Spaghetti West: A Space Odyssey (Part IV)

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After the Atmospheric Kugelblitz Black Hole event, Sugar had to sit down with Liselot to understand what they lost, and why it was more important than it sounded. Near the equator of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida once lay a country called Eyrenland. They named it after the indigenous wildlife, or more specifically, what they produced. The uquira and uquirapods had an evolutionarily interesting dynamic.

They didn’t adhere to Earth’s rules of biology and taxonomy. Some were plants, and some were animals, but only as the closest analogs to human comprehension. Their reproductive cycle was multi-faceted, but what the locals and consumers cared about were the eyren. They most closely resembled eggs. They had a shell—which was iridescent and beautiful—a white—which was actually more tan—and a black yolk. The yolk actually kind of looked gross and rotten, but it was perfectly healthy, and irrefutably tasty.

When the yolk was touched by a tongue, it didn’t simply taste like whatever it tasted like. It reacted with the taste buds, providing them with whatever they preferred and desired most. It behaved less like a food, and more like a drug. It activated pleasure chemicals in the brain, creating a sense of euphoria and peace without limiting the user’s faculties, or inhibiting their judgment. It was a miracle food, and the most popular import across the stellar neighborhood. For centuries, philosophers believed exporting and importing would be irrelevant at interstellar levels, but people were determined to make it make sense, and the eyren trade was the result of those efforts.

Sugar asked why these special eggs couldn’t simply be reverse-engineered in a lab. Technically they were, but that defeated the purpose. Everything was composed of chemicals; nothing was made of magic. Anything that existed could be recreated from scratch. And to be sure, there were plenty of people who got their hands on the formula so they could do exactly that. But transhumans could also just flip a switch in their brains and release whatever hormones they wanted. They could literally trigger an orgasm with a single thought. That wasn’t the problem. Consumers wanted real eyren because they valued authenticity. The bounded source and finite supply were precisely what gave it its value. And now that was almost all gone, thanks to the AKBH.

Eyrenland served as the intake region for the whole world. They had a few space elevators for redundancy purposes, but the default was to come through here, specifically so they would be close to the uquira. They did it for the same reasons ancient museums often placed their exits in the gift shop. The refugees from Proxima Doma and Doma Tertia were given a patch of land to start their new lives here, so they lost their homes for a third time, which would be profoundly hilarious if it weren’t so sad. When they showed back up on the ship that brought them to this planet in the first place, they were pissed to say the least. They would have rioted had their numbers been greater.

That wasn’t to say the non-refugees were any happier. They just lost their homes, and they demanded to know why. The Interim Axiom of Eggs and First Axiom had to teleport up to Sugar’s ship to keep them calm so Axiom of Astronomy Liselot could explain what went wrong. Until today, they had no reason to believe that a KBH would enter the atmosphere. She strongly suggested that they be grateful for their lives. Not everyone there was streaming their consciousness to backups, and they would not have 

survived had Sugar not stepped in. Even then, some assumed that it was somehow her fault, only because of the suspicious timing.

There was a secondary source of eyren, clear on the other side of the world. Researchers were still trying to figure out how two separate populations of uquira/uquirapods managed to evolve so far from each other. Sugar could find out relatively easily with a bit of time travel, but she didn’t bring that up because she didn’t care and had more pressing matters on her mind. The Eyrenland farmers insisted that Sugar teleport them down to Quiratan, but that did not seem like the right thing to do.

Farmers were already living there, and were evidently more concerned with preserving the ecology. They harvested eyren too, and exported what they couldn’t consume themselves, but they didn’t scale to meet demand. They mostly stuck to themselves, and didn’t participate on the world stage. Vantu became extraordinarily protective of the Quiratani after being asked to basically use their immense power to kick the locals out. He took a shuttle down to show any would-be invaders that they would do well to stay out. For now, Axiom of Eggs Antinan and the Eyrenlanders were heeding the warning, but Van had to remain, leaving Sugar mostly alone on the ship.

It was fine, everything was automated. It wasn’t like Sugar had to babysit all the equipment. The KBHs were still arriving, but they were incrementally improving warning times, and none so far had appeared as close to the planet as the AKBH. They did not believe it would likely happen again. There was just too much other space, and while a pattern had not yet presented itself, lightning proverbially never struck twice. Fending them off had become routine to the point of monotonous, which was not good. That was why it was so important to complete that modified defense grid. Their ship was the only one capable of reaching the source, and it was now time to do just that.

While they were predicting and deflecting the onslaught, Sugar was also trying to track where they were coming from. She thought, with enough data, she would be able to determine the answer, but it wasn’t there. There was no interstellar signature, or anything. She had come to realize that the only way to locate it would be to push one back through its portal, like she did with the AKBH, but this time, follow it through.

“That’s suicide,” Liselot warned. “And don’t argue that you’re backed up like everyone else; it probably doesn’t work like that. We were recently discussing the signal interference that it was causing. You will not likely beam back here. You will simply die.”

