The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 28, 2572

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Their collective depression had not been alleviated by Romana’s departure, but had only grown darker. She did what she promised, or at least so far. When she made it through to the other side, she sent a message back through the persistent bulk connection, assuring them that she was fine. And just this morning, she sent another one, informing them that she would be leaving Earth today. Later messages would have to come through the quantum network, which took longer, and couldn’t be done in realtime at these distances; not with the equipment her little ship had. It was equipped with everything she needed, including a reframe engine, but it was nothing fancy.

As for the rest of them, they didn’t want to do anything. They tried to sulk together, but they kept awkwardly locking eyes with each other. No one said anything out loud, they just gradually started to go their separate ways. Mateo didn’t know if they were occupying their minds with various activities, or like him, they were just sitting there, stewing. Not even Ramses was working, and he almost always had a project in his queue. Speaking of queues, there was an off-world mission that they could have taken, but no one was up for it, so they simply ignored it. It wasn’t the right thing to do, per se, but the way they saw it, they were a bonus addition for the galaxy. They were not officially responsible for helping anyone. They had committed to no one.

After a few hours of this, Olimpia paged their communicators, which was just a simple way to say, come here. It wasn’t the right protocol for an emergency, so no one rushed to her location in the main lounge. When they finally did show up one by one, she didn’t even look like she was waiting for them. She was resting her temple on her fist, and staring blankly at the floor. Only when the last of them, Angela arrived, did Olimpia perk up a little. “I’m leaving too.”

“Like Romana?” Leona asked, panic in her eyes, but also patient caution.

“Yes, but I don’t intend on going anywhere besides Earth. I think I want to revisit Sri Lanka; see what’s become of it. And...I wanna do it alone. I’m not asking for a divorce, or anything. I need to clear my head. This place reminds me of my...of Romy.”

“It’s okay,” Leona encouraged. “She saw you as a mother figure. You are inarguably her stepmother. You can call her your daughter. I do.”

“I think that’s maybe changed,” Olimpia decided. “We have been through a lot together, the seven of us. I used to think nothing could tear us apart. Now I don’t know if anything can bring us back together. It’s not the only reason I’m leaving, though.”

Leona stood and approached her wife. She leaned over and kissed her on the lips. It wasn’t a mere peck, but it wasn’t passionate either. It was soft and familiar; fitting for a goodbye. “I don’t want you to go, but I respect your decision.” She inhaled. “Matt, would you like to say goodbye to your wife?”

Mateo stood too. He exhaled. “I can’t respect this. When you break a pencil, it becomes harder to write with. You don’t solve that by breaking it again.” He walked out of the room. He couldn’t take another person leaving. Well, he wouldn’t be able to stop it, but he at least didn’t have to watch it happen. If he didn’t see her go through that slingportal, as far as he would know, Olimpia was always just in a different room.

He suspected that he would regret his actions later, but he was not living in the later. Now was now, and this was what he had to do to survive this.

As he was trying to sulk alone in his room, Leona walked in.

“Don’t say it,” he begged.

“You need to go fix this before you miss your chance,” Leona demanded.

“I meant what I said. When something is broken, don’t break it again,” he argued.

“If you don’t go back out there before she leaves, you’re going to have to repeat what you said to her to me. Do you understand me? This is a difficult situation, and we all have different feelings about it. This is her way of dealing with it.”

“Well, this is how I’m dealing with it,” Mateo reasoned. “Why should I apologize for my reaction to her reaction? She should respect me, and let me be.”

“She is,” Leona countered. “That’s why I’m in this room right now, and she’s not.”

“What if she doesn’t come back, Leona? What if Romana doesn’t either? What if this is the end of all of us?” He couldn’t even remember how long he had been doing this, or how long he had known the people he loved, but he couldn’t imagine an end to that. Not even death should have been able to collapse the team, but here they were.

“Exactly,” Leona agreed. “What if she never comes back, and what if the reason she never comes back is because you made her feel like it would be bad if she did?”

“We made vows to each other, Lee. She’s breaking them.” Mateo sighed.

“No.” Leona shook her head. “You are.”

He sighed again. “You’re right. Goddammit.” He still didn’t move from his bed.

“Get up. She’s packing light. She could leave at literally any second.”

Mateo went back out to the lounge, but Olimia wasn’t there, so he teleported to the slingdrive lab. He didn’t see her there either, so he started freaking out, but he knew what the machine looked like when it had recently been used, and it had not recently been used. That was when he remembered that they could locate each other.

Olimpia was with Ramses in the main hangar bay. They were just climbing down the steps as the latter was finishing up explaining how to shift AI models if something went wrong with the first. “The failsafes are foolproof, you’re gonna be fine. Oh.”

“Sorry. Can I talk to my wife alone?” Mateo requested sheepishly.

“I just want to make sure the ship collapses into the right pocket dimension,” Ramses said. “I have fixed the initial bugs by now, but I had some issues with the earlier iterations of this technology, so now I always quadruple check it.”

“I just tap right here?” Olimpia asked, mostly rhetorically. After receiving a nod from Ramses, she tapped her interface. Her personal shuttlecraft disappeared.

“Okay.” Ramses put on a special pair of glasses and sized Olimpia up like the best friend character in a ‘90s romcom who didn’t have as much restraint as the protagonist. “All right, it’s in there. You’re good to go.” He put his glasses away and opened his arms.

The two of them hugged before Ramses left. Now it was only Mateo and Olimpia.

“I made a huge mistake and reacted poorly. I’m sorry. I don’t want us to part on bad terms,” Mateo said. “Do you have time to forgive me before you step into that machine? And if not, can you delay departure, so we have more time to talk?”

