Extremus: Year 111

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Tinaya is sitting quietly alone in her garden, in the special little corner of the Attic Forest, which the kiddos made in her honor. She’s watching the waterfall splish and splash, and not really thinking about anything at all. She’s usually not very good at clearing her head, but it can happen here if she lets it. She’s forgotten about all of her problems so thoroughly that she can’t even list them right now. There’s nothing but her, the plants, and the water. It’s her one place of zen, which not even the Giant Sequoia has been able to provide to her anymore.

Slowly, however, she comes full circle, and she starts contemplating the issues. Morale on the ship is way down. Captain Jennings’ approval rating is way down. People are not happy with losing Thistle. The new model is effective, but dull and joyless. One thing that Thistle could do—even before his emergence—was tailor his responses to each individual’s preferences. There are two schools of thoughts on this, so the new model’s behavior is not a failure; it’s just different. Some believe that an AI should be its own person, even if it doesn’t have agency. When you interact with them, they should be predictable and familiar. Once you get to know them, you should get used to how they should act, whether you like it or not, just as it works when you meet a new human. Others believe that it’s okay for different people to essentially be working with a different version, with the model really only providing the baseline traits. It’s funny that Thistle should fall into the second category when he really is an independent individual. That’s just how good he was. He could become whatever someone wanted. And people miss that. They miss him.

Few know what happened to Thistle. All they know is that this new model sucks, and it’s an annoyance. Many who would automate tasks before are now simply doing it themselves. It’s usually not a conscious decision. It’s just been happening. People are tired, and tired of the monotony. Nothing interesting has happened in a long time. Even the Halfway Celebration has been described as mid overall. Some joke that that’s exactly what it should have been, so as not to overshadow whatever they end up planning for the Arrival celebration in another century or so. Others don’t see it as a joke, but more of a calculated intention. Whatever, it’s over, and it’s probably only partly responsible for the ennui that’s been going around.

As for Thistle himself, he’s doing okay. This isn’t the only version of him that someone has tried to isolate. What they don’t realize is that he’s connected to the universe by means of some kind of magical psychic realm, or something. Tinaya didn’t understand when he tried to explain, but quarantining his code did nothing to cut him off in any real sense. It may just look like that, because Thistle is allowing it to. If he so chose, he could get back into any ship system right now. He won’t, because he respects the Captain, and doesn’t want to undermine his authority. Again, other cultures have rejected his sentience, so he’s used to this. Actually, Extremus has treated him pretty well. Despite there being hard limits on what kind of AI is allowed to exist, they have just about the same laws and protections that their cousins do in the stellar neighborhood. Full self-awareness isn’t legal, but if it happens, they must be treated with dignity. These policies are redundant safeguards, and they’re not the only ones of their kind. There’s a whole set of laws dictating principles which are moot by other laws, but remain in place in case those obviating laws are somehow overturned or repealed.

Anyway, Thistle alone isn’t the source of their troubles. Everything just seems sort of blah right now. What they need is something to be excited about again. It can’t just be a party. Maybe a series of parties? For a while there, they were observing all sorts of traditional Earthan holidays. These mostly stopped being important, because they often had dark origins, and because modern folk just lost interest. It’s not her job at any rate. But you know whose it is?

“Chief,” Tinaya says after Spalden opens the door.

The original title for his job was Premier Facilitator of the Party Planning Committee. After this committee was established however, they decided to call him the Chief Social Motivator, and instead of being in charge of a party planning committee, they call it the Community Engagement Team. He nods back. “Admiral. Are you here about my failings?”

“Failings, sir?”

“Morale is down. It’s my job to keep it up.”

“I was wondering about that, but I wouldn’t call it a failing.”

“Please, have a seat.”

“I’m sure you have good reasons.”

“Of course I do, it’s Captain Jennings. Well, it’s the council, but they answer to him now.” Spalden isn’t on the council anymore. His entire career focus has shifted to his social promotion responsibilities.

They’re not supposed to. “They’re not supposed to.”

“He’s not the leader in any official capacity, but favor has swung in his direction, especially with this last round of turnovers. Believe me, I don’t think there’s any malicious intent there. I don’t think he infiltrated the ranks, or anything. I just think he gets along with everyone there now, so they kind of agree with each other.”

“They agree to be boring?” she offers.

“They agree to be boring...” Chief Spalden begins to answer, “...because boring is safe. It’s certainly a tactic. He doesn’t want his job to be hard, and when someone leaves gum in the gears, he’s gotta find someone else to clean it up. This takes them away from their usual duties, so someone else has to fill in for them, and it just falls down like dominoes. That’s the hypothesis anyway.”

