Microstory 2764: Ghostriders

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In this post-scarcity economy, gold is not valueless. It’s actually quite useful. It has a number of applications in electronics, aerospace engineering, and even medicine. It’s used for all sorts of mundane things. And that’s because, in this day and age, destroying entire planets only to extract their raw material is on its way to becoming a matter of it being Tuesday.

Many treasure hunts end with a cache of precious metals and jewels. They’re not usually quite this extensive, but they signal the end of the challenge. The accomplishment of that challenge is the real prize. Hunters usually don’t even take the treasure, but leave it for the next batch, or if they do, they take only a small trinket to remind them of the good memories. No one needs this much, except major engineering operations. The disappointing part, however, is not the letdown of the prize itself, but that the hunt might be over. They went through a lot, but they still expected more.

They tie the boat off, and step out. They begin to walk around on the cave floor between the piles and piles of goblets, coins, bars, crowns, and other accessories. They’re going to spread out to look for clues. There has to be something, whether this is the end or not. Every hunt tells you when you’re done in no uncertain terms. It’s never simply implied. They don’t need fanfare, just undeniable proof.

“Don’t touch anything,” Minotaur warns. “It’s sometimes a literal booby trap, and sometimes a curse to teach of the dangers of greed, or whatever.”

“We might need to dig,” Jolanda points out. “A clue might be under the gold.”

“You’re right,” Minotaur admits. “Just don’t take anything.”

“Should we look for something special?” Elise asks them. “Like the only blue gemstone, or something anachronistic or out of place?”

“That’s a good idea,” Mino agrees. “Most everything is probably a distraction. The important thing will be simple or not valuable to the pirates we’re pretending to be.”

“Something out of place,” Zelda begins, “like this?” She’s standing beside what initially appeared to be the cave wall. But she’s opening it like a door. It’s heavy, so she and Miracle hold it open for everyone to walk through single-file.

They’re now standing in another locker room. The lights are flickering on for them. Their names are on their respective lockers again. Colley is the first to open his.

“What is that?” Rage asks. “What is that for?”

Jolanda is frowning. “Racing. That’s a racer’s uniform, including the helmet.”

“Why do you look so upset?” Rage questions. “This is right up your alley.”

“Because I know I’m gonna win, and I might have to hurt you to do it.”

“I don’t understand,” Elise says. “Don’t listen to Hrockas when he says only one person can win. We don’t have to follow his rules all throughout. We’re in charge here.” She said it, but she doesn’t mean it. They’re really not. She’s just trying to be positive.

“This is a headless racing uniform,” Jolanda begins to clarify. “It’s a niche race that kind of went obsolete. The helmet gives it away. You see, they didn’t just suddenly come up with mind-transference and uploading technology. It was a grind. There was a time when updates were periodic, rather than continuous. It was metaphysically scary. But not as scary as this. No updates, but a local chip implanted in your head. You see, unless you’re an octopus, the head is the only place where your brains are stored. And it’s a lot easier to protect that above all else.

“Some astronauts were given these kinds of helmets. If something went wrong—if all else failed—your spinal column is severed, and your head is preserved. You lose consciousness, so someone has to retrieve you, and give you a new body. This tech came out of the private sector, so while they had government contracts, they also had private ones. This gave rise to the deadliest format of racecar driving. The ancillary tech wasn’t that reliable. Racers occasionally died because sometimes, their heads were destroyed as well, because of-freaking-course they were. Or sometimes the reintegration process simply didn’t work. They signed waivers, but it was a dark time in our history. Now, with consciousness streaming, the races can technically be deadlier, but reliably temporary.”

“This,” Zelda says. “This is why Hrockas gave us an out. It wasn’t all the storms.”

“Can’t we all pile into a car together?” Elise reasons. “Even compact cars can fit seven if you’re creative and willing to get really familiar with each other’s bodies.”

“The cars are too small. You wouldn’t be able to fit two people,” Jolanda clarifies.

