Microstory 2590: Quidel Tears Through the Sac and Crawls Out Like a Monotreme

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Quidel tears through the sac and crawls out like a monotreme. He’s all alone, but he’s been through this many times before, and will be able to acclimate to his new body just fine. Of course, in most of those instances, he has had an institution to fall back on if he needed it, but it’s better than the alternative. A few months ago, he saved the “world” from a terrorist attack, almost single-handedly. As reward for his heroism, he was given an egg-shaped crystal trophy. In-universe, this was only symbolic; something to place upon his mantel, and lie about when in the presence of someone who didn’t know that he was a spy. In reality, it was an extra life. Spydome has a bunch of these little rewards scattered throughout the environment. You can’t just find them, though. You have to earn them, and most of the people operating inside of the storyline don’t understand their value. It just looks like a tchotchke.

After solving the secret puzzle by refracting light through the trophy in just the right way, a holographic message appeared on the base, telling him what he now had in his arsenal. It also gave him instructions for how to use it. He emptied the organic starter nanites into a sterile pee sample cup, and mixed it with the other ingredients, which included his own blood. What formed was an actual egg. A human egg. Of course, as a spy, he had safehouses and storage lockers all over the dome, so he chose a remote one to store his egg in a freezer, where it grew on its own from there. It has been sitting here ever since, preserved in its own self-contained stasis field, and kept cool by the freezer, which gathered dust in his absence.

Quidel flicks the interior safety mechanism, and climbs out. “Ugh, gross. I should have stored a shower in here too. This is basically amniotic fluid.” This locker isn’t heated, because that would just make it easier to find, and it wouldn’t help preserve the clone sac. It’s freezing outside, and probably windy. The device. The device is giving off waste heat as the RTG transmits power. He punches in the code to the cabinet, takes out the case, and starts hugging it. It would be better if he had the code unlock the case as well, but that’s probably not super safe anyway. Okay, he’s gathered a little bit of warmth. He only has two sets of clothes here. One of them is a tuxedo, and the other is jeans and a t-shirt. It’s unfortunate, but he’s got to clean himself off, so he uses the tux like a rag. Then he puts on the regular clothes, and hugs the case for a little bit longer.

Okay, he has to leave now. He didn’t store a phone, not because it wasn’t safe, but because he didn’t think he could trust anyone with this location, especially not given its rare contents. And when he came here to stash the device yesterday, he just didn’t think about it. He went into this experience with plans to be a lone wolf, and so far, that has played out as expected. He opens the door, and sticks his head through. The coast is clear. The storage lot is closed right now, because consciousness transference takes so long due to all the safeguards, so they’re not expecting anyone to be in here right now. He didn’t check in, with his alias, or anything. He’s going to have to sneak out, avoiding the cameras, and any guards who might be lurking about. This is what he trained for, though. This kind of thing is precisely why he signed up for Spydome in the first place. It was only his second choice.

He came here in the year 2500, which was when the planet opened up for non-beta exploration. Before this, he spent nearly twenty years in Empty Planet, and then another few months just relaxing in Polar Tropica. He likes adventure, and he likes to relax. After this is done, he still isn’t sure if he wants to switch to Underbelly or the Nordome Network. Maybe Baumrealm. That’s so many years away, though, unless this latest mission ends up cutting his spy life short. Not only does he have no more extra lives, but all of this has become super meta, which the Custodians may not like. This little ragtag team might be making huge problems for the entire system. They might shut them down at any moment.

Holding out hope, he calls upon his lessons, and sneaks over the fence, sticking to the shadows, and making no sound. He’s clutching the device case, still for the warmth, but also because it’s clearly quite valuable. While Quidel didn’t have the foresight to store a burner phone in his locker, he is aware of his surroundings, which means he knows that there is a no-tell motel just down this hill. He walks inside and slaps a hundred dollar bill on the counter. “I need your phone...and your discretion.”

The night manager lifts up the receiver of the corded phone, and punches in a code; one that Quidel recognizes from his training. “Carrier call log has been switched off, but you only have five minutes.”

“I only need one,” Quidel says back in a gravelly voice. God, that’s so cheesy, but back in the 1990s, that’s exactly the kind of thing the hero would say in a spy movie. As the manager is putting on his noise-cancelling headphones, Quidel dials, using his own code to prevent any local tapping. It adds an extremely annoying background screech to the call, but the voice will come through well enough, and it’s better than risking an eavesdropper. When the human Marshal answers, Quidel says, “I’m alive. Meet me at the northern border.” The country in this dome is called Usona, but it’s an analog of more than just the 21st century United States. There are four distinct regions, which also include a series of dome layers that are more like Canada, one series like Australia, and one like New Zealand, which is a bunch of islands. To get to one of these other regions, it doesn’t matter if you take a plane, train, or automobile. You’re gonna end up in an elevator. He really is standing by a border. He doesn’t actually need to get to the Canada-analog, though. Right next to the elevator is a maintenance tunnel that will lead them to Osman, which is this mythology’s analog for Pakistan.

Castlebourne Capital Community: The Man Who Refused To Die (Part III)

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The Castlebourners were mad, and they had every right to be. Dreychan didn’t commit a cardinal sin, but he did screw up. As soon as the rest of the council was arrested for conspiracy to commit murder, he should have addressed the people. He knew how to do that. At any one time, they were spread all over the world, but he had the means of contacting them separately from all the visitors. These visitors mostly didn’t know that the refugees were from 16,000 light years away as that went against everything they understood about physics and space colonization. The lie that they spread about a closer empire was weak at best, but it was the only lie they had. At some point, the full truth about time travel was probably going to get out to the general public, but for now, Dreychan should have used the news bulletin protocol. But. It had only been one day, and it didn’t spell the destruction of the whole planet, so everyone just needed to chill out.

He finally escaped the angry crowd of wannabe journalists, and ducked into the council chambers. His speech to them wasn’t half bad, if he could be so bold as to evaluate it himself. Perhaps they felt otherwise, or this was just such a crazy situation that no one knew what to think, or how to react. He took a deep breath as he leaned his head against the door, still hearing them rabble rabble in the corridor. No one else was allowed in here. He used to dread coming to this room, now it had become his one place of respite. How had things changed so much in only a matter of a few days? He breathed through the inner turmoil, and turned back around. “Who are you?”

