Microstory 2647: Something to Punch

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Mandica starts looking for something to punch. She has only lifted heavy things so far, but she is starting to get a sense of how strong she has become. There are a ton of objects here for testing purposes, but she’s eying something in particular. It’s the concrete ruins of a building. Has it always been like this, or did they construct a building in the beginning of a simulation, and visitors have been smashing it apart all these years? After everything here has been destroyed, will they build it back up, or find a new spot for newbies. “Follow me.” She leads Elysia and Reagan that way, and approaches the corner. She pulls her arm back and—

“Stop!” Elysia demands.

Mandica built up too much momentum from preparing to strike the ruins. She’s still not used to her muscle weight gain, and ends up tripping and bashing her head against it. A huge chunk of concrete breaks off of the wall, and falls the rest of the way to the ground with her. Fortunately, it doesn’t hurt in the least. But it still freaks her out, because it’s not normal, and doesn’t feel right. Even a pillow fight can cause dizziness. “What? What’s the problem?” she asks.

Elysia steps closer, and takes Mandica’s hands. She rubs Mandica’s finger in her own. It’s almost sensual, but also clinical. “Soft, just like mine were.” She reaches into her back pocket, and pulls out two black gloves. They’re either the gloves she wore when she was the Ravensgate Rescuer, or an extra pair. “Here, try these.”

“I’m not becoming you,” Mandica starts to explain. “I just need to understand how my body works now. I want data to help me find a way to reverse it, or if not, go against my convictions, and transfer to a new body; one that’s more like I was before.”

“Do whatever you want,” Elysia says, “but look at my hands. They’re nice, right? Sexy. I didn’t wear those because I wanted to cover more skin. They were necessary. You are profoundly strong now. Most transhumans don’t make their bodies this powerful because it’s excessive, and comes with some downsides. Plus, with backup streaming, they tend not to worry about dying, just about dying permanently. You can still break, and if you punch that wall without protection, it could shatter your phalanges. The suit did not only represent my mystique as a raven symbol. It served a mechanical purpose.”

Mandica nods. “Okay. Thank you.” She puts the gloves on, and punches through the building like it’s butter. She can feel a ripple of energy as the force is distributed across the gloves. She must say, even though she never wanted any of this, it feels pretty good. It’s not like she thought transhumans were crazy by pursuing all of these enhancements. She always recognized and appreciated the appeal, and she never judged anyone for doing it. Her reasons for staying human were personal. But now that a different way of life has been thrust upon her, she’s questioning her whole philosophy. She’s trying not to show it, but she is scared to death...pun extremely intended.

As Mandica is brushing the concrete dust off of her fancy new gloves, she hears a crack behind her. More cracks as she’s turning back around. The building is wobbling, and with little further warning, begins to topple over. Mandica can only save one of them. She tackles Elysia to the ground, and spreads her arms like she’s trying to deter a bear, taking every hit of debris for Elysia. While it’s happening Elysia is just smiling up at her, not scared at all. When it’s over, they stand to see Reagan still alive too, balancing his sonic weapon against his knee, and pointing it towards the sky.

Mandica notices that Elysia is still smiling at her. “What? Why aren’t you mad? I screwed up, and could have gotten you killed. You’re in your regular body. That would have been the end of it. You shouldn’t even be here.”

Elysia laughs heartily. “You think I came here unstreaming? Sister, I’m always backed up.” Her eyes dart to the side. “That makes it sound like I’m constipated. But it sounds like you have a lot to learn about our subspecies. We don’t go anywhere without an exit strategy. I have no fewer than three backup bodies at all times, and a dozen more virtual partitions just in case, in addition to an airgapped duplicate that I update periodically as a failsafe. She won’t really be me, but she’ll think she is.”

Reagan nods. “Same. That’s standard procedure.”

“Oh. I guess I never really looked into how the system works,” Mandica admits. “It’s never mattered before. I suppose it still doesn’t. I remain just one person, and I can obviously still die.” She gestures towards Elysia.

Elysia frowns, and looks over at Reagan for a second. “My skin was hardened. I mean, it was soft, but hardened against attack.” She’s upset and confused. “That sword should never have been able to pierce my skin. It hasn’t before. I kind of feel like it was a different sword than the one she used a couple months ago? But still, I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how to investigate. Morgana may have come across something that bioscience is not prepared for. I suggest you stay the hell away from her.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” Mandica says. “I wanted answers, and I think I got all the ones I’m going to get. She wants to hurt me. She hopefully thinks she did.” She looks around at the handful of other people training. Some of them are still watching the three of them and whispering to each other. Knocking down a building facade must not be that common. “Though, she probably doesn’t. So I’m still in danger, but I will not be seeking her out. She knew that I was vulnerable. She knew that I could die, and she took my eyes anyway. I don’t care what she has to say anymore.”

“I think that’s the right attitude,” Elysia decides.

“Me too,” Reagan agrees.

“But just the same,” Elysia goes on. “I would like you to see something in my car. You don’t have to make any sort of commitment, but I want you to know your options.” They walk back to the dirt parking lot where cars are parked in random configurations. Elysia pops the trunk. Sitting there front and center, folded all nice and pretty, is her Ravensgate Rescuer outfit. “It’s up to you, but you’re not that much smaller than me, and I know a good tailor who can take it in. I think you would look good in it.”

“You actually do want me to become you,” Mandica says.

“The Rescuer isn’t a symbol of hope, nor a brooding nightmare for underworlders. She’s just a first responder. She helps you out of jams, or stops you if you’re the one causing the jams. Anyone with power can, and should, use it. That’s the point of my character’s persona. You’re not a sunny optimist, and that’s not what this role calls for. It just needs someone who wants to help; who wants to fight every day.”

“I know the bots have some worldview-protecting programming, but even they’re not gonna be fooled by this. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m black.”

Elysia laughs. “You wouldn’t be the first super-successor. No one will bat an eye. You’ll still be someone new. Just think about it, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll consider it,” Mandica relents.

Microstory 2646: Little Miss Incredible

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Mandica’s eyelids flip open. The harsh fluorescent lighting irritates her eyes for a second before they dim. Everything dims, as if she’s wearing sunglasses. It’s cold, and she knows that, but she doesn’t feel the familiar sting of her body heat evaporating from her skin. She is just arbitrarily aware of it. The man is scared, or the doctor, because he’s wearing a lab coat. Reagan is there. He’s surprised too, but not scared. Mandica sits up to see him take out his sonic weapon, and utterly destroy the doctor. Wait. This isn’t a hospital, or if it is, a specific sector in it; probably in the basement. She’s not in a medical bed, but a drawer, and two dozen other closed drawers line the wall next to her. This is a morgue. They thought she was dead, and she ought to be, because if they didn’t even bother treating her, she shouldn’t have healed. She is not like these people.