“Now, let’s all calm down,” Rage tells them when she notices everyone growing more stressed out about this. “All we see are the uniforms and helmets. We have no idea what’s waiting for us on the other side of those doors. We might have a choice of challenges. Those helmets might just be manufactured to look like decappers. Let’s first get changed, but keep the helmets off, and go outside. Sound okay?”

The seven of them gladly remove their tattered, disgusting tunics, shower down, and suit up. They walk through the set of doors beyond the showers holding their helmets. They expected to find seven cars waiting for them, but there are instead two dozen. It’s tempting to believe that they will have their pick of the litter, but they know they’re not that lucky. They’re going to be racing against some other team, or other individuals. This obviously raises the stakes. Now it’s plausible that none of them will win. Jolanda is the best driver in their group, but she’s not invulnerable.

What’s interesting about it is that seven cars are sitting separately from the other 17, so they don’t know what that’s about. While they’re examining the vehicles, and debating whether they should get in, or try something else, seven zombie ghosts appear before them. It’s the same ones from the sea before, and they know that, because they grew to be quite familiar with their distinctive looks, despite them all being undead. They’re on the other side of the cars, and end up walking straight through them as they approach the humans. They move much less menacingly than they did before. Once they are a couple of meters from the hunters, they stand there and wait.

“Oh,” Rage finally says. “I think we’re each meant to choose one. That happens on the regular hunts all the time. They don’t expect you to magically know how to complete a task. If it’s a skill, an expert will train you on it. I think they’re our driving instructors.”

“Them?” Miracle questions. “They don’t exactly look the part.”

“Maybe they’re shortstaffed,” Zelda jokes. She steps forward, and points at one.

The ghost reaches out and pantomimes taking her hand. As he’s leading her to a car, he growls but more in a grumpy way, rather than violent. The one-footed captain isn’t here, which would have been awkward since they seem to have personalities now.

Rage sighs and gives the other line of cars the side-eye. “I suppose we have no choice if we want to keep going. Pick your partner. The competition may be pretty fierce. We won’t know until we learn, and hopefully there’s no time limit, because we practiced driving, but we didn’t train for this.”

Microstory 2762: Emergency Exit

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Once the deed is done, Miracle flies back over to the boat and lands on the deck. She sways her head side to side as her angel wings tuck back into her body like they presumably would for a real angel. She smiles at the group, particularly Laise.

“You upgraded,” Laise points out. “The wings are organic now.”

“They’re carbon-based, but they’re not organic,” Miracle explains. “They’re not from Daedalus, I don’t know why I was ever limiting myself to his antiquated work in the first place. I’m still getting used to the nanites. What did I miss?”

“How did you get here?” Rage asks. “You said we were in another dimension.”

“We are,” Miracle confirms. “Did you think Hrockas was the only one with the ability to traverse dimensional barriers? There’s really no way to lock the door on a parallel. That’s what pocket dimensions are for. Now, of course, he could always show up and kick me out, which I’m guessing he’ll do here in the next few minutes.”

A scary man wearing battle armor magically appears behind Miracle.

“He’s right behind me, isn’t it?” Miracle jokes. She smirks, and doesn’t turn around. “It’s nice to see you again, Dominus. Are you here to kill me?”

“Not yet,” the man replies. He brushes past Miracle and approaches the rest of the group. “Good morrow, folks. My name is Azad Petit of the Castlebourne Charter Contingency. As we are in peacetime, I currently operate under Mr. Steward directly.”

“Yeah, as his lackey,” Miracle points out, rolling her eyes.

Azad smirks much in the same way she did, but still doesn’t face her. He continues facing the group. “You have all survived a great deal, and I commend you on the current state of your success. Your friend is right, she will not be allowed to continue on this journey. She didn’t earn it. She failed one of the obstacles, and should not even have any memory of this, let alone the means of reëntering the program. So I will be pulling her out.

