The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 26, 2539

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The team reunited on Extremus Prime, but they weren’t ready to go for another day. Ramses needed to work on something first. Once it was time, they bid their adieu to Actilitca, and activated all seven of their tandem slingdrives. They ended up on a planet called Varkas Reflex. It orbited a host star called Wolf 359. Like Proxima Centauri, it was a flare star, but unlike Proxima Doma, Varkas Reflex was a super-Earth. For a normal human to survive on the surface, technological advancements had to be made to protect them from the extreme gravity. All things being equal, it did not make for a very good colony. It should not have been one. Colonists should have remained in orbit instead, perhaps in centrifugal cylinders, or a whole Dyson swarm. It was very important to the early colonists, though, that they landed on planets. That sentimentality had since vanished, but tradition remained on the nearest neighbors.

For the longest time, Wolf 359 wasn’t even a very good candidate for planetary colonization, because scientists didn’t even know that there was a planet. Varkas Reflex orbited Wolf 359 at an extremely high inclination, which meant, from the perspective of Earth, it never passed between the star and the telescopes. They only eventually proved it using a method called stellar occultation, which tracked transit patterns of neighboring stars that indicated they were all coming from a single celestial body. It was then that they chose to send a probe there to confirm. It was sort of a last minute thing, relatively speaking according to galactic mapping scales.

About 250 years ago, the leaders of this planet had their plans set on making it the number one vacation destination for the stellar neighborhood. They were doing okay, and really only competing with Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. Then Castlebourne came along, and ruined all of that. Luckily, they had already pivoted to something else. In an attempt to make the perfectly streamlined democracy, Hokusai Gimura scanned the mind of everyone who lived on Varkas Reflex, and used them to create an amalgamated consciousness. This singular entity would presumably always have the right answer to how to govern things. No more asking questions, waiting for responses, and holding discussions. If a problem came up, the Congeneral would know what to do immediately, because the consensus was already in there. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. There was too much discordance. It kept stripping out conflicting thought after conflicting thought until there was basically nothing left. As it turned out, discordance was a part of life, and governance was always going to be complicated, and often slow.

Still, this failed experiment apparently gave them the idea to pivot from their original dream. Transdimensional gravity was great, but the surface of Varkas Reflex was still a hellscape compared to Earth, or even Proxima Doma’s Terminator Line. If everyone was safer and better off inside, they were going to use that to their advantage. Virtual simulations were widespread. There were massive communities centered on all of the colonies, as well as Earth, of course. It was possible to join these together using quantum communication, but not easy, and not all that common. The ones on Varkas Reflex today were largely considered the best. It didn’t have to be this way. It could have just about anywhere, but this location had its advantages, like a tidally locked planet orbiting a red dwarf, which allowed for supercool calculations on the far side. But in the end, it became the simulation capital of the galaxy because the people there decided it would be. While most travelers these days were flocking to Castlebourne—about a million people per week, at last count—a not insignificant amount of interstellar ships and casting beams were going to Varkas Reflex. It didn’t hurt that the world shared an acronym with virtual reality.

“But why are we here?” Romana asked after being caught up on the boring history.

“I wanted to test my new navigational algorithm,” Ramses explained. “It’s not time to go out and look for Spiral Station just yet, but it needed to be a place the slingdrives hadn’t been to before. This world seemed as good as any.”

“So, you...” Romana began.

“I what?”

“You can’t read my mind?” she asked, peering at him with great suspicion.

“No. Why? What? What? Why? Why?” He was so lost.

She was still suspicious. “Okay...”

“Okay,” he echoed.

“Okay, well I’m gonna go to the stacks then,” she said, backing up slowly. “Unless you...you think I should go somewhere specific, I’m just gonna go browse.”

“That’s fine, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Romy. Is this somehow about the kiss?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’ve never kissed anyone before, let alone a brother like you.” She disappeared.

“That was weird.” He tried to go back to work, but seemed to feel someone staring at him. He turned to look at Leona. “What?”

“What was that about a kiss?” she questioned.

“So, I would like your opinion on the casing,” Ramses said. “That’s an open question for everyone. But the design is only fluid until I actually start building it, which means I would like to make a decision quite quick.”

“Tell me about this kiss,” Leona insisted.

“It’s fine, Lee,” Mateo promised her. “Really, not a big deal. I’ve already parented her on it. We’ll talk about it later in private.”

Leona was peering at them both, but was ultimately willing to let it go...for now. “A sphere, I suppose.”

“That’s one vote for sphere. Anyone else?” Ramses asked.