“We’ll be okay,” Olimpia said to him. “There’s nothing to forgive. I sprang this on you. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I’ve not discussed it. I still have family alive who I’ve not seen in centuries. I don’t know where they are, but I’m gonna start there. The reason I didn’t bring it up before is because I didn’t know if I wanted you to come. I want you to meet them, but maybe we don’t overwhelm them? I will stay connected. I’m not going just because of what happened with Romana. It’s bad timing.”

Mateo nodded. “Okay. Don’t forget that I love you, though. Our marital bed will feel empty without you, even though Leona will be next to me too.”

“Well...keep it warm for me. I hope by the time I return, Romana has as well.”

By the time Olimpia was even close to returning, Ramosus had been deserted.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 26, 2570

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Everyone was depressed after Romana was locked up. How had things spiraled so quickly, how did they miss the signs, and how were they going to get through this? Romana was comfortable in the VIP holding block, but she couldn’t leave, and keeping her there was only making her angrier. They would have to let her out eventually, but no one knew when. The elephant in the room was whether they would ever forgive her, and whether she would apologize for her own actions. It was complicated, because while many of her choices were clearly wrong—forcing them to go on missions against their will, and misappropriating dangerous equipment—was the end result wrong? Did she not deserve to be happy? More importantly, did Boyd 3.0 not deserve to live?

“Lock me up forever,” Boyd suggested when Mateo had no more options but to ask him for his own opinion on all this. No one else knew of a solution.

“We can’t. You’ve not broken any laws, and it’s not sustainable,” Mateo argued.

“I don’t have to have broken laws,” Boyd reasoned. “You’re thinking very much like a 21st century boy. Legal quarantine doesn’t always happen as punishment for something you’ve already done. Unlike in your time, it is entirely plausible that a dangerous entity’s first criminal act is genocide. Humans need time and experience to escalate their behavior. A rogue intelligence might skip right to complete annihilation, if only due to a missing proverbial semicolon in their code.

“Don’t get me wrong, you’re not living in a dystopia. They don’t just throw people in jail left, right, and center. You have to prove that they’re a danger to life and peace, but that proof doesn’t have to come from an irreversible past tragedy anymore. I’m too much of a wildcard. I must be dealt with.”

“It’s big of you to be saying all this,” Mateo admitted.

“Again, you’re thinking of a human. I’m not asking to die. I will live as long as you, if not longer. Virtual quarantine is considered the most humane response to an existential threat. Once the longevity escape velocity progressed into virtual immortality, life sentences became nearly entirely meaningless. What if the individual requires persistent longevity treatments? Are they entitled to those? Or is it better to let them die, rather than torturing them with an eternity of imprisonment? What if they were constructed out of code from minute one? Is it possible to kill them, or is it no different than deleting a blurry photo from your camera roll? What if they want to die?

“The legal system decided that the nuance was too much to bear, so they came up with the best singular answer for extreme cases. You keep them in an airgapped environment, where they’re free to do whatever they want, even if it’s destructive, because they can’t actually gain access to base reality, or other virtual worlds.”

“They stay there forever?” Mateo questioned. “Many law-abiding citizens live like that already. Most crabitat owners don’t ever visit networked simulations.”

Boyd nodded. “Yes, that’s why it’s humane, because it’s not about punishment. It’s about removing them from where they can do harm to anyone but an NPC.”

“It sounds like there’s no rehabilitation in this method. Is that an option?”

Boyd’s face dropped a little. “Not really. Hyperintelligences are more difficult to trust than baseline humans, believe it or not. Of course people like you are capable of deception, it happens all the time. That’s why recidivism is a legal term. But over time, you can learn to trust in a human’s future actions by their past and current ones. Something made of code, regardless of their origin, might end up with a bad over-the-air update which causes them to snap one day. And it will be completely unpredictable.”

“This is all sounding pretty dystopian to me,” Mateo pointed out.

“Some see it that way,” Boyd acknowledged. “There are alternatives but they take effort. A current proposal is that you can use a separate intelligence to audit every single character in a rogue intelligence’s code to track aberrations. This governor intelligence would keep an eye on them as they receive updates, upgrades, and interact with other code. But that comes with its own philosophical questions. What if the governor itself breaks? What if its charge actually corrupts its governor. Their systems have to interact, after all. And is it morally right to scrutinize independent beings like this? What does that mean for privacy? Is this not simply prison in a different form factor?”

Mateo frowned. “I didn’t realize how complex the universe was now. Everything people have been saying is that it’s more simple. You don’t have competing machines that do the same thing because information is shared and distributed, so everyone has the best model. But there’s all this underlying structure that I didn’t realize.”

Boyd nodded in agreement. “Possibilities are now endless, both good and bad. You have to do this. And you can’t have Ramses construct his own quarantine. It obviously failed when he tried that before. We need institutional insulation, and that can only be found in one place. Well, it’s only other planets, but these guys do it the best.”

“Where would that be?” Mateo asked.

“The virtual reality capital of the galaxy,” Boyd answered, “Varkas Reflex.”

“Makes sense. It’s a big rock. There could be an entire continent dedicated to it.”

Boyd chuckled. “It’s not quite that big. For the most part, crime isn’t much of a thing anymore. If it is, it’s generally beyond the stellar neighborhood, and they have their own laws. We don’t wanna be in the wild west. We want redundancies.”

“I’ll call a meeting,” Mateo decided with a heavy sigh.

“No, you have to do this on your own,” Boyd insists. “No one can know until after it’s done. Romana will forgive you...eventually. Not everyone is that safe.”

“I can’t go on my own. I mean, I could, but then I couldn’t come back.”

“There are ways,” Boyd says. “I won’t tell you, but I know you can figure it out. This won’t be the first time you have had to separate yourself from your family.”