“I’m giving you this one opportunity to join her. If you leave as well, your respective mind streams will be reactivated, and you will move on with your lives at least with the memories of what has happened thus far. Of course, it will disqualify you from attaining whatever prize does or does not exist at the end of this hunt, but at least you won’t risk consciousness discontinuity.”

“She obviously didn’t suffer from discontinuity,” Elise points out.

Azad nods. “Miss Brighton does not store her consciousness, or her backups, in base reality, but in another dimension, much like this one. That will not work for you.”

“Thanks for speaking for me,” Miracle lambasts. “I’m just a girl in the world.”

Azad smirks again, and finally turns his head to face her. “Go wait in the car.”

Miracle rolls her eyes again.

Azad sighs. “We fought the Ochivari together. I respect the hell out of you. But these people deserve to win or lose on their own, not to have you cheat for them.”

“I won’t cheat,” Miracle insists.

“What’s behind your back?” Azad asks.

“Oh, these ol’ things? If you want, I’ll keep them tucked away the whole time.”

“Not good enough,” Azad reasons. “You can’t be trusted.”

“You just said you respected me,” Miracle argues. “It’s not exactly a contradiction, but it doesn’t make much sense either. I made one mistake, I’m back, deal with it.”

Azad tilts his head for a moment. He then steps back so he can address the whole group. “All right, Hrockas says you can stay, but you have to transfer into a substrate of his choosing. Before you ask, you won’t look like this anymore. He believes you have been coasting on Romana Nieman’s good will, walking around with her face. It’s time you look like someone unique, and you don’t get any input on what it looks like.”

Miracle contemplates the offer, then tries to respond, but gets cut off.

“Oh, and someone has to exit the hunt,” Azad adds. “A life for a life.”

“I’ll do it,” Laise says, so quickly that Elise wonders if she could see the future.

“You don’t have to do that for me.” It sounds like Miracle is being sincere.

“I want to quit,” Laise decides. “I suspected you might say something like that, Dominus, so I waited to speak up. I’ve been thinking a lot about my continuity. I don’t want a version of me to move on not knowing what I know. I did things I never thought I would, even in a simulation. Sure, I’ll be missing out on whatever comes next, and this fabled prize, but now I know what I’m capable of. Now maybe I’ll stop spending all of my time in historical domes, and actually have an adventure or two.”

Miracle notices Azad frowning. “You thought no one would take you up on the offer. You thought I wouldn’t have a shot, so you wouldn’t have to break any rules.”

“I admit that,” Azad acknowledges, “but we are following rules. We’re just changing them a little.” He turns to Laise. “Hrockas accepts the deal. Take my hand.”

“Wait!” Colley reaches out in an obvious request for a hug from Laise, which Laise gladly takes. Elise thinks that she’s the only one close enough to hear him whisper, “if I die, find me and tell me that my shoes in Elizabeth Victoria were anachronistic. I’ll know what it means.” He then kisses her on the check, right by her ear.

Laise kisses back, then lets go. She takes Azad’s hand, as Miracle takes the other.

Azad looks at the remaining six hunters. “I don’t think it’s cheating to tell you that you’re clearly expected to sail somewhere. I won’t tell you where, but I will say that the south is beautiful this time of year. It’s so relaxing. In a couple of hours, a stranger will appear. That will be Miracle in a new body. I’ll let her explain why.”

They disappear. Elise would very much love to know how they do that.

After a reverent moment, Rage claps her hands. “Okay, let’s figure out how to point this thing south and sail so we can search for our next clue.”

“No,” Minotaur counters. “We need to head north.”

“That’s not what the man said,” Rage contends. “You think he was lying?”

“He didn’t tell us to go south,” Minotaur reasons. “He told us that south was relaxing. We don’t want relaxing; we’re on an adventure. We want danger.”

“They have a point,” Zelda agrees. “Mentioning the wrong direction allows him to nudge us towards the right one without technically giving anything away.”

“Trust me on this,” Minotaur says to Rage. “I have experience with misdirection.”

