Microstory 2627: He That Would Eat the Fruit Must Climb the Tree

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September 1, 2526. Breanna, Cash, and Sorel are just coming up on the area where their friends would have landed on the north side of the chasm when the rover’s proximity alarm goes off. Breanna and Cash look out the windows, but don’t see anything. “It’s above us,” Sorel explains. “Thistle, open sunroof.” The partition slides away. An object is falling from the sky. If they were to stop right here, it would crash land on them. So Sorel keeps driving until they’re clear of it, whatever it is.

“It’s not an asteroid, is it?” Cash asks. “I don’t think we can survive a war on another front.”

“Nah, it’s manmade, and it’s not falling, but landing.” Sorel double checks the screen. “It’s a dropship, I think from a Teaguardian.” He drives onwards, but then stops once the computer indicates that they’re well within the safe zone, near the edge of the chasm. As they watch the descent, they also look outwards, back where they came from. The ground where they were once standing has turned to soup, just like it already had farther south. They see huge stones crashing into each other. Twisted pieces of a once standing dome and spine swim around violently. It looks almost beautiful from this far away, though, like a small pond in a storm...except for all the lava and fires.

Ten minutes later, they watch the ship descend upon the ground, firing its rockets to slow itself down. It still lands quite hard, though. There might not be any people inside of it. As they continue to watch, the structure begins to transform. The walls fold down and dig themselves into the regolith. A giant cylinder rises from the center before splitting apart. A dish unfolds itself like a paper fan, spinning until it finds the right spot, slanted towards the sky at a certain angle. Power systems ramp up with an electrifying sound. The spectators’ respective interfaces beep. “We just got global comms back,” Cash says with a smile. Their screens light up with activity, displaying all the chatter that’s suddenly jumping back and forth all across the planet.

Breanna rushes through the menus until she finds the group chat. “Hello? Can anyone hear me? This is Breanna Jeffries. Are you reading me?”

“Breanna?” Calypso’s voice comes on. “Breanna, is that you? You’re alive?”

Breanna smiles and laughs. “Yes, Cash and I both. How’s the group?”

“We’re all alive too,” Calypso replies. “We’re looking for safety, on foot. We’ve been walking for days. We thought we found a dome, but they didn’t want us there.”

“Yeah, that has turned out to be a good thing. It’s been flooded with lava.”

“I knew it!” Notus cries triumphantly.

“Listen,” Breanna goes on, “we have a rover again. There’s enough room for everyone. Drop us a pin, and we’ll pick you up.”

“Okay, how do I do that?” Calypso asks.

“I know how to do it,” Notus says.

Their location appears on Breanna’s interface. It’s not too far from here since they had to walk it, and the three of them will be able to catch up quickly on wheels. She flings the coordinates over to Sorel’s rover so it will be able to navigate to them. They all start heading back towards it, but he stops. “Wait. Lifesigns detector.”

The girls look back over to the satellite dish.

“No, it’s not from there,” he clarifies. He slowly turns until he’s facing the chasm again. He starts walking towards it.

“No,” Breanna says. “That’s impossible.”

“You don’t think...” Cash trails off.

“It’s impossible!” Breanna repeats. A hand appears from the edge, and finds purchase before being met with the other hand. Two more hands appear right next to them, and pull the human they’re attached to up. It’s Tertius and Aeterna, completely naked, dirty as hell, but otherwise entirely fine. They don’t look upset or tired. They just climb all the way up, and begin to brush ash and dust off of their bodies. They look just as surprised to see Breanna and Cash as Breanna and Cash are to see them. Tertius approaches, and waves with a smile. He holds his hand out like Oliver Twist.

Confused, but also rather nervous, Breanna removes her first stage air filter, just like she did when they first met these two, and hands it to him.

Tertius places it against his mouth. “Hey, you’ve been waiting for us this whole time? It’s been days. You should have moved on without us.”

“We weren’t waiting for you,” Breanna replies honestly. “It has taken us this long to make it across ourselves. It’s just coincidental timing.”

He nods. “Well, it’s nice to see you again. I’m glad you did make it.” He looks behind them. “I’m worried, though, that no one else did.”

“No, they’re all fine,” Breanna says. “They made it across much quicker, so they are ahead of us now. We were just about to go meet up with them.” She points at the dish. “We can finally communicate with the rest of the planet again. News will start pouring in, and we’ll have a better picture of the state of affairs. We’re not sure who up north will take us in, if anyone. But you maybe wanna put on some clothes to blend in.”

“We don’t have any extra suits,” Cash reminds her. “If we did, we would have used them to glide over the chasm with everyone else.”

“Oh, true.” Breanna shakes her head. The Valerians seem to have no problem being open about their impossible level of immortality, but it’s probably best that they keep the circle tight. It’s looking like she has to protect them, even from themselves.

“I saw a couple of suits in that gondola hab back there,” Sorel explains. “They’re not IMS units, so they won’t work in actual outer space, but they will look all right to outsiders. I won’t even ask how they’re standing here like this.”

Tertius looks at his daughter, who faces her palms upwards in ignorance, because she hasn’t heard the conversation. He drops the filter to communicate with her in sign language. Aeterna nods, and holds up the a-okay sign to the rest of the group.

They all climb into the rover, and send a quick message to the other seven survivors, asking them to sit tight while they make this detour. Notus is immensely relieved to learn that Tertius made it, as it will give him the opportunity that he’s been dying for to thank him privately. Now that they know exactly where to go, and have blazed a trail, the drive back to the canyon dome doesn’t take too long. They scoop up the mining suits, drive back to the chasm to get around the stone forest, then drive northwest. Finally, after days of being apart, they reunite with their friends, and together, the twelve of them—plus Heracles—make one final push northwards to find refuge. They’re not the only ones, and it has become a political nightmare, but now that Teagarden is back in play, the hope is that those who refuse to provide aid will start feeling the pressure. That doesn’t really happen.

