Microstory 2487: Skilldome

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I don’t want to speak for you, but I’m guessing that your life is pretty easy. Everything you need is handed to you, along with a few things that you might just want. There are those who spend their whole lives holed up in their modules, connected to VR or the network. Dayfruit growers provide them with food. Drones deliver their feedstock. Their electricity and water is piped in, and their waste is shipped out. Their personal robot does all their work. I’m not criticising people who live like this. This is just a preamble so you’ll understand what purpose Skilldome serves. So many things that you may or may not take for granted were either not cheap for our ancestors, hardly available, or outright didn’t exist. Obviously, different time periods came with different limitations, and over the years, there are skills that we’ve lost to automation, and engineered simplicity. I’m not saying that you’ll become a better person if you learn how to drive a car with your hands and feet. I’m just telling you that the skill is something that this dome offers. You can also learn how to churn butter, command an animal to plow a field, or write something down with a pencil and paper. It’s hard to describe what these activities are, since there’s such a broad range, but it’s basically everything that people used to have to do to be productive that we don’t anymore. To be sure, there are some things that still hold some merit in our world. You might not have access to a medpod or healing nanites, even today, so knowing how to perform first aid is one of those skills that some people have maintained anyway. But for those of us whose minds it didn’t cross to do it before, if you’re on Castlebourne, come on down and take a class. As far as skills that are less practical in the synthetic era go, like stuffing mail in envelopes, or coding a program in an obsolete computer language called C++, you can do it just for fun, or to have a greater appreciation for modern living. Or come up with your own reasons. There are no requirements on what you have to do when you come here, but if you do come, and you do choose a particular skill, it is asked of you to use the tools you are given, and not “cheat”. If you’re taking a math test, only use one of those old basic calculators that they will provide you with. Don’t just ask an AI to do it for you. That defeats the purpose. I actually saw a guy do this, which was so stupid, because no one was making him take this otherwise pointless test. What you get out of coming here is entirely up to you. Ain’t nobody gonna hold your hand. Nor should they have to.

Microstory 2474: MOE Dome 42

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MOE stands for Molten Oxide Electrolysis. This is the method that they use here on Castlebourne to produce a breathable atmosphere. The thing about barren terrestrial planets is that there’s usually a ton of oxygen, it’s just trapped in the rocks. Earth has it floating around, along with other gases, like nitrogen and hydrogen. Separating that all out isn’t easy, but it’s possible, and absolutely necessary here. So you got your dome in place, and it’s all sealed up, but that doesn’t make the inside anymore livable than the outside. Whoever first colonized this planet could have carried it with them, theoretically, but that...that’s a lot. It’s called in situ resource utilization. Use what’s available where you are, even if it takes work to process. There are about fifty-six MOE domes right now. I chose to take a tour of this one, because I like the number, but they’re all the same. I’m kidding, this was the only MOE Dome open for tours. I won’t go over their entire process, since that should be a surprise if you come here, lol. I’m kidding, it’s boring and dry, and that’s not what a review is for. It’s my job to tell you what my experience was like, and speculate as to what your experience will be like if you choose to do it too. These big machines grind up rocks, melt them down, and extract the constituent molecules. It’s all very technical. I thought it was cool to see the process, but I’m kind of a dummy. If you already know all this, it may seem normal and prosaic. Like yeah, of course that’s how they do it. I’ve seen it a million times. Well, then you don’t have to come, do you? There was this one woman on my tour who kept asking questions, but you know, in that kind of way that makes it clear that she already knew the answers, and just wanted us to be so impressed with her. Well, she was wrong or not quite right a number of times, which the tour guide respectfully corrected. He was a human, so I thought that was a pretty cool touch too, given how automated this whole planet has to be to function. If you’re into this stuff, come take a look for a couple of hours. If you’re not, I won’t try to convince you to try. Just remember that this effects us all. Until every dome has an established ecology which recycles air as efficiently and unceasingly as Earth does in its natural state, MOE Domes are probably the most important ones we got. I hope you appreciate that, whether you think it’s boring to watch and learn about, or not.

Microstory 2471: Hubdome

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It may be boring, but someone’s gotta do it. Centuries ago, mail was all the rage. You could send someone a letter a thousand kilometers away, and it might only take a month to get there, or never! Doesn’t that sound neat? Over time, of course, speed picked up as infrastructure was developed, and efficient methods were discovered—or rediscovered, as in the case of relay stations. In the late 20th century, they invented electronic mail, which may lead you to believe that regular physical post was all but eradicated, but not so fast my friend. Adoption was slow, and...people are dumb. They still sent letters. Plus, the population was booming, so even if any given individual wasn’t sending as much, the volume was still increasing overall. It did eventually die down, but one thing that didn’t go away was package delivery. Instead of just the written word, real, useful items had to be transported from one place to another. There was no way to send that electronically. Or was there? Of course there is! It’s called additive manufacturing, and it’s been improving too. Not everyone has their own industrial synthesizer, and there are some things that standard feedstocks can’t handle. If there are too many different types of materials in one item, you can’t expect every end user to maintain each type in their private space. And even if you did, the feedstock itself has to be delivered, right? That’s where this dome comes in. It’s a hub for all your shipping and delivering needs. It doesn’t take weeks to get to its destination, though, unless whatever you asked for hasn’t been built yet. I say, if something you ordered takes more than a few hours to reach you, there’s probably something wrong. Shipping was one of the easiest industries to transition to automation back when human employment was something necessary in order to maintain a stable economy. You pick this thing up, put it in this box, seal it up, and move it to its destination. The programming couldn’t be simpler. Only one human works here. He walks up and down, making sure that things are okay. Obviously, the robots do this too, but they like to put  a human touch in everything, and that’s true of pretty much every planet, except maybe Glisnia. Come here for a tour if you have a few hours to kill, but you could also probably just read the more detailed literature on the prospectus, and get just as much out of it.

