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.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 5, 2549

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On a scale from robot butter-passer to ecumenopolis, the infrastructure that Ramses’ forge core was able to construct during their interim year sat at about a 5.6. This logarithmic scale was designed by a team of futurologists back in the very late 21st century; not just something that he made up himself. The core’s interface was very intuitive for even the dumbest of dum-dums. It was basically a store, where they added things that they wanted to a shopping cart, and the cost—the time it would take to complete the whole project—automatically calculated in the corner. At first, all they wanted was to build a Nexus, which took a healthy chunk of time alone due to its sheer complexity, outmatching all other buildings on their plans combined in that category. Without it, the starter nanites could have resulted in a continent-wide civilization-ready network of interconnected megacities. But what they ended up with was more than enough. There were only nine of them, including the three on the away mission.

There were several arcological megastructure tripods now. If any Earthan were to move here, they would feel right at home. They weren’t actually expecting that to happen, though. They only built all this because they were trying to maximize the time available by hitting that 365-day mark. They figured it was better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. They had no idea what they wanted to use any of this for yet, but that was where the Nexus came in. People from anywhere in the galaxy, or farther, would be able to travel here near-instantaneously. It only had the capacity of a few dozen people, so it wasn’t suitable for some kind of mass-exodus, but it wasn’t useless either. If Hrockas had had access to this level of technology back when he was building Castlebourne, it could have been completed in under a decade. Now there was the simple question of what to name all this.

“I’ve been trying since we got here,” Romana revealed.

“What have you come up with?” Mateo asked her.

“Nothing good. The best ones are Lorramm, Ramlorm, and Marmorl.”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...” Mateo said.

“They’re all seven of our initials.”

“Oh.”

“Not enough vowels.”

“Right.”

“We could add E and C for Echo and Clavia,” Angel suggested.

“Leave me out of this,” Clavia insisted, weirdly offended.

“I thought this planet was named Echo,” Marie pointed out.

“Yeah, on the other side,” Romana agreed. “Firstly, I started thinking about this before the weird interversal portal we went through. And secondly, I was brought up to believe that there is no such thing as an alternate self. We’re each unique, even when we come across people who look just like us, and share our memories. I think that goes for planets too. That’s Echo. This is somewhere else.”

“That’s completely true,” Clavia agreed. “When Olimpia screamed the Sixth Key pocket universe into existence, she based it on the original Milky Way, but it’s not an exact copy. It was just mostly close. You should name it something else. My brother would say the same thing if he were here right now.”

Mateo nodded in agreement. “Well, let’s keep thinking while we explore. We also need names for the various domes and cities, I guess. And there’s still the issue of what the purpose of this planet is.”

“I think it’s whatever it needs to be,” Marie began. “If there are more refugees, we can bring them in. If people want to come here for vacation, we will have recreational facilities available too. If someone is in need of a prison, we’ll build a remote site somewhere here, and house them safely. Even if they escape, where are they gonna go? It’s an all-purpose planet. It will serve as the central hub for the Milky Way galaxy one day, and maybe sooner than you think.”

“Well, if that’s the case, we need someone to host,” Angela said. “We need someone who is here every day of the timestream.”

They all looked over at Clavia.

“Oh, no. That’s not my job,” she contended. “I don’t even live in this universe. I’m just here to keep an eye on you people until your friends and lovers come back.”

“Most of our permanent friends are on Castlebourne,” Mateo pointed out, not expecting her to change her mind. “We would have to poach them.”

“Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be a sanctuary,” Romana argued. “I thought it was going to be just for us; a place that no one else could get to. They wouldn’t even know about it. Whatever happened to that plan? We got so wrapped up in what we could do with the forge core that I think we lost the plot.”

“It was always going to end up like this,” Marie countered. “We don’t stay out of things, even when we try. If we ever do need a real sanctuary just for our team, we’ll use some other distant world that Rambo’s Operation Starframe colonizes for us. It doesn’t even have to be big. It could be a hollowed out asteroid, like Linwood’s.”

“That’s gonna take over a hundred years from these staging grounds,” Romana volleyed. “I’m not saying we can’t build out, but my Future!Dad was warning us about something. Even if this planet had nothing to do with anything in his timeline, there might be an inevitable threat that us coming here only worsens, or at least doesn’t alleviate. We keep making these choices which have lasting consequences for the universe. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for your meddling. I would not exist if my Past!Dad hadn’t randomly ended up on Durus at the exact right moment, but what he and Leona did that day resulted in more than just me. It impacted the future of an entire civilization.” She focused her gaze upon her father. “Present!Dad, you helped make Dardius what it is today. I still believe we hastened the carnage on Proxima Doma. Who knows what we’ve done to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida just by helping a woman carry her potatoes? Again, I’m not saying we bury ourselves in a hole, but let’s try to think things through. Romana Nieman, youngest one here, unlikely voice of reason.”