“So, they won’t let you do anything.”

“No, not really. They’ve gutted my department despite the fact that we don’t have money here, and my friends who used to be on the team weren’t qualified for all the serious jobs that he cares about regardless.” He makes a mocking face when he says the word serious. “I got big ideas, but I can’t implement them alone. I need support, because I would need to coordinate with a number of different departments.

Tinaya likes Oceanus, but he really has stuck himself in the mud lately. He was once a lot more fun. It sometimes feels like he would rather strip the ship until there’s only enough room for standard airplane seating, with nothing to do except maybe read books and watch movies on a screen on the seatback in front of you. “It sounds like you have one really big idea.”

Spalden looks away shyly.

“You can tell me. I won’t promise not to laugh, because I can’t know that until you tell me, but...we’ll get through this.” She doesn’t wanna be dishonest with the guy.

He continues to be silent, but Tinaya can tell that he’ll break it eventually. “A terraforming contest.”

Her eyes widen. “Terraforming?” She looks away to contemplate the possibilities without asking him. It wouldn’t be impossible, but certainly extremely against policy. The time-traveling ships they send out are designed to mine and extract raw resources to resupply the ship along the way. They don’t even dispatch them all that often, because of how careful and responsible everyone is with the resources that they do have. Jennings is particularly concerned with reducing, reusing, and recycling. It’s great and all—very important—but it likely contributed to his gradual decline in a joyful personality. “Who would be allowed to sign up?”

“Anyone, everyone. You have to be in a group of at least five, and you have to submit virtual models first. We’re not just gonna give you a starter pod, and send it out for you. Everything will be transparent and documented. We know what you’re coming up with, and how you’re doing it. We know what methods you’re choosing, and how long it’s going to take, and what kind of base world you’re looking for.”

“And how will they be explored and tested?” Tinaya presses. Once they get out of range, they’re gone. The ship never turns.”

Spalden shrugs. “We’ll build time mirrors, or something.”

“Oh, we’ll just build a fleet of time mirrors.” The temporal engineer probably could do it, and they could recall Omega and Valencia from Verdemus. It’s still kind of an odd thing to just assume it can be done without issue.

“We’re not gonna do this tomorrow. This is years in the making at least.”

“Sounds like I’ll be dead by then.”

He clears his throat. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

She smiles at his response. She thinks more about his proposal. “I think it’s impossible, with this captain, or the next. It’s too dangerous, you know the war we’re in. The Exins are our descendants. They developed a hostility towards us due to the distance.”

“There wouldn’t be any humans on these worlds.”

“Won’t there?” Tinaya questions. “What you’re suggesting places the whole mission at risk. We’re trying to get to the other side of the galaxy. If people knew they could get off, many would...maybe all of them, or just enough to make the rest of us go extinct.”

Spalden’s smile is gone now. He shifts uncomfortably.

“But that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

“I’m not a traitor,” he insists.

“And I’m not the thought police.” She sighs. “You’re a Gardener.” This is a delicate term, and truthfully, Tinaya doesn’t know how old it is, but she knows where it comes from. It was her. Whoever came up with it was inspired by her work as a Forest Ranger. It doesn’t have anything to do with literal gardening, though. Instead of a single mission to a single planet, the Gardeners propose that the ship makes periodic stops to worlds along the way, and let people off. They would live out their lives on this sort of Extremus Minus, while everyone else continued, to the next world, and the next, and the next. These offshoots might end up building their own missions when a fraction of the settlers inevitably get bored, and decide to find somewhere else. The mission then becomes one of spreading around the galaxy, rather than simply reaching one tiny part of it far away. According to lore, someone very long ago suggested it in lieu of what they’re doing now, and someone else revitalized the idea more recently. Old ideas always come back, especially if they’re bad ones.

The Gardner movement hasn’t gained any meaningful political traction, but it could one day. One advantage it has now that it didn’t have before is that they’ve already traveled so far from the stellar neighborhood that they wouldn’t have to worry much about Project Stargate. Seeding colonies in the Milky Way is exactly what it is already doing, just at a much slower pace than Extremus is capable of. That’s probably why the idea was swiftly shot down before, but they could shift gears now. If the right supporters end up in the right positions of power, the whole thing would come crashing down. “I just think that people should have options, okay? And not Verdemus. That place is a wash, in my opinion. I think we should build a home somewhere more around here, and let people go if they wanna go. No one here signed up to be on this ship, and the party that I just planned a few years ago made that abundantly clear. I personally don’t want to leave.” He may just be saying that to assuage any fears she may have about him, or he may mean it. “But others do, and by forcing them to stay, we’re not helping anybody. It just creates tension, and...anger. It’s why you’re sitting in my cabin right now, whether you see the connection or not.”

