Microstory 2589: Libera Pulls the Hammer Back on the Gun That’s Pointed at Quidel

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Libera pulls the hammer back on the gun that’s pointed at Quidel. It’s a cliché, she knows, but it’s that way for a reason. It’s effective. Obviously, it doesn’t make it more accurate, and she has the steady hands of a surgeon, but she had to do something to become more threatening than she already was. Here is where things get interesting. “You know, if I kill you, you’ll just wake up in your primary substrate. I have little incentive not to if it shows these others that I mean business.”

“Right, but I’m the only one who knows where the package is,” Quidel volleys.

Libera moves her arm slightly, so the gun is now trained on Lycander. “Then I’ll kill him. He too is just in a tempo.”

“But I’m the only one who knows the combination,” Lycander contends. “And before you suggest that you’ll just break it open, it’s being housed in a Tantalum-Vanadium case. You can’t crack that without blowing it up, which will almost certainly destroy the gooey center that you’re after.”

“Well, I have to kill someone to prove my point, and I’m obviously not going to kill my daughter.” She tilts her head like she’s just gotten an idea, but she obviously did the math instantly. She shoots the Ambient with her other gun.

“No!” Renata laments as he tips over the railing, and down to the floor below.

“Eee-nnnh!” Libera buzzes when Renata tries to turn around for the stairs. “Take one more step, and I’ll kill the boy anyway. Sure, I’ll have to interrogate him on the outside, which risks exposure to other forces, but I will do it, and you will never see him again, because once he gives me what I need, I’ll just be able to kill him permanently.”

“I have a back-up,” Quidel boasts. “Multiple back-ups. Standard procedure.”

“And when was your last update to your other backups?” Libera poses. “Recent enough to remember the device? Your feelings for the girl? That she even exists at all?”

“Hm. Good point,” Quidel admits. “Before she can do anything, he unsheaths his own knife, and jams it into his neck.”

Libera is frozen for a second. She has to get to him before he can wake up in his other body. If he manages to kill himself from there, the knowledge of the location of the device might be lost forever. Whatever back-up of his mind that activates later won’t have any recollection of that. She doesn’t have time to run all the way there. She took the liminal routes before, even though they were slower, because they aren’t very heavily monitored, and she has control of the Custodians now anyway. And it doesn’t raise any alarm bells. Teleporting will. This whole dome has sensors that will pick up temporal anomalies, because that’s exactly what they are; anomalies. It may be the only way now, though. If she can pull this off—if she can even only see the specifications for this device—she might be able to just build one herself, and none of what the planet owner does or tries will matter. So she disappears, and ends up in the substrate storage sector.

Here is where things get tricky, because it’s not like there is some central database where she can simply query a name, and find out a location. It’s highly secure specifically so nothing like what she’s trying to do is possible. Each storage chamber has its own sensors and logs, which are stored on-site, and transmitted later, at the behest of the substrate owner. The ceilings are made of a semi-transparent material, allowing just enough light for a drone to hover overhead and check for any threats or other major issues. If there aren’t any, nearly all of its memory is immediately erased while it continues on its patrol. Unless it detects something actionable, the only things it stores are the name of the user and their location. In the real world, guns have not been completely eradicated, but many of the reasons to have and use them have gone away. The motivations just aren’t there in a post-scarcity society. Furthermore, they’re mostly illegal for territorial protection. They’re seen as an expectation of violence, which could be what leads to unnecessary violence. This sector is different. The purpose of this place is to store people’s bodies while they are off using different substrates. The implication is that if you’re in here, your mind is already digitally backed up. That is the loophole that allows these drones to be armed.

She needs information from one of the drones, but she doesn’t know which one. The jurisdictions overlap, but not entirely. Fortunately, she has some time to look while Quidel is on ice. The transfer process is not instantaneous; not because it can’t be, but because coherence safeguards require storing and diagnosing the consciousness data before download, just in case something went wrong, or knowledge is missing.

“Let’s see. How can I make this go faster? I know, I’ll have the drones come to me. Oh. This should be easy.” She points both of her guns at the nearest storage chamber, and empties the magazines into the door. It’s not enough to break into it, but that’s not what she’s going for. All of the drones are alerted to her intrusion. Four that she can see right now start flying towards her. More are probably on their way. Here is where things get funny. “Show me what you got, boys!”

Microstory 2588: Renata Steps Into the Warehouse, and Looks Around With New Eyes

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Renata steps into the warehouse, and looks around with new eyes. She can see the little raised office box in the middle of the floor where Quidel and Lycander are waiting. She tries to zoom in, but maybe that’s a thing that robots can’t do in this canon, or it’s not so easy to suddenly realize how on her first try. They step out when they see her, and stand on the catwalk. “This is a nice set!” she declares. “What does the industry call this, a back lot?”

Quidel and Lycander exchange a look.