Mateo didn’t use the base’s slingdrive to sling himself and Boyd to Varkas Reflex, but he did use its power. That way, there would be no trace of where he went, and no one could follow. As soon as he showed up, he dropped his name to the first workerbot he saw, who fed it up the pipeline where an old friend of Leona’s heard it. She came right away. She wasn’t in charge of the virtual quarantine sector specifically, but she had plenty of pull around here. She said she trusted Mateo’s judgment, and fast-tracked the process because knew that they would otherwise have to wait for an entire year.

Boyd was now leaning back in his upload chair, appearing calm and stoic. He didn’t look mad or vengeful, which was what Mateo was most worried about coming into this. He wasn’t sure he agreed with this form of imprisonment. It always left the door open for a return, not that the alternative was morally or ethically superior. Maybe it was a trick, though. Maybe Boyd set all this up because he knew of some way to escape it. Maybe Mateo was a fool by unilaterally deciding what would become of him. He chose to place his trust in someone he hadn’t always liked.

The upload was complete, the body was destroyed, and Mateo left. Without a slingdrive array to latch onto, there was no way back to Ramosus. He accepted a reframe ship which Loa lent him, and began the journey back to Earth.

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Extremus: Year 144

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It’s near the end of year 2413, so it’s been 24 years since the latest captain took the seat. Around this time people are expecting Waldemar to announce his successor. To quell the rumors, he has decided that he is indeed going to make an announcement, but for many, it won’t be what they expect. They’re not going to like it either. The original plan was to simply say nothing, and coast on the chair, but Waldemar keeps forgetting how inquisitive and curious people are. They want to know, and they want to know now. They’re about to find out that it’s not happening.

At one point, they were planning on holding this event in the grand auditorium, but they have decided against that. It’s too dangerous. Even though Waldemar has since taken steps to protect himself, he doesn’t want to give an assassin or an angry crowd the opportunity to attack. If they get mad, they’ll do it within the confines of their quarters. What they don’t know is that they will not be able to leave unless the AI security system detects that they’re friendly to the Captain.

He is sitting in front of the camera, preparing himself mentally for this. It’s not nerves or fear. He wouldn’t know how to feel those things. What he’s feeling is concern for the future. He doesn’t care for uncertainty. That doesn’t mean he’s gonna use time tech to see the future, but it does make him nervous. Hm...maybe he does feel that too.

At any rate, it’s time to get started. His inner circle is behind him, figuratively and literally. It’s important that the audience sees that he’s not alone in this, and that he will have people protecting him, even if it’s only these few dozen men. They will know what to do. “Begin recording,” he orders the camera. It’s already on a five-second delay. “My fellow Extremusians, I sit here before you, humble but powerful. For the last twenty-four years, I have led you into a period of unprecedented peace and personal success. I ended the war with the True Extremists using my covert away teams. I reformed the contribution point system so that all must work to help make this the greatest colony in the universe. I am not the most popular leader you have ever had, but your lives are better thanks to me and my administration.

“I know you’re all wondering who is going to pick up the reins next year. You’re confused, because no one appears to be on the shortlist. There’s a reason for that. Unlike my predecessors, I didn’t limit myself to the few who desperately wanted the job. I didn’t ask for a list of everyone graduating from the academy on the captain’s track. I looked at every single one of you. Everyone who would be at least 21 years old by January 1 was on the table. I didn’t even cap it at a maximum age.”

Waldemar approximates a smile. He’s not good at smiling because it’s an emotional response, but people know when that’s what he’s doing, and they’ve grown used to it by now, so it has the same effect as it would for a feeler. “That’s right. Nearly every adult had the chance to take my place. I was incredibly thorough. Unfortunately, I was unable to find anyone suitable for the job. I looked at that comprehensive list, and I looked at what still needs to be done to make Extremus great again, and I realized that there is only one person who can do what I do.” He clears his throat. “It is for this reason that I am respectfully declining to step down. Twenty-four years was always an arbitrary number. Every crew position here has changed the length of service according to new laws, except for this one, and I see no reason for it to remain an exception.

“I want to make it clear that I’m not declaring an authoritarian state. You are still represented by your civilian government. It is my job to run the crew, and protect the vessel itself from all threats. Your daily lives will not change...except for the better. I have the support of my advisors, most of the crew, the police, and the military. I ask that you remain calm during this non-transitional period. You do not have to do anything. But you do have to recognize that this was never a democracy. You never had any say in who would be your captain. I’m changing the rules because I am the only one here with the experience and vision to continue down the correct path.

“I am not guaranteeing twenty-four more years. I will step down when it is time; when I know that you’re going to be okay without me. And when I do, I will not be an admiral. That was a travesty of a tradition. Admiralcy is something that you earn. It’s not something that you should simply fall into at the end of your useful career. When I have accomplished all of the ship’s goals, someone will take over for me, but not a day sooner than that. In the coming week, I will be scheduling press conferences, interviews, forums, and debates, but I will not be changing my mind. Thank you.” He taps the correct finger gesture under the desk to shut off the camera.

“That was amazing, sir. You were brilliant,” Faramund points out.

The rest of his loyalists agree.

“Show me the unit feeds,” Waldemar orders, ignoring the compliments.

The big screen starts with an establishing shot of the entire ship from the outside. Quickly, the hulls, bulkheads, and walls begin to disappear. The new cameras he installed don’t just record what’s literally happening. They paint a broad image of the room. The AI can then compile all of these feeds into a collective video of what’s happening at the ship. It’s like opening a dollhouse, and viewing the cross-section, except it’s real and in realtime.