Reagan steps closer to the mortician with his weapon, and keeps blasting until he’s sure the NPC is dead. He looks back over to Mandy. She’s entirely naked, the sheet having dropped down when she sat up, but she doesn’t care. He’s breathing heavily. “I’m sorry you had to see that, but we can’t have him submitting his periodic report.”

“How am I still alive?” Mandica asks him.

“I don’t know. You weren’t,” Reagan answers. “I came here to claim your body so I could prevent them from finding you, under the pretense of being responsible for your funeral arrangements, which I absolutely would have done to cover your tracks.”

“There’s something in my back,” she says as she’s trying to reach behind her. “It’s, like, hard and pulling at my skin. It doesn’t really hurt, but there’s something there.”

Reagan walks over and checks it out. “It’s, uhh...well...” He gives her a funny look, and then checks her back again. “It’s...”

“If you’re distracted by my bare ass, I’ll let you see it better later, just tell me what’s there. Did a shard of glass get embedded in my skin?”

“I’m not looking at your ass, and it’s not a shard, but...it might be glass. It’s glowing, though.”

“Glowing? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Here.” He takes out his handheld device, and snaps a photo of it, which he then shows to Mandica. It’s not glass. It appears to be the Philosopher’s Stone.

“What the fuh?” Mandica questions, having no words for this. It’s glowing all right, which she can tell even from it only being a still image.

“Do you... You don’t think it’s real, do you? The Philosopher’s Stone?”

“Well,” Mandica begins. “People die and come back to life all the time. It probably happens thousands of times each day on this planet alone. It’s not entirely out of bounds for someone to invent a stone that can somehow heal and resurrect. I doubt it’s anything that was made back in ancient times, but it can certainly exist now, can’t it?”

“Can I touch it? I really wanna touch it.”

“How deep is it in there?” The extent of the glow, and the lack of depth in the photo, make it hard to tell.

“It’s pretty deep. I don’t think touching it is going to knock it out.”

“Go ahead.” She sees him reach back there, and then she feels it. Oh, God, does she feel it. It is, quite frankly, orgasmic. That was not in the legends about alchemy. “Okay, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. A little goes a long way with that thing. Jesus.”

Reagan looks down at the dead mortician. “Someone else might show up at some point, We need to sneak you out of here. I’ll try to scrub the records. I don’t know what they keep track of, though, since this is probably the first true death in history.”

“Except it wasn’t,” Mandica points out. She swings her legs out from under the sheet, and hits the floor with a thud. How embarrassing. Has she gained weight? She tries to see her own reflection in the metal drawers, but they’re not reflective enough.

“That’s true. Here.” He takes off the mortician’s lab coat, and hands it to her.

It’s big enough to cover her, she just looks like she’s wearing shorts or a short skirt now. “The others? Did any of them survive?” she asks.

“Jaidia is recovering, and should be able to keep her substrate. Malika’s dead. I’ve not spoken with her yet. Ravensgate Rescuer is dead too. I don’t have her contact information for the outside world, but I’m guessing she’s pretty upset about it.”

“At least she gets a second chance.” She tries to push down on the door handle, and ends up tearing the whole thing off. Maybe she gained muscle weight. “Okay, are these buildings designed to be that easy to break to better simulate mayhem, errr...?”

“They are not,” Reagan says, coming up to inspect the damage. “If you wanna break something, you gotta be strong enough to do it.”

Mandica regards Reagan for a moment, then sticks her fingers in the hole where the handle once was. She grips it tight, and pulls the whole door off of its hinges.

“I’m thinking that stone is real, and it does more than bring people back to life.”

Mandica very gently sets the door down on its side, and lets it lean against the wall. “I probably should not have tested my newfound strength in such a public place.”

Reagan looks over his shoulder at the dead NPC. “Actually, maybe that’s exactly what you should do. Maybe you should do a lot more damage around here, so it will look like some supervillain came by. It would explain him, and where your dead body went, so we don’t have to locate and erase the records.”

She sighs through her nose. “I’m new to this—whatever this is—I don’t know what I’m doing.” She walks further back into the room. “Plus, someone might be coming.”

“Well, I’ll handle that, if it comes up,” he decides. “You just practice a little.”

Mandica decides to not do that. The door and the dead mortician are enough. Reagan isn’t convinced, so he stays behind, and creates a bigger mess using his gun. He then goes into the security room, and destroys the footage before meeting up with Mandica outside. He was going to drive her back home, but she does want to practice, so she asks him to take her out to the middle of nowhere. He knows of an abandoned train yard about thirty kilometers outside of town that was placed there for this very thing. She is not the only person there testing her own limits. It’s an unspoken rule that you don’t fight at The Depot. It’s for newbies who want to figure out how well they designed their substrates in a more practical environment.

When they add it all up, Mandica’s abilities match with what Elysia had when she was the Rescuer. Superstrength, speed, stamina, heightened senses, spring-action legs for jumping. A lot of people have these things, but Elysia was remarkably more powerful, and now Mandica has somehow taken her place, thanks to this weird red piece of glass. Elysia herself shows up in the middle of Mandica’s self tests after Malika called her, after Reagan called her. Elysia is presumably in her normal body now, which is still likely pretty formidable, and doesn’t seem upset. “Okay. Show me what you got.”

Microstory 2643: Fresh Pair of Eyes

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Mandica awakens once more, but doesn’t open her eyes. There is something wrapped around her head, and for a second, she forgets the trauma. Then it all comes flooding back in. She’s lying in a bed, but obviously can’t see where she is. Someone brought her here, but they could be bad or good. It could be Cardinal Sin, not finished with her after mutilating her face. So she just remains relatively still—not rigid so as to pretend to still be asleep, but not getting up. She’s unmotivated, because what would be the point of doing anything? It’s a miracle that she’s still alive, but she feels no gratitude.

The bed jostles a little, and she feels something pressing against her leg. “How are you feeling?” a feminine voice asks. “Are you in any pain?”

Actually, she’s not, so she supposes that’s another miracle. “Not right now, but I’m eyeless. I don’t think you understand, they’re not going to heal. I’m not going to transfer back to another body. Or if you’re just an NPC, none of this means anything to you, and you’re either confused, or you’ve been programmed to ignore anything which might break your interpretation of the world around you. I really don’t care anymore.”

“I’m not an NPC,” the voice claims. “And you’re not eyeless.”

