Microstory 2414: Adrenadome

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TRIGGER WARNING. I want to talk about laws here, but I’m not going to say which laws specifically right away, because if my review ends up in a blurb, then it could get banned—or shadowbanned—for perpetuating harmful ideas. I think I need a few extra words to be safe sooooooo, there we go. Suicide laws. That’s what I mean. Back in the old days, when death meant the end of everything, and there was no going back, it was illegal in many places to attempt or commit suicide. Over time, these laws were changed to account for people’s unique desires and needs. Suicide and assisted suicide became necessary evils in certain situations, especially when a slow, painful death was the only other option on the table. The funny thing is, over time after that, these laws had to adapt again. Once they started sufficiently treating, or even curing, certain previously life-threatening medical conditions, the reasons for wanting to unalive yourself began to disappear at about the same rate. People stopped having very good excuses for not wanting to be alive anymore. Progress in mental health research, the proliferation of advanced medical solutions, and the drive towards a post-scarcity economy, among other factors, contributed to a healthier society overall. The development of more extreme technologies, like maximal longevity treatments, transhumanistic or cybernetic enhancements, and consciousness uploading and transference made it practically impossible to justify ending your own life, or anyone else’s, for that matter. Even the language of the relevant laws shifted to phrases like “reckless self-destruction” or “consciousness back-up endangerment”. Self-harm became illegal once again. Whereas before, dying meant taking maybe only a hundred years from someone’s potential future, now you’re potentially robbing you or someone else of the rest of eternity until the heat death of the universe. That should be profoundly immoral and unethical in anyone’s book. They’re even talking about making normal biological humans illegal, with some arguing that letting yourself die after a pitiful century is tantamount to suicide when framed as a negligible blip in the full timeline of reality. I don’t know about that. What we’re talking about is your body, your choice. Anything short of total freedom in that regard is hypocritical when you really think about it. Castlebourne is a Charter planet, which means that it doesn’t have to follow Core World Law. They still do, for the most part, having modeled their legal system on what came before, but they’re also free to make some changes, such as the definitions of those phrases above, like reckless self-destruction. What does reckless even mean? Does it mean jumping out of an airplane without a parachute—a new extreme sport, which they call skydying? Adrenadome is attempting to test the boundaries of what you’re allowed to do with your own body. I’m not gonna just list the extreme sports that can be found here. You can look them up. They’re all available, along with variants that forgo safety measures entirely, and just let you die, knowing that your mind will wake up in a back-up body moments later. Not everyone is gonna like it. I personally don’t. I came here to study the concept, because I’m a scholar of law. But it’s certainly interesting that these philosophical questions about the meaning of life and death get to play out in the real world, and no longer only on the lips, or the page.

Microstory 1748: My Future as a Hare

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Everyone in the galaxy has a right to immortality, unless they lose it by committing a severe enough crime, but not all forms of immortality are created equal. We’re all ageless, but how old you look—and feel—when you stop aging, is dependent upon a number of factors. You can be awarded lagomorphic status, as they call it, upon your own merits. Good people lead infinite lives, unless they become bad, in which case their lagomorphicity can be removed from them. Some buy their way into status, often worried that they won’t be worthy of achieving it on their own, or because they’re children whose parents don’t have confidence in them. But again, just because you’ve been accepted into the program, doesn’t mean you’re going to be young and healthy forever. There are three primary classes of lagomorphic immortals. Pikas appear as children, which could mean they were children when they underwent the procedure, or because their age was sufficiently reversed. They may not have been the one to make this choice. The most common of the lagomorphs are Rabbits, who look like adults. The last class are the Hares, which is what I have recently become. They’re not constantly on the brink of death, but they’re not super healthy either. I suppose I should be saying we at this point. I would rather be a Rabbit. Pikas are often not taken seriously, because they look so young, but at least they’re healthy. Hares, like me now, apparently, are riddled with general aging problems, which can’t really be treated. We suffer for eternity. There is one upside in that we’re the ones who run the government. We make decisions about who receives the gift, and what kind. We can even transition people at will. I know what you’re thinking, but no, we can’t later choose to change ourselves into Rabbits or Pikas. That would be a conflict of interest, and a gross abuse of power.