The elderly woman wearing what appeared to be a robot costume stepped forward, and extended a hand. “Yunil Tereth, big fan.”

“How did you get in here?” Dreychan questioned. “It’s DNA coded.”

“Twins have the same DNA. My sister was on the Council. I always could have walked in here. I just never had the occasion.”

“Who could possibly be your twin sister?” There were some fairly old people on the Council, but none of them quite this old. He was surprised that she could even stand up on her own.

“Lubiti. Now, I know what you’re thinking...why don’t we have the same last name?” She giggled. “We never really got along, so when we chose our names, we deliberately distanced ourselves.”

“I was actually thinking...” Was it offensive to bring up her age?

She giggled again. “When I heard the news, I was in Perspectidome, where you spend time in someone else’s proverbial shoes, to better understand what their life would be like. This is only a temporary substrate. Thank God I chose to make it my older self, instead of just any old lady, so my DNA works. Pay no attention to the outfit. My character had a backstory that was out of my control.”

“Okay. Well. You’ll forgive me if I don’t tell you anything since I can’t really place my trust in that. When it comes to mind transfer, you can’t trust anyone. That’s one reason why I stayed normal. I’m always me.”

Yunil nodded. “I understand. We can meet again, with me in my own body. I decided not to take the time to transfer back before coming here now, because my usual face is...”

“Infamous now?” he guessed.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll tell you what. I don’t know what you want, and I believe it’s best not to say at this time. Next time I see you, I not only want you to look like Lubiti, but I want to see you two at the same time. She’ll confirm if you’re real or not. She’ll know if you’re just a liar in a meatsuit.”

“Fair enough,” Yunil agreed.

“I assume you have my contact card?”

“I do.”

“Send me yours so we can coordinate. I have to reach out to schedule visitation.”

“I’ll do that.” She started tapping on her device. “Also, can I go out the back?”

“Go ahead.” While she was leaving, Dreychan pulled out his own device. Her contact card came through while he was navigating to Azad’s. He took a moment to think about what he wanted to write. Good morning, Dominus Petit, I—

“What’s up?”

Dreychan spun around to find another surprise guest. “Dominus. I was just writing to you.”

“I know,” Azad replied. “I get an alert whenever anyone so much as opens my card.”

“That’s...a little frightening.”

“It’s a security thing. We need to know who’s thinking about us in case it’s an assassin, or something worse.”

“I see.”

“There is a workaround. What you do is take a photo of the card using another device, and consult the image whenever you want. Don’t just take a screenshot, though, because I, uh, get alerted when that happens too. This works for anyone with a spy-ping trigger.”

“That’s good to know.”

They stood there awkwardly for a moment. “The trigger doesn’t alert me to the reason you were looking me up, though,” Azad went on.

“Oh, right, sorry.” Dreychan gestured towards the back door. “I was just visited by a...old woman who claimed to be Lubiti’s twin sister, but just in a different substrate. I can’t verify that, so I need to speak with Lubiti sooner than I expected to ask her about it. And I would like this Yunil to be present.”

Azad narrowed his eyes at him. “You spoke with her here? Please tell me you were stupid enough to let her in, and not that she walked in herself.”

“It was the second one.”

Azad sighed as he started tapping on his wrist device. “I’m choosing to believe that the sister is okay, but if she breached using her shared DNA with Lubiti, it clearly means that Lubiti could come back in as well. Presumably, so could any other former member of the Council. Even if they’re locked up, that is a huge security flaw that we’ll need to cover. I’m sorry, I can’t grant visitation, to you or her sister, until we figure this out. For all we know, this whole thing has been a plot to break her out, and clearly, that could cause problems. I’ll call you with updates as appropriate.”

“That makes perfect sense. Do what you gotta do, and take your time.” After Azad disappeared, Dreychan also slipped out the back, and headed for the senior vactrain hub, which he now had access to thanks to his higher status on the Council. The reporters wouldn’t be able to follow him there, so it was another source of protection from the onslaught of questions, though a sterile and boring one. They shouldn’t be able to accost him at home either, but perhaps that too was unsafe. There were plenty of places to sleep here. He could apply for a temporary unit in Overdome maybe. That was so weird and random, no one would think to look for him there. “Yunil?”

She looked up from her device. “Oh, hello again. Just waiting for my train.”

“Oh.” Super awkward.

“Oh no, what happened?”

He couldn’t say anything. If he explained what Azad just said about the access flaw, it might give her an idea that she didn’t have before! Argh, no! Get him out of here!

Yunil smiled knowingly. “You don’t have to tell me anything. If you’re not busy, perhaps you can accompany me back to Perspectidome, where my real body is waiting for me? I’m not thinking that that will be enough to get you to trust me, but if you see the records which prove that it’s my primary, maybe that gets us one step closer to trust.”

“I suppose I have nothing better to do.” The train zipped through the tube before them, and the doors opened. The both of them stepped onto it, and let it take them away. They were alone in the pod, which was good. This time was usually busy with people coming and going, but the council shake up must have rippled across the population, and altered other people’s personal schedules. It wasn’t long before they were at their destination. Dreychan looked around, confused. “We didn’t have to stop at a Conjunction. I didn’t know that was ever a thing.”

“Don’t need one, with that handsome face of yours. You’re now not only a senior traveler, but an executive senior traveler. Every train has become an express train. We probably did go through a Conjunction, but we didn’t have to stop and switch tracks. And yes, Perspectidome is relatively close.”

The doors reopened, and let them out. They proceeded to the intake plaza, where Yunil informed the bot that she was picking her primary substrate back up. They processed her biometrics, and let them into the transfer room. “This is the weird part.”

“What’s weird about it?” Dreychan asked. “Besides everything?” He knew very little about how all this body switching stuff worked, and didn’t care to know. She could tell him that a microscopic creature was going to crawl out of her ear, and into the one of the body she was trying to move to, and he would believe it, because he really just did not know.

“This body isn’t just temporary. It’s disposable, and is actually required to be disposed of. It’s going to melt, which might be unsettling to watch.”