“We vote,” Rage decides. “Raise your hands for Minotaur’s plan to go north.”

Everyone raises their hand, including Rage herself.

A few hours later, Miracle does return with a new face. The boat has not yet moved. Still none of them knows how to sail, so they need to study the vessel first. They would love a manual to read, but it’s safer to remain stationary until they have a better understanding of what they’re dealing with. At a certain point, however, they need practice, so they raise anchor, and head off. It certainly isn’t relaxing.

Microstory 2761: Into the Drink

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This boat isn’t very big, so the crew isn’t a legion of men, but they’re still outnumbered. In the chaos of the initial attack, it’s hard to tell by how much, but fortunately, they have some fighters on their side. They trained as much as they could in each other’s fields, but Zelda and Jolanda are still the best, and have to take the brunt of the combat. Elise has done some martial arts in her day, but doesn’t have any experience fighting moving opponents. Colley is a pacifist, but can defend himself, or someone else. He hides in a corner with Laise, who has absolutely no fighting experience whatsoever.

Meanwhile, the only means of making any headway in this fight is getting the zombie pirates over the edge, and keeping them at bay. They don’t drown, they don’t die, but it does take effort for them to try to climb back aboard. So once they’re over, the living humans end up with the upperhand. The zombies are relentless, however. They also don’t get tired. Their only hope is that this is a nighttime problem. After all, why did they only attack at nightfall on the day they finally lifted the boat? Once the sunrise comes, they’ll cower back to the depths, and the hunters will finally be able to rest.

There it is, that reddish-orange glow over the horizon. Elise can’t stop glancing at it even though she knows she’s meant to be keeping an eye on her sector. She’s holding an oar from the rowboat, and has to keep swatting pirates away. Any second now, there should be enough light. They’re like vampires. In some franchises, it just takes a little more time. The sun has to be a little higher. It often depends on the dialogue.

Three hours later, they’re still at it. Funny enough, despite their collective fatigue, they’ve all kind of grown used to the job. They fight in shifts. Five of them man their sectors of the boat while the other two sleep or rest below deck. They started out with a sixth person down there on high alert, but the zombies never tried to somehow break through, so they categorized it as a non-threat. It’s almost time for Elise’s break. Her eyelids are low as she almost carelessly bonks the zombie on the head again. It’s not scary anymore. Part of it is the sunlight, but part of it is the sheer tedium of it all.

There has to be some way out of this. There’s always a way. There is always a loophole. They may have a random, bizarre weakness that is impossible to know unless you came across the lore earlier, or you have to fix something for them in order to break the curse. The hunters need time to figure it out. They can’t just keep fighting. Maybe Elise can call upon her research skills during her break to search the cabins for any clues. Maybe the zombies simply have unfinished business, and they can help finish it, symbolically or physically. Oh, but that bed down there looked so good. It was short and narrow, and probably not soft, but right now, it might be the best thing in the world. Maybe she’ll just lie down for a quick nap, and then get to work.

Thirty minutes pass, which is twenty minutes after she should have been relieved.

The zombies aren’t geniuses, but after they get knocked down, they realize that that’s where a hunter is, so they move to try a different spot. The hunters sometimes use that to their advantage if they need to get closer to one another. It takes time to control where the next intrusion will come from, but it’s possible. Rage has done that. Now she’s within better speaking distance of Elise. “Where the hell are Colley and Laise?”

“Iono.” Elise can’t even bring herself to say all the words separately. “Laise was s’pose ta take over my spot.” She stands there with a puzzled look on her face.

“What?” Rage questions. “What is it? Do you see something out there?”

Elise swats another zombie. “Her name is Laise. My name is Elise. Do you think we’re related?” The zombie has managed to take hold of the oar, and is trying to wrestle it from her, which they do from time to time when she gets too complacent and lazy. She mindlessly pulls and pushes on it while she waits for Rage’s answer.