Most of the time, a Hare has become that way because they have spent a lifetime proving themselves to be up to the challenge, and have kept themselves on track. They have usually refused to be turned into Rabbits specifically so they might one day be entrusted with the ongoing prosperity of our culture. Occasionally—and it is incredibly rare, according to everything I have ever heard about Hares—someone will be aged forward so that they become an elder after having only lived a relatively low number of mortal years. Why this happens is a closely guarded secret. It’s happened to me, and I still don’t know whether someone did it on purpose, or if my body reacted to the treatment in a unique way. I don’t know why I’m like this. As I said, I’ve always just wanted to be a normal Rabbit. I have no interest in making decisions, or in wearing a diaper until the end of time. I don’t think all Hares have to do that, but it’s not unheard of, and no thank you. Right now, I’m waiting in The Great Hall for someone to retrieve me, and give me some sort of assignment. I’m sure most people understand the process at this point, but I don’t pay much attention to politics, so I don’t know how the distribution of power works. It’s been two hours. I would complain about them making an old man wait this long, but they’re old too, so they’re probably pretty slow. Finally, the gargantuan doors open, and I just get the feeling that I’m meant to step in. I walk up to the Grand Council, and stand before them patiently. I have never even seen their faces before. Honestly, it’s a huge honor. “Welcome. The sad news is that a member of our council has chosen to die after centuries of service. The bad news is...you were selected to replace her.”

Extremus: Year 13

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The election is over, and there is no going back now. Ovan is going to be smart about his takeover of the ship. He isn’t going to suddenly start trying to order the security team around. He drops a few hints here, makes a quippy remark there. Everything he says out loud says fine when you first hear it, but if you think about it too hard, you realize how some people could interpret it to mean that the passengers should become hostile towards the crew, probably without even realizing it. He’ll grow bolder as his plans begin to bear fruit, but right now, Halan has other things to worry about.

“How do we know he’s not one of them? He and Vesper could have been working together,” Omega suggests.

“We don’t, but I’m not getting the sense of that,” Halan says. “I feel like Ovan, and his drive to take over the ship, is completely separate from the people trying to kill me. Getting rid of one Captain is not going to do the passengers any good if they have a problem with the entire crew. I’ll just be backfilled by the Admiral, or maybe even the Bridgers. No, Ovan wants this to become a fully civilian operation. More to the point, he wants to be in charge.”

“Why didn’t he just get on the Captain’s track?” Omega questions.

“He’s not the right age. It’s a timing issue, you see. It’s the reason why the crew shifts in and out at different times. My shift lasts for 24 years, but if everyone was like that, everything would have to change hands all at once. That’s a logistical nightmare. By staggering them, we allow for people to apply for positions even when they come of age in the middle of a cycle. Still, on the individual level, this can potentially exclude a lot of people. There is no law that says a 32-year-old can’t become Captain, but it’s unlikely he would ever get the job, since he’ll be in his fifties by the time he’s done.

“That’s not that old,” Omega argues. “I’m 64 if you count my rapid aging as part of my lifespan, rather than just subtracting this year from the year I was manufactured.”

“True, it’s not,” Halan agrees, “but if there is a single worst character flaw that Ansutahan humans have, it’s probably ageism. Life expectancy used to be a lot lower for us, since medical science was stunted by a number of factors, all stemming from the fact that we were constrained to one continent. Younger people have always been better at securing leadership positions, and then they are strongly urged to step down when they get too old.”

“Why does that same unwritten rule not apply to Ovan’s position as Passenger Chair?” Omega asks.

“It’s a shorter term. Even the term limit is shorter than a captain’s shift. Anyway, he might not have known what he wanted until it was too late. Captain’s track starts in the single digits. There’s a decent chance that my successor was born here. Now let’s get back to Vesper’s co-conspirators.”

Omega nods, but still isn’t convinced that they should be focusing on this. Yes, the extremist group hiding in their midst is a greater threat, but they don’t know where to begin. At least the anti-crew movement has a face. And a punchable one, at that. Even so, he keeps his mouth shut, and concedes to the Captain’s decision. Most problems need to be solved either way. “Indeed,” he says simply.

