Microstory 2658: Full Roster

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Azad reaches down and scoops Jiminy’s gun up, so he now has both the fully operational model, and Reagan’s prototype, which isn’t as powerful. He looks down at Vanore, who is starting to do some breathing exercises. “Let me have her so I can take her to get medical attention.”

Mandica stands with Vanore in her arms. “No, take me and her both.”

He shakes his head. “You need to make sure this never happens again. That man has waged war on the living, and he’s prepared to overtake multiple domes in order to get it done. The Seagate Savior is rallying her people, and I need you to do the same for Ravensgate. I promise, she will receive the best care this side of Gatewood.”

“I brought her back to life,” Mandica explains, “with this stone.” She twists her shoulders demonstratively, but not enough to actually show the Philosopher’s Stone. “But probably only this one copy of her. Her backups are still likely dead, so don’t let anything else happen to her.” She hands her over to him. “What’s happening?”

“Underbelly is under attack,” Azad answers as he’s accepting Vanore. “Unlike in most cases, we can’t turn this off. They’re coming from other domes, since I don’t have time to explain how, let’s just say, they’re not using the door. You saw how I got here, and you’ll see me leave. There is more to this universe than you know, and whoever this person is, he has the same power. Real power.” He magically disappears with Vanore.

Mandica pulls her earpiece out of her pocket, and calls Elysia. “What’s going on over there? Are you being attacked?”

“Yes!” Elysia replies as she’s grunting. “Zombies!”

“Zombies?” Mandica questions. Zombies were played out centuries ago.

“Hordes of them! We think they’re coming from Zombiedome! There’s, like, a portal. A real portal. We don’t know how they’re doing it!”

“We need to get back to the vactrain,” Malika offers.

“That will take too long. Do you have any guns?” Mandica asks Reagan.

“Just this.” He holds his arm out. His own nanobots crawl out from his sleeve. They shape themselves into a simple tube, with a handle for him to grip, before exacting details and texture onto the cylinder as they bond together into a more solid shape.

“Yeah, that’ll do.” She just points, and lets him blast a hole in the tower wall.

“Don’t be mad, but I think we should go supersonic,” Mandica tells them both.

“We have definitely not tested that,” Reagan warns.

“Underbelly is, what, about 2,000 kilometers away? So if we just go—”

“No, no, it’s not happening. I won’t allow it,” Reagan insists.

Two minutes later, they have reached the opposite side of the Loegria dome. Malika is carrying Reagan by the waist. He blasts a hole in one of the dome’s panes so they can fly right through it. Now they’re flying over the real Castlebourne, no longer protected from the thin and unbreathable atmosphere. Fortunately, all three of them can survive this without even dying once. It’s not particularly comfortable at these speeds, but they only have to manage for half an hour, moving at roughly Mach 3. It’s actually better for them to go this fast now that they’re so exposed. They slow down to cruising speeds, and crash through the Ravensgate pane, but much lower this time since there’s a greater risk of diamond falling down on someone’s head.

They continue to fly at cruising speed until they’ve reached the heart of the city. It too has been overrun by zombies. Some of the other superheroes are fighting them off, along with some supervillains. Everyone else is running for their life. This is a black swan event for them. They were not programmed for this eventuality.

“Why would this Jiminy guy do this?” Mandica questions. “What’s the point? Everyone is either an NPC or using a temporary substrate. Yeah, it might hurt if you die, but they knew what they were signing up for. Does he just want to cause chaos?”

“It’s not just here,” Reagan is looking at his wrist device. “There are zombies in the residences too. Some people there are like you were before that stone. I have to go.”

“Wait!” Mandica urges when he tries to break away.

“I can’t wait! People are going to die!”

“We all saw what Azad did. He has real powers; ones that go against what we all learned about physics. Elysia said the zombie portal is real. But she’s in Seagate. They’re using two different portals, and if they’re all coming from the same place...”

Reagan nods. “Then that’s how they’re getting into the residences too. We have to get to that portal, but first, we need to make one stop.”

The three of them return to the lair.

Jaidia is there in a fresh new body. She’s naked, putting on her original wings since her upgraded ones are still back in Loegria. They have to go on before her costume.

“That was a quick turnaround,” Malika points out.

“Azad knows what’s at stake. I blew past reentry procedures,” Jaidia explains.

Reagan heads for his private lab. He has never let anyone into it before, but he leaves the door wide open this time while he makes a beeline for a raised black cabinet. He inputs his code and biometrics, opening the doors and extending a set of two stairs. Inside is an outfit that none of them has seen before. It’s mostly brown, embellished with some white and silver. It’s not simply a wing apparatus that attaches to the back, but an entire suit which he steps backwards into. The wings are feathered, the rest is piped and painted to be reminiscent of feathers. “Meet my new character...The Harrier.”