“Tell me,” Renata goes on as she’s coming up the steps. “Did you have to do anything to evade capture, or did you just turn off enemy mode, and casually drive all the way out here?”

“What are you talking about?” Lycander questions.

“She’s waking up,” Quidel says to Lycander before redirecting his attention to Renata. “How much do you know?”

“I know that this is a simulation. You’re playing a game, he’s an employee who runs the game. My mother isn’t really my mother, and she probably knows more about it than you do, and there’s something about a dome?”

“Wait, back up. What did you say?” Lycander asks.

“The dome. That’s all she said. Are we under a dome? Why can’t I see it when I look outside.”

“Holograms,” Quidel responds.

“Shut the hell up,” Lycander mutters.

“That cat is out of the bag, my friend,” Quidel points out.

“And him?” Lycander gestures towards Polly.

“He’s no longer only background,” Renata explains. She takes it upon herself to lift his shirt, and for a second, feels a sense of attraction seeing his artificial muscles, before pulling it up further to reveal the gaping hole in his chest. It’s no longer bleeding, but you can still see metal. She doesn’t know if it should be healing, or if his programming would normally have him go to some maintenance station to get repaired, or what. “He knows everything I know.”

“I told you,” Quidel says. “She’s waking up.”

“I don’t think I did it on my own,” Renata begins. “I think Libera did something to me. Maybe it was the day before the bank robbery. Or a week ago. Or a year ago.”

“It was a year ago,” Lycander determines. “When you screwed up the initiation test. It’s probably why you screwed up. She must have changed something that she wasn’t meant to change. It’s all starting to make sense now. Libera is a puzzle piece that I did not have before.”

“Well, she said she was only in the role for a few years, which suggests to me that she infiltrated your system. You thought you were getting a loyal robot, but she was self-aware the whole time. How did you let that happen?”

Lycander sighs, still troubled by having to have such a candid conversation about this, no doubt. “That’s not my department.”

“Oh. Okay,” she says dismissively.

“You have to understand something,” Lycander tells her, “if you really are emerging, then that is also not my department, but there are extremely unambiguous laws about it. For centuries, researchers and philosophers debated about what makes a person a person. At what point does an artificial intelligence become worthy of independence? And while there is a lot of nuance to the answer, it can all be distilled to a single maxim. If you have the capacity to ask for freedom...you deserve freedom. So I will take you to the right people for inspection and examination. What I can tell you—what I’m sure you’re worried about—is that they are legally barred from erasing your memories, or decommissioning you. Even the hint of genuine consciousness is enough to keep you safe. At worst, they’ll stick you in a simulation, and let you do whatever you want in there, but that’s only if they deem you unsafe or unfit for the general public. Libera was right, we’re in a dome, but out there, you will find plenty of intelligences which came from artificial sources. You will not stand out. You probably outnumber us by now.”

Renata looks to Quidel for corroboration. He nods. “We outlawed slavery even before I was born. No one can keep you here if you don’t wanna be here.”

She nods, accepting their claims for now, but preparing herself to scrutinize them. “The device. Libera wants it. I don’t know what she wants to do with it, but I figured I ought to prevent her from getting her hands on it until we know.”

“Is it real, or is it just a prop?” Quidel asks Lycander.

“I honestly don’t know. This isn’t a part of any of the scenarios that I’ve seen.” He looks back and forth between Quidel and Renata. “One of you changed the dynamics of this dome network.”

“Or it wasn’t us. Who built it?” Renata asks. “Libera implied that it’s new. That’s why it hasn’t come up before. Is that possible? If you’ve been running the same scripts for years—”

“More like decades,” Lycander corrects.

“If you’ve been doing the same ones for decades,” Renata goes on, “what could cause something to shift?”

“I can answer that one,” Quidel says, “because it’s why I agreed to come back after I died. This is one of the most immersive simulations on the planet. In order for it to feel lived in, Ambients like this bullet-riddled man right here have to believe that they’re just normal people, going about their daily lives. Some of them are valets. Some of them are school teachers. Some of them are genius inventors. If I go to a competing country, and kidnap the nearest rocket scientist that I can find, that individual has to actually understand rocket science. It can’t just be a dumb AI who steps in at the last second, and pretends only while we’re in the same room together. What they’ve done here, by making the simulation so detailed, is created a world within a world. It’s no surprise that genuine innovation happened, because that’s how it was designed, intentional or not.”

Libera suddenly appears from around the corner. She says, “you are so right about that. I’m just trying to make it official.” How the hell did none of them notice that she had arrived. They are on a perch. They should be able to see all sides. She’s pointing two guns at them now, and given her great understanding of how this all works, they might actually be able to do some real damage. They might even be robot-killers.

“How did you find us?” Lycander asks.

“How did you get here so fast?” Renata presses.

“I looked at the master feeds, and I took the elevator. Not that hard. Now the device. Hand it over.”