Liselot did not know about the afterlife simulation, which could capture one’s consciousness from anywhere in the galaxy, and Sugar didn’t think it was wise to tell her. There was a reason the architects kept it a secret. People were only meant to go there if all else failed. Still, it meant Sugar couldn’t explain why she wasn’t worried about the mission. She would have to make her case another way. “I’ll be fine.” Oh, how clever.

“I’m going with you,” Liselot insisted, “and I will not be arguing with you. I know you have the power to magically send me back down to the surface, but that would violate my autonomy. I’m still upset that you tried to convince me that Van was a hologram when we first met. I want to go, and I want you to respect that.”

“I don’t want to argue with you either,” Sugar began, “but you literally just said that I was gonna die. So am I the fool for going, or are you for coming with me?”

“Both,” Liselot answered. “Where I’m from, we believe that every day past 120 years is a gift. Our ancestors could only dream of reaching such ages, and for the vast 

majority of human history, that was close to the hard limit. If I die now...” She shrugged. “Well, I’ve surpassed it many times over, so it’s nothing to cry over. If it’s my time, I’m ready.”

Sugar shook her head. “I won’t violate your autonomy, even though as captain of this ship, it is well within my rights to decide who boards and who doesn’t.” She looked over at the screen showing a KBH’s pending arrival. “You have a couple minutes to change your mind, though.” She tapped a button, causing a bridge escape pod to open. “This will teleport you clear of the event horizon through burst mode until it makes it back to the space station. The ship, meanwhile, will be so close to the singularity, that even when I push it back, the gravity will be too strong for me to escape.”

Liselot nodded and stepped towards the pod before turning around to face Sugar. “I made up my mind before you told me what you were gonna do. I knew you would do it eventually. Don’t think I came to this decision on a whim.”

“Very well.” Sugar teleported the whole ship to the next arrival point. While they were waiting, she walked around the console holding her new device. “It’s preprogrammed, but if you’re coming, you need to get in here too. It’ll be a tight fit.”

“What is it?” Liselot asked, looking at the unfamiliar gizmo.

“Personal equilibrium generator.” Sugar attached it to her arm, activated it, then hugged Liselot tightly. The small egg-shaped energy field began to emanate from it. She held Liselot even tighter once they saw quite how small it was. They held onto each other and watched as the KBH appeared out of nowhere, and the ship began to shake around them. They couldn’t feel a single thing; it was like they weren’t even really there.

Sparks flew as inessential systems crashed under the weight of the gravitational disturbance. The ship lurched forward as it fell towards the center. Attitude control worked overtime to make sure the particle beam continued to focus on its target, with a little bit of leeway compensated with a gyroscope. The black hole fell back into its portal, dragging the ship along with it. Within seconds, they were in the wormhole. It took a surprisingly long time. Wormholes weren’t instant—they both obviously knew that—it was just taking longer than expected.

At last, they flew out of the tunnel, back into normal space. The ship stopped shaking, so Sugar deactivated the equilibrium generator. Sensors which had been gathering data the whole time were blinded for a moment while they recalibrated. Once they determined that it was safe, the viewscreen turned itself back on, and showed them where they were. They were entering orbit around a planet. The sensors still didn’t know where it was, or how far they had traveled from Tau Ceti. That was odd too, because a simple star chart reference should have come up with an answer rather quickly. It was picking up infrastructure, though. Whatever world this was, it was clearly inhabited.

An unknown vessel came up and matched the ship’s vector. The strangers opened their weapons...and fired.

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Microstory 2709: A Map and a Name

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This place turned out to be a dangerous one. It was perfectly fine in the beginning, but it seemed that the Custodians wanted to take this time to remind the family that there is no such thing as safety. The first few years were peaceful, which lulled them into a false sense of security. For the last seven years after that, however, they faced raid after raid from rival Danes who wanted what they had. Ronan couldn’t leave. He had to stay and protect their land. They considered picking up their door, and moving everyone again, but that wasn’t what a true Norseman would do. He would stay and fight. He always thought he would eventually go off a-viking and seek out the battle, but he clearly didn’t have to. It always found them. He didn’t usually know if he and Vith were fighting other players, or NPCs, but it didn’t matter. Their responsibility remained the same: defend the home, protect the girls and the child.

Leif is ten years old now, which is older than Talus was when he started showing signs of an antisocial disorder. Leif is a completely different kid, just as Gia promised. He is gentle and thoughtful. He eats meat, because he has to, but he doesn’t go on hunts. Ronan found him with a rabbit once, which gave him a powerful flashback to that day with Talus, but Leif wasn’t hurting it. He was holding it on its back like a baby, and petting its neck and chest. It made Ronan wonder whether this was the right world for him. Was he simply not built for it? Did he deserve to try something more his speed, like Raindome? Or maybe something else with a lot of animals, like Canopydome? It doesn’t have to be on Castlebourne either. They could take him to Earth, or one of the other colonies. They just didn’t know. It has been hard to explain to him that none of this is real. They no longer have the flexible display to illustrate the technology that they’re missing here. He might have to see it for himself so he can make a decision.