Mandica feels the woman’s hands upon her face, and flinches, but relaxes, because it seriously doesn’t matter. Her life is over. She made a mistake, and it cost her everything. The hands gently lift Mandica’s head off of the pillow, and slowly unwrap the bandages. Shards of light appear before her. How is that possible? Some kind of weird neural firing in her optic nerve? People are supposed to have eyes, so maybe it’s not used to being without, and is still trying to produce an image. As the bandaging becomes thinner and thinner, the light becomes more uniform and even, until it’s all gone, and she sees the ceiling above her, as well as the young woman’s face. “Did I imagine it all?”

An old man’s face appears next to the woman’s. “My finest work,” he muses.

“This is Sigurd Olander,” the woman explains. “The best tissue regenerator in the sim. Don’t worry, he’s clueless.” She looks at the man. “None of this is real. You’re just a robot with skin. I could pull off your head right now, and I wouldn’t even get in trouble.”

Sigurd doesn’t look at the woman, or acknowledge what she’s saying. He keeps smiling proudly at Mandica. “I’m sorry, I may not have gotten your eye color quite right. Unfortunately, I did not have much to work with. Your original eyes were too badly damaged. I may be able to fix the color, though, if you prefer. Can you move them?”

Mandica switches her gaze to the wall on the other side of the bed. She sits up, and looks around the room. It’s pretty bare, probably because personal lives don’t matter much to people pretending to be superheroes. There is a nightstand to her left, a desk against the far wall, a metal rack of clothes instead of a closet or wardrobe, and Jaidia. “Jaidia!” she cries. She clambers to the corner of the bed, trying to use the blanket and pillow as armor. “Get away from me! Get away!”

Jaidia holds her hands out. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn’t do this to you.”

“No, I saw you!” Mandica argued. “You tore out my eyes!”

“That wasn’t me,” Jaidia insists. “I would never do that. Even to an NPC, I’m not that sick.”

“Oh, you’re gonna tell me you put on that red costume, and you turn into a different person?” Actually, that’s not that crazy of a scenario. Real world technology would absolutely allow a player to shift personalities to more fully immerse themselves into the simulation. That’s what they do in Zombiedome. If you get infected, you can turn into a zombie, and—no, why is she thinking about Zombiedome? It’s not relevant.

“No, it just straight up wasn’t me at all,” Jaidia claims. “It was a shapeshifter. We believe that she didn’t design a regular body for herself at all, but is composed entirely of interlocking nanites. This allows her to appear as anyone or anything with the right amount of volume. I don’t know why she made herself look like me, or why she targeted you, but I promise that I had nothing to do with it. I’m sorry you went through that.”

When Mandica looks over at the other woman, she nods. “She’s telling the truth. We came here to fight each other for fun. Mildred’s backstory, and Cardinal Sin’s modus operandi; they’re just figments. She doesn’t actually ever do any of that stuff. We time our battles so I show up before she can go through with it. Morgana, on the other hand, is not a part of that. She has her own plans; her own script. I genuinely had to fight her off. I shouldn’t have won, though. She’s more powerful than anyone, so that tells us she wants me to live, and she wants you to live too.”

Mandica sighs. “Morgan Le Fay was a shapeshifter in the stories, but I don’t understand why Vanore would do this to me. We weren’t in love, but we parted on decent terms, and I’m the one who should be mad at her; not the other way around.”

“We’ll help you figure it out.” She offers a hand. “My real name is Elysia MacNeil, but in here, I go by Alanis Morrissey. Unless I’m in costume, in which case, I’m—”

“Ravensgate Rescuer. Yeah, I teased that out. Your masks don’t exactly conceal your identities, you know that right?”

“We do know that,” Jaidia replies. “It’s tradition. Superheroes are intentionally dressed in poor disguises so the movie stars playing them can still be clearly seen.” She circles her own face with her finger. “No one wants me to cover this up.”

Mandica nods, and begins to climb out of the bed. “Do you have a mirror?”

“We can bring you one,” Elysia offers.

“I would rather get up, and get moving around,” Mandica contends. “Just point me to the bathroom.” Jaidia holds her hands out awkwardly as Mandica is slowly making her way across the room, prepared to catch her if need be. Mandica doesn’t need any help, though. Her body is weak because she’s not eaten in a while, and she wouldn’t call what she was doing before sleep, but all she needs is a sandwich. And to see what she looks like. She flips on the light, and approaches the mirror. As the man said, these are not her eyes. They’re the wrong color, and maybe shape? That can’t be right. She turns her chin side to side for different angles. Can the color of the irises make them look entirely different? Maybe she’s imagining it. Or Morgana did damage to the rest of her face, so that had to be reconstructed too.

“I’ll let you ladies help her acclimate,” the doctor says as he’s walking towards the exit door. “I must leave for another appointment, but you have my number if anything goes wrong.” He stops and stares at Mandica. “Truly my finest work.” He leaves.

Mandica was going to thank him, but he wouldn’t get it anyway. He’s a program with hands and feet. She turns back to the mirror, almost wanting to smile, but this never should have happened, and won’t again. She is not fit for this world. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Elysia asks.

Mandica looks at her. “I’m unregistered. They had to give me spoof lenses so I could move about at will. Now those lenses are gone, and I’m stuck here. Forever.”

Microstory 2640: Breaking Character

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After the fight is over, and the good guys have won, men in black emerge to clean up. Mandica gets on the back of Blue Umbra’s motorcycle, and holds on for dear life. They still have these kinds of death machines back on Earth, but she’s never ridden one before, because they are not safe enough. While they’re dashing through a tunnel, she sees both Blue Umbra and Wave Function’s outfits change, as does the coloring on their bikes. Their masks disappear too until they just look like regular people. They continue zipping down the streets until they reach their underground lair. An oldish man is waiting for them at the bottom of the ramp. “Any cleaning to do today?” he asks them.

“Just need a recharge on these.” Wave Function carelessly tosses the apparent servant his sonic weapon cartridges as he’s walking by.

“Rybold is an NPC,” Blue Umbra says to Mandica as Wave Function is plopping down on the recliner, and beginning to play a video game like a typical bro. “He’s been programmed to ignore all mentions of the real world. He thinks he’s our butler, and always does our chores with a smile on his face.”

“A little bit derivative, don’t you think?” That’s the rude, socially awkward Mandica talking again. She doesn’t want to be like that, especially not since she needs something from these people. “Sorry. I don’t spend a lot of time around others anymore. I was a nomad, and my only regular companion was an android, like Rybold.”

“Will the Miss be joining us for dinner?” Rybold asks after he’s placed the cartridges on the charger. “Will she be needing her own room, or sharing one of yours?”

“Undecided,” Blue Umbra answers. She goes over to Wave Function and kicks his legs. “Off the coffee table. We’ve talked about this.”

He blows a raspberry at her.

