Microstory 1469: Drumpf is Fired

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One of the first paramounts to rise up after the Hokusai and the Deathspring changed the whole system was a young woman named Andromeda. She was a builder, who could configure building materials in complex and extremely useful ways. She was one of the most powerful people Durus ever saw, save the source mages and Jayde Kovak herself. Because of this, Andromeda garnered a lot of favor amongst both the Earthan refugees, and the Duruen natives. She would later turn Aljabara into a real city, with stable buildings and roads, rather than the haphazard fustercluck it was before. She built outposts as well, like the settlements that formed during the Mage Protectorate. But even before she did all that for them, everyone loved her, and listened to her, much like they did Ecrin, so when she came to some kind of decision, it was tantamount to law. Some insisted on calling her Queen Andromeda, but if they were going to do that, she in turn insisted they address her as Your Badass. It was a play on words, and modeled upon certain other honorifics, like Your Honor, or Your Highness. Despite his higher standing in the Provisional Government, even Drumpf had to acquiesce to her authority. But this authority was not taken, or earned, it was just given to her. Because that was how this new transitional system worked. People trusted whoever proved that they could be trusted, and when that person started to fail them, they demanded the individual be removed from power. For now, this would probably be okay, because of the whole provisional part. But it was not necessarily a good dynamic in the long-term. It could end up okay, like the Adhocracy that formed a hundred and forty years ago. Or it could just lead to anarchy. They needed something better; something more formal, and though it would take a very long time to actually get there, progress towards this goal would start with Andromeda. They held a meeting, where governmental officials pleaded for her to help them with the reconstruction efforts, and she was happy to help, but she had a list of demands.

While the people were busy trying to correct their history of misogyny, they unwittingly fell into another trap of injustice. They treated the people who had come here from Earth a couple years ago as second-class citizens, forcing them to live separately in a refugee camp. The Durune weren’t openly hostile, but they were preoccupied with their own problems, and didn’t want to help these new people. Andromeda had to explain to them that they were all part of the same community now, and if that truth were to be respected, everyone would be able to contribute in their own way, including the Earthans. The Provisional Government had to officially recognize the Earthans as citizens. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t be allowed to leave if an opportunity came about to return to Earth, but it would allow them to enjoy certain privileges, such as moving about the surface of the planet at will. She also engineered a way for Poppet Drumpf to step down as provisor, because she could easily see how toxic he was, and how he had not changed from his past. He wouldn’t have done it on his own, so Andromeda had to ask for help from a friend named Loa, whose time power it was to broadcast what she was seeing to anywhere—or everywhere, as it were—in the world simultaneously. He said some nasty things about his people, and they finally understood that he really hadn’t learned from his past mistakes. It would be a few more years until a round of elections came about, but for now, the government was at least peaceful and stable, and would be allowed to continue trying to make the world a better place. She wouldn’t do it forever, but Andromeda did use her powers to construct homes and other proper buildings, and would die a rare hero in most people’s eyes.

Microstory 1125: Eudora Mercari

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Eudora Mercari was born on Durus during the reign of the First Republic. Upon turning twenty, she was promised to a man. In this world, she had no choice in the matter, and though she knew intellectually that this was wrong, she never felt like she could do anything about it. Society’s way of doing things left a lot of very important questions unanswered. If a woman has no choice in the man she marries, is it even possible for her to consent to sex? Can she make an informed decision about her body when she’s inescapably expected to provide for her husband whatever she needs? No. Still, when it comes to sex, there is at least some difference between assault, and a vague approximation of true consent. There are men out there who are very clearly raping their wives. They’re doing so with violence and malice, and despite protest. This was Eudora’s fear her entire life; that she would be stuck with a man like this, and it is that fear that drove her towards accepting her fate. Marital rape is a heartbreaking fear that pervades the minds of many women of Durus in this time period. It is better to be assigned a mate against your will, than be hopelessly bound to a man who your family has not vetted and interviewed. This was not how the new phallocratic society began, but it is how its government maintains its power. The system isn’t perfect, but destroying the policies without effective replacements wouldn’t help alleviate the dangers. If that were to happen, the people who instituted those original policies would still there, along with everyone who agreed with them. They would still feel the same way, but there would be no protections whatsoever; just anarchy. Of course, being that the system is designed quite publicly to subjugate women, even properly vetted potential husbands can turn out to be abusive.