“And we’re married to that name?” Malika asks him awkwardly.

“Absolutely,” he replies. He steps out of the cabinet, and walks back down the steps. He’s a little off-balance, but at little risk of tipping over. “Let’s go join the circus.” His visor snaps shut, concealing his identity entirely. He leads the flock out of the lair.

The portal is probably 40 or 50 meters wide, but only a couple of meters tall. Zombies are knocking each other over as they shamble in. The team won’t be able to slip through without encountering them. To protect their wings, they land as close as possible, and start fighting their way through, bashing zombies’ skulls in, and tearing off their heads. It’s a bloodbath, but necessary, and the point of Zombiedome. They were designed to be threatening and deadly, and to die for it so visitors can have their fun. Their teeth are sharp, but not enough to pierce their skin, which is good, because according to Malika, you actually can become a zombie yourself, and either exit the game, or have your brain dumbed down. They are not interested in that here. They keep punching, kicking, and tearing until they’ve reached the portal together, and then they have to keep fighting on the other side to break free. They take flight again to get some rest. They scan the immediate area to find the paths to Seagate and the Residences. It’s not going to be so easy. There aren’t only two more portals, but dozens of them.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 3, 2547

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Ramses was unable to track the location of the missing slingbelts, and there was no recourse for this. He designed the bulk map so that, while most of the dots were showing non-specific points, the belts were distinct, and stood out. If they were anywhere out there, he would be able to spot them. Their two top hypotheses were that they were either destroyed, or taken through time. Whoever did it knew exactly what they were after. They weren’t just a couple of random kids swimming in the ocean, who happened to feel something invisible in the water. Their prime suspects were the Spiral Station crew, but they didn’t want to assume. They had plenty of genuine enemies, and since time travel was inherently involved, it could have been someone they hadn’t even crossed paths with yet. Instead of wasting pointless effort on figuring it out, Ramses just programmed his forge core to build three replacement belts during the interim year. Mateo, Leona, and Olimpia had lost all of their belongings, but that wasn’t a big deal.

It was interesting that the married trio were the ones whose belts were stolen. Ram calculated a 2.85% chance that this was entirely unintentional, but the more practical odds said that it was vastly more improbable. Just the fact that the other four belts were left behind made it unlikely to have been random. They were magnetically linked to one another. It was actually more difficult for them to take only some of the belts, than to have swiped them all in one go.

The next day, the missing belts appeared on the bulk map. They had been transported halfway across the Milky Way, for reasons yet unknown. “Have we been there before?” Olimpia asked. “Do we know anyone there?”

“That is part of the nuclear star cluster, which is relatively close to Sagittarius A*, our galaxy’s central black hole” Leona explained. “It’s not the farthest we’ve ever been, but as you can see, no one else is there. It’s only our belts.”

“No one has ever been there,” Ramses added. “They’re on Southside. Extremus crossed over the black hole on the north side of the galactic plane. When the Matrioshka Body was studying time, it too was on Northside. The whole stellar neighborhood is on Northside, so we just don’t know too much about this region.”

Romana giggled. “They’re a gift.”

“Huh?” Mateo asked.

“We were just talking about Operation Starframe,” Romana said. “If we want to reach every corner of the galaxy, it’s best to start in the center. Now we can do that. Now we have something to lock onto. This will be our staging ground.”

“We don’t know that the thief did this as a favor,” Marie pointed out. “It could be a trap instead. I’m guessing this region is naturally fairly hostile, if it’s so close to the chaos of the supermassive black hole.”

Ramses made a facial shrug. “It’s not as dangerous as, say, the s-star cluster, which is much closer to the singularity, but it’s not particularly safe, like it is for Sol. I’m inclined to agree with Romy. It’s too coincidental. If I were the thief, I would put a trap around Sirius, or some other close but barely settled region. It took them too much work to get to where they are. Yes, I’m sure they are trying to lure us there. It’s irrational to believe that they hid the belts from detection last year, but forgot to shield them today when they would know we’ve returned to the timestream. But based on our track record, does anyone here really think that we’re not gonna go?”

They all laughed a little. “Yeah, we’re gonna go,” Mateo decided. He commanded his nanites to wrap him up in armor, leaving his face unprotected for now. “What did you say before, Romana? Boot ‘n’ rally.”

They all armored up too. “Yalla,” Leona ordered.

“Give me a minute,” Ramses defended. “I need to make the calculations.” He turned away and paced a little as he was tapping on his wrist device. “Okay, do it again.”