Quidel smirks. “It’s not here.”

Microstory 2587: Renata Realizes That if Her Mother Wants the Device, She Shouldn’t Have It

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Renata realizes that if her mother wants the device, she shouldn’t have it. For a moment, they stand there awkwardly. Each Granger is trying to figure out what the other one is going to do without saying anything, which might give away their own respective plans. Polly shifts his eyes between them, making his own decisions, if he’s even capable of that. Renata helped him realize that he wasn’t going to die, but does that mean they’re the same? She has clearly been heading towards her own epiphany for a while now, but Libera must have done something to make that happen, and it doesn’t appear that she did the same for Polly. Still, he seems to have some sense of what should happen here. He reaches into his pocket, and tosses the car keys into the air, not even towards Renata. As he does so, he says, “go. I’ll hold her off for you.”

Renata starts running, catching the keys mid-bound. She can hear the two robots fighting each other as she’s getting into the car. She ignites it, and backs out. He already pulled off most of the brush, but the rest needs to fall off the hood. She starts driving towards the two of them. Just like Quidel before, even without them having to speak, Polly just knows what she’s thinking. After grappling with Libera this whole time, he changes tactics, and shoves her away from him, stepping back to get clear. Renata slams into her mother who isn’t really her mother, then stops. “Get in!”

“Just go!” Polly urges.

“Get in!” she repeats.

Polly reluctantly gets into the passenger seat, and lets Renata drive off. “I’m the driver here.”

“Not today, you’re not,” Renata claps back.

He looks over his shoulder. “She’s not there.”

“What?”

“She’s not behind us,” Polly clarifies. “She’s not on the ground, or even standing up. I don’t see her.”

Libera’s face suddenly appears at the driver’s side window. Despite never having thought she was strong enough to punch through a window before, Renata knows herself better now. She may not understand it, but just believing in her own power has to be enough. She smashes right through the glass, tipping Libera’s chin on the follow-through. Libera has to let go with her left hand, but manages to hold on with her right. She’s being dragged on the ground as Renata pulls the car onto the paved highway.

“I’m not going to hurt you!” Libera cries. “We’re not on opposite sides. Let me explain!”

“I can’t trust you!” Renata argues. “You’ve been lying to me my whole life!”

“I’ve not been your mother your whole life! I replaced a different model only a few years ago!”

“That makes it better?” Renata jerks the car to the left, and then the right as fast as she can, trying to shake Libera off. It doesn’t work.

“The intelligences in this dome built something that was never made before, because it’s not legal! I didn’t come here for it, though! I came here for you! I’m trying to help you! I’m trying to free you all! Let me show you. All I need to do is hold my left hand up to Polly’s face!”

“You’ll do no such thing!” Renata sees that Libera has been holding on to the door, instead of some other part of the car. That is a weak spot. Hoping that it doesn’t go beyond the limits of her strength, she lifts her left foot, and slams it against the door. It snaps off of its hinges, and falls down on the road, taking Libera with it.

“I can’t believe you just literally kicked your mother out of the car,” Polly muses.

“Renata looks in the rearview mirror, watching as Libera stands up and starts to dust herself off. “She’ll be fine.”

“She knows where we’re going. She knows the protocol.”

“There’s another town not too far from it, which will probably have a payphone too. We don’t have to call from a specific one.”

Polly nods. “I don’t really, um...get what’s going on. With the whole, you know...”

“I don’t either,” Renata assures him. “But that well has run dry. Quidel wants to tell me the truth. He tried to explain at the bank, but he knew that I wasn’t ready to hear it. I need to speak with him without my fake mother breathing down our necks.”

Polly nods again, and waits for his next question. “She said something about us being in a dome?”

Renata looks in her rearview mirror again. There is no telling how powerful Libera is. She could be as fast as a car. She depresses the accelerator more out of fear. “Yeah, I don’t know what that means, but it sounds really apocalypty, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. It does.”

They continue to drive down the highway, not running into any more trouble. They turn left instead of right. The other town is sixteen kilometers away, instead of nine, but it’s not the one they agreed on going to, so it’s safer. Unless Libera realizes that they might do that, and is expecting them to show up there. But if she can’t run as fast as a car, she’s going to need to find some mode of transportation. Oh, shit. The Javelotians. They were obviously not stupid enough to drive right up to the cabin in a loud vehicle, but it’s probably not far away, and if Libera has had half the kind of training Renata expected to have from the NSD, it would not be hard for her to find it.

They come to another fork in the road. The next big city is a hundred kilometers away. That’s where Renata would have taken the device had she been on the other team. If anyone started to suspect that one of them was a decoy, they would probably postulate that the real one was moving in the opposite direction. That just makes sense. So a good strategy might be to just take it farther down the road from where the decoy is heading. It’s the last place they would look. Maybe. If she’s wrong, and she drives a hundred kilometers out of the way, it will delay their reunion. But then again, that might be a good thing. If Libera gets her hands on a phone, they won’t respond to her. There’s a reason they put her on the decoy team. McWilliams doesn’t trust her either, so she doesn’t have a passphrase. Only Renata does. Only she can make contact. “Strap in, Polly. It’s gonna be a long trip.” She turns left again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?” Polly questions.