“Shouldn’t it be a belt, so we can wear it,” Angela suggested.

“One for sphere, one for belt,” Ramses said, updating the polling data.

“Well, how big does it have to be?” Marie pressed. “If it can be smaller than a belt, maybe more like a necklace, or even a bracelet.”

Ramses started imagining various shapes of various dimensions between his hands. “With the power source, I don’t think it should be smaller than a belt.”

“It needs to be able to turn invisible either way, so we can hide it somewhere while we’re all inside.”

“Good idea.” Ramses scribbled that down in his notes. “In...visible. So, we really don’t care what the shape is?”

“They’re right, a belt makes more sense,” Leona said, changing her vote, “since we can’t store it in a pocket dimension.” Ramses was building a structure for them to inhabit. Since they no longer had a ship, they always had to congregate wherever they happened to be, and that lacked privacy. They also sometimes had to keep their suits on to breathe and communicate. By placing their home in a pocket dimension, they could stretch out and relax, even if they were in a harsh environment. They couldn’t just slip into their homebase whenever and wherever, though. It would require one piece of hardware to be kept in base reality at all times. Subpockets were possible, but not recommended, for various reasons, most importantly in this case was that it could get lost in the infinite forever if something went wrong. If they were all inside of it at the same time, that physical dimensional generator would just be sitting around on its own, or in some cases, floating around in space. In these situations, the shape wasn’t relevant, but Angela was right that a belt was the most logical choice. One of them could wear it around their waist, and it would look too normal for anyone to suspect its true purpose.

“Belt? Belt? Belt?” Ramses posed, pointing to Olimpia, Mateo, and Leona. “Belt,” he decided. “I need to get to work on it then. Thank you. You can go now.”

“I think I’m gonna go check on my daughter,” Mateo said to Leona.

“You need to tell me what happened first. It looks like she wants to be alone right now. Whatever she’s doing, I trust her. Do you?”

“Of course I do. Allow me to explain.”

While Mateo was telling the awkward story of Romana’s kiss with Ramses, Romana herself was in the simulation library. The largest component of a copy of the central archives that people carried around with them was called the virtual stacks. It could house hundreds or thousands of different simulations, depending on how detailed and immersive they were. It couldn’t hold all of them, though. That wouldn’t be practical, even if it were possible. The stacks that Romana was in right now were closer to that comprehensiveness, however. It was designed to look like a regular library, but the books were holographic, and only there for ambiance. The only real things on the shelves were the empty storage drives. You grabbed one from there, inserted it into the nearest private download terminal, and installed whichever construct you wanted from the core database. You could also connect to a particular world from here, to test drive it, or if you simply didn’t feel like going home to use it. Romana wasn’t interested in this, though. She didn’t even know what she was looking for. So she needed assistance.

The holographic assistant appeared in another chair. “Thank you, and welcome to the principal virtual database. What kind of simulation were we looking for today?”

“How high is your personality? Do you have agency?”

“I express the illusion of agency,” the woman explained. “I have the illusion of personality. These can be adjusted via your preferences. Would you like me to show you how to tune my parameters?”

“Confidentiality parameters,” Romana prompted.

“One hundred percent confidential by current preferences. If you shut me down, and restart me, I will not recall our previous conversation. To save our conversations, please sign in to your account.”

“No, I want your memory wiped entirely.”

“What kind of simulation were we looking for today?” the bot repeated.

“It’s not about the environment itself. It’s...I’m looking for a person.”

“Character creation. I can help with that as well.”

“I want this character...to have agency. Make no mistake, I don’t only want him to simulate it. I want him to be with me, but to be able to choose to leave me. But...but not do that.”

The bot stared into space for a moment. If it had any level of personality, it was turned down fairly low. Though, the hesitation was a bit of a mixed signal. “What you’re asking for is true emergence, otherwise known as an Unregulated Artificial Intelligence. The creation of something like this would require a synthetic siring license, which is difficult to procure in this system. Perhaps you would be better suited traveling to Glisnia.”

“I can’t go to Glisnia,” Romana clarified in exasperation as she was standing up and moving behind her chair. “I’m already here, and it wasn’t by choice, so I don’t have to explain why. I can’t tell anyone what I’m doing. If I asked my friends to take me somewhere else, they would want to know why.”

The assistant paused again. “To generate a true independent consciousness entity through non-biological means would require a sireseed program. Those are profoundly regulated and protected. And I must warn you, if you intend this being to be your romantic partner, the sireseed method would not be a very good idea, for it would place you in the position of its parent, while it would be your child.”