“So,” Mercer begins after having been silent most of the time. “Omega’s right about one thing.”

Halan gets it. “We still don’t know how to find these true Extremusians.”

“First order of business, I believe, is we should try to come up with a new name,” Mercer decides.

“Agreed,” Halan replies. “We are true Extremusians. If anyone on this ship is under the impression that they are somehow special, and different from the lot of us, then this misunderstanding must be rectified. Henceforth, in all reports, they will be known as...” He trails off, not knowing what would be a better word to use.

It is then that Omega realizes that he already came up with a name for them in his own headcanon. “True Extremists,” he offers.

“Hm.” Halan considers this. “I imagine that could be quite insulting to them. It is close enough to what they apparently call themselves for us to pretend our words are an accident, but different enough for them to know in their hearts that we do not respect them.”

“Perfect,” Mercer says. “To begin again, how do we root out these True Extremists? We must get them to reveal themselves without realizing they’re doing it, and without alarming the rest of the ship.”

“Right,” Omega says. “And why exactly can’t we tell the ship that they’re out there?”

“For the moment,” Halan explains, “they appear to be rather contained. I do not think there are very many of them, and I do not think they are recruiting. Vesper strongly suggested he was from a planet that they consider to be Extremus. I don’t know exactly how they arrived there, but they take a strong disliking to everyone else. Still, we don’t need to turn anyone to their side, and the only way to do that is to prevent any would-be sympathizers from finding out they even exist.”

“Well, it’s not the only way, sir,” Mercer clarifies for him. “It may be the best, but honesty is always an option.”

“I am aware of that, Lieutenant, thank you.”

Mercer knows he’s being sarcastic, and to combat that, he closes his eyes and nods respectfully so as to make it look like he’s taking the response sincerely.

Halan moves on, “any ideas?”

“The Elder Shuttle,” Omega says cryptically.

“What about it?”

“Advanced, powerful, compact. Time travel-capable, self-sustaining...and coded to my DNA.”

“Where would you take it?” Halan questions.

“May 29, 2272,” Omega answers.

“We are nearly 7,000 light years from their position,” Halan argues, “and we still don’t know where they were teleported to. You would have to hunt for them, and who knows how long that could take?”

“That’s the self-sustaining part. It was engineered with something that I haven’t mentioned yet, because it’s dangerous technology, and Veca and I agreed it would be best if no one else knew. But I suppose now is the right time.”

“What?” Halan prompts. “Some kind of highly destructive weapons system that would be capable of taking out our ship?”

“Nothing like that,” Omega assures him. “It has no weapons at all. It does, however, have—”

“A quantum replicator!” Valencia has since retired from her position as the temporal engineer. Unlike other jobs, however, it’s important that she remain available in case they need her for an emergency. Just about anyone can learn engineering, but people like her are rare, so while August Voll has taken over as head of the department, Valencia still helps out. She’s more like a consultant now.”

“How did you know?” Omega asks.

“How did you get in this room?” Mercer asks.

Valencia is the one who designed the teleportation systems on this ship, and all the ways they can control who has access to what sections, and when. If she wants to bypass a restriction, she will, and she’ll do it with her eyes closed while she’s composing a new sonata. Knowing this about her, Omega rolls his eyes, and emphasizes his own question. “Did Veca tell you?”

She smiles, and removes something from her ear to present them with it. “It’s a sangsterbud.”

“What the hell is that?” Halan doesn’t like people inventing things without him knowing about it.

“Simple tech,” she says. “All it does is transduce future soundwaves—in this case, from about five seconds—and plays them for me to hear.”

“Why are you wearing it?” Halan presses. “Knowing what people are going to say just before they say it isn’t that helpful unless you want to prevent them from saying it, or in this case, show off what you can do.”

“I’m just tryna figure out who I am now that I’m no longer Head Temporal Engineer,” Valencia says.

“I offered to extend your shift,” Halan reminds her. “Now that Vesper turned out to be a mole, we’re down one member of the already small team anyway.”

Valencia shakes her head. “August needed the job. She deserved it. I just underestimated how bored I would be. Now I see there’s more for me to do. I can go on this mission with Omega. Together, we can find out what happened to Rita, and those other three people who we don’t really care about personally.”