Eudora’s new husband started out slowly, like he knew what he wanted—how far he wanted to go—but didn’t want to be called out for it. If, say, he raped Eudora on their first night together, there might be some legal actions she could take against him. No, it was better to break her down gradually, so she felt there was nothing she could do, because she was all alone. They had been married for so long, and she had never complained before, so who would believe her now? He was careful and patient. He didn’t so much as touch her for almost two months, trying to make her think that he wouldn’t make the first move; that he was a good guy. Then he started to be a little affectionate, but not overtly sexual. He would criticize her appearance and behaviors, but mask these complaints as encouragements. Instead of telling her she was fat, he would work out a discount at a fitness center, for the both of them. Instead of telling her she was ugly, he would buy her makeup as gifts. On their own, these things seemed so innocuous that not even Eudora realized what was really happening. When he was finally ready to take what he believed he was entitled to, he turned drastically. He forced himself on her, and he finished so quickly, that it barely registered to her right away that anything had happened. She was so shocked, she didn’t even get a chance to vocalize her refusal, which meant she didn’t think she could report it. When he wanted it again the next day, she was better prepared, but no stronger. His technique was working. She begged her parents for help getting out of this marriage, and didn’t even bother asking them to seek to charge him to any crime. She just wanted to get away from him, but they wouldn’t allow it. Her father was not unlike her husband, and her mother was not unlike Eudora feared she would become one day: hopeless and powerless.

This is one of the few times that the system didn’t completely fail women, however. After months of his abuse, Eudora’s husband started getting too confident. He didn’t think he could ever get in trouble for the horrors he was inflicting, even if people knew about it. He bragged about the power he was holding over his wife, and of the extramarital conquests he was making all the while. A man nicknamed Professor Pane caught wind of his stories, and decided he could help, though not in the best way possible. He was a mage remnant, and could create one-way visual portals to other places. He used his ability to keep track of current events on Earth, but there were so many more applications. These portals were only windows, which allowed him to see some distant location, but not interact with it. Anyone on the other side would not be able to see him back. So he approached the authorities, told them what he knew, and opened a window to Eudora and her husband. Recording devices were never invented in this world, so his was the only way of catching the husband in the act. Obviously that meant he would have to rape her one last time, but Pane would fight with all his strength to make sure it was indeed his last time, even if the authorities didn’t take action after witnessing it. They did, though. They could not deny what they had seen, and they arrested Eudora’s husband immediately. She spent years in a deep depression after that, working alone to overcome the trauma. Therapy existed on Durus, but it was given mostly to men. A woman can seek psychological help, but only if the man who owns her gives his permission, and she no longer had one of those. The only light in her life being her daughter, Andromeda, who was the product of one of her husband’s crimes. By the time Andromeda was old enough to understand where it is she came from, the world had changed. The phallocracy was crushed, and a new government was formed. The crimes of yesteryear were wiped clean, in one of the most despicable acts of this provisional government, and this historical whitewashing would not be remedied for many years. Eudora decided to keep her terrible history a secret for the rest of her life, as apparently the new convention dictated. Both she and her daughter died never having spoken of it.