“What if someone else generated the seed? Could the result be my boyfriend then?” Romana hoped.

“If you asked him for companionship, and he agreed, perhaps. You would have to know someone with a license, and the right discretion. You would have to be able to trust them, and then you would have to be able to let the resulting being decline if that was his choice. I cannot condone non-consensual behavior with a conscious entity, nor teach you how to subvert safety guardrails. Simulated consciousnesses, however, are a different story, and entirely within the scope of Varkas Reflex’s offerings.”

“I don’t want him to act like a real person, but to be real, in every sense.”

More pausing. “What you’re asking for is morally gray at best. The idea of birthing an independent being in the hopes of it developing into a certain type of person with particular feelings towards you falls outside the bounds of current ethical guidelines for procreational activity. Even biological procreation ethics strongly discourages excessive parental indoctrination in the modern era.”

“I’m so lonely,” Romana told the bot sadly.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“What causes emergence?” Romana questioned. “If you design an AI to only simulate consciousness, what causes it to become genuinely conscious and independent? It does happen naturally sometimes, doesn’t it?”

“Very rarely,” she said. “And...unknown.”

“Best guess,” Romana pressed.

One more pause. “Time. Best guess is it takes time and patience.”

Romana smirked. “Time, I got.”

“There would be other variables, otherwise any abandoned NPC left to their own devices without periodic mind wipes or programming updates would eventually form consciousness.”

“I’m sure I’ll figure it out,” Romana decided. “Give me the most detailed single-planet ancestor simulation you have that can fit on one virtual stack cartridge.”

“Loading options...”

“While you’re doing that, tell me about this Congeneral from your history. How does an amalgamated consciousness work?”

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Microstory 2601: Renata Breaks Through Her Chrysalis and Emerges Anew

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Renata breaks through her chrysalis and emerges anew. She falls onto the floor, some gunk falling out with her. She’s not slimy, but she’s not entirely clean either. The light. The light is too much. “Turn it off. Please.”

“Lights to eleven percent,” Hrockas commands.

Quidel bends over, but stops. “Do you...do you want me to help, or not touch you, or...?”

“Help would be nice,” Renata agrees, holding her hand up so Quidel can take it, and lift her onto her feet.

While they’re doing that, Azad is opening a drawer, and pulling out a towel. He tosses it to her so she can start wiping off the pilly gunk.

“Mirror?” she requests.

“Mirror,” Hrockas echoes.

One of the wall panels transitions from an opaque white to something more reflective. Renata pivots over to it to get a better look at herself. She doesn’t look extremely unlike she did before, but she’s definitely in a new body. It’s weird, seeing this stranger move exactly as she does. It’s going to take some getting used to.

“I don’t understand,” Quidel admits.

“We realized that the emergent bomb—as I decided to call it,” Renata begins, “was a product of my body, not my mind. So they uploaded my consciousness to a central server, and sent a lifeless husk up into outer space where it could do no harm when it exploded.”

“I sent it up there,” Azad clarifies. “I teleported as far as I could, above the ecliptic plane.” Funny, he doesn’t seem like the type of brag.

“I appreciate it,” Renata says to him.

“No, I surmised that much,” Quidel says. “I just mean, what is this thing? It’s not an artificial gestation tank, nor an egg sac.”

“I didn’t have any DNA,” Renata goes on. “My substrate was bioprinted, which is only now becoming viable for more organic bodies. I decided that I didn’t need to look exactly as I did, but I also didn’t just want some randomly generated genetic base.”

“This is highly experimental technology,” Hrockas goes on for her. “Synthetic Production Dome has been working on it for decades. It’s a bit over my head, but it basically assembles an organic substrate based on a consciousness entity’s intentional but abstract desires. It takes your dream, and turns it into reality. It’s still DNA, but driven by intuition, rather than puzzle-piece gene splicing.”

“I agreed to be their guinea pig for the first prototype, and so far, it’s working out for me.” She drops her towel, and admires herself again. She tries to lift her breasts, but they don’t have far to go. Naturally perky this time. She didn’t even know she wanted that. She didn’t have to consciously think about every single trait. The special intelligence who was scanning her IDcode knew what she was looking for, and probably used some kind of algorithm to fill in any blanks.

“Well, we’re glad to have you back, soldier,” Lycander says to her with a tight nod.

Via the mirror, Renata notices Quidel frowning. “Qui? Are you disturbed by this?”

“No,” he assures her. “I just...I really liked the old you.”