Rage is only staring at her. “No, Elise, I don’t think you’re related.”

“Oh, okay. Fair question, though,” Elise decides.

“You’re tired,” Rage argues. “Go ahead and sleep. I’ll take care of two sectors.”

“That won’t be necessary!” Colley cried from the top of the steps. He and Laise have pulled a big sack up from below, and are starting to drag it across the deck. “I know you’re all tired, but we have a way to end this once and for all so we can all sleep!”

“What is that?” Rage questions. Then she has to turn around and fight because a zombie has made it over the bulwark. Laise runs up and provides assistance.

“A mouse trap,” Colley explains once the zombie is taken care of. “Everyone huddle up, and put your backs together! We need to get the zombies into one place!”

“You want us to let them onto the boat?” Jolanda questions from the stern.

“They’ll just keep coming unless we take control! I can say no more than that, because I think we all know that the zombies are smart enough to understand us ! Trust me, we’ve been quietly discussing, and secretly preparing, for this for hours!”

They decide to trust the two of them. As they’re huddled together, the zombies climb aboard. They’re moving slowly now. They might be tired too, or Colley is right and they understand the humans well enough to know that something is up. They’re still not too smart, though, because they naturally group into a single mass, presumably to prepare for the next onslaught.

“Rotate counter-clockwise a little bit.” Laise is in the middle of them. “Perfect,” she says once they’re done shuffling. “Rage, Minotaur, you’re the tallest. You feel what’s at your feet behind you?” After they both confirm, she adds, “you know what to do.”

“Ready...!” Colley begins. “Everyone, run to the closest side to get out of the way!”

After everyone else scatters, Rage and Minotaur run forward holding the corners of a huge heavy net. They raise it over the heads of the zombies and pass them as fast as they can, managing to snag all of them all at once. Colley and Laise take this opportunity to start punching and kicking the zombies so they end up on the floor. The others join in too, of course, even though they still don’t know what the endgame is.

Laise goes around and starts shackling the zombies’ ankles one by one. The chains are already tied to the net, so even if they escape, they’ll be dragging a whole lot of weight. It’s still not enough, though, which is where that sack comes into play. Per Colley’s direction, all seven of them work to hoist the heavy sack up and over the railing. Elise is in back, and not really helping that much, but the job gets done. She touches it enough to know that it’s filled with cannonballs. Once the sack falls over, the net drags all the zombies across the deck, and over the edge too. Now there’s no escape.

Oh, no, it’s not over. “Guys,” Elise says, looking behind them. “Guys!”

When they turn around, they too see what she’s looking at. One of the zombies—the captain, by the looks of it—is still standing there. He’s holding his ooey gooey sabre, and standing on one leg. He cut off his own foot! And he’s got a gun.

A hot blonde girl flies out of nowhere on angel wings. She snatches the evil dead captain up, soars back up in the air, and drops him in the ocean kilometers away.

Microstory 2758: Headwater

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The survivors look up at the sky, expecting Hrockas to reappear to announce Miracle’s death, like this is some kind of dystopian survival game. He doesn’t do that, though, and doesn’t need to. They all saw it. Miracle’s first teleportation could have been a weird trick of the mind, but it’s harder to explain it away this time. It looks like various forms of time travel are possible, and that one of these forms killed her. She will survive, or at least one version of her will. She will have no memories of her life after she was taken from her hotel room, and thrown out the window at the start of this. It’s unclear what she’ll think happened, or what she’ll do now. She may try to fight her way back, but if they really are in another dimension, that might be impossible.

The stakes have officially been raised. Death is plainly on the table, and the traps might be unpredictable, and even inexplicable. They have no idea where any other mines could be hiding. Hrockas wouldn’t have let them get this far if there were no way out, though. If he actually didn’t want them to find the treasure, he probably would have simply erased their memories. That’s not illegal here in the Charter Cloud of the galaxy.