Omega shakes his head too. “No, the mission could take years. I can go, because I’m immortal. You don’t wanna die out there, in that tiny little ship, with dumb ol’ me.”

“I’m immortal too,” Valencia reveals.

“You are?” Halan asks. “Extremus is generational. We all agreed...”

“Yeah, I broke the rules,” Valencia confirms. “I guess you better kick me out, and force me on the Elder Shuttle.”

“Can we come up with a better name for that too?” Mercer poses.

“What kind of upgrades do you have?” Omega is pleased to finally be around someone else like him again. No one else on this ship understands him, and they never will.

“Cellular countersenescent.”

“How do you accomplish this?” Omega is even more interested now.

“Antintropic technology that I invented myself. I got the idea from my refrigerator.”

“Holy shit. Is it a constant process?”

“As we speak.”

“Holy shit,” he repeats.

“Could you dumb it down for the rest of us?” Halan requests.

Omega opens his mouth to explain, but realizes that Valencia should do it. He gives her the floor.

She begins. “When your cells lose the ability to replicate themselves, they become senescent. They are essentially dead, but they’re a problem, because they sort of just sit there in your body. On the whole, this is what causes you to degrade and age. It’s obviously a complex process, but the most important aspect of longevity treatments is our ability to reprogram the body, and command it to undergo a process called transdifferentiation, which basically means the organism reverts to a less mature state. That’s what allows the vonearthans to live incredibly long lifespans.”

“So that’s what you did to yourself,” Mercer figures.

“No. I’m not allowed to do that. I’m not even allowed to access the research that allows the vonearthans to do that. But I did do something similar. I’m a temporal engineer, so what I do is command my cells to become young again, but by essentially reversing the flow of time for them. This creates issues for the natural laws of entropy, but it’s fine on smaller scales, like my tiny little body. It wouldn’t be okay to do that to the whole universe. Anyway, when a cell of mine begins to deteriorate, it releases a chemical, which triggers something I’ve deemed a tempomere to activate the countersenescence. So you see, I’m perfect for this mission. I don’t belong here anymore, and I won’t age out there.”

“What does any of this have to do with that quantum regulator?” Mercer questions.

“Replicator,” Omega and Valencia correct in unison. She continues alone, “it’s exactly what it sounds like. Place one grape in there, push the button, and you’ll have two grapes. It’s technically the same grape, but one of them was stolen from an alternate reality. Now put those two back in the replicator, push the button, and you have four. Rinse, repeat, and eat as many grapes as you’d like. As long as you got power, and at least one copy of something that you need, you got as many of that thing for replacements.”

“This one has a fairly extensive database,” Omega adds. “We can spontaneously generate an object without ever actually bringing it on board. Evidently, Old Man spent a lot of time encoding everything he could get his hands on.”

“Great,” Valencia says. “Even better. Does it have ice cream?”

“Hold on, I haven’t agreed to anything,” Halan warns the both of them. “If we’re doing this, we have to be careful. We can’t let anyone else know about it, not even Old Man. If you show up in the past to meet him before he has a chance to invent the damn thing in the first place, it could cause a paradox. It could cause one even if he has already invented it.”

“So we’ll modify it,” Valencia promises. “It shouldn’t be too hard to make it look like something completely different, and alter its specifications. I already have some ideas on how I can improve power efficiency, and safety protocols. Old Man obviously didn’t give that sort of thing much thought. It’s a time machine, so it doesn’t matter how long it takes us.”

“I will...remember that when I’m making my decision. For now, we should all return to our duties. Now that you’re in the braintrust, Miss Raddle, I trust you understand not to tell anyone about any of this?”

Valencia zips her mouth shut, locks it up, and throws away the key. Then she leaves with Omega to begin making the modifications. But first, they have to find a way to get the thing out of the cargo bay, and into a secure area.