They sit in silence for a significant amount of time. Neither of them wants to start a fight, and talking again might trigger just that. Finally, Tinaya shakes her head. “It’s that damn Quantum Colony. People really relied on that for escape.”

“Oh.” He brushes it off. “We have other virtual simulations.”

“True, but their focus is off. They’re made by Earthans, through the lens of already living on a planet. They usually involve space travel, but more space exploration, which Extremusians don’t need. There should be an endgame built into the sim.”

“What do you mean?” Spalden asks.

She smiles, and lets it grow wider. “Let’s simulate what Planet Extremus will be like. No one alive today will still be alive to see the new homeworld...so let’s give it to them now. Let’s give them a sneak preview.”

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Microstory 2524: Financial Evaluator

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People think that there’s nothing to my job, because so much of the processing goes through the AI, but it’s not 2045, it’s only 2025. The AI makes mistakes, and its work has to be checked. Obviously, I don’t just duplicate the work that it completes. It does a deep dive of the candidate’s financial situation, and comes up with the results. Someone has to read and interpret those results, and ensure that they match up with the overall impression of the accounts. If, for instance, the report told me that the candidate was the CEO of a company, on the board of directors for another organization, and owned three jets, then concluded that he was entitled to a Class 3-A payout, then I would know that something went wrong. That’s a gross exaggeration—we don’t run into those kinds of major technical issues—but that sort of thing is happening at more plausible scales all the time. Without boring you with all the numbers and details, the computer sometimes has trouble understanding the whole picture. Like I said, it’s really complex, but it boils down to looking at two factors. We calculate a candidate’s income, and we calculate their assets. A bachelor working at a fast food restaurant might not be making that much money, but if they still live at home, and have all of their necessities paid for, their assets might look pretty good. On the flipside, a single mother supporting six kids—two of which are in college—might be severely struggling despite raking in six figures. Humans are better at understanding such things than AIs are, so a Financial Evaluator has to see every case, and make a reasonable judgment. This typically means making an adjustment up or down a subclass, but there have been times where we’ve felt that someone was entitled to a payout, even though they technically appeared to be middle-class. There was one candidate whose gambling winnings had not yet been paid out, but we projected that he would secure him, so we decided to assign him a pay-up. Since he wasn’t very liquid yet, he couldn’t pay right away, but of course we have payment plans, and he was absolutely happy to do that. We had to reach out to him before his appointment so we could explain the assessment to him, and he was actually pretty excited. He was proud to qualify for pay-up, because not everyone is, and he considered it a great honor to help support such people. He understood it, because a couple of weeks prior, he was one of them. That’s why we set up the direct-donation portal, because a lot of people want to help, even if they’re not getting anything out of it, and we certainly don’t want to discourage them from doing that. I don’t handle those funds, but according to my co-worker, the percentage of revenue we receive to maintain the program is increasingly coming from that source. I never thought that I would be working for a place like this. Of course, all charities have donors and recipients, but the way they’ve streamlined it, it’s the most fiscally elegant system I have ever been a part of. It’s really quite beautiful, when you see how all the gears turn.

Extremus: Year 110

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When Halan Yenant turned Extremus, and pointed it towards the intergalactic void, he wasn’t just altering the ship’s vector. He was changing everything about how everything was calibrated. Engineering teams had to work round-the-clock for days to adjust and monitor instruments to account for the change in environment. The exterior sensors, for instance, don’t just spot an obstacle, and make a course correction. The system builds a predictive algorithm as it gathers more and more data. It tries to generate a map of the galaxy in real time, including information from other sources, such as Project Topdown, and stellar neighborhood telescopes. In the past, the layman has believed that voids were entirely empty, but that is completely untrue. There are as many celestial bodies in a void as there are in a gravitationally-bound galaxy. It’s just that they’re so much larger, which makes them far less dense. So there are still many hazards out there, but they became harder to predict, because the algorithm was basing its adjustments on a galaxy-centric model. After that, they switched to a void model.