Romana was right to be cautious. Despite only living one day out of the year, their actions have rippled out in ways that few could have predicted. They would need someone like Bhulan Cargill to see all the branches. That metaphor gave Angela an idea so she went off alone to unpack it. The rest had their own things going on. Marie left the city entirely, reacclimated to the planet’s natural atmosphere, and took a walk in the wilderness. Clavia accompanied her for protection since they didn’t know what else could be out there, and no one should be alone outside of the controlled environment of a dome. Mateo tried to activate the Nexus for a test. Everything seemed to be in working order, but they had not been given their own term sequence. The gods only assigned it once everything was engineered to absolute perfection, but he didn’t know what was wrong, and obviously could not have fixed it either way. Romana just sat down on the dirt, apparently to meditate. This far out, no grass had been planted yet.

A few hours later, Angela called everyone back, claiming to have figured it out. They didn’t know what exactly she had been working on, but they came anyway. After a moment of silence, she began with a single word. “Ramosus.” She uttered it in an accent a couple of times, like she was getting the feel of it, before returning to her normal voice.

“Is that a band, errr...?” Romana hadn’t gotten the chance to make that joke yet.

“It sounds like a corruption of Ramses,” Marie suggested.

“It is,” Angela confirmed. “But it’s not just that. Romana certainly helped point me in that direction, but your comment about branching timelines is what really led me there. It’s Latin for branched, which I think works because the initial hope for this outpost was to serve as the launch point for Starframe. Plus, it has natural life on it. I love those willow-like trees we saw that we think recycle their water by sending it up the trunk, running it across the stems, which hang down, and dripping it back into the soil.

“Yeah, I like it,” Mateo decided. “It’s good that he’s not here, or he would argue against it. We need to find ways of solidifying the name so it’s established before he has the chance to come back here and put a stop to it. Maybe we build a welcome sign?”

“We can start to spread the word,” Romana offered. “If we send it out into the universe, what’s done will be done, whether he likes it or not. People in the past will probably even hear about it. Were you able to turn on the Nexus?”

“On?” Mateo questioned. “Absolutely. Power is not the problem. It just won’t go anywhere. It’s a cell phone without service. I think we need him and Leona back for that. I probably shouldn’t have even tried. It was too risky for an idiot like me.” When they were all silent, he added, “wow. Not even gonna argue that I’m not an idiot. Thanks.”

They all laughed.

“All right,” he went on. “Clavia, do you have anything to contribute?”

“Like I said,” she began, shaking her head, “I’m just here to protect you. I’m not a part of the team.”

“Well...” Mateo thought about it. “Olimpia is my wife, and Echo is her son, and you’re Echo’s sister, so whether you like it or not, we’re family. That doesn’t mean you have to help, or even stick around. Romana’s sisters don’t, but we still love them.”

“I have plenty of family,” Clavia reasoned. “Thanks, though.” She didn’t sound pretentious or arrogant, more just trying to keep her distance. That was fine.

“We don’t need the Nexus,” Marie said after the group relocated from the middle of nowhere to a picnic table. The biggest bottleneck in construction was managing heat dissipation. The laws of thermodynamics always slowed rapid deployment down when not utilizing temporal manipulation technology. Life, on the other hand, was a different story. It would take years to make this dome look less artificial or dead, so for now, this park was only a placeholder. It was just this one table and some fast-growing resilient shrubbery. “We have our tandem slingdrives. We should go to Castlebourne. We’ll let Hrockas know what we’ve built, and give him an idea of where we are. If some refugees from the Exin Empire would like to move, now they have a new option.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for the others?” Angela figured.

“They’re making decisions that affect the multiverse,” her sister reasoned. “They can stand to come back to a surprise or two.”

“They’re your wives best friend,” Romana said to Mateo. “I say it’s your choice.”

“Let’s wait until tomorrow,” he decided. “If they’re not back, we’ll pull the trigger. For today, let’s focus on the capital. I think I have an idea of what we should do with the dome. Let’s lean into the branching theme.”

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Microstory 2654: An Epic Quest

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Hrockas gave Mandica and her team unprecedented access to data and controls for the simulation. Unfortunately, it turned out to be rather useless in finding her hideout in the dome. If the Custodians who ran the sim couldn’t find Morgana with that information, what hope did four puny humans have? But it wasn’t entirely unhelpful. They decided to think more like her, or more to the point, like her character. If Morgana were a real person, how would she think? How would she act? The core question is why hasn’t she done anything since her attack at the jewelry store? Before Mandica showed up, her power in this city was surpassed only by her mystique. She claimed to live in a distant land, only coming to Ravensgate when business brought her here. Malika says it reminds her of some guy named Ra’s Al Ghul, but Mandica doesn’t know who that is. Their initial assumption was that Vanore wasn’t spending all of her time in Underbelly, but how was she exiting the dome without being traced? According to the logs, Vanore’s regular body is still in substrate storage. If she’s leaving, she’s not returning to it.