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Microstory 1494: Shutting the Stable Door

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The evidence was piling up that there was nothing the Durune could do to stave off their eventual total loss of temporal energy. By 2230, most people with powers had already lost them, and the rest could only use them sporadically and unpredictably. Time tech wasn’t reliable enough to be worth it either. There was no more teleportation, no more filter portaling, no more transdimensional living spaces. Aljabara was the only city on the planet that had built enough regular renewable energy to continue operating sans temporal manipulation. It was looking like a world without time powers was where they were headed, so everyone had to once again consolidate into one place. The outposts and distant settlements were entirely abandoned as everyone literally converged upon the Capital. They weren’t all crammed together, however. The most efficient living spaces available today were constructed underground. They were protected from the elements, easier to keep warm, and residents were able to spread out more without wasting energy, or taking as many resources as would be required for the same real estate above ground. Technology wasn’t nearly as advanced as it was on Earth right now, but engineers had learned enough to build these connected bunkers. They didn’t know what was going to happen to the world, but it was the best way to survive a number of disaster scenarios. Wind. Wind was their best friend, because without sun, without geothermal power, without fusion, without crazy temporal energy—wind would remain a constant. If they didn’t have wind anymore, it was because they didn’t have a planet, and there wasn’t really anything they could do about that anyway, because they weren’t anywhere near advanced enough to build exodus ships. They would just die, and that would be it. A normal fledgling world would be okay without any energy, but those all had host stars, and were at a quite minimal threat of losing them. At this point, there were one and a half million people, so the only way they were going to make it is if they fixed anything and everything that was wrong with their planet. People were still dying; their agelessness having long been stolen from them, presumably by the suns of 70 Ophiuchi. They still weren’t sure whether real sunlight was detrimental to their way of life, or if there was something particular about these stars. It didn’t really matter in the end, of course. They had no way of moving off to another star system, and even if they could, they weren’t confident about being able to survive the trip, even with their trusty wind turbines. A lot of things were capable of wiping them out while they were here, but it would be so much worse in interstellar space. At least they were still able to utilize solar panels while they were orbiting Ophiuchi A, which they had since named Calluna. Things were getting really rough, and everyone was making sacrifices. They would be nowhere, however, without the hard work of their ancestors, who fought for equality and justice. Without them, they would still probably be suffering the same problems, but they would not be armed with the tools necessary to combat them. They were a unified peoples now, and that was going to get them through this, even if it wouldn’t be very easy.

Microstory 1492: Death of an Immortal

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Life on Durus only got worse after the realization that no more paramounts were being born. People’s time powers started becoming less intense, and less reliable. By 2224, they were in the middle of their second orbital pattern in the 70 Ophiuchi system, and people were beginning to feel like they ought to be setting off for a new home. Perhaps another star system would be kinder to them, or maybe it was best to just not be orbiting a host star at all, and survive on what temporal manipulation abilities they still had left. Unfortunately, this was proving to be nearly, if not completely, impossible. Even collectively, the Durune were not strong enough to alter the planet’s pattern. It was one thing to stay as they were, but to try to move off in some other direction just wasn’t in the cards for them anymore. They tried to contact someone from the past to help, but their powers weren’t strong enough for that either. Something had to be done to drastically change everything about their lives, and they would vote for these contingencies during the 2225 round of elections. The experts writing up these proposals needed time to work on them anyway. Until then, a worldwide mandate went out, limiting people’s ability to manipulate time and space. Teleportation would be used only in emergencies, spatial locks were replaced with regular physical locks, speed school and other time bubbles were outright banned. All temporal energy had to be conserved, in order to have enough to maintain their world’s homeostasis. If they flew back off into interstellar space now, they wouldn’t be able to protect themselves against cosmic radiation, and the vacuum. For some, that didn’t matter anymore, because there was one essential time power that stopped working, even without the government dictating it. Based on one case, it would seem that they were no longer ageless.

Agelessness was a right that every citizen of Durus enjoyed, whether they were rich, poor, smart, or not so smart. It didn’t matter whether they contributed positively to society, or not. If they were alive, they deserved to stay alive forever. By whatever interference the Ophiuchi stars were giving off, people started aging again, and this all came to its inevitable conclusion when one of their older immortals passed away from age-related diseases. Of course, no time power was capable of eradicating a disease—congenital, or otherwise—but their youth made it a lot easier to treat just about anything without worrying about old age making them more susceptible. Now that that was gone, nothing was stopping the Durune from being wiped out. Almost literally everyone attended the first funeral in decades. The only people not there had to maintain everyone’s survival in some way. It was a frightening day more than a sad one. This wasn’t to say that no one cared about this individual, or that no one was in mourning, but it was becoming clear that everyone was doomed. If death was back on the table, their whole society could collapse. If they wanted to survive, physically as well as socially, they were going to have to change a lot more about themselves than they ever thought they would, and they would have to do it very soon. While the right people were working on a way out of this mess, others were making laws and policies to adapt to the ever-changing present, and to prepare for every eventuality conceivable. Through this, things continued to get worse, but the Durune continued to endure at pace. It was going to take a lot more than a little wrinkly skin to get them down. Unfortunately, fate did indeed have more in store for them, and their success was not assured.