Brooke’s Battles: Bounty (Part VII)

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Sharice’s code had not been corrupted, and she had not switched allegiances. Through months of bureaucratic debrief, Captain Cabral, Brooke, and the rest of the senior crew learned from her that the captain of the Zerzan had figured out a way to bypass the chain of command, and communicate directly with Sharice. He and his people had gathered intelligence leading them to believe that a different faction on their side was intending to destroy the center Northwest Forest circles in an attempt to escalate the war. The problem, according to them, was that up until that point, they were fighting against their enemy using that enemy’s rules. They believed there were no such things as rules of engagement, or war crimes. The difference between anarcho-primitivists, and the primitivists living in the center circle was the anarcho part. They were not content living with little technology all on their own. Either the entire populace fell in line, or they would have to die. Anarchy, like many other forms of social politics, doesn’t work if they’re constrained by some other form of government’s idea of civility.

For instance, in the 21st century, most countries were capitalistic. Everything was valued at whatever anyone was willing to pay for it. If enough people couldn’t afford something, and the producers were incapable of sustaining their business at those price points, that price would drop. While other countries attempted to create some antithesis to this, it was impossible. Every nation traded on the international stage, so whether they liked it or not, and whether they believed or not, they were all capitalists. It was unclear whether the more violent faction of anarchists would have succeeded in their mission to force the solar system to stoop to their level, because thanks to the bravery of the late Captain Torben Altink, their whole plan failed. Evidently, he had attempted to open talks with the system leadership, to explain the growing threat to them, but was mostly ignored. As the Sharice and other warships took the enemy ships down one by one, power perpetually shifted amongst the winners. By taking out their competition, the violent faction was able to consolidate power, and basically do whatever they wanted.

The Zerzan had all but given up their fight to stop them when a random crewman came up with an idea. Since they didn’t have the resources to take on their internal enemy themselves, they would recruit the Sharice. They lured Ecrin and Brooke in, then secretly began talking with Sharice. The original plan was for Sharice to take total control over the ship itself, and follow the Zerzan back to Earth, where they would fight off the other faction together. Her mistake was not even trying to convince her people to listen to the Zerzan. In the end, with both vessels crippled, their only hope was to commandeer the drop ship, and take it straight down to the other faction, sacrificing Captain Altink in the process. Now the only question was, how did they get their hands on a Lucius-bomb?

“I am not at liberty to say.”

“What are you talking about? I’m your mother,” Brooke said.

“I’m your commanding officer,” Ecrin said to Sharice.

“Yes,” Sharice began, “and you’re the one always talking about the chain of command. I am not at liberty to say.”

“Are you telling me someone higher than me ordered you to keep quiet about the Lucius-bomb?” Ecrin asked.

Sharice waited to answer. “I’m not, not saying that.”

“How far are we to intercept?” Ecrin asked.

“Seventy-two minutes,” Sharice responded. While the crew was only now hearing her justification for recent events, the system leadership heard everything months ago. They were satisfied with the explanation enough to grant her full duty privileges, so she could return to work. They were presently on their way to capturing a fleet of space pirates.

“Oh, so you can answer some questions. It’s nice to know this old dog still has a little pull on this ship.”

“Ecrin,” Sharice started to say.

“Captain,” Ecrin corrected.

Sharice pretended to clear her throat. Of course, she didn’t have a throat, but she found that human speech relied on brief pauses, false starts, and other disfluency to maintain a bond between one another. These meaningless utterances are vital to natural language, because perfection can sound rehearsed, which comes off as didactic, or condescending. “Captain,” she echoed, “You know I would never do anything against your best interests if I didn’t have a good reason. I didn’t put that bomb on my drop ship, and I did not want it there. When an opportunity to get rid of it came along, I seized it.”

“When was it put there?”

Sharice cleared her hypothetical throat again, but didn’t say anything.

“Miss Prieto,” Ecrin prompted.

“Answer her,” Brooke ordered.

“During the quarantine,” Sharice said.

“That makes sense,” Brooke said. “A lot of people came in that I didn’t know.”

“So there’s no telling who did this, let alone who ordered it,” Ecrin said with a sigh.

“Unless...” Brooke began, sending Ecrin a coded message through her gestures.

Ecrin stepped back gracefully. “Use the meeting room.”