“This is another escape room,” Rage determines. “I’ve even played one very similar to this before. They were regular land mines, of course, but the trick is finding the only safe path between them. We need to get to higher ground.”

“I will take care of that,” Zelda volunteers. She tries to jump up to a beam attached to the outside of the dome, but she can’t get that high in her tiny frame.

Minotaur helps her up. They’re taller, so they follow on their own with less issue.

They can’t climb up too far because they’re constantly curving away from the street, eventually reaching a point where they would lose the perspective advantage.

“See anything notable?” Rage shouts up to them. “Darkened squares? Anything?”

“There’s nothing!” Zelda cries back. “Minotaur is getting nauseated!”

“Come on back down!” Rage tells them. “It’s not safe!”

Everyone has been looking up at them, of course, but Elise has just now realized that Colley has been looking in the wrong direction. His eyesight is darting back and forth across the sky, and he sometimes turns completely. “What is it?” she asks.

“Has anyone here been to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida?” Colley asks.

“I have,” says one of the only two remaining hunters from Miracle’s team. Elise has not even gotten the chance to learn her name yet, even though it would have been plastered on her locker at the starting line. “I was born on a stasis ship that was part of the original fleet because my parents were awake the whole time as Shepherds.”

“Do you know Bida’s constellations?” Colley presses. “Because I don’t...except for that one.” He points. “That’s the feather duster, which is how I know this is a clue, because we’re a hundred light years from Tau Ceti. It has to be on purpose.”

The girl looks up as well. “Umm...I think you’re right, but I’m not much into the astrology. Unlike Earth, my ancestors never needed stars to navigate. Colonists contrived constellations for fun, according to what I remember. I think that might be the River Dhel, though. It’s the most important one for many of the world’s superstitions because it reflects the real river for a brief window every night.”

“When is the window?” Elise asks her. “And does anyone have a watch?”

“I have a watch on my multitool,” Minotaur says as Jolanda is helping them back down to the ground. “Why do we need it? What did we miss while we were up there?”

“The window depends on what day of year it is,” Colley explains. “We would need a Bidan calendar, and we would need to know what time it is—”

“We don’t need a Bidan calendar,” the Bidan girl argues. “I know we don’t need it because we don’t have it, and had no chance of taking one with us. I just need to know what time it is right now. It doesn’t even have to be the right time according to anyone in the outside world. Hrockas would have accounted for that when programming it.”

“She’s right,” Elise agrees. “You have a timekeeper because he wanted you to.”

“It’s 20:42,” Minotaur answers. “It’s true, I don’t know what planet.”

“For now, it’s Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida,” the Bidan decides, “and we’re too late. The reflection happens at the same time as the lunar culmination every year on the same night between 20:24 and 20:31. It’s a holiday. We took too long to figure out the clue.”

“Point out the river again,” Colley says. He moves over to stand next to her. They quietly work out exactly which stars make up the constellation while he looks down at the ground, a little off to the side, away from Miracle’s still dead body. “We got it.”

“You remember where the stars were fifteen minutes ago?” Rage asks him.

Colley clicks his tongue and taps on his head. “Hrockas can force me into any substrate he wants, but he can’t stop me from having an eidetic memory,” he echoes Miracle from before she hit an apparent teleportation mine and fell to her death.

Rage takes a breath. “Okay, we’ll draw for lead. Colley, you’re out of the running this time since you have the map. Our new Bidan friend is too for the same reason.”

“No, please don’t draw,” Jolanda says. “I’ve not been contributing anything to the hunt, and need to feel useful. I’ll take lead. I had a conversation with myself shortly before my consciousness stream was cut. I’m prepared to wake up without memories.”

“Okay, we have a volunteer.” Rage looks around at the group. “Any objections?”

No one objects, so Jolanda stands in front. Colley stands behind her, but far enough away to be hopefully safe from the blast of a land mine. It will hopefully not happen at all, but they’re not too naïve to be prepared for it. Everyone else walks in a single-file line behind him and the Bidan. