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Oceanus was furious that Crusan switched the envelopes. He demanded to know
how he even did that, but it really wasn’t that hard. The printer was
literally behind the stage, unlocked, and all the presets were still
engaged. All Crusan had to do was type a new name, print it out, and switch
it with the real one using some sleight of hand. What they didn’t know
before was that he likes to study old Earth magic in his free time. He was
already coming in to see who won when Tinaya stopped the clock, so he heard
most of the argument about Silveon being the real chosen one. His exact
motivations, however, are not yet apparent. Oceanus argued with the
braintrust in secret, but there’s no going back now. It’s irrelevant which
envelope is real. Tinaya said the name out loud, and the written evidence is
all the proof that anyone would need to declare it legitimate. Crusan
destroyed the original, and even if Captain Jennings pointed to the file
version history, Pronastus’ name is the one that everyone heard. Going back
on that now would just make him look incompetent. The best thing they can do
at this point is move forward with the three candidates for this ship’s new
captain.
The true wrench in the works is that Waldemar was the one who asked for the
competition to be rigged. He was expecting his friend, Silveon’s name to be
called instead. It was Oceanus who had to explain his reasoning. Tinaya
wasn’t there, but he reportedly used it as an opportunity to teach Waldemar
a lesson about leadership. The ship cannot be managed by one man alone. You
are always having to work with others, and even if you have authority over
them, they have the inborn freewill to defy you. Working through these
conflicts with a cool head is an important skill to master. This would be
great advice for just about anyone else hoping for an executive position,
but this is a special case. It has probably set their progress back with
Waldemar a little bit. He likely sees it as a bad lesson, favoring the
search for a workaround which would allow him to do whatever he needs
without any pushback.
Speaking of Waldemar, something must be done about his clones, if any extras
exist. Consul Sanchez never told Tinaya where she rerouted it when AI!Elder
attempted to reveal the truth about it on The Black Deck. The logic is that
it’s in Tinaya’s best interest not to know. Plausible deniability, and all
that. She said that it was disposed of properly, but AI!Elder claimed there
were others. He could have been lying for all she knew, but if he wasn’t,
they have to be found. The hunt has been slow going. She doesn’t have any
leads. She has to literally look for them in unoccupied sectors of the ship.
Well, she isn’t doing it herself. Silveon has been working on it, with his
fast legs, and ability to use them for more than fifteen minutes at a time.
Audrey helps too. It’s been easier for her to get out of her quarters, now
that Waldemar is officially busy with vice captain duties. They have tried
to ask Pronastus for help, but his magical superpowers are evidently not
leading him anywhere. Perhaps there’s nothing to find.
Silveon sighs, and plops down on the couch. He’s tired from the search, as
well as his normal stewardship responsibilities. “We have to learn to accept
the possibility that, if there are more clones out there, they’re being kept
somewhere that isn’t out of the way. We don’t know where the one you
found came from, so it could have been created by a Future!Waldemar, or the
one we have with us today, or it could be someone else entirely, storing one
of the pods securely and secretly in their own linen closet.”
“You’re right,” Tinaya says. “I’m sorry to make you go looking for it.
You’re off the hook. You should be living your life. How old are you now,
twenty-seven?”
“A hundred and two.”
“Oh. I was close.” Tinaya smiles, and then starts nodding off a little.
“You should get some rest, mom,” Silveon suggests. “You don’t have to go to
the launch party.
“No, I wanna be there, but I think I will take a quick nap.” Her eyelids are
really heavy now. “Just...need to talk to you...about...finding...your
own...”
Silveon sits there quietly for a moment before standing up, and starting to
leave.
She hears the doors slide open. “Place,” she finally finishes.
Silveon stops. “What?”
Her eyes are closed, and she’s half asleep already. “You’re a big boy now.
You just said it. You’re a hundred. That’s older than me. You shouldn’t
still be living with your parents.”
“Mom, I don’t live with my parents. My parents live with me.”
