| Generated by Google Gemini Pro text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3 |
The honeymoon was going well. After horsing around in Mud World: World of
Mud for a little while, Mateo, Leona, and Olimpia spent the night in the
Sovereign Suite of the Palacium Hotel, which was pretty much the most
extravagant, opulent place to stay on the planet. Hrockas actually booked it
for them for more than a year, so they could sleep across midnight central,
and not worry about anyone having used it during their interim year. It was
too much, and completely unnecessary, but he insisted. While it was
luxurious and beautiful, people really didn’t need such things these days.
They mostly came for the fun and adventure, and to do things that they could
not do anywhere else. The majority of the residential dwellings were
functional and unremarkable, because it wasn’t a big draw for anyone, and
there were plenty of nice places to live on other planets.
They were currently hanging out in State of the Art, standing on the
shoulder of one of the gargantuan statues that towered over the skyline.
Visitors couldn’t typically climb this high up, but teleporters didn’t share
such limitations. They were trying to figure out what they were going to do
next. The others on the team were right. They needed this, and if they would
deign to admit it to themselves, they deserved it too.
“Adrenadome?” Olimpia suggested. They were each looking through the catalog,
and tossing out ideas.
“I don’t want to shift substrates,” Leona said. “Nothing life-threatning.”
Olimpia clicked her teeth as she began to swipe away the options she had
bookmarked one by one.
“We should just go to Polar Tropica,” Mateo said for the umpteenth time.
“That’s so basic,” Olimpia contended. “Are we basic?”
“Well, I suggested we try the Outer System space battle simulations, but no
one wanted anything violent,” Mateo reminded her.
“Still don’t,” Leona confirmed. “Whoa,” she added, looking down at her
forearm output.
“What? Something juicy?” Olimpia asked, trying to look over at her readout.
Leona read the message out loud, “you have been browsing the catalog for a
while now. Still having trouble deciding? Tap here for a random suggestion,
which will come from your preference algorithm. If you linked your profile
with nearby friends, this suggestion will be sourced from their interest
surveys as well.”
“Tap on that thang!” Mateo said.
Leona shrugged and tapped on the button. A new message popped up that read,
temporal signatures detected. Rerouting. Instead of just producing
the answer, they were automatically teleported elsewhere.
They found themselves standing next to a wooden wall. It wasn’t cleanly cut,
but looked more like bark. The air was foggy and unbreathable. A heavy rain
was falling upon them. They activated their EmergentSuits, and continued to
look around. “Wow. That could have killed us,” Olimpia said.
“Must be an experimental feature,” Leona mused. “Jesimula Utkin suggested it
at a meeting once. Hrockas wasn’t so sure, because he didn’t know how to
distinguish time travelers from regular people. I guess they think they
figured it out.”
“Not really,” Mateo contended. “The air is toxic. Unless it also knew that
we had suits on, I guess.”
“It’s only toxic for us,” Leona agreed. She ran her hand over the wood wall.
She reached over to her arm screen, and flicked the data over to her heads
up display, which was an easier way to read when her helmet was on.
“Derudome. It houses The World Tree, along with thousands of others, but
this one is set to reach the top of the dome, and be three kilometers in
diameter.”
“So, it’s not a wall,” Mateo stated the obvious.
“No. This isn’t even in the catalog yet,” Leona went on. “I can only see the
prospectus because we’re already in the dome, and the satnav found an
otherwise hidden link, but it isn’t open to visitors.”
“First!” Mateo shouted playfully.
“Hey, Thistle,” Leona began. “Erase the fog and rain through multispectral
imaging. Show us the tree alone.”
The image on their HUDs changed. The fog still had them enveloped, and they
could still hear the pitter-patter of rainwater on their suits, but they
could now see what the tree would look like on a clear day. It was a
magnificent sight to behold. People were really going to love it. Leona was
in just as much awe of it, but was also running calculations through her
head. How could such a thing be possible? How did it grow so fast? Did
Hrockas use time tech? Or had he been working on this longer than she
realized? No, even if it was the absolute first dome he started working on,
the tree could not be at full height in this short amount of time. And if
time tech were involved, he likely would have conscripted Ramses to
make it happen.