“Yalla.”

They slung to the nucleus, and landed on a rocky planet. It wasn’t heavily vegetated, but not barren either. The plantlife was clearly alien, but decidedly alive. The sky was a beautiful sunset orange. Snowcapped mountains towered in the distance, and it looked a little greener on the foothills. They turned to find three dress form mannequins on a display curve. A slingbelt was fitted to each one.

“Yeah. Definitely brought here for us,” Romana agreed with herself.

“That’s not all,” Ramses said, looking at his interface again. “It’s breathable. For us, anyway. I’m seeing 83% nitro, 11% oxy, 5 for CO2, and a half percent each for hydrogen and trace gases.”

They decided to open their visors but keep the rest of their armor on, except for Romana, who chose to end up in a gray sports bra and yoga shorts. It still could be a trap. The atmosphere was indeed breathable, but it took a few minutes for their bodies to acclimate to the suboptimal environment. During this time, they were mildly suffocating before their carbon scrubber organs caught up to compensate for the extra toxin.

“Carbon load back down to manageable levels for everyone,” Angela announced. She had expressed an interest in serving as the closest thing to a medical professional the team had.

Romana instinctively walked around to the other side of the mannequins. She reached up to one of them, and pulled something off of it. “Sorry for taking these, but now you have extra, in case you need them. You won’t have to worry about us again. Don’t screw it up this time,” she read.

“They didn’t sign their name?” Mateo asked her.

“Not exactly,” she answered.

“They...initialized it?” Mateo couldn’t think of anything else that was close to a signature.

“They hand-wrote it, or I should say, you hand-wrote it.” She showed him the note, and she was right; it was in Mateo’s handwriting.

“Well, I suppose I can trust myself, can’t I?”

“No,” Leona replied bluntly.

“Fair enough.”

“Any other anomalies besides these belts?” Leona asked Ramses.

“No artificial signals,” Ramses began to answer from his interface. “No satellites, no power generators, no signs of life in the immediate vicinity...” He looked back up and regarded the horizon. “There is no way to know if we’re alone, but we seem to be.” He took out his forge core, and appeared to be in thought as he separated himself from the group, and also looked at the mountains.

“Are you considering building something here?” Mateo asked.

“Something?” Ramses returned. “Maybe everything.”

“Like a new lab? You just built a new one in your pocket,” Mateo reminded him.

“Yeah, I know, and I would still want to keep it with me as a mobile office.” Ramses turned back around. “But a real home base might be nice too. I once thought that that was Castlebourne, but there are too many people there. I think we should be more like Linwood Meyers, and take full ownership over a remote territory. No one else is here, it would just be ours. It will take tens of thousands of years before Project Stargate reaches this region. That’s more than a hundred and fifty years for us. This could be a safe place. We would really only have to worry about Spiral Station.”

“It’s not the farthest man has ever gone,” Olimpia said. “You just mentioned Linwood, who is even more remote on the far end of the galaxy. The Extremus isn’t too far from there. The Exin Empire has reframe engines, and several decades to kill.”

“They would have to find us,” Ramses continued to list. “This is a central location. It’s a great place to stage Operation Starframe. It’s uninhabitable by even some other posthuman models.”

“Still,” Olimpia pushed back. “Shouldn’t we go as far as we can? I agree, it’s perfect for Starframe, but not the best place for a home if we truly want to be hidden and remote.”

“The slingdrives have power constraints. Being ultra-distant has its disadvantages too. We’ll still defend our home. We’re not just gonna live like pioneers.”

“The note, it’s warning us about something,” Romana jumped back in. “We don’t know what. Did we come here in another timeline, or is that what changed? What exactly are we hoping to not screw up this time?”

“It’s doubtful that we were here before,” Leona determined. “We came here for the belts. That and the note probably mark the point of divergence. I think this planet is meant to change whatever issues Future!Mateo faced that he’s trying to fix now.”

“You just said we couldn’t trust him,” Marie contended. “Handwriting means nothing. Anyone could have forged it.”

“True,” Leona admitted.

“I’ll do my surveys,” Ramses reasoned. “I’ll build satellites and probes. We’ll map this whole star system, and beyond. Infrastructure will not be a problem. If we change our minds later, we can always leave. That is entirely what Starframe is even about. It gives us options, and this world gives us those options faster.”

“Anyone opposed?” Leona posed to the group. When no one said anything, she looked at Romana. “You’re our navigator, but you didn’t bring us here. Do you object to staying?”

“No,” Romana answered. “Like he said, we can always leave later.”

Leona nodded. “Okay. Let’s do some quick surveys before the infrastructure can be built, just to get some idea of what we’re dealing with. No one has to participate who doesn’t want to. What I’ll be doing is teleporting high up into the atmosphere, taking readings and images on my way down, and then popping back up over a different swath of land to image that area next. Anyone is welcome to spread out and do the same. But if you just want to stay here, that’s fine. If three of you would rather go back to the stellar neighborhood, that would be acceptable too.”

“No, we’re not gonna do that,” Olimpia promised. “We’ll stick together, as we always try to do. I had to argue against the plan to make sure it was a good plan. I’ve seen this movie before. This planet has monsters on it, and that’s the whole plot.”

“It would not be crazy if we did find complex life here,” Leona concurred. “With carbon dioxide levels this high, I’m more surprised that there’s even a desert. I suspect the majority of the surface will be fairly lush.”

Leona was correct. While Ramses camped out at their landing site to synthesize the data, the other six jumped around the atmosphere to serve as living survey probes. Their onboard sensors weren’t advanced enough to take highly detailed readings, but it was enough to generate a crude globe. They saw some more yellow and red, but they also saw green and blue. It looked not unlike Earth, though the night sky was a lot prettier. There wasn’t any light pollution, and this region of space had a denser cluster of stars to admire.

They found almost no manmade structures besides the display mannequins, but they didn’t find none at all. “Everyone jump to my position,” Marie requested.

“Even me?” Ramses questioned.

“Especially you,” she replied.

They all converged at Marie’s location. They found her standing on a grassy hill, elevated above a surrounding forest. They weren’t quite sure what other thing they were seeing here, though. It was a sphere of warped space, rotating so fast that they couldn’t even tell which direction it was moving. It reminded Leona of a black hole, but not exactly. “It’s not black,” Olimpia sort of joked, sort of really didn’t understand it at all.

“Back up anyway,” Leona suggested.

They all took several steps back because their guess was that it was a portal, and of course, they had no idea where it might take them. But like the gravity regulator machine back on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, it wasn’t going to give them any choice. It suddenly expanded, and engulfed them all.

It didn’t appear to have done anything to them. They were still standing on the same hill. The same forest was still surrounding them. “Is everyone okay?” Mateo asked. “Roll call.”

They took their turns declaring their respective statuses. They had settled on an order ahead of time, so it was predictable, except in any hypothetical situation where something actually was wrong with one of them. Everyone was fine this time; no currently detected health or temporal issues. The swirling portal was still there, so they elected to turn around and walk back down the hill to avoid any further issues.

“Mother,” came a voice from behind them. They turned to see a man standing near the top of the hill, right in front of the portal. No one recognized him.

“Who do you believe is your mother?” Leona asked in a way that implied she hoped it wasn’t her yet again.

The man slowly pointed at Olimpia.

“Me?” Olimpia questioned, shocked. “If I look like your mom, then she must be from a different timeline, because I don’t have any kids.”

“No, it’s definitely you. I was hoping we would meet sometime, but I didn’t want to push it. It had to be your choice. I left this reality portal here in case you ever came looking.”

Olimpia shook her head. “I don’t know how it would be possible.”

“You’re sometimes called The Echo, right?” the man pressed.

“Not so much anymore,” Olimpia countered.

“Well, I’m always called Echo. I’m your echo.” He took a deep breath. “Welcome back to The Sixth Key.”

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Microstory 2630: If You’re Going Through Hell...Keep Going

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April 3, 2527. Each pod can hold about 2,500 people, and with three tether systems running concurrently, that means around 2.16 million people can be evacuated every day. On the north side of the planet, only around 147 million people ultimately needed to evacuate. The rest had died, transferred their consciousnesses to other worlds, or refused to leave. A lot of the people who had originally settled in the surviving domes saw no reason to go, and no one spent much effort trying to convince them otherwise. The future is wildly uncertain at this point. Science suggests that the poles will remain safe indefinitely, but that’s assuming nothing more changes about Proxima Centauri, and that anyone truly understands what’s happening. This has never occurred before. If Earth were this hostile, nothing would have likely evolved on it, let alone a species as intelligent as humans. The safe bet is to leave, but many don’t see it that way.

It’s been 69 days now. Breanna, Cash, Notus, and Calypso are still here, along with a handful of Tangent workers who are just finishing up. They have made one final announcement in case anyone wants to change their mind, but it’s time to leave now. People have had multiple chances to get on board, so this is it. They need to pack up and head off to the southern pole to do it all again. It is reportedly going to take a lot longer, as more of them want to leave, but the four of them have completed their responsibilities. They weren’t even expected to stay for the whole two-month stint, but they did, because they wanted to help. They have not been shown a whole lot of gratitude for their efforts by the evacuating Domanians, but that’s not why they did it, and it was a rewarding experience anyway. The Bungulans initially left two pods down here as staging pods. Each one is several stories tall, so filing everyone in was a lot faster when they were already in place. One of those staging pods has finally gone back up, completely empty, which means it can do it a lot faster. This last one is for the last remaining workers. They all climb the steps, along with Heracles.

“Wait! Wait, wait, wait!” Someone says. He’s jogging through the holo-stanchions, and jumping on stage. It’s none other than Sorel Arts.

“Hey,” Breanna says after he climbs into the pod. “You’re coming with us?”

“Yeah, everyone who’s ever gonna say yes to the upload has already done so. I see no point in wasting my time here. The southerners need my help now.”

“Good on ya,” Cash says. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Likewise,” Sorel replies as the doors are closing.

One of the Bungulan workers comes over as the pod is closing and being moved out to the tether. “Listen, we were hoping to do an express trip. Can you all handle that? The pod isn’t equipped with inertial dampeners. We had to manufacture too many of them on our way here. It was simpler to basically just make a tin can tied to a string.”

“How many Gs are we talking’ here?” Breanna presses.

The Bungulan reaches over and waves a sliding door open. “A hundred and twenty. Because we have to break through the atmosphere first, so it will take nearly fifteen minutes total.” She steps to the side, revealing what’s in the other room. It’s a giant tank of some kind of fluid. Breanna is guessing perfluorocarbon.

“We’re trained for that,” Cash says, pointing to herself and Breanna. “They’re not,” she explains, indicating Notus and Calypso.

“No, it’s all right. We can handle it,” Calypso insists.

“You don’t understand,” Breanna says. “If you accelerated at these speeds without that tank, it would kill you. No matter what, unless you’re maybe a couple of certain someones, there would be nothing you could do to survive.” She gestures towards the tankroom. “This allows us to do it without feeling the full effects of such extreme acceleration, but you’re submerged in a special water that you breathe through your skin as it also fills your lungs. Everyone panics the first time. Even I did, and that was a controlled pull, at a lower acceleration than this.” She faces the Bungulan. “I’m sorry, I won’t allow it. You’ve been at this for seven months. You can wait sixteen more hours.”

“No.” Notus steps forward. “We have been through this much. We did things we never thought we would. None of those things was our choice, but this is. Let us do it. We promise, we’ll make it through. Even if it traumatizes us, it’s a story that we can tell our grandkids one day.”

“Our grandkids?” Calypso echoes.

“Our...respective...collective...grandkids.” Nice save.

“I assure you, it’s quite safe,” the Bungulan promises. “You won’t be able to talk, but it comes with an AI coach. Even the veterans will hear it guide us through the experience. The voice has been clinically tested, and proven to be fairly universally calming and helpful without sounding robotic or irritating.”

Breanna sighs and looks at her friends. They all seem amenable to the idea, and he’s right that it’s safe. The concern is not that something will go wrong, but that they won’t like, and won’t be able to tell anyone to stop. “Well, because of the atmosphere, I suppose we have to start off rather slowly anyway, so that will give us some time for human coaching, right?”

“Right,” the Bungulan agrees.

“Okay, fine,” Breanna concedes. “I’ve never actually done it in the field, so you’ll have to walk us through it. Explain like we’re five.”

“We can do that.”

Everybody climbs into the tank, and dips into the water. At first it feels like nothing, and then they move. They can feel the resistance of the thick fluid surrounding them, but still, the suit itself is fully sealed. Once everyone is in, the pod begins to move, but at very low speeds. The Bungulan instructs them on what to do. The suit, being as versatile as it is, is designed with the ability to accommodate this very thing. Valves open to let the fluid in. It’s the weirdest part. Humans evolved without the ability to breathe underwater. They are hardwired to not even try. It takes a great deal of will to force one’s self to overcome that impulse. Yet everyone does. While they’re still moving at fairly low speeds—though already accelerating—the group reports being prepared for this. Notus retains the wherewithal to send a message to Heracles, who is still in the main area of the pod, telling him that they’ll see each other on the other side. The pod moves faster and faster. Then it goes faster, faster, faster, and faster. The AI voice responds to their reactions, and alters its guidance accordingly. It’s rough and frightening, but they all get through it. Minutes later, they’re on the platform. Breanna may never see Proxima Doma again. She’s not sure yet if she wants to head for the southern pole, or take a shuttle somewhere else. She doesn’t have to decide right away.

Delegator Chariot greets them when they arrive. “Welcome to The Tangent. The Captain would like to meet you.”

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!!!!!!!”