He was shockingly right about nothing changing about their daily lives. They’re barely concerned. He can’t hear what they’re saying specifically, since there are thousands of them, but the AI is providing him with a summary. They’re mostly apathetic about it. They don’t think it really matters. It’s not that they love him, but that they think no one else will be able to do a better job. Is that what he wants, for them to not care? He doesn’t want power for the sake of it. He wants prosperity. No, he wants prosperity and enthusiasm. His next term will have to be different. Now that he knows no one is going to stop him, he can definitely arrange that

One thing he forgot to explicitly mention is that laws aren’t simply something you write down, and expect people to follow forever. They’re fluid, they change, and if the people at the top want that change to happen, they shouldn’t have to cross out what someone wrote before, and write a new one. All they need to do is make sure everyone knows about it. They sure as hell know now. He clearly could have been more direct about it, though, because some of their comments suggest that they’re not sure how far this will go, and whether he is lying about their daily lives.

“You’re right, Tensil. If you say something with the sense of authority, people will either believe it, or believe that there’s nothing they can do to stop it. They’re not rioting, they’re not organizing. They’re not even calling each other to talk about it.”

“Is that what you wanted, sir...indifference?” Faramund presses.

“For now.” Waldemar stands up, straightens his uniform, and prepares to leave. Something catches his eye, though. The collective feed has been orbiting around the ship slowly and randomly. There’s one dark spot that he can’t see. It’s completely black. He points. “What’s this? Why can’t I see this?”

“Council chambers,” one of his sycophants explains. “The civil government didn’t allow us to install the cameras there due to the sensitive nature of their discussions.”

“Why am I getting the feeling that something in particular is happening in that room right now?” Waldemar asks. He sighs when someone tries to come up with an answer. “That was a rhetorical question.” He shakes his head and tries to teleport there.

He finds himself literally bouncing back, and falling on his ass against his desk. “I’m fine!” he shouts at the men who try to help him up. “There’s an anti-teleportation field around it, which shouldn’t be there, because I didn’t authorize it.”

“You can teleport to just outside the room and—”

“I know the trick, Tensil. I’m not an idiot. “Waldemar tries again, this time only trying to get close to his final destination, but again, he’s thrown back. This time, the men are able to break his fall, but it’s still humiliating. “Argh!”

“Sir, it’s really not that far. We could just walk. Or I can get you a hoverchair.”

“I’m not old!” Waldemar complains. “Just shut up and leave me alone!” He teleports away again, but this time to his stateroom.

Finally, this works. If he’s going to be forced away this time, it will remain private. He teleports yet again, trying to get close to the council chambers, but not even as close as he tried the second time. He falls down once more, but instead of boomeranging to his room, he ends up back in the speech room. Oh, someone is messing with him. When he finds out who, they’re gonna die. They’re literally gonna die.

“I’ll walk,” he says, holding a finger up before Tensil can reiterate what he said before, “but I’ll do it alone.” He looks back at his people. “Disperse.”

Waldemar steps out of the room and takes the long way through the corridors to the council chambers. An odd sensation emerges in his stomach. It feels like bugs are crawling around in there. No, more like dull knives. Is this nerves again? What the hell is wrong with him? He tries the door, fully expecting it to be locked, but it opens.

He walks to find that the entire council has convened. His girlfriend, Sable is standing on the dais. To her left is a screen. It’s currently paused on a frame showing his speech. No, it’s after his speech was done, when the camera should have been off. He’s mid-blink, but due to his advanced age, his right eyelid always falls ever so slightly faster, making it look like he’s trying to wink here. Sable obviously did that on purpose. “What is the meaning of this? You knew I was giving a speech. Why meet today?”

“We’re here to discuss the future of the ship,” some dumb bitch council chairperson says.

“That’s what I was trying to do, as you can see. Again, why did you schedule it for the same time?”

“We were watching your speech,” the chairperson goes on. “We have not completed the vote, but enough have voiced their concern that I’m confident in the way it will turn out. Captain Waldemar Kristiansen, you will be free to continue as captain of this ship for as long as you are able. Your job will be to remain on the bridge, and supervise the monitoring crew. You will have no jurisdiction over the rest of the crew, nor anyone else on the ship. You say laws can be changed? Well, you’re right, they can be, and they are. This is a civilian vessel now. You have no authority here.”

Waldemar sneers at Sable. “You did this. You orchestrated all of it.”

“You’re out, Waldy. Buh-bye.” She gives him the old four-finger baby wave.

He points aggressively. “I’m fighting you on this. It may turn violent.”

Sable sports that evil grin she usually only does in bed. “Bring it on, honey.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 25, 2569

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Romana had gotten out of control. Her father, and everyone else, fully understood where she was coming from—she was lonely, and she needed companionship—but she was playing with fire. They blamed the progression and simplification of technology. A lot of what Ramses did involved temporal manipulation, which most researchers and users didn’t have access to, but a lot of the rest had become ubiquitous. Their advanced substrates were quite common these days, except for the bit about being able to teleport, and their attached pocket dimensions. The computing power and the detail of simulations; the whole galaxy had it, or at least it was available to them.

Downloading what began as a programmed intelligence into a mobile body was nothing new, but it had certainly become easier over the centuries. And that was what a lot of the development focused on now. All everyday problems had been solved, so the primary changed involved removing friction from the processes. You used to have to know how to program a dayfruit with the right ingredients. Now you just told it what you want, and it grew. It even did it faster than the original species could be produced. It used to be that if you wanted to give a digitized consciousness a body, you had to have the education and experience for it, and to account for all sorts of variables. Now you pushed a button. All Romana had to do was push a button, and Boyd 3.0 was just there.

But Boyd was not perfect. She wanted him to be just like them, which meant he had to skip a year at the end of every day. That was time tech, and not in the central archives, so she had to come up with a workaround. According to her, every day at midnight central, his brain went dormant, and didn’t come back online until midnight 365 days later. This was the only way she could do it. If she had asked, Ramses would not have helped her, so she probably made the smart call in that regard. That didn’t mean it wasn’t a problem, though. If his mind could be switched off like that, he could be switched back on. Where were the safeguards? What if someone else showed up during their interim year? What if Boyd got tired of skipping time, and turned himself back on in the middle of a cycle? Did he even want to skip at all, or did he want to leave this planet, and go find his way elsewhere? Romana still hadn’t thought this through.

“I have thought it through,” Romana insisted. “You are just not listening.”

“No, you’re not listening,” Ramses argued louder when Mateo tried to. “Sorry, Matt, but I’m gonna have to take this one. She’s old enough to make her own choices, and suffer the consequences beyond a scolding from her parents.” He looked back at her. “This is dangerous stuff. There was a reason I was quarantining him, and I know you knew that. This was reckless, childish, and stupid, and there will be consequences.”

“Oh, you’re just mad because you’ve become irrelevant,” Romana contended. “Now suddenly the great Ramses Abdulrashid isn’t the only one on the team who can create life. I’m sorry science caught up to your genius, but it was inevitable. Get over it.”

“No.” Ramses was generally a chill guy. He usually only had anxiety over his own insecurities, but he was livid today. “You may not have used my personal lab, but you used equipment that I fabricated.” He stopped her before she could interrupt, “don’t bring AI into this. Of course I didn’t program them character-by-character. They are still mine, and you abused my trust in you by doing this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to you and your parents, but there may be something seriously wrong with you, so you’re going in hock.”

“You can’t do that.” She laughed it off. No one else was laughing. “No, he can’t do that. I’m an equal member of this team!” No one said a word. “Dad! Moms! Stop him! Stop him!” They didn’t. The time bullet hit her, and sent her straight into lock-up.

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Microstory 2751: Checkpoint

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Thanks to Minotaur’s directions, Jolanda is able to negotiate them to the finish line. She presses the garage door opener just as Elise did before, but nothing happens.

“The second button, probably,” Elise suggests. She has been so helpful on this adventure. They never could have figured out where to find a key, how to open a door, or buckle their seatbelts on their own. She’s really pulling her weight.

The door opens to reveal only a hallway, so they all step out to cross the threshold on foot. It’s eerie; dimly lit with some of the overhead lights flickering, and uncomfortably narrow. Just like the main entrance to the warehouse, the door behind them slams shut on its own, locking them in. The wall to their left rises up, and disappears into the ceiling. On the other side is a torture room, for lack of a better term. They see a table full of scary and sharp instruments, oddly shaped beds, and even what appears to be an electric chair. Rage is here, inside a glass cage. She’s sitting in a toddler chair, her wrists tied behind her back, and she’s gagged. Her mascara is running down her face and she looks scared. She’s screaming unintelligibly at them.

“Nobody move!” Zelda orders. “That usually means there’s a tripwire or trap.”

They freeze and look around, but don’t see anything. They continue cautiously.

Elise goes over to Rage’s cage, looking out for booby traps. “Can you hear me?”

Rage screams again and nods her head.

“I appreciate your dedication to authenticity,” Elise goes on, “but at this juncture, the easiest way to get you out might be to kill myself where I stand, and seek help from the outside world. We’ll continue to play along, but if you’re genuinely being held against your will, we’ll treat it more seriously, and go meta. So if this is real, I want you to blink both eyes. If it’s still part of the team-building game, give me a wink instead.”

Rage winks.

“Okay.” Elise turns around and claps her hands. “Let’s find a way to escape this room. I don’t know of any pertinent quotes from historical figures.”

Five minutes later, Rage is out of her cage, and is able to spend the next twenty minutes helping them solve the rest of the clues to escape the room itself. She says that she asked an AI to design the puzzle on her behalf, so she wouldn’t know how to solve it either. She asks them kindly not to talk about anything but the room until that door reopens, and everyone respects that because this was the deal. She does assure them that this is the last exercise for now. There is no level beyond it until after the debrief.

“I was watching on the monitors,” Rage says after the game is over, and they’re walking into what she calls the lounge. “I only had a bot lock me up once you were at the end of the track. I want to thank you all for playing it straight, instead of finding some workaround. You could have asked to exit the trial at any time, and I would have obliged, but it didn’t seem to cross your minds. I hope you don’t feel tricked or disrespected. Zelda was right, I needed to see how well you five worked together so I would know how to plan the curriculum. It seemed more useful to throw you in the deep end rather than laying out what you would be up against. I’ve not yet synthesized the data, but just from watching you, I think it’s safe to say that we will not need much training. Despite not knowing each other, you breezed through the challenges, and didn’t argue with each other even once. I’m sincerely impressed and grateful.”

“I had a lot of fun!” Zelda announces. “There could have been a few more airplanes to fall out of, but I can’t complain. It’s only the first day.”

“Yeah, there’s almost always one skydiving or basejumping challenge on a treasure hunt,” Rage agrees. “I didn’t get approved for a plane here, but we’re not stuck. We can always go to Adrenadome to do other training. We can go to any of your prime domes, or anywhere for that matter. There’s no time limit. If y’all wanna take a break for a couple years to relax in Polar Tropica, I won’t argue. Based on what I just saw, though, this is the team I want. If I could brag, I think I knocked it out of the park, assembling you. I’ve worked with a lot of teams under Escape Dome, and I’ve never been happier. As I already said to each of you individually, you can leave whenever you want, but I really hope you stay. I want this to be the six, and I will wait until everyone agrees that we’re ready.” She pauses for a moment. “Minotaur, Elise...out of the bunch, you were the most hesitant to come out. How are you feeling now?”