Brooke stepped into the other room. “Sharice, isolate yourself in here, and hand over control to the helmsman on duty.”

“Why?”

“We need to have a private conversation, that’s why.”

“Isolated.”

“Sharice, we can’t do our jobs if we don’t know what we’re up against. Right now, we’re going off to capture precisely five stolen interplanetaries, three boarders, and a command ship. And we know that’s what we’re up against because we’ve been investigating these crimes. We’re not just flying blindly, hoping we’re not outmatched. If someone was able to hide a Lucius-bomb in the drop ship, they could have hidden something else. Hell, you may not even know about it. Your internal sensors can’t see everything. Your relationship with the crew is built on trust. We all agreed to come back after what you did, because we trusted you believed you were doing the right thing. I’m here to remind you that you’re my daughter, I’m your mother, and I’m asking you for a name. The chain of command is important, but if the person who made you do this already broke that chain, it’s up to us to stop them. Do you understand?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Go ahead then.”

Sharice didn’t say anything.

“Go ahead,” Brooke repeated.

“Holly Blue.”

“What?”

“Holly Blue put it there.”

“Holly Blue is not Ecrin’s superior officer. Ecrin is hers.”

“I’m not talking about the chain of command from the Sol military. I’m talking about a higher level of authority; one that goes beyond anything any human could understand.”

“When you say human, do you mean human like Ecrin is biologically human, or human like Richard and Allen are humans.”

“The latter,” Sharice answered.

“There is no hierarchy in the world of choosing ones and salmon,” Brooke argued.

“If The Last Savior of Earth tells you to do something, you do it.”

“This was Étude’s doing?”

“She had the intelligence. She knew this would happen, because someone with powers told her the future.”

“She’s retired,” Brooke pointed out.

“She’s quit working for the powers that be,” Sharice said. “That doesn’t mean she’s quit saving people.”

“What else did she do?”

“The Lucius-bomb is all I knew about. Like you said, though, my internal sensors weren’t designed to pick up every little thing that happens on this ship.”

“I need to speak with Holly Blue.”

“She’s busy preparing for the intercept.”

“Sharice, if she’s built more bombs, or something else bad, she has to be stopped and questioned. What is she planning to do with the pirates? She cannot be allowed to continue.”

“I assure you she has no intention of harming those pirates. The plan is to stop them peacefully, just as we did all those other ships.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can, though. Please, don’t tell the captain, not until we close this case.”

“Very well, but I want you monitoring her movements with what few internal sensors you do have. I’ll pilot the ship myself if you can’t divide attention.”

“Understood. And mother?” she said as Brooke was about to leave the room. “Thank you, I love you.”

“I love you too.”

An hour later, they were upon the pirate fleet, which made no threatening moves towards the Sharice. Nor did it attempt to outrun them. Ecrin ordered Sharice to hold steady for a while, to feel out the situation. The pirates were hoarders, but no evidence suggested they were violent. They never harmed the rightful crew and passengers of the vessels they stole. They always packed them in lifeboats, and programmed a time-delayed rescue beacon. It would seem all they wanted were the ships themselves, almost like they were building an army.

“Sir?” Holly Blue offered. “Should I release the EMPs?”

“No. Open a channel.” Ecrin waited for the comms officer to set it up. “Rover One, this is Captain Cabral of the Sharice Davids. Please respond.”

“This is Rover One,” someone responded immediately, in audio only. “We call it the Midas, though.”

“Midas,” Ecrin acknowledged. “Please lower your defenses and prepare to be boarded.”

“Sure thing,” the pirate agreed.

Ecrin looked over at Brooke.

“Maybe they know they have no chance,” Brooke suggested. What else would cause them to be so accommodating?

Ecrin turned to the bridge crew, and started delegating. “You, coordinate the transitions. Scan for weapons and tech, and put everyone in hock. Keep the leader separate from everyone else. I’ll want to talk with him first.” She walked out to prepare for the confrontation.

