When they returned to the timestream, all the locals were confused about
where they had been for the last nine and a half months, but they were also
preoccupied with a second shocking development. Shortly after their
departure, another alien came down to their world from the quantum terminal.
He claimed to be from a planet called Teagarden, and during the interim
year, Sasha had been trying to explain to him that this was all real,
instead of a video game of some kind. She thought that maybe the humans
would have better luck with the clarification, though it would be best if it
took place back up on the outpost. The Pluoraians didn’t need to have
anything to do with this. Fortunately, she had fixed the teleporter. They
escaped the hellish winterscape, hoping never to return.
“What’s your name?” Mateo asked, deciding to take lead on this
interrogation.
“Hrockas. Yours?”
“Mateo and Leona Matic, Ramses Abdulrashid, Angela Walton, Olimpia Sangster.
And...Sasha.”
“Sasha, I’ve met.”
“What are you doing on this planet?” Mateo went on.
“This is my planet,” Hrockas said. “I laid claim to it thirty years ago. I
don’t know how you broke through my quantum restrictions, but I want you
gone.”
“You didn’t tell him?” Mateo asked Sasha.
“It wasn’t my place,” Sasha replied. “I didn’t want him to commandeer it.
Besides, he wasn’t listening to reason. As soon as he found out I was an
android, I stuck his fingers in his ears.”
That was probably the right call on Sasha’s part. Even now, Mateo didn’t
know if he should explain how it was they arrived without casting their
consciousnesses using the quantum terminal. “We came in a ship.”
“That’s impossible. No one has access to lightspeed ships in the game,”
Hrockas insisted.
“What game are we talking about here?” Mateo pressed. They were going to
have to clear this up by starting at the beginning.
Hrockas looked at him like he was a total moron. “Umm...Quantum Colony; the
game we’re literally playing right now? Ever heard of it?”
“No, I haven’t. I’m more of an RPS-101 Plus guy.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, idiot! You’re in it! That’s how we’re even
talking! I want answers to a few questions. Who are you? How did you get
here? What did you do to the power a few years ago? Why did you bring it
back? And when the hell are you gonna get the hell out of my star system? I
found it; it’s mine. If you want it, you’ll have to start a war. I don’t
like your chances. I have a pretty good army down there, and they’re all
loyal to me!”
“The people down there never once mentioned a Hrockas,” Leona pointed out.
“Well, they don’t know me by name. The creators will kick me out of the game
if I break First Contact protocols.”
“Why do they care if it’s just a game?” Mateo asked.
Hrockas shrugged. “I dunno, they have their reasons. Any player who finds an
inhabited world has to follow more strict rules. Everybody knows this.”
This reminded Mateo of the time they had to convince a couple of scientists
that The Parallel was a fully real reality, and not just an incredibly
elaborate simulation. Something told him that Hrockas wasn’t going to be
swayed by the same evidence. They needed help figuring that out, and to do
that, they needed more information. “Sasha, could you please find out what
this Quantum Colony thing is?”
“Accessing,” Sasha said.
“Anyone else heard of it?” No one had. “Leona?” He singled out specifically.
“Ramses? No?”
They shook their heads again in confirmation.
Sasha began to regurgitate the information, “Quantum Colony is a stellar
neighborhood-wide role-playing immersion game that takes place as far into
the galaxy from Gatewood as any interstellar ship has been capable of
reaching since the launch of Project Stargate in the year 2250. Players are
expected to solve math equations to seek out new worlds that have been
settled upon by quantum outposts. Once they cast their avatars to these
systems, they are free to establish territory, build new structures, conduct
research, initiate relations with other players and their worlds, and in a
select few cases, carefully foster a native population of humans, aliens, or
source variants.
“Leona?” he asked again simply.
“Well, I knew they were still trying to figure out what the hell they were
going to do with all the data that Project Stargate and Project Topdown sent
back, but we never found out the answer. There are hundreds of billions of
star systems out there. I suppose one way to synthesize that data would be
to...crowdsource it.”
“But they’re lying to the players,” Olimpia noted with airquotes. “They
don’t think it’s real. That’s so unethical. I mean, what if a player starts
a war, or something, thinking there are no consequences?”
They looked to Leona again, who still wasn’t sure what the solution would
be. “I mean, I didn’t know anyone on Teagarden knew about Project Stargate,
let alone had access to it. I can’t imagine that Team Keshida would have
authorized something like this. They’re kind of all about secrecy. Ramses,
you didn’t hear any whispers about the game?”
“They never said a word,” he answered honestly.
Leona looked at Hrockas. “Why do you think you’re in a simulation? How can
you possibly not be able to tell that your consciousness is being actually
cast to a base reality location?”
“They said it was designed to feel authentic,” Hrockas said, starting to get
worried. “Are you being serious? We’re on a real planet?”
“Well, we’re on an asteroid,” Mateo said, “but yeah, it’s real. We came here
in a real ship, and we’ve never heard of the game until now.”
Hrockas averted his gaze from the group, seeking guidance maybe from his god
of choice. “I had sex with those people.”
“Excuse me?”
“I thought it was a simulation! Everybody does it. I flew down there in
secret, blended in, and interacted with some of the people. Like my real
one, this substrate is partially organic, so I still have needs. I mean, it
was consensual, though, I didn’t claim to have any power over them. It was
just two people, sometimes three or four—”
“Okay, we don’t need the details, thank you.”
Hrockas shook his head in utter despair. “Why would they do this? I guess it
would be fine if they locked out all populated worlds, but...some of the
others have life; they just don’t have evolved and intelligent life. That
can’t be right either.”
“Far be it for any of us to successfully debate such nuanced ethical
considerations,” Leona said.