Microstory 2621: We’ll Build That Bridge When We Come to It, and We’ll Do it in Style

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August 26, 2526. The cataclysm has escalated. The ring fault surrounding the southern pole has torn open. Rivers of lava flow through the chasms, threatening to incinerate any who would fall to their deaths below. People are cut off from each other. Some successfully made it across before the mountains pulled away from each other, or already lived in the safe zone. Others could not make it in time. Soon, the land beneath their feet will turn to soup, or some other hazard will end their lives. Something must be done to bring these people back together. A bridge must be built. No one has ever constructed anything like this before, and certainly not at scale, but they are not wholly unprepared. The southern polar region is more mountainous than the north. That is the primary reason why it has fewer domes at this point, and why it is less populated. It is more difficult to travel between domes, and traditional forms of engineering are both tedious and slow. That is why they have been experimenting with new forms of construction, including the fast-woven graphene lattice.

Instead of laying blocks of material on one end, and slowly adding farther and farther towards the other side, drones fly clear across the gap. Fewer refugees are seeking shelter in the southern pole. An entire quarter of the Terminator Line is even more mountainous than the cap. And one advantage they have compared to the north is a newly built dome that is recently sealed, presently uninhabited, and fully available for temporary housing. So instead of dealing with an untenable onslaught of people, the leadership was able to dedicate resources to researching the threats. They realized that the ground was about to break, and began to plan for that as an eventuality. They still have to hurry, but this will work, as long as they’re careful.

They chose a spot where the two edges of the chasm are particularly close together. It’s not quite in the center of the Terminator Line, but they have sent volunteers in both directions in parallel to the chasm, on the dangerous side, to direct refugees to the right spot to cross. They have been gathering in an emergency pressurized inflatable habitat, but it’s quickly reaching capacity, so it’s time to make this happen. Timing is everything.

The southern pole is a little different than the rest of the planet. It’s run by an advisory-administrative government. There are two delegator boards, which come to decisions independently, and compare notes before making a joint decision, which they then delegate to the administrators. Each delegation includes a skeptic. It’s unfair to call them uneducated, but they are definitely meant to be out-of-the-box thinkers who are meant to question everything that they’re told. If you say left, they say right. If you say right, they say wrong. If you say wrong, they say wrung. Their job is to fight you, even when you start agreeing with them. It’s the devil’s advocate for the secular world. That’s what Thadeus Hogan’s role is, and he was here to make sure that what they were doing made sense. He’s done that, so now he’s mostly just here to watch.

Thadeus stands on the edge of the cliff. His consciousness is backed-up, both on the ground, and in orbit, but he’s tethered to a safety anchor in case he slips over the edge, and doesn’t want to waste time in a respawn pod.

“Ready!” the ordnance foreman cries from the perch. “Ready!” he repeats. “Fire!”

The artillery engineers activate the railguns. The cryogenic warheads soar through the air, arch over the chasm, and then plummet into the depths.

“Can I get closer?” Thadeus asks. When his guide nods, he leans over. The bombs crash into the toxic lava below. He can’t actually see it, but he sees the change. The thermal updrafts change from a sickly reddish color to gray. It just looks like steam.

“Why did we do that again?”

“We just froze the topmost layer of that lava,” his guide explains again. She knows he’s like this. Asking the same question multiple times is his duty, because if your answer changes, how can you be confident in it? “The fumes were chaotic and unpredictable, and just too much for the drones to handle. They were designed to fly in the Proxima Doma’s thin atmosphere, but to make that work, they’re slow. By switching from fumes to vapor, they fly through much more manageable paths. They surf the air, and safely find purchase on the other side.”

As the ordnance foreman sits back down, the head drone operator stands to take his place. “Prepare the drones!” she orders. “You have two minutes!” This is just in case something has gone wrong. They are a well-oiled machine, and the drones have been ready for hours. They had to wait to begin constructing the bridge to make sure the ground was stable enough. There is no point in building a bridge if the gap is going to widen another kilometer by the time everyone manages to cross it. He’s keeping one eye on his launchers, and the other on the barometric technician.

The technician is tracking the shifting composition of the air, and waiting for that perfect moment. He lifts his hand in the air. The head drone operator takes one last look at the launchers, but then focuses right on the tech. “Hold! Hold!” No reason he can’t have a little fun with it. This is a momentous occasion. Finally, he slams his hand down.

“Launch!” the head drone operator orders.

The drones fire into the unprecedentedly thick atmosphere. Thadeus loses direct eyesight of them too, but watches their progress through augmented reality. And he can still see the graphene scaffolding that the drones are pulling, spindling out like a silkworm’s silk. The drones are flying in pretty close tandem, but the pressure gradient isn’t perfectly smooth, so some lose attitude, and have to regain formation. Once they’re on the other side, they drop anchor, slamming hard into the ground, and digging in. Volunteers on the other side drive over in their rovers, and lower their suspension into hunker mode to provide extra support. It’s not sophisticated, but every kilogram helps.

“Launch the weavers!” the head drone operator orders now. The smaller drones fly along the skeleton lines. They distribute themselves along them, and begin wrapping the webbing around, over the gaps between them, and around each other’s lines. Over and under, over and under. They build tensile strength in perfect synchrony, and what results looks like a fully stable, strong, and lifesaving bridge.

The convoy master is on the perch now, having ordered the test rovers to the end of the bridge. The drones have finished their jobs, and it’s time to make sure the bridge will hold, and not kill anyone who tries to drive on it. The foreman nods her head, all the drones are back. The convoy master simply points to the rovers, and doesn’t say a word. The operators let them go, at high speed for the ultimate stress test. They make it to the other side. They go a hundred kilometers an hour, and make it there in two minutes.

“Send the first wave!”

Microstory 2620: They May Call it an Unknown Unknown, But Many Will Say They Should Have Known

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August 25, 2526. In the year 2155, Earthan scientists dispatched a series of procession probes towards Proxima Centauri. These were not the first probes to visit the star system, but they were far superior. It took the procession over 28 years to arrive, most of them sacrificing themselves to the fury of the red dwarf. There was nothing there to slow them down, except local gravity. The first one used solar pressure to decelerate as much as physics allowed, and transformed the energy it was receiving into a laser beam, which pushed against the next probe, decelerating it even faster. One by one they came, each one pushing back against the next in line before falling into the sun, until the last one was moving slow enough to survive. It performed a gravity braking maneuver around Centauri, and then remained there to perform its duties.