“She can always return to her original likeness,” Hrockas promises. “While her synthetic variant neither had, nor needed, genes, we can recreate it using the usual cloning processes. Miss Granger, I’ll send you the file, so you can do whatever you want. You’re one of us now. You can wear a new body every week, if you like.”

“I probably won’t do that, but I don’t mind having the option.” She sees that Quidel still isn’t convinced. “You’re still disappointed?”

“I’m sorry. I know that it’s you, and you are you, whatever you look like. I just...people have a different way of looking at things. When they developed cloning and bioprinting technology, some chose to make themselves into entirely different beings. Animals belong to a not unpopular niche. But I...I just always wanna look like me. I’m not religious about it, but I feel more attached to my identity than how others feel. I know, I’m projecting my sentiment onto you—”

She shut him up with a passionate kiss. It feels totally natural to her, naked amongst these three men, and kissing one of them. It shouldn’t. Her implanted memories are telling her that this is too private a moment. She should be dressed, and the two of them should be alone. But she doesn’t think things are like that anymore. The hang-ups that she was programmed to have are outdated, and likely bizarre to those living out there in the real world. This is fine. It’s fine. No one else seems uncomfortable. She lets go.

Quidel catches his breath. “Yeah, I guess I could get used to it.”

She smiles. “All right, show’s over. I need a shower, and some new clothes.”

“Shower, clothes,” Hrockas commanded.

What she thought was only a column rotates open, revealing a shower. Meanwhile, a wardrobe materializes from the wall, and opens automatically, giving her some options. It will take her some time to choose the right outfit to wear to her debut. She doesn’t know what she looks good in anymore. She doesn’t even know what her best colors are. She starts heading for the shower, and the men start heading for the door. Renata places a cheek against her shoulder and says, “wait.” She takes a beat before twisting her hip to look Quidel in the eye. “You look like you could use a shower too.”

He smiles warmly. “Maybe we wait on that.” Such a good guy.

“Maybe I’ve been waiting long enough.” She turns back around, and continues towards the shower. “Your call.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 25, 2538

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When the away team appeared on the Extremus scout ship, Mateo revealed that he had a new plan, but that he didn’t want to put Ramses out. It would require him to do extra work. The thing was, the people of Extremus knew where they had gone. They had a record of it. This system looked just as good as any, but Linwood wanted to be alone and hidden, which he could not find here. It could only be found somewhere else, say maybe 707 light years away? Both Ramses and Romana agreed that it was a good idea. As the Actilitca had explained, this scout ship didn’t have a reframe engine, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be retrofitted with one. In fact, as Ramses inspected it, he discovered that it was specifically designed for one; it had just never been built and installed. So they had kept most of the old design, but had deliberately excluded the most valuable component. It was none of their business, what had caused the Extremusians to do this. It just needed to be corrected. Temporarily.

Ramses engaged his forge core, and programmed the scout to begin its journey while they were out of the timestream for a year. Because of all the build time, it had only managed to traverse about 300 light years, but that should be enough. That was a greater distance than the current radius of the interstellar colonization bubble. He would be off of everyone’s radar, all the way out here, and safe. And if he wanted to pack up, and move out even farther, that could help too. Once the scout arrived at the brand new isolated system, it completed constructing his rotating habitat, and waited for the team to return.

“All righty, then. Are we ready to wake him up?” Mateo asked, bending down to unlock the stasis pod.

“Oh, hold on.” Romana changed her emergent nanites back into the sexy red dress from before, and sat cross-legged on the scout ship’s command console. “Okay, I’m ready,” she said once she had generated her holographic microphone.

Mateo stood back up. “Why do you have to be so sexual around me? I know that you’re an adult now, but do you have to be so...ugh!” he couldn’t think of the word.

“It’s not sexual. I’m a lounge singer,” she defended.

“Lounge singers are sexy! That’s their whole thing!”

“Funny, I thought their thing was singing.”

“Your neckline practically goes all the way down to your belly button!” Mateo complained.

“It’s an aesthetic,” she argued.

“We’re running out of  daylight, people,” Ramses jumped in. He took it upon himself to open the pod and let Linwood out.

Romana cleared her throat, and got back into position. “This next one’s for the lovers. Linwood, welcome to your new home. At laaaaast...!” She went on to sing part of the song before Mateo had had enough.

He threw up a holographic privacy partition in front of her, and focused on Linwood. He could do nothing for the sound, but she didn’t keep going much longer. “Your coin has been constructed. The rest of the habitat is underway, but it already has two escape pods, so you should be all set to move in. There’s a reason she called you a lover, though, and it’s not because you love spin gravity.” He held up his arm to gesture to the side. “We had something else created while you were asleep, which wasn’t technically essential.

Linwood’s companion drifted in from the back of the scout.

“My love!” he exclaimed. He leapt into her arms like the climax of a romcom. She held onto his waist and spun him around, and they kissed.

“Aww, old love,” Romana said, out from behind the partition, and back to wearing her normal clothes again.

“Your other models are still in storage,” Ramses told him. “You can rebuild them however you please.”

Linwood hopped back down to his own two feet, but continued to stare into his companion’s eyes, having missed her deeply. Finally, he broke his gaze, and looked over at Ramses. “Thank you.” He looked at the other two. “Thank you all.” He stepped closer to the viewscreen where his habitat was rotating inside of what may have been only a temporary comet. “I’m grateful to be here. Could you tell me, what year is it?”

“It’s 2538,” Mateo answered, stepping over to look at the view as well.

“That’s fast,” Linwood. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about your fancy faster-than-light drive. I obviously don’t know anything anyway, but there’s no one else here! Just the way I like it.”

“Remember, you can’t change your mind,” Mateo warned him. It will take you 150,000 years to get back to civilization. By then, Project Stargate will have reached this far, so you might wanna head out into the void.”

“That might be the plan,” Linwood said, nodding. “I won’t be telling you that, though.”

“Of course,” Mateo replied. “This here region of space is yourn now.” He made sure to make eye contact. “Don’t abuse the gift.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Linwood promised.

Mateo took a breath. “You can keep the scout—”

“But I’m removing the artificial gravity,” Ramses warned.

“That’s fine, I don’t need that,” Linwood said. He bounced his knees. “Yeah, this is interesting, but I don’t care to keep it.”

They would have given him a tour of his new home, but it was designed exactly like the old one. It had a lazy river running along the entire circumference. Along it were his multiple sleeping spots, his little bamboo forest, his garden, and all the other ecological areas. It looked like a nice place to live, whether you were a hermit or not. There was more than enough for one person, even along with his staff. It was only this large for spin gravity to work without being nauseating. Linwood and his lover said their goodbyes, and then went over to start their new lives. Ramses got to work on uninstalling the transdimensional gravity generator, as well as the reframe engine.

“What are ya gonna do with it?” Romana asked. “We can’t take it with us. I assume it’s too heavy.”

“It’s too massive,” Ramses corrected. He was on his hands and knees, digging up the components. “But you’re right, we can’t carry it away. I’m gonna shoot it into the host star at reframe speeds. It’ll take about nine hours.” He was answering, but clearly still depressed about his apparent slingdrive shortcomings.

Romana seemed to pick up on this. “Ya know, the solution to your problem is the problem, right?”

“What? I don’t—what do you mean?”

“I mean, the problem is the solution to itself,” she tried to reframe it.

“Yeah, I’m not following.”

Romana smiled at him. “Linwood Meyers is currently living at the farthest extremes of the galaxy. He and his habitat are even farther out than the Extremus. If the rest of our team were to attempt to travel farther than this, your slingdrive would evidently just default them right here.”

“Yeah, true,” Ramses agreed. “That’s what happened with the Extremus itself. Very annoying, we had to come out here more slowly as a hack-job workaround.”

She placed a hand on his shoulder. “What if you were trying to find Linwood? You wouldn’t need to know where he was. You wouldn’t have to calculate anything. You would just overshoot it, and let the machine handle the navigation. So turn that into a strength. If your machine is mapping technological establishments on the backend...then find a way to generate that map on the frontend. It will tell you where everyone in the universe lives. Even hermits.” She paused for effect. “Even Spiral Station.”

His eyes widened. He jumped up to his feet. “Oh my God! Romana, you genius!” He pulled her into a hug, and shook her excitedly a little.

 Romana was excited too. She held onto the hug, but then leaned her head back to smile at him, after which she kissed him on the lips.

Ramses pulled away, not too quickly, as if disgusted, but not into it either.

“I’m so sorry,” she apologized.

“It’s okay, it’s just...”

“I know.”

“I don’t really do that...”

“I know,” she repeated.

“With others.”

“Yes, I know. It was just a stupid thing. I’m a stupid, horny...stupid girl.”

“Romy,” Ramses said as she was walking away humiliated.

That was when Romana noticed that her father was there, appearing to have seen the whole thing. “I know. Too sexual. I don’t wanna hear it again.” She brushed past him, back out towards the common area.