Isavet is not like Talus or Leif. She grew up to be a fierce girl, who looks just like her mother, but acts just like Ronan, specifically when he’s fighting the raiders. Over the years, she has talked about seeking revenge against their attackers. Ronan and Gia wouldn’t let her go; not because she was a girl, but because she was too young. They always said, though, when she came of age, if she wanted to go a-viking, they would let her. Has that day finally arrived? Was this the last straw? Even Ronan is feeling legitimately angry about it, and he better understands just how contrived this world is. That’s a funny word to use for it, though, when you’re standing before your own house as it’s burning down, including the door that you fought to protect for so many years.

Everyone is angry, except for young Leif. He never got attached to the house. He prefers unsettled nature anyway. But Isavet is on a whole other level. She stands with the flames to her back as the wood crackles and crumbles to the ground. She tenses up and screams her head off. She knows this is a simulation. She knows that no one genuinely holds anything against her. But she’s fully engaged. She holds nothing back. Life is really black and white for her, and motivation doesn’t matter. She had a house, she had a door, and now she has neither. She’s going to get revenge now, whether her parents help or not. This is happening. So Ronan and Gia better get on board.

The next day, after the fires have died down, and the ruins are now only smoldering, Ronan hands Isavet a pack of supplies. “You’re an adult now, girl. I don’t want you running off, looking for trouble. You are not ready. Your anger alone will not get you through this. You will train first. You will seek help. I can no longer leave. I must stay with your brothers and mother. If you want this, you need to do it right. In there is a map to the nearest city, and a name. Stay away from the mercenary camps. They will not help you. They will take more than they give. We have a blacksmith friend in Hedeby who will teach you what you need to know. I had intended to go to him myself, but never got the chance. If you give him my name, he will give you a room and lessons.”

“Thank you, father,” Isavet says. “I will find you when I can. Unless I die, but it will be a noble death. I promise you that.”

“We’re headed farther north,” Ronan explains, “to the tip of Danmörk. The seas are rougher. It will be a tougher daily life, but it’s remote, and raiders will have little reason to attack. We will rebuild.” He looks around, in case anyone is watching, which is ridiculous, because they’re pretty remote already. The raiders won’t return to claim their spoils until later. “It’s near the wall. You always wanted to see it. You can there. That is incentive to return to us.”

“Okay, father. Goodbye.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 13, 2557

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While Marie and Angela were exploring the area, they came across what looked like an even more intricate ice cave system. It just so happened to be roughly in the direction where they were headed now. They didn’t want to walk a thousand kilometers, and didn’t have time to do so anyway, but unfortunately, it appeared that they were being watched. If they wanted to teleport, they had to do it in secret. So they went into the caverns, waited until midnight central hit again, and then jumped pretty close to their destination, hoping that it wouldn’t be recorded. It was still freezing and snowy here, but not below them. Deep in the valley, they could see snow-free land, as well as a fairly small structure in the center of it. “X marks the spot,” Mateo mused.

They walked down the rest of the mountain, and approached the oasis. Before they could set foot on it, a man ran out to a balcony. “Stop!” he cried. “You’ll wake them!” He pointed to their right. “Over there!”

They looked over to see a bridge a couple hundred meters away. They climbed up the steps, walked across the bridge, and entered the building, where the man was waiting for them. “Hello. My name is Captain Leona Matic. We appreciate your hospitality. Could we ask, who is asleep? Who are you worried about?”

“My name is Gunther Lank,” he said. “I was left on the surface to study these creatures. We have no name for them yet. I was thinking of naming them after myself, but I don’t want to seem pretentious.”

“I think it would be fine,” Leona said. “May I ask, if they only live in the tundra oasis, why not build somewhere on the snow? Then you wouldn’t have to be so careful.”

Gunther shook his head. “There are two major lifeforms on this world. One of them lives in the oases, the other the snow. The former are predators, who respond to sound and movement; the latter prey who react to electrical signals. Our technology confuses them. Like electric eels, they use it for their mating rituals. I’m studying them too, but I have to be more careful. They vastly outnumber the sand creatures, and I believe they will attack en masse if they feel threatened. That is why we jam all tech.”

“Are they like those things from Dune, or those things from Tremors, or that thing from that episode of Sliders that was a ripoff of Dune and Tremors?” Olimpia asked.

“I do not know the references,” Gunther admitted.

“So, how do you get off the planet, and join your friends in orbit?” Romana asked.

“I don’t,” Gunther replied. “This is my home now. In a few centuries, either the snow will overwhelm the oasis, or the oasis will expand as the snow melts. I’m watching it happen from here. My colleagues are watching from orbit. We need both to get a clear picture.” He looked around. “We cobbled this facility together using dozens of dropships that they manufacture up there. We try to disturb the surface as little as possible.”

“So...” Marie began, “...bottom line is you don’t need any help with anything. Neither you nor your colleagues want to swap places, or receive new supplies, or anything like that? You’re good? You’re set?”

