Sora gently takes Pribadium!One by the arm. “Wait, no. Don’t go out there.”
“I have to,” she explains. “I know what it is, but I have to see for
myself.”
“Just have a robot go out to retrieve it for you,” he insists.
“There’s too much interference,” she claims. “That’s the whole problem.
Organic eyes need to see it for us to know what happened, and what’s
happening now.”
“Which is more likely?” Sora questions. “That there’s some kind of signal
jammer between us and whatever’s out there, or that something there
disables technology?”
Pribadium sighs. “I suppose that makes sense.” She pauses to think about it.
“I will send a drone, and if we lose contact with that, we’ll cut our losses
and move on.”
“I think that would be a much better idea,” he decides.
They don’t lose contact with the drone. It doesn’t have to get too close to
the dimensional barrier. When it arrives, it shows that Pribadium!Two’s
shuttle isn’t the only thing drifting around. All of the probes they
dispatched prior to the manned mission are nearby. They’re all dead. The
equipment is dead, the ship is dead, and Pribadium!Two is dead. She could
not have possibly survived that; not in that body. The shuttle is entirely
twisted—no, it’s unraveled, like peeling a citrus fruit in one single
cut.
Pribadium!One—or should she just go by Pribadium now?—pulls up her
privileged vault. Vonearthans share knowledge in a series of databases
collectively known as the central archives. Since time travel isn’t common
knowledge, travelers keep their own records on special drives that only they
can access. It’s vital to keep this information separate and protected. “I
think I’ve seen this before.” She stops, because she doesn’t know what to
search for. “What was it? Corkscrew? Coil? No, spiral.” She runs the
search, and pulls up the lone entry. “Spiral Station. It doesn’t say why
they designed it that way. It doesn’t even say what it’s for. But this must
be why. It must have been unraveled by quintessence. Whoever these people
are, they have bulk tech.”
“You don’t know who they are?” Sora asks. “Your database doesn’t say
anything?”
“It only observes that it exists, and knows the name. It says nothing else.”
“But if it’s operational then maybe she survived her unraveling,”
Sora offers.
“That thing was gigantic,” Pribadium explains. “If people survived, it’s
because there was enough room in the empty interior spaces. The shuttle was
far too small.”
“Okay, so what about her back-up? I know where your body library is, so
let’s go and bring her back online. That’s the whole point of that place.”
Pribadium sighs. “I would have gotten an alert that her mind was transmitted
back to us. Something went terribly wrong out there. The drone is gathering
data, which we will synthesize. She didn’t die for nothing, I’ll tell you
that.”
“No. Even if she wasn’t streaming until the very last second, she would
still have a back-up, because she was streaming any number of seconds prior
to that,” he reasons.
“That’s not what she wants. I know, because she was me. The stream must end
at the same millisecond of death. If there is any gap, it’s not really her.
It’s only a very convincing copy.” The only hope they have of getting her
back is if she managed to survive it, and ends up in Fort Underhill. That
won’t happen for some time, though. She will go to the afterlife simulation
first, and Pribadium doesn’t have access to that system. “Trust me, I know
myself. Our personal protocol is to destroy all lingering IDCode.”
“I refuse to accept that.” Sora runs off. Towards the substrate library.
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