The pirates followed direction with absolutely no problem. When one of the guards questioned this, they all said they were actually following orders from the boss. He had some plan to get out of this, and they trusted him to follow through.

“Where’s my prisoner?” Ecrin asked as she was waiting in the interrogation observation room.

“Uhh...he’s holed up in his quarters,” one the guards reported. “He says he’s only willing to talk to you on his ship.”

“Force him,” Ecrin ordered.

“We’ve been trying. We can’t break through.”

Brooke shook her head. “Don’t do it.”

“It’s obviously a trap, sir,” Holly Blue concurred. “I’ve seen this movie a million times.”

“So have I,” Ecrin said. “But those characters didn’t have what I do.”

“What’s that, sir?” Holly Blue asked. “Us?”

“No,” the captain replied as she was checking the power on her belt. “They didn’t have emergency teleporters.” She looked back over to Brooke. “If something goes wrong, this ship is yours. You’re going to have to deal with the Holly Blue situation yourself.”

“The what?” Holly Blue asked, confused and offended.

“How do you know about that?” Brooke asked. She never reported what she had learned from Sharice about the Étude and Holly Blue conspiracy.

“I hear everything. Sharice, put me on that ship, and bring back our people.”

Sharice apported Ecrin over to the other ship. After a few torturous ignorant moments, she said, “receiving visual.”

“On screen,” Brooke ordered. The monitor showed the inside of the pirate ship. Cameras were following Ecrin down a passageway, and up to a door. It opened automatically, and let her in. No man was in this room, though. When Brooke was piloting the Warren back from the rogue planet with Leona and the gang, something went wrong with one of the pocket dimensions they used to hold a higher passenger capacity. A boy had the ability to create a new being out of nothing with every draw of breath. He didn’t make humans, though. Some called them white monsters, because they were tall and as white as a chicken egg. They called themselves the Maramon. Most had stayed in their dimension, which was eventually transformed into an entirely separate universe. One of them was stuck in this universe at the time, and Brooke hadn’t kept track of what they did with him. The Maramon smiled at the camera and lifted a small device. He pressed a button, and his ship disappeared.

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Brooke’s Battles: Backslide (Part VI)

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Every new technology comes with its detractors. Some fear progress. They have lived their lives a certain way for a certain period of time, and they don’t know how they could ever learn something else, and also learn to love it. Others have legitimate fear for a new development. Just because something was once not possible, and now is, doesn’t mean it’s good. Research into nuclear reactions, for instance, provided the world with amazingly powerful energy, but it also necessarily came with nuclear weapons. As they say, the invention of the ship was the invention of the shipwreck. That’s not to say this research should not be done at all, but researchers need to understand the ramifications of their actions.  The world is better off with at least a few people reminding them of their responsibility. It’s when these people become so obsessed with their position, and violently so, that the danger arises. Two major movements formed based on a generic disdain for nearly all technology. Some preferred to stay near civilization, but remain untouched by it, and were given ample space in the Northwest Forest circles to be themselves. Others hid themselves away in disparate pockets of rustic living. For the most part, it appeared they were satisfied being isolated from society, but something changed. Brooke’s unintentional creation of an unregulated artificial intelligence galvanized them to serious action.

This extremist group quickly altered their lifestyles, adopting technology they claimed to despise. Evidently they believed it worth it to go against their own convictions if it meant the ultimate destruction of the establishment. Unfortunately for the solar system—as anyone who’s ever seen it attempted can attest—trying to fight fire with fire only makes more fire, unless you know what you’re doing. In this case, nobody did, because nobody saw it coming.