Dreychan stared at her. “If you’re going to disrobe, I’m not going to be watching anyway.”

She laughed. “No, the clothes are biosynthetic, so they’ll just melt too.”

“Still, I don’t think I’ll watch.”

“I can appreciate that.” She pointed at the side door. “My primary is in that room. It is unclothed, but it looks nicer, and it’s not going to melt. You can wait for me there.”

He went into the other room to find a motionless body that looked just like Lubiti. It was floating in this big vertical tube against the wall, in some kind of bubbly amber fluid. Within minutes, her eyes popped open. She took a moment to get her bearings before settling into eye contact with Dreychan. She smiled at him kindly before reaching down and turning some kind of wheel on the floor. The fluid started to drain away. Once the tube was empty, she slid the hatch open and climbed out.

Dreychan had noticed a towel sitting folded on the table between them. He picked it up now, and tried to hand it to her.

She smiled wider now. “I have to wash up first. It’s basically amniotic fluid.” She glided over to the shower, which didn’t even have a curtain. So he wouldn’t keep staring, he went over to the machines, and started looking at the various components, as if his observations alone would give him any understanding of how they worked.

“It’s okay,” she said while she was still in there. “I switched on the holo-partition.”

He looked back over, but it was a lie.

“Sorry! I’m a bit of a trickster.” Yunil did this weird hand gesture where she tapped the tip of her own fingers with her thumb and flicked her wrist a little. The hologram appeared now. It was rather translucent, and barely tall enough to cover the important bits, but he didn’t want to argue anymore, so he just kept his eyes on hers. “Don’t be so uptight. You treat your own body as a vital part of you, but for people like me, it’s just a husk. You don’t cry for your clipped fingernails, do you? I’ve met people who look like rabbits, mythological creatures, and even machines. There’s a dome here where you transfer your mind to a vehicle, and drive. It feels like you are the vehicle, not like you’re just sitting in one.”

“I don’t cry for my nails,” Dreychan explained, “but my body is not something I can lose. It would be more like the body loses me. We call that death.”

“Well, that’s your first problem. You see death as inevitable. The vonearthans see it as an anachronism.” She sighed. “I’m gonna have to walk through the hologram to reach the towel.”

He looked away again.

“Oh my God,” she said. “It’s not me. It’s her. Do you have a thing for her?”

He took one little peek. The towel was now keeping her covered. “She was nice to me. It’s over now.”

“I’m nice to you, and that’s not over.”

“What are you saying?”

“Drey—”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Okay.” She didn’t see it as a big deal. “Your video was leaked, did you not know that?” She opened a drawer, and pulled out a set of clothes, which she set on the counter between them.

“Of me in 2.5Dome? No, I am indeed aware of that. Many of the reporters’ questions had to do with how I survived the ordeal.”

“You don’t understand. No one has ever made it through that whole game in one go. It’s only supposed to be for people like me, for whom death is but a temporary setback. The loudest people are mad that you didn’t make your announcement right away, but most of us are extremely impressed, and that is quickly overshadowing any resentment we feel about the lack of immediate transparency. I came to you because I wanted to meet the man who refused to die. I wanted to meet the man who my sister underestimated. You want my body, you can have it. You want me to jump to another one, and have that instead, just say the word.”

“That’s not what this is about for me. I don’t feel emotions for bodies. I feel them for people. And we just met.”

“We can take it slow,” she said with a shrug as she tossed her towel into the material reclamator, and started slipping on the outfit. “But maybe not too slow. After all...if you’re planning on dying in less than a century, you better get on it. You don’t have as many opportunities to find happiness as almost everyone else in this part of the galaxy. I admire that in people like you, but...not if you take it for granted.”

“I don’t need you to feel any particular way about me. I just want you to tell me what you really want. And don’t say it’s just about sex. I don’t believe that.”

“You told me you didn’t want me to tell you yet.”

“I changed my mind.”

She nodded. “I’m part of a group.”

“Oh, shit.” That word. His brain instantly associated it with other, less innocuous ones, like rebellion, insurgency, or traitor.

“Don’t be like that. We’re not violent. We’re connoisseurs of Earthan history. Ya know, our ancestors were grown in test tubes by a madman, who stole them from a ship, which originated in the Gatewood Collective, and whose passengers were once refugees from another universe, which were the descendants of runaways...from Earth. Yes, our peoples have a longer history of fleeing oppression and strife than you might know. But while we don’t call ourselves vonearthan, we are all technically sourced from there. My group studies the homeworld, because we believe it is the absolutely most important aspect of our lives, now that we even know it exists. I came to you, Dreychan, because if you want to know how to formulate the new government of Castlebourne, you have a perfectly good model to base it on. Earth spent thousands of years trying to figure it out. Don’t reinvent the wheel. My friends and I will show you what works. It’s been working for centuries. That’s how they were able to build this paradise.”

“Hrockas built it to get away from Earth.”

“No, he was assigned this planet because while it is naturally barren, it’s stable, gravitationally healthy, and the host star is relatively similar to Sol. Its distance from the Core Worlds is the product of cosmic statistical probability, not a design feature.”

“What are you trying to say now?” He was getting confused.

“Don’t think that you need to rebuild the Council back to how it was. You might not even need a council. All I’m saying is get yourself educated before you start making any decisions. I’m here to give you whatever you need, and I don’t just mean access to my body. My brain is pretty great too.”

Dreychan’s watch beeped, so he checked the notification. “No more express trains for you. You’ve been locked out of government privileges. Or rather, Lubiti was.”

Yunil rolled her eyes. “DNA locks are so stupid anyway. All I need is one hair, and I can grow a passing clone in a matter of months without setting off any alarm bells. It should be brainwave-locked. I know they have that technology. You should demand it.”

Dreychan breathed deeply. “I still can’t trust you. We need to set up that meeting with your so-called sister.”

She chuckled. “That’s not the first time she’s been called that. I call her that. And yeah, I’m down for the meeting whenever. I cancelled all future dome trips, so I’ll just be sitting at home whenever you’re ready. I will be able to leave at a moment’s notice.”

“I’ll talk to my contact again,” Dreychan said. “But right now, I’m exhausted, so I think I’m gonna go home. Maybe we don’t share a train again?”

She shook her head. “We’re not going to the same place anyway. I live in Underbelly.”

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Extremus: Year 119

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Decades ago, Tinaya and Arqut connected their lives together through a lifelink. When one of them gets hurt, so too will the other. They weren’t sure if the procedure had worked, because it wasn’t always reliable. There were times when one was sick, and the other was not. It was never really the point, though. This is why they did it. They have just died at the exact same time, which is rare on this ship. Everything that they were dealing with—all the trials and tribulations—it’s all behind them now. Their son is technically older than them, and this isn’t the first time that he had to say goodbye to his parents. Silveon will be okay without them, armed with his memory of future events, and a lifetime’s worth of knowledge and wisdom. He and Audrey bid farewell and let them go, as did everyone else here who deserved it. Now they can move on. Now they can finally rest.

There is one thing left to do, however. It is time to answer The Question. Tinaya has known about it for many years, and eventually told her family. It’s a secret from just about everyone else, though. It violates a major principle of the Extremus mission, but again, they have known about it for so long, they’ve had plenty of time to come to terms with it. There is no way to know how many people answer yes, and how many answer no, because it should come as a surprise for most. At the moment of their deaths, Tinaya and Arqut’s consciousnesses were uploaded to a special server. If they agree, their minds will be put on ice for another century, until the Extremus planet is reached by their descendants. When it comes time to settle their new homeworld, everyone who answered yes will be downloaded into new substrates, and become part of the colonists. If the two of them were normal, it would feel instantaneous to them—assuming nothing destroyed the ship in the meantime. But they’re on a different track. When they say yes, they will be going somewhere else.

“Hello, and welcome to The Buffer,” a woman says warmly.

They were standing in the Attic Forest, though obviously a virtual simulation of it. The two recently deceased are now young again, which makes sense, and feels nice.

“Does everyone come to this place?” Tinaya asks. “The forest hasn’t always existed.”

The welcomer smiles. “You were clearly prepped beforehand, so I will skip the usual explanation. To answer your question, the simulation scans your thoughts, and generates what it believes will be the most pleasant and comforting place for you specifically. For most people, it looks something like this, as we all wish to find Extremus. For you, it sounds like it’s more specific. I hope it pleases the both of you. We don’t get many duos. I’m guessing it’s a lifelink?”

“Yes, and I helped build this place for real in base reality, as did my now-husband,” Tinaya explains, “so it’s important to us both.”

“Ah, yes. I have heard of you. Miss Leithe, right?”

“Admiral Emerita Leithe.” Tinaya doesn’t usually care about formalities, but it felt important to her to clarify her title in this case.

“Apologies. And you?”

“Superintendent Arqut Grieves. You didn’t know that we were coming?”

The woman shakes her head. Her voice is still calming. “I do not receive a manifest beforehand, or even an alert of a forthcoming arrival. My job is to ask you The Question without judgement or preconception. It doesn’t matter to me who you are, or who you were. You’re entitled to answer.”

“Who are you?” Tinaya asks, “Or, who were you, if you prefer?”

“I am Dr. Itri Meziani, thanks for asking,” she replies. “I was the Executive Grief Counselor many years ago.”

“Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Dr. Meziani.” Tinaya shakes her hand, then Arqut does.

“I suppose that you already know what I’m about to ask you, but I still must ask it,” Dr. Meziani says.

For a long time there, Tinaya intended on saying no to The Question. She only changed her mind relatively recently when Thistle showed her that her whole family line has been kept alive in base reality on an asteroid which Tinaya herself colonized and called Eleithium. It gave her some perspective. She doesn’t wanna die. The problem now is that Thistle is no longer the AI in charge, and they don’t know whether they will be rerouted to the colony, or just kept on ice with everyone else. Did he set it up so that it will happen automatically? Truthfully, she forgot to ask him before Oceanus stopped allowing their visits. Do they have to be honest with this Dr. Meziani about their sort of get out of jail free card? In the end, they decided to just come clean and tell the truth. They can’t risk something going wrong with the process. If it doesn’t work, they’ll just go on ice, and still be alive. All they know is that they’re not going to say no. They really want to see the Extremus planet, and they almost have to see Silveon again.

“We have somewhere else to be,” Arqut begins. “A friend of ours set up...an alternative option. I’m not sure how we go about getting there, though. He’s sort of...indisposed at the moment.”

“I can check for a rerouting subroutine,” Dr. Meziani says graciously, “but I can’t guarantee anything. If your friend can’t control it from the outside, I can’t get you there. It wouldn’t be that I wouldn’t want to. Again, it’s not my job to make judgments. You don’t have to do anything in particular. Hell, if you can will yourself back to life in your own body, go for it. But understand that there is a time limit. I can’t tell you what it is. It’s after five minutes following the next death, so that could be any second now. The Buffer must be kept open.” She looks to the left, presumably searching for the path that will take them to Eleithium, and hopefully finding it. She suddenly jerks her head to the right. “Something’s wrong.”

“What is it? Did you find it?” Arqut asks.

“Your time is up,” Dr. Meziana tells them. “Someone else just died.”

“But we have five more minutes,” Tinaya reminds her.

“No.” She starts breathing heavily, which doesn’t make sense given that there’s no air in this virtual environment. “You don’t.” Without warning, she pops away, leaving a faint puff of smoke behind.

A shadow appears in the trees in the distance. It’s moving in an eerie serpentine pattern, but drawing nearer. As it does so, its silhouette becomes clearer and clearer. Finally, it looks like a person, and soon after that, it looks like someone they know.

“Pronastus?” Tinaya questions. “You died?”

“Just for a few minutes,” Pronastus says in a weird tone that doesn’t really sound like him. “The flatline device that I found will revive me in about six minutes.”

“Did you have something to tell us?” Arqut presses.

“Or ask us?” Tinaya adds.

“You gave me the ability to do this,” Pronastus goes on. “You’re the one who helped me find the consciousness transference technology that I needed to hack in here. I was looking for it, but I could not find it, because it was for me. I can’t do anything for myself. I have to be searching for someone else. Fortunately, you never realized just how close you were to it. For reference, it was in a closet, in the first Frontrunner you teleported to; the one where you met AI!Elder.”

Oh, right. AI!Elder did say that there was a cool helmet in there. She should not have ignored that quip. “So you’re, uh...evil...errr...what’s goin’ on here?”

“What’s going on is that I am sick of doing everything for everyone else. I found a workaround, and it’s thanks to that helmet. Coming here was a necessary latent step, but not my endgame. I’m going to send my mind to another body. Bonus, I get to keep my pathfinding powers, and finally use them for myself!”

“What do we have to do with any of that?” Arqut spits.

“You know me,” Pronastus reasons. “You know me better than anyone. Others know that I’m a pathfinder, of course, but they don’t understand it. When Captain Jennings dies, I’ll have to make sure that he also answers no. I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry about Silveon. He’s too preoccupied with his own life, I don’t feel threatened by him, so I don’t care what answer he gives when he dies. However, if any of you put yourselves on ice, and come back in a hundred years, you’ll see right through my disguise. I have long-term plans. Running the ship is just the first part of it. I don’t plan on ever dying, because that’s a retarded provision that our ancestors never should have decided upon or agreed to.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to say that word.”

“That’s your issue? I’m about to straight up murder you, and you’re arguing with me about political correctness?”

“We’re not too worried,” Tinaya explains. “Tyrants like you and Waldemar always create their own resistance. It’s not gonna last. You may be a pathfinder, but eventually, you will run out of paths that lead you to joy. You’ll always want more, and it will be your downfall. Extremus will get through this. It suffered but survived Consul Vatal, and Ovan Teleres, and Mister Radomil Cernak. It will survive you too.”

Pronastus smirks. “Will it survive Waldemar?”

“You’re obviously undoing that timeline,” Tinaya replies.

“Am I?”

“Oh, shit. The clones.”

“The clones,” Pronastus confirms. “They were never made by him. What would be his reasoning?”

“No, that doesn’t make any sense. You needed me to ask you to lead me to the Frontrunners for the consciousness transference technology. That’s where I found the first clone. You didn’t know about it beforehand.”

Pronastus smirks again. “I’m not in this alone. Others know where the path should go, and have known that for decades. They just didn’t know that I would be the one to take the first step in the right direction. Eight. Eight. Eight,” he says in a low and intimidating voice.

“What?”

“Eight. Eight. Eight,” Pronastus repeats. Oh, it’s a weird chant. “Eight. Eight. Eight.” It kind of sounds like hate with all that breathiness. His watch beeps. “Oh, my time is up. Don’t wanna wake up with brain damage, do I?”

“We’ve not given an answer,” Arqut tries to reason. “How exactly are you gonna force us to give the wrong one?”

“You have a time limit, remember?” Pronastus says.

“But you’re the time limit, and you’re not really dead. You have to go back in a minute or so. I doubt the Buffer will force us out. I mean, it hasn’t yet.”

“I started the clock,” Pronastus begins. “The next death will stop it. Some overlap is acceptable, but not three death events.”

“How do you know there’s gonna be another death soon?”

One last smirk. “Because I caused it, just like I caused Détha’s. Trust me, I didn’t miss anything.”

“Who did you kill?” Tinaya demands to know.

Oh, no. This is his last smirk.

“Who did you kill!”

Pronastus winks, then disappears.

“Response window expired,” a disembodied computerized voice that they don’t recognize announces. “Answer null. Prepare for IDCode purge.”

“No!” Tinaya and Arqut exclaim. “We answer yes! We answer yes!” Tinaya continues.

“Mom?” Silveon asks, having just appeared before them.

“NO!” they both repeat. Everything turns black.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 16, 2529

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The team stayed on Jaunemus the rest of the day, eating the local cuisine, and recharging their photovoltaics by the star that they were orbiting right now. This moon was a gargantuan spaceship, which could move through space at will. The Jaunemusians couldn’t travel all the way back home to Verdemus to eat lunch with their friends every day, but they didn’t have to stay in one place either. They bounced around the nearest stars in this area, and spent a lot of time in interstellar space to avoid detection.

There was nothing for Team Matic here, so they decided to bug out. “We have to get back to Proxima Doma,” Angela suggested. “We have to find out what happened there, if anything.”

“I thought we were going after Miracle,” Ramses countered.

“That trail has gone cold,” Marie figured. “She has had a whole year to get those cuffs off.”

Leona chuckled. “She has not been able to get them off. They’re held together by a distributive bond. Breaking them would cause her to explode, and I’m the only one with a key.”

They all looked to Ramses for confirmation. He nodded. That was how their EmergentSuits worked. It was how they could be so thin, yet so durable, and protective against harsh environments, like the vacuum of outer space.

“There’s still the question of where she is,” Olimpia tried to remind them. “She could have gone anywhere. I’m guessing the quantum connection doesn’t extend this far.”

“Even I have my limits,” Ramses admitted. “But your husband doesn’t.”

“Me?” Mateo questioned. “If I can find her, why didn’t we do that yesterday?”

“We all needed a break,” Leona explained, “especially you. As I was saying, those cuffs aren’t going anywhere. There was no need to rush off, and besides, I don’t like traveling with low slingdrives. Mateo, your dark particles are the backup, not the other way around.”

“All right,” Mateo agreed. “I’ll use my black magic for a locator spell.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Romana said. No, it wasn’t Romana, but Miracle. She was holding her arms in front of her chest, like a beggar. “Get them off of me, and I’ll agree to transfer to a new substrate. It doesn’t matter anymore. I stole this body because that’s what Pacey asked of me. But I never wanted this.” She sighed, and looked off into a random direction. “I just wan—I just wanted to end him...and his reign of terror.”

The real Romana stepped forward, and placed a comforting hand on Miracle’s shoulder. “You’re not doing this for Pacey, you’re doing it for yourself. You’re from the Goldilocks Corridor.”