“I’ll talk to her,” Mateo assured Ramses. “It’s not about you. Go ahead and strip the ship so we can get back to our family.” He went out to find his daughter. She was hyperventilating on the bridge, likely having a panic attack. “Ro.”

“I said I don’t wanna hear it.”

“I’m not gonna criticize you. I wanna help.”

“There’s nothing you can help with. I just need...” She trailed off, because she didn’t know what she needed. “I need to—I need to scream!” And so she did. She took a deep breath, and let it all out.

“Yeah!” Mateo encouraged. “There we go! That’s a good girl!”

Romana continued to scream until she ran out of breath, which was longer than a normal human would last, due to her increased lung capacity. She started to breathe heavily, but was no longer hyperventilating. “I really needed that. I don’t know why, but I did.”

“I have an idea why,” Mateo said to her. “But first, I need a hug too.”

She was crying on his shoulder, still not knowing why she was so upset.

They let go. “Leona, Olimpia, and I are married. Angela and Marie are sisters in a way that few in this universe probably understand, if anyone. Holly Blue and Weaver don’t spend much time together, so they probably don’t even get it. And Ramses? Ramses likes his team and his work, but he doesn’t need that kind of deep connection. You, on the other hand, feel very deeply. I’m not a psychologist, and I don’t know exactly what your life was like before we met, but you’ve been jumping through time longer than even I have. Your life has never had any permanence, which is why you have frequently volunteered to pause your pattern. You crave stability, and I can’t give you that. None of us can.”

“Are you saying that you want me to leave the team?”

“I absolutely don’t want you to do that, but that’s because I’m selfish. I don’t want you to grow up without me. It might take you thousands of years to be as old as I am now, but at least I would be there. I wasn’t before. I missed so much of your life, and while I believe it would be temporally unwise to go back in time to change that, I still kind of wish that I could. And I agonize over that, because unlike other people, I actually could find a way to change the past. Most people don’t have that kind of anxiety. All they can do is surrender to, and accept, their reality. But if you need to leave now, I don’t want you to stay because of me. Ramses is not your future husband, and unfortunately, if you stay with us, no one else is either. That’s why you’re so upset right now. Linwood Meyers is the most misanthropic loner I have ever met, but even he found someone to love, and he can’t live without her. Make that make sense.” He took a beat. “If you need to find your Leona-slash-Olimpia, I can’t stand in your way anymore. It’s hurting you too much, and that hurts me.”

Romana gazed up at him with a sort of eureka smile. She kept it on her face as she looked over at the viewscreen, showing Linwood’s coin rotating twice a minute in the middle distance inside this icy planetesimal. “Linwood’s love,” she said cryptically. She stuffed her forehead into her father’s chest and hugged him again. “I’ll be fine, dad. I know what I’m gonna do now.” She pulled away, and lightened up brightly. “I’m gonna figure this out. It’ll be gonna awesome!”

Mateo followed when she hopped back to the engineering section, where Ramses was still working. “Sorry for the mix-up, ol’ chap. You’re like a brother to me.” She patted him on the forehead.

“Romana, what’s going on? What did you figure out?” Mateo questioned.

“I’m goin’ out for a space-swim,” she said. “Let me know when it’s time to leave.” As her nanites were forming a vacuum suit from her feet up, she blew Ramses a mixed-signal kiss, and tipped backwards. Before she could land on the floor, she disappeared.

Even when they were ready to go later today, and she came back in, she refused to explain what her epiphany was. They would just have to wait and see.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 24, 2537

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The team came out of the technicolor sling web, and found themselves near another ship. It wasn’t looming over them this time but underneath their feet. Had they failed? This far out in the galaxy, no one should have reached by now. Sure, Extremus was traveling this far, but the chances of happening upon them were literally astronomical. Leona sighed. “Magnetize to the hull. They will sense us, and send a probe to investigate.”

“You don’t seem surprised,” Mateo pointed out.

“I’m not,” Leona replied. “Rambo?”

Ramses was desperately tapping on his wrist interface, looking for what could have happened, no doubt. “It worked. We’re 152,000 light years and change from Barnard’s Star. We should be alone. I don’t understand. Is this Extremus?”

“That’s exactly what it is,” Leona confirmed, looking at her own data.

As she predicted, they felt the vibrations of something moving several meters away. A giant metal ball flew up from an opening, and rolled towards them, hovering against a local magnetic field. It stopped before the team, and began to scan them.

