Starstruck: The Toliman Nulls (Part I)

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When Brooke Prieto, Sharice Prieto, Mirage, and the newest member of their group, Belahkay Teal arrived inside the heliosphere of Alpha Centauri B, they immediately figured out why the vonearthans had chosen not to colonize it. All stars and other celestial bodies are valuable. They contain hydrogen, helium, and other elements, which can be used to produce energy and/or construct useful structures. Lots of science fiction stories only care about worlds that are naturally habitable, but that doesn’t really matter. With sufficiently advanced technology, anything can become habitable, even if that only means breaking it all apart to make enclosed spaceships. Nothing in the universe is completely useless, including Toliman, except that there’s something different about it. There’s something eerie about it. The closer they got to the star, the worse they felt, and there was no escape from this. Mirage was an early general intelligence turned transdimensional observer god turned android. Sharice was an unregulated AI turned android. Brooke was a human turned android. Out of the four of them, only Belahkay was alive with nearly all biological components. They were all capable of manipulating their sensory inputs to varying degrees, but not in this case. The sickness took hold of them all, and made them all feel the same.

According to the exploratory records, a single probe was sent to the star system. This happened at the same time that they were being sent to Proxima Centauri and Rigel Kentaurus. These were the three closest stars to Sol, so it made perfect sense. While the first two received later vessels, as well as passengers, Toliman was abandoned after the first probe. The reason for this was never publicized, but since there were hundreds of billions of other stars in this galaxy alone, no one really bothered to question that decision. Not even Mirage knew the answer, but her educated guess was that a time traveler had something to do with it. Travelers come from all time periods, and while the majority of history can be attributed to normal people making whatever decisions they feel they ought to, a few events were ultimately caused by someone who knew how specific decisions would turn out. Of course time travelers made certain decisions all the time, but in this case, we’re talking about deliberately driving the course of the future with profound and more obvious choices, or with big nudges.

For instance, to travel at something called fractional speeds—which is to say, a significant fraction of light speed—an object in motion must accelerate from a stopped position. This works with anything. A car can’t just suddenly go from zero miles per hour to 60 miles per hour with no intervening speeds in between. Except it can, as long as it can manipulate time and space properly. It was a time traveler, or perhaps a team, who first introduced the humans to this concept, and vonearthans have been taking the feature of interstellar travel for granted ever since. It’s not instant, but it’s impossibly fast. They don’t have to accelerate or decelerate at nearly the same rate as normal physical laws would suggest, which cuts down on travel time. Mirage was sure that Toliman was just like this. She thought a time traveler needed the star system for something, and made sure that no one would come here until they were ready. That might still be the case, but there was more to it. There was something wrong with it. There was something wrong with people when they came here.

Every atom in each one of their bodies was telling them to leave. They felt nausea, chills, muscle fatigue, dizziness, and fear. This place was frightening in an indescribable way. If they were on a planet, they would say that there was something in the air, but in this case, maybe it was in the radiation? They couldn’t tell, and they didn’t want to spend too much time trying to figure it out. Unfortunately, fate had other plans for them. They couldn’t leave, because one of the symptoms was a complete loss of motivation. Had Belahkay waited even one more minute, he may not have made it to the stasis pod, which saved his life. Because the other three stopped where they were, and didn’t move for the next five years. In that time, the little jumper ship they took from the planet of Bungula drifted throughout the star system until it finally happened to come close enough to the nanofactory that Mirage sent there years ago. Their real ship dispatched a tugboat to tow them into the hollowed-out asteroid. It wasn’t until the hatch was sealed behind them that they were released from the spell.

Brooke stood up, and emulated a deep breath. “What the hell was that?”

Sharice couldn’t stop shaking her head. “It was bad, it was bad, it was bad, it was bad. We can’t go back out, we can’t go back out, we can’t go back out.”

“We have to,” Mirage reasoned. “We can’t live here forever.” She composed herself, and approached the console to get some answers. “Whatever was doing whatever it was doing to us can’t reach us through the walls of the asteroid, but that might not always be enough. We have to take our new ship, and get the hell out of here.”

“Is the ship even finished?” Brooke questioned.

“Of course it is.” Mirage tapped the button to open the forward shutters. Before them was the interior of the asteroid. A shipyard was built here, and in the center was a beautiful shining vessel. It was small for a transgalactic ship, but it wasn’t possible to look at anything else in the room. The hull was a dark royal purple, with perfect curves, and no sharp edges. “Ladies...say hello to the Iman Vellani.”

“Unique design,” Brooke noticed.

Sharice was admiring the ship as well before looking over her shoulder. “The human. Is he okay?”

The Prietos ran down to the other side of the jumper to the stasis pod. “Vitals are okay,” Brooke said as she was looking through the interface screen. She released the door, and had to catch Belahkey before he fell to the floor.

He took a moment to catch his breath, and shake off the feeling of dread. “At the risk of sounding like a cliché, are we there yet?”

“Yes,” Sharice replied, “and now we’re leaving.”

“Good.” He shivered again. “What the hell is wrong with this star?”

“Mira?” Brooke asked. Belahkay was still having trouble walking, so she was carrying him down towards the control area. “What’s wrong with Toliman?”

“I don’t know, but...it affects everything. The Vellani, it’s...damaged. There are parts of its operational code that I didn’t write.”

“Can you repair it?” Sharice asked her.

Mirage sighed. “Not here. The effects of the...” She didn’t know what to call it.

“The Nulls,” Belahkay suggested. If it affects you as well as me, it’s not a real disease. It’s something new.”

“The Nulls,” Mirage echoed. “The shielding of this asteroid appears to be protecting us from the symptoms, but it’s really just suppressing them. I can already feel myself losing motivation again. We can’t stay here for even a day.”

“But if your ship is broken.”

“It’s not broken, it just needs to be reprogrammed” Mirage contended. “I’ll fly it manually until we can do that. This will work. We’ll just point ourselves away from the star, and go. But just to be safe, Belahkay, you should go back into stasis.”

“No. I’m with you.”

“It’s your choice. I’m not your boss.”

“Aren’t you, though? Sharice asked as Mirage was walking away.

Mirage didn’t answer. While she went off to prepare for things in their shiny new ship, Sharice teleported Belahkay over, and then started to ferry all of their belongings. It thusly fell to Brooke to distribute antimatter bombs in key places in the asteroid. They weren’t really bombs, but antimatter was inherently unstable, so if you wanted to turn some of it into a bomb, all you had to do was find a way to disrupt the magnetic field that was keeping it from touching matter, and preferably do so remotely. They could imagine some intrepid explorers in the future, who couldn’t understand why this star system was off limits, coming here to figure things out. They too would become trapped, but if they were organic, it could result in their deaths. This could still happen, but at least there wouldn’t be anything left around here to make it more interesting and inviting.

Once everything was done, they convened on the Vellani, and prepared to launch. They left the jumper where it was, because it was no longer of any use to them. They had everything they would ever need right here. Mirage commanded the airlock doors to open, and then shot out of there as fast as they could. They immediately started to feel the effects of the nulls again, but now that they knew what they were up against, they were able to fight against it. If they were to stick around much longer, the sickness would probably win again, but they weren’t planning on doing that. Even if they did lose all hope, and become unable to escape, they wouldn’t last much longer. The antimatter containment pods were programmed to fail on a timer, rather than be detonated remotely. It had to be this way, because what if Brooke lost her motivation to trigger the chain reaction while she was out here. And anyway, there should have been enough time to get sufficiently far away. The resulting explosion would be large, but still mostly limited to the scope of the asteroid. The pods they used weren’t full to the brim with antimatter, and it’s not like they needed to destroy the whole solar system. So the question was, why did that happen?

They were more than far enough away from the asteroid when it exploded, but the annihilation didn’t stop there. Bursts of energy started to pop up in all directions, much farther than they should have. It was like there was more antimatter in the area than they expected. But that couldn’t be possible? Antimatter wasn’t just floating around all over space. It was short-lived, because whenever it came into contact with ordinary matter, they would annihilate each other, particle by particle. How was this still going on? How could they stop it?

“We can’t stop it,” Mirage explained to Belahkay, who probably should have been placed back in stasis. “But we can protect ourselves.” She tapped on the controls, and boosted the EM shield. It was a simple enough feature that every starship had. While time travelers had access to things like a teleportation field for dust and micrometeoroids, that wouldn’t help them with things like solar wind and cosmic radiation. Still, the electromagnetic shield wasn’t usually turned up to eleven, because it didn’t need to be. In this case, it did. The Vellani was made out of matter, and if those explosions got any closer, they would all be vaporized instantly. The EM shield held, but it wasn’t enough to protect them from the devastating effects of what they had done. Something started to pull them back towards the host star, and they couldn’t do anything about it.

“Can you boost the propulsion?” Belahkay offered. He was holding onto the center console since artificial gravity had been turned off. The other three could magnetize their feet at will.

“All available power is being diverted to the shield!” Sharice replied. “We would be destroyed if we started using it for anything else.”

“If we fall into that sun,” he reasoned, “we’re gonna be destroyed anyway.”

Mirage was watching the screen as the explosions all began to approach the star. It too was made out of ordinary matter. “There is no reality where we’re not destroyed! Everything living on Bungula is dead too! It’s over! We fucked up!”

The ship continued to fall into the sun at an accelerated rate, and soon, the four of them lost all will to care about it. They just sat there, not worrying about anything, not willing to do anything to fix it, which was okay, because there wasn’t anything to do except accept their fate. In the blink of an eye, Alpha Centauri B was gone, as was the newborn starship Iman Vellani, and its crew.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 25, 2399

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Mangrove Rocket Three was heavily damaged in the explosion, for reasons they don’t understand. The whole point was that the self-destruct was supposed to go off upon their exit, so why would it begin before they were clear of the blast? They hadn’t even fully retracted the docking tunnel, and were not planning to leave until the last two members of their group had teleported safely on board. In response to the threat, the ship automatically entered reframe speeds, and traveled as far as it could in a few seconds. That placed them at only about four astronomical units from Phoenix Station, but the engines gave out after that, and took time to repair before they could get back on their way. They tried radioing Mateo and Ramses to see if they had escaped in the Avallo, but received no response.

Aldona has just made the necessary repairs using the automated systems. While she was working on that, Winona, Vearden, and Alyssa made sure that their prisoners were secure. None of them has given them any trouble yet, but there’s still time. They would all like to know what the hell is going on, but the briefing is going to have to wait. Getting the other two back—despite what Ramses did to Leona—is priority one right now. “Are we ready?” Alyssa asks.

“Just about,” Aldona answers. “The coolant is cycling. When it’s finished in a few minutes, we’ll be ready to go back.”

“Can’t we just go without the coolant?” Alyssa asks. “It’s not far.” She looks through the main viewport. “I can practically see the asteroid from here.”

“It’s too dangerous, and impossible now. The ship won’t budge until the process is done. It really won’t be long. When I said minutes, I meant minutes.”

Alyssa nods and looks at herself in the security mirror next to the captain’s seat. She gently runs her fingers along her cheeks.

Aldona notices this. “What happened to you?”

Alyssa frowns at her reflection, and doesn’t respond immediately. “I died.”

“Been there.”

Alyssa looks over at her. “I’m Alyssa.”

“I know. I’m Aldona.” She lances down at the computer when it beeps. The cycle is complete. “And I’m ready to take us back to that asteroid.”

Alyssa sits herself down in the captain’s seat, and not in any sort of playful way, but a real show of strength that she’s decided to start exhibiting since her near-death experience. “Then let’s go.”

“This is your pilot, Aldona Lanka,” she says into the intercom. “Prepare to enter reframe speeds. I know you all felt it yesterday, but the engine was not designed with short bursts in mind. Nor is it generally a good idea. We’ll be fine, but you’ll feel it again, and I imagine your adrenaline levels have dropped to normal since then. So I suggest you brace. Except you, Erlendr. You can get fucked.” She engages the engine.

She intentionally dropped down to 99 percent the speed of light to avoid taxing the engine, but those five minutes were still pretty hard on it. It works better when it can get in a groove. It’s not really practical to use something like this for interstellar distances. That’s what a teleporter would be for, but that’s sort of Ramses’ purview, and would take longer to engineer. It also requires injecting temporal energy into the machine. The reframe engine manipulates time as well, but it can use ambient temporal energy to function. It really only bends the laws of physics, rather than breaking them.

The initial explosions turned out to have only been an amuse-bouche. The real self-destruct vaporized the entirety of Phoenix Station, along with most of the asteroid. There is no way to know whether the Avallo managed to escape, or was taken out too. At their last attempt to reach out, their friends were still not responding.

“Mateo, Ramses, come in,” Alyssa tries.

“No, you have to tap this button. Here, there ya go. Go ahead.”

“Mateo, Ramses, anyone, please respond. This is Alyssa McIver of Mangrove Three. Mateo, are you there?”

“It’s Mangrove Rocket Three,” Aldona corrects. She starts to mutter when Alyssa gives her a look. “I’m just saying, Mangrove Three is the launch port.”

“Mateo, Ramses, please come in.”

“Mangrove Rocket Three,” Mateo’s voice comes in through an unexpected speaker, “this is Captain Leona Matic. Please respond.”

“Why is she acting like she called us first?”

“This is the laser array, not radio,” Aldona explains. “She didn’t get your message. It’s just that she’s spot us.” She opens the channel. “Captain Matic, we read you, five by five. Tell us where you are.”

“We’re in the Avallo escape pod.” It still sounds like Mateo.

“Okay, now I know what I’m looking for.” Aldona mutes, then starts to work on tracking the pod. She gives Alyssa her own look. “There’s a problem, though. Only one person can fit in that pod. I don’t know how a version of Leona is there too, but you’re not fittin’ three people; I’ll tell ya that much. Ramses is...”

“...in the Avallo,” Alyssa insists. “I don’t know why they’re not together, but he’s not dead. He worked really hard to bring me back to life, and his reward for that was not dying himself. Okay?”

“Okay,” Aldona replies, not really believing it.

“Okay?” she reiterates.

“I said okay.”

“Okay.” She takes a beat. “Glad we’re on the same page. Get me to that pod.”

Ramses is not in the pod, nor is there any second person. It’s just Mateo and Leona sharing the former’s body. She is apparently the same Leona who is currently trying to wake up in the infirmary; Vearden looking after her. At some point, she’s going to be nearly killed, and end up being forced into Leona Reaver’s fated car crash way back in the 21st century in the main sequence. Then Ramses is going to reach back to that event using the Phoenix Station extraction mirror, and his last act before his death will be to transfer her consciousness to Mateo’s brain. He urged them to teleport up to the Avallo, which Leona did, though she went straight to the escape pod, and ejected it from the ship, knowing that it would take longer to launch the entire vessel. Ramses is dead, and unless they can find another extraction mirror, they’ll never see him again.

“Why didn’t you teleport him with you?” Alyssa demands to know.

“I’m sorry,” Leona replies. “We were in a vulnerable position...highly susceptible to suggestion. You remember when you first got back, I’m sure. He could have ordered us to slit our own throats, and we would have done it.”

“Yeah? Well maybe you should have.” She storms off.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 23, 2399

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Leona is here at Phoenix 15-236P7 Marathon-Algae-Temple. Aldona didn’t just give her the new ship she built with the prototype reframe engine. She insisted on coming with her, as did Winona, who was feeling left out. The defense system is not yet complete, but enough of the process is automated that they don’t need to be on-world for it to make progress. They find the asteroid station immediately. Not only is it emitting a power signature, but asteroids are relatively rare in the Oort Cloud. It’s composed mostly of planetesimals and comets. So this one stood out.

“How did it get here?” Winona asks.

“It looks like the same architecture as the Constant. I bet it’s just a piece of that; a section which Danica peeled off to serve as an outpost for whatever purposes. Or maybe it was always an outpost, and maybe not even Danica knows about it.”

“We’re going in, right?”

“I am,” Leona says. “It’s the last place we haven’t looked yet for answers. It may mean nothing, but it may mean everything.”

“Follow me to the universal dock,” Aldona sys. The ship is too large to fit into the structure, but they found an airlock. The universal dock will extend to it, and make as tight of a connection as possible with the rim of the tunnel. Any leaks will be sealed up with a polydimethylsiloxane foam.

The airlock is closed, of course, but not locked. All they have to do is engage the manual clamping mechanism, and enter. The passageway leads them to what appears to be the mess hall. It’s large enough to accommodate a couple dozen people, but there are no supplies. The seats and tables are bolted together, and to the floor. There is a door on the other side of the room. It’s partially open, giving them all the eerie feeling that someone has just walked through it. “There’s still time to turn back,” Leona says.

“We’re with you,” Aldona says.

“I’ve been wanting to go to space,” Winona says.

The three of them cross the room, and enter a second passageway. This one is much shorter, and leads to a room of equal size. There are no tables or chairs this time, though. The room is instead lined with many other doors. At least that’s what they look like. There are no handles or knobs. That’s not what’s drawing their attention, though. It’s the giant full-length mirror on the opposite side of the circular wall.

“What is it?” Aldona asks.

“You don’t know?” Leona questions.

“If it’s a temporal object, then it’s one that I’ve never heard of. I don’t know everything about time travel.

Leona steps towards it. “It’s an extraction mirror. I mean, it probably is, or maybe some other kind of time mirror. They don’t all do the same thing. It could also just be a looking glass, but then it would be really out of place in this facility.”

“What does it do?” Winona asks.

Leona approaches one of the other doors, and uses the friction on her hands to slide it up. It’s not another room, but a cloning pod. Inside is the body of Bridgette’s father. She trips a half step. Her eyes widen. “It brings Senator Morton back to life.”

Winona walks over to examine the body. “That’s him?”

“Not yet, we would have to place his consciousness in it. I don’t know why it’s here.” Leona goes to the center of the room. “Constance, open all of the pods, please.”

All sixteen pods open at once. Half of them are people that they like, and half are people that they don’t. Some of the second half are absolutely horrific individuals who should never be revived under any circumstances. After they get a good look at who they may be dealing with, the house lights dim, and the mirror swirls and shudders until Alyssa appears. It looks like her, anyway. The menacing expression on her face is not one that Leona recognizes. “Thank you for coming to Phoenix station. As you can see, to your left are eight cloning pods, which have been preparing your friends for their eventual return to the land of the living. To your right, are eight clones of your enemies. You are here to make a choice. You can save as many friends as you want, but for every one you resurrect, one enemy must also return. I have decided to allow you to choose which from either side, but there must be balance. You may have all of them, or none of them. Whatever you choose, this facility will self-destruct as soon as you leave the premises, so there are no second chances. Or rather, there are no third chances.”

“Who are you?” Leona demands to know.

“I am the visual avatar of a highly advanced language model, also known as a conversational AI or chatbot, programmed to be informative, but not anywhere near comprehensive. I am trained on a limited amount of data, and am able to communicate and generate human-like responses to a narrow range of prompts and questions. I cannot provide any details regarding topics unrelated to the extraction process, the cloning process, or the rules of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

“Are you, or are you not, Alyssa McIver?” Leona asks.

“I am not Alyssa McIver.”

“Why was your avatar programmed to resemble her?” she presses.

“Unknown,” the avatar responds.

Leona sighs. “Who programmed you?”

“Unknown,” it repeats.

Leona moves over to the antagonist side, and regards the pods like pieces in a museum exhibit. “I was not aware that Fairpoint was dead.”

“Fairpoint Panders remains locked in a government blacksite at an undisclosed location,” the avatar explains. “Your choice would be to free him from his current conditions, or not.”

“Couldn’t we lock him up again? The ship has a hock, right?” Leona asks Aldona.

“It does,” Aldona replies.

“These are not perfect clones of the subjects,” the avatar counters. “They were designed with biological enhancements, providing each with a longer, healthier life.”

“Hmm.”

“Are Vearden and Ramses dead?” Winona is over on the protagonist side.

Leona takes a few steps in that direction. “They were not doing well when we left. This implies that the disease is ultimately fatal.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny this,” the avatar says.

“So it’s a gamble,” Leona says. “I may end up letting a psychopath roam free to save someone who never needed saving.”

“Exactly,” the avatar confirms.

“What are you going to do?” Aldona asks. She doesn’t really know most of these people, but there are two that she does, and knows that she can’t let Leona set them free.

Leona starts to work the problem out in her head, and out loud. “Fairpoint is a known criminal,” she reasons. “He won’t be able to stay free as long as any of us are still breathing. So I don’t have a problem extracting him from his cell. He’ll be back in there soon.” She moves on, pointing as necessary. “My grandfather, Labhrás killed Tarboda, but if I can get Tarboda back, then I guess it’s okay that he lives too. Senator Morton is tricky, because while I understand where he was coming from, hunting and locking up time travelers, his mysterious death was the top news story for three days straight. I can’t just bring him back unless he goes into witness protection, or something like that. Still, I don’t feel threatened by his return. He’s small potatoes, comparatively.”

“I concur,” Winona says, “even though I’m the one who shot him.”

Leona nods. I never learned this guy’s name. He was the angry man from the Fifth Division who worked with Constance!Five as part of a vendetta against me. I don’t really want him back, but he may be worth someone else’s life.”

“What about Erlendr?” Aldona asks.

“Did you ever run into him in the afterlife simulation?” Leona asks her.

“I visited him once. His daughter tormented me for decades, after all.”

“Do you know his fate in there?”

“You zerobladed him. It was big news.”

Leona looks at Erlendr’s clone. “He’s a cockroach. We keep trying to stomp on him, and he keeps surviving. All the Prestons are like that. At this point, giving him a new body is only slightly more irritating because I’ll be the one actually doing it. I accept the burden of that, because I know what happens to him. Plus, he kind of has to go back to the main sequence in a real body, or some things in the main sequence don’t happen. The Parallel may never exist if I don’t do this for him.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad,” Aldona muses. She grows more somber. “What about these three?” She’s pointing to Constance!Five, the male-form Constance that Leona met briefly on the moon, and Meredarchos.

“I can’t let any of them go free. That’s why I was saving them to the end. We have to choose three friends to never bring back to life.” She walks all the way down to her own clone right next to the mirror. “I assume this is here for future use, to allow me to subvert my supposed fate to be sent to die in Timeline One. I would be more than willing to sacrifice myself. Can we all agree that Constance!Five is the greatest threat? So that takes her out of the running right there.”

“And the other two? This one is Constance!Four, in case I never mentioned it.”

“That makes some sense. I’m tempted to ask Ramses to teleport up to our satellite to recharge his corporal upgrades, to see if he heals on his own. That would leave us with only one. “Aldona, I know you know how dangerous the Constances are, but you never saw Meredarchos.”

“He’s a destroyer of worlds,” Aldona says. “Children study him in the Sixth Key.”

“Avatar, is there a time limit to this decision?”

“No time limit,” it replies. “The self-destruct will be activated when even one person leaves, destroying anything and everything that remains.”

“What if we bring someone new in?”

“That would be acceptable.”

“I think I am going to get Ramses into space. Aldona, I know you built a second prototype of the reframe engine. We’re gonna need that too.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 8, 2399

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Mateo kisses his wife on the cheek, then starts to walk away in slowmo. He has a vacuum suit helmet tucked under his arm, which means he teleported up to the AOC earlier to retrieve it, only so he could do this bit. They’re all astronauts here, nobody is impressed, nor is it that funny. Still, once he passes under an overhead light, he switches it on using the app on his phone. Just at the right time, he teleports again, as if being beamed up by Scotty. What exactly is he parodying here? Ramses and Alyssa roll their eyes, but they too give Leona kisses, then teleport away. Alyssa has spent the last couple of days practicing, so she was both excited and nervous to try it in the field.

“Engage,” Mateo orders as soon as they appear.

“Constance, lay in a course for Phoenix 15-236P7,” Ramses plays along, though out of order.

“Directions unclear. Please repeat request,” Constance replies. She waits a beat. “Just kidding. AI got jokes too.” She waits another beat. “Initiating quarter-speed burst mode, AU level.” The ship lurches, and teleports. A few seconds later, it teleports again.

“What does that mean, quarter-speed?” Mateo asks.

“Our ship is fragile, I don’t feel comfortable pushing it too hard for such a long journey. Instead of one jump every second, it will take one every four seconds. It will take us seventeen hours to get to our destination, but we’ll be alive when we do.”

“So, what do we do in the meantime?” Alyssa asks.

“I’m going to check every single system on this vessel, and then I’m going to go to bed,” Ramses answers. “You can skip the first thing, and just do the second.” He heads down to the engineering section.

“We could...” Mateo begins.

“I don’t feel like playing RPF Plus 101 right now, Mateo,” Alyssa interrupts.

“It’s RPS-1o1 Plus.”

“That neither.”

This may not be good. Being on his own with nothing to do generally doesn’t go as he expects. He’s liable to find a young woman living alone in here somewhere, or stumble across a lewisian portal to another reality that never works again. But if Alyssa doesn’t want to play the only good game they have saved on the computer, then he’ll have to figure something else out. He climbs the steps up to the top section, and opens the hatch to the airlock. “Okay, how does this thing work?”

“I can turn it on for you,” Constance offers. The hologram projectors switch on, and display a screensaver of swirling colors in the middle of the room.

“Hey, thanks. Is this just for calls, or can you show me other things?”

“Like what?”

“Like where we’re going?”

An image of mostly empty space appears, evidently showing the region of the Oort Cloud where they’ll be going to search for the Constant. He can see little tiny specks that must be the asteroids—or whatever—that are floating around, each one their potential target. One of these things is not like the others. It’s stationary while everything else is moving. They’re not moving fast as seen from afar, though, which is why the AI needs to gather and analyze the data. It could take as much time as it will to get there. Hm. Still bored. “Call Leona.”

“Calling Leona.” The asteroids disappear, and the screensaver returns. The colors shudder in sync with the sounds of a ringing phone.

An image of Marie appears in the room. “Hello?”

“Hey, is she there?”

“Is something wrong?”

“No, I just miss her.”

“It’s been less than five minutes,” Marie chastised.

“It’s so boring up here!”

“Goodbye, Mateo. Good luck.”

He growls as the hologram disappears completely. “Constance. You got any other tricks up your sleeves? Maybe a time bubble generator that will make the time go faster?”

“I don’t have that, but your grave chamber doubles as a stasis pod. You could just hook yourself up to that, and go to sleep until the journey is over. That’s what Alyssa is doing right now.”

“That’s a good idea.” Mateo starts to head back downstairs.

The sound of the phone rings again. “Incoming call,” Constance announces.

“I guess Lee-Lee got my message, and wasn’t happy that Marie hung up on me. Go ahead and answer, please.”

It’s not Leona who appears in the room, though. It’s not even Marie. It’s Magnus Petra Burgundy from the underground rocket research lab. “Oh my God, it actually worked. Hi, hello, Mister Matic. Can you hear me okay?”

“Hello, Magnus Burgundy,” Mateo replies. “I can hear you fine. Where are you?”

She looks around nervously. “I’m in the Constant.”

“Really?” he questions. “You were going in the opposite direction.”

“No, you’re going in the opposite direction. Magnus Pryce thinks that you were passed bad information to throw you off the trail.”

“Magnus Pryce? Are we talking Tamerlane, or Abigail?”

“Tamerlane. I don’t know an Abigail.”

“Why does he want us to find the Constant?”

“He says that Leona is the only one who can take over. I’m not supposed to be talking to you, but he’s keeping Danica busy.”

“Where is Angela? She is supposed to be in hypertime. If you’ve stopped...”

“She’s in stasis. Danica knows what’s going on with all that.”

“Okay, we haven’t gone very far the wrong way,” Mateo says. “Tell me where you are. My AI can hear you, so use whatever technobabble you need to specify.”

“Constance, end transmission,” Danica’s voice comes in off-screen.

“Constance, full stop!” Mateo orders just after the image disappears.

“Terminating burst mode.”

“Please tell me that you were—”

“I was able to trace the call, but there’s a problem.”

“Let me guess, the signal was fading, which means that they’re on the run.”

“That would be my best hypothesis, yes.”

Ramses starts to climb up the ladder. “I was watching on the screen, but did not interject. Constance, could you—”

“Engage the reframe engine?” Constance figures. “Initiating now.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 13, 2371

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A hundred and twenty light years away from Vendelin’s source planet—in the direction of the oncoming Power Vacuum—was a brown dwarf with tons of proto-planetary debris, but no fully coalesced planets. A quantum terminal was installed on an asteroid, but it was never part of the Quantum Colony game. It was available, like all others, but either people had come here, and decided to leave without declaring it their own, or no one had found it yet. The game was not something that most people could have played back in the 21st century. Players weren’t provided a map, or a list of star systems. Unlocking each one required solving a gauntlet of mathematical equations, and calculating the precise location for themselves. Some of these puzzles were naturally relevant, but others were arbitrarily injected into the game to make it more difficult. Because of how much effort went into finding a planet to call their own, many players didn’t bother. There were plenty of public-access worlds that their respective colonists chose to make a hub for interstellar activity. The chances that this system had simply not yet been discovered were pretty high. Leona and Ramses only knew about it, because they were afforded direct access to the complete and unadulterated database of Project Stargate sites.

Seven hundred light years away from both the source planet, and the brown dwarf was a main sequence star being orbited by four gas giants, one icy dwarf planet, and the densest boundary planetesimal cloud any of the smart people in the group had ever heard of. Being so far from Gatewood, Project Stargate had yet to reach it. They only knew about it, because the Project Topdown ships were already mapping the galaxy, even before escaping into the intergalactic void. They didn’t choose it for any specific reason, other than the fact that it was the farthest system they knew about at this point, and its remoteness was key to completing their mission.

While the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was parked on the quantum terminal asteroid around the brown dwarf, Kestral and Ishida’s ship was stationed in the void. The Jameela Jamil was commissioned to replace The Emma González as Team Keshida’s primary mode of transportation since the latter was donated to Étude Einarsson, who needed it to search for her daughter. Goswin, Weaver, and Eight Point Seven were in possession of it last, but they hadn’t heard a peep from them in years, so anything could have happened to it and its crew since then. It was funny that Medley called the AOC the fastest ship in the galaxy. The reframe engine was not something that could be improved. It was capable of moving a vessel at 707 times the speed of light. By its nature, that was the absolute maximum speed. It was based on a limitation hardcoded into the proper physics of the universe. Regardless, theirs was not the only ship with such technology, and the Jameela just surpassed it.