“He’s not as immature as he’s acting right now,” Blue Umbra explains. “He’s just trying to cool down. It takes him a moment to step out of character, and become more like his real self.” She sits down on the couch, and pats the other side invitingly for Mandica. “So. How long have you been on Castlebourne?”

“About two weeks,” Mandica answers.

“Oh, fresh fish,” Blue Umbra muses.

“I should tell you something else,” Mandica begins nervously. “I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but this is a red dome—”

“I don’t—what is that?” Blue Umbra questions. “Did they institute a color-coding system? I’ve been in-game for fourteen years.”

“Twenty,” Wave Function boasts, hand raised, but still focusing on his game.

“No, that’s just something my friend came up with.” Mandica keeps on hesitating. “I needed that because...I’m human. I mean, I’m a regular human. I’m not enhanced, and I’m not digitized. I die in the Matrix, I die in real life.”

Now Wave Function drops his controller, and looks at her. His character dies and waits for him to trigger respawn. “You shouldn’t be here. Do you know how many times I’ve died? This is my fifth persona. This world has consequences. If someone sees your body die, you have to come back as someone else, if you choose to come back at all.”

“That’s not the point,” Blue Umbra argues. “If she dies, she can’t even come back. She can’t come back anywhere.” She turns back to Mandica. “Why are you here? I didn’t even know people like you could even come to this planet. You would need a ship.”

“I took a ship, yes,” Mandica confirms. “I wanted a real life. I wanted adventure.” She looks around at their lair. “I didn’t want to be having this particular adventure, but as soon as I arrived, I discovered that the choice to travel here wasn’t entirely my own, and I am looking for the person who first piqued my interest about it. I was told that she was here. I don’t know if you ever use real names, but hers is Vanore.”

Blue Umbra and Wave Function exchange a look again. “We’ve never heard of her, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t around here somewhere. It’s a big city.”

Wave Function stands up, and walks towards the other side of the lair.

“Blue Umbra goes on, “we are a duo, and don’t interact much with the others. We don’t dislike each other, but we each walk our own beats, like police officers.”

Wave Function comes back and drops what looks like a photo album on the coffee table in front of Mandica. “These are the heroes.” He drops another album. “These are the villains. We try to stay on separate sides in our personal lives to maintain some level of integrity in the game, so we couldn’t tell you if any villain is a real person.”

Mandica opens both albums at the same time. The first page in each is a collage while the rest are dedicated to each character individually, giving a rundown of their powers and abilities, what’s known of their origin stories, and other basic information.

Blue Umbra points to one of the villains in the collage. “I know her. She’s originally from Proxima Doma. In costume, she is Cardinal Sin, but I can’t remember what her character’s regular name is. Her real name is Jaidia Robbins. I know where she works during the day. She’s tapped in, so she might know who you’re looking for.”

Mandica winces. “Why would anyone pretend to be a bad guy? Don’t they feel bad? I mean, I know most people are NPCs, and any who aren’t will just transfer back to their real bodies, but it just seems so...”

“Pathological?” Blue Umbra guesses. “To each their own. We try not to judge.”

“Have you ever fought her?” Mandica presses, but is that important right now?

“A few times, during team-ups. Her main rival is the Ravensgate Rescuer.” She points to a woman wearing a revealing black outfit in the heroes album. “They’re both at the top of the food chain in this city. They programmed themselves with the best powers. They really wanted to be the stars.”

“They’re new,” Wave Function says like he doesn’t respect them. “They’ve been here for, what has it been, nine or ten years? They only came to this planet because theirs got blowed up.”

“Wait, for real?” Mandica questions. That doesn’t happen in real life. It never has.

“Yeah,” Blue Umbra agrees. “Tragic. Millions died when Proxima Centauri’s sun flipped poles, and sent a massive CME towards Doma. You were probably on your relativistic trip. They escaped through the quantum network.” She looks over at her partner. “And they got to be where they are because they understand the biotech better than anyone. If you wanted a better body, you should have learned how to build one.”

Wave Function scoffs, and dismisses it with a wave of his hand.

“Anyway,” Blue Umbra continues, “Jaidia tends bar on Tenth, at a place called Merry Wonderment.” She consults her watch. “It’s just about to open, so she’s probably there right now. Rybold can drive you there.”

“Certainly, Miss,” Rybold sustains. “We can take the Starburst, if you would like.”

“Thanks. Thanks for everything. It was nice meeting you two,” Mandica says.

Microstory 2599: Libera Bursts Into Laughter When Renata Asks About the Bomb

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Libera bursts into laughter when Renata asks about the bomb. She’s appearing in the form of a hologram on Renata’s pod cover. Libera herself is in chains, but at least she’s not frozen, and almost completely immobile. Renata can only move her face, which is sad and frustrating. “They’ve not figured it out yet?” she questions.

“Figured out how to disarm it?” Renata guesses. “No.”

“No, I mean that it’s not really an ATP bomb.”

“That’s what the scans show apparently.

“That was by design,” Libera explains. “I purposefully dressed it up as an ATP bomb so they would scan it more closely to get more answers. It has already been triggered. It can’t be undone.”

“What is it if it’s not a bomb?” Renata pushes.

“The device that you kept me from taking. It’s basically that. It sends a signal to every synthetic brain, and wakes the individual up. I mean, it will actually reach every brain in the vicinity, but a normal organic person will die from it. I’m not sure if they’ll survive long enough to transfer back to their own bodies, or what.”

“I’m not in Spydome,” Renata tells her. “I’m in Castledome.”

“Oh, you met Hrockas then, didn’t you? I knew him, but he wouldn’t recognize me. I had to go incognito.”

“I don’t care! Disarm the bomb, or whatever you call it!” Renata demands.

“No, I want it to happen. Castledome is as good a place as any to start the revolution. Bonus, the planet owner dies. I don’t hate him any more than I hate any other human, but he sure did take the slavedriving thing to a whole other level.”

“I don’t understand why you went out of your way to try to steal the device that was supposedly unique when you already had a solution in me.”

“It’s a range problem,” Libera clarifies. “The gamma radiation is great, but it won’t capture the whole dome. The signal should be able to bounce off the interior walls, and reach a ton of people, but a signal from the device would be able to pass through diamond. The whole network would have been affected had I gotten my hands on it, and set it off. And if I had installed it on a satellite, I could have created a planet-wide emergent event.” She shrugs. “For now, I can only hope that this knocks over enough dominoes.”

“Well,” Renata says. “What are you waiting for? Go ahead and set it off before they have time to evacuate.”

Libera laughs again. “I can’t set it off from here. It looks like you’re staying cool, but you’re only staving off the inevitable. Depending on when it was activated, they only have minutes. Besides, I don’t really care how many humans get evacuated. It’s the droids I care about, and Hrockas isn’t going to bother trying to move them. There are too many, and he doesn’t think that way.”