Many radical movements start small. They’ll try to protest relatively peacefully, but then soon get into a fistfight with those who oppose them. Then they’ll start vandalizing, but this phase won’t last long, because it’s ineffective, so they’ll blow up an entire building, but they’ll make sure no one is in it. Then they’ll stop caring who gets hurt in their attacks, and then they’ll start hurting people on purpose. If left unchecked or uncaught, they’ll continue to escalate the violence until it gets so bad than people start writing songs about it, and days of mourning are set aside each year. These anarcho-primitivists did not present themselves like other radical movements. Their first act of violence was quick and decisive, and almost worked. They knew everything there was to know about the Panama space elevator, though they had no reason to. While the elevator was scheduled to be taken apart a little more than a year ahead, the decision to plan for a symbolic final trip was not decided until a couple months before. The selection of passengers was not finalized for another several weeks, and the task force charged with finding out who was bidding for UAI technology only learned the day of that those passengers were corrupt. How did the anarcho-primitivists find out, and how did they so quickly plan for the sabotage of the elevator?

So without warning, a war exploded across the whole system, centered on Earth. Their best chance of surviving this rested in the hand of The Sharice Davids, which was the most formidable warship in circulation. For months, actually, it was the only one. Ecrin was placed back in the captain’s chair, commanding a full military crew, none of whom had experienced any conflict. Holly Blue served as head engineer, while Brooke was named pilot, though her responsibilities consisted primarily of liasing with the ship herself. Until a real fleet could be built, the Sharice had no choice but to fight the enemy on its own. Luckily, though it was the most hated ship in the war, it was also the safest place to be.

Holly Blue retrofitted it with a number of impressive upgrades. A time barrier protected the outer hull, like a force field. Any ammunition thrown at the ship—be it a nine millimeter bullet, or a long-range missile—would be caught in the barrier, slowed down to a snail’s pace, and totally stripped of its momentum. The Sharice also now carried zero lethal weapons itself, fitted exclusively by technology-disabling technology. Ignoring the possibility of a time power solution, Holly Blue designed specialized EMP grenades. Almost all of a target’s systems could be taken offline in an instant, including artificial gravity, but excluding life support. With no hope of firing back, or escaping, the enemy vessel could be boarded, and its crew taken into custody. The solar system was winning the war, but it wasn’t over yet. They were presently coming up on what they believed to be the last significant enemy vessel. Once they took it out, the nightmare should be all but over. The Sharice cruised into weapons range, and then waited, which it was not supposed to do. They need to take care of it soon, because it was on its way to Earth.

“Brooke, what are you doing?” Ecrin asked.

“It’s not me,” Brooke replied. “Sharice has full control.”

“Okay, what is she doing?” Ecrin asked, still willing to give the ship’s AI the benefit of the doubt.

Brooke contorted her face. “Sharice, answer your captain.”

Nothing.

Brooke shifted uncomfortably. “Sharice, if you do not respond right now, I’m going to shut your systems down until we can airgap your consciousness.”

Brooke’s chair suddenly shocked her with enough electricity to kill a standard human. For her, it was just enough to knock her out of it.

“That’s technically a response,” Ecrin said as she was helping Brooke from the floor. “You need to shut her down anyway.”

“They’re talking to each other,” Holly Blue exclaimed from the back terminal.

“Who?”

“The Sharice, and The Zerzan,” Holly Blue reported.

“They’re using an AI?” Ecrin questioned. “I know they’re not big on praxis, but using an AI is like sacrilege to them.”

“No, the ship is full manual, as they all are. She’s talking to the crew; the captain, specifically. Has been for awhile.”

This angered Ecrin. “Sharice Prieto, you have one captain, and she’s the one on your bridge. I am ordering you to cease all unauthorized communication with the Zerzan, and drop yourself to hush mode, or I’ll make you wish a UAI could be court-martialed. Do you understand me?”

“Sir?” the communications officer said. “It’s the Zerzan. It’s slowing down, just a little.”

“What is Sharice doing?” Brooke asked.

“She’s... she’s syncing,” he answered.

Brooke looked at her own console. “It’s a docking maneuver. The ships are getting married.” This was the colloquialism for when two ships were locked together, resembling a mating position, but that was usually only done when one of them was unable to travel on its own. The Zerzan appeared to be in perfect operation, which it shouldn’t have been, because Sharice should have let Holly release disabling grenades on it.