The first thing the final probe did was prepare what they called a catcher’s mitt. This was an electromagnetic tube built into an asteroid, designed to slow down any other vessel set to arrive by creating drag, so there would have to be no more sacrifices. The probe’s primary function, however, was to survey Proxima Centauri b, which colonists would later deem Proxima Doma. It looked up and down the land, building a map, and charting its past. It captured the mass, density, and surface gravity. It labeled the canyons, lava tubes, craters, and mountains. It sent high resolution images back to Earth, and the rest of Sol. It prepared for the nanofactories in 2194, which were made to build everything else that the colonists would need to live and thrive on the surface.

The probe noticed two very interesting geological features, later to be named the Chappa’ai and the Annulus mountain ranges. The former was in the north, and the latter in the south. They circled the poles quite fantastically perfectly. They weren’t artificial, but they were surprisingly smooth, in geological terms, anyway. They separated the poles from the rest of the planet, along the Terminator Line, and on both planetary faces. The researchers who studied these fascinating walls interpreted them as evidence of severe crater impacts. The fact that they could be found at both poles was mysterious and noteworthy, but not wholly implausible. Space is a dangerous and chaotic place. Things are flying every which way all the time. Why, Earth only supports life because a smaller planet once crashed into it, and ultimately made the moon. That was implausible too but it obviously happened. They certainly didn’t think there was anything else going on here. They had no alternative explanation.

As it turns out, the rings were not created by two perfectly positioned bolide impacts. They are the result of a multi-millennia long cycle, precipitated by the instability of the host star. Proxima Centauri was already volatile prior to this, sending out solar flares, and even coronal mass ejections, constantly. The polarity reverses every several years. It’s commonplace. It’s predictable. It’s accounted for. Very occasionally—but reasonably predictably, given enough data—the poles flip so spectacularly that it spells catastrophe for the orbiting terrestrial planet. That is what is happening in the here and now. The poles snapped, and sent a massive CME towards the colony. The atmosphere swelled, the surface turned into soup, and the ants were sent running for the hills. But it is not over. The cataclysm is only beginning. Because those polar rings? They’re suture zones, and they’re beginning to rip apart at the seams. And not everyone will be on the correct side when that happens.

Microstory 2608: The Floor is Literally Lava

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August 19, 2526. Breanna and Cashmere are plummeting through the air. This high up, they’re going to be falling for about four minutes, which is enough time for a brief conversation. Breanna taps on her wrist interface to control her HUD. “Okay, Cashmere, I’m programming my parachute to deploy at 600 meters, just in case I pass out before then. You should do the same, but if something goes wrong—and you’re hopefully still awake—you’ll have to pull it manually. It is not safe to go below 200 meters, so if you reach 599, and it hasn’t opened, go ahead and pull. Don’t wait.”

“Hold on.” Cashmere taps on her own suit. “There. Now you have full control over my IMS. If I do pass out, and the chute does fail, please don’t let me die. And you can just call me Cash, if you want.”

Breanna gives Cash control over her suit as well. “Good idea...Cash.”

Neither one of them passes out, and neither one of their parachutes malfunctions, but by the time they stop falling, and start drifting, they notice a problem. The ground is no longer solid. It’s churning around like soup. Buildings have collapsed, and are sinking into the soil. Debris is floating every which way. If they try to land in this stuff, they’re gonna sink and die. “This is an extinction level event,” Cash points out. “What could cause something like this?”

“A coronal mass ejection. That’s what happened. It destroyed our ship, it expanded the atmosphere so it was closer than we thought, and it has turned the surface into melted butter. It’s called thixotropic liquefaction, and it probably didn’t happen to the whole planet—the equatorial regions are at most risk—but that doesn’t matter right now because this is where we are.”

“Where can we land?”

Breanna points. “That hunk of metal right there is probably a building. It’s still sticking up high enough for us to land on it.”

That’s gonna be tough. It’s pretty far away.”

“Then start navigating there now.”

“I am!”

They adjust their risers, combatting the unpredictable weather, trying to cover the distance to the only safe area that they are close enough to. Cash was right, it’s extremely difficult, especially since the wind is doing everything it can to keep them from it. Cash is a little bit lower than Breanna when they make it there, or rather when she almost does. Her feet hit the fallen down side of the building, but she doesn’t find purchase, and ends up tipping over to her back, into the soup.

While Breanna manages to land safely at first, the wind continues to try to pull her into the soup too. It’s even stronger than the retraction mechanism. Her only solution is to dump it. It breaks off, and flies away. She dives down to her stomach and reaches out for Cash. “You’re too far away, can you get closer?”

“I think the only thing keeping me from sinking is how evenly my weight is distributed. I don’t think I should move.”

Breanna inches closer, but if she goes too far, she’ll slip in, and they’ll both sink eventually. She’s agonizing over whether she should get up, and try to look for something to extend her reach, or to stay here and keep trying. She just needs a few more centimeters, and maybe she can at least touch the tip of Cashmere’s boot.

A man suddenly appears next to her, on his hands and knees. He’s not wearing a suit of any kind, but just regular clothes. The air is extremely toxic right now, he should be dead unless he specifically designed his substrate to survive just about every deadly gas and particulate known to man. He must be one hell of a posthuman. He slides back and takes hold of Breanna’s ankles, then he nods.

Breanna nods back, then lets herself slip into the soup. She grabs onto Cashmere’s ankles, and lets the man pull them both up to safety. She rolls over to her back and finds that the man is not alone. He’s with a woman who looks similar to him, and is also walking around completely unprotected. She helps Breanna up while the man handles Cashmere. After he smiles and gives them both the a-okay sign, Breanna takes off her first stage air filter. She’s not using it as her internal carbon scrubber is working optimally. It has this handy little feature where it remains tethered to her, though, so even though this guy apparently doesn’t need it, it’s the best way for them to communicate, like a tin-can telephone.