Leona refocused her vision to the HUD text. “There’s more. It has a planned
release date of...” She trailed off.
“When?” Mateo prompted.
“Year 2900,” she said.
“Whew, that’s the long-game,” Olimpia pointed out.
“Wait. Why wait?” Leona questioned. “Thistle, what are the current
dimensions?”
“Nearly eight kilometers tall, with a diameter of two-point-four-two
kilometers.”
“Yeah, it’s just not ready yet,” Leona determined. “The math is tight, but
the rate of growth doesn’t break the laws of physics in a highly controlled
environment such as this one.”
Someone else wearing an environmental suit walked up from a couple of meters
away, letting themselves appear in the honeymooners’ sightlines without
speaking or jumpscaring them first. Whoever it was, their visor was opaque.
They held one hand towards Olimpia while the other hand was underneath their
own chin. Both palms were face up. They drew both hands together until one
was on top of the other, then turned them so both palms were face down. They
then extended their hands back to the original positions, except with the
hands switched. This was the universal sign for
open up radio communications on a hailing frequency.
Leona did as she was asked. “Hello?”
“Sorry, my visor is broken,” Hrockas’ voice came through. “I refuse to wear
an IMS on this planet on principle as the whole premise is that it’s
infinitely survivable. I didn’t realize the helmet didn’t work right until
it was already on.”
“How did you get here so fast?” Mateo asked him.
“I have a teleporter belt,” Hrockas replied. “Ramses built one for me. It
needs constant charging, but it makes my daily life easier. Is he here?”
“Just the three of us,” Olimpia promised.
“Good. Not that I wouldn’t want him here. Well, I don’t plan on any of you
being here. It’s just that I was worried about my lifesign sensors, but it
appears they captured all visitors. You really aren’t meant to be
here, though.”
“The auto random selector dispatched us here,” Leona explained.
“Oooooooohh, I forgot about that. It should not have been activated. I’ll
have a talk with Jesi’s friend about it. I put the project on hold
indefinitely.”
“Fair enough,” Mateo said. “We’re sorry to have imposed.”
“No, it’s okay, you three are fine,” Hrockas insisted. “I just need to
include it when we update the security protocols.” He looked up at the tree.
He likely couldn’t see it in all its glory, however, as the fog would be
blocking most of the view. “Wady’all think?”
“It’s gorgeous,” Leona said. “We were looking for a place to spend some of
our honeymoon. This place checks a lot of boxes. I like ecologies. Mateo
likes water. Olimpia likes dangerous or toxic environments.”
Hrockas chuckled. “The air is saturated with carbon dioxide. Makes them grow
faster.”
“So there are other trees here?” Olimpia pressed.
“Oh, yeah, it’ll be a whole forest when it’s done,” Hrockas said as he
turned at the waist to indicate the area in general. “Land for giants, but
not with giants. I’ll leave that to Gulliver’s World.”
“Thanks for letting us see it,” Leona said graciously. “I’m sure we’ll be
back in about four hundred days, when it’s finally open to the public.”
Hrockas chuckled again. “You can stay as long as you want. The fog makes it
hard to see, but hey, if you’re into that, as well as danger, you could
always try Foggy Forest.”
“Thanks. After my time in Bloodbourne,” Mateo said, “I’ve decided to stay
away from the intentionally scary or unsettling ones.”
“I understand. Have a good rest of your honeymoon.” Hrockas tried to tug on
a pull actuator, and flip a switch on his shoulder. “Oh, shit. My
teleporter’s drained again.”
“Here.” Mateo approached. “Let me take you to Treasure Hunting Dome, so
Ramses can fix it for you. It shouldn’t drain that fast.”