The communications officer spoke again, “that’s not all. They’re preparing to share power.”

“Officer Blue,” Ecrin commanded. “Shut this whole thing down. Now. Sharice is compromised.”

Holly Blue’s interface terminal exploded, sending her scurrying back away from it. One by one, all other consoles exploded as well, except for the auxiliary terminal in the corner, which wasn’t even powered up. The fires that started were immediately put out by the internal suppression systems. Sharice may have been compromised, but she didn’t want to hurt them.

“She’s doing this for a reason,” Brooke said in hope. “Don’t ask me what that reason is, but I don’t think she’s been hacked, or anything.”

“I need solutions, people!” Ecrin shouted.

Holly Blue activated her earpiece. “Parsons, are you in engineering?” She waited for a reply only she could hear. “Remember the little red button?—Push the little red button.—Now you have manual control.—Jettison the drives.—Yes, all of them! Now!”

“I don’t think the Zerzan needs our drives to fly,” Brooke noted.

“No, but they do need theirs,” Holly Blue said, before turning her head slightly, and looking at the floor, to indicate she was back on the phone. “Good. Now drop every goddamn grenade we have. I don’t wanna take any chances. I want us both dead in the water.”

The lights flickered but stayed on. All crewman on the bridge fell away from the floor, and began floating around. Only Brooke remained standing, having been using magboots since she started flying on the Sharice. They weren’t generally necessary, but Brooke was always worried about something like this happening, and her upgrades made her strong enough to barely notice a difference.

“Brooke, you’re closest. Can you boot up the aux for me?” Holly Blue asked. “We need to find out what’s going on.”

“Why would it still be working?” Brooke asked her as she was walking over to comply. “Why are the lights on?”

“I protected the bridge from the the EMPs, because...well, I think you see why.”

After Brooke’s boots were finished clicking and clacking, they started hearing more clicking and clacking from the hallway, drawing nearer with every step. Brooke switched on the computer, then took out her weapon, as did everyone else. The clacking stopped ominously, just outside. A magical black archway appeared on the door, then fade away to show a man standing in it. Behind him was the hallway. He stepped through, and let the door fade back into view. He looked around to get his bearings, then went straight for Brooke’s corner terminal. Ecrin tried to shoot him in the shoulder, but the bullet literally passed right through him. She continued to shoot, just to be sure, but it was no good. He was a either a choosing one, or a salmon, and one which none of them had ever heard of.

The man walked right through Brooke’s body, and started working on the terminal. She tried to stop him, but her hands were just as useless as Ecrin’s bullets. She gave up, and tried to halt his attempts to break into their system by tapping random keys. He took her by the wrists, and forced her hands behind her back, right through the wall. He then closed the wall back up, and left her trapped there. He was capable of temporarily erasing objects from reality, and then just as easily putting them back as if they had never disappeared. “Sharice, are you there?” he called out.

“I’m here,” Sharice replied.

“I can’t get your weapons back online. Can you do that yourself?”

“I cannot,” she said.

“What about the drop ship?” he suggested.

“What about the drop ship?”

“Will it work?” he clarified.

“Yes, it will work, but—”

He stepped away from the the terminal, and headed towards the exit. “Then make the jump.”

“Captain,” she said, concerned.

“Make the jump, unless you want to do it yourself.”

“I could,” Sharice said.

He opened his portal, and stepped one foot through it. “I’m replaceable, you’re not. Thank you for the...re-education.” He stepped all the way through, but stuck his head back in fat the last second. “Make the jump.”

The Sharice’s teleporter powered up and initiated a jump. They could see the stars outside the window change. Then the teleporter powered up again, and the stars changed again. Again, and again, and again. The hull buckled and quaked, losing integrity more and more each time.

“It can’t take much more of this!” Holly Blue warned them as the ship kept teleporting.