Incidentally, they did check Vanore’s storage chamber, though Hrockas was not happy about it. He told them that there was a breach a number of years ago that he doesn’t want repeated. Substrate storage is extremely delicate. People rely on those back-ups to survive, so there are mountains and mountains of laws designed to protect bodies from being tampered with. While Castlebourne doesn’t have to follow stellar neighborhood laws, in this situation, they absolutely do, because mind-transference is their bread and butter, and because it’s the right thing to do. But if Vanore isn’t in Underbelly, and she isn’t in her regular body, then she must be somewhere else on the planet. But she could not have beamed her mind to an entirely different body, because the logs would show that too.

“I got it!” Mandica is in her pajamas. They all are. It’s late, but this puzzle keeps them up just about every night.

“You know where she is?” Jaidia questions. “How?”

“I don’t know the how,” Mandica replies, even though that’s not really the question. “I only know the where. It was so obvious, I’m kicking myself for not realizing it before. God, I’m so stupid. She told us where she lived from the very beginning!”

“Well, stop teasing us like she apparently did, and tell us!” Reagan urges.

“Loegria.”

“Loegria?” Malika echoes.

“It’s the King Arthur dome,” Mandica explains. “There is a Morgana there; there has to be. Just like there’s a Merlin, and a Lancelot, and even Sir Dagonet. When I first heard of her, I assumed they were distinct interpretations of the character. I mean, there are already plenty of different versions of Morgan Le Fay in lore. The one from the TV series Merlin is not the same as the one from Le Morte D’Arthur. But what if it’s not like that here? What if she’s just counting on us to assume that? She could be splitting her time between Ravensgate and Camelot. She’s a shapeshifter, so if she’s somehow found a way to sneak back and forth through the backrooms, or whatever, Hrockas and the Custodians would never know. They wouldn’t realize it’s the same consciousness either.”

Malika and Reagan exchange a glance. “Mandy, you can’t go to Loegria. Hrockas warned you against that. We could go, but we would have to go back to our regular bodies first, even Reagan. That’s why we were hoping she hadn’t left this dome.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that,” Mandica begins, “since we started postulating that she wasn’t always in the dome. Hrockas is not a god. He obviously needs us, or he would use whatever resources he has at his disposal to deal with meta-business. Do you remember how weird it was when he came here? Why did we meet him in some penthouse? Why didn’t he just walk into our headquarters? For that matter, why did he conscript us for this job at all? I’m sure he’s busy, but I’m sure he can delegate the work to someone else in the executive administrative authority. I don’t actually care why he chose us, as long as he honors that moving forward. If he wants us to be the ones to catch Morgana, we will, and we’ll do it by whatever means necessary.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” comes a voice from behind the couch. They jump up to find Hrockas’ personal bodyguard, Azad Petit. It’s impossible. Unless there are built-in trapdoors all over the place, one of them should have seen him come in. He’s just standing there as if the solid wall was briefly a doorway. It doesn’t make any sense. 

“How did you get in here?” Reagan questions, aiming his maser gun. He didn’t come back here as a superhero, but he’s not completely helpless either.

“That’s classified.” When Azad senses that they’re too intrigued, he goes on, “you can either know how I did it, or you can get an exemption to leave the dome with those bodies. We will have stipulations, but we need this problem taken care of. Quietly.”

“Are we allowed to ask how you happened to show up while we were talking about your boss, or are we to believe it was just a coincidence?” Jaidia questions.

“Your buddy was looking at my contact card,” Azad explains. “I get an alert when that happens.

They look at Reagan. “I was only preparing to reach out to him,” he defends.

“Now you don’t have to,” Azad reiterates. “I’m here, and I’m here to tell you that you can go to Loegria, but you can’t be in costume, and you can’t take those wings.” He jerks his head towards their wings, which are charging on their docks. “If you get there and run into resistance, we don’t want you to die, but you can’t be flying around as superheroes. It does not belong in that world. Again, we want to get this done without anyone noticing. If Vanore has replaced that simulation’s Morgana NPC, that is a huge breach, and letting others know that it’s possible will only make things worse.”

“Wow. How much of our conversation did you hear?” Jaidia kind of complains.

“Obviously enough. Will you do it? Will you help us plug the leak?”

“What do we get if we do?” Malika asks him.

“He doesn’t have to give us anything,” Mandica contends, looking over at her briefly, and then back at Azad. “Our goals are aligned. We’ll take care of it. We’re not asking for payment, but if we do this, we become your heroes, right? That will count for something, right? You will consider us friends in the future...right?”

Azad scoffs, but isn’t mad. “Yes, and friends take care of each other.”