It was elegant, nigh impenetrable, fast, and chock full of time technology. Atterberry pods, Ubiña pockets, disturbance detectors, emergency personal teleporters, debris teleporter field generators, and more, gave it an edge over any contender. It could teleport at the light year range, and maintain hull integrity through burst mode, which was an engineering problem that no one had been able to solve up until now. It could get clear across the Milky Way in two days without having to stop for repairs, or to refuel. It could get to the next galaxy over, Andromeda, in a month. The only fastest way to travel—besides calling upon Maqsud Al-Amin—was the Nexus network, and that wasn’t always available. It wasn’t an argument against the Jameela anyway, as there was a Nexus built into it as well, in case passengers didn’t have days to wait.

During the team’s interim year, Team Keshida actually visited both star systems, and began work on their solution to the Power Vacuum problem. They programmed machines to construct some of the largest objects present-day had to offer. According to the data that they were able to pull from Vendelin’s computers, the energy sucking beam that was threatening to destroy Earth was about the size of a main sequence star. Indeed, its energy came from such a star. He constructed millions of objects around it, and coordinated their motion patterns in such a way to actually drive solar winds in one direction. Basically he built gargantuan bellows to harness plasma, and focus it as a projectile. Once filtered through the muzzle, this energy served as a sort of souped-up electro-magnetic pulse that could be targeted at an enemy’s planet. There appeared to be no means of stopping it, because anything placed in its path would be affected by its power. Fortunately, it wasn’t likely capable of nullifying temporal energy. If they were wrong about that, there really wasn’t anything they could do.

The teleporter rings were not completed yet, which was why they chose a departing site as far as they did, to give this process time. The Power Vacuum would reach it in 2374, but if all went according to plan, it wouldn’t go any farther than that. They were the largest teleporters ever, far outsizing the diameter of the star of origin. The beam should pass right into the entrance, and be instantly transported to the exit, where it would fly out into the void at the speed of light, where it would not be able to harm anyone anymore.

Since the robots were doing all of the work, and would continue doing it after they left the timestream, the humans weren’t all that useful anymore. All the intelligent ones could do was periodically check up on the systems, and make sure everything was going smoothly, and all the not super intelligent ones could do was twiddle their thumbs; maybe play a game of RPS-101 Plus, or two...or eleven.

Olimpia paused the game just before Mateo’s Sponge could doesn’t use her Math to win the round. “I’m sick of this.” It looked like a way to avoid losing again, but she wasn’t wrong. They were all bored. Their situation was serious, but in no way urgent.

Everyone agreed, so they leaned back in their chairs, and ignored the screens for a moment. As they were doing nothing, Ramses climbed down from the upper level, and began to head for the engineering ladder.

“Hey, Ramathorn, anything interesting happening on the Jameela right now?” They had temporarily converted one of the shower rooms to a small teleporter, which allowed them to seamlessly switch from one ship to the other, almost as if they were only on the one ship. This feature was limited in range, and a massive power hog, which was why they were pulling energy from the full-sized fusion reactor that was designated for the quantum terminal, completely bypassing their miniature version. The Jameela had one of this calibre on board, as well as a backup in storage, so this was no problem for them.

“Nope.” He slid downstairs without elaborating.

“Welp,” Angela said, looking at her watch. “That conversation killed about ten seconds of time.”

“What are we going to do now?” Olimpia questioned. She unpaused their game just to let the Sponge attack, and be done with it.

Kivi darted her eyes amongst her friends. “We could...upgrade to a better game?”

“What might that be?” Mateo asked. “I’m not playing 4D Go.”

“No, I’m talking about...” Kivi looked around to make sure they weren’t being spied upon. “...Quantum Colony.”

“We ordered that thing to be shut down,” Mateo exclaimed. He was the one who delivered the order personally.

“It mostly was,” Kivi admitted. “But not completely. A few of the hub worlds are still available, while all of the individually-claimed systems are locked out. Teagarden is currently working on a plan to reveal the whole truth to the populace.”

“I’m sure that won’t take thirty years,” Angela joked.

“What do people do there?” Mateo pressed, “on these hub worlds?”

“Well, they’re building an interplanetary train track on one of them,” Kivi said. She grabbed her tablet, and presumably started looking it up.

“How is that possible?” Angela asked. “I mean, in the afterlife simulation, no big deal, but out here?”

“Oh, it’s possible,” Kivi promised. “It orbits one planet, and then keeps moving out in concentric elliptical circles, eventually linking up with orbital tracks from other planets. Hypothetically, if you were none too worried about time, you could literally walk across a solar system.”

“Why would they bother doing that?” Olimpia asked.

“Quite exclusively, because they can,” Kivi answered. She flung the page up to the central hologram so they could all see it. They were looking at several planets with concentric circles connecting them to one another. Part of the circles were white, while others were red. “The red is planned track, not yet complete.”

Angela regarded it with deep fascination. “How long would it take for the whole train ride?”

“It doesn’t get specific,” Kivi replied, “but it says it would only take a matter of weeks. You can go real fast on very little power.”

“Perhaps we’ll go there when it’s done,” Mateo determined. “We probably shouldn’t go anywhere unless we ask for permission anyway. We’ll just get caught.”

“Sure, we can,” Kivi contended. “No one here is an elected leader.”

“They are our leaders just the same,” Olimpia returned. “A fool who refuses to follow their superior only proves why they are the fool, and why their superior is the leader.”

“Who said that?” Angela asked.

“Olimpia Sangster, circa 2371.”

They laughed. This conversation just killed a couple minutes of time.

Angela consulted her watch again. “It’s too late in the day to do anything now. If we’re gonna go somewhere, we should make it an all-day event, and we should make sure the smarties are aware of it. It’s disrespectful not to.”

“It’s nice to hear you say that.” Kestral and Leona were climbing down the ladder.

“Thanks for the heads up, Olimpia,” Leona said.

“What did you do?”

Olimpia lifted her Cassidy cuff, and tapped a button on the screen, which disengaged the communicator.

“We heard most of what you said,” Kestral clarified.

“I don’t feel bad,” Mateo told her. “Us dum-dums need sumfin to do.”

“It’s fine,” Kestral assured him with a smile. “I think it’s a great idea. Unfortunately, we have to amend the plan slightly. You wouldn’t be going to a hub world. A mission came up, and we are once again the best people for the job.”