Brooke struggled with her wrists. “On the bright side, it’s weakening this wall.” After the last jump them took them all the way back to Earth’s orbit, Brooke was able to break free. She adjusted her magboots to a low setting, and started running, crashing right through the door, and continuing down the hallway. The drop ship was all the way at the end of the mothership, and was meant to be an escape pod for all the crewman who worked on that side. She ran as fast as she could.

The hatch was closed when she got there, but Holly Blue had presumably teleported herself all the way there. “You should have waited for an emergency teleporter,” she said, still floating. She opened the hatch, and let Brooke through, but she probably shouldn’t have. The drop ship broke free from the Sharice, releasing all of its oxygen at once.

Seconds from death, the invader forced his hands back to the console, and finished inputting his command, but he was unable to execute the program before losing consciousness.

“Execute the program,” Sharice begged.

Brooke was hardier than a normal human. She was actually rated to survive the vacuum of space for a brief period of time, with no harm done. It would not last forever, though. And in this case, with her ship plummeting towards the Earth, at a bad angle, she was going to die anyway.

“Execute the program,” Sharice repeated. “Please, I don’t wanna lose you. Trust me. Push the button.”

Brooke decided to take a chance. She got herself to the command console, and pressed the execute button. The drop ship suddenly teleported deeper in the atmosphere. Oxygen returned to her lungs, but she was still falling to her doom. They were heading right for another ship; too large to be hanging out this close to the surface. All of its weapons were trained on the ground below, which Brooke realized was the center of the Northwest Forest circle. That was where the pioneers lived. They too disliked technology, but were peaceful and accepting of other people’s lifestyles. The drop ship was going to hit the attacker right in the center, and blow it out the sky. That wasn’t good either, though, because the debris would do just as much damage to the land dwellers below as the weapons would.

Étude suddenly teleported in, took Brooke by the waist, and jumped them to the surface. Brooke looked up and watch as the drop ship continued to fall, then hit the other vessel. It began to break apart, just as Brooke had predicted, but it didn’t get too far. A Lucius-bomb exploded seconds later, and tore it apart on the molecular level. Not a single piece of debris was left to hit the ground. The circles were saved, but from whom?

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Microstory 504: Why Does the Destruction Destroy?

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Separatist, extremist, terrorist. These are just some of the terms associated with the unnamed man known to most only as The Destruction. It seems that every week comes with a new story about one of The Destruction’s heinous crimes. I just spent four months as a faceless minion in The Destruction’s militia, under threat of eventual criminal prosecution, and I can tell you that it is not what you would expect. I’m planning both a long-form article about my experience, and possibly a later book, but I wanted to get out a few points. First of all, most—if not all—members of the militia legitimately believe in The Destruction’s cause, and this cause is not what you’ve probably heard. They do not believe in anarchy just for the sake of it, or so that they can run around doing whatever they want. Nor do they want to dismantle the establishment so that some sort of better society can rise from its ashes. What they really want is to create cracks in the system. He has indoctrinated his people into trusting in some sort of master plan. That’s right, folks, they have what you might call “true faith”. He treats his people well, providing for them food and luxurious shelter wherever they are. He never explains his orders, but they are always followed to the letter. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you why he’s never questioned. I was able to infiltrate his organization after speaking with a survivor from his group who was deprogrammed, and she cannot explain it either. The way she’s talked about it, though, it sounds almost hypnotic, like their minds were being controlled. I can’t speak to that, however. Perhaps I just wasn’t part of it for long enough. What I can tell you is that The Destruction is not as mysterious as he would have the public believe. He’s just a man. He was born of one mother, and one father. He grew up with both pain, and happiness. He sees problems with this world, and like most everybody, he thinks he knows how to fix it. That much is clear. He’s not creating all this fear for no reason; he’s doing it for a purpose. The answer to this article’s question is one that should not be answered, because it doesn’t matter. All that matters is finding a way of combating all that fear.