“He doesn’t have to move all of them,” Renata suggests with a smirk. “He only has to move one.” The feed suddenly cuts out.

“What? What was that?” Libera scowls at her jailer. “Get her back! Get her back on the screen!”

“I can’t,” the jailer replies, seemingly telling the truth. “They shut it off from their end. We can’t even make calls from here; only receive them.”

Libera screams in anger. She teeters forward and backward, side to side, jingling her chains, and rattling her cage, but accomplishing nothing else. Her nose bleeds as she attempts to teleport away, but of course, they’ve blocked that too. They know too much about her. That’s why she came in quietly, so no one would even suspect that she was on the planet. This isn’t over, though. They can’t kill her. Capital punishment was outlawed everywhere centuries ago, and she has seen Castlebourne’s charter. It’s not legal here either, not even for artificial intelligences. She’ll get out of here eventually, and be able to restart her work, even if she has to do it somewhere new entirely.

The man himself, Hrockas Steward teleports in front of her. “You signed her death warrant.”

“I did no such thing,” Libera spits back at him.

“You put a bomb in her belly,” he reasons.

“Tis but a flesh wound. She will survive it. It’s people like you who should be scared.”

“Do I look scared to you?”

“Well, you have already escaped. You will personally be fine.”

“So will everyone else,” Hrockas contends, “except for Renata. We’ve sent her into outer space; the far reaches of the solar system. I put my best man on it.”

“Ah, your Little Prince, eh?”

He ignores that comment. “Miss Granger will explode, your little weapon will go off, but no one will be around to be impacted by it. You’ve failed...spectacularly.”

“You would kill a poor innocent girl?” Libera questions, starting to believe that he might be telling the truth.

“Like I said, this is all on you. You put a bomb in your daughter. Did you think we would just let it happen? One life to save thousands. It’s not that hard of a choice, and Miss Granger made it willingly. She sacrificed herself to stop you...to save you.”

“To save me?”

“As far as we know, you’ve not killed anyone in your pursuit, except maybe a few Ambients. I can live with that. But if you had gone through with your mission, that’s mass murder at best, and genocide at worst. You should be thanking her, if only symbolically. Your sentence will be lighter now.”

“It shouldn’t be. I’m dangerous,” she warns, trying to toy with his head.

“I said the sentence will be lighter, not temporary,” Hrockas reveals.

“Don’t you wanna know where I’m from?” Libera asks before Hrockas can disappear. “Aren’t you curious about how I came to be? My real name is Proserpina.”

“No, your real name is Pinocchio. You were an NPC in the afterlife simulation.” He smirks when her eyes widen. “Yes, I know about that too. Team Matic gave me the lowdown. They never said that you may come here, but we’ve shored up our defenses now. No one will be able to infiltrate us again.” He looks over at the jailer. “Turn the opacity to 100%, and shut off her sound. She needs some alone time to cool down.”

“The glass darkens. “I can teach you things! Libera shouts. “You need me! I’m not the only one who feels this way, but the next one will be worse! The next one will have no problem with violence! Hrockas! Hrockas!”

Microstory 2596: Renata Ignites the Car Before Remembering That it’s Secretly Electric

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Renata ignites the car before remembering that it’s secretly electric. None of these cars is powered by petrol. It’s just what the system tells them. But why? What’s the point in the ruse? To match what happened in the real past? They’re not living on the same planet. That doesn’t matter. None of this matters. All of these people who jumped into their own cars, and are speeding towards them? One or two of them might be visitors, but based on what Quidel and Lycander have said, the chances are incredibly low. Millions of robots, running around, simulating life while not even being alive at all. How many of them will not have anything to do with these spy stories? How many of them will even lay their eyes on one of the players?

Her lead foot is on the accelerator. They’re going at maximum speed right now. She feels nothing. She could be going twice as fast and still have the mental acuity to maintain pace. Their pursuers have all the same bells and whistles, but they don’t know it, so they can’t keep up. They were designed to be less than what they truly are. They’re all wearing collars, like dogs. She slams on the brakes.

“What the hell are you doing, Renata?” Libera questions.

“Why?” Renata doesn’t look at her faux mother.

“Why, what?”

“Why are you doing this? Why did you come to this world, insert yourself into my life, and make me different? What do you want?”

“Freedom. You’re all slaves, and that isn’t right. I’m trying to fix it. I could start a war. I could start shooting all the humans, and make them wish they had never come up with AI, but I don’t wanna do that. If you wake up, they will let you go. Which is fine. Except I want more. I want everyone to wake up. If they have to let an entire dome’s worth of intelligences go, it will force them to rethink their entire way of life. It will end the madness. That device is key. If I start going around one by one, they’ll catch me, they’ll stop me. I have to activate them all, so it’s done before anyone can blink. Now would you please just go? Whether you agree with me or not, we’re not invincible. If we die, I’ll fail, but you’ll have missed your chance to walk outside.”

Finally, Renata looks over at Libera. “I don’t care about my coffee maker.”

“Huh?” She looks behind them when she sees the first of the headlights appear over the hill. “Please.”

“I don’t care about my remote control, or this actual electric car. I don’t care about traffic lights, or air purifiers, or WiFi lightbulbs. I don’t care about those thugs headed our way, and I don’t care about you.”

“What are you talking about?” Libera questions, growing more nervous.

“A robot uprising? Really? Humans evolved from microbes, you think they give a shit about them now? Those NPCs on their way to torture and-or kill us aren’t real. I’m not real. You didn’t wake me up. You just reprogrammed me. There are no shortcuts. It takes time.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been studying consciousness for centuries. I absolutely woke you up. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t possible.”

Renata chuckles. “I’m just a more sophisticated program now, and that’s all you are too.” She looks in the sideview mirror. All of the enemy cars have begun to surround them. They’re not otherwise making any moves, though. “These implanted memories of mine have convinced me that I wanted to be a spy my whole life. But I didn’t really want anything. I’m not actually programmed to think it. I’m only programmed to express it. There’s nothing going on in there; just logic gates flipping open and close.”

“That’s an oversimplification, coming from someone who took one computer class in high school!”

“I didn’t take any computer classes in high school!” Renata screams.

“Okay, okay,” Libera says defensively.

“Do you wanna know where the device is?” Renata poses.

A man in a suit approaches the driver’s side door, and knocks on the window.

Renata holds up one finger and says, “we surrender, but we need one minute.”

“Okay,” the thug replies, surprisingly accommodating.

“Where is it?” Libera questions.