Elise and Minotaur exchange a glance, not having known that about each other. Elise is very curious now, what it was like when Rage tried to recruit the others. Were they as confused, or did they understand the reasoning instantly? Colley can solve clues, and the other girls are used to living fast. Their skills are more obvious. Elise still doubts her value here, and she’s afraid that everyone else sees it too. She’s going to respectfully bow out. She has to. She will only bring them down. There’s no way that a treasure hunt benefits from someone like her. Rage will understand; Elise believes that much about her. This is the right decision, for herself, and for them. “I wanna keep going.” What?

“Great!” Rage says. She’s ecstatic. She could probably sense Elise’s continued reluctance, and is just as surprised by the answer.

Elise is surprised too. Did her subconsciousness respond before she could? She had no idea she was going to agree. What did she just get herself into?

Jolanda, Zelda, and Colley all volunteer to stay as well, to less fanfare

“Minotaur?” Rage presses. “Remember, there’s no wrong answer.”

Minotaur sports a poker face before finally saying, “you son of a bitch, I’m in.”

This does feel like a heist, doesn’t it? Elise doesn’t know all that much about Treasure Hunting Dome, but you don’t play thieves. It’s more of a race where if you find the prize, you’re entitled to it. Still, Rage claimed that there was some deeper level to the whole thing, so maybe they really will be doing something that no one has ever done before. Maybe they’ll have to break some rules. Maybe they’ll have to break them all.

Whatever ends up happening, Elise is out of her comfort zone now. That’s probably a good thing. She has spent so much time on her own, only occasionally working with others when the skill she was learning demanded it. She doesn’t have any surviving family or lasting friendships. It’s not that she dislikes people, but you don’t need them to survive in a post-scarcity society, like the ancestors did. Socialization is a skill which she never thought to develop. Skilldome doesn’t offer it. Perhaps they should. It’s a lost art for some. She’ll suggest that to them, but first, it’s time to party.

They don’t run any exercises for the rest of the day. They eat, they drink, and they interact merrily. They don’t do any training the next day either...or for the rest of the week. Only after that do they get to work, running drills and teaching each other various things. A week after that, they go on their first field trip to a dome that none of them has been to before.

Microstory 2747: Staged

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Pribadium doesn’t have Sugar board the Teaguardian. Instead, she does what she said she would, and programs it for a relativistic loop to keep them busy. That way, they can’t interfere with their important demolition work. Pribadium and Sora then teleport over to Sugar’s ship so they can learn about what happened after the bulk portal closed.

Years ago, Tau Station was forcing its way through a haphazard breach in the membrane of the universe. They were trying to enter something known as the bulk. There are an infinite number of universes, known as branes, floating around this “hyperspace” where time has no meaning. Everything that happens within it is happening at the same time. Everyone who is crossing over using their own methods—the Crossover, the time knife, Ochivari wingsinging—it’s all happening at this exact same moment, relatively speaking. The bulk sees time as a spatial dimension, rather than a temporal one. So when Sugar, Runaway, and all of the survivors of the dimensional collapse, are floating around, trying to continue to survive, time is really only an illusion.

Not all of the space station made it through, but fortunately, every section that had life in it did. They were congregated in the auditorium. The tear in the spacetime continuum wasn’t large enough, and didn’t last long enough, to keep the rest of it intact. It came out on the other side twisted and mangled. The surviving section doesn’t even have any means of propulsion, except for a few stationkeeping thrusters, but they can’t naturally be controlled from here. Sugar and Pribadium have had to jury-rig a way in. In the meantime, the survivors have been getting by on the emergency food synthesizers. Metabolism is supposed to stop while you’re out in the bulk, but you will still get hungry, depending on how shielded you are from the equilibrium.

“We need supplies,” Runaway points out. “We need to be able to move. We need to look for a home for these people. Whatever we end up doing, we can’t just leave them here for all of eternity.”

“I agree,” Sugar says. “But the thrusters aren’t powerful enough. The amount of force required to move an object of this mass through an equilibrium isn’t a reasonable expense. We need to siphon that energy into a small vessel, pilot that out of here, and go look for help. The station will simply stay where it is while that’s happening.”

“So we need a ship?” Runaway questions. “We looked, there is none.”

“There are industrial fabricators, though. I can build one,” Sugar promises.

“You can build something large enough to carry all these people?” Runaway asks.

“Again, that would be a waste of power. This would only be a small shuttlecraft, for me and me alone. You will stay with your progenitors, and keep them safe.”

“I don’t like you going off alone,” Runaway admits.

“We gotta keep it tight,” Sugar explains. “I can do everything myself.” She pats Pribadium’s forge core, which she has hanging off her hip. “This has all of our research, some of which postdates my last memory as the original Pribadium. It also has an AI.”

“That’s not good enough,” Runaway contends. “I want you to have a corporeal person by your side. If you have to leave the ship in a brane that you visit, someone should be standing next to you. Now stop arguing, and let me find that person.”

“Huh?”

Runaway shuts her eyes. A moment later, she reopens them and walks over to one of her progenitors. She escorts him back, arms interlaced like a date. “Sugar Delgado, Vantu Hidayat.”

“Or Van. I was told you wanted help with something?” he asks.

“She will be going on an away mission, and needs a lieutenant. You are a jack of all trades. You’ve studied engineering, medicine, even temporal sciences, despite the fact that you’ve never heard of real time travel before.”

“I know all of that stuff myself,” Sugar tries to explain to Runaway.

“He’s not going because you need him to do things for you, but to do them with you. I thought we already went over that. I just didn’t want to saddle you with a moron like...never mind. Van is perfect. I don’t even need to let him answer whether he wants to go. I know him well enough to know that he will. That’s why I picked him.”