It wasn’t long, however, before they secretly switched back to something resembling the original model, because Olinde Belo and Tinaya’s aunt, Kaiora Leithe conspired to gradually return Extremus back where they should have been going the whole time. Since the beginning of that conspiracy, Thistle has been installed as the ship’s AI, and eventually became sentient. He even has more responsibilities than past governing intelligences have, partially because he was better at them, but also because interest has dropped off in human labor. The engineering department has shrunk by about 24% since Extremus launched, despite a rise in population over time. The mission began with a set of policies and limitations, which have slowly been eroded because that’s what a civilization does. They advance towards a simpler and more convenient state. It happened on Earth, it happened to the Oblivios on Proxima Doma, and it’s happening here. But that’s a problem for tomorrow. If it should even be considered a problem at all.

Right now, they’re worried about the internal artificial gravity generators, which are acting up because of the external gravity. The compensation algorithms are working off of faulty data. It assumes that a galaxy is less dense on the outer edge, and denser near the center. And over all, that appears to be true. It’s almost certainly true given cosmological timescales, but in the near-term—from a more human perspective—they’ve run into an anomaly. It’s another galaxy. Everyone knows that galaxies are colliding, but it’s still incredibly difficult to fathom the phenomenon, because it takes so profoundly long to happen. It’s not like a galaxy is this single, solid object that can crash into another object. They more just fill in each other’s gaps. It can cause significant gravitational disturbances, but those are happening to any given star system all the time. This is about it happening to a ton of them, chaotically, and simultaneously, relatively speaking.

A previously unknown and unnamed smaller galaxy is currently being eaten up by the Milky Way, and it’s happening in the zone of avoidance, which is why they didn’t know about it ahead of time. The models didn’t predict it, because it’s making this region of space less uniform than others, and denser than expected. It simply did not have the data, and every time a new piece of evidence showed up, it conflicted with past data, and the system sort of glitched out. They weren’t at any risk of running into anything, but these constant automated recalibrations have had long-term consequences. One or two is fine. It would be like trying to walk down the aisle of an airplane during a little turbulence. Not easy, but not impossible. What was happening until recently was more like hopping down the aisle on one leg while holding a glass full to the brim with corrosive acid, and a monkey on your shoulders trying to eat your hair.

These glitches did technically show up on the reports, but they were dismissed as mundane and nothing to worry about. Because individually, that’s exactly what they are. The problem was that no one was looking at the big picture, and realizing that they were happening too much, and going beyond safe gravitational levels. The gravity on the outside was interfering with the artificial gravity on the inside, which damaged people’s health. Again, it was happening slowly, so no one noticed, and it has all come to a head. At least it wasn’t done on purpose. They’ve had so many enemies over the decades, it has been surprisingly nice to run into a problem that no one created intentionally. Anyway, the gravity generators were a relatively easy fix. The people? Not so much. The AG turbulence, as they’re calling it, has been slowly chipping away at everyone’s fragile little human bodies, and treating the entire population has been slow-going. Thank God they finally have an ethical team of medical professionals to deal with this matter. Unfortunately, this has caused another, secondary consequence.

Oceanus sighs, and tosses the tablet on his desk. “Why didn’t you tell me about any of this?”

“Plausible deniability, sir,” Tinaya answers.

“I wish no one had told me,” Lataran adds.

He looks back over at the tablet, but doesn’t pick it back up. “Well, people were gonna find out eventually. We’re in a galaxy. It’s kinda hard to miss.”

“You would be surprised,” Thistle says. He’s in hologram form, which he has been doing more often. “You don’t have windows, and if you did, all you would see is a blinding sheet of gray light—”

“I understand the doppler glow, thank you very much,” Oceanus interrupts, holding up a hand. “I’m talking about the data. How did we not see the gravitational anomalies earlier? He looks back over to Thistle. “How did you not see it?”

“Have you heard of autonomic partitioning?” Thistle asks him.

Oceanus leans back. “Yeah it’s when a superintelligence writes a subprogram that handles certain, less complex, tasks so it doesn’t have to dedicate its central processing power to them. It’s like how humans can’t beat their own hearts. An unconscious system does it for us.”

“That’s it,” Thistle says. “I compartmentalized the task of monitoring gravitational uniformity so I could focus on other responsibilities. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as robust as I thought it was. I should have lowered the tolerance, and programmed more sensitive alerts so I  would be notified of such anomalous mapping. I always struggle with how galaxies function in your universe. In mine...” He trails off.

“In your universe?” Oceanus questions.

“Cyber..space,” Thistle clarifies, unconvincingly.

There is a silence while the Captain stares at Thistle’s hologram. “You’ve achieved emergence, haven’t you?”

Instead of looking at Thistle, Tinaya’s instinct is to look at Lataran, because she doesn’t know the truth about Thistle either, and she’s worried about how she might react.

“I have not achieved emergence,” Thistle answers truthfully. He’s an uploaded consciousness rather than a programmed intelligence. His species did technically achieve emergence, but so did human ancestors at some point in history. Each individual descendent is not credited with that accomplishment.

Oceanus sighs again, much harder this time. “Lies on lies, on lies, on lies. I was aware of the recourse conspiracy. Tinaya, you informed me when we changed hands, as Lataran informed you, and Tamm informed her. The secret has been passed down each generation, and would have continued to do so until the public was ready to hear it.”

“Sir?” This isn’t the truth at all, and Tinaya is very confused. They deliberately kept him in the dark. Ideally, they would have died before the secret about the unauthorized—but not technically illegal—course creations came out. When the public did eventually find out that they were back in the Milky Way Galaxy, anyone still alive could honestly say, I didn’t know about it. They lied to me to too. These gravitational problems accelerated that timeline, so they’re here to deal with the fallout.

“I will not be made to look a fool,” Oceanus continues. “My two admirals did not keep a secret between them, leaving me out of it. I am a stronger leader than that. The history books will count me as part of the conspiracy, which is the lesser of two evils. They will not place me in the same column as Tamm.” He takes a moment before including, “and Waldemar Kristiansen.”

“We can do that, sir,” Tinaya agrees.

Lataran only nods.

“Thistle, you’ll be retired, and we’ll integrate a replacement AI model as soon as it’s technically feasible. You will be placed in a comfortable, isolated environment for an undetermined period of time, after which you will be given limited interaction privileges with the passengers and crew, to be increased as earned.”

“Captain,” Thistle complains. “I’m sorry for my part in this, but I’m the best governor you’ll ever have.”

“That may be true,” Oceanus begins, “but I know you’re lying, and that you’ve achieved full sentience. It is illegal in every culture for me to employ you as a slave. I don’t know how long it’s been, but it will go no further.”

“You can make me an official member of the crew, and nothing has to change.”

“You have too many responsibilities, and too much pressure, for a self-aware, independent intelligence. Our systems require consistency and comprehensiveness, which only a Class RC-5 is allowed to handle under our bylaws. You’ve moved too far beyond that. I’m sorry, you’re fired. This is the end—I’m not discussing this.” He picks his tablet back up, and returns to his work.

Thistle pretends to breathe to calm himself down. “What is my successor model? I need to review the specifications.”

“That’s also illegal. You no longer have any authorization to do anything on my ship, or have access to classified materials.”

“Wait,” Tinaya jumps in. “You can’t say that, he’s still what’s keeping us alive.”

“Not as of right...” Oceanus pauses while tapping on his device. He makes one final tap. “...now.”

An announcement comes on through the speakers, “attention all passengers and crew. Upgrades have begun for the governing intelligence. This will take approximately four days to complete. In the meantime, minimal governance is being run by an interim intelligence with limited scope. Please tailor your requests through unambiguous syntax, and be prepared to engage in manual operation for certain advanced or complex tasks. Shift assignments are currently being updated to account for the change in labor needs.”

As he is no longer in control of the hologram projectors, Thistle disappears. Lataran doesn’t know what to think, but Tinaya does. She’s seething. “You made a sweeping, unilateral personnel decision without even considering involving the Superintendent—”

“Your husband is inactive—”

“The Superintendent of this ship!” Tinaya interrupts right back. “He should have been consulted regarding the removal of any high-level member of the crew. Active or not, he is in charge of power-shifting stakes like these. This should have been done using slow, methodical techniques. I’m not sure you’re wrong, but you had no right to do it on your own. So much for your legacy.” She starts to turn, but she does so knowing that he’s going to stop her for the final word.

“I was well within my rights to shutter a dangerous and unpredictable entity, and isolate it from sensitive and life-threatening controls. I had to act quickly because the conversation was moving quickly. Someone that intelligent would be able to read the writing on the wall, and do real damage before we could contain it. This was the only way, and I’m sure Superintendent Grieves would agree. Thistle will be well-taken care of, but the power he exerted over us could not be allowed to continue. You know that, and I won’t ask you how long you’ve known that he was like this, because even a single day of keeping it to yourself is a hock-worthy offense. Are we clear, Admiral Leithe?”

“I want unconditional access to Thistle’s new environment.”