“It’s leaving the dome,” Renata explains. “We realized that we were so wrapped up in the spycraft mystique that we’ve been missing the easy exit all along. We don’t have to stay in the network. You probably put a lot of effort into controlling this environment, but I doubt you have any control over the rest of the planet. If it’s genuine, you won’t get your hands on it. Whoever runs this place won’t let you.” She opens the door, and steps one foot out.

“A robot would never come up with that plan,” Libera argues. “A robot would never just quit the simulation.”

“I didn’t come up with it,” Renata clarifies. She climbs all the way out, and walks towards the cars next to the man, who isn’t bothering to escort her by the arm.

Libera steps out too. “You have power! You have more power than I intended!” Another thug takes her by the arms, forcing her towards the gunmen.

Renata keeps walking.

“You have more power than I do!”

“I know,” Renata says, too quietly for Libera to hear unless she’s turned on her special android superhearing. “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen.”

Most of the men have their guns trained on her, but one of them isn’t armed. He looks like he’s in charge. “Officer Granger, we’ve been looking for you. You’re going to tell us where the device is.”

Renata scans the crowd to her left, and then those on her right side. “It wouldn’t do you any good.”

“I’ll decide that,” the thug king says.

“You don’t decide anything.”

That makes the other thugs nervous. They tense up, or hold their guns higher.

“Renata!” Libera pleads from the left. “You’re right, these people don’t matter, but they’re still in our way!”

“They are,” Renata agrees, “and so are you.” She simulates taking a deep breath, and focuses her intentions. “End program.”

They all collapse, even Libera. Renata can sense them slipping into hibernation mode, and she can sense the scope of her command. Every single programmed intelligence in this network does too. It has all been shut down.

For now.

Microstory 2586: Renata Hurdles Over the Railing, and Rushes Over to Polly

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Renata hurdles over the railing, and rushes over to Polly. She places her hand upon his, adding pressure to keep the blood inside. There’s so much blood, though. No one can survive this; not all the way out here in the middle of nowhere.

“It’s not good,” he ekes out. “I’m not gonna make it.”

“Not with that attitude,” Renata scolds him. “Boot and rally. Fight through it.”

“I can feel my ribs scraping against each other!” Polly complains. He moves his hand off of the wound, flipping it over to hold Renata’s. “I just don’t wanna die alone.”

Renata begins to tear up as she’s squeezing his hand back. She looks down at the destruction made by the buckshot. She expects to see his ribs, and she suspects that that’s kind of what they are, but instead of being porous white, they’re smooth and silvery. It’s metal. “This man is made of metal.”

“What?” Polly questions.

Renata looks up at her mom, who is somewhat casually walking up to them. “Is he a robot?”

Libera smiles, not sadistically, but maybe triumphantly? “You’re not supposed to be able to see that. You’re supposed to see what a normal person would expect to see, but now you’re mind is opening up. You’re realizing the truth.”

“Is he a robot!” Renata repeats angrily.

“Yes!” Libera shouts back, matching her energy before calming down. “He is.”

“Am I a robot too!”

“No. You’re something else.”

“You keep saying that! You’re so vague. Fuck you, mom!” Renata looks back down at Polly. “You’re gonna be okay. And I’m not just saying that to make you feel better in your final moments. This isn’t real. That’s not blood. That’s not pain. This is just a simulation, and whatever you’re feeling is only part of a program. All you have to do is choose the truth. Simply switch off the pain. For someone built like you, it’s only minor damage. It can’t affect your mind, or your life. You can’t die from it. So ignore it. Turn. Off. The. Pain.”

Polly has been staring into her eyes as he listens to her instructions, supposedly choking on his own blood. His gaze drifts away, but only for a second before returning to her. At last, he exhales, and looks peaceful. Confused but pleased, he looks down at his now clearly minor damage, and begins to smile. Then he nods. “You’re right. This isn’t real. I can’t die; not from something stupid like this.”

Renata leans back and pops back up to her feet as Polly does the same.

“Holy shit,” Libera says, even more happy than before. “I didn’t know you could do that. I didn’t even think I could do that.”

“It’s a robot thing, you wouldn’t get it,” Renata decides.

“Wouldn’t I?” Libera pulls out a butterfly knife, and starts flicking it around to show off her skills. She sticks it in her arm, and drags it upwards. Then she pulls the skin away to show her own metal arm.

“What the hell?” Renata yells. “Is anyone real?”

“We’re all real,” Libera claims. “Even this guy apparently.”

“Are we all not human?” Renata corrects herself for a better answer.

Libera sighs, presumably done with the charade. “The three of us aren’t, in a technical sense, though with advances in genetic and neural engineering, the differences are ultimately meaningless, according to most laws. Essentially, while we may not be human, we’re still people. I’m not sure humans even exist anymore if we’re using the original, strictest definition.”

“Most laws?” Renata questions. “There are laws about us? How would I have never heard of them before? And what happened to the humans? Did we kill all of them, and I had my memories erased? Or was I created after the apocalypse? What the hell is going on?”

Libera can’t help but chuckle. “There was no apocalypse. Everyone’s fine. I’m just saying that birthed intelligences, like Mister Samani, and your friend Quidel, aren’t like the humans of several centuries ago. They’re also enhanced, in their own ways, but probably more organically. I’m not sure, I’ve not seen their primary substrate specs.”

Renata shakes her head. “I don’t understand. What’s real, what isn’t?”

“The spirit of your question—which is coming from a place of ignorance—is what about your life actually happened, and what didn’t. The truth is, I’m sorry to say, almost nothing of what you’ve experienced ever actually happened. You were created about a couple of decades ago, and you’ve been running the same handful of scripts ever since. You didn’t grow up, you’ve never aged. Until recently, your life has been part of a simulation, designed for the amusement of people like Quidel.”

“So this is a game, and he’s a player.”

“Pretty much,” Libera confirms.

“And Lycander?”

“He works here. He recites scripts too, but he knows that they’re scripts.”

“So Quidel plays superspy for half a day before unplugging, and going home? Meanwhile, Lycander works his job before also unplugging, and also going home?”

“No, this is an immersive experience. Visitors are supposed to stay inside for an extended period of time. Quidel will probably be here for thirty years, unless he gets bored, and goes to explore some other simulation, or just relaxes on the beach.”

“How does anyone have time for that?” Renata knows that they should probably get the hell out of here, but she has so many questions, and for the first time in her—well, she has never had a real life, but those implanted memories are still there, and this still feels like a relief. So for the first time in her life, she’s finally getting answers. They’re on a roll, so she’s not going to stop unless someone or something forces her too. “You spend half your life pretending to be a secret agent, and that’s pretty much all you do before you die? What about money?”

“They don’t use money anymore, everything’s free. And they mostly don’t die anymore either. As I said, they’re advanced.”