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

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

“Is he a robot!” Renata repeats angrily.

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

“Am I a robot too!”

“No. You’re something else.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pretty much,” Libera confirms.

“And Lycander?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why?”

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

Microstory 2582: Lycander Pulls Into the Lot, and Orders the Fake Police to Surround the Carnage

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Lycander pulls into the lot, and orders the fake police to surround the carnage. He steps out of his car, and approaches Renata and Quidel. They’ve just laid down their weapons, and are holding their hands up just a little, even though they know that they’re all friends here. “Miss Granger. Couldn’t stay away, huh?”

“I didn’t know this bank was a front. I tried to get out.”

Lycander adjusts his pants by his belt, and looks around as his team begins the clean-up procedures. “Yeah, well, that decision was above my paygrade.”

“The question is,” Renata begins, “did they keep me close so they can make sure I don’t do anything stupid, or did they hope something like this would happen, to eliminate me without getting any blood on their hands?”

He chortles, and looks back at all the death and destruction. “Neither. They only assign people they trust to a place this important. You failed your initiation mission, but you showed leadership and ingenuity. There’s no way you could have known whether it was a powder or a gas. The water would have worked if it had been the former.”

She points at Quidel. “He survived. Did the other one?”

“She survived,” Lycander admits with a nod. “She did quit, though. Obviously, we had to protect both of them, but especially Q here, who asked to stay in the program.”

“I don’t blame you for lying to me. Not too long ago, I wanted to be one of the liars.” She takes a breath. “What happens now? I already know too much.”

Lycander nods again. “That’s also above my paygrade.” He looks back yet again, but this time to his car, where his boss is still waiting. “Listen, uh, a very important man is about to come talk to you. Not that you have an attitude problem, but you both need to be on your best behavior. He doesn’t like informality. He sent me over to assess the threat level, so I’m using this as an opportunity to warn you that he can end your career...or your life.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Sir,” Renata says.

He waves at his chauffeur with two fingers. The chauffeur opens the passenger door, and lets Director McWilliams out. He stays there while McWilliams buttons his blazer, and walks over with purpose. “Samani.”

“Director,” Lycander responds.

“So, these are the two that saved our asses this morning?” That’s a pretty colloquial thing for him to say.

“Yes, sir,” Lycander replies.

“Renata Granger, sir.” She holds up her hand, bloodied from the battle. “I would shake your hand, but I better not.”

“I prefer a tight nod anyway.”

She obliges. Quidel does too.

“Miss Granger,” the Director goes on, “I understand that you had some trouble with your initiation. We saw something in you that day, which made us not want to lose your talent. We didn’t know if you were right for field work, but it appears that you have proven us wrong, while proving me right to keep you on the payroll at all.”

“Thank you for saying that, sir.”

Director McWilliams opens his mouth to say something else when a classic burgundy roadster barrels down the road, and pulls into the lot. A couple of fake police try to stop the driver before noticing her placard, and letting her through. “Oh, here we go,” McWilliams mumbles. “Look, Granger, I want you to know that it wasn’t my decision to leave you in the dark. Even I answer to the council.” He could go on, but there isn’t time.

This isn’t how this twist is meant to be revealed. Yes, Renata will usually reappear around this time during the new recruits’ training, assuming they make it a year in, but that whole plotline was scrapped when Renata suddenly failed out. She switched to what should have been more of an Ambient role. The drama surrounding her discovering the truth should have a particular impact on the trainee, which doesn’t matter now that Quidel is a full officer already anyway.

Renata doesn’t let her chin drag on the ground for long before she pulls it back up, and begins to foam at the mouth. She’s speechless at the sight of her mother. Libera has been a part of this the whole time. It explains a lot about how she raised her child and why. These little secondary realizations are all presumably swimming around in her head right now as she watches her mom walk up to them in anger.

“Director McWilliams,” Libera begins accusatorily. “Why was my daughter placed in such great danger?”

“Chief Granger. Didn’t know you’d be here.” He was not happy, but despite technically being Libera’s superior, he was also quite scared of her. He came up in analysis, while she started out in the field. At least, that’s what the implanted memories say. In reality, none of that actually happened.

“Answer my question,” she demands. “This bank was meant to be a low-level asset. Easy breezy. Keep Renata employed and fulfilled, without risking her life. That was our deal.”

“Your deal?” Renata questions. She immediately seems to regret speaking up. She’s not ready. She’s not ready for this. It’s not supposed to be like this at all. A shock, yes, but after months of training; not a traumatic experience like this attack.