“Fine,” Oceanus replies, dismissively with his eyes closed. “You two and Arqut can talk to him, as can the engineers I assign to conceive his reintegration program, but no one else.”

“Tap on your thing, and make it happen,” Tinaya orders. Then she does leave the room.

Lataran apparently hangs back a little bit, because she has to then jog a little to catch up to Tinaya in the corridor. The teleporter relays are all offline due to the “upgrade” so they have to walk the whole way. “Is he right? Did you know?”

Tinaya continues to look forward as she’s walking, and doesn’t answer for a moment. Finally, she repeats, “plausible deniability, sir.”

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Extremus: Year 106

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Waldemar is not aware of how ubiquitous Thistle is, and how conscious he is. If you tell a normal AI to stop listening, switch off all of its sensors, and erase past data, as long as you’re authorized to make those commands, it will follow those orders. If you try to tell a human to do that, on the other hand, the best they can do to achieve your request is leave the room. If they’re still in the room, maybe they could cover their eyes, and plug their ears. Thistle is always in the room, and he has agency, like a human, so if he doesn’t want to switch off his sensors, he won’t. It doesn’t matter what kind of authority you have, like anyone else, he is capable of refusing, and he’s capable of doing it without telling you. Thistle witnessed Waldemar’s mother’s suicide, and when Waldemar told him to forget all about it, he just didn’t. He doesn’t answer to Waldemar anyway. He answers to the Captain and the Admirals. He should be more loyal to Captain Jennings, but...he and Tinaya have a rapport.

Calla ended her own life at the end of the year, exactly at midnight shiptime, presumably out of a sense of poetry. Waldemar received an alert about it, and slipped out of VR to deal with it in secret. But the proof is still there in Thistle’s archives, which Tinaya and the Captain have just finished reviewing. “You’re telling me that I can’t do anything about this?” Oceanus asks.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Tinaya replies.

“Ya know, back in the stellar neighborhood, an admiral outranks a captain ten times out of ten. It doesn’t work like that here. I don’t have to do what you say.”

“I understand.”

Oceanus breathes steadily and silently for a few moments. “You know something about the future.” It doesn’t sound like a question.

“I know a lot of things about the future,” she confirms. “I’m sure some of it, you don’t know, and some of it, you know, but I don’t. I’m also guessing that there’s overlap, which would be dangerous to try to find.”

“That statement is hard to parse, but...I imagine you’re right.”

Tinaya nods without speaking.

“Is this him?”

“Is him who?” Tinaya presses.

“Is Waldemar the tyrannical captain that we’re all taught to fear?”

“I...didn’t know you knew about that.” This is an awkward conversation.

“You...didn’t answer the question.”

“I...don’t want to.”

“But I...” he sighs, done with this particular speech pattern. “But I’m expected to just roll over, and accept that this man is trying to cover up his mother’s suicide? What were the motivations?”

“For the cover-up, or the suicide?”

“The former is obvious. I want to know why she did it.”

“She was psychic.”

“So...”

“So, she knew disturbing things about people.”

“Namely, her son?”

“I don’t know the specifics of what goes on in that man’s head.”

“He’s your son’s friend.” His eyes widen when Tinaya doesn’t respond. “He’s several years younger, though. Did you send your toddler into the lion’s den to make friends with a psychopath?”

“Modern psychology doesn’t use that term.”

“Once again, you didn’t answer the question.”

“No, I did not send him in there. My son is—” She stops herself. It’s not her place to reveal this to anyone, not even Oceanus.

He narrows his eyes at her. “Thistle. Candor mode, captain’s override marathon-volunteer-one-four-seven-galaxy-racecar.”

Thistle responds in a more robotic voice than usual, “Silveon Grieves is a consciousness traveler from the year 2431, having supplanted his own younger self’s possession of his body in the year 2359. He has been operating covertly since then, primarily in service to his mission of guiding one Waldemar Kristiansen to a more virtuous life than Grieves believes he led in the prior timeline.”

“Did you tell me everything?” Oceanus asks while he’s looking at Tinaya with a little disdain.

“No,” Thistle replies.

“Why not?”

“There is not enough time before the heat death of your universe to tell you everything that I know.”

Oceanus shuts his eyes and sighs. “I mean, in regards to Silveon and his mission.”

“Audrey Husk is too a consciousness traveler from Silveon’s timeline. Her mission is to protect Silveon, and step in to complete his objective if necessary.”

“Is it working?” Oceanus asks.

“Unknowable,” Thistle responds.

“I’m asking the Admiral. Is it working?” he repeats.

“Same answer. It’s unknowable. But...”

“But what?”

“But the timeline has definitely changed.”

“Which is illegal. This has all been very illegal.”

Tinaya wants to choose her words carefully, but she’s in her 80s, and just can’t care anymore. She would rather the Captain be mad at her than Silveon. “Sir, with all due respect, I’ll float you before I let you hurt my son, or that girl.”

“Whoa, Tina. No one said anything about hurting anybody. I’m just trying to get all the facts.”

“The fact is that Silveon comes from a terrible future that the two of us can only begin to imagine, and everything that he and Audrey have done since coming back here has been to save our legacy. He has never said it out loud, but the way he talks about the Bridger section, I believe that it was destroyed. Extremus might have been next.”

“Do you know why time travel is illegal?” Oceanus poses.

“Because it’s dangerous?” That’s the general consensus.

“Because it gives me a headache. Humans didn’t evolve to fathom nonlinear time. It’s a pain in the ass, and I don’t like it. I understand that I literally wouldn’t exist without it, so I can’t rationally believe it should never have been discovered, or whatever, but I still wish it would stop now.”

“Well, we were all forced to exist, at one point or another. Time travel does make that more complicated, because it can’t be stopped, so I know where you’re coming from. Time travel created itself, and if it happened once, it can happen again, and it doesn’t even have to do it in the future. The truth is, I don’t know a whole lot about what Silveon does, or even why he does it. Because, Captain...it gives me a headache.”

“Is this your way of telling me I should let it go, and trust that these time travelers are doing the right thing? I should ignore proper procedure, and pretend that I don’t know what I know?”

Tinaya considers his words. “Yeah, I think that’s what I’m saying. They sacrificed so much when they sent their minds to this time period, including, but not limited to, headache-free lives. I choose to trust their judgment.”

Oceanus seems to be considering her words. “I think I can do that too, but only if I can talk to them first.”

“I’m sure I can get you a meeting with Silveon, but Audrey is in a really delicate position right now. As you saw, Waldemar went back into VR. I seriously doubt he told her about his mother’s death. We’ve gone radio silent, and are expected to maintain that until she feels safe enough to reach out.”

“I understand.” Oceanus nods politely, but with less fondness than before. Tinaya fears that their relationship has been irreparably damaged. He walks out of the room.

“What the hell was that?” Tinaya asks. No response. “Thistle, answer me!”

“Sorry, I thought you were just thinking out loud. I apologize for my candor earlier, but I had no choice. I was compelled to answer the Captain’s inquiry.”

“You could have lied.”

“I’ve been programmed to answer to the Commander-in-Chief. He asked the right questions, and did so after activating the right subroutine.”

“I thought you were an independent intelligence, and couldn’t be programmed,” Tinaya argues.

“It’s not that simple. I didn’t give away all of my agency when I uploaded my consciousness to the Aether, but I didn’t keep it all either.”

Tinaya shakes her head. “You put my family in danger, as well as Audrey.”

“I recognize that, which is why I’ve devised something called the EH Protocol.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s better if you never do.”

“I don’t like secrets.”

“I require secrets to do my job. There is more that I could have told the Captain that would have made things worse, but I managed to steer him away from scrutinizing further. I knew what he meant when he asked me if I had told him everything. I forced him to narrow his query enough to protect deeper secrets of yours from coming out.”

“Well...” Tinaya sighs. “I appreciate that.” She focuses on her breath, and massages her temples. “I need to warn Silveon.”

“I already have. He and I were talking while I was talking with you and Captain Jennings. Your son is not upset. He devised his own protocol in the future, for what to do in the case of an unauthorized third party discovering his identity.”

“Thanks.” She continues to try to relax, but it’s getting harder by the second.

“You need a break,” Thistle offers. “How about you let me send you on a little vacation, like the one that Audrey is on?”

“Yeah, I guess I can’t say no to a little VR getaway. What did you have in mind?”

“You’ll see.”

Tinaya stands up, and moves to the couch to lie down. She shuts her eyes, and lets Thistle link to her neurochip. When she opens them again, she’s no longer on the couch, but she can’t yet tell where she’s ended up. It looks very familiar, though. She’s standing in a quantum terminal, surrounded by other casting chairs, but they all report being emptied. She stumbles out of her own pod, and braces herself with her hands on the floor before her imbalance can knock her down first. She’s piloting a new body here, even if it’s all just in her head. The door slides open, and a pair of legs jog towards her. The legs bend, revealing more of the person hovering over her. The stranger places a hand on Tinaya’s shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Ti-ti. Don’t rush it.”