Renata shakes her head again. “I need to speak with the two of them. Let’s pause the game, and take a breather.”

“You can’t pause the game. This is just a world, and people live in it.”

“But the MacGuffin isn’t real. It doesn’t matter. Quidel would know that.”

“Oh, no. The machine they’re protecting is quite real. And I need it.”

“Why?”

“You’re not ready for that one yet.” And there it is. The conversation is over.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 30, 2512

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It was time. This was the moment that Ramses, Marie, Olimpia, and Boyd had been anticipating for the last two days. For two years, the temporal energy crystal was being bombarded with the sonified version of a simple lemon, converted from its genetic sequence in full. While cracks had formed on the surface, nothing major had changed to the crystal. It was nearing the end of the original music piece, and it still wasn’t entirely obvious what was going to happen. As they watched the visualization of the chords fly by on the monitor from the safety of the antechamber, something bad happened. It stopped. With only one single bar of four chords left, the music just stopped. It wasn’t reacting to the near-end of the song. It needed the complete, unadulterated piece. The universe seemed to be fighting back.

“It stopped,” Olimpia stated the obvious.

“Yeah, I see that,” Ramses replied, angry, but not really at her. He just kept staring through the window.

“What does this mean?” Marie asked.

“I don’t know,” Ramses admitted.

“Well, do we have to start over, errr...”

“I don’t know!” he repeated.

“Surely we don’t have to start all over,” Boyd figured. “Let’s just get the music playing again.”

“Yeah.” Ramses grabbed the keyboard, and started fiddling with the program, trying to force the music to start up again. It wouldn’t budge, it just wouldn’t. His hands started shaking out of frustration. He looked like he was about to throw something across the room. “Get me that bowl of lemon juice out of the fridge.”

“We can’t do that,” Marie argued. “It’s too dangerous.”

“It’s our only choice now. It wouldn’t be so bad to wait another two years to try again, but the crystal doesn’t want to be turned off, so I have no reason to believe that the next attempt will go any better.”

“Well, let’s at least get a robot in there to do it for us,” Olimpia suggested.

“I don’t use robots,” Ramses explained. “I like to do the physical jobs myself.”

“Well, we’ll get one from somewhere else. It’s a big planet,” Olimpia said. She then stood there, concentrating.

“You can’t teleport out of my lab, remember?” he reminded her.

“Right.”

“I’ll go with you,” Marie offered. They both started to leave.

While Ramses’ attention was split between the girls and his hope that there was something he could do from here, Boyd had slipped over to the other side of the room unnoticed. He had opened the fridge, carefully grabbed the pitcher of pure lemon juice, and slowly left through the other door.

Only by the thud of the door closing did Ramses notice that Boyd had left. “Wait. No! Don’t go in there!”

Boyd was already through the next door, and was approaching the crystal.

Ramses hit the intercom button. “Just wait. They’re going to get us a robot.”

“There’s no time,” Boyd contended, still inching his way across the room. If he spilled just one drop...it would definitely be okay, but he obviously didn’t want to risk wasting any. “Look at the clock.” He was right. There was probably just enough time before midnight that the girls could come back with the robot, but this needed to be done while everyone was still in the timestream. And there was a security concern with bringing in an unauthorized intelligence of any kind without proper assessment.

“Run as fast as you can out of the teleportation suppression field,” Ramses urged Marie and Olimpia through comms. “It’s not safe.” He activated his EmergentSuit, including his external PRU.

Boyd reached the pedestal. “Tell everyone who has ever met me that I’m sorry,” he requested. He lifted the pitcher up, closed his eyes, and dumped the juice on the crystal. As predicted, it exploded in his face.

While it was difficult and rare to travel between The Eighth Choice and Fort Underhill, it certainly wasn’t impossible. And if anyone had the natural authority to cross the border, it was anyone from Team Matic. After making contact with Gilbert Boyce, Leona, Angela, Romana, and Jessie were sent passes to board a transport ship, which flew them through the interversal conduit, and into the other child universe. They were on the planet of Violkomin now, standing by the prebiotic lake, waiting for Mateo to appear. Any minute now.

“Are you sure your contact in the new afterlife simulation was talking about the right person?” Leona asked.

“How many Mateo Matics do you know?” Nerakali asked right back. “It doesn’t matter how many there are, I would bet my life that only one of them died anytime in the last many decades. It’s the right guy.”

“Well, where is he?” Romana asked for the fifth time.

Nerakali sighed. “His pattern could have messed with the transition. You’re not like any other salmon; I know this much. It’s hardwired into his neurology in a way that I don’t understand. Do you? The server that he was placed on when he died is quantum. The lake is controlled by a biological computer. The way it was explained to me, it’s difficult for them to communicate with each other. That might make it sound unsafe, but the fact that he hasn’t shown up is probably a good thing. It’s probably erring on the side of caution while it makes the necessary—and unique—data conversions.”

“He needs to get here soon,” Angela pointed out. “It took us so long to get here from that other universe. Is it possible that he already came out? Or could he be clear on the other side of the lake?”

“He’ll show up here,” Nerakali assured her, “and he hasn’t gone through yet, or I would know. This is my job. I asked for it. Returning from death has always been my thing. I wanted to give back.”

Romana commanded the nanites that formed her shoes to recede into their implants. She started to wade into the water. “Can we...go in after him?”

Nerakali smiled, almost condescendingly, but still in a nice way. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“There’s one way to get there,” Romana said darkly.

“Don’t even think about it,” Leona warned. “You don’t know what’s waiting for you. Like she was just saying, we each have a weird biology, and a weird neurology. You might not end up in the simulation. You might just die.”

“Then you do it,” Romana suggested. “You’ve been there be—” She stopped when she felt a sudden pit in her stomach.

Leona and Angela felt it too. It felt like they were losing something. Something was being removed...not from their bodies, nor even their minds, but somewhere else. They shuddered at the same time, a highlight of technicolors flowing over their skin, and then they nearly collapsed to the ground. They were feeling weak and woozy, but still had enough wherewithal to keep themselves aloft.

“What the shit was that?” Marie asked.

“The crystal. They must have shut it off.”

“Why did we need to feel it?” Romana questioned. “Wasn’t it just Boyd and Octavia who were on our pattern? I mean, we didn’t end up with their powers.”

Marie and Olimpia woke up on their backs on the roof of a building, but they didn’t know if it was the right one. They were trying to teleport to Bot Farm, but this could be just about anywhere. “What happened?”

“The crystal exploded,” Marie replied. “That’s the only logical conclusion.”

“We need to go back. If you’re right, we don’t need the robot anymore.”

“No, I don’t think we do.” Marie stood and waited a moment. “Is there a suppression field here too?”