He accepts it, and places it against his mouth so the sound will travel through. “My name is Tertius Valerius. This is my daughter, Aeterna Valeria. We detected your arrival on the roof via a rectenna’s diagnostic alerts, and were making our way towards it when we saw you parachute down. What luck, we met in the middle.”

“How are you even alive?” Breanna consults her environmental readings again. “The glassified dust particles alone should be shredding your lungs.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tertius replies. “We need to get you to safety. We were only still in Leviss to look for stragglers who refused to evacuate before. Breckenridge is still safe for now, but they’re in danger too. If this liquefaction spreads, they’ll need to continue northwards. You can join us in our...boat,” he adds as he’s looking over towards the other side of the pylon that they’re standing on. “Hm. It’s sinking too.”

With their only means of transport gone, they start looking around for options. There’s a hill jutting out from the soup, which Breanna’s sensors show is solid enough to stand on. If they can reach that, they will be four and a half meters closer to North Exit. Their IMS units come with smaller speed flying parachutes, which can launch and retract much faster than a primary chute. They’re designed to cross chasms and ravines, but they will work in this situation, as long as these islands are sufficiently close to each other. The problem is Tertius and Aeterna. They’re not wearing suits. Even if their bodies can survive this environment, they likely can’t fly.

“We have tandem straps,” Cash reminds Breanna.

“Those are designed to carry children, like a bjorn,” Breanna argues.

Cash shrugs. “They’re strong enough to hold an adult man.”

Breanna sighs. “Okay, we can try it.”

Tertius straps in against Breanna’s chest while Aeterna straps in with Cash. Despite the awkward configurations, they manage to get a short running start, and then jump. Their speedchutes pull them upwards just enough to fly forwards, and drop them on the hill. “Told ya,” Cash teases

“You were right,” Breanna admits. “This might actually work. Let’s go look for the next place to jump to. Hopefully it, uh...exists.”

Microstory 2607: You Ever Find Yourself Hanging off the Edge of a Building, You’re Gonna Wanna Do At Least One

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August 19, 2526. Breanna and Cashmere’s joint escape pod is dangling from the side of the dome, but they don’t know how long the parachute is going to last. It might tear or slip off any second now. Breanna finishes synthesizing their status, and coming up with a plan. “We’re too far in the center of this pane.”

“What does that prevent us from doing?” Cashmere asks.

“We can melt the frame of this dome using an overboosted impulsive burn, and break a pane off. If the pressure doesn’t suck us right through immediately, we can then slip in and jump to safety.”

“Why don’t we release the parachute, and use the remaining thruster fuel to glide down on the outside of the dome?”

“Because there’s not enough fuel.”

“We could supplement it with the back-up parachute.”

Breanna shakes her head, knowing that Cashmere can’t see her. “We can’t control our descent in this thing. Whatever expanded the atmosphere is causing unpredictable weather patterns. We could end up knocking against the dome over and over again, leading to severe blunt force trauma. It’s a miracle that the main chute didn’t snap. We can’t risk the back-up. If it fails, we’re done for. No, the safest way down is for us to use our own personal chutes, free from the confines of the pod, and as far from the dome structure as possible.”

“I’m not arguing with you,” Cashmere replies, “I just want to make sure you have all of your options. Sometimes really smart people like you don’t see the dumb obvious things that people like me can’t see beyond.”

“It’s not the worst idea, but something happened to this planet, and until we figure out what, I only want us taking minimal risks.”

“Okay,” Cashmere begins, “I’m in. But how do we get the thrusters to where they need to be?”

Breanna hesitates to answer, because this is the hard part. “I sent a flutterby drone to inspect our situation. The canopy is hanging off of a maintenance dock. There’s currently no repair beetle on charge, thank God, or it wouldn’t have been able to snag. Most of the suspension lines are hooked separately, however, on a rectenna. They’re holding us up higher. If those lines were to let go, the pod would drop down far enough for the thrusters to be kissing the frame below us.”

“So get your flutterby to cut the lines,” Cashmere suggests.

“They’re made out of a graphene-infused fiber. The flutterby isn’t nearly strong enough to cut through that. I’ll have to go out there, and use the emergency escape torch.”

“No, I’ll do it,” Cashmere volunteers.

“You don’t have the experience.”

“And you do? Hung off a lot of domes lately? I know how to use a torch, and it should be me, because I’m on top. I would have to move out of the way to let you get out instead. That just doesn’t make any sense.”

Breanna obviously already thought of that logic, but it’s not her place to delegate work. She has no rank, no authority. She was only on that ship as a passenger. To be fair, the same goes for Cashmere. Though, she is more of a nomadic tourist. “Okay, but you can’t cut them all at once. We want the pod to slip as slowly as possible so the drone dock still holds the canopy.”

“Got it,” Cashmere says as she’s shifting to prepare to leave. “One at a time. Red wire, green wire, blue wire. Give me yellow, I’ll paint you the world.”

“Okay, take my hand,” Breanna offers, reaching down. “When I open the hatch, it’s probably gonna break off, and you could go flying out after it.”

Cashmere obliges. “M’lady.”

“Ready. Four, three, two, one, mark.” She pops the hatch open. It does go flying off its hinges. Cashmere starts to slip out of the pod, but Breanna manages to hold onto her. “Mag, mag, mag!” she urges.

Cashmere magnetizes herself to the bottom of the pod, but doesn’t stay there long. She begins to climb, letting Breanna give her a boost, and taking the torch along.

“Keep shakin’ that bush,” Breanna shouts. “Let me know how you’re doing!”

“Almost through the first line!” She doesn’t have to announce it when she does make it through, because the pod violently drops down a little.

“Keep one eye on the canopy to make sure it’s holding!”

“Aye, captain!” Cashmere returns. She keeps working on the suspension lines, breaking through them one by one. Finally, with the last one, the thrusters are close enough to the frame.

“Okay, come back!”

“Just burn!”