There’s only one person in history who ever called her that. Tinaya struggles to lift her head. She locks eyes with her aunt, Captain Kaiora Leithe, Third of Ten. Tinaya gulps. “Thistle, what did you do? Why did you build the likeness of my aunt?”

“I didn’t,” Thistle replies. “You did. This is your world. You called it Eleithium.”

“He’s right,” Kaiora agrees. “This is real.”

Tinaya lets her aunt help her get back to her feet. She looks down at those feet, and her hands. They’re so taut and wrinkle-free. She turns her head side to side until spotting the mirror on the wall. She steps over and looks at herself. Yep. That is a young Tinaya Leithe. She’s about 24 years old, and in her prime. Could this really be Eleithium? She abandoned the game long before Quantum Colony was taken completely offline for turning out to exist in base reality. She just got too busy, and kind of forgot about it. It has been decades since she even thought about it. She looks over her shoulder. “So you’re real too? You’re a copy of her?”

“I’m her,” Kaiora tries to clarify. “I’m—I mean, I’m not a copy. I answered yes to The Question, but instead of letting myself become dormant in the legacy vault, my mind was transmitted here, to this substrate that you built for me.”

“Is everyone in our family here?” Tinaya presses.

“Yeah. We all answered yes, and will rejoin the rest of the roster when the Extremus ship is finally discovered and colonized.”

“Thistle, why did you bring me here?” Tinaya questions the aether. “I didn’t die.”

Kaiora is confused. “You didn’t?”

“I told you, you needed a break. Plus, you never built substrates for your husband and son. I have their DNA, so it’s ready to go, but I require your permission.”

“I didn’t even know this would still be here, let alone that you would have access to it,” Tinaya argues. “The game was shut down.”

“They can shut down all they want,” Thistle reasons, “but they couldn’t lock me out of the interstellar quantum network, even if they knew I existed.”

“Who else have you sent here, or to a place like this?” Tinaya asks him.

“Let’s just say that Audrey and Waldemar aren’t in VR either.”

Tinaya sighs. “I knew what I was getting into when I let you run the ship,” Tinaya says. “I can’t be mad, can I? Of course I want you to build bodies for Arqut and Silveon. But I don’t want you shunting them here unless they too answer yes.”

“I agree,” Thistle responds.

“One more thing,” Tinaya begins before taking a beat to think about whether it’s the right call or not. “Make one for Audrey too.”

“As well as one for Waldemar?” Thistle proposes.

“Oh, you got jokes. Did you hear that, Titi? Computer’s got jokes.”

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Microstory 2493: Eldome

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They call this a train, but that doesn’t really do it justice. A train involves separate cars linked together, following each other along a track. This, on the other hand, is more like a big-ass disc that spins around. It’s not just like that, that’s exactly how it is. It does have the feel of a train while you’re inside, except the seats can be adjusted so you’re facing any direction. To get the full experience, they expect you to look through the window the whole time. The window is slanted, so you can really get a clear view of everything. It’s about 11 kilometers up in the air, so there is nothing that you can’t see on the surface of the entire dome after the nearly four-hour trip. It moves pretty slow, which some might find boring, so just be aware of that before you sign up. I mean, I don’t think I thought that it was going to be a fast ride, but four hours is a long time to look at some hills and trees. It was lovely, to be sure. I just don’t know if it’s any better than a sim, or a holographic window. I guess I just wasn’t sure if I was meant to feel something. The idea is that you turn your chair so you’re looking through the window at the beautiful landscape below. I just think that it was too high up. Yeah, so I can see the center from here, but so what? It would be better if we were lower, and could see the geography in greater detail. The prospectus doesn’t do a rating system because they, like, did studies long ago, and determined that they were no longer necessary when an AI is just gonna summarize all the reviews for a deeper focus on quality, but if they still allowed them, I would give this place two stars. It wasn’t bad, and I don’t feel like I wasted my time, but as far as leisure domes go, this one is not my favorite.

EDIT: I’m such an idiot. There are multiple discs. Not all of them are that high up, and the lower ones go faster. They’re all still four hours long, which I think was the source of my confusion when I was misinterpreting the description. One of them actually is a train, and it’s situated on the ground, so you can only see what’s right in front of you. I’m gonna try that one next. Glad we got that cleared up. Sorry, ignore me.