Microstory 1484: Necter of the Gods

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The universe is but one in a sea of infinite others. Each is called a brane, and is swimming around a sort of hyperdimensional metaspace known as the bulk. Do not confuse these with alternate realities. Any similarity between two branes only occurs because one was modeled upon the other. Some of them are natural, but some are conceived in the minds of people. The latter can last indefinitely, or collapse quickly, and are usually created through dreams, or fictional storytelling. An example of the former, on the other hand, will not resemble any other. It may have humans in it, or it may not. Its physical laws may feel familiar, but that will be coincidence, not because of some inherent interversal connection. No matter what, each universe is independent, through both time and space. And it is extremely difficult to travel between them. Interversal travel has only been invented twice in the entire histories of the entire bulkverse, and every means of travel beyond it has been based on that original technology. Because these branes do not operate on the same timeline, there really isn’t any such thing as the first, but one did inspire the pursuit of the other. They called it The Crossover, and the biggest reason the one group of people who encountered it were capable of replicating its function was because they were immortals who were billions of years old. They called their version the Nexus Network. It started out as a way to jump between systems in a galaxy, before expanding to other galaxies, and eventually all over the universe. Once the process was fully automated, and left to conquer the cosmos, its inventors decided they needed a new challenge. They chose interversal travel as that challenge, and proceeded to spend millions of years working on the problem. That was how difficult it was.

Getting out of one’s current brane was the easy part, but navigating the bulkverse, and finding somewhere to land was all but impossible. The best computer in any universe is usually not anywhere near good enough to make the necessary calculations. Once those calculations are made, however, the system that utilizes the data doesn’t have to be very large, or even all that complex. After all that time figuring out how to travel to other universes, this small group of immortals had to come to terms with the fact that their latest challenge was over, and they had nothing more to do with the rest of their eternal lives. There was talk about building more systems in these other universes, but they weren’t sure that it would be worth it. Their home universe had quadrillions of people in it, spread across many galaxies, and they needed a way to reach each other quickly and conveniently. In these other branes they visited, the population was always a lot lower. They expanded within their galaxy, and into neighboring galaxies, in some cases, but their levels never reached a meaningful fraction of the number the immortals were used to. Even further down the timeline, they seemed to be doing okay with their own technological advances. Still, there were a few cases where the group’s means of instantaneous intergalactic travel would be quite useful. In salmonverse, they didn’t build a full network, but they constructed a handful of them in strategic locations. One of them was Durus. The Durune were aware of temporal manipulation, and psychic abilities, and even a hint of other branes, so they were deemed worthy of being connected to this very small network of replica Nexa. It was constructed in secret at some point, and discovered in 2195. But they weren’t allowed to go anywhere yet.

Microstory 1483: Time Tech Rises

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For five years, the best of the best scientists and engineers buckled down on research in order to figure out how to translate all useful paramount powers to technology, or even implant them in other people. They didn’t want to try that second thing too much, though. They were not transhumanists, at least not most of the Durune. Some of the Earthans who came during the Deathspring already had technological upgrades on their bodies, and this actually helped further the research. But the main purpose was to give people what they needed to live their lives. Everyone on Earth had clothes and ways of communicating with each other, and they had access to these conveniences pretty much all the time. The existence of people with powers had always hindered some of that progress on Durus, though of course, it wasn’t the only reason. They were cut off from civilization, and doing what they could with fewer resources, so that slowed it down too. Now that the government was stable, and society was thriving, it was time to make comparable—or maybe even superior—technology to what people had now back on the homeworld. Around 2190, they started coming out with a line of products that people would use as needed. They rated them according to a ubiquity scale that they came up with. Everyone would have a teleportation wristband, which would allow them to jump to any point in space on the surface of the planet. In order to protect privacy, and ensure safety, though, some locations were blocks from some people. They could set up something called a spatial lock, which was like the teleporting equivalent to a door lock. If one were not authorized to be in a particular area, they could not jump there. People’s homes, bank vaults, doctors offices; all these required their own spatial locks, which were regulated and protected by a governmental body.