After he leaves, The team decides to get one more night of rest, but before that, they visit Elysia’s tailor to make them new clothes. They will need to blend in with the Arthurian realm. They don’t take the wings that Azad indicated, and they don’t take their superhero outfits. They’re not entirely unarmed, however. They do have wings, but they’re an upgrade from even Daedalus’ originals. Thanks to Reagan’s mechanical engineering skills, and Jaidia’s background in biology, their wings are now always with them, and hidden.

Microstory 2632: Pet Project

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Mandica Kolar is a perfectly normal human, which is rare in her time. The transhumanism movement might have begun in the middle of the 20th century, but it did not gain any real traction for many decades, when the science started to catch up with the ideas. Over the next few centuries, the population of undigitized organic humans (UDOs) gradually diminished. They weren’t being killed or replaced. It was just that fewer and fewer people were deciding to tolerate natural aging limitations, aches and pains, and kind of being sidelined. They have become a silent minority. Posthumans hold most of the power now, not out of some nefarious plan, but because that is how the math works out. Whether consciously or subconsciously, some undigitized people feel that they’re being treated as pets, or maybe children. They are so fragile, and people just wanted to protect that. This mindset can be problematic because it often leads to the UDOs being patronized, but honestly, most mean no disrespect. One little plane crash or massive explosion, and a UDO would die...forever. Most everyone else is constantly backing up their consciousness to a remote server somewhere, and don’t worry about such things. In fact, their virtual immortality often makes their lives pretty boring, especially since these adaptations come with other technological improvements, leading to higher quality of life in a post-scarcity society. They have turned to entertainment, and the most popular of these involve some level of simulated danger. They can’t die for real, but they can make believe, and the best systems do better at making them forget that the stakes are genuinely quite low.

Someone is paraterraforming an entire planet for these reasons. Instead of virtual simulations, they will be physical. Some might even alter a visitor’s memories to forget who they are, making them feel like life is still precious and fleeting. Tens of thousands of domes, each with its own theme, are being constructed on the surface of Castlebourne. Mandica isn’t necessarily interested in the simulations, but she does want to leave Earth, and she happens to know of a ship that is heading in that direction. There are too many restrictions here. She doesn’t want to feel like a pet anymore. She wants to live somewhere that will let her be herself. To accomplish this, she needs to move to a Charter Planet. Lying between 50 and 200 light years from Earth, Charter Worlds are not subject to the same laws that the Core Worlds and Stellar Neighborhood systems are. They have to protect themselves, but they often do so by chartering resources from other systems. Castlebourne is set to receive a shipment of lower lifeforms from Earth. They have already been sent one arkship, so this is a second wave with additional specimens, many of which are live. It will probably be Mandica’s last chance to get to where she wants to be. Arkships are rare, and Castlebourne is lucky to get two. They may not receive anything else ever again as most other resources can be found and processed in situ. The problem is, this ship is not for her. There was no chance that they were ever going to let her on it, so she has decided to stow away.

Mandica is a nomad, but she’s still a citizen of the state, and is entitled to certain amenities. Most people in this post-scarcity society get what they need from their local Resource Allocation Committees, which they voted for. As she has no local rights or responsibilities, an At-Large Allocation Board (ALAB) decides what she gets, and what she doesn’t. The people who sit on the board are reportedly mostly former RAC members, but she has never even met even one of them. All of her dealings have been fully automated, which she prefers. She accepts the bureaucracy, but that doesn’t mean she has to participate in government. Since life is so dangerous for nomads, she never goes anywhere truly alone. She possesses a bot pack of drones to aid her in her travels, and protect her. They practically force the pack on her, but she likes animals, and they’re quite convincing, so she doesn’t mind. Others in her situation have outright refused, or disabled them permanently.

There is something else that is different when it comes to Mandica. In addition to the horse, dog, hawk, and flutterby, she’s also accompanied by an android. This is fairly rare for nomads. It’s more of a hermit thing, and of course, there is overlap, but there is a clear distinction. Hermits live alone, and reject the state’s authority, which is why most of them have gone off-world by now. Nomads, on the other hand, frequently get involved in community affairs, they just like to shift between communities at will. They don’t typically need an android for human companionship, because they’re getting plenty of socialization through more conventional—albeit ephemeral—relationships. Mandica visits populated regions as well, but she spends a lot more time in the wilderness, exploring, hiking, and just enjoying the solitude. So why bother with an android? Well, Mordred provides something she might be able to get from others, but with a lot fewer complications. He gives her the sexual satisfaction she needs without all the emotional baggage. Well...there might be a little bit of emotion involved.

“But I don’t understand why I cannot go with you.” Mordred was programmed to adore Mandica, perhaps a little too much.

“Because I need you to stay behind to fake my death,” she explains once again.

He was also programmed to be able to forget things, act a little dumb, and be generally confused. “But I love you, my love. We said we would stay together forever.”

“It was only a fantasy. I must away to start my new life. If you truly love me, you’ll set me free, erase the animals’ memories, and protect me from being discovered.”

Mordred looks down at Mandica’s bioprinted facsimile. It’s state of the art, and looks just like her, down to the scars. A dedicated medical examiner could plausibly tell the difference, but they will hopefully not even bother with a post mortem. It will be a simple fall from an extremely high cliff, which is perfectly believable, given her lifestyle, and nomads aren’t exactly top priority. “This golem of yours...does she feel as you do? Does she love me as well?”

“She feels nothing. She is not a she at all, but only a husk. Her sole job is to pretend to be me...in her death.”

“Will we ever see each other again?” he presses. “One day?”

“I told you that I would never lie to you, Mordred, and I shan’t. I’m afraid you will never see me again. As the brightest candle burns the fastest, our love must end.”

“How can I go on without you? I shall end my own life.”

“You can do that, but only after you show others that I am dead. Please, this is of the utmost importance. I cannot have them looking for me.”

“I will, my beautiful flower,” Mordred promises. “Now turn away. If I see your face for one second more, I will not be able to say goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!” he shouts melodramatically.

“Goodbye, dear Mordred. I’ll think of you always.” Mandica walks down the trail, and heads for the launch site. Castlebourne calls to her from the distant sky.

Tangent Point: Death Spiral (Part III)

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Shasta is a very capable woman, but she is not a pilot, nor an engineer, nor a mechanic, nor anything else that they would need to get them out of this mess. She was able to fire the three torches because that much was obvious from the console. Since it had been almost a minute now, and no more kinetic drones had destroyed any part of the platform, or the propulsion attachment, they were guessing that her initial act had worked. But they were still in trouble, and something had to be done about it. They needed their pilot back at his workstation. But that seemed to be impossible. The platform was spinning like a carnival ride. Artificial gravity was down, and they were all pinned against the wall. No one was going anywhere. Shasta was barely holding onto the console, even if the pilot could somehow walk her through whatever procedure needed to be done.

Suddenly, however, they found themselves slowing down. They were still rotating, but their eyes were no longer bulging out of their heads, and what food remained in their stomachs wasn’t threatening to follow what had already come up. “Grab my ankle!” Shasta cried.

The pilot jumped over and took hold of her leg. He climbed her body until he could hold onto the console himself. “Someone is controlling this,” he announced, looking at the screen. “I can’t pinpoint where, but it’s not remote. They’re somewhere on this ship.”

“Get me AG!” Reed ordered.

“That’s my job,” his specialist insisted. Her official title was Transdimensional Regulator, and Reed did not understand what exactly her job entailed. He just needed her to make it work again. She was crouched on the wall, tapping on her tablet. “I’ve been trying to fix it this whole time. It’s giving me so much shit!” She growled as she continued to work on it. “I need more power. I need someone to reroute it from non-essential systems. I don’t care which, but the portals are closed. I need one burst to reopen them, and then they should draw normally.”

“Climate control,” Reed decided. “Reroute from climate control.”

“On it.” Shasta swung over to environmental control, and gave the Regulator what she needed.

“Ramping gravity to thirty seconds,” the Regulator informed them. “I would make an announcement if I were you.”

Reed placed his wrist in front of his lips. “This is Acting Captain Reed Ellis, calling all hands. We are restoring dimensional gravity. Relocate the floor, prepare for a sudden shift.”

“Sudden shift,” the Regulator mumbled. “There’ll be nothing sudden about it. I do my job.” She stood up on the wall, and deftly walked back down to the floor with perfect timing. Everyone else tumbled towards it with varying degrees of gracelessness.

Reed got back to his feet, performed the Picard maneuver, and cleared his throat. “Report!”

“We’re still spinning, sir,” his pilot answered, “but gradually regaining attitude control. Soon enough, we’ll still be plummeting to our deaths, but doing so straight as an arrow.”

“Arrows spin,” the Regulator argued.

Reed ignored her casual combativeness. She was one of the most important people on this platform. Of course, everyone had their own job to do, but transdimensional gravity was incredibly rare, and one could count on their fingers how many people were qualified to operate it safely and effectively. Again, he had no clue how it worked. Some unnamed singular genius invented it, and doled it out very selectively. At the end of the day, his Regulator could do or say whatever the hell she wanted, because everyone here was replaceable...except for her.

“Did you find out who fired the thrusters to control our spin?” Reed asked the pilot.

“Not who, but where. They’re in main engineering.”

“That should be impossible.” Reed pointed out. “I was told that it was not survivable.”

“It might be temporarily survivable,” the pilot reasoned, “and the person in there is about to die, or already has after fixing the issue.”

“Good point. Stay here, and get us the hell out of this gravity well. Fire all three operational thrusters if you have to. It doesn’t matter if we have our own gravity working.”