Microstory 2458: Diamond Dome

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Would you believe it, centuries ago, diamonds were considered a precious commodity? They’re still precious, but they’re not nearly as rare and luxurious as they once were. Our ancestors would cut them up into pretty shapes, and fashion them into pretty jewelry. We don’t care about that. We care about function over form. Carbon is one of the most versatile elements in the universe, and as it turns out, its diamond form is actually extremely commonplace. It was hard to find on Earth when people were digging it out of the ground with shovels and pickaxes, but when you have the automation and power to manipulate entire planets, you start to see how abundant things are. We use diamonds because the stuff is durable and reliable. It’s also clear, making it a perfect, semi-natural alternative to glass. There are lab-grown polycarbonates out there that we can use instead, and to be sure, those are here on Castlebourne too, but nothing beats the OG super-material. We could also grow diamonds in a lab, but there’s plenty of it in this world, so why not take what the Lord giveth. Now, what exactly is it used for? Well, it’s the primary material for the domes. Most of the domes here aren’t perfectly smooth. They’re geodesic, which means they’re made up of a skeleton called a space frame. Traditionally, these were metallic, but these days, we use metamaterials; particularly graphene. Between the struts for the space frame, they affix transparent triangular panels, which allow you to see the other side. Why do they do this? Most of the domes use holographic skies anyway, so you’re seeing whatever the image is programmed to be. Well, I don’t really know. The tour didn’t explain that. It wouldn’t really be better if the entire dome were opaque with no hope of seeing the outside for real. Using a framework with clear panels is the most common way to design these things, and I just think they look nicer. You can turn the hologram off, and see the true Castlebournian sky, but if they weren’t made this way, that would not be possible. I guess it just gives us more options. A lot of people are afraid, believing that clear equals unsafe, but obviously that’s ridiculous. They think some meteorite could crash through, and suck out all the air, but that’s not really possible. Like I said, it’s made of diamonds, and even if it weren’t, your concern is unwarranted. Even if one panel does falter, these things are so gigantic that it would take days for all the air to escape, at worst. If it’s only one panel, it would take years. At any rate, there would be plenty of time for a drone team to fly up there and replace the panel, or panels. If there is so much damage that the dome rapidly becomes unbreathable, well, whatever caused that damage probably killed everyone on the surface anyway, so the air would be the least of their worries. Okay, I’ll end this on that happy note. Safe travels!

Microstory 2425: Industrial Farm Dome

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A bunch of domes are dedicated to farming. Some of them are designed for necessary food production, but others are just for the sake of it. Industrial farming describes the kind of farming that they did during and after the industrial revolution. They used machines to farm giant fields for massive numbers of people, and even used electricity, but they didn’t have computers. There was absolutely no hint of automation. Lots of farm hands still had to do all the work, and that’s how it goes here. Nothing gets done if there’s no one here to do it. If that means the crops die, then so be it. There’s actually plenty of waste, because the rest of the current population of the planet doesn’t really want to eat this stuff. Everything they could ever want is provided for them. They got their lab grown meat, meal bars, food printers, and dayfruit. They don’t really care how hard I worked out here in the hot sun, and the Castlebourne leadership isn’t incentivizing them to choose us over those other things. I think they really should have worked this out differently. Screw that other stuff. If you have the real thing—and people are willing to labor FOR FREE—why would you choose anything else? Those should be a last resort. If they want this planet to be self-sufficient, then we have what you’re looking for. I don’t blame the other visitors for doing this wrong. There is so little awareness about what we can do for them. I guess what you really need is cooks. Some domes have culinary components, or so I hear, but I can’t find a dome that’s dedicated to the culinary arts. If they did that, we could work closely with them to make the supply chain a real thing. See? I got ideas, and I’m just a dumb regular human. I came here on a ship with one of these new reframe engines. I can’t even upload or transfer my consciousness to a new body. This is the real me. These other people don’t always even need to eat, so they have no appreciation for any of this. Some changes need to be made around here, because I don’t want to go back to the stellar neighborhood. I shouldn’t have to. I should be able to find what I’m entitled to on this planet. People just need to do the right thing.

Microstory 2413: Polar Tropica

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I’m at the bottom of the world. If you want to see the biggest known ocean on a habitable planet, go to Earth. I know that they seeded human life on some other planets, so I guess I can’t speak about those, but I’m guessing that Earth still takes the cake, so to speak. The next best thing, however, is on Castlebourne. This planet has two oceans, which are man-made. Have you ever thought about how unusual that word is? My guess is that it’s a holdover from back in the day when things really were constructed by humans. There I go, showing my age. A bunch of quincentenarians are rolling their eyes now. “No, d’uh it’s because we used to have to make everything by hand, you idiot.” Of course, it would be technically unfeasible to try to accomplish something like this with manual labor alone. The land was mostly there, but the automators had to do a lot of digging so the water would be contained to these two spots. The domes here are much more disproportionate, and do not form hemispheres. Still, because of how insanely wide they are, they’re much taller. It says here that they’re 3300 kilometers in diameter and 216 kilometers high at the zenith. When you’re inside, the holographic projections make it look like you’re just outside. Really, you cannot tell the difference between the two environments. If you abducted someone from Earth, transported them here, and let them wake up on the beach, they would assume they were still on Earth. Certainly if you took them from, like, the 21st century, where they didn’t know about alien planets yet. More recent days, who knows? I’m getting off topic, I know. I’m here to discuss Polar Tropica. This is the southern dome. It’s more of a cap, really. Someone else in our orientation group called it a little yarmulke for the world. I had to look that up. It’s a religious thing, LOL. Just run an image search for that, and you’ll get that he was right, though. Okay, enough about the shape. Unlike on Earth, the oceans here are perfectly tailored, and maintained. The temperature always sits between 21 and 27 degrees. It depends on what time of day it is, and precisely where you are. If you recall, it’s a giant environment, so they don’t have to keep it at the same temperature everywhere at once. They control the humidity too, but I don’t have those numbers. Basically, it’s perfect. It’s always comfortable. Some of the water is deep, but not as deep as a natural ocean would be. You can stand in water that’s miles and miles away from any shore in some places, which is just so amazing. Name something you can do in a real ocean, you can do it here. You can even fish, though you’ll be catching animatronic sea creatures, so just remember that, you violent psycho. Anyway, there’s a strip of land that runs the entire perimeter of this thing, and random islands dotting the water. Some of them even float, which you can’t get on Earth either. There’s a giant island in the very center that serves as a sort of hub. There are residential spaces there, and I think that a lot of people are making it their permanent homes. Who could be unhappy in a place like this? To me, if the only habitable region on Castlebourne was Polar Tropica, it would be worth it. But I guess you’ll have to see for yourself...

Microstory 2349: Earth, May 8, 2179

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Dear Corinthia,

Yeah, there was an idea fairly early on, after the gases settled over the surface, to build massive aerostats. Their reasoning was that, if the atmosphere was going to be toxic, we might as well take advantage of the density that we didn’t have before. I’m pretty sure I heard that they have a couple of them on Venus, because the atmosphere is already really dense, and I believe they’re building more. So we know how to make them. The idea to make them here was ultimately abandoned because too many people felt like it was giving in. The air shouldn’t be toxic, and we shouldn’t be satisfied with it staying that way. We’re supposed to be fixing it, and if we start treating the bug as a feature, we’ll either not work hard on cleaning it up, or we will, and people will have to leave the aerostats before too long anyway. Neither plan seemed reasonable or rational. Now on to the party discussion. The time you propose is totally fine with us. We both requested the entire day off, and the way the department is designed, there should be no problem. A lot of people would have to call in sick, or have some other emergency, before we would be called back in. They take work-life balance very seriously these days. I was telling you that we settled into a stable society a few years back, and that was part of it. If all we’re worried about is survival, then we’re not really living, and if that’s the case, is there really any point in working so hard to continue? People don’t seem to think so, and as terrible as it is that the atmosphere has been poisoned, at least it happened in our time period, instead of a couple hundred years ago. Most of the grunt work is automated, so it’s not like things will fall apart if people stop working. A lot of scholars believe that we’re only not living in a post-scarcity society right now because of the bad air. The domes have forced us to do more work than we should really have to worry about. So yeah, that was another big tangent just to say that we’ll start our party at 20:00 on the day of our birthday. I wanted to ask, and should have asked before, are you really going to have to be there alone? There’s no one else you could invite? By the time we receive your response, the day will have already passed, but you will receive my letter by then, so I hope you think about whether there’s anyone else, now that your mom is gone.

Really hoping you don’t have to be alone,

Condor

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 23, 2475

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They programmed the Vellani Ambassador to travel at slightly lower than maximum reframe speed. There was no specific reason for this. They just felt like letting the ship arrive at Castlebourne at the same time they did. It took exactly 365 days to cover the distance of about 108 light years. The Ambassador fell back into subfractional speeds only moments after they all returned to the timestream. Elder had been kept in stasis the whole time, and they wouldn’t wake him back up until they scoped out the area. He was not in good shape mentally, and they were neither equipped nor prepared to help him deal with whatever demons he was fighting.

“Wh—what am I looking at here?” Mateo asked.

“Another unusual and unexpected thing,” Angela noted.

A few centuries ago, people were getting bored with regular old golf. Again. Of course, pioneers had already developed other forms of golf that went beyond the traditional, like speed golf, and arguably, frolf. Tricky Golf was a new iteration, but the only difference was the design of the ball. The course was the same, the rules were the same, but the strokes were a lot harder to keep low. Instead of dimples, the ball had bumps. Poor aerodynamics dampened the lift, and shortened the range, and accuracy was much more difficult to pull off. This resulted in a great deal of frustration, and even anger. But players knew exactly what they were getting into. There was a reason why normal golf balls were made with dimples in the first place. It was never random. The bumps were just as intentional, but this time, to make it a greater challenge.

Tricky Golf was more fun to watch for some, especially when players started tossing their clubs around, and cursing the wind gods. It never really took off—pun intended—for obvious reasons, but there’s a market for pretty much everything, so it never died out either. Some serious professional players even used it as a tool during their training. If they could sink a Tricky Golf ball, they could handle a regular one with ease. That was the idea, anyway. And it would seem that someone who had access to this world took inspiration from Tricky Golf. Maybe it was only a coincidence, but as an ironic occasional viewer of the alternative sport, Mateo chose to believe in a connection. The entire surface of the planet was covered in geodesic domes. Though, to be fair, they weren’t all the same size.

“Ram, open a channel; all frequencies.”

Ramses tapped a few buttons, then pointed to her.

“Vendelin Blackbourne, are you there?” She waited, but received no response. “Kestral McBride? Ishida Caldwell? Anyone on the Stateless Mothership Jameela Jamil, or one of its capital ships, please respond.” Still nothing. “Is anyone receiving this signal?” Not a peep.

“I’m picking up an ACS band,” Ramses declared. “Would you like me to play it?”

“What’s that?” Olimpia asked.

“Automated Control Signal,” Leona explained. “It’s essentially what independent robots and AIs use to coordinate their efforts. Go ahead, let’s here it.”

 Ramses shifted the signal to the speakers. It just sounded like white noise and beeps to them. R2D2 would probably know what they were saying.

“Can you translate?” Marie asked, smiling a bit, hoping that it didn’t sound like a dumbass question.

“Sort of,” Ramses replied. “Largely...build. They’re saying build to each other, over and over again. There are a bunch of other embedded messages layered on top of each other. It would take our computer some time to convert the specifics, but...”

“Don’t bother,” Leona ordered. “Just send one back. Translate...don’t build. Override anything that interferes with this new directive.”

It took him hours to complete what sounded like a simple task to the less knowledgeable in the group. There were a ton of security protocols preventing exactly what they were trying to do; hacking into the system to change its behavior. He only managed to do it by locating the emergency shutdown procedures, which were there to prevent something catastrophic from happening. According to the data that Leona was pulling at the same time, that was exactly what had happened, though the consequences were probably relatively minimal, at least for now.

There was an old thought experiment called the Paperclip Maximizer Theory. The question was, what if you commanded an automated machine to make paperclips, and programmed no other objectives or subroutines into it? What could stop it from fulfilling its mandate ad infinitum? What would happen once it ran out of the usual materials? Would it eventually decide that humans would make good paperclips? From what Leona could tell, that was basically the trigger. Before he left, Vendelin must have commanded his automators to make more dome habitats. In his unexpected absence, they found no reason to stop. He probably forgot about it, and had never come back since leaving, dying, and ultimately ending up working with Team Keshida.

While they were gathering all of this information from the construction logs, the Ambassador was in orbit. The sensors detected 83,839 domes in total, though one of them wasn’t finished when they stopped the robots, so Mateo decided to call it an even 83,838.3. Actually, several of them weren’t completely finished, but the last one wasn’t even airtight yet. Once they were confident that there was no danger on the planet, the whole group teleported down to just outside the main dome. This was the one that was already present when they first came to this world over a century ago. Other automators had built up this dome beyond the castle that was there before. There were now four stone walls to protect it against the approximate zero threats here. There were towers, a keep, and a trench for a moat, though it was not filled with water. Vendelin was clearly into medieval times, because this was what he chose for his own dwelling, but other domes had their own themes.

The dome on one side of the first one was modeled on feudal Japan, while the one on the other side appeared to have been inspired by The Wizard of Oz, or maybe Wicked, complete with a green palace, and a yellow brick road. Another one nearby appeared to be a giant golf course. They teleported into Castledome to see if they could find out more information from the local computers. While the smarties were deep in the complicated data, the other four each grabbed a tablet out of the dispenser, and started looking through what was evidently a visitor’s brochure, which stored a directory of all the domes. Roughly 3,000 of them were indeed designed as their own special getaways, leaving the other 80,000 so far undesignated. Some of them were based on historical periods, while others were inspired by fictional media. A few of the concepts were too large in scope, so they combined multiple domes. There was a Westworld analog, which Mateo went straight to in the directory just out of curiosity. It boasted a full complement of robots, just as the source material did, though it was unclear whether they had actually been built, or if the full amusement park was planned for the future.

It was Marie who realized that a lot of the domes weren’t in the directory, because they were planned for traditional residential units. These were typically less exciting, though they were still meant to house like-minded individuals. Many hundreds of billions of people could pretty much move here starting today. Even though this rock was uninhabitable on its own, Vendelin had big plans for it. Maybe he really had been trying to destroy other planets, to get rid of the competition.

“Found it!” Leona suddenly shouted.

“You found the master code?” Ramses questioned.

“What? No, that’s...encrypted,” Leona replied. “What I found was Vendelin’s personal quantum identifier. This can reach him wherever he is, as long as she’s sufficiently near a quantum computer, even if it’s not his.”

“How does a PQI know where he is if it isn’t his device?” Angela questioned.

“If he’s logged into one of his accounts on any device, or if he has an implant, it will send a near-field signal to any and all quantum computers to identify him.” Ramses sighed, and redirected his attention to Leona. “I thought you were looking for the master code. I want control over all these things.”

“Vendelin can give us that,” Leona explained. “He already has it; we wouldn’t have to hack anything.”

“Wait.” Ramses looked away from everyone. “So do I.” He unceremoniously disappeared.

No one bothered to ask him where he had gone. They just went back to their devices. Mateo was particularly drawn to a dome that purported to simulate a zombie-infested city. He always wanted to test his mettle in such an environment. But what kind of safeguards were in place for something like that? None?

Ramses returned with some kind of portable storage device. Mateo recognized it, but couldn’t quite recall what it was used for. He knew that it wasn’t just for transferring any ol’ files, though.

“No,” Leona decided. “Is that him? No,” she repeated.

“In all likelihood, the Jameela Jamil is still in the Dardius galaxy,” Ramses began to reason. “He’s not gonna get your message. He hasn’t even responded to the one we tried to send him before. This is our only hope...unless we just wanna bug out, and forget the whole thing.”

“No!” Olimpia cried. She wanted to try the citywide escape room dome, if it was even available already.

“What is that?” Angela asked, nodding towards the device.

“Who is that?” Marie corrected. “I’m guessing it’s Vendelin. Why do you have it?”

“We rescued him from the afterlife simulation,” Leona answered instead of Ramses. “We then downloaded his consciousness into a new substrate. We shouldn’t still have this q-state, though. It’s unethical to keep extra copies of intelligent beings without their permission.”

“I didn’t keep it intentionally,” Ramses defended. “I was busy, I forgot.”

“That’s no reason to use it now,” Leona argued. “It would still be unethical. He has not authorized a duplicated emergence.”

“Isn’t he good now?” Olimpia asked them. “I’m sure he would understand.”

“Part of what caused his improvement was his exposure to Team Keshida,” Mateo said. He faced Ramses again. “The version that you have stored in there hasn’t experienced any of that. I agree with Leona. I say we find another way.”

“You could always ask me for the code.” It was Hrockas, standing in the doorway. While Vendelin Blackbourbne had laid claim to what would come to be known as Castlebourne in what he believed to be a game called Quantum Colony, Hrockas managed to unlock access to Pluoraia, which was one of the rare populated worlds. He was devastated to learn that he was not just playing a game, but messing with real people’s lives. He was part of the team’s effort to locate Vendelin, and bring him to justice. What the team didn’t know at the time was that this justice was in the form of an execution.

“How are you here?” Leona asked him. “I thought they shut everyone out.”

“Teagarden opened the quantum terminals back up in a limited capacity,” Hrockas answered. “They gave me permission to come here. They did that with a few of their top players.” He used airquotes. “As long as we don’t travel to any of the populated worlds, they’ve allowed us to continue our construction efforts.”

“So, it was you?” Ramses pressed. “You built all these domes?”

“No, I couldn’t control the automators in the beginning, so I leaned into it. I only designed most of the themes. I hoped to open it up to visitors by the end of the century.”

“We scanned for both human and mech lifesigns,” Leona divulged with suspicion. “You didn’t show up.”

Hrockas laughed. “This is a castle?” he said in the form of a rhetorical question, like she was an idiot. “They’re for defense? It’s shielded,” he finally clarified after she failed to see where he was going.

“Anyone else here we should know about?” Marie asked.

“No, just me. Like I said, I was planning for a Grand Opening in 2500.”

“Are you telling me that Zombie City is ready to go, or at least nearing completion?” Mateo asked, hope in his eyes.

Hrockas debated the answer in his head. “It would take me a few hours to initialize the sim, but yes. I mean...kind of. I’ve programmed all the enemy NPCs in those worlds, but then I realized that something like that would need other survivors, unless enough real people sign up at the same time. Trust me, I’ve tested it out on a smaller scale, and it’s boring unless you can run into other people trying to win.”

“Why do all this?” Leona asked. “A virtual simulation can accomplish all the same things in a fraction of the time.”

“There’s something very exciting about getting your own physical heart pumping,” Hrockas replied. “They’ve done studies. People tend to prefer real world simulations over virtual constructs if they can help it. VR is best left for worlds that break physical laws. They don’t need to co-opt everything.”

“Well...” Leona began, hesitating. “I need this planet.”

“For what?” Hrockas asked.

“Yeah, for what?” No one else knew what she was thinking.

She wasn’t sure how she would be received. “There are some people living under an oppressive regime about 16,000 light years from here. I would like to set this up as a sanctuary world; the final destination of an underground railroad.”

Hrockas chuckled. “Did you see how many domes there are? I don’t know how many people you’re worried about, but I’m guessing there’s plenty of room. The way I see it, anyone who ends up here is a potential customer, so go ahead, and bring ‘em on down. Whenever you’re ready.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 2 EXT

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For a year, the Ambassador stayed in a relatively low orbit around Ex-001, monitoring its developments on the surface. It occasionally flew off to expel its waste heat from the hot pocket on the other side of the host star to avoid detection, but then it flew right back to continue collecting data. There was no indication that either Bronach or Elder was aware of its presence overhead, so the invisibility protocols were holding. It didn’t hurt that it automatically relaxed them while it was on the other side of the planet, and that the ground inhabitants hadn’t bothered deploying any sort of satellite of their own. Oaksent probably believed that there was basically no way that anyone else could be around this far out in the galaxy, this far back in time. Which was ridiculous, because if they were able to travel here from the future, so could anyone else.

When the team came back, Leona and Ramses started skimming the data. The forefathers of this budding civilization were doing exactly what could be reasonably expected of them, but also a few unexpected things. They were staying within the confines of the geodesic dome despite the fact that the planet was habitable, evidently out of an abundance of caution, and so that their business could be taken care of in a controlled environment. They may have gotten the idea to do this from Dubai on Earth, which adopted this lifestyle back in the late 21st century. It became an isolate, determined to maintain its outdated and violent societal norms against a backdrop of global progress. The population dwindled over time, but the dome was still there the last time anyone checked. Here, in the seed of civilization for the Exin Empire, the population was expected to survive, and eventually expand. Should they let it happen?