“That would be one way to frame it, except this is the admiral’s stateroom.”
It’s the admiral’s stateroom now because Tinaya is an admiral, but it’s the
same one they lived in when she was still captain. It’s an
executive stateroom really, but her point stands. It will never be
Silveon’s. In fact, it would never even be Arqut’s. If they weren’t going to
die at the same time, and she went first, Arqut would have to move out. And
Silveon will have to when that day comes. He might as well do it now. They
should not have let it go on this long, even though it’s obviously a nicer
unit, and he probably hasn’t hated the luxury.
“I just mean, I’m here to take care of you. I may be older, but I don’t look
it, and I don’t feel it. You’re frail and tired. You can’t even open your
eyes right now. Nor should you have to. You should be able to retire. Or
it’s not really a retirement, but they make a new rank above it, which
basically means retired. I’ve thought about this.”
“The Captaincy is a lifetime responsibility,” Tinaya tries to explain. “We
all know that going in.” She falls asleep again before she can say anything
else.
Tinaya was mad that Silveon and Arqut let her sleep though the launch party,
but she was secretly relieved. Even if she had woken up, being around all
those people would have been exhausting. She is the oldest admiral this ship
has ever seen, and it’s not something that anyone ever really thought about.
Based on the ideal timing, any admiral who reaches this age should have a
younger admiral for the captain to lean on more heavily. Nothing changes
officially, but in practice, she ought to be working less. But Lataran isn’t
that much younger. Should she be expected to carry the burden alone from now
on?
People love The Search for Extremus. It really speaks to their sadness that
they’ll never see the planet for real. Oceanus and Waldemar took their
credit for its development, but gave Tinaya some credit too, which was nice.
It was her baby, after all. She watched the event later from the comfort of
her own bed. It looked like a real hoot, but also a little too rowdy. It’s
been a couple of months now, and it hasn’t lost steam. Every player really
wants to be the one to find the new homeworld. Tinaya doesn’t play it
herself, but she reads the summary updates to see if anyone has made any
real progress.
She’s getting an award this evening. They won’t tell her what it is, but
it’s probably the Lifetime Achievement award. It’s given mostly to members
of the civilian government, but executive crew members qualify, and everyone
who reaches the rank of admiral should get it eventually. She has to take a
nap before she leaves, which Arqut does with her, but then they get up, get
dressed, and get going.
Silveon is evidently the one who is going to present it to her, which is
nice. “Admiral Tinaya Leithe is the hardest working person on this ship, and
has been since her youth, and I can say that, because she’s my mother. She’s
been a builder, a grower, a caregiver, a fixer, an explorer, a First Chair,
a Captain, and an Admiral. She still is most of those things. She bridged
the gap between sides, and has touched every department. She has made this
journey better than it ever has been before, and she’s still clocking in
every single day, putting in the time to make everyone here happy. This game
you all love, she made that for you. She came up with it, because she knows
how hard it is to be a middler. She too was born on Extremus, and will never
see our home. She deserves this promotion more than anyone.”
Silveon looks over his shoulder at Tinaya before continuing his speech.
“Captain Jennings and I have been working on a special project, which will
shift the paradigm of the executive crew. They’ve already done that with the
new vice captain position, so we figured we might as well go for it. In
years past, the admiral position has been underutilized, but Admiral Leithe
didn’t accept that. She kept moving. She redefined her own job, just as she
did with all the other ones she had before this.” He looks at his mom again.
“At the risk of sounding insensitive, mother, you’re done now.” He starts to
tear up. “It’s okay for you to get your rest. You’ve earned it.” He turns
back to the audience. “There is no retirement for an admiral. As my mom
pointed out a few weeks ago, everyone who signs up to be captain understands
that. But it doesn’t make it right. So Captain Jennings and I came up with a
workaround. Tinaya Leithe, please stand up to accept your new insignia. I
have the honor of officially designating you Admiral Emerita.”