Other advances had less ubiquity. They came up with something called speed school, which would place students in time bubbles that moved faster than the time outside. Someone could learn a skill or topic at about the same speed as they would in the regular dimension, but once they stepped back out, very little time would have passed for everyone else, which allowed any education program to be greatly reduced in terms of total time taken. People were given agelessness pils, and transdimensional living spaces, if they wanted it. Different people wanted, and needed, different things, but the technologies were there to let everyone survive and be happy, without worrying about a lot of the inconveniences of yesteryear. There was one particular invention that had a lot more trouble coming through. They called it the day pass. It would allow a user to travel back in time one entire day, but not physically. This was consciousness transference, so people would be able to start their day over again. This had such a low ubiquity rating, that it was generally just treated as a zero. Only a select few people would be given this privilege, and only for certain reasons. Life was still dangerous, and the day pass allowed a small team to fix problems that happened; people’s deaths, and other accidents, namely. Scientists and law enforcement worked together, and lobbied the government to give them permission to use this new technology. Time travel was illegal, so it wasn’t easy, but they did finally get their day pass. World leadership had some conditions, though. In fact, they had rules and regulations about all these inventions, but that was okay, because no one wanted them to result in chaos. This was only the beginning.

Microstory 1476: Quantum Love

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In 2148, a girl was born on Durus with the ability to make quantum duplications of people. For some reason, it only worked on people, rather than other objects, so she wouldn’t be able to generate infinite resources for Durus. Not that it mattered, she was a girl, and it was the government’s official position at the time that there was no such thing as a female mage remnant. When she was three years old, her powers manifested for the first time when she accidentally made a copy of her younger brother. This wasn’t the most famous family on the planet, or anything, but people were well aware that the parents had two children; one daughter, and one son. If this twin were to be revealed to the world, people would know that something fishy was up. They considered lying, and claiming that the baby boy had duplicated himself, but he was too young for that to be likely, and he wouldn’t grow up with the ability to prove it. So they kept one of them a secret, and sent him off to live on a farm outside of the city with a family friend. The two versions of this individual lived separately for sixteen years. They didn’t even know about each other, but upon reaching the age of eighteen, the parents, and their farming friends, figured that they were old enough to know each other. What they didn’t consider was the possibility that these two would end up falling in love with each other. The circumstance was unprecedented, but there were plenty of similar situations on Earth, where siblings separated at early ages were reunited. No one here had ever actually seen it happen, but still, their romantic connection was weird. It was very weird. Was it worse, falling in love with an alternate version of one’s self, than it would be for two twins, or even regular siblings? No one could answer that question, but it made people uncomfortable either way. There were protests.

Phineas Hanlin, and Philadelphia Kikkert didn’t really do a whole lot to resist the feelings that were brewing between them. They spent the day together when they first met, and hit it off, as if they were on a date. They easily gave in to their feelings, and started pursuing each other with equal vigor. Their families tried to keep them apart, but there was nothing illegal about it. They wanted to take the two men to court, but the government would not let it continue. It would set a dangerous precedent, they felt, to start deciding who was allowed to be in a relationship with who. The oppressive phallocratic government was over, and they were paranoid about the slippery slope. The fact was that they were two consenting adults, and they were free to be with each other, if they wanted. Incest was only treated as an offense if it would lead to the conception of a child, and as two men, this was impossible, so people would have to get over it. Well, they didn’t. Society shunned them, and marriage officiants refused to let them cement their love in ceremony and contract. They thought about asking the crew of the visiting ship to take them back to Earth with them, but already so many people wanted in on that, and they couldn’t be sure Earth would treat them any better. They had to stay together, and if that meant being alone, then that was what they would do. When Hokusai Gimura joined the crew of the Elizabeth Warren, she stripped her tiny one-person ship for parts. What she left was mostly the skeleton of the vessel, capable of supporting and insulating life in outer space, but not capable of launching off the ground, or propelling itself anywhere. She did fail to remove this extra little feature that halted aging for all those inside, regardless of how long the trip took. Still, Phineas and Philadelphia figured that it was their only option. Now people actually started helping them. No one wanted them to be together, but if they weren’t going to do the right thing, then at least they could do it somewhere else. The community came together, and started repairing Hokusai’s ship. Engineers and mechanics pooled their knowledge, and figured out how to add the right instrumentation to the controls. Paramounts added special upgrades to keep the ship going indefinitely. Wherever they chose to go, Phineas and Philadelphia wouldn’t be able to get there instantaneously, but at least they would be together, and from the Durune’s perspective, at least they wouldn’t be on Durus anymore.

Microstory 1448: Ecrin’s Return

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When the final battles of the war against the time monsters began, the source mages retreated into their special hidden dimension. They took with them nearly a hundred and fifty people, who could theoretically restart the population, assuming the rest of the humans on Durus were killed in the attacks. It would be a long time before anyone knew what happened to these people, because only one of them returned to the main dimension. Her name was Ecrin Cabral, and she was one of the first town mages ever. She protected Orabela Vinci when the latter chose not to be proverted to an older age. In reward for this, Orabela gifted Ecrin with the power of agelessness. So she was eighty-nine years old when she returned to the main dimension in the year 2101, but she still looked as she did when she was seventeen. She was horrified to find the world she once loved had been destroyed, and not by the war, but by the survivors. As a woman, as a mage, and as a human being with a conscience, she did not feel like she could stand by, and let things go any further. So she fought. She used the skills she learned over the course of six decades to fight against the establishment, pretty much all by herself. She tried to take the leaders down, and open up people’s eyes to the damage they were doing to civilization. Unfortunately, people had already made similar attempts before, and they had always failed. She didn’t really have anything that the other rebels didn’t. The authorities snatched her up, and stuck her in a room, so they could ask her where she had been for the last eleven years. Well, she wouldn’t tell them anything. No matter who asked, or how they asked, she literally remained silent. She would not tell anyone what happened to the source mages, or where they were now. The interrogators couldn’t even be sure that she knew the answers to their questions. They kept her alive for her time power, and because she was useful in many other ways.

They wanted Ecrin to propagate her species. It was already clear that the children of former mages had powers of their own. These powers were weak, however, and often not all that helpful, which was why this new class of people was called mage remnants. Ecrin never lost her powers, however, so if she had children, the assumption was that they would be full mages in their own right, and could bring Durus back to its former glory. At this point in history, there were a lot of things that men were allowed to do to control the women around them, but rape wasn’t one of them...yet. Ecrin didn’t want to bear children for anyone, and no one was going to make her. So they locked her up in a very uncomfortable cell, and every single day, someone would come back, and ask her if she changed her mind. She never did. She took the torture, and never budged. The world had changed so much while she was gone, though, and there was no reason for Ecrin to believe they would magically get better while she was in hock. She feared the government would only get worse, and policymakers would make her do what they wanted. There were a few options. They could keep rape illegal, but not enforce it strongly enough, or deter it. They could twist the wording of the laws, so that their way of forcing her to have children couldn’t be construed as rape at all, but something else. Or they could simply make rape legal, or legal under certain circumstances. She couldn’t take the chance that any of these would end up happening, so she took dramatic action. Luckily, her doctor was sympathetic, so he agreed to a medical procedure that the government wouldn’t like. He performed a tubal ligation, which served to sterilize Ecrin’s body, so that she couldn’t have children anymore, even if she wanted to. This didn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t be raped—in fact, she figured the chances were high someone would do that to her as punishment—but it did prevent her oppressors from getting what they wanted. The truth was, had the world turned out differently after the war, she might have considered settling down, and starting a family. But she couldn’t do it if it benefited a misogynistic government, or really anyone but herself. They moved Ecrin to a slightly more comfortable cell, right next to her doctor. She wasn’t released until 2161, when the Republic finally came crashing down.