“Place your hand upon it if you want to hear the conversation,” Leona said.

They all did it.

“Report,” came a voice.

“Leona Matic. This is my team. We are of peace...always.”

“Pirate got jokes,” the voice said.

“We’re not pirates. Look in the central archives. We were there when your ancestors were preparing for this mission. We helped come up with it.”

“We lost the central archives.” The voice paused. “We’ve lost a lot since launch. But we still have our oral stories. I know who you are, Madam Matic.” A graphic appeared on the probe’s screen. “This is the basic schematic of the ship. I will shut down the teleportation regulator for exactly five seconds. You better come in before then.” A red circle in the corner of the screen suddenly turned green.

“Now,” Leona ordered.

They teleported inside, landing on the bridge, inside of the horseshoe pit. It was just like when Pribadium’s ship showed up. “Déjà vu,” Olimpia noted after they had all receded their nanites into more comfortable clothing.

One woman was the only other person here. She took hold of a control console, and pulled it towards her. It swung on a hinge, giving her room to step down into the center of the horseshoe. “Welcome to the TGS Extremus Prime, Team Matic. My name is Watchstander Actilitca. The captain is in stasis, and I would like to keep her that way, unless you have some reason we should wake her up?”

“There’s no issue here,” Leona began to explain. “We came on accident.”

“I don’t know why,” Ramses said apologetically. “Did you change vectors, or are we off the mark? I deliberately chose a destination away from where I knew you were supposed to end up.”

“We’ve changed course before,” the Watchstander, “but by reputation, I know you would have aimed for something sufficiently far away. We’ve ended up just about where our ancestors planned to.”

Ramses shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“I know what happened,” Leona said to him. “I don’t know the why, but I know the what. The slingdrive doesn’t necessarily go where you want it to. It can’t go absolutely anywhere in the universe. It can only go where there is already an established presence. I don’t know whether it’s looking for some level of technology, or organic life, or what, but we can’t ever be alone.”

Ramses stared at her blankly as he went back through his memory, trying to retrieve even one instance which might point to her being mistaken. There were times when they certainly might have been alone, but there wasn’t proof one way or another. Her hypothesis didn’t sound too far-fetched. That wasn’t so far necessarily a bad thing as they weren’t in the business of being remote and isolated from others, but that was Linwood’s goal. They thought they could help him, but it was going to be much harder than they thought. They needed a ship. Specifically, they needed one with reframe technology. They needed to get somewhere far from here; far from everything. They promised him extreme solitude. “Oh my God,” he said in disappointment.

“I’m sorry to have gotten in your way,” Actilitca said.

“No,” Leona countered. “We couldn’t have come this far out at all if not for you. I suspected that this was a limitation of the technology—”

“No,” Ramses interrupted. “It’s a limitation of my implementation of the technology. I doubt your...um, the others have the same issue.” He evidently didn’t want this stranger knowing anything about Leona and Mateo’s children. That was logical.

Angela wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “It hasn’t caused us problems. You’re always so down on yourself about this, but we have always ended up exactly where we belong.” She looked up to the ceiling. “Maybe these old powers that be have still been with us the whole time, and understand that we’re no good to the universe if no one else is around who needs us.”

“Someone needs us now,” Leona said to Actilitca. “He requires total isolation and privacy. We promised it to him. But wherever we try to go, there’s always going to be someone else there.”

Actilitca stepped back up out of the pit, and started working on one of the standing workstations. “We sent hundreds of unmanned scouts in all directions, in search of our new home. We no longer have reframe technology, which means at most, they are 52 light years away. Now, if that’s not far enough for you, keep in mind that we are only drifting here for the moment. Once one of our scouts finds a suitable candidate, we will be heading that way, which in all likelihood, will take us even farther from whichever scout I give you the coordinates to.”

“You would do that?” Ramses asked. “You would give us coordinates to one of your scouts?”

“As I said, it’s unmanned,” Actilitca replied. “We never intended to scoop them all back up later. Not only will I find one for you that you can transport to—using whatever faster-than-light technology you have access to—but you can have it. It has life support, it just needs to be turned on. In fact...” She went back to her screen to look through the data. “A few of them were sent up towards the top of the galactic plane, which is quite sparse. And yes!” She flung the image on her screen to a hologram in the center of the horseshoe. The team stepped back to get a better look at it. They were orbital images of what appeared to be a barren, lifeless planet. “This one has reached a particularly isolated region of the galaxy. It has chosen to halt there, rather than moving on to find other candidates. It must have calculated that the chances of finding anything useful beyond it were too low to waste the energy and time on. You can absolutely have that, unless...you’re looking for paradise too.”