“It’s the elevator pod, sir,” the pilot reminded him. “They don’t have AG, so they’re in danger as long as they’re still out there.”

“Then reel them in!” Reed turned to face Shasta. “You’re with me.” He started walking away. “I also need one engineer.”

“Sir!” an eager young engineer said, literally jumping at the chance. He would learn these people’s names eventually.

They walked in silence for a moment before Reed was finally ready to ask, “how are you here?”

Shasta shrugged. “We’re immortals.”

“I didn’t ask how you were alive,” he snapped back.

“I had a back-up in a respawn sector. Not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal. I had to bring you into this. You didn’t have Tangent clearance. I’ve never actually been up here before, yet you’re telling me that you had time to construct a clone of yourself? You would have had to do it months ago at least.”

“I had this substrate made while you were in blackout hock.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. No one can clone or print a body that fast.”

“They can on Castlebourne,” she contended.

“Yeah, they use special technology that we don’t have. We got artificial gravity, they got rapid bioprinting.”

“We got both,” Shasta insisted. “You just need to know where to look.”

“How did you know where to look, but I don’t?”

“You were asleep,” Shasta tried to explain. “There were many last-minute details that you don’t know. We recruited others that you are not aware of. Someone from Castlebourne came here to help. We don’t know how they knew that we needed it, but we didn’t question it after they proved their worth. I watched a copy of her materialize in a pod in seconds. It was phenomenal. I’ve never seen anything like it. It does not look like what you’re used to.”

“However it looks, it would not have been a software issue, but a hardware issue,” Reed said. “You would have needed to get this mysterious savior on the Tangent to make the secret upgrades.”

“She said that she would take care of it, and she did,” Shasta replied. “We decided to trust her. I don’t know if she magically made her way onto a secure yet to be operational space elevator platform in record time, or if she already had someone on the inside, but it obviously worked.” She swept her hands down in front of her chest illustratively.

They were back at main engineering, so Reed couldn’t press the conversation, but he was determined to get more answers later. Random people didn’t just help like that, and they certainly didn’t show up unprompted. He pointed at the dented door. “I need you to tell me what’s happening in there without any of us going in there.”

The engineer’s fingers were dancing in the air before her. She was controlling an augmented reality interface that they could not see as it was being projected directly into her pupils. These weren’t too terribly common, probably because it was a little awkward, pressing buttons that you couldn’t feel. People tended to prefer the haptic feedback of more traditional form factors. “This way.” She walked off. They followed her around the corner, and around the next corner, to the opposite side of engineering. “This door is fine, but I don’t have authorization.”

“Are you sure it’s not gonna boil me alive?” Reed asked the engineer. He glanced over at Shasta for a second. “I don’t have a magical back-up body.”

“You would if I had had time to ask for your consent,” Shasta claimed.

“I’m sure,” the engineer said. “This door doesn’t lead all the way into engineering. It’s just a mechanical service terminal, but it’s undergoing unusual power spikes, so I would start there. I promise, it’s safe.”

Reed opened the door.

None other than their shuttle pilot, Trilby was on the other side. He was elbows deep into an access panel of some kind. Wires and power crystals were hanging out of other panels behind him. Trilby looked over at them. He quickly pushed his steampunk goggles to his forehead before going back to the wires.  “Cap’n. Nice to see you again.”

“What are you doing?” Reed questions.

“Fixing your ship,” Trilby answered.

“It looks like you’re taking it apart.”

“Oh, no sir. I couldn’t get into engineering, so I’m piloting ‘er manually.”

“Those are just the power relays,” his engineer said. “How the hell are you doing anything from here?”

“Power is everything,” Trilby said. “It’s all just ones and zeroes, on and off, stop and go. You can make a machine do anything if you pull the right connections in the right sequence.” He let go of the wires, pulled his arms out, and faced the three of them.

“That’s ridiculous,” the engineer retorted. “You would have to have an insane amount of intimate knowledge of this platform’s systems to exercise any semblance of control over it. Not to mention the fact that the fusion torches are an attachment, not tied directly into the infrastructure.”

“Is the platform still spinning?” Trilby posed.

“No,” the engineer admitted.

Trilby showed a cocksure smirk that was eerily serious. “You’re welcome.”

“You were supposed to leave,” Reed reminded him.

“I got held up,” Trilby replied.

“Good, I’m glad,” Reed said.

“No, I literally got held up at gunpoint,” Trilby clarified. “But then someone shot them, and I ran off. I’m not sure whose side they were on.”

“It’s all settled now,” Reed determined. “Please report to auxiliary engineering. I know you didn’t come here for this, but no one gets in and no one gets out. We won’t begin hostage negotiations until we’ve broken orbit, so you might as well keep yourself busy.”

“Aye, aye.” Trilby began to walk away, but stopped. “Hey, you know you have five hours to keep from crashing into the atmosphere, right?”

