the trial yet. This is called the inquisitorial period, where all of the primary evidence is laid out before the court. There are no witnesses, there are no testimonies. The state, in this case, the owner of Castlebourne, has provided them with what they claim is the proof of Talus’ guilt. Truthfully, Ronan doesn’t doubt it. Talus hasn’t been right since he’s been old enough to make his own decisions again. He doesn’t understand why Talus would try to kill his little brother, but there’s almost no way that Castlebourne has this wrong. They have this whole world wired up. You can only keep your secrets as long as they don’t hurt anyone. Once they do, it ends up out in the open. You know that going into a simulation, and Ronan and Mayumi had no problem with it. They still don’t. Especially if it’s true that Talus did hurt Yumo with malicious intent, they need to know what happened.

At first, the footage is all right. It’s certainly weird, but out of context, it’s totally fine. Maybe Talus was gathering dirt and leaves to make a new pigment. Maybe he wanted to study them, or build a terrarium. It is easily explainable, or rather would be if they didn’t know what they knew. The next part is far more damning. Talus takes all the stuff he picked up from the forest floor, and rubs it into little Yumo’s bellybutton. His eyes. That’s the hardest part. They’re so...detached. He’s not angry or sad. This is just a task he has to complete, and he has no strong feelings about it. Ronan has to look away. It’s horrific. He did it with such intent. He doesn’t know if it’s because the original Talus would be smart enough to understand the mechanism, or if the new one teased it out. Or if it was some sick combination of both.

“That’s enough,” Judge What’s-Her-Name says. “We don’t need to see the whole thing. Is that it for the state’s evidence?”

“It is, Your Honor,” a lawyer named Jericho Hagen replies.

“Does the defense have evidence to provide the court at this time?”

Talus has an attorney of his own. His name is Kyle K. Stanley. “We do not, Your Honor. We accept the state’s evidence as a matter of existence without acknowledging any particular interpretations of it. We are anxious to prepare our defense.”

“Very well,” the judge says. “If there are no objections, this inquisition hearing will come to a close, and we will break for two days while the advocates prepare to call witnesses, and make their cases.”

“I plead guilty,” Talus says.

“Son, that’s not how it works. There will come a time for that—” the judge begins.

“I plead guilty now, I plead guilty now!” Talus insists. “I did it. I tried to kill him, and I would do it again! He was never supposed to exist! He’s not real! It’s just a simulation! He’s an NPC! He’s not real!” As they’re dragging him out while under contempt, he keeps yelling that. “He’s not real! He’s not real!”

“What does this mean?” Ronan asks Stanley. As the father, Ronan doesn’t have any legal authority in this court. He doesn’t have the right to know something simply because he raised Talus for the last eight years. Still, it’s okay for him to ask.

“If the judge accepts the plea, we will move on to the sentencing portion of the proceedings. That was always going to be the more grueling component of the process. Honestly, he is guilty, and we all know it. What we need to determine now is how to handle him. That’s what I was really brought in for, and I will protect him as much as possible.”

Maybe he shouldn’t.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 14, 2558

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After a couple of hours, close enough to midnight central for the sling to factor in their timeskipping, Team Matic left Tartarus, and returned to Ramosus. They found themselves just standing there, blinking at each other, but not talking. While it took longer than expected, their experience on the colony was mundane, and didn’t amount to anything. The fact they were researching aliens was interesting, but the research itself was kind of boring? “Why do I feel so weird?” Mateo asked. “I felt a little weird there, but coming here has suddenly made it actually weird. Fully weird. Weird, weird.”

“I know what you mean.” Leona looked over at Ramses. “I think we need to run some times.” She breathed deeply, and couldn’t help but yawn. “Tests. Run tests.”

“Maybe it’s the cold?” Marie suggested. “Has the cold made me...”

“Loopy?” Leona suggested. “We would have other symptoms, like frostbite. We wouldn’t be able to stand if it were cold enough to affect us like this.”

“I’m sorry, guys,” Romana said. “I made the wrong choice.”

“No, no,” everyone said. She had nothing to apologize for. They would never know what was on the other side of the sling. It could be interesting, it could be boring, or it could even be dangerous. Whatever they found, they would get through it, and they would do it together. They were starting to feel like explorers, after all.

They all went to the medical wing of Ramses’ lab to get themselves checked out. They discovered something mild, temporary, but very strange about their neurochemistry. Ramses relied quite heavily on his automated machinery to do the work for him, because he wasn’t in a state of mind to operate them himself. “Um. I can’t read the data myself right now, so I’m going to rely on the summary to explain it to us.” Ramses tried to point at the screen, but gave up. He was too weak. “Basically, what it thinks is that our brains were running at optimum efficiency on Tartarus. If we had stimuli, we might have been able to be really productive. But since the environment was pretty much just snow, we didn’t have any problem to solve. I mean, we were lost, but we didn’t have any tech to work with, so our brainpower was wasted.”

“So it’s like a drug?” Angela figured, “and now we’re in withdrawal?”

“Yes. That’s the word the computer thing said,” Ramses agreed. “Don’t worry, though, I don’t think we’re dependent. It would be like if you went to your college quantum physics class, and they handed you a kindergarten math sheet. It’s easy, and takes the cognitive load off, and you might get a little lazy if they keep giving you the same silly tests, but you’re not going to get addicted to it. The day they hand you a real test, you’ll need a little time to readjust—which is what we’re doing right now—but you will ultimately be fine. Because in this scenario, you knew quantum physics before, so you know it now. It will just take time. Sleep too.”

“Is there anything we shouldn’t do in the meantime?” Olimpia pressed. “Should we not have sex, or should we not eat carbs, or should we get warm, or get cooled off?”

“Carbs would be very good for your prefrontal cortex right now,” Ramses answered. “Sex would be fun, but you might find yourself disinterested. Just listen to your body. If you’re cold, warm up. If you’re hot, cool down. It knows what it needs.”

So they left the lab, and returned to their separate abodes. They were mostly still sleeping in their joint pocket dimensions, because they didn’t have any better ideas. They certainly weren’t going to come up with any today. The next year, they woke up totally okay, and actually rather enthusiastic. They were all ready for the next adventure.

Romana asked not to pick this time, though.

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