Van smiles. “I wasn’t planning on stuffing a habitat into an asteroid, and retreating into a virtual construct. I was building myself an exploratory vessel. I want to visit new worlds in base reality. I was told that aliens didn’t exist, but I had hope anyway. Now you two tell us that they’re real, they’re just in other universes. I am so in.”

“Well, it’s going to be a couple of weeks,” Sugar says. “I don’t have the ship yet. I suppose I can add one more seat to the design. But there will only be one bathroom.”

“Not a problem,” Van replies sincerely. “I can help fabricate too, not because you need it, but just to take some of the tedious burden off your hands.”

“Very well,” Sugar decides. “Let’s get to work.”

“And so we built the ship,” Sugar says, finishing her story to Pribadium and Sora. “We departed, ultimately finding a new universe with tons of resources, and a very friendly technologically advanced peoples, who helped build us this thing.” She indicates the capital ship they’re on right now. “I chose it because of its modular properties.”

Pribadium nods. “It can be a transport vessel as easily as a cargo ship. Then it can become a warship or a hospital. Why come here, though, instead of returning to Tau?”

“We tried to at first. Tau Station was different when we got back. Its...meta-time had changed, it’s so weird. It was attacked, boarded, and overtaken.”

“By who?” Sora pressed. “Aliens?”

“Yes, basically,” Sugar confirms. “The Maramon. They came in higher numbers and superior firepower. They wanted Tau Station for themselves, but they didn’t like what it was called, so they changed it to something else. Van and I barely got out of there alive, but we’re pretty sure the Maramon either killed the human survivors, or transplanted them across the bulkverse. We came here to seek your help finding them.”

“We have our own problems right now,” Pribadium tells Sugar. “Sora’s Doma Tertians still need a place to live, and as we all know...” She glares at Sora, lovingly but not too playfully. “...they can’t live here. They need to be transplanted too.”

“That can be arranged.” She used a finger sequence to call up a monitor, which switched to the feed from the hangar bay, where a smaller transport ship was sitting. A man, presumably Vantu, was running an inspection on the exterior.

“That’ll do.”

“Wait, you skipped something,” Sora points out. “What do they call the station?”

Sugar nods. “They call it...The Stage.”

Microstory 2731: The Choices We Make

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Pribadium!Two offered to explain to Sora what happened to his alternate self, but he decided that he didn’t want to hear it, at least not right now. They all three split apart, and went to their separate corners. They need to decompress from everything going on, and process all the new information. If they miss their window to create a mobile pocket universe, then so be it. It was never going to be an instantaneous endeavor, and it’s prudent to wait a bit anyway. This is a huge undertaking, which will have massive ramifications in this universe, and who knows how many others?

Pribadium!One is lying in her equilibrium chamber now, thinking about Sora. When they first met, he was a clear opponent. She was trying to get him to calm down and see reason, but she never thought she would feel bad for him like this. The story he told about his crush on Proxima Doma was heartbreaking. She teased him with the chance to get some closure, and then about immediately took it away from him. It wasn’t fair, and she’s going to have to figure out a way to apologize for it, besides simply literally saying the words. He obviously needs some space right now, though.

A door alert. It’s Sora. When she commands the AI to open the door, he walks in. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were sleeping. I can come back later.”

“No, it’s okay.” Pribadium!One stands up and hangs there mid-air.

His eyes widen. “How are you doing that? I thought antigravity was impossible.”

She lowers her legs one by one like she is climbing down a ladder, towards what’s considered down. “It’s not really antigravity, per se. Though, I suppose we could make that happen too if I figure out how to contain quintessence. I have some friends who built a machine that uses it, but it was awkward between us, so I never got the chance to study it in depth. Anyway, no, this is an equilibrium chamber. Another friend of mine developed it, and now they use it extensively on Varkas Reflex. People stay in simulated environments for years on end. This perfectly distributes the pressure on your body, so you don’t suffer the negative health effects of extended immobility.”

Sora stares at the apparatus, curious enough, but obviously not really thinking about it. Their goals are unaligned, and one of them might have to relent one day.

It’s not just about him, though. He’s not the only person they have to worry about. Thousands of colonists who just so happened to be on this side of the host star have the right to decide what to do with their own lives too. She’s just glad that most people escaped the bubble. She placed her lab away from the activity even though it placed her in the line of fire of the upcoming obliteration blast, because she knows exactly when it will arrive, and has ways of avoiding it. Now that doesn’t matter anymore. “Did you want to talk about something?” she asks as she’s stepping out.

“I don’t need to talk to Elke,” he answers. “Before you say anything, I realized that she made her choice. Whatever her reasons, I wasn’t worth sticking around for. We knew each other for years. Her suicide took years, but she never gave up. If she survived it—if she didn’t end up killing herself again on the other side, then that still has nothing to do with me. It never did. So you two go ahead and do whatever you need to do with the weird universe thing. I’m not much help, but I’ll be here. I’ll support you.”

“This wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with what she said about us?”

“About how we were together in another timeline? No. This is my choice.”

“Okay,” Pribadium!One says. “I’ll speak to my alternate self in the morning.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 20, 2564

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Time was weird in Romana’s simulation. Ramses and Leona worked the problem for the better part of three days before they were able to get Mateo and Boyd out of there. And they did get Boyd out of there too. They didn’t have a physical body for him to inhabit, since they didn’t know his wishes, but they moved his IDCode to a new server, and isolated him from Romana’s original system. They then ran a bunch of diagnostics on him, and medical tests on Mateo, to determine whether there were any lingering risks associated with them having been trapped in there.