“Yes, we’re working on it,” Reed concurred. “Thanks for helping with that.”

“Sir, I think...” his engineer trailed off.

“You should go to aux engineering too,” Reed interrupted. “Keep and eye on him for me, but don’t get in his way. We may really need him.”

“Aye, sir.” The engineer left.

Reed turned back to Shasta. “I need to see this crazy advanced bioprinter.”

“I can take you to it,” Shasta promised, “but I warn you, it’s not going to make sense. It’s not just the same ol’ technology made faster. It’s entirely unrecognizable.”

“Stop teasing me, and let’s go.” Reed went down the hallway, figuring that he had a fifty-fifty chance of choosing the right direction.

“It’s this way,” Shasta countered.

“That’s all you had to say.” He spun around, and followed her down.

As they were walking, they listened to updates from engineering, the bridge, and other sectors. It wasn’t going to be easy, but they were making it work. They would get out of this mess and finally be on their way to the Proxima system. Everyone was doing a fine job, and the hostages weren’t giving them trouble after having reawoken from being stunned. The two of them ended up in the bowels of the platform; precisely where you would expect to find a secret respawn chamber. It was dark and damp, until it wasn’t. They entered a different section, and found it to be pristinely new, sleekly designed and sparkling.

Shasta stopped. “Okay. I warned you that it was different, but nothing can prepare you for actually seeing it with your own two eyes. Nonetheless, I assure you, it works. I woke up not an hour ago, and I’m fine.”

“Just open the door,” he urged.

She punched in the code. The door slid open.

Reed walked in first, slowly, and very confused. He was looking at something rather gross hanging from a pipe on the ceiling. It had come out of there apparently, and grown afterwards, and according to Shasta’s claims, it had done it impossibly fast. “What is that, a cocoon?”

“A chrysalis,” she corrected.

“It’s organic?”

“Yes.”

“That’s even more outrageous than I thought,” Reed began. “If anything, something like this should be slower.”

“The Castlebourner said the growth acceleration was a separate thing from the medium. It doesn’t have to be that fast. In fact, it usually isn’t. As a senior...rebel, I was granted the fastest development time, but not everyone has that luxury.” She jerked her head over to another empty chrysalis a few meters away. “I didn’t have time to learn who this was, but it was sealed up when I was here, so they must have eclosed since then.”

Reed stepped over to the second open chrysalis. He looked around it, and on the ceiling, but didn’t find any sort of interface, or anything that might point to who this would have been. “Wait. Are all of our people in the system?”

“Almost. Notable exceptions include you. Our mysterious benefactor said that she wouldn’t allow it since you couldn’t give your consent in person. A few others just straight up refused, since it freaked them out.”

“What about Vasily? Was he a holdout?”

“No,” she answered. “He was a junior rebel, so he qualified for fairly fast growth time; just not as fast as me. Why, did he die in the fight?”

“You could say that. Vasily, this is Ellis, report in,” he spoke into his comms. “Vasily, report in. Where are you?”

“Why do you look so nervous?”

“He murdered someone,” Reed explained. “A normal human.” He went back to his comms. “Vasily, report in right now!”

“Captain, sorry, I know you’re looking for Vasily, but we got a major problem on our hands,” Sartore, the elevator tech interjected. “The tethers have snapped. The pod is in a steeper decaying orbit. I hesitate to say, but...I think they were sabotaged.”

“Sabotaged by someone here, or in the pod?” Reed asked.

“Definitely here.”

“Security, get to the tether sector,” Reed ordered. “Search the entire complex. Shoot anyone who isn’t a part of our group.” He paused. “And if you find Vasily, bring him to me.”

“Sartore,” Shasta spoke in her own comms. “Can we get the pod back?”

“With a shuttle, sure,” Sartore replied. “But every second counts.”

“We’re very close to the shuttle bay,” Shasta told Reed.

“Let’s go!” He ran out of the room.

“Thanks, Sartore!” Shasta yelled into her comms as she was running out too. “Take stock of the tethering that we have left! We need to make sure we have enough to actually help on Doma!”

They raced down the corridors, and into the shuttlebay, but Vasily was one step ahead of them. He was standing at the top of the ramp of the shuttle, his gun up and ready to fire. Once they were close enough, he tensed his arms, and aimed at Reed’s head. “I know you’re not in our chrysalis system yet, Captain. If you die, you’ll end up off-world.”

“Are you so mad at me, Vasily, that you would ruin our chances to help the Domanians?” Reed asked him. “I didn’t tag you as that petty.”

“Well, I am. Have you ever been stabbed in the head before, sir? It’s not pleasant. It’s the worst way I’ve ever died.”

“You killed someone in cold blood,” Reed reminded him. “I would have shot you cleanly if I could have, but the gun wouldn’t let me, so I improvised.”