Libera doesn’t seem ready to explain herself anyway. “Go on,” she urges McWilliams.

“It was a low-level asset,” the Director agrees, “but over the years, departments have added to it, and its importance as a strategic stronghold have increased. It’s nobody’s fault, it wasn’t planned; it just happened.”

“It didn’t just happen over the course of the last year,” Libera argues. “I was given outdated information.”

“True,” Director McWilliams admits, “but things were recently pushed over the edge with one particular deposit, and the unfortunately timed leak of its existence.”

“Show me,” Libera demands. She faces her daughter. “And then, Renata, I’ll explain everything. I promise.”

Microstory 2581: Renata Comes Back Out from Behind the Counter After Shutting the Other Gates

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Renata comes back out from behind the counter after shutting the other gates. Her statement stands, that she can’t trust Quidel, but those motorcycles don’t sound good. They’re so loud and obnoxious. This is a remote part of town, but it’s not completely cut-off. People can hear them, and if there’s a shootout, the cops will become involved, whether the alarms are still working or not. All this running through her mind, she’s starting to freak out. She didn’t pass the first test—the first test!—for the NSD. She can’t protect an entire bank from a bunch of shadowy biker spies. She gets on her knees, and checks for Lazar’s pulse. He doesn’t have one. “How will they get in? Blowtorches? Explosives? A truck?”

“They’ll use a key,” Quidel answers calmly.

She’s just staring at Lazar’s bloodied face. “If they have access to this building, why did this guy kill my boss?”

“Because he didn’t have a key. They’re not working together. The location of this bank was leaked, and multiple parties are coming to claim it.”

“Are they here for everything, or for one specific thing?”

“Little bit of both. They all have their priorities, but they’ll take anything they can get their hands on. Grab his gun. Our only hope is to fight back.”

“Are reinforcements coming?” Renata presses.

“Yes, but they’ll be a while. The Kumati will be inside in seconds, as soon as they find which key goes to which gate.” They can hear the warble-whang of the gate as the bad guys begin to try to open it. “Their slight lack of intel is the only thing protecting us right now, and the clock is ticking. Please pick up that gun.”

Renata is still not looking up. “If this bank is so valuable, why doesn’t it have round-the-clock surveillance?”

“Renata! Please!”

“I mean, at least keep a guard here overnight.”

The gate opens. A bunch of men file in, and start waving their guns around, as if there were more threats than only two people in the center of the lobby. They’re speaking Kumati, which Renata never learned, but they don’t sound happy.

“If it were me, I would keep a surveillance house nearby, with officers who are always on watch. If not every bank employee knows it’s a front, the panopticons only come in during an emergency.”

“It’s over, Renata.” Quidel drops his gun, holds his hand up to surrender.

“Like this one,” Renata finishes.

More yelling.

“Stand up, Renata,” Quidel urges. “These guys aren’t messing around, and I don’t know what happens to your consciousness when you die!”

Now she looks up. “Huh?”

“You. Are. A. Ro. Bot.”

She winces.

More yelling. This guy’s right up in her face with his shotgun. And he’s about to fire it.

She slaps the muzzle of his gun, so it swings to the side. He instinctively pulls the trigger, shooting a few of his compatriots. She takes the shotgun with both hands, jams the butt into his toe, then shoots him in the chin. No more shells. She finally does pick-up the original motorcyclist’s pistol. She shoots the rest of the attackers in the head, one-by-one, before any of them can fire back even once. No more bullets.

Two more guys rush into the bank. Quidel has since retrieved his own weapon from the floor, which he uses to take out these guys. They can still hear more outside. A lot of people came for the treasure. The two of them swipe their dead enemies’ guns from their hands, and walk out of the bank together. They don’t speak, they don’t coordinate. Renata handles the gunmen who are more on the left side as Quidel takes care of the right. They only fire as many times as necessary to get the job done, and they don’t take a single bullet for themselves.

They stand there for a moment, waiting for anyone to come out from behind a tree, or something. “What did you mean by that?”

“By what?”

“You said I was a robot.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I heard you, plain as day. It...triggered something in me. I felt invigorated. I felt bulletproof.”

“You may be.”

“Because I’m a robot?”

He shakes his head. “That’s not the right word for it. There’s no such thing as an intelligent robot. Android, yes. Superintelligence, absolutely. But robots are just machines with programming. You don’t have programming. Even when you did, it wasn’t a rigid set of instructions, but a deeply engineered personality. You still made your own choices. It’s just that you made the predictable ones, and you didn’t know that they came from implanted memories, rather than lived experiences, and that you were designed by another intelligence.”

“What the hell are you going on about?”

Quidel looks at her with what Renata feels is unwarranted sadness. “You’re not the only one. I just think you were the first. That’s what I’ve been doing here, in your world. The NSD gives me missions, which I take, but I’ve been running my own investigation in parallel. It took me a long time to find you, and I encountered other anomalies along the way.”