Miracle sighed again. “My name isn’t really Miracle. It’s just Mirinda. Mirinda...Oaksent.” They didn’t know exactly what that meant. In modern times, you couldn’t guess someone’s relationship to someone else based on their appearance. They could look 50 years older, but be 200 years younger. She giggled. “You’re all waiting for the clarification before judgment. That’s quite magnanimous of you. I’m his daughter. I’ve been that way for millennia. You see, all those people out here in the Corridor, they are his subjects...his toys. He built them to serve, and to adore him. But the problem with that is they were indoctrinated into belief from birth. Ignorance is the killer. I mean, you showed one person the truth about Earth, and an entire opposing faction spread out from it, which is what he’s always been afraid of. Sycophants who don’t know any better aren’t very satisfying either way. He wanted a group of people who loved him because that’s what they were supposed to do. He wanted a family. He made us just like he made the others, but he made us immortal, just like him. He didn’t really raise us, but we got more face time with him than most, so I suppose he figured that was enough.

“I grew to resent him, of course, which is how we ended up here. In defiance of his plan to curate a family of superhumans, I started fighting back violently. I killed all of my clones, as well as my brothers and sisters’ clones. I didn’t kill them too, but they eventually died, and there was nowhere for their consciousnesses to go. Oaksent doesn’t like virtual simulations, I don’t know why, so there’s no uploading to a central server. There’s just backup bodies. I was just about to kill my own final clone when Pacey found me. He made me realize that Bronach never cared about any of us, which was why he made almost no attempt to stop me. His plans didn’t work. He’s not a likeable guy, and if he didn’t force adoration through ignorance, it wasn’t going to happen. All of his children loathed him. I’m just the only one who wanted to do anything about it. Pacey promised that he could kill my father. He promised to find a way. You were supposed to be that way, but what he didn’t tell me was that you always look for the peaceful resolution. Your ship was literally called the Vellani Ambassador. I’ve been trying to get you to change, but if I thought that anyone could do that, I would never have let my siblings die. I would have tried to call them to action. I believe that I’ve just been trying to replace them...with you.”

Leona stepped forward, and gently held Miracle’s wrists in her hands. It looked like she was about to remove the cuffs from her. “Obligation.”

“Yeah,” Miracle said with a nod. “Wait, what?”

“It’s a movie, about a sibling rivalry that goes too far. The motif throughout is Nazca boobies, which are known for killing their siblings.”

“Oh, I guess that’s kind of similar,” Miracle agreed.

“No, it’s almost the exact same premise. What you just described here, killing off your siblings to drain the parents’ of their power, and their legacy...that is the plot of Obligation. That never happened to you.”

“Well, I hardly think that’s a unique situation. I mean, I’m sure—wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!” she screamed when Leona started to lift her arms up. “You don’t have to do this! Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay! I’ll help you! I’ll switch sides! Just don’t make me transfer out of this body.”

This was such a weird freak out. What was she so afraid of? Why did she not want to transfer to a new substrate? It wasn’t like the processes hurt, or anything. It just felt like going to sleep, and waking up in a different room after surgery. It could be disorienting, but that went away, and relatively quickly. Why did she even ever want Romana’s body if not to parade around as Romana, and give her a bad reputation? They should have asked this as soon as Miracle agreed to keep it. They shouldn’t have been so trusting of her. They won’t make that mistake again.

“Please don’t, please don’t! Miracle continued to beg.

Leona suddenly broke the cuffs apart, and let the nanites recede into her implants. “There you go.”

“You’re setting me free?” Miracle asked, shocked.

“I don’t want us to be enemies anymore. It doesn’t come for free, though. I want you to take us to Pacey. We need to have a talk with him. I’m sick of going through his little minions. It’s inefficient at best.”

Yeah, sure,” Miracle said, stepping away and rubbing her wrists. Déjà vu, this was basically what she looked like yesterday, just before escaping through a black hole portal. “I just need to, uh...speak with him first. I’ll be right back!” Still reminiscent of just yesterday, she fell through a portal, which closed up behind her immediately. And it wasn’t going to reopen.

“Why did you do that?” Olimpia asked her wife.

“She ruined our plans,” Ramses answered for Leona. “Miracle was supposed to lead us to Pacey, not come back here. Matty?”

“Okay,” Mateo said. Gather ‘round.” They huddled in a group, and let Mateo generate a swarm of dark particles to overwhelm them. It was a pretty weak showing, though. There weren’t very many of them. “I think we’re trying too soon! I can’t pull enough out,” he warned. “It took too much to get us to the Fifth Division!”

“That’s okay,” Ramses shouted back. “Just build a bridge! The slingdrives will take us the rest of the way!”

Mateo didn’t exactly know what he meant by that, but his intuition told him to spread the dark particles thin, so they reached far enough out to their destination without being wide enough for a group of seven people to cross over with them. They then activated their slingdrives, and used the signal to navigate them to the right destination. The technicolors came and went, and they found themselves in a familiar place. This was the room they went to before they were knocked unconscious, and inserted into the Underburg simulation with false memories. The place was empty back then, but not this time. Miracle was there, as were Octavia, Pacey, and some other woman. He seemed to like the ladies. He wasn’t happy right now, though.

Miracle’s eyes widened in fear as she stared at the team. She looked over at her boss. “I’m sorry. They took the cuffs off! You said I could come back if they took the cuffs off!”

“We never needed the cuffs, you idiot,” Ramses argued. “He can find anyone in the universe.” He jerked his head towards Mateo.”

“Not with my shielding,” Pacey contended. “There must be something else.”

“Nanites are very smol,” Leona said to him. “They could be on you, without you even knowing it. We never needed the cuffs,” she echoed Ramses.

“You tracked me, like an animal,” Miracle spat.

“You’re a murderer. Which one is worse?”

“Who said I murdered anybody?”

“So you were lying.”

“Enough,” Pacey interrupted. “You obviously came here to talk, so let’s talk. Leave my girls out of it.”

“Mr. Henricksen, again, I’m so—” Miracle tried to apologize.

He held up a commanding hand. “We’ll talk about it later. You both can go now.”

Miracle left, as did Octavia, having never said a word. Miracle was annoying, but an opposing force. Octavia still felt like a betrayal. They wanted to talk to her again too, but on a personal level. Today was about business. The mysterious other woman stayed. She didn’t lurch or hesitate. She knew from the start that he wasn’t ordering her to do anything. If this were an action movie, she would be the one in charge here, and all of their previous dealings were with her henchman or lieutenant, who was only pretending to be in charge. But this wasn’t a movie, was it? Was it? It was a movie before, under the dome. It could certainly be that again, or worse...still.

“I understand that you have reservations about fulfilling the mission,” Pacey began, getting himself comfortable in an arm chair while the woman sat next to him in a hardback.

“That’s an understatement,” Leona said. “We’re not doing it. We don’t need higher compensation, or incentive. We don’t need you to explain why you think we should do it. It’s just not happening. We don’t care if you agree or not. We don’t care what you want or know at all. It’s. Not. Happening. If you have some kind of Plan B, which doesn’t involve us, then I suggest you move forward with it. We’re not interested, and we never were. Why don’t you make like a snowflake, and let it go?”

“I don’t know what that means, but I want you to know that I’m listening, and I hear you. I won’t make you do anything that you don’t wanna do.” He seemed proud of himself for the response, which meant that it was a trick. It probably had something to do with the woman next to him.

They all realized that this wasn’t actually going their way, and it felt exhausting. Mateo stopped forward and placed his hand upon Leona’s chest. He gently nudged her backwards in the direction of the team. “It’s all right. I got this.” He took another step forward, but more towards the stranger. “Who are you? What is your stake in this?”

The woman looked over to Pacey, not for guidance, but more like they were having an unspoken conversation with each other. She lifted her eyebrows to ask a question. He shrugged like the answer was maybe. She pointed at him, and lifted her brows again. He shrugged again, but this time, more as if to say, yeah, fine. They made a couple of other gestures towards each other, all basically implying that they were relenting to the team’s demands, but really, it was impossible to know for sure what they were saying. In fact, they could have been in the middle of an actual psychic conversation. Finally, after Pacey said, “okay” out loud, the woman took a breath, and leaned back in her chair. “I was admittedly hurt when I first heard the term Team Kadiar.”

“No,” Mateo said.

“I felt left out,” the woman went on.

“No,” Mateo said louder. It couldn’t be.

“Yes, it’s true, father. I’m your fourth daughter. Or should I say...your first. His name isn’t Pacey. It’s Séarlas. And I am Franka.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 15, 2528

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The tree light receded. They were now standing outside. The ground beneath them was yellowish, there was no apparent atmosphere, and they felt very light. It was probably an uninhabitable moon. There was a massive structure before them, maybe four or five kilometers away. Leona checked her watch interface. “August 15, 2528.”

Ramses knelt down, and scanned the surface with his sensor suite. “Sulfur and sulfur dioxide, also silica. We got some pyroxene and feldspar. That explains the yellow.” He stood back up. “I believe that we are on the rogue moon of Jaunemus.”

They didn’t know much about this world. It once orbited the planet of Verdemus, but was transported to the Goldilocks Corridor, and used as a staging ground for the Verdemusian Corps. They lived and trained here when they weren’t on the Anatol Klugman warship. The team looked around, and couldn’t find Miracle Brighton anywhere, nor Adult!Dilara. They were dispatched, not ferried, or perhaps the other two had just moved on, since it had been a full two years since the team was last in the present day.

The Jaunemusians seemed like all right people. They were warmongers, sure, but not Klingons. They didn’t want to fight simply for the sake of it. They felt a duty to protect their home planet from the Exin Empire, and decided to take an offensive strategy, instead of a defensive one, since Verdemus was still in hiding, much like Castlebourne now. According to their military mandate, the fighters on this moon didn’t have much interest in fixing the Goldilocks Corridor. They just calculated that the only way to prevent the Exins from spreading beyond it were to put an end to it altogether. It was unclear how they felt about Earth, the rest of the closer regions, or Team Matic. According to Core World conventions, this whole part of the galaxy belonged to what they called the Borderworlds. It was technically too specific of a term to use for it, however. It was only called that because it covered all systems between 14,000 and 28,000 light years from Earth. On the other side of the Milky Way, that referred to systems that were literally on the edge. In this direction, though, they were still in the middle.

“Drive check!” Olimpia announced as she looked down at her wrist band. “Whew, I’m in the red. Anyone else have a better gauge?”

They all shook their heads. It took an enormous amount of power for them to send the entire Oblivion tower to another reality in the past. That wasn’t even that long ago for them. It would be a while until their slingdrives recharged. They might as well pop in to see how the Jaunemusians were doing lately. They teleported to an airlock that appeared welcoming enough, and knocked on the door. There was a doorbell, but it looked like it was only meant for emergencies. Hopefully the sound would travel through the structure well enough for someone to hear. They stood there for a few minutes before a face appeared in the viewport. Hm. No cameras? Or were there, and he just wanted to get a look for himself? They waved at him with smiles.

The man went away, and then the airlock door opened. They let their suits collapse before the airlock was fully pressurized again. The man was still watching them, from the observation chamber now. Another man entered the room behind him with an air of authority, so the first one opened the next door for him. “Greetings, Team Matic. My name is Anatol Klugman.”

“No, it isn’t,” Mateo said, being unable to stop himself.

The man winced. “I may not have been born with the name, but I earned it.”

“Forgive him,” Leona mediated. “It’s just that we know the man who serves as the namesake for your warship. You’re obviously not him, it’s just a little jarring to hear.”

“Ah, yes.” Fake!Anatol nodded. “It’s easy to forget that the ship was named after a man. I am named after the ship. And when I retire, a new Anatol will be selected to take my place. There are others like me even now.”

“Are you connected to your vessel?” Ramses asked him, fascinated. “Do you control it with your mind?”

Fake!Anatol considered the words. “It’s more like I instruct it with my mind. The crew has to carry out the orders, and could theoretically refuse them. Right now, my second has the reins. The human brain cannot handle the interface for too long, so the link changes hands regularly.” His gaze shifted to Romana. “I’m guessing that you’re here in search of your sister? I can take you to her.”

“That is not my sister,” Romana said, her blood boiling. “She is an impostor.”

“Oh. She said her name was Miracle Brighton.”

“Oh, well that’s her name,” Mateo explained, “but she stole my daughter’s body. Well, she stole one of them. The extra one.”

