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Ramses was unable to track the location of the missing slingbelts, and there
was no recourse for this. He designed the bulk map so that, while most of
the dots were showing non-specific points, the belts were distinct, and
stood out. If they were anywhere out there, he would be able to spot them.
Their two top hypotheses were that they were either destroyed, or taken
through time. Whoever did it knew exactly what they were after. They weren’t
just a couple of random kids swimming in the ocean, who happened to feel
something invisible in the water. Their prime suspects were the Spiral
Station crew, but they didn’t want to assume. They had plenty of genuine
enemies, and since time travel was inherently involved, it could have been
someone they hadn’t even crossed paths with yet. Instead of wasting
pointless effort on figuring it out, Ramses just programmed his forge core
to build three replacement belts during the interim year. Mateo, Leona, and
Olimpia had lost all of their belongings, but that wasn’t a big deal.
It was interesting that the married trio were the ones whose belts were
stolen. Ram calculated a 2.85% chance that this was entirely
unintentional, but the more practical odds said that it was vastly more
improbable. Just the fact that the other four belts were left behind made it
unlikely to have been random. They were magnetically linked to one another.
It was actually more difficult for them to take only some of the belts, than
to have swiped them all in one go.
The next day, the missing belts appeared on the bulk map. They had been
transported halfway across the Milky Way, for reasons yet unknown. “Have we
been there before?” Olimpia asked. “Do we know anyone there?”
“That is part of the nuclear star cluster, which is relatively close to
Sagittarius A*, our galaxy’s central black hole” Leona explained. “It’s not
the farthest we’ve ever been, but as you can see, no one else is there. It’s
only our belts.”
“No one has ever been there,” Ramses added. “They’re on Southside.
Extremus crossed over the black hole on the north side of the galactic
plane. When the Matrioshka Body was studying time, it too was on Northside.
The whole stellar neighborhood is on Northside, so we just don’t know too
much about this region.”
Romana giggled. “They’re a gift.”
“Huh?” Mateo asked.
“We were just talking about Operation Starframe,” Romana said. “If we want
to reach every corner of the galaxy, it’s best to start in the center. Now
we can do that. Now we have something to lock onto. This will be our staging
ground.”
“We don’t know that the thief did this as a favor,” Marie pointed out. “It
could be a trap instead. I’m guessing this region is naturally fairly
hostile, if it’s so close to the chaos of the supermassive black hole.”
Ramses made a facial shrug. “It’s not as dangerous as, say, the s-star
cluster, which is much closer to the singularity, but it’s not particularly
safe, like it is for Sol. I’m inclined to agree with Romy. It’s too
coincidental. If I were the thief, I would put a trap around Sirius, or some
other close but barely settled region. It took them too much work to get to
where they are. Yes, I’m sure they are trying to lure us there. It’s
irrational to believe that they hid the belts from detection last year, but
forgot to shield them today when they would know we’ve returned to the
timestream. But based on our track record, does anyone here really think
that we’re not gonna go?”
They all laughed a little. “Yeah, we’re gonna go,” Mateo decided. He
commanded his nanites to wrap him up in armor, leaving his face unprotected
for now. “What did you say before, Romana? Boot ‘n’ rally.”
They all armored up too. “Yalla,” Leona ordered.
“Give me a minute,” Ramses defended. “I need to make the calculations.” He
turned away and paced a little as he was tapping on his wrist device. “Okay,
do it again.”
“Yalla.”
They slung to the nucleus, and landed on a rocky planet. It wasn’t heavily
vegetated, but not barren either. The plantlife was clearly alien, but
decidedly alive. The sky was a beautiful sunset orange. Snowcapped mountains
towered in the distance, and it looked a little greener on the foothills.
They turned to find three dress form mannequins on a display curve. A
slingbelt was fitted to each one.
“Yeah. Definitely brought here for us,” Romana agreed with herself.
“That’s not all,” Ramses said, looking at his interface again. “It’s
breathable. For us, anyway. I’m seeing 83% nitro, 11% oxy, 5 for CO2, and a
half percent each for hydrogen and trace gases.”
They decided to open their visors but keep the rest of their armor on,
except for Romana, who chose to end up in a gray sports bra and yoga shorts.
It still could be a trap. The atmosphere was indeed breathable, but it took
a few minutes for their bodies to acclimate to the suboptimal environment.
During this time, they were mildly suffocating before their carbon scrubber
organs caught up to compensate for the extra toxin.
“Carbon load back down to manageable levels for everyone,” Angela announced.
She had expressed an interest in serving as the closest thing to a medical
professional the team had.
Romana instinctively walked around to the other side of the mannequins. She
reached up to one of them, and pulled something off of it. “Sorry for taking these, but now you have extra, in case you need them.
You won’t have to worry about us again. Don’t screw it up this time,” she read.
“They didn’t sign their name?” Mateo asked her.
“Not exactly,” she answered.
“They...initialized it?” Mateo couldn’t think of anything else that was
close to a signature.
“They hand-wrote it, or I should say, you hand-wrote it.” She showed
him the note, and she was right; it was in Mateo’s handwriting.
“Well, I suppose I can trust myself, can’t I?”
“No,” Leona replied bluntly.
“Fair enough.”
“Any other anomalies besides these belts?” Leona asked Ramses.
“No artificial signals,” Ramses began to answer from his interface. “No
satellites, no power generators, no signs of life in the immediate
vicinity...” He looked back up and regarded the horizon. “There is no way to
know if we’re alone, but we seem to be.” He took out his forge core, and
appeared to be in thought as he separated himself from the group, and also
looked at the mountains.
“Are you considering building something here?” Mateo asked.
“Something?” Ramses returned. “Maybe everything.”
“Like a new lab? You just built a new one in your pocket,” Mateo reminded
him.
“Yeah, I know, and I would still want to keep it with me as a mobile
office.” Ramses turned back around. “But a real home base might be nice too.
I once thought that that was Castlebourne, but there are too many people
there. I think we should be more like Linwood Meyers, and take full
ownership over a remote territory. No one else is here, it would just be
ours. It will take tens of thousands of years before Project Stargate
reaches this region. That’s more than a hundred and fifty years for us. This
could be a safe place. We would really only have to worry about Spiral
Station.”
“It’s not the farthest man has ever gone,” Olimpia said. “You just mentioned
Linwood, who is even more remote on the far end of the galaxy. The Extremus
isn’t too far from there. The Exin Empire has reframe engines, and several
decades to kill.”
“They would have to find us,” Ramses continued to list. “This is a central
location. It’s a great place to stage Operation Starframe. It’s
uninhabitable by even some other posthuman models.”
“Still,” Olimpia pushed back. “Shouldn’t we go as far as we can? I agree,
it’s perfect for Starframe, but not the best place for a home if we truly
want to be hidden and remote.”
“The slingdrives have power constraints. Being ultra-distant has its
disadvantages too. We’ll still defend our home. We’re not just gonna live
like pioneers.”
“The note, it’s warning us about something,” Romana jumped back in. “We
don’t know what. Did we come here in another timeline, or is that what
changed? What exactly are we hoping to not screw up this time?”
“It’s doubtful that we were here before,” Leona determined. “We came here
for the belts. That and the note probably mark the point of divergence. I
think this planet is meant to change whatever issues Future!Mateo faced that
he’s trying to fix now.”
“You just said we couldn’t trust him,” Marie contended. “Handwriting means
nothing. Anyone could have forged it.”
“True,” Leona admitted.
“I’ll do my surveys,” Ramses reasoned. “I’ll build satellites and probes.
We’ll map this whole star system, and beyond. Infrastructure will not be a
problem. If we change our minds later, we can always leave. That is entirely
what Starframe is even about. It gives us options, and this world gives us
those options faster.”
“Anyone opposed?” Leona posed to the group. When no one said anything, she
looked at Romana. “You’re our navigator, but you didn’t bring us here. Do
you object to staying?”
“No,” Romana answered. “Like he said, we can always leave later.”
Leona nodded. “Okay. Let’s do some quick surveys before the infrastructure
can be built, just to get some idea of what we’re dealing with. No one has
to participate who doesn’t want to. What I’ll be doing is teleporting
high up into the atmosphere, taking readings and images on my way down, and
then popping back up over a different swath of land to image that area next.
Anyone is welcome to spread out and do the same. But if you just want to
stay here, that’s fine. If three of you would rather go back to the stellar
neighborhood, that would be acceptable too.”
“No, we’re not gonna do that,” Olimpia promised. “We’ll stick together, as
we always try to do. I had to argue against the plan to make sure it was a
good plan. I’ve seen this movie before. This planet has monsters on it, and
that’s the whole plot.”
“It would not be crazy if we did find complex life here,” Leona concurred.
“With carbon dioxide levels this high, I’m more surprised that there’s even
a desert. I suspect the majority of the surface will be fairly lush.”
Leona was correct. While Ramses camped out at their landing site to
synthesize the data, the other six jumped around the atmosphere to serve as
living survey probes. Their onboard sensors weren’t advanced enough to take
highly detailed readings, but it was enough to generate a crude globe. They
saw some more yellow and red, but they also saw green and blue. It looked
not unlike Earth, though the night sky was a lot prettier. There wasn’t any
light pollution, and this region of space had a denser cluster of stars to
admire.
They found almost no manmade structures besides the display
mannequins, but they didn’t find none at all. “Everyone jump to my position,” Marie requested.
“Even me?” Ramses questioned.
“Especially you,” she replied.
They all converged at Marie’s location. They found her standing on a grassy
hill, elevated above a surrounding forest. They weren’t quite sure what
other thing they were seeing here, though. It was a sphere of warped space,
rotating so fast that they couldn’t even tell which direction it was moving.
It reminded Leona of a black hole, but not exactly. “It’s not black,”
Olimpia sort of joked, sort of really didn’t understand it at all.
“Back up anyway,” Leona suggested.
They all took several steps back because their guess was that it was a
portal, and of course, they had no idea where it might take them. But like
the gravity regulator machine back on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, it wasn’t
going to give them any choice. It suddenly expanded, and engulfed them all.
It didn’t appear to have done anything to them. They were still standing on
the same hill. The same forest was still surrounding them. “Is everyone
okay?” Mateo asked. “Roll call.”
They took their turns declaring their respective statuses. They had settled
on an order ahead of time, so it was predictable, except in any hypothetical
situation where something actually was wrong with one of them.
Everyone was fine this time; no currently detected health or temporal
issues. The swirling portal was still there, so they elected to turn around
and walk back down the hill to avoid any further issues.
“Mother,” came a voice from behind them. They turned to see a man standing
near the top of the hill, right in front of the portal. No one recognized
him.
“Who do you believe is your mother?” Leona asked in a way that implied she
hoped it wasn’t her yet again.
The man slowly pointed at Olimpia.
“Me?” Olimpia questioned, shocked. “If I look like your mom, then she must
be from a different timeline, because I don’t have any kids.”
“No, it’s definitely you. I was hoping we would meet sometime, but I didn’t
want to push it. It had to be your choice. I left this reality portal
here in case you ever came looking.”
Olimpia shook her head. “I don’t know how it would be possible.”
“You’re sometimes called The Echo, right?” the man pressed.
“Not so much anymore,” Olimpia countered.
“Well, I’m always called Echo. I’m your echo.” He took a deep breath.
“Welcome back to The Sixth Key.”
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