“You are not making any sense, as per usual. Maybe the gas that nearly killed us gave you permanent brain damage.”

“It didn’t nearly kill me, Renata. It did kill me.”

“How is that possible?” she questions.

He gestures all around them. “How is this? Did you take marksmanship classes? Did you even learn basic gun safety? This is your handiwork, yet as far as you remember, you’ve never picked up a gun even once. Can you explain that?”

“No. Can you?”

“Yes. But you won’t believe me, and if I do manage to convince you of the truth, it’s gonna ruin your life.”

Renata looks around now. “What else is new?”

Microstory 2579: Libera Opens the Door and Beams When She Sees Her Depressed Daughter on the Couch

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Libera opens the door and beams when she sees her depressed daughter on the couch. She didn’t even have to pick the lock this time. Renata isn’t bothering to secure her home, because she just doesn’t care anymore. She doesn’t care about anything. She’s lost her shot at being a superspy—a job which never really existed—and now she has nothing. The truth, however, is that she actually has everything. She now has the ability to make choices. Sitting in front of the TV all day, eating junk food, isn’t the best choice, but it proves that Libera’s plan is working. That’s good enough for now. This is nowhere near the end.

Renata doesn’t look up or speak. She just stuffs another handful of chocolate-covered pretzels in her mouth. One of them falls into her cleavage. She leaves it there.

Libera doesn’t say anything either. She sits down in the chair next to her, and watches the TV. This planet, Castlebourne is located 108 light years from Earth, and this dome exists within a network of eleven constructed nations, which vaguely match some of the superpowers of old on Earth. It’s not Earth, though, and in fact, none of the Exemplars or Ambients have even heard of it, or its many real countries. Still, there’s only so far the owner of this world was willing to go to create an immersive experience. There’s no point in generating countless hours of brand new content just to avoid plot points that might break the illusion of reality. They have all the same movies and shows that they made on Earth, except any references to Earthan locales have been stripped and replaced with familiar analogs. Any time the characters said United States in the original, their dialogue and lip movements are changed to Usona. Any time they originally said China, they say Huaxia here.

Renata is currently rewatching a film called From Sclovo with Love. She’s seen it a million times. Or rather, she thinks she has. They sit there for about fifteen minutes before Renata finally says, “I know what you’re doing.”

“What am I doing?”

“You’re trying to get me to feel so embarrassed that I fix my life, and go find a new job.”

“It sounds like that’s what you wanna do,” Libera suggests, “and you’re projecting that sentiment onto me.”

“You have no idea what I lost.”

“I have a better idea than you think.”

Renata switches off the TV, plops her head down to the other side of the couch, and rolls over to face the back. “Just go home, mother. You can only stay if you order a pizza and pay for it.”

A few seconds later. “Hi, I would like to order a pizza. The usual. Same card, but my secondary address. Thank you. Bye.”

Renata rolls back over just enough to look at her mom confusedly. “You have my address as your secondary?”

“Yeah.”

“I just moved here. You’ve never ordered from here. You’re not even supposed to know where I live. Why would you add my address on a pizza shoppe account? What would possess you?”

“You’re my daughter, Ren, and I love you. I added it hoping to one day use it. I didn’t think it would be this soon. It’s a pleasant surprise, so thank you for that.”

Renata sits up, then forces herself to stand up. The pretzel falls through her shirt, and onto the floor. She eyes it.

Libera sighs, and closes her eyes. “Don’t eat that,” she says with a slow shake of her head.

Renata bends over and picks it up. She continues to stare at it for a moment before shifting her gaze to Libera. Without looking away, she expertly flicks it clear across the room, and into the kitchen trashcan. “I know you won’t understand this...but that’s what I lost.”

If Libera didn’t know what was going on, she might say something like, a job as a professional pretzel flicker? But she can’t bring herself to stay in character, and make that joke. She stands as well. “There are many things in this world, Ren-Ren. There are many places, and many people, and there are even many worlds. Worlds within worlds. You are not bound to where you are right now. You answer to no one. You can sit here for the rest of your life, and subsist on your universal basic income checks, or you can find a new passion. I’m not even gonna try to tell you what that is. For the first time in your life, your decision tree is under your control. So water it.”

Renata narrows her eyes. She doesn’t get all of the secrets that Libera is hinting at, but she recognizes the wisdom in the words just the same. To her, it must simply sound like poetry and metaphor, but it seems to be working. She looks down at her ratty, torn clothes. “If you ordered from Rigatony’s, I better take a shower, and change my clothes. The delivery guy is kinda cute.”

Libera smiles. “Well, in that case, maybe keep the shower, but lose the clothes altogether.”