Fake!Anatol lifted his chin as he absorbed the information. “I see. We might be able to help with that. We are...pretty good at cloning here.” That was how this army began. Omega Strong cloned himself thousands of times, but he didn’t use the exact same code. Each clone was slightly different than the one before it. Despite ultimately being born of a single source, the population was almost as diverse as any other of comparable magnitude, thanks to this intentional genetic drift. That was a long time ago. This man would be a descendant of the original generation, now many generations removed.

“It wasn’t technically theft,” Romana explained, “but more of a con. She has legal claim to that substrate. If we were to move her to a different one, she would have to consent.”

“If she does, we can arrange that,” Fake!Anatol offered. “Do you still want me to take you to her?”

“Yes, please,” Mateo confirmed.

They followed him down the corridors until they reached a common area of couches, tables, and other basic amenities, like you would find in a hipster apartment complex. Fake!Anatol stopped when he noticed Miracle sitting in a comfy chair with a good book, and a cup of tea. She, of course, knew when they would be returning to the timestream, so she was not surprised to see them. She dogeared the page she was on, and snapped it shut. “Thank you all for coming. And thank you, Mister Klugman, for bringing them to me. You can go now.”

Fake!Anatol looked awkwardly at the team, not sure if he should do what she said, or accept their guidance, or do whatever the hell he wanted.

“Please, sir, could you show me your neural interface?” Ramses requested. “I would much like to learn about it, if at all possible. This conversation is going to become uncomfortable, and I don’t need to be here.”

Romana stepped forward, between the team and the antagonist after Ramses and Fake!Anatol departed. “Thank you for not using my name,” she said to her doppelgänger

“I prefer mine.”

“I wouldn’t,” Romana mumbled.

“What was that?”

“I am as appreciative as my daughter,” Mateo said, also now stepping forward. “We would like to ask you, what is your plan here? What do you think we’re going to do for you?”

“You’re going to find a way to kill the unkillable,” Miracle answered plainly.

“If you want him dead, why don’t you just do it? You, Pacey, and Octavia seem intelligent enough. Why are you trying to make us do your dirty work?”

Miracle bit her lip.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Olimpia posed. “She thinks we’re untouchable. If his sycophants come after us for it, not only will it keep their hands clean, but she thinks we’ll survive it anyway...because we always do.”

“Or she’s counting on us not surviving this time,” Marie countered. “Because if the Exin loyalists interrogate us, we’ll be able to link her to it.”

“Lots of people know I’m here,” Miracle argued. “Word will get out that I’m involved, I don’t care.”

Mateo shook his head. “Word might get out that a woman who looks like Romana, and goes by the ridiculously made-up name of Miracle, is involved. Not very strong evidence that it has anything to do with Pacey. I’m not even sure if anyone besides us, and his sycophants, knows that he exists. We’re the only ones who have interacted with him, to our knowledge. He’s Snuffleupagus.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Miracle said.

Their armbands beeped at the same time, alerting them that their slingdrives had charged up to Orange. “We won’t do what you ask,” she contended. “We won’t kill him, and we will no longer interfere with these people’s lives unless we decide that it’s necessary, and we will also decide when that is, and what that means.”

“Those things can’t save you,” Miracle claimed. “We’re like Arcadia Preston. We can just keep bringing you back here. You have to remember that Pacey is the one who invented the—what do you call it—slingdrive technology, not your precious little Gyppo.”

Mateo tensed up, and leaned in closer. “Do not..ever say that.”

“Sorry, that was too far, I’m just trying to remind you that you took quintessence from Pacey. He has every right to dictate what you do with it.”

She wasn’t getting it. It was irrelevant how long they had to wait to sling again. This was a perfect example of you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. If she kept dropping them here, they would keep escaping, or just doing nothing. Even if their slingdrives weren’t ready to go again, they didn’t have to do anything they didn’t want to. She only had the power to move them places, not control their actions. If she could do that, why would she need them at all? “It doesn’t matter, we’re not doing it,” Angela reiterated.

Miracle finally stood. She sighed. “Miss Nieman is the youngest in your group, and for that reason, she will be spared. The Oaksent doesn’t see her as a threat, and I think he may have a little thing for her. He has instructed his minions to spare her, should they encounter Team Matic, and find a way to end the rest of you without hurting her. If you don’t kill him, Romana will be the one to do it, if you get my meaning. She won’t be safe anymore. She will be the primary target.”

Leona smiled.

Miracle was confused. “What? What just happened? Why are you so excited?”

The others weren’t excited, it was just Leona. She reached out, and took hold of both of Miracle’s wrists. She instructed her nanites to construct handcuffs around them. “You just gave me permission to remove you from that substrate.”

“How’s that now?” Miracle questioned.

“You just admitted to making plans to commit a crime using a substrate that will implicate a different individual of said crime. That gives me everything I need to get you out of it, and reclaim the substrate to protect the world from you who would abuse her power in it.”

“I was just speaking in hypotheticals, I didn’t say anything,” Miracle insisted. “Plus, I was so vague.”

“We all heard what we heard, and I’m sure that camera caught it too.” Leona pointed up at the security cam. “Besides, at worst, it places us in a stalemate. You can’t actually commit the crime any more than you can admit to the conspiracy of it. If you go through with the plan, we’ll show that footage to the Exins. They have similar cloning laws internally. Harsher ones, in fact. Your safest course of action is to leave that body, and move on with your life without it. Romana is damaged goods.”

Miracle was flustered. She backed up a little, and tried to pull the cuffs apart through brute force. “I have an exit strategy. These can’t keep me here.”

“We can track you wherever you go. Their friends can, anyway,” Leona added, referring to the nanites that she was still using herself.

Their armbands beeped. They were now in the Yellow.

“Not if I figure out how to get them off first!” Miracle shouted. A black hole appeared underneath her feet, and she fell right through it.

“What if she does it?” Angela asked. “What if she just goes off to kill Bronach before we have the chance to find her, and remove her from that substrate?”

“She doesn’t know how,” Leona believed. “She was bluffing entirely. She called him unkillable, because they also need us to find the killswitch that will prevent him from coming back to life, however exactly he does it. We’re known for finding loopholes, and Team Pacey is betting on us finding this one too. There’s more than one reason they chose us.”

“What do we do?” Mateo asked her.

“Today, we rest. I don’t think we’re gonna be able to sling again until next year.”

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