Tinaya stands, and walks over to him. Silveon removes her old insignia, and
attaches the new one. Shiny. She’s crying as he does this. He hugs her.
Lataran was sitting next to her, of course, and hops up to hug her too.
Oceanus is standing now. He reaches out to shake her hand, but Tinaya
insists on a hug. It’s less warm though; more professional and formal.
Still, it’s nice. They used to be so close, and maybe they can get back to
that one day. If she lives long enough. After this, the congratulations
become less organized. Vice Captains Pronastus and Détha step up to express
their own respect. Waldemar does too, but his hug is weird. You would think
the mechanics of it would be obvious enough from seeing other people do it,
but without a conscience, he’s totally lost and awkward. It’s not
surprising, though. Fortunately, right afterwards, she gets to hug Audrey,
which feels real good right now.
After the ceremony is over, they move on to the celebratory portion of the
day. This started early, fittingly because this is about letting Tinaya rest
now. So the party is fairly chill. There aren’t too many people here. Consul
Sevara Sanchez is one of them, though. They lock eyes from across the room.
Sevara waves at Tinaya with her pinky finger alone while holding a drink.
She keeps talking to some guy who has his back turned right now.
Head Councillor Regulus Crusan sidles up to Tinaya. “That one’s bad news.”
“I don’t know who it is,” Tinaya replies. She keeps looking forward, as does
he.
“You don’t know the Consul?” Regulus questions.
“Sevara?” Tinaya questions right back. “I thought you were talking about
that guy. Why would Sevara be bad news?”
“She’s a believer. She knows what’s coming, and she welcomes it.”
“What do you mean? What’s coming?”
“Waldemar Kristiansen, Eighth of Eight.”
“I’ve never heard that title before. How do you know about that?”
“Let’s just say you’re not the only one who’s been on...the Bridge.” He’s
not talking about the bridge of Extremus, but the Bridger Section.
Oh, man, another spy? How many have they turned? Literally everyone? “Are
you trying to stop it?”
“I’m trying to make it better,” Regulus explains.
“Pronastus,” Tinaya says simply, nodding. That’s why he switched the
envelopes at the award ceremony last year. He didn’t pull an applicant name
out of his ass. He chose one for very specific reasons.
“Kegrigia knows where the timeline is meant to be, good or bad. It’s less
that Kristiansen needs an advisor like that, and more that the ship needs
it, to protect them from what Kristiansen might do on his own.”
This is probably a stupid question, and it’s definitely a dangerous one.
“What do you know about the clones?” At least it was vague?
“I know that there are eight,” Regulus begins. Maybe he really does know
what she’s referring to. “I saw the codenames once. I wasn’t supposed to be
looking at it, though, so let me try to remember. “The Seed, the Potato, the
Softie, the Morph, the Prime, the Gravity, the Elder, and what was the last
one...?”
Tinaya nods. “The Clutch.”
“Yeah, that’s it. So you already know.”
“I didn’t know there were eight, but that makes sense.”
“Why would it make sense?”
“You just described the Seven Stages of Aging. The Seed sometimes refers to
an embryo, but it can be a foetus too. The next six are after you’re born,
and were part of the original system. A filmmaker came up with them
centuries ago. Basically, if you want to cast a character whose entire life
will be on screen, you need six different actors. The Seed was added later
when the concept was adapted to cloning and artificial gestation
technology.”
“There are eight, though.”
She nods again, and sighs. “The eighth one only belongs in our world. A
Clutch is an immortal who can shift to whatever age they please. You only
need one.”
“Oh, I think there was an asterisk next to that one,” Regulus adds.
“I can’t be sure what that means, except we don’t have clutch technology.
It’s not even so much as mentioned in the archives. The asterisk could mean
that it’s proposed, but not yet existent. I don’t know. I only found the
Gravity.”
“I can help you find the others. I just need something in return.”
Of course he does. “You need what?”
“Just a vial...of your husband’s blood.” And there it is.
“No.”