“No, I’ve been using it all day. I really just need to be careful with it.”
“Well, I’ll make him give you a second one during charge cycles, or hell, a
third.” Mateo took hold of Hrockas and took them both away. Leona and
Olimpia followed.
They were standing in the antechamber to Ramses’ new lab, which he built
when he was stuck in the past for a year. After they went through
decontamination, the three EmergentSuit wearers receded their nanites, and
stepped into the lab. While Olimpia was helping Hrockas remove his bulky
suit, Mateo approached Ramses. Something caught his eye, though. He looked
over at a gestational pod, which Romana was floating inside of. He fumed.
“What happened to my daughter?”
“She’s fine,” Ramses said. “She’s taking a nap. That’s not your daughter.
It’s a new substrate for her.”
“Why would she need a new substrate?” Mateo questioned.
“The retroverters,” Ramses began to explain. “They’re not proverters too.
Romana asked me to give her an upgrade instead of waiting for time to age
her back up.”
“We can find her a proverter somewhere else,” Mateo reasoned.
“That’s not what she wants. You should talk to her.”
“Were you ever gonna tell me?”
“Yeah, when you got back. Why are you back so early?”
“It was just a quick detour in between adventures. Now I worry I should
stay, or you’ll do something drastic.”
“Mateo. We were going to tell you. We just wanted you to relax first. Don’t
make this into a thing.”
“Well, you’ve obviously been working on it for a long time now. She only
looks as old as the real Romana does right now.”
“That is on an accelerated timescale,” Ramses clarified.
“I thought that wasn’t safe or stable.”
“I mean, the clone is in a time bubble. Or it usually is, while I’m not
here. It’s developing at a normal rate, but from our perspective, it’s sped
up. I shut off the temporal field this morning so I could run diagnostics,
and make any adjustments necessary...which there aren’t any.”
This made Mateo even more frustrated. “Why can’t you just do that for Romana
herself, keeping her in her original body?”
Ramses shook his head. “You’re not as dumb as you pretend to be, so stop
asking stupid questions. It wouldn’t work for a conscious individual. She
would go insane, trapped in the pod for ten plus years. God!”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Mediator Leona said, stepping in. “Ramses, don’t be
mean. Not everyone is as smart as you, and I know you get annoyed, but you
need to keep control of how you speak to others. What might seem like a dumb
question to you could sound perfectly reasonable to anyone else.” She too
was a genius, but a part of her wasn’t. She recalled a timeline where she
majored in Film Studies in college. This gave her a rare ability to straddle
both worlds, and be empathetic to all. “Mateo, Romana is an adult, and this
decision was inevitable. Look around. Nobody on this planet is a regular
mortal being. Some people refused transhumanistic upgrades once they became
available, and you know what happened to them? They died. Because that’s
literally what they wanted. Their race has all but died out at this point,
because fewer in each generation choose to stay as they were when they were
born.”
“I know,” Mateo responded. “Intellectually, I know. I just can’t help but
see her as my little girl. I never got to raise her. I think I would give
her all the room in the universe if I watched her grow up, making small
decisions on her own at first, before working her way up to the
life-changing ones.”
“Yeah, and that wasn’t fair for you, but at the same time, it’s not fair
of you to expect her to let you treat her as a child.”
Mateo said. “I know that too.”
“This wasn’t a rash decision,” little Romana said from the doorway. “I
always wanted to be like you. My whole life, I’ve wanted to be like you. I
grew up with stories. This...Ashvin thing was just the catalyst that pushed
me to finally go through with it. I want this.”
“It’ll be ready in a couple days,” Ramses said.
“Did you hear that, dad? Plenty of time to go back to your honeymoon. I
promise, when you return, I’ll still look like a child. I won’t transfer
without you present.”
Mateo nodded. “Okay.”
When Mateo showed up the next day, still in the middle of the honeymoon,
Romana no longer looked like a kid. She didn’t look like herself at all.
No comments :
Post a Comment