“It’s safer in here!”

“There’s no door anymore!”

“Just get your ass back down here!” Brenna demands.

Without another word, Cashmere finally reappears. She carefully steps onto the floor of the pod, and remagnetizes. “I love it when you comment on my ass,” she says as she’s hugging Breanna for safety, and only for safety, right?

“Shut up. Is everything sexual to you?”

“Sex is everything,” she defends.

Breanna rolls her eyes. With the hatch gone, she has to use the manual controls on the side, which means she has to physically feel for how much fuel is being dispensed. No readouts here. She’s gonna burn fast and hard. If the fire goes out, and that frame hasn’t melted, they’re gonna have to take their chances out here, and hope the wind carries their gliders to safety. “Four, three, two, one, burn.” She pushes the flush lever to the side with her thumb. It hurts because it’s stiff, and doesn’t want to be moved. She only has to hold for a few seconds, though. The flutterby reports that the diamond pane has turned, revealing a small gap between it and the frame. Plus, the fuel has run out. The gauge was broken, having claimed higher levels.

“What do we do now?” Cashmere asks.

“Shit, I don’t know,” Breanna responds. “We might need to get out and kick it with our f—aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!”

Microstory 2606: There But For the Grace of God Go I, Yet I May Be Next

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August 19, 2526. Comms Officer Jeffries is operating the auxiliary station when the call comes in. He presses the tentative emergency button before the message completes, then listens intently to the rest. We’re experiencing a major hyperflare! You need to prepare for what comes next! You need to prepare for— is all he catches before the signal is cut. It doesn’t matter what the guy was trying to say, because there are only a few possibilities, and none of them is good. He doesn’t get the chance to hit the genuine emergency button before someone else hits it for him. He’s only on secondary duty right now. Everyone else is working the problem as the whole of Terminator Sentinel Alpha goes into mauve alert. His daughter is his number one priority now.

Jeffries races out of the room, and down the corridors, sliding against the wall as other people are racing to their own responsibilities. He finds Breanna in their unit, already putting on her integrated multipurpose suit. He smiles at her. “Good girl.”

“What are we doing?” she asks.

“Crew of Sentinel Alpha,” comes the voice of the captain through the intercom, “we are preparing for a hard turn into the nightside of the planet. Brace for inertial dampener disruption. Everyone is at PREPCON ONE. I repeat, all hands to PREPCON ONE! This is not a drill.”

“That,” Officer Jeffries replies to his daughter. “Get your helmet on.”

“What about you?”

“I ran out of the room without it,” he explains.

“You should have an extra one in here,” she argues.

“It’s in maintenance.”

“Goddammit,” she complains.

“I just need to get you to safety,” is all he’s able to say before the inertial dampeners glitch. He’s suddenly thrown against the wall. IMS units have their own onboard dampeners. It doesn’t save Breanna from the lurch entirely, but she survives it. Her father does not. Well, he does survive for a moment. His head is covered in blood. He’s enhanced, but not enough. He should have been wearing his full suit. Why wasn’t he wearing his suit? “Get to the pod,” he instructs. “Get out of here. You need to get underneath the magnet.” And then he dies.

She knows she doesn’t have time to mourn him. He wouldn’t want her dying up here too. Her body is more advanced than his, but she can’t survive everything. She runs out of the room, and down the corridor until she reaches the escape pod bay. She has always thought that each unit should have their own, instead of all in central locations, but this is an old ship, and they didn’t think of that yet. All of the pods are gone save one. She bolts towards it, but another girl shows up at the same time from the other entrance. “Cashmere.”

Cashmere switches her gaze between the pod and Breanna. “They’re technically large enough to fit two people.”

“Not with helmets on,” Breanna argues. There’s another lurch, but their magboots keep them upright.

“You ever heard of sixty-nining?”

“Jesus! Not the time!”

“To save our lives, there absolutely is.” Cashmere doesn’t wait for consensus. She pushes Breanna into the pod. Then she gets on top of her facing the opposite direction, filling in the space between her Breanna’s legs with her helmet. “You gotta operate the controls.”

“I know,” Brenna argues. “This better work, or we’ll both die. Goddamn pods designed like goddamn coffins!” she mutters as she’s engaging the pod. She flips on the boosters, and jettisons the pod out of the bay. It flies from the ship at Mach 20. They can see the planet below them through their HUDs. “Beginning decay.”

“I can see that,” Cashmere says.

“I know, but you’re supposed to announce it. Didn’t you read the manual?”

“I’m waiting for the adaptation!”

“Just let me know if you pass out, okay?”

“Will do, captain.”

“Targeting the northern pole,” Breanna announces. “Twenty minutes until atmospheric drag.”

They lie there together for another few minutes, not saying anything, but just stewing in the awkwardness. Suddenly, alarms start going off. They no longer feel the soft curve of their arc, but the shudder of turbulence. “What happened?” Cashmere questions.

“The atmosphere is too close. This doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s expanded,” Cashmere guesses.

“How?” Breanna cries

“I don’t know!”

They begin to plummet like a stone, at a far steeper angle than they planned on. Their ablative shielding peels off piece by piece. It’s too early to pull the parachute, though. They have to wait until they’re closer to the surface. “Wait for it,” Breanna says. “Wait for it,” she repeats. “Brace for chute.”

“Oh, I don’t think we can brace any more than this.”

Breanna can’t rely on the computer to make the calculations as its estimation of the distance to the planet was about 500 kilometers off. She hovers her hand over the button, forcing her mind to stay alert so she doesn’t succumb to the g-forces. Finally, it’s time. “Now!”

The chute opens. The pod flips up so she’s fully upright, and Cashmere is upside down as they wait to complete the descent. “Do you know where you’re going?”

“There’s a dome not far from here. The thrusters will be able to push us close enough to it so we don’t have to walk far,” Breanna answers.

They fall and fall and fall, slowly, but certainly not gently. Her mental calculations are slightly off when it turns out they were actually a lot closer to the dome than she thought. They end up crashing into the side of it. The only reason they don’t slide down from there is because the chute gets caught on something. Now they’re hanging, and they don’t know what to do.

“Rescuers are gonna find us six months from now, and will think that we died having sex,” Cashmere mused.

“No, they won’t,” Breanna contends. “I’m gonna figure this out. Just...shut up.”

Microstory 2547: Director of Housekeeping

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A lot of people don’t know that I’ve been working here the longest. It’s been even longer than Landis or the Foundation Director. We still call this a hotel, because that’s what it is, but before Landis bought it and converted it into a place of healing, it was just, indeed, a regular hotel. We didn’t have any official guests yet, because there were funding issues, but housekeeping was already a thing, and I ran it. Before things fell apart, the original owner held a soft open, where guests could stay at a heavily discounted price. They were asked to complete surveys, and help decide the direction the hotel would go. These weren’t just random people snatched off the street. The owner either knew them, or knew someone who knew them. They agreed to help because of their connection, not because they needed a place to stay overnight. It was still real, though. The experience had to match what they were hoping to offer following the grand opening that never was. So there was a staffed kitchen, and bellhops, and a concierge. I was the only housekeeper, but it wasn’t hard to keep up, because the guests were very clean. They were also incredibly respectful. I’ve been doing this for eighteen years, and not everyone is like that. That’s really why I stuck around. The owner, before he found a buyer, kept me, and me alone, on the payroll. The rest moved on to other things. Actually, I take that back, the original janitor now works as a line cook in the cafeteria, but he’s only been back for about a year now, so it’s more of a coincidence than anything. And he still doesn’t beat my record. While he was in limbo, the original owner lived here, and I was just his housekeeper. I treated the job like any other, and did the work that I would have been expected to do under normal circumstances. Now I run a full staff, though the work is easier than it is at other places. All of our guests are permanent, and there is a different expectation in such cases. They mostly pick up after themselves. They can even come down and retrieve more toiletries or towels when they need them. We do handle the laundry for their bedding, but they bring it down, and retrieve a replacement set on their own. My people run the machines. We also provide a little extra care for our mothers and expectant mothers, but really only when it’s hard for them to move around. It’s a pretty cool job, and a lot different than what I used to do. It’s still busy, busy, busy, but we have a good atmosphere, and I’m happy to help keep it clean.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 8, 2521

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Leona was not happy when she found out that Miracle was going to stay in Romana’s original body. She argued that this naturally placed her on the team’s pattern, and gave her other temporal abilities that she was not really supposed to have. The problem was that it wasn’t really their choice. Body swap laws were complicated, but not too complicated. Basically, the only way they could force Miracle out of Romana’s body would be if Romana wanted it back. But even if Romana expressed such interest, she couldn’t then turn around and upgrade to her new substrate right away, just as a means to keep Miracle from the original. It would have to be a sincere wish. Since Miracle did not ask to be cast into the wrong body, her rights to that body were assumed unless someone else were to have a stronger claim to it, and a legitimate one at that. Since this was now simply where Miracle’s mind lived, it fell under my body, my choice laws, which predated even the most nascent consciousness transference technologies by decades.

After Ramses completed Romana’s upgrade, she immediately took herself off the pattern, so she could spend the next year helping Miracle control her own relationship to that pattern, and stay in real time semi-permanently. She could always decide to start time-skipping like the rest of them, but what would be the purpose of that? They didn’t know her; they weren’t friends. She didn’t seem to want to be part of the team, and they kind of had a full roster at this point. Ramses programmed his AI to look for ways to clear Miracle of her temporal manipulation properties altogether, but again, she would have to consent to any procedure that might make such changes.

During the interim year, an old frenemy reached out. Korali was aware of the team’s schedule, but timekeeping was different in the Goldilocks Corridor. It was hard to keep track of precisely when the team was available, and when they weren’t. So they spoke with Team Kadiar at first. “She wants a meeting?” Leona questioned.

“She and the other claimants, which is what they are calling each other, all want a meeting with us.”

“They haven’t killed each other yet?” Marie asked.

“They can’t really die,” Romana reasoned. “There have been a ton of loss on all sides, which the crew of the Vellani Ambassador have been trying to put a stop to, but...they don’t have any support.”

“They don’t have support from who?”

Dubravka stepped forward. “Let’s break this down. You got three claimants, which are the two versions of the Oaksent, and Korali. On the other side, you have the internal resistance, headed by the inhabitants of the penal colony, Ex-666, which they now call Revolumus. I know, not very clever, but they’re trying to tie themselves to the Extremus mission. That brings me to the fifth opposing faction, which is composed of allies from Verdemus, headed by the Anatol Klugman warship. The sixth and final faction are the refugees, and us on the Ambassador who try to rescue them. Revolumus and Verdemus don’t really support our efforts. They don’t exactly want war, but they don’t think there’s any choice.”

“That sounds like a lot,” Mateo admitted, “but what does it have to do with us? The whole reason I had you transport the old Bronach there was so he could deal with it, and we could wipe our hands clean. The situation is far too complicated for a small group of people who only exist one day out of the year to make any meaningful impact.”

“You are the only people they all like,” Kivi explained.

“Why would they like us?” Mateo questioned. “I mean, Korali, I guess. But we’ve grown apart. And the other guys? Sure, I saved one Oaksent from death, but he doesn’t seem like the grateful type. The other version of him definitely isn’t. He keeps trying to kill us, and we keep almost killing him.”

“He respects you,” Dubra clarified. “You never stop fighting to fix things, which speaks to him. Apparently, that’s how this whole thing started. That’s why he founded the Exin Empire in the first place, to fight for his rights.”

“We don’t fight for our rights,” Olimpia contended. “We fight for others. He doesn’t see the difference?”

“I don’t think he understands the concept of helping people,” Kivi replied.

“Look, if you don’t do this,” Dubra went on, “we’ll go back and let ‘em know to take care of their own shit. We’re just the messengers. Hrockas is already aware that the location of Castlebourne is out there, and is working on his own arrangements. Our refugees will be safe, and we will keep gathering more as long as there are more to gather. But. I would love it if the violence stopped. It would make my job easier.”