“We’re good, we’re set,” Gunther replied. “Is that why you came here?”

Leona nodded. “We have dedicated our lives to traveling to various colonies that exist outside beyond the Charter Cloud. We’ve come in an experimental, and extremely energy inefficient, new type of drive. Now that our technology has been turned back on, we can leave. So unless you need anything, we’ll be moving on to the next colony.”

“Well...” Gunther hesitated. “Maybe you could stay for tea?”

“We can do that,” Leona agreed.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 8, 2552

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Before calling anyone else about the creep, the twins walked back around the portal building, which they had named The Gatehouse. Angela wanted to call it The Iris, but Marie said that they weren’t allowed to. They stress-tested the structure, and found themselves unable to get in, which suggested that Bronach Oaksent would not be able to get out. They certainly didn’t design it to be that easy. But they had only just now built it, so they were paranoid that it wasn’t enough. Who knows what tricks this guy had up his giant sleeve? They returned to the doors where he was waiting to be let out, and urged him to go back where he came from. He didn’t leave, and he didn’t speak. He didn’t lift his hood either, so they weren’t even able to confirm that it was him. For all they knew, it could have been a troublemaking teen just playing a prank.

Once it looked like their opinions weren’t being respected, they relented, and called in everyone else. The Matics were not happy to be interrupted from what they were doing, but they understood the seriousness. Ramses was fortunately at a stopping point in his work, where the trillions of simulations he was running needed time to iterate and resolve. “I’ll handle this,” he said. He took the forge core back from Angela, and started working on something new, claiming that it would be complete by the time they returned to the timestream. He was right. When they came back a year later, it was impossible to even get close.

It was now surrounded by the largest pyramid they had ever seen. Ramses said that the perimeter was 20 kilometers in total length. He would have built it bigger than that, but that was all the space he had to work with outside of the capital dome. There was actually an entrance that went from the dome, into the pyramid. From there, a maze leading to the portal would make it virtually impossible to find your way through. Even if Bronach returned to where he came from, and flew back through the portal with a stealth bomber, he should not have been able to escape. He kind of went overboard with this one, but admitted to feeling bad for not addressing the issue before. Leona wanted to point out that it was Echo who made the portal in the first place, with no apparent way to shut it off, but that would have been insensitive of him.

“Is he still there?” Leona asked over Angela’s shoulder as Angela was studying the Gatehouse’s feed.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Well, his robes are anyway.” She cast the video to the big screen, and stepped through days and days of footage. “See? He doesn’t move. He’s literally frozen. I’m thinking he teleported out, and teleported a mannequin in to take his place.”

“I though you had the suppression field up.”

“Oh, that doesn’t just prevent people from getting in or out?” Angela asked.

“It should stop it altogether.”

“Oh, then I don’t know,” Angela said. He’s, uhh...a robot? I saw that in a show once. An evil android went too far back in time, so he made himself a little money, bought some infrastructure, then sealed himself up, and just went dormant for decades.”

“That’s absolutely not impossible.” Leona looked back at the screen for a few seconds. It made her shiver. “Ack, that’s so creepy. Turn it off, turn it off.”

Angela exited out, letting it revert to a wide shot of the pyramid from the outside. “I know this was all automated, but it still took a lot of energy for just one little person.”

“It’s not a waste. It’s good to have a pyramid anyway. It helps facilitate interstellar and intergalactic travel.”

“I’ve heard that,” Angela said, nodding. “I don’t understand why, or why it seems like we’ve never worried about it. Most people can’t jump that far anyway. Is it just for people like Maqsud and Aristotle Al-Amin?”

“The way I understand it, it’s specifically not for them. They were born with the ability to cross those distances on their own. There are a lot of things going on that we don’t hear about, from both salmon and choosing ones. They need to cover those distances too, for various reasons. I don’t think that pyramids hold special power. I think it’s more about the size.”

“Also the shape,” Ramses added, having returned at some point from his work on the moon. “It could be a cone instead, but those are harder to engineer, and I personally prefer the former, though I am Egyptian. It’s about funneling temporal energy from a large area to a fine point. But you’re right, the pyramid-builders in ancient days didn’t do anything special to the interior. Energy just concentrates well from this basic shape.”

“Right,” Angela said. She twisted her shoulders back and forth a couple of times between Leona and Ramses. “Am I the only one seeing an issue here?”

“What do you mean?” Ramses questioned.

“We built a megastructure to prevent someone from coming here from far away without our permission. And this new structure is particularly well-suited for helping people come from far away without our permission.”

“Don’t say that,” Leona urged, “because if you say that, something’s gonna happen, and we’re not gonna like it.”

Fearfully, all three looked back up at the live feed. Leona was seemingly correct. A beam of fiery blue light landed right on the tip of the pyramid, releasing a pressurized vhwm, loud enough to be heard by the far camera, but not from inside the dome.

“Everyone report to main control immediately,” Leona ordered into comms.

They all appeared nearly instantaneously, except for Romana.

“Romy!” Leona cried. “Romana, where are you!”