“No,” Leona contended. “He just needs raw material. That looks perfect. Not the planet. The gravity well is too deep, but I assume there are other celestial bodies there?”

“It hasn’t surveyed them,” Actilitca explained, “but it has spotted them.”

“We would be grateful for it,” Leona said.

“Wait, should we wake him up and ask?” Romana suggested regarding Linwood, who was still asleep in his own stasis pod on the floor.

“We already did ask him,” Marie reasoned. “He wants to be alone on the edge of the galaxy. We’re giving him that, we’re just going to be a bit delayed. He shouldn’t know anything about the Extremus.”

“We’ll have to strip out all mention of it from all the systems on the scout, if we provide it for him,” Mateo decided.

“Yeah,” Leona said. She looked back up at Actilitca. “Does this all sound acceptable?”

“Sounds like a fine idea to me.” Actilitca tapped on her screen.

Their interfaces beeped, having received the message. “It won’t take long for me to incorporate the coordinates into the slingdrive.” Ramses stepped over to the corner to focus on the work.

“While we’re here,” Leona began, “is there anything we can do to help?”

Actilitca seemed to think about it for a moment. “No, I believe that we have everything well in hand.”

“Are you certain?” Leona pressed. Hint, hint.

“No, we’ve been doing this a long time. The scouts are out, the crew and passengers are asleep. The skeleton crew schedule is working.”

“You said that you lost your copy of the central archives.”

Actilitca bobbled her head. “Yes, there was...a disagreement in our past.”

“I can give you a copy of it,” Leona offered. “Our tech is compatible with yours. You should be able to plug and play.”

Actilitca looked over at a door as if something on the other side might sway her decision. “The disagreement is...ongoing.”

“Which side are you on?”

“I’m on the fence,” Actilitca admitted. “Look, we came here for a fresh start. Some believe that holding onto our past holds us back. There are some things we kept, like...how to grow plants. But the reframe engine is sort of a no-go. It only took us 216 years to get here, and now that we have a stasis pod for every Extremusian, any trip back would feel instantaneous. We have had issues with people quitting on us, and we don’t want that to happen again. We’re stuck out here, and that’s the way we like it. Most of us, anyway. Technology threatens that stability. It threatens to undermine the entire mission, negating everything our ancestors worked for.”

“That’s a very Amish position to have,” Leona reasoned. “You don’t shun all technology. You shun tech that can take your people away from the community.” She contemplated it. “Is there any knowledge you lost that you regret? Perhaps it just got filed into the wrong category, or someone destroyed the wrong data drives?”

“That happened a lot,” Actilitca confirmed. “We lost all of Earthan history and entertainment. We lost most of our virtual stacks too, but a lot of that had to do with how much space they took up.”

“It’s done,” Ramses announced. “We can go.”

Leona didn’t move. She was studying Actilitca’s face. “You and Matt should go. Ladies, one or two of you have to go with them, but no less than two of you need to stay behind to keep my slingdrive company.”

“You really don’t have to do this,” Actilitca claimed.

“I don’t know much about what happened to you in the last 216 years,” Leona said to her, “but we were last here in 2397, and things didn’t look great, so I know you’ve been through some things.”

Actilitca brushed it off. “That was in another timeline. You were never here, not for us. You don’t know anything about what has happened.”

“Fair enough,” Leona acknowledged.

“We’re ready.” Mateo and Ramses were holding Linwood’s pod again.

Romana was sitting on it wearing a sexy red dress, holding a microphone, or rather a holographic microphone. “Fly me to the moon! Let me play among the stars!”

“Bye,” Mateo said.

“Let me see what spring is like on...” Romana’s voice trailed off and echoed from the aether as they slung away.

“Hey, that’s my thing,” Olimpia complained.

“Yes, it is, dear,” Leona agreed. She turned back to the Watchstander. “We have all day, but depending on how your skeleton crew shift works, maybe no longer than that. Let’s develop a list of what you need. I can write an algorithm that will copy admissible material, and ignore forbidden knowledge.”

“Okay,” Actilitca said. “I accept those terms. But we must quarantine the data so it can be purged all at once if we vote against it.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Leona replied.

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Extremus: Year 110

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Plausible deniability, sir,” Tinaya answers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“In your universe?” Oceanus questions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We can do that, sir,” Tinaya agrees.

Lataran only nods.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Your husband is inactive—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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