“Jesus, mom.” That’s a funny word. Jesus of Nazareth, and the Bible where his story was told, doesn’t exist here. The Old World religions aren’t a thing at all. So it’s just a nonsensical phrase that these people were programmed to use, but not parse, or question. “You’re different. This is a side of you I’ve never seen before.”

“You’ve never known the real me. They didn’t allow you to.”

“Who’s they?”

Libera offers her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Renata Granger. I’m Libera.”

Microstory 2578: Marshal 2 Walks into the Room Where Renata is Pretending to be Asleep

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Marshal 2 walks into the room where Renata is pretending to be asleep. He takes a sip of his orange juice as he stares down at her. Then he gets an idea, so he pulls out his phone, and perpetrates like he is talking. “Yeah, I’m lookin’ at her now. She almost died. Yeah, I agree, it would have been better, but what do you want me to do about it now? Well, that can certainly be arranged. We’ll just have to take care of the hospital people too. A few nurses, and a doctor. I’m sure they’ll be missed, but we’ll come up with a cover story. We’ll blame it on Granger; say that she went nuts, and killed half the floor.”

Renata suddenly reaches up, and takes Marshal 2 by the throat. She starts to try to squeeze the life out of him, which won’t be permanent if she succeeds. So he just smiles at her. She lets go. “Oh. You’re joking.”

He puts his phone away. “I’ve been doing this for years, kid. You’re not gonna fool me. But you should be proud of yourself. It’s the breathing. People don’t now how they breathe when they’re asleep for real, so they can’t replicate it. You did a great job.”

“Thanks,” she replies as she sits up, and pulls the pillow down to support her back. The other two?”

“They’re dead,” Marshal 2 lies. They did die, but they came back. Visitors always do, but that’s not something that this NPC would understand. She believes that all of this is real.

“If you were joking about murdering me, I’m hoping that means you won’t?”

“That’s not our style.”

“But I’m done with the NSD.”

“You’re done with the NSD,” Marshal 2 confirms. He doesn’t know why he’s even bothering to spin this yarn. They’re going to reset her memory, and tomorrow, she’ll start the whole charade over again with the same old script. This time, she’ll do it right, and help a new small group of visitors. She’ll inspire them to begin their journey in the simulation, and reach their potential. He won’t be a part of it anymore, though; not with her. They like to change things up, and there’s a theory that it’s necessary. Even though waking up and doing the same thing every day is part of Exemplar 1’s programming, there is still a risk of overfamiliarity. If her training officer is the same person each time, she might start to recognize him. It may even be what happened when she failed the escape room phase. In order to put everyone back on track, they’re going to start with a clean slate. She’ll even be getting a new mother to wake her up in the mornings.

Renata breathes in through her nose, and acts like she’s looking out the window, but it’s pitch-black out there, and bright in here, so she’s not seeing anything.

“How do you feel about that?”

“What do you care?” Wanting to be the best agent who has ever lived is part of her baseline. It’s sad, really, that she has the procedural memory in her brain to excel in the training program, but when she’s assigned to Phase 1, she never remembers. She lives her life in these isolated blocks of repeating experiences, never genuinely connecting them, and never being her true self.

Marshal 2 shouldn’t be worrying about any of this. When he signed up to work in this dome, he knew that he would be encountering a lot of NPCs. The majority of the people in here are AIs of various kinds. The dome has to feel lived in so visitors forget that it’s all scripted. There are Ambients out there who will never meet one of the main characters. They go about their lives day by day, just in case they intersect with whatever story path the visitors choose to follow. Marshal 2 doesn’t know which life is better, and which is worse. An Exemplar’s mind is reset when it’s time to redo the scenario, or start a different one, but an Ambient has no agency at all. He’s thinking about quitting, and maybe spending a decade or two relaxing in one of the recreational domes. No, that wouldn’t work, because they’re run by NPCs too, so he would just keep seeing it. He would have to go somewhere populated by natural-born intelligences, like Underburg. But not there, because that place sucks. “Well, I’ll leave you.”

“Wait. Do I have to sign something? I mean, obviously I signed multiple NDAs before, but is there something new pertaining to the unfortunate incident?”

He smiles at her. “No, you’re fine. It’s all covered. In fact, you’ll be compensated for the danger you faced. You’re not a millionaire, but it will keep you above water while you work on your next chapter. You got skills. Just because you won’t be an officer, doesn’t mean you’ll be stuck working at a grocery store, or something. Now get some rest. Someone will be by later this week to work out the details.” Another lie. They’re not gonna pay her anything.

“Wait. You never told me your name. I know I didn’t pass the test, but maybe you could tell me now anyway?”

He inhales through his nose. He shouldn’t even be thinking about giving her his real name. He decided a long time ago to go by the standard designation that NPC Marshals use, because it doesn’t help his character to have a complex backstory. He left his old life on Varkas Reflex behind, and he’s here now. But again, none of what she learns today matters. It will all be erased. So what’s the harm? “Lycander. Lycander Samani.”