The two of them had selected 147 people for the first generation, gestating each one about thirty times faster than normal until they were all in their teens. Not being the fatherly type, they used androids to raise these rapidly grown individuals from then on. They taught them everything a good group of indoctrinated slaves needed to know. Math, Science, Language, Physical Fitness; these were all on the schedule, but at their most basic levels, and history was nowhere to be found. They didn’t teach them anything about where they came from, and they steered clear of philosophy and ethics. It was no one’s job to question authority. There was only Bronach’s word, and their obedience.

Elder was reportedly under duress the entire time, though he seemingly grew tired of feeling the defiance in his heart so strongly. He fell into a routine, and just did whatever he was told, like it wasn’t even him anymore, but an automaton with no free will. If Team Matic was going to put a stop to this, rescuing the one person who Bronach needed to keep his plans moving forward was likely their best option. Elder didn’t want any of this, but Bronach wasn’t smart enough to do it on his own. If they were to take that tool away, what would he be left with? Then again, what would the consequences be for the team interfering in any form, let alone in such a monumental way? This wasn’t the first time they had changed the past, but it would probably be the biggest, and the hardest to predict. But also, what did it really matter at this point? Things already had changed, just by them coming here in the first place. The timeline was already new. There was no going back to the old one, unless maybe if they happened to run into Dilara. This was the earliest in the timeline they had ever been to, except when they were in The Constant during its early days. Was that the solution? Contacting Danica?

“Danica and the Constant are 16,000 light years away,” Leona reminded Olimpia.

“That’s nothing,” Olimpia replied. “We could just take the slingdrive there.”

“The slingdrive?” Ramses questioned, having not been listening to the conversation too hard until now. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

“Yeah, because it’s like a slingshot,” Olimpia explained. “You can pull back, and let go, and it will generally go in the direction you’re aiming, but precise targeting is difficult at best, especially when you’re first learning. You’re bound to miss the mark on the first few attempts.”

Ramses frowned.

“No one’s mad at you,” Leona told him for the umpteenth time. “I think we’re supposed to be here anyway. I mean, we could have ended up landing in the timeline a thousand years ago, which wouldn’t have done us any good. Yet we happen to wind up just when the Goldilocks Corridor is getting interesting? That’s no coincidence.”

“Well, anyway,” Ramses began, “if that’s how we’re framing the quintessence drive, then trying to get to Danica would be foolish. I obviously don’t know how to aim this thing. We may indeed find ourselves a thousand years off course or worse.”

“That’s not what she’s saying,” Mateo decided. “There’s a learning curve with this new technology. It might not even be you, per se. Maybe the ship just can’t handle the quintessence yet, and needs to learn. Right now, we have a single point of data, which is our arrival two years ago. You need more data, which means you need more jumps.”

“Hold on,” Marie interjected. “Aren’t we trying to do something here? Shouldn’t we be saving Elder, or—I dunno—assassinating the Oaksent?”

“They were just saying, it would be too dangerous,” her sister insisted. “I don’t think we should be messing with the past any more than we already have. Ramses, aim for the future, and if we go to the wrong place, then try again. Keep trying until we get there. Every time we show up in the wrong point in spacetime, we should do as little as possible until that next jump.”

“Maybe we wouldn’t be changing time,” Mateo offered. “Maybe we always did come here to save Elder. We don’t know that that’s not what always happened. No one in the Corridor in the future ever mentioned him. Perhaps he’s but a footnote in history because we took him out of the equation at the right time. That’s the thing about changing history; if you don’t know that you’re doing it, you can’t be at fault. You might just be fulfilling your destiny; closing your loop.”

“He’s right,” Leona confirmed. “Getting him out of there could be our only purpose here. Society is incredibly advanced three thousand years from now. If we don’t take Oaksent’s toy away, maybe they turn out even more advanced. Maybe that would be changing the timeline.”

“I think that’s a weak justification,” Angela contended. “I still say we do nothing.”

“Hon, I think this may be one of those times that calls for a vote, even though we’re not a democracy,” Mateo said.

“Not yet,” Angela said, raising her voice too much. “I need time to build my case.”

“You’ll have the time,” Leona promised with a hand upon her friend’s. “We have all day to make a decision. Pia can jump down there and grab him in a matter of seconds if that’s what we decide to do. They’ll literally never see it coming.”

“I would like to do it,” Mateo volunteered. “If we agree to it, that is.”

“Why?” Leona asked him.

“I wanna help. And I don’t think I need to be invisible, though I do think I can pull that off for a limited time.”

“We’ll vote on that too,” Ramses suggested.

Marie shook her head. “Whoever goes can’t be invisible. We keep calling it a rescue, but we don’t know for sure that he’ll want to leave. That’s just what the satellite images imply. He may want to be there, or he may have his own plan. Either way, if he doesn’t want to come with us, he should have the right to refuse. I’ll agree to a rescue mission, but not an abduction. I won’t be party to that.”

“Good point,” Leona agreed. “Angie, you want time to formulate your argument? Tell us when you’re ready, and we’ll listen to it. I can’t tell you that the decision has to be unanimous, but we’ll consider every option carefully.”

“Do I get a vote?” It was Bronach Oakset. He was lounging on the couch. Except he wasn’t really there. Looking closely at the way he was sprawled out there, it was clear that he was on a different couch, and was merely projecting his image into the ship, just like he did on Welrios. Which was good, it meant their defenses were holding. But it also meant that they needed better defenses. No one should be able to come up here to spy.

Even so, just to be sure, Mateo stepped over, and attempted to smack him in the face. Yes, his hand went right through.

“Yes, daddy,” Bronach replied grossly.

“Goddammit,” Leona lamented.

“Oh, no, did I ruin your plans?” Bronach joked. “Look, I’ve told you in the past, and I’ve told you in the future. I can’t be beat. I know everything. I know where you’ve been, what you’ve done...where you’ll go, and what you’ll do. You want Elder, go ahead and take him.”

Without hesitating, Mateo disappeared. After a long detour, he reached the surface, where he grabbed Elder, and attempted to teleport back up to the ship. “Guys, I’m stuck,” he said through comms.

“Did I forget to mention the teleporter trap?” Bronach asked with a maniacal laugh. “Why do you think we’re in that dome, you idiots?”

“Shut it off,” Leona demanded.

“I’m not doing that,” Bronach replied. “The stopping and starting process is a major pain in the ass. But I’m having one of our people escort the two of them to the exit, where they’ll be free from the spatial field. I wasn’t kidding; you want ‘im, you got ‘im. But don’t think for a second that any of that matters. I scanned that man’s quantum state years ago. I can always bring him back. You’ll be taking a clone, and that will have zero impact on what I accomplish.” He sighed, and stood up to look around the room. “You will always fail. Best get used to it.”

Mateo and Elder appeared on the other side of the room.

“Welcome back!” Bronach exclaimed in a terrible approximation of sincerity.

“Let’s try this again,” Mateo growled. He steadily, but not too quickly, approached Bronach’s hologram, and swung a punch at him. To everyone’s surprise, it worked. Bronach fell back, tripped over his couch, and tumbled back behind it.

“How did you do that?” Leona questioned. “Is Oaksent just playing around?”

“No, he’s not.” Bronach stood up, and wiped the blood from his lip. “I second that question, how the fuck did you just do that!”

Mateo lifted his leg, and slammed it into Bronach’s chest, making contact once more, and forcing him down hard to his back. “I thought you knew everything. Now get the hell off my ship, and erase every single copy of Elder’s brain scan!”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 1 EXT

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Since it was too risky to even attempt to use the quintessence drive again, Ramses engaged a short reframe burst to the planet where the signal was coming from. Once they arrived in orbit, they found there to be no lifesigns aboard the other ship. This wasn’t surprising as the design suggested it to be completely automated, meant to prepare the surface for habitation at a later date. It deployed dropships to begin construction on geodesic diamond domes, which was funny, because the atmosphere was fairly comparable to Earth’s. With only a minimal amount of bioengineering, any organic human should be able to survive unaided by external technologies. Leona posited that the onboard systems were not smart enough to realize this. They were programmed to build domes, and fill them with oxygenated air generated via electrolysis, so that was precisely what they were doing. It didn’t even seem to detect the Vellani Ambassador’s presence at all. So they just stayed out of its way.

Curious, the team hung out for the rest of the day until midnight central hit, staying invisible so they wouldn’t be seen by anyone else. The domes were completed by the time they returned to the timestream, and a second ship had arrived in the meantime. There could be people here now. “I’ll go down,” Olimpia volunteered.

“Just you?” Leona asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t dare go alone,” Olimpia clarified. “Perhaps Mateo could come with me for support? I believe that I can keep him invisible too, but taking any more may be too difficult.”

Leona sighed. “No one’s going down right now. Rambo, just keep an eye on the surface. Send an invisible probe, and gather some recon data for us. Pia, could I speak with you for a moment?”

When they were alone in the second pocket dimension, Olimpia spoke up rather defensively. “I know what you’re going to say, but this is how I contribute. I can’t dispatch and control probes, and I can’t mediate diplomatic discussions. I happen to be good at invisibility, so let me use that.”

“I don’t have a problem with you leaning on your strengths. I don’t have a problem at all. But I did want to speak with you about you and my husband.”

“What about us?”

“He told me what happened in the simulation.”

“I don’t know what he said—”

“He told me the truth,” Leona interrupted. “He told me that the two of you have been inching towards each other ever since you met, like a derelict satellite caught in a decaying orbit.”

“Okay, well I don’t know that I would describe it like that...”

“You’re right, because the satellite would just burn up in the atmosphere. And I don’t want that. The metaphor doesn’t work anyway, because it doesn’t account for me.”

“What are you saying?” Olimpia asked.

“Do you know who Serif is?”

“Yeah, she was a clay woman who came to life while you were living on Tribulation Island. She left to go save the multiverse from the Ochivari’s virus, or something.”

“She was carved from stone, not clay. She was more than only another member of our crew at the time. I was in love with her. I still am, to an extent. My brain contains memories of her that never took place. Mateo didn’t even have those fake memories, though, and when he disappeared from the timeline altogether, she and I only grew closer, because I couldn’t remember him either. When he came back...it was like falling in love with him all over again. And Serif was...sort of left out in the cold. Our three-person relationship didn’t work, because it was uneven.”

“I’m still not following.”

“There are six of us here, and we all love each other, in various ways. Angela and Marie are sisters who were once the same person. Mateo and Ramses are best friends. He and I are married. And you? You’re falling in love with him, if you haven’t already. I believe that he’s experiencing the same thing, at his own pace.”

“I’m not a homewrecker,” Olimpia argued.

“I know, and I don’t want you to be. None of us does. That’s why it’s a problem. Even if you push through it, ignore your feelings, and find someone else, this connection between you two will never go away. Instead of letting it be the way that it is, I propose a—shall we call it—an unconventional response. As I said, we all love each other, so I don’t think it’s completely impossible for you and me to...”

Olimpia shook her head slightly as Leona trailed off. “To what, fall in love with each other too? To save your marriage, and the team, you want to force a polyamory triangle?”

“Well, I don’t see it as being forced.”

“Are you even attracted to me?”

“Have you even seen a mirror before?”

Olimpia blushed a little. “This is weird.”

“I know, and it may blow up in our faces, but if we don’t try something, it definitely will. I don’t want one of us to become the next Serif. Nothing has happened between you two yet, so let’s go on this journey together. Let’s not keep secrets, and hide our true selves. You don’t have to come up with an excuse to spend time with him. You and I would be better suited for the ground mission. You have the invisibility, I have the brains. I didn’t mean to say it like that, I’m sorry. I know that sounds mean.”

“It’s fine,” Olimpia assured her. “I know I’m not stupid. I’m just uneducated, because whenever my teacher tried to ask me to respond to a query, I would give the answer several times in a row.”

Olimpia was the only one still wearing a Cassidy cuff, but still Leona would forget that this was because of her sonic echoing time affliction. She had a pretty good reason for her lack of life experiences. “Right, I get that.” She paused for a moment. “So. Are you willing to try this weird thing? It’s unusual, to say the least, but I don’t just want to be the jealous, resentful wife who denies my man’s desires because society has told me that only two people are allowed to be together at any one time.”

Olimpia reached up, and took a lock of Leona’s hair out from behind her ear to let it fall in front of it.

“What was that for?”

“So I could do this...” She reached up again, and tucked the hair back behind Leona’s ear, placing their faces close together as well. “Gut reaction, how did that feel? Uncomfortable? Awkward? Breathtaking?”

“Both B and C maybe,” Leona answered.

Olimpia giggled. “I suppose that people date each other all the time without knowing where it’s going. That’s the whole point of the dates. All we’re doing is agreeing that true love is the end goal, and admitting that if we don’t reach that goal, I’m gonna die alone. I’m a time traveler, and my options are limited. So if you and I can’t make it work, it probably means that the only reason I fell in love with Mateo is because, to me, he may as well be the last man on Earth.”

“So, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll take it slow, start with a first date; no sex.”

“No sex,” Olimpia agreed. “No sex...at all. If you really want to give this a shot, I think you two need to pretend like you’re not already together, just for a time.”

Leona nodded, considering the parameters. “I think that makes sense. Polyamory doesn’t work unless there’s mutuality. Without that, it just devolves into polygamy.”

“Yeah. So it’s settled. You and I will go down to check out the dome while Mateo sets up a romantic date for us.”

“Is that what we settled on, that he does all the work?”

“You and I had the hard conversation,” Olimpia reasoned. “Let him do something.”

The two of them called Mateo into the pocket to essentially have the same conversation all over again until he came to the same conclusion. It was definitely weird until he looked at it from the correct angle. They had to be active participants in this situation, rather than trying to let the chips fall where they may, and hoping that none of them flew up to hit someone in the eye. He had no problem with staying home to set up their first three-person date together while the womenfolk went off to figure out what was going on with the planet below.

Ramses agreed to help once he was clued into the new dynamic. “Dude, that’s great, man. Two ladies, I hear that’s kinda the dream.”

“It’s not like that,” Mateo argued.

“Bullshit. Ya know, you can appreciate someone for their mind, and their body at the same time.”

“What would you know about it?” Mateo asked.

“I still have sexual needs, I just choose to fulfill them on my own.”

“So, you’re not annoyed that I’ve found two special people, and you’ve not even found one?”

“Nah, it’s cool. Really. I’ve always been ultra-focused on my work. Creating something that does exactly what I want it to do is the closest thing to a relationship that I’ve ever needed. I might have thought twice about turning myself into a time traveler if I felt the compulsion to seek out a mate.” He stopped setting the plates down. “Ugh. This dimension is so bland. I can’t work with this. I think you need to have your date in a simulation.”

“No, it has to be a real place with real food,” Mateo contended. “If I just ask the computer to make something perfect, I’ll have done nothing.”

“Let me help.” Angela was in the doorway.

Mateo was worried. “Angie, I didn’t know you were in this pocket.”

“I was bored. And you forgot to switch off your comm disc again. We all heard everything.”

Mateo widened his eyes in horror. “Leona?”

“It’s fine, love. Just locker room talk. It’s perfectly normal to have a conversation with your friends about someone you haven’t had sex with yet.”

“Huh?” Ramses was as confused as Angela.

“We’re starting from scratch,” Mateo explained. He turned away to speak into his disc again. “Okay, I’ll see you two tonight. I won’t say I love you, because I don’t know you very well yet. Okay, love you, bye.” He tapped it off. “Dammit.”

“Aww,” Angela feigned fawning.

“Did you say you could help with something?” Mateo asked her, embarrassed.

“This new girl you’re seeing,” Angela joked, “called it four-dimensional holography. We all appear to have our own specialties, and mine is being able to generate images that last across time without me having to be focused on them. I can just set something up, and walk away, so I’m confident that I can make this room look like anything,” she said, looking around, and taking mental notes of a few ideas.

“Wow. That’s very exciting, and not the least bit concerning since I seem to be the only one who’s not particularly good at creating holograms in any special sort of way.”

“I don’t have a specialty either,” Ramses claimed.

“Are you kidding me?” Mateo asked. “You take our power, and replicate it in technology. This ship is invisible.”

“Yeah, well, I guess.”

“So, what were we thinking?” Angela asked, putting the conversation back on track. “Grand banquet hall? Kitschy theme restaurant? Low stakes fast-casual joint?”

Mateo thought through his options, which were apparently limitless. “Um. Let’s go with quaint small town bar and grill that used to be City Hall before they built the new one ten years ago.”

“I think I can make that work.” Angela began to throw up some holograms, adjusting bits and pieces here and there, taking in input from the two guys and her sister, until they had something as original as possible while still channeling photons from real places elsewhere in spacetime.

After Leona and Olimpia came back from their little mission, they showered, and showed up for the date. Marie served as their waiter, because she wanted to be a part of it too. She has a hypertime food synthesizer to make the food, but she elected to sit and wait to make it feel more real. The dinner was nice. They didn’t hold onto the ruse about being strangers on a blind date. They discussed their real lives, acknowledging that they were quite familiar with each other already. The whole team was there, with Ramses and Marie having their own meal together as friends. So they were able to hear the mission debrief too. A very young Bronach Oaksent was in the dome with none other than Elder Caverness. They were seemingly the only two people on the planet, besides the secret spies. They were currently calling it Ex-001, which Leona once mistakenly believed to be the seat of power for the Exin Empire. So it did exist, but instead of being the most important world, it was simply the first one to be settled. It made Mateo wonder, what would become of it thousands of years from now? Would it end up holding secrets that were just waiting to be exploited?

The meal was a success, which wasn’t surprising, because they were all friends, and there was nothing to fight about at the moment. As promised, it did not end in sex. In fact, Mateo retired to his own room in the second pocket dimension, as he would if this really were his first evening with a new prospect. They chose not to worry too much about what was happening on Ex-001, or how they would involve themselves. They couldn’t be sure how much would change during their interim year. As it turned out, quite a lot. There were now 147 new people living there.

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Extremus: Year 75

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Eagan Spurrs is not a man, and that is not a derogatory way to put it. Artificial intelligence is a complex subject. There is no clearly defined point when a robot becomes truly self-aware and conscious. There are ways to test this, but no one here is qualified to do such a thing. Not that they would have to anyway. Eagan fully admits to being artificial. Research into the field of AI started in the 20th century, and by the end of the first quarter of the 21st, generative AI was the hottest form on the market. These were extremely sophisticated programs, which could answer unique queries, often in ways that would not inherently give their true origin away. They were used to analyze and synthesize vast amounts of data to organize people’s lives and work, and teach users about various topics, but they couldn’t actually do anything. Humans were still needed to implement any ideas that their collaboration produced. The natural evolution of them was the realization of something known as Performative AI.

PerAI is an offshoot of GenAI, and in fact, requires the latter in order to function. A request is fed into the system, and a response is formulated. This response is sometimes an answer to a question, but it also sometimes requires the manipulation of other systems. For instance, one might ask a GenAI how to write the code for a website. A PerAI could come up with that answer too, but also plug the code directly into the coding program itself, and even debug it. Further advancements allowed PerAI to be incorporated into robotic substrates, so that they could perform physical tasks in the real world; tasks which they hadn’t necessarily ever been asked to do before. That’s when the general population really started taking notice. All of the sudden, all of your chores could be done by someone else. Your handy dandy personal robot could wash your dishes and clothes, mow the lawn, and buy your groceries. This solved a lot of problems in the world, even if it took a little time to be adopted. But in the end, who would bother spending all their time on work that bored them, tired them out, and prevented them from enjoying their life? Only people without the money. Fortunately, that problem was eventually solved too, thanks in no small part to the advent of General Intelligence, but that’s a topic for another time.

Eagan is a PerAI with an android body. It took Tinaya and Belahkay a few frustrating minutes to figure this out, though. Being such an old technology, neither of them was initially aware of Eagan’s limitations. He can tell them why he was created, and what his job is here, but not why, or why anyone built the structure. Who was supposed to live here, and who decided that? It’s his responsibility to welcome new residents, and teach them how the megablock works. Or rather, it was going to be his job. Ever since the time mirror exploded, no one else will be coming here, leaving Eagan without a purpose. He’s not even been allowed to enter the interiors unless accompanied by a human, which is why he’s been staying out of the elements in this wikiup.

There’s another question, which they will likely never get an answer for. When Belahkay’s crew first showed up here, they scanned the surface of the planet. That was how they found the settlement in the first place, and started getting involved in the survivors’ lives. The megablock is the biggest above ground structure across the globe. It should have been easily spotted by the Iman Vellani’s sensors, so why wasn’t it? According to Eagan’s information, construction began eleven years ago, so it should have already been visible a few years ago. Belahkay dispatched a drone scout to explore the buildings while the two of them had lunch together. Once the survey was done, the three of them left the area with the images and specifications to report back to the group. Everyone else was just as surprised, and couldn’t explain it, but it did prompt them to find out whether there was anything else hiding around here.

Most of the visiting starship crew are gone by now, but they left them with a shuttle to use as they wished. The Kamala Khan has been slowly flying all around the world unmanned, looking for energy signatures, right angles, and even lifesigns. For the last several months, nothing has come up, besides a heavy water processing plant under the ocean, which will help refuel their fusion reactors. Today, the shuttle has detected something else. It’s an underground complex, hard to detect with the shuttle’s limited sensors. It’s running on very low power, presumably due to the now absence of a human presence. But that’s just conjecture. The group has not yet uncovered what the purpose of this facility is. They’re going down to the main level right now. It’s a long ride.

More than a kilometer underneath the surface, the elevator stops, and the doors open. They’re immediately struck by what’s been hiding down here. They stare up at it, gradually walking forwards to the guardrails, and then they keep on staring. “It looks like the Extremus,” Lilac points out.

“It’s a battleship,” Tinaya determines. “Look at that exterior weapons array. That down there looks like the entrance to a fighter bay.”

“Why the hell are they building this?” Belahkay questions.

“Who are they?” Aristotle asks.

They all look over at Spirit, who rolls her eyes. “For the last time, I didn’t know everything. SCR&M. Safety, Compartmentalization...” she says, stopping before the last three words of the mantra. The Bridgers were there to maintain order in the event that it was necessary, but we didn’t have our fingers in every pie. That was... Tinaya’s purpose.”

“Lataran was also a spy,” Tinaya reminds her. “Now she’s the Captain.”

“Yes, and either she was keeping this whole thing a secret, or the other Bridgers were keeping it from me. All I know is that I don’t know what this is.”

Belahkay moves over to a console, and starts flipping through the information. “I think I know why we weren’t able to detect this before,” he soon says. “It’s running off of extremely low power, prioritizing frugality over speed.”

“Why would they need to do that?” Tinaya asks. “If this planet, with its abundance of resources, is nothing more than staging grounds, why not get it done?”

“The megablock,” Spirit realizes. “That’s to house, and probably train, an army, and maybe even raise them. That would take time. Getting the ship done quickly wouldn’t be necessary, so you may as well save the hydrogen.”

“Wait,” Niobe jumps in. “Who were they planning to fight?”

Tinaya and Spirit exchange a look, and simultaneously say, “the Exins. We believe this world to be relatively close to where they live.”

“It makes sense,” Aristotle figures, “to find the one world perfectly hospitable to humans to prepare for an attack.”

“Belahkay, keep doing what you’re doing, and report in when anything interesting comes up,” Tinaya orders. She didn’t set out to become the leader here for their tiny little group, but whenever a decision has needed to be made, they’ve routinely looked to her to make it. Everyone just fell into their roles. “Niobe, you can stay with him. Spirit, there are three more levels. Explore with Lilac, stay on comms. There could be people living down here for all we know, or more Eagans. Totle, you’re with me.”

“Where are we going?” Aristotle asks her.

“Into the ship, of course,” she replies.

They step into the second elevator, but this one is fully exposed, and running down the side of the hangar. They then have to get into a third elevator in order to go up into the ship. They begin to search it with flashlights, but the lighting systems turn on by themselves to show them the way. Tinaya was right that there is a hangar bay here, but it’s for transport shuttles, not fighter jets. They are apparently troop transports for ground assaults. The fighters, on the other hand, are designed to shoot out of tubes that litter the hull everywhere there is not some kind of gun to protect the battleship itself. They find the bridge, the engineering section, and a few staterooms, but the rest of it is taken up by stasis pods. Tens of thousands of fighters can sleep here in wait for the long journey ahead of them. Belahkay would be the one to figure out where exactly they were going to be sent, and how long it would take them to get there, but unlike the Extremus, this is not a generation ship. The people who were meant to live here would lie down one second, then wake up the next, but it would be decades later in realtime.

Who were all these people expected to be? The battleship could accommodate the entire current population of Extremus, and still have plenty of room to spare. Even if every security officer and reserve soldier were conscripted into this, there would be absolutely no need for this much space. There was never any reason to build something quite this large unless they had more time to build their army. Or perhaps they had some other means in mind, like cloning. The ethical ramifications of this whole endeavor is making Tinaya’s head spin. Lataran was keeping this from her, and the Extremusian people. This is not what the mission is about. If the Exins were going to attack, then protecting the ship they already had is the only thing that ever made any sense. This thing is new. If it had been built in the past with plans for it to meet up with Extremus before it flew out of range, that would be one thing. But they’re in the present day, with no hope of catching up without a new time travel event. None of this makes any goddamn sense. They need answers. They need to contact their people, now more than ever. This is no longer an extended vacation. Now it’s a mission.

When they’re done searching the whole place, they meet back up with the rest of the group on the mezzanine level. “Anything interesting? Any people?” Tinaya asks.

“Just some labs and offices,” Lilac reports. “Nothing of note. No people.”

“You?” Niobe asks.

“It’s a sleeper ship,” Tinaya answers. “No crew quarters. Everyone in that megablock could fit in here. It was...disheartening to see.”

“We didn’t come all the way out here to wage war,” Spirit agrees.

“It’s fully operational,” Aristotle continues. “We could teleport out right now, and go. The automators are still building a few things, but all vital components are done.”

“Belahkay?” Tinaya prompts.

“I can confirm everything that you’ve been saying. The weird part about it is that it doesn’t have a reframe engine. The Goldilocks Corridor, their destination, is 216 light years from here, straight back down into the galaxy. It was gonna take them 216 years.”

“I didn’t think that we were that close to the Milky Way,” Tinaya remarks. “We should be pretty deep into the void by now, given Captain Yenant’s new heading.”

“We’re not far.” Belahkay acts like he didn’t realize that the rest didn’t know that.

“We also found out the name of the ship,” Niobe goes on, building some suspense. “It’s the Anatol Klugman.”

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