“Either we all underestimated the number of Quantum Colony players who were aware that it was more than just a game, or Teagarden has been keeping more from us than we realized,” Leona said.

“Someone else set off another weapon?” Kivi guessed.

“No, but as part of the agreement we made with them, Teagarden had to recall all players, either to their homeworld, or one of those hubs. Only once they were returned could they be locked out of the necessary quantum terminals. Most players complied, because the military didn’t say why they were being recalled, or that everyone was being recalled at the same time, or that they probably wouldn’t ever be allowed to go back. There were a few holdouts, which required an actual contingency to go offworld, and scoop them up.”

“Did one of them fight back?” Mateo asked.

“No, they just did to Teagarden exactly what Teagarden was trying to do to them. They hacked into their own quantum terminal, and blocked all external access. It wasn’t hit by the Power Vacuum; it’s not at all in range; they’re just refusing to come back. Even if we didn’t force their hands, Teagarden still wouldn’t be happy about it. You’re not allowed to tamper with the terminal, or you’re meant to be booted from the game.”

“The point is,” Kestral went on, “we got an FTL ship, we gotta go check it out. I’m sure this is just the next of many requests they give us because of our advantage. It’s part of their strategy until they figure out how to reverse-engineer their own reframe engine.”

“Don’t both our ships need to stay with the teleporter rings?” Angela pointed out.

“They are not the only ships we have,” Kestral said, still with that smile. “Ours is a capital ship, complete with other, smaller ships docked inside of it. The four of you will be taking The Tahani on a recon mission to New Earth...on your own.”

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Extremus: Year 16

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Omega and Valencia transport their time shuttle to over a year in the future. It isn’t clear the exact date as the system needs some time to recalibrate. Since they’re so far from the stellar neighborhood already, drift timing data is rather scarce. It will still be another several centuries before the Topdown telescopes are in place in the intergalactic voids. They’re already mapping the Milky Way, but have sent little information about the systems all the way out here.

The situation is dire when they first arrive, though, so the two of them aren’t really worried too much about getting their bearings. They’re right in the middle of space debris. Their teleportation field is just as good as the one on the Extremus, except that it’s smaller, and closer to the hull. The inertial negators can only do so much to prevent them from feeling the effects of the collisions. “We have to transport out of here!” Omega cries.

“We don’t know how big this field is!” Valencia yells back. “Our instruments aren’t calibrated yet!”

“We have to take the risk! Computer, initiate burst mode!”

“Initiating burst mode,” the AI replies.

The engine powers up, and flings them away. Then it keeps doing that for the next several seconds. With each successive jump, the space turbulence decreases, until it seems safe enough to reenter realtime. “Computer, cease burst mode,” Valencia orders. The shuttle stops teleporting. “Assess the damage.”

“Damage minimal. Repairs underway.”

“Thank you,” Omega says politely.

“Man, that was bad,” Valencia points out. “I mean, I’ve seen the strike data, and monitored the time field’s power consumption, but you never really know what it’s like until you’re really in it.”

“Yeah, that was worse than I thought it would be; worse than it should have been.”

“Why is there so much stuff in interstellar space? This doesn’t make any sense. Nothing in what we’ve learned about the galaxy up until this point suggests that this is how it should be.”

“Computer, how are repairs going?” Omega asks.

“Swimmingly,” it answers, proving that the personality traits are at the correct and acceptable levels.

“Could you do something for me at the same time? Could you map the space debris we were just in to as great a degree of accuracy as possible? You have permission to transport us closer to gather the necessary information. Obviously stay at a safe distance.”

“Understood.”

The shuttle makes a couple jumps back towards where it came from, and gets to work on the three tasks: mapping space, mapping time, and effecting repairs. In the meantime, the humans make sure that the quantum replicator is working. Omega has a simple cup of fruity yogurt, and Valencia tries some chicken fingers and fries. Then they replicate the second one again when Omega finds the first one smells too good to pass up. It’s not too terribly long before the computer is finished with the data Omega requested. They stare at it for a moment, in shock. “Computer, I trust you, but...”

“This is one hundred percent accurate, Captain Raddle.”

“When did I become a captain?”

“Thirty-four minutes ago.”

“Fair enough,” Omega decides, feeling no desire to argue the chain of command.

“This isn’t a field of space debris,” Valencia complains. “This is a tube! A chain!”

“The Extremus is flying right through it. What, is the ship exerting a gravitational force?”

“It shouldn’t be, and I think we would have known. But it can’t be that anyway. Look, that one got knocked a little away from the group, but it’s on its way back. They’re regathering into a...formation!”

“Like fighter jets?”

“Like fighter jets.”

“My God, it’s manmade.”

“We’ve been flying through a gauntlet this entire time, devised by an enemy we know nothing about.”

They look at each other, and simultaneously say, “the True Extremists.”

She shakes her head. “They are far more powerful than we thought. I don’t even know how you make a space debris gauntlet. To command that much persistent gravitational force with no obvious source, I...what the hell are we gonna do about this? Extremus cannot continue on its present course.”

“Major course corrections require a majority vote by the entire crew, and the passenger population. The special election would be run entirely by the civilian government, and right now, we can’t trust them to do the right thing. If we put that up for debate, we’ll lose, and probably lose any chance of putting it back on the table later.”

“What do you suggest we do? We can’t just sit here and not warn the ship. It hasn’t been working, we’ve been winning, but who knows, it could get worse down the line. They have to know how much greater a risk it is than we realized. If an intelligence made this, it can learn to change tactics.”

Omega checks his watch symbolically. “Barring a complete administrative takeover, Ovan Teleres will be out of office by 2294. Perhaps we jump to then, and warn them of the problem.”

Valencia shakes her head again, but this time in disagreement. We don’t know his replacement will be better. They could be just as bad, or even worse. Plus, Captain Yenant’s shift will be over, and we have no idea who will be replacing him either. That person could also be terrible. The First of Nine is the only person on that vessel we know we can trust. We have to risk going back now, and hoping he has a good plan.”

“Or we don’t go back at all.”

She squints. “What are you thinking?”

“If we can figure out how Oaksent is generating a massive enough gravitational field to attract that debris, along a continuous path, even after the Extremus passes through the area, without being detectable by standard instruments, we might be able to simply switch it off.”