“Debatable,” Mirage interjected. She was noncorporeal, but visible to them via holographic projection. She was pretending to be sitting on the counter, one of her legs propped up on the backrest of an empty chair.

“What’s that?” Leona asked.

“Ignore her,” Dubra requested.

“Go on with what you were saying,” Leona encouraged Mirage.

“There’s no such thing as a peacetime refugee. They ask us to save them because there’s something to save them from. If you negotiate a ceasefire—which, let’s face it, is as close as you’re gonna get to peace—people won’t feel any impulse to escape anymore.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” Dubra spat.

“Yes,” Mirage said, raising her voice a little, and hopping off the counter. “The Exin Empire is corrupt. The body can’t be saved. You can’t even save the limbs. The best you can do is save the individual cells, and bring them here.”

“That metaphor doesn’t make any sense,” Dubra argued. “Shut up.”

“What does Alt!Ramses say about this?” Mateo asked. “Is he still in control of what Old!Bronach does?”

“He goes by Tok’ra now,” Kivi divulges.

“Like as a first name? It’s a person’s name?” Mateo asked.

“It’s his only name. It’s a mononym.”

“He does love that franchise,” Leona admitted. “He said that he appreciated how much Egyptian culture and history played into it.”

“Where is the other Ramses?” Marie asked, looking around.

“He’s working on what he calls the Miracle Cure,” Leona answered cryptically. It wasn’t really their place to tell the crew of the VA about the Miracle Brighton issue.

There was a pause in the conversation.

“So, what do you say? Will you come back with us?” Dubra offered. Mirage was technically the captain of the ship, but Dubravka had full decision-making power over the missions, and she was apparently really adamant about that.

“Does it have to be today?” Leona asked her.

“If you go today, you’ll be waiting until tomorrow,” Mirage jumped back in. “They’ll all wanna make you sweat.”

Leona looked back to Dubra, who closed her eyes, nodded slightly, and shrugged even slightlier. “That tactic is not really gonna work on us. My problem is that we don’t have enough information. We’ve received piecemeal updates from you, but if we go back there, we need a more comprehensive report.”

“I can write one up for you in minutes,” Mirage volunteered.

“No, you won’t, Dubra insisted. “You’ll add too much bias. We already have reports,” she said to Leona. “The resistance fighters have their own form of central archives, and the AK tracks everything it does, and everything it sees. I can have an unbiased AI compile the information into something more digestible.”

“I can do that.” Ramses was standing in the doorway. “I’ve been listening this whole time. I trust Thistle. Feed him all your information, and he’ll take it from there.”

“So are you all coming today, or waiting?” Dubra asked again.

“We’ll catch up with you,” Ramses told her.

“That’s a complication,” Dubra began. “You’re not allowed to come. Well, you are allowed to be nearby, but they won’t talk to anyone on Team Matic if you’re involved. They see it as an unfair advantage, since an alternate version of you is on Old!Bronach’s side.”

“I don’t talk to that guy,” Ramses explained. “Tok’ra, you say?”

“It doesn’t matter what the truth is,” Mirage said. “It’s what they think.”

“How’s your work coming along?” Leona asked Ramses.

“It can wait,” Ramses claimed.

“Why don’t you stay and keep working on it?” Leona suggested. It was probably the smart move anyway, to keep someone on the outside, protected. They couldn’t do it all the time, since they were supposed to be a team, but they would still have him there, just in a different form. They wondered what he was like now. Tok’ra had been without them for years now, but he surely wouldn’t have changed too terribly much.

“I’ll stay here too,” Olimpia proposed. “I don’t care to be around any version of the Oaksent. I tried to kill him once, so...”

“So did Ram,” Mateo reminded them. “This is the right call. ‘Kay, buddy?”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” Ramses didn’t like being sidelined, but he understood.

Marie hung back too. It was prudent to not leave one or two people stranded somewhere without a full tandem sling drive array. The rest of them accepted the Vellani Ambassador’s invitation to transport them to the Corridor, since it left their tandem slingdrives at full capacity. The VA had to go back there anyway.

They were now orbiting an Earth-like planet. From this viewpoint, there appeared to be more land and less water on the surface, but that was otherwise unremarkable. What they focused mostly on was the atmosphere, which shone brighter. An aurora wrapped itself all around the world, dancing with brilliant shades of turquoise and magenta.

“Don’t try to teleport down there,” Dubra warned. “This world is a fortress, which is why it’s a perfect neutral planet. Argon is extremely rich in the crust, and makes up about 60% of the atmosphere. It’s safe to breathe, especially you with your advanced substrates. The locals use breathing apparatuses to pull in oxygen, and raise the pitch of their voice to normal standards, but they don’t require them, so you will meet people who move slowly, and talk deeply.

“I don’t understand,” Mateo said.

“Argon is what we use in plasma shields,” Leona said. “They got domes down there?”

“They got domes,” Dubra confirmed. “Transparent ones, though, unlike Castlebourne. They have a real sky, so they never felt the need to fake it with holograms.”

“As it turns out, they’ve been in revolt and independent for a long time,” Kivi went on. “They never fought back, or tried to recruit. They just said, leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone. Let us develop and advance however we see fit, and we’ll continue to ship refined plasma to you, but at our discretion. Since the war began, they stopped shipping anything at all, but they did agree to not provide plasma to their enemies either, so there’s that.”

Leona chuckles quietly. “Argon is not a rare element. Sure, I bet it was convenient to have a single, highly concentrated source of the stuff, but they never needed this particular planet to satisfy their needs. I bet they harvest it from lots of other worlds, and that they weren’t too butthurt to let this one go.”

“How do we get down there?” Mateo asked.

“We’ll take The Puff!” Kivi replied excitedly. She ran off.

Dubra ran after her. “You’re not flying it!”

“Oh, yes, I am!” Kivi insisted.

The team followed them to the shuttle bay. They obviously knew this was here the whole time, but as teleporters, never had any use for it. The Puff looked mostly like a smaller version of the Vellani Ambassador. It was purple, sleek, and pretty. “Wait, where’s The Tammy?” Leona asked when she noticed the empty second docking bay.