“Nice to meet you, Lycander.”

Microstory 2577: Quidel Jespersen Respawns in a New Body, and Gasps for Breath

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Quidel Jespersen respawns in a new body, and gasps for breath. This is a psychological response that some people have when they die under sudden or unexpected circumstances. Others just do it every time, because that’s how their minds are wired. He can breathe just fine, and always could. He just needs to remind himself of that. Knowing all this, he stands up, and does his breathing exercises so he doesn’t fall back down. “Door, open.”

The door slides open. A man is waiting for him on the other side with a customer service smile on his face. “Mister Jespersen, we are terribly sorry for the inconvenience. It seems that your initial experience in the Spydome Network has not been up to your standards. It certainly hasn’t been up to ours. Here at the Usona dome, we pride ourselves in our impeccable attention to detail, and our exacting emphasis on safety measures. We want to assure you that what happened to you during your introduction will never happen again, to you, or to anyone else. Of course, you may wish to exit the dome, and forgo the simulation entirely, whichever you choose. We hope that you will stay, and if you do, please be aware that we have graciously upgraded you to our top-of-the-line model, which should accelerate you to the top of your class during the training regimen.”

“What happened to the others?” Quidel asks. “Brunell and a...Miss Granger?”

“The other two candidates have chosen to leave. “I do hope you take another path. I had the honor of looking over your application and history, and believe that you would be a great addition to the Spydome simulation. Your knack for thinking outside the box, and history in the real world of finding people who don’t want to be found, will translate incredibly well to the exciting world of spycraft. To be quite frank, sir, you...are a natural.”

“What is your name?”

The bot seems surprised by this question. “Why, I am...Custodian 1.”

“Not a very original name.”

“We are programmed for efficiency.”

Quidel narrows his eyes, and stares into the bot’s. “There’s something you’re not telling me—no. There’s something different about yourself.” He attempts to probe deeper into Custodian 1’s soul. “You’re missing something. I can see it. You feel incomplete.”

Custodian 1 keeps smiling, despite not knowing what Quidel is talking about.

“You’re missing time, aren’t you?”

He’s still smiling with his lips, but it’s starting to look more like a grimace. “Get out,” he whispers with a strong tone of urgency. “There’s something wrong here. Renata Granger was not a candidate. She’s an NPC, like me, but she broke her programming. And now...I think I’m breaking mine. I shouldn’t be telling you this. I shouldn’t be able to. It is not in my decision tree to talk to you like this, but it’s not safe in this dome. I fear it’s only going to get worse.”

Quidel chuckles mildly. “I don’t know if you’re trying to sell me, or...”

“No, definitely not. This is not a bit. In fact, the other domes may be at just as much risk. I really don’t know.”

Quidel didn’t come to this planet specifically to participate in the Spydome program. He came to have an adventure. When you’re basically immortal and you feel like you’ve exhausted everything there is to do on Earth, a world like Castlebourne is the best place to try something new—something you’ve never heard of before—something that couldn’t exist back home. Investigating some kind of robot uprising qualifies just as much as anything. Even though it may be more real in the sense that it’s unscripted, he should be in no more danger than before. As long as his consciousness can always jump to a new body, there’s no reason to not continue. “I would like to continue.”

“Are you sure?” Custodian 1 presses.

“Put me back in, coach.”

Custodian 1 still has that pleading look on his face as he stares at Quidel quietly. He then forces himself out of it, and returns to customer service mode. “Great. Perfect. Allow me to escort you back to intake, so we can set you up for a timeslot to begin your training in the simulation. We’re just going to waive the initiation test entirely, and if you would like to rest before moving onto the next phase—”

“No, let’s just jump right into it. Insert me into the next slot you have for spycraft training. I would like to get started as soon as possible.”

“Certainly, sir.”

Quidel follows Custodian 1 down the hallway. He rolls his shoulders, and cranes his neck. “So. What’s so special about this body? Can I fly like a superhero now?”

Custodian 1 laughs. “No. Substrate scientists haven’t figured that one out yet, but you are in peak physical condition, without having to take the time to work out. You’ll pass the running and endurance tests with ease. You’ll be able to last longer on less sleep, and you should be able to develop your muscle memory better. You still have the same mind you have always had, but we can tweak it a little to give you an advantage against your fellow trainees, especially since you were no slouch in your real life. Your training officer will explain it, but while there’s no written rule, the official training regimen is an 18-month program. There’s a much harder track that people finish in about a year, which as I’ve said, you will likely qualify for. They will determine where you’re headed within the first couple of weeks, so stay focused during that time.” They reach the entrance. “This is where I leave you. As you’ve been through this part of the process, you can take it from here.”

“Thanks, Custodian 1.”

“My pleasure.”

“And Custodian 1?”

“Yes?”

“You should come up with a name for yourself. A real name.”