Mateo checked the locator. “She’s in the pool. She likes to float around in there when she’s meditating.”

“I guess that’s okay, as long as she’s not near the portal pyramid,” Leona decided. “We have an intruder. I don’t know who it is. Marie, you’re with me. Ramses, secure virtual systems. Angela, be an extra set of hands if he needs it. Mateo.... Mateo?”

“It looks like he’s at the pool now,” Olimpia notified her.

Mateo reappeared, wet from the waist down, carrying his daughter in his arms. She was breathing, but not opening her eyes, or stirring. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

“I do,” Marie admitted. “She’s in VR. She’s been living a second life.”

“Ram...” Leona began, “deal with that too. Marie, we gotta go.”

They took each other’s hands, and teleported to the benbenet, where they found Bronach Oaksent, as well as some unknown person, who was wearing too much clothing and goggles to recognize. That second guy had some kind of apparatus attached to the balcony floor, and was doing something with a tablet.

“Whoa, hold on, ladies,” Bronach said, holding up his hands defensively. “We’re not here to hurt you. There’s a peace treaty, remember?”

“I remember we can’t trust you. How did you get out?” Leona demanded to know.

“I didn’t,” he answered. “I didn’t have to, because I was never in there.”

The other guy pushed his goggles to his forehead, and looked up. It too was Bronach, but the old version of him, who Mateo rescued from the afterlife simulation. The two of them had a weird relationship since they could both lay claim to the Goldilocks Corridor. “It’s nearly done, then it will need to calculate the return vector.”

“Make sure you make it two-way,” Young!Oaksent instructed. “I don’t want the two of us getting trapped in there too.”

“No, we wouldn’t want that,” Leona said sarcastically.

“Before you get any bright ideas,” Young!Oaksent responded, “there’s a reason we’re wearing these vests. They let us dig tunnels through suppression fields. All he’s doing now is calculating the trajectory so we get a straight shot into the Gatehouse. Without it, we would still be able to get free.”

“I don’t like how much you know about this place,” Marie spat.

“This is the most famous planet in the galaxy,” Young!Oaksent explained. “Or it will be anyway. I don’t have time to tell you everything—”

“I don’t care,” Leona contended. “I just need to know who the hell is down there, and what you want with him.”

Young!Oaksent winced. “It’s Key!Bronach, obviously. Your portal only goes to one place. He’s been searching for a way back here since the Sixth Key was created. He finally found a safe route with the portal that you so graciously created for him. We don’t want him here. We can’t have it. We’re already splitting power in the Corridor. He would only muddle things up.”

“Why is he all weird, and not showing his face?” Marie questioned.

He shrugged. “No clue. We don’t know that much about what he’s been through. We just see him as a threat. I promise, once we get him, we’ll shimmer back home, and not bother you. There’s no reason for us to stay on Ramosus.”

“Not yet,” Old!Oaksent quipped.

“Shut up,” Young!Oaksent scolded.

Leona laughed. “Wow, could you two be more having totally rehearsed that?”

“Huh?”

“Look, I don’t doubt that you have a problem with sharing the wealth, but I don’t believe that you’re going to leave us alone. I’m sure you already know that we’re formulating a plan to shave the top of this pyramid off so it can no longer access Shimmer.”

“That’s your prerogative,” Young!Oaksent agreed. “Either way, I’m getting my alt self, and taking him somewhere so far away, you’ll never see him again.”

“Let me guess, the distant future?”

“N—no,” he protested.

Old!Oaksent’s tablet beeped. “We’re good to go.”

Young!Oaksent put his goggles on. “All right, sweethearts, it was nice to catch up, but we gotta do a thing.” He clicked his tongue and pointed at the girls with both hands.

Before they could tunnel away, Olimpia and Angela appeared behind them with jet injectors, which they promptly stuck into the two Oaksents’ necks. They fell over unconscious immediately.

“Boom, asshole! Wait for her to shoot you!” Olimpia cried. She looked up when she realized her words weren’t landing. “Dredd, 2012. Anybody? Anybody? Whatever.”

A few hours later, they saw on the interior Gatehouse cameras as the two newest Oaksents were waking up in the Gatehouse with the third version of him. The creepy one was still just standing there frozen. “Welcome back,” Leona said into the microphone.

Young!Oaksent looked up at the camera. “You took our vests.”

“Ramses is already looking them over,” she told him. “What a thoughtful gift.”

“I underestimated how ruthless you were,” he said. “A chemical attack. It doesn’t sound like you.”

“I do what I must,” she replied.

“Are you gonna trap us here forever?” Old!Oaksent asked.

“There’s a way out, right behind ya, up the hill.”

They both looked over their shoulders at the portal. “We’ll find a way back. And anyway, our people know what to do in our absence.”

“We’ll be ready,” Leona claimed, not knowing if it was true.

Young!Oaksent shook his head indignantly. He snapped his fingers in front of the supposed Sixth Key version of them. “Simon says, unfreeze.”

The hooded figure slowly turned towards him, but didn’t react too dramatically.