Romana was devastated, but otherwise all right. Beyond her artificial implants, she wasn’t presenting any other signs or symptoms. She appeared to be physically and neurologically healthy. Still, Ramses extracted the implants, and flushed her of any dangerous foreign bodies. It was a relatively simple procedure, because it was one of the first things immersive VR researchers came up with, under the concern that something like this could happen. The only reason they didn’t do that earlier was because of her visitors. She was not saying much, save for apologizing profusely. It wasn’t her fault.

Mateo was pissed. Someone did this to her. It could not have simply happened incidentally. Glitches did happen, of course, but there was too much intent from the monsters. They were far too organized and driven. Of course, Mateo still didn’t know what they would have done if they had caught up to the humans, because they didn’t give them the chance, but they certainly weren’t trying to say hello, and they weren’t random. When he found whoever was responsible, they were gonna wish they had targeted someone else.

“That may not be what happened,” Leona said. “It may not have been an attack.”

“You didn’t see them,” Mateo argued. “They were absolutely relentless. Boyd and I literally had to keep running. Thank God I was able to shut off some of my bio-responses, or I would have grown too tired to make it.” He shook his head.

“The blobs,” Leona began. “Why did they chase after you at all? If they were a part of the system, why not simply materialize right in front of you. You didn’t actually run anywhere. You were only ones and zeros, as were the blobs themselves.”

“Exactly,” Mateo reasoned. “They weren’t a part of it. That’s how I know someone put them in there. It couldn’t have been your average file corruption, or whatever.”

“I have another hypothesis,” Ramses jumped in. “I think it could have been natural and unintentional. I think they were a part of her, but not the simulation.”

“What, like her antibodies, or her stress hormones?” Mateo questioned.

“Something like that,” Ramses went on. “Do you remember when Romana was abducted by the original Boyd? He placed her in a dark particle stasis field.”

“Yeah, it changed her,” Mateo said. “It made her just like him. That’s over now.”

“Perhaps not,” Ramses suggested. “I’m still detecting periodic neutrino collisions inside of her body, and in yours. It would be nothing to be worried about, it means your bodies can handle it. But it looks like her mind is being negatively impacted.”

“Well, she’s been dark particle-free for weeks, and nothing. What’s changed?”

Ramses frowned at Mateo sadly, but didn’t say anything. He looked nervous.

“Me,” Mateo surmised. “I visited her simulation. I have lingering dark particle-ness too.” He had to sit down. “I did this to her.”

“It’s not your fault either. It’s just nature,” Leona said comfortingly. “It could also be this star system. Different stars, different solar flux.”

“Fix this,” Mateo demanded. “Do whatever you have to do, even if it hurts.”

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Extremus: Year 138

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Waldemar and Sable are back together. It has been long enough since Audrey died that the people of Extremus accept the new relationship, so they can be public about it. Yes, she’s young. The crew and passengers do notice that, but they wouldn’t dare say anything to his face. He doesn’t want people to talk about them behind their backs either, but he can’t stop that. Well, he probably could. He could have the AI that runs the systems track everyone’s conversations, and make sure they’re only saying nice things, but he won’t do that. The old version of him might have, but he’s different now. He still doesn’t have real emotions, but he knows if he takes away all of their freedoms, then his popularity rating will drop down to zero, and he won’t keep his job. Maybe in a few years once the second phase of the master plan begins.

Other than his personal life, nothing noteworthy is happening, at least not that he can be honest about. The ghost of his late wife still haunts him, and not in a metaphorical way. She shows up when he’s alone, and talks to him. It’s torture. He knows it could be worse. She’s not screaming in his ears while he’s trying to sleep, or singing the same song over and over again. What she does is basically give him advice. She acts just Audrey did when she was physically here, except now he can’t even get on top of her like he used to.

No, the problem with it is that he doesn’t have a choice. He can’t leave the room unless he wants to surround himself with others. She won’t leave. A part of him doesn’t want her to, but a part of him does. He obviously can’t tell anyone about it, because it will make him look unfit for the chair. He can’t trust Silveon, and his rekindling with Sable isn’t where it should be yet. When the—

“Stop. No one cares about this.” It’s Audrey again. She just appears out of nowhere sometimes. It can be really annoying.

“What are you goin’ on about now?” Waldemar questions.

“You’re dwelling on your situation,” Audrey explains. “Your thoughts are not interesting, which makes sense, because the story is not interesting right now. The beginning of this volume had a lot of action and intrigue, and the end of it will too, but right now, The Superintendent is in the middle of focusing on other projects, so he doesn’t have time to write this whole thing about your fake fee-fees and hallucinations.”

Waldemar stands there midstride, holding a plate of cookies and a glass of milk. A single drop of the milk sprang out of it when Audrey first showed up, and is currently running down the back of his hand as another form of irritation. He wants to stop and lick it up, but he’s worried he’ll look stupid in front of the ghost. Can you believe it? Feeling self-conscious before someone who you don’t even respect. If only—

“I said stop!” Audrey argues. “Stop trying to create a story where there is none. He’s gonna cut this short, and move on. Maybe he’ll have more time next week.”

“I’ve had enough of this.” Waldemar carelessly drops both the plate and the glass on the floor to let the cleaning bots deal with it. He taps on his wrist band until he finds what he’s looking for. Or rather, who he’s looking for.

Sable appears on the floor. She’s half-naked, crouched in an awkward position.

“What were you doing?” Waldemar asks. “Having sex?”

“Uh, no. Yoga?” Sable claims, probably lying. She stands up. “I don’t appreciate being summoned like this. You may be the captain, and I may be your girlfriend, but—”

“I’ve been seeing the ghost of my dead wife. For years. And I need your help.”

She stares but he can’t say what she’s thinking. “Fascinating. Tell me everything.”

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