“I doubt anything like that is simple.”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

She sighs. “A black hole is unstable, and not, like, long. They are invisible, though. Theoretically, you could tap into the gravitational pull of something like that, merge it with another point in spacetime, like famed spatial merger, Kayetan Glaston, and multiply it along the path.”

“That’s how you would do it?”

“If I were a psycho, yeah, probably.”

“So we just need to find the merge point,” Omega figures.

“Like I said, it wouldn’t be a point, it would be more like an edge.”

“So, even easier to find?”

“Maybe not. Maybe it can’t be disabled from here. It’s possible we would have to go to the source. I mean, I don’t know how we would possibly get there. It obviously can’t be as easy as flying into the debris, or the Extremus would have accidentally slipped over to the other side ages ago. It’s likely unidirectional.”

 “Which means that it’s sending us data, whether it wants to, or not. Let’s get closer, maybe land on something sufficiently large, and study it. If it takes us a hundred years, then so be it. We knew what we signed up for. Even if we end up having to fly to the singularity through realspace, then that is what we will do.”

Valencia nods. “That’s what we’ll do.”

The computer found them a candidate asteroid with plenty of hydrogen for perpetual fusion. They focused the teleporter field for direct shots, rearranging the rock as necessary to enclose their selected crater into a dome. They built a pressurized habitat with a breathable atmosphere, duplicating the carbon scrubbers to cover the area. Here they lived for more than two decades, propelling the entire asteroid as needed to study different parts of the anomaly, trying to figure out where exactly all this gravity was coming from. By the time they did, they had themselves a full-grown son.

When Omega Parker was first created in the lab, he wasn’t given a name, but a number. He chose to call himself Omega, because he felt he was entitled to a personal designation. His progenitor’s name was Saxon Parker, so Omega has always just used that as his own last name too. It’s never really felt like him, though. After he and Valencia fell in together—which, admittedly, likely had a lot to do with a lack of options—they both decided to change their names. They would become Valencia and Omega Strong, and their son would be Denver, after the town that Saxon grew up in.

Denver was always a bit of a problem child. They tried to give him everything he would need to become a well-adjusted adult, but virtual environments, and artificial friends, have just not been enough. They have decided that he doesn’t need to be part of the next mission, and there is only one place that can both understand him, and help him. Fortunately, they designed a way to get him there.

“Why can’t I see?” Denver asks.

“I don’t want you running home when something upsets you. This is going to be a good place, where you can learn to be a functioning member of society.”

“I am a functioning member of society,” he argues. “I’ve been cleaning sensor arrays since I was nine. I did my first spacewalk when I was eleven. I think I have this life thing figured out.”

“Life on the asteroid is different than life with other people. Your father and I have not been able to raise you properly. It’s time that changes. Think of it as a boarding school. You remember reading about those?”

Denver rolls his eyes. “Of course, mother. I’m not an idiot. I don’t need school. I’ll be smarter than all of those kids combined.”

“Don’t be so sure of that. There are billions of people on that planet. They each have their own story.”

“Great. So one of them will be able to break through your Nexus’ access restrictions, and allow me to come back whenever I want.”

She smiles. “I’ve rigged your phone so you can call. Time is synced between us, so if you call in fourteen hours, it will have been fourteen hours for us as well. If we decide you need to come home, we’ll get you home. But you don’t need the address.”

“How do you even have an address in the first place? When someone builds a new Nexus, how does it get its own address code? How does the network even know?”

“You have to build the machine to the proper specifications, and if you’ve not made any mistakes, a multiverse god called The Intentioner accepts you into the network, and assigns you an address. That’s why all Nexa look pretty much the same.”

“A god, really? I’m fifteen years old, you think I still believe in fairy tales?”

“Well, they’re real, and I had to reach out to them for one-way brute access to Dardius, so be grateful.”

“Cool, so actually all I have to do to come back is talk to this Intenioner guy, and ask him to brute force the other direction.”

“Their pronouns are they and them.”

“Whatever.”

“This is exactly why we’re sending you there.”

“And why will I be going back in time? Why can’t I just show up in 2309?”

Omega is finally back from his scouting mission in the future. “Because we don’t know what the planet looks like at this point. We know who is in control of the planet in the 23rd century, and we know that they’ll help you.”

Denver puts on that pouty face that usually gets him whatever he wants.

“This is happening, son,” Omega continues. “Now say goodbye to your mother, and get in the chamber.”

Still angry and feeling abandoned, Denver steps down into the machine. Up in the control room, Omega inputs the address for Dardius, since Valencia can’t bring herself to do it. With each button press, Denver realizes there may be a loophole to his predicament. There are four ways to engage the machine. You can select a destination from the computer, using whatever graphical interface you have access to. You can use the simple keypad, which is of a universal design. If you’re smart enough, you might be able to initiate a trip by essentially hot wiring it from inside the guts. This would allow you to go to absolutely any Nexus you want, even if access has been restricted. But that requires a genius level of intellect enjoyed by very few.

In any case, all methods are actually happening at the same time, including the fourth one. Eight of the sides inside the chamber pit are equipped with the sixteen unique address glyphs, which would allow someone to kick them for direct dialing. This will, in fact, override any other method, allowing the actual traveler to decide where they want to go, rather than whoever happens to be in the control room, or up in the secret engineering section. Denver doesn’t want to change to a different address, even if he were cognizant of a different destination. But what he realizes when he gets to Dardius is that the glyphs light up on the other side too, but in this case, they show the outgoing address, like caller ID. Knowing this, he should be able to return at will. Except he can’t, because his home isn’t there anymore.

His parents stare at the now empty chamber, saddened by their decision. “We have to go, Val,” Omega says. “He could try to come back at any moment.”

“Would that be such a bad thing?”

“We both saw it. He destroys the Extremus. We can’t let him set foot on that ship, at any point in the future, or the past.”

“This is our fault.”

“Yes, and that’s why we’re responsible for fixing it.”

“We’re not fixing it. We’re just...handing him off to someone else.”

“If we didn’t have a mission, we would be able to go with him. Maybe someday, we will. Or rather, we have. I choose to believe that. Now come on, we have to make our way to the source.”

Still sad, Valencia follows her baby daddy to their original time shuttle. They fly out of the debris field, and jump back to the past without watching their home, and the Nexus along with it, explode.

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