“Who’s them that did this?” Olimpia questioned. “Who on Teagarden would we
need to speak to? Is there, like, a company?”
“We don’t have companies anymore, but there is a governing organization,”
Hrockas disclosed. “If not all of the members know the truth, at least a
portion of them do. If I screw up, a moderator knows, and threatens my
account. I bet my moderator is aware.”
“How do we contact them?” Mateo asked.
“Pretty easy,” Hrockas said as he was walking over to one of the base model
pods. He reached behind it, and they could hear beeping noises. Then he
physically separated the pod from its place, which revealed a second pod in
a recess in the wall. It wasn’t a base model, but a unique individual. He
flipped a switch from red to green.
After a few minutes of awkward silence, the body woke up, and opened the
glass hatch. The apparent moderator climbed out, and oriented herself. She
studied the crowd watching her intently. “Hrockas, what did you do?”
“They say this isn’t a game,” he said to her in an accusing tone. “They say
this is a real planet, with real people on it.”
She took a beat before responding, surely trying to decide if there was some
way for her to maintain the lie, even after all this. There wasn’t. The
proverbial cat was out of the bag. She looked up at the clock in the corner
of the room. “Time of veil removal, zero-sixteen on March 9, 2367 Earthan
Standard. I’ll have to return to Teagarden to give them the news: Phase I is
officially over.”
“Screw your return,” Mateo raised his voice a little. “We want answers. What
ever gave you the right to treat these people like NPCs?”
The mod breathed in deeply, and fluttered her lips as she exhaled. “Are you
kidding me right now? The whole purpose of Project Stargate and Operation
Starseed is to run one giant interstellar social experiment. The fact that
we’re observing our subjects should come as no surprise to anyone. We always
knew the double blind study would end, and transition to a blind study, and
then later end completely. We just didn’t know when. Your arrival in
apparent physical form has made that day today. Now I have to go back to
Teagarden to tell my superiors about this.”
“No, you’re not doing that at all,” Leona argued. “I know how this goes.
Your bosses will decide that the experiment hasn’t actually ended, as long
as no one here tells anybody else.”
“We’re not murderers,” the mod argued.
“Perhaps you would not see is as murder. Perhaps you wouldn’t have to kill,
but exile us to an expendable planet, and destroy the terminal behind us.”
“Don’t give them any ideas, love,” Mateo warned.
“True.”
“Just so I’m understanding you right,” the mod began, “you’re refusing to
allow me to return to Teagarden, and are instead holding me hostage.”
“You’re not a hostage,” Leona contended. “No, we can’t let you go, but we’re
not going to use you as a bargaining chip. We don’t even know if they care
about you. It’s entirely possible that they’ll scrub the entire solar
system, including you, to cover this up. We just don’t have enough
information about who you people are. We are close friends with the two
individuals who oversaw the automated construction of the seeder ships. We
know they did it for the Earthan government at the time, but also that not
everyone was privy to the truth. Until we speak to them, no one is going
anywhere.”
“I can’t imagine that they’re involved in this,” Mateo noted.
“I don’t understand how they could possibly not know,” Ramses negated.
“Sasha?” Leona asked. “Figure out how to get me into one of those pods, and
cast my mind to Gatewood. I’m going to speak with them directly.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Ramses, I’m going to need you to stay here, so you can monitor systems from
this end. Sasha, it’s not that I don’t trust you, but...”
“But you don’t trust me,” Sasha finished. “I understand. You can’t offend
me, Aunt Leona.”
“I’m going too,” Mateo decided. “I think I know the two of them better than
you.”
“Indeed,” Leona admitted. “Sasha?”
“Two pods, coming right up.”
It was a lot more difficult than Sasha presumed. The pods themselves were
easy, but locating the quantum signature for their target was a bit more
involved. A ship traveling at relativistic speeds made the calculations
exponentially more complex. Even a reframe engine would throw them off. The
first step was figuring out that that was what was happening in the first
place. Apparently, the centrifugal cylinders were no longer orbiting
Barnard’s Star at all, but on the move to a new destination. In the end,
however, she figured it out, and got it working. Leona and Mateo entered the
pods, and cast their consciousnesses to Cylinder One, which was evidently
somewhere in the middle of interstellar space.
A technician greeted them on the other side, and helped them acclimate to
their new environment. This wasn’t the first time they switched substrates,
but it was still a little jarring, since they were using a different
technique, which maintained their connection to their real bodies. The time
difference made it even weirder. Once they were ready, they demanded to see
Team Keshida, but the tech shook her head. “I’m afraid that’s not possible.
We’ve not seen either of them in almost ninety years.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Leona said. “Ramses spoke with them a couple
of years ago.”
“Perhaps they were communicating across time,” the tech suggested.
“No, they made reference to something that occurred a couple of years
prior.”
“Did they say they were still in the Collective? Because...we weren’t. We
left Gatewood almost as long ago.”
“Where are you going?” Mateo asked.
“Torosia,” he answered.
“Never heard of it.”
“I have,” Mateo said. “They used to call it Durus.”
The tech nodded. “We’ve chosen to join forces, and develop a new society of
human outcasts.”
“Have you ever heard of something called Quantum Colony?” Leona asked her.
“Is that a band, errr...?”
“All right. Well, thank you for your hospitality, but we’re going to have to
cut this short.” She looked to her husband. “We’ll strategize with the team,
but I’m pretty sure our next stop will have to be Teagarden.”
They only spent a few minutes on the cylinder, but almost the whole day
passed for their team on the outpost, because the Gatewooders were traveling
at relativistic speeds. Teagarden would have to wait until next year. It
would be up to Sasha to make sure Hrockas or the moderator didn’t try any
funny business in the meantime.
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