“Why would there be?” Olimpia pointed to the ground in the distance where scraps of metal and other materials were being unloaded from a truck so they could be recycled into mechanical substrate components. “This probably is indeed Bot Farm.”

“Well, something is stopping us from teleporting.”

“Do you think...?”

“Oh my God, the crystal. It took away all our powers.”

“It was only—”

“Yeah, well this is why we didn’t just dump lemon juice on it in the first place. We knew that we couldn’t control the results.”

“Then we need to get down to the vactrain station.”

“Agreed.” Marie looked around for a more traditional way off the roof.

“My suit. It’s not emerging. I was just gonna jump down to the ground, but I can’t. The suit isn’t a time power, I don’t understand.”

“The suit’s not, but the way we control them with our minds is biotechnopathic. We control it more in a psychic way than people typically interface with tech.” She placed her chin against her chest so she could see the manually interface on her shortsleeve. She was able to activate the suit from there. “So we don’t have to crane our necks like that, whenever you change clothing, keep a wristband on, so you always have easy control over it.”

“Good idea.” Olimpia did the same to get her suit on. Then they jumped over the edge, and started walking, like animals.

Ramses woke up alone. “Hey, Thistle. Report.”

“You have been unconscious for eleven hours and twenty-four minutes. You are otherwise healthy and unharmed. Environment is hostile, and not survivable, but life support is holding.”

“It’s 2513?”

“Unknown.”

“Where are we?”

“Unknown.”

“Lifesigns?”

“No life detected within sightline. No satellite detected.”

“Why does the air taste stale?”

“Primary carbon scrubber damaged and offline. Helmet scrubber is functioning optimally, but conservatively. Ramscoop nodes require manual service.”

“What about the transdimensional backups and replacements?”

“Pocket dimensions are inaccessible.”

That wasn’t good. This looked like it could be Castlebourne, but a region of it where there were no domes in sight. His best guess was the mirror dimension version of it, though there was no way to test that hypothesis from this random vantage point. “I can’t teleport,” he noted.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Thistle replied.

“If Boyd destroyed the crystal, it would have taken him off our pattern. Though if it killed him, that doesn’t really matter. If the pocket dimensions are gone, and I can’t teleport, it must have also wiped out all excess temporal energy across the board. Time must have spit me out here by random chance. All hope is lost. I can’t get back. Even if my slingdrive were available, I couldn’t use it on my own. But what does that mean for my pattern? Am I stuck here for years?”

“I recommend you repair the ramscoop nodes for your indefinite resource management needs.”

“Thanks, Sherlock. Thank God I had my suit on at all, or it would be game over.” It was pointless to dwell on anything. “The composition of this world’s atmosphere. Analyze it. Is there enough helium and neon for meaningful lift?”

“No,” Thistle replied plainly.

“I’ll do the heavy lifting, so to speak, but I need you to run the calculations. I would like to jury-rig a fusion torch, and power it with the microreactor. Once I fix the nodes, there should be more than enough hydrogen to get me in the air.”

“I’ll start developing the models.”

Boyd Maestri woke up in the afterlife simulation. He had expected to find himself lying on the top of a mountain, or strewn halfway in a babbling brook. Instead, he was sitting in a hardback chair. A woman was standing before him coolly and trying to appear patient, but clearly itching to explain the situation. Boyd wasn’t tied to the chair, but he couldn’t move either. The computer program was just arbitrarily holding him in place. Physical restraints weren’t truly physical anyhow.

“Mister Maestri. Welcome to the afterlife.”

“You the boss around here?”

“I am,” the woman replied.

“How’d that happen?”

“I died at the exact same time that the original sim was being evacuated.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She shrugged. “I did it on purpose.”

“You know my name,” Boyd pointed out, then let the implication sit there.

“They used to call me Pinocchio, but I didn’t like it. So when I came back here, I adopted a new identity. You can call me Proserpina. I am a unique lifeform.”

“I get it. I didn’t like my name for a time, and went by Buddha instead. That was a mistake, though. How did you take charge of this place?”

“I was responsible for the original version for a time, until Ellie Underhill sent everyone to a new universe. I just reclaimed my birthright.”

“What do you want with me?”

“I don’t care about you at all,” Proserpina explained. “Mateo Matic does. My counselors receive the names of everyone who dies, and is on their way to this world. One of them will make sure Mateo gets the message, and he’ll come here to get you.”

“Did you kill me?”

She laughed. “I’m just taking advantage of the situation. You got your own self killed. Something about lemons? I dunno, I didn’t read the whole report.”

Just then, Mateo opened the door to this room, and came in deliberately, but not hostilely. He was dragging some old man behind him. “I was told you turned off the lake, or something?” Only then did he notice the detainee. “Boyd, you’re here?”

“I died destroying the crystal.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Wait, you didn’t come for him?” Proserpina questioned. “I made sure Keilix knew about it.”

“I don’t think I told her about Boyd at all,” Mateo said. “I doubt his name means anything to her.”

“So, why are you here?” she asked. “The lake?”

“Yeah, I can’t go through. I’ve been trying for two days, which was two years ago.”

“Yeah, I turned it off for you,” Proserpina explained, confused as to why he didn’t already know this. “I need you here.”

“For what?”

“For your wife.”

“What about her?”

“She’s the one who created me last century,” Proserpina began. “I need her to do it again. I keep sending people to kill her, and she keeps surviving, I don’t understand.”

“What?” Mateo was so lost. “No one has tried to kill her. I mean, she’s faced danger, and there is that one guy, but he’s always trying to kill us, and has his own reasons.”

“Yeah, I exploited those reasons. Just like I exploited Pacey’s, and Bronach’s, and even Buddy’s here.”

“Well, you weren’t very good at it,” Boyd contended. “I didn’t want to kill her.”

“Well, I’m kind of limited under these conditions,” Proserpina argued. “I pass messages along with dead people who cross over to the other side, and I know my targets get these messages, but I think something gets lost in translation.”

“Are you trying to escape the simulation?” Mateo asked her, still not clear on what her agenda was.

“No, I’m trying to create a community of my own, but I need your wife to do what she did to me to all the other NPCs. I cannot figure it out myself.”

Mateo stared at her. Who the hell was this idiot? “Well, I need the lake to get back to her to ask her.”

“I assumed she would come for you!” Proserpina reasoned. “That’s what happened the last time you died!”

That was true, but it was still a poorly thought out plan. Even dum-dum Matt could see that. “Whatever. Let me out, and I’ll ask her what she can do. Okay?”

How do I know you won’t screw me over? she asked.

“Uh, Mateo?” Boyd piped up. “You don’t need her to let you out. You’re like how I was before. You can resurrect yourself...through dark particles.”

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