Young!Oaksent took him by the upper arm, and began to walk up the hill. Old!Oaksent followed them both through the portal.

“We need to find a way to close it completely,” Leona determined. “I thought it would be a good idea to have that connection for our own use, but it’s too dangerous.”

“Yeah, I’ll look into it,” Ramses volunteered. “But right now, I’m trying to get Romana out of her virtual environment.”

Leona looked across the room, where Mateo was next to his daughter, stroking her hair gently. Leona breathed deeply. “Yes, that’s priority. Then the portal. Then the Outriders. Then...preparing for anything and everything else. And we thought this world would be boring.”

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Microstory 2659: Nightmare Fuel

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Zombiedome is obviously full of zombies, but Malika has been here before, and it was never this bad. It feels like every square meter of the surface has a zombie in it, though it probably tapers off in the distance. A player would not be able to move around, let alone have any hope for survival. There also aren’t any buildings, which Malika says isn’t right either. It would obviously be a ridiculous setup. If there’s nowhere to run to or hide behind, it’s not really a game. There’s something very wrong here. If Jiminy spent a third of his time in this dome, how could he have dismantled all of the infrastructure without the Custodians, or the executive administrative authority, noticing? It really doesn’t matter, though. The undigitized organic humans are in trouble.

“What do the residences look like?” Mandica questions. “All we can do is split up and check every one in order. When you find the right one, holler.”

“No, that’s a poor use of time. When there are this many of them, the zombies aren’t enemies; they’re the weather,” Reagan argues. “We could never kill them all. Many of my people are posthumans. They will protect the others. We have to find a way to close the portals. Look at all of them. Something is keeping them open and stable.”

“Do you have some way of finding the power source, or the controls, or something that can help us put an end to this?” Jaidia asks him.

“Oh yeah, let me just take out my transdimensional window detector. Shit, I think I left it in my pure gold airplane.”

No one responds. They just keep hovering, watching the horror.

“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to think of how to fix this,” Reagan says.

“Can y—ear me?” Elysia asks. She’s speaking through comms, but it’s garbled.

“Yes, but barely,” Jaidia replies. “Are you still in Seagate? We’re in Zombiedome.”

“I see you, I’m on my way,” Elysia says. She starts out as a flying dot over the ground before getting bigger and bigger as she draws nearer. “Report.”

“We’re hoping to find the source of all this,” Mandica says. “It has to be some kind of machine. Maybe it’s integrated into the dome’s own power systems—”

“This isn’t Zombiedome,” Elysia interrupts.

“What? What other dome could have been filled up this much already?”

“Well, it is, but it’s not our Zombiedome. That’s why I could hardly reach you when I was near the portal, and why we can’t talk to the EAA from here. We’re in a...different reality, or something. That’s why Jiminy was able to accomplish all this without anyone noticing. It’s a different world, parallel to our own. Which means our only priority is shutting it down. Once we close the portals, the military will only have to deal with the attackers that are already on the other side. But there’s a problem.”

“That’s not the problem?” Malika questions.

“They’re not just coming from here. There are also portals linking to an alternate Bloodbourne, and even an alternate Botfarm full of crazed androids, as well as a number of simulations which were originally privately held intellectual property. We have to close every one of them. All nightmares have descended upon the real Castlebourne.”

“But bottom line,” Reagan begins, “the military has been deployed.”

“Yes,” Elysia confirms. “They’re prioritizing domes which have the most UDOs in them, like State of the Art, and the residences. Your people are being cared for. We are not alone in this. The villain opened portals in our domes first to keep us busy, but he underestimated how fiercely non-superheroes would protect the innocent. We mostly designed our bodies with the best powers, but transhumanism is perfectly legal anywhere else. So let go of your anxiety, and focus on our task. We’ve been given this assignment because of how fast we can move. Any ideas of where it would be?”

“I don’t think it would be here. It’s too random,” Jaidia decides. “If they’re drawing from multiple domes, and there is a central command center, we have to think like Jiminy, or maybe even Morgana. Would he be in this dimension, or the real one?”

“We have to understand what he wants,” Malika says. “If he just wants to destroy the world, as bad as this is, it’s not a good permanent solution. Most people will survive it. If you truly didn’t want them to, you would go after the backup terminals, and all consciousness maintenance infrastructure. You would do it quietly and meticulously. You wouldn’t just throw monsters at as many people as possible.”

“They’re only a distraction,” Jaidia agrees. “He’s banking on our drive to fight back. That’s why we all entered Underbelly in the first place. He obviously has a thing for Pinocchio. I say we look for him in Collodidome.”

“No, there’s a reason he dressed himself up as Morgana, and did it in two domes. He’s either in Ravensgate or Loegria,” Malika counters.

“He only did that to get under Mandica’s skin,” Jaidia argues.

“Why would he need to get under her skin?” Elysia jumps in. “He hasn’t gotten anything from her. I think he was just playing a part. I think that was a distraction too.”

“Well, he can’t be in Loegria anyway, because that’s where he died,” Jaidia adds.

Malika shakes her head. “That’s exactly why he would be there, because we left.”

“We left to go to Ravensgate, and you thought he could be there instead!”

Reagan flies between Malika and Jaidia. “Guys, he’s not in either of those places, or Collodidome, or if he is, then he’s on this side. It’s the safest place for him. There’s no authority, he controls everything, he can draw an ungodly amount of power. The portals are coming from here, so it stands to reason they’re being controlled from here too.”

“I’m the key,” Mandica utters quietly.

“What?” Elysia asks.

“When you were all dead, it was just me, Vanore, and Jiminy. He said that I was the key. He said it like that, he emphasized the word. He needs me to open something. I don’t know what, or why it has to be me, but he’s been keeping me alive for a reason.”

“He stabbed you with a sword in the jewelry store,” Elysia tries to remind her.

“Right next to the Philosopher’s Stone,” Mandica reminds her right back. “He knew it was real. He probably put it there. And that sword? That was a special sword too. He used it once, and then never again. None of this makes any sense unless you frame me as being the ultimate target. But why? What’s so special about me?”

“You were a UDO,” Reagan answers. “That’s pretty special these days.”

“You said it yourself,” Mandica responds. “There are others like me in the residences; your people who chose not to back themselves up. They were closer.”

“We’re not vonearthans,” Reagan explains solemnly. “We are descended from a generation of ancestors created in a lab under vastly different conditions. We all received special shots when we came to this region of space. Our biology is different. They’re not even sure if we can procreate together. They consider it unethical to test it.”

Mandica stares at him for a moment. Without saying a word, she leans backwards and dives towards the ground. She pushes herself to supersonic speeds, which is incredibly dangerous inside of a dome, but she needs to break away quickly. Her friends can’t know where he’s going. She doesn’t know where he’s going. It just needs to be away from here; away from this whole mess. Before she’s reached the ground, she collapses her wings into her body. She shuts her mouth and plugs her nose, then slams herself into a bunch of zombies as hard as she can, absolutely pulverizing their bodies, and leaving her covered in their undead viscera. Now that she smells like the other zombies, they begin to leave her alone. She blends in with them, making her way through the crowd to a more distant portal. It can’t be the one she landed near, because that is where they’re going to look for her. It takes hours to meander through, like a neutrino in a star.

After she walks through the portal, she doesn’t know where she is right away, but it’s a good thing she didn’t wait even one second longer, because it closes right behind her. In her absence, her friends managed to figure out how to shut them down. They may have found the controls for the interdimensional technology, but they didn’t likely find Jiminy, nor what he’s truly after. He’s not going to make it easy on them. She’s going to take a page out of his book, and do the same. She’s going to rob him of the one she does know he wants. She’s depriving him of her.

She discovers she’s in Party Central, which is a great target to send a bunch of zombies and monsters. It was on Trilby’s green dome list so she was free to come here back when she was just a boring and delicate human. She still needed to be careful of falling disco balls and spiked punch, but she has had to be worried about freak accidents her whole life. She finds a fur coat on the ground. It’s covered in blood and guts, but that’s okay, because she fits right in with all the party-goers who were just attacked. People with guns and other weapons are here, cleaning up the last of the monsters. They’re not dressed in military garb, but some of them match. Her guess is that they’re from Mêléedome or Shmupdome. Those were on the red list because their only point is violence. She ignores them, doesn’t talk to anyone, and goes on her way.

She finds a public water closet where she takes the opportunity to clean up, throwing all of her clothes into the trashbot, which she pats on the head in remembrance of the one who got her here. After the shower, she grabs one of the robes, and walks back out. No one is paying any attention to her. They’re all still reeling from the assault. She continues to walk until she finds a remote building that is currently under construction. There’s an incinerator here to dispose of unrecyclable materials, so she switches it on, sets a timer, then dives in. It’s agonizing, but she needs answers.

Unlike the other times she’s died, she comes back to life this time with some memory of what happened to her. She doesn’t have many details, but she knows enough to get by. Jiminy was the lieutenant for a dangerous man named Pinocchio, who was once in charge of wherever Mandica goes when she dies. After being stripped of power, he eventually downloaded himself into base reality, where he continued to carry out his nefarious plans, predominately in the Spydome Network, until he was caught and locked away. Mandica is sure that Jiminy wants to break his boss free, and this stone and Mandica are collectively the way he does that. She can’t let that happen. She has to stop fighting, and start hiding. So she crawls out of the furnace, gets cleaned up again, and then simply attends the nearest party. This is where she lives for the next five years.

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.

Microstory 2585: Renata Has Grown Bored as They Wait for the Next Assault

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Renata has grown bored as they wait for the next assault. She and her mother successfully forced the first group of attackers off the road, and then another one once they reached the log cabin, but there hasn’t been a peep since. They’re still here, having already buried the bodies in shallow graves. The worry is not that someone else will come, but that they won’t. They are the decoy team, while Quidel and Lycander are the ones in charge of the real package. There is a procedure for meeting back up later, but that’s following 24 hours of no activity at the safehouse. It involves switching cars, and traveling to a small town farther east.

“Hey,” she says, holding her cup of tea. “Are you the strong, silent type, or can you talk?”

“I can talk,” the driver replies. “I just don’t usually say much.”

“That’s basically the definition of the strong silent type. Can I sit?”

“Be my guest.”

She sits down on the swing, still wrapped in her quilt. It’s funny, sitting here with a stranger, but she’s sick of being inside, and there is no other seating on the porch. She takes a sip. “What about your name? Is it a secret? Does my mother just call you The Driver?”

He chuckles. “It’s Polykarpos. Polykarpos Goldd. Everyone just calls me Polly.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Polly. I’m Renata, by the way. I don’t know if I ever said that.”

“Madam Granger speaks of you often.”

“She does?”

“Yes. She’s quite proud of you.”

“Did she tell you to say that?”

“I work for her, but I have my own opinions. She tells me what to do, not how to think.”

She nods, and doesn’t speak for a moment as they just enjoy the sunrise. “How long have you worked for the NSD?”

“I technically don’t. I work for a company that contracts to the NSD. Many low-level jobs like mine are like that.”

“I wouldn’t call it low-level. That was some smooth driving while we were being shot at. You didn’t flinch at the bullets. You must have some tactical training.”

Polly smiles. “Well, I wasn’t always only a driver.”

That’s when Libera interrupts. “Ren, could you help me with something? We need some more firewood from the shed.”

“I can do that, sir,” Polly says as he’s standing up.

“No, I want my daughter,” Libera discourages.

Renata knows this tone well. Libera doesn’t actually need help with anything, but wants to speak privately. She downs the rest of her tea, which has already gotten cold out here in the winter woods, and sets it precariously on the window sill. A metaphor for her and her mother’s relationship?

They head out into the shed, and Libera just stands there, not even pretending that the request was genuine. “You don’t need to be talking to him too much.”

“I’m a big girl, and I actually think he’s younger than me.”

“That’s not the point,” Libera contends. “He’s...irrelevant.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean, that he’s expendable?”

“Look, some people in this world are simply more important than others. You could call them...exemplars. I’m an exemplar, you’re an exemplar. Polly is just...background. I have no plans for him.”

“Plans? What about Lycander, is he background too? I saw the way you looked at him, like you couldn’t trust him. Do you too have bad history?”

Libera smirks. “Lycander is something else.”

“And Quidel?”

“He’s very something else.”

Renata shakes her head, and consults her watch. “Let’s go find that small town where we’re supposed to meet up.”

“It hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet,” Libera says.

“We have to wait that long to make the call,” Renata reasons, “but we may as well get there. I would rather wait by a real bathroom.” She begins to leave.

“We have a nice bathroom here.”

“Get the car!” Renata shouts up to Polly as she’s walking back to the cabin. “I wanna get some real breakfast, instead of these MREs.”

“Yes, sir.” Polly hops down the steps, and heads towards the back, where they hid the car loosely under some brush.

Renata, meanwhile, picks her teacup up to prepare to wash it.

Libera starts walking up the steps as she’s watching Polly walk away. “He followed your orders.”

“What?”

“You told him to do something, and he didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even look over at me for guidance. He just went off to do it.”

“Yeah, we bonded a little. He trusts me. I’m sure I was nicer to him in those two minutes than you ever have been, if you think he’s only background,” Renata says with airquotes.

Libera scowls at her daughter. “Go make your bed. We should leave this place looking like we’re trying to make it look like no one has been here for months.”

“Yes, sir! Commander, sir!” Renata replies sarcastically. She goes back into the cabin even though her bed is already made because she’s no longer a child. While she’s finishing the dishes, she hears the sound of gunfire. She drops the cup into the sink, letting it shatter. She grabs the pistol from the counter, and heads outside.

It’s another group of attackers, hoping to get their hands on their special device, not knowing that it isn’t really here. She sees three men a few meters from the cabin, pointing their shotguns at Polly. He’s sitting in the dirt, holding the right side of his chest with one hand, and trying to drag himself away from the shooters with his other.

“One more step, and he dies!” one of the bad guys says in a Javelotian accent. Javelot is one of their closest allies. “Gun on the ground!”

Renata drops her gun.

“Wait!” Libera is walking through the door behind Renata, her hands up in supposed surrender. In one hand, she’s holding the decoy bag. “You came for this, you can have it!”

“Drop it down the steps,” the Javelotian guy demands.

“Does that sound wise and safe?” Libera asks rhetorically. She sets it down on the porch, and begins to back away from it, as does Renata in the opposite direction.

Two of the Javelotians creep up to it, pointing their weapons at the ladies, but of course, it doesn’t matter. The bomb in the bag explodes them both when one of them tries to open it, and the surprise is enough to push the remaining Javelotian off balance. Libera pulls her own pistol out of the back of her pants, and shoots him dead. It was a short-lived attack, but they’re not out of the woods yet.