“It’s...being borrowed,” Dubra replied, uncomfortably like it was a lie. Had it been stolen, or something?

Leona decided not to press for more answers. They climbed into the shuttle, and flew off down to the surface while Mirage stayed alone in orbit. Where was Tertius? They also decided to ask probing questions about that either. After receiving permission, they flew through the entry barrier of the visitor dome, and landed on the pad. The welcome party consisted of only one person. It was presumably this planet’s variation of Vitalie Crawville.

“She’s why they revolted,” Dubra explained without prompting. “They found her stasis pod, managed to break her out, and kind of elected her as their leader. Some may even worship her. I forgot to tell you,” she added in a more hushed voice, “they call this planet Vitalemus.”

“Will she see us as friends?” Angela asked. “I’m getting the impression that this secession happened quite a long time ago.”

“Oh, yes, it was centuries ago,” Dubra responded. “She is a little bit different than the other World Caretakers. A little bit more jaded, maybe? Serious. Hard to read. You should be fine, though.”

They stepped out of the shuttle, and approached Vitalie. She did look quite serious. Her face wasn’t sporting a frown, but it was still a little jarring when it suddenly turned into a smile. She reached out and took Leona in an embrace. “Oh, how I’ve missed you, old friend. Come quick, come quick.” She turned, and started walking away. “Let’s fuck some shit up.”

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Microstory 2494: Biolock

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When this planet was first discovered, it was a barren wasteland. It still technically is. It has not been terraformed. It’s been paraterraformed, which means that the only places where anything can survive are under the domes. You can’t just plant a seed in the dirt, and wait for it to grow, and start producing oxygen for you. The composition of the atmosphere at the moment is not suitable for life, and if we wanted to make it so, we would have to be extremely destructive. Terraformation is always a centuries-long project, which even today, we’ve only completed on one planet, and there are rumors of alien intervention with that one, because no one knows how it was possible. Besides, the whole point of Castlebourne is having these special themed domes. Even if we were to make the rest of the world habitable without destroying everything currently standing, we wouldn’t want to. For that, you can go to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, which was already habitable when we discovered it (though, I have my doubts about that too, because what are the chances?). I digress. What I’m saying is that, in order for us to have any life on this planet, it had to be transported. In some cases, that means digital DNA, but even that’s tricky, because you’re gonna need feedstock to actually develop the organism into something physical. In other cases, we transported live plants and animals, on something called an Arkship. While it took 108 years to get here, the ships were traveling at relativistic speeds, so the time as observed by the passengers was only about two months. It was during this time that the specimens were being monitored under their second quarantine. They experienced their first while still on Earth, which lasted four months. Six months isn’t bad, is it? You should be able to tell whether something has a disease or not in that time. Eh, probably. We’re probably always safe enough, but we don’t want the bare minimum. We want to be extra careful. Besides, the conditions on Castlebourne are different. The atmospheres in the domes are typically optimized, not natural. The surface gravity is different. In order to satisfy our requirements for safety, specimens are kept in special habitats in Biolock for an additional six months so that we may observe and study them, but also so they can acclimate to their new conditions. Once this time period is complete, they will be either transported to their new home under whatever dome they are destined for, or a parallel preserve for further acclimation efforts. Up until now, this was only a Logistical dome not fit for visitors. We have recently completed renovations, which will allow visitors to come through for tours. You will not be able to touch or interact with any of the specimens, but will be able to see them from the protection of a sealed corridor while your tour guide teaches you about our process in greater detail. My superiors asked me to write the first review just to get things started so that our prospectus is ready for it once the first tours go through, and reviews are unlocked for public contribution. Thank you for your time.

Microstory 2482: Teledome

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This is the biggest known ground-based telescope in existence. They make them bigger, but they’re all floating in space, because that’s the best way to avoid atmospheric distortions, and other artifacts. For those of you not in the know, Earth launched two arrays of telescopes for something called Project Topdown. These are currently on their way out into the two intergalactic voids adjacent to each face of the Milky Way Galaxy. They’re all about the practical applications. I won’t go the details, because you can look it up in the central archives, but I’ll say that the purpose of it is to map our galaxy, as well as peer into the local group, unencumbered by the light and other distractions that come from being within the “border” of our own galaxy. Of course, these are not the only telescopes in existence, and it’s not like we’ll ever dismantle the more local ones in favor of using Topdown exclusively. Earth still has its Bouman Interferometer Array, and other worlds in the stellar neighborhood are working on their own projects. Castlebourne isn’t trying to make any breakthrough discoveries with its Teledome, but it certainly seemed logical to build it anyway. At 5400 square kilometers, the Sugimoto Phased Radio-Optical Telescope takes up nearly the entire area of the dome. You might ask yourself, why is it even under a dome? It shouldn’t need to be. Other telescopes certainly aren’t. Well, dust; that’s why. The space within the confines of the dome is pristine, and very easy to keep well-maintained. If they had to worry about dust storms clogging up the sensors, it would be this huge constant chore. So instead of a geodesic dome, it’s a smooth one. And instead of diamond, it’s made of an ultra-clear polycarbonate. It’s not a single object, however. There are seams in it, but they’re bonded at the molecular level. So if it suffers damage, only that section has to be replaced, but that’s only in the event of catastrophic damage, because it’s just as self-healing as any other metamaterial. As for the telescope itself, the name tells you that it’s both radio and optical. It’s also not made of a single, uniform lens. Nanomodules can shift between states, allowing for the absorption of a wide range of frequencies on the light spectrum. There is an atmosphere on Castlebourne, however thin, and it does create artifacts on the image, but as I’ve been saying, they didn’t engineer this to be perfect. We have plenty of alternatives, and they’re always building more. If you want to see the telescope first hand, you can come here, but obviously, the prospectus includes a live feed of the image, and a constant readout of the data, for your own analysis and synthesis. So you don’t have to come here, but it’s cool to see anyhow, so I still recommend it.