“You tried to banish me back to Bungula, where the authorities likely would have been waiting!” Vasily screamed.

“I’m sorry about that, but we need that shuttle to go retrieve those VIPs. The mission isn’t over yet. Let us finish it. Help us finish it.”

“Nah, I’m done with that. I knew you would come here, so I didn’t come alone.” Vasily slammed his palm against a button on the inside. The door to the cockpit slid open. Someone was in there, tapping on the console, likely running the pre-flight check. “How are we lookin’?” he called back.

“We’re just about ready to go.” The shuttle pilot turned around, which showed Reed and Shasta that he was not one of theirs, but a hostage. “I just need to run diagnostics on the hook that we’ll use to grab the pod. It’s never been deployed before.”

“Hook?” Vasily questioned. “We don’t need the hook. We’re just gonna crash into it. I have no interest in dropping the VIPs off on the planet. I just want to prevent him from using them as leverage.”

“Hey, that’s not what I signed up for,” the shuttle pilot argued. “I thought we were gonna save them. Some people on there aren’t even backed up.” He tried to continue arguing, but couldn’t finish.

Vasily quickly swung his arm around to shoot the shuttle pilot dead, which was just enough time for Reed to take out his own maser, and point it into the shuttle. Vasily smirked at it. “You can’t shoot me, remember?”

“But I can shoot the junction box, which will disable the shuttle, and if I aim it just right, it might even blow your body up.”

“You’re not that good ‘a shot,” Vasily contended.

“But I am.” Shasta lifted her weapon too. “Put your gun down, and step out of the shuttle, Vas. We need it.”

“You’re not getting it.” Vasily looked over his shoulder. “Shoot the box for all I care. I don’t need it to fly. This is just a bullet now. You’re the one who needs a fully functioning shuttle to retrieve it.”

They heard a gunshot. Vasily seemed to be hit in the chest. They all looked over to find Ajax behind them, walking up fast. He shot again, and again, and again, and again. Vasily’s whole body shook like a cliché as he stumbled backwards towards the cockpit. He fell to his back, and was struggling to breathe. “You should have gone for the junction box.” He reached his hand up and tapped on the console. The shuttle suddenly shot forward, through the plasma barrier, and headed straight for the floating elevator pod.

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Microstory 2494: Biolock

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

Microstory 2452: Coraldome

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This dome is categorized under multiple categories, but you wouldn’t know it by finding it in one of the categories, and opening its prospectus. It’s a little nitpicky, but I just happened to notice that it shows up when you change filters. It’s unclear how many domes are multicategorical, which I guess just bothers me on principle? I know, that’s not really what we’re talking about here, but you can’t provide public feedback on the catalog itself, and I just felt like this was something that other people should know. Okay, I’ll get back to it, and I promise that it won’t be negative moving forward, and that’s because Coraldome is a beautiful place. After looking through all the category filters, I was able to determine that this dome is Residential, Leisure, Ecological, Research & Development, and Institutional. You can live here, if you find an apartment that strikes your fancy, or have a temporary stay at Korallion Hotel. Whether you’re here for long-term exploration, or a one-day visit, there’s a lot to see, and a lot to learn. Life on Earth began through a process known as abiogenesis in the ocean, specifically in hydrothermal vents. It evolved from there, organisms multiplying, taking in energy from their environment, responding to stimuli. They mutated, adapted, filled ecological niches. They transformed into independent species, gained new traits, and eventually left the waters, growing new limbs, and reaching for the sky. But some stayed in the water. Most of them, indeed. Earth’s biosphere is perfectly tailored for the life that evolved there, because any life that wasn’t suited for survival...didn’t. And it still doesn’t. Castlebourne is a different place. You can stick as many domes on it as you want. You can pump air in here, and salt the water with minerals. You can warm it up and cool it down, but it will never be Earth. It will never be our origin. Still, we like life, and our biological imperative demands that we make it. Humans are unique in that we are compelled to make and preserve other species besides our own. Whether it benefits ourselves or not, we want it to live. It’s why we consolidated our population into centralized spaces on Earth, and why we left. It’s why we settled on barren worlds, including Castlebourne; because it didn’t require us to destroy life. When you come to Coraldome, you’ll be met with a community of organisms of all varieties, imported from Earth via digital DNA. They live here now, genetically altered to survive in Castlebourne’s unique ecosystems. We may call it a clownfish, but it’s not the same clownfish that you may find off the coast of Australia. It’s a Castlebourne clownfish, because the composition of the water is different, as is the gravity. The other plants and animals are different too, which impacts how they interact with each other. You could know everything about the biosphere back home, but you’ll have to relearn everything if you come here, and Coraldome is the perfect place to do it. The fish swim all around you, right up to the glass, on multiple levels. It’s my favorite place in the world. This world anyway. Nothing will ever be better than Earth; where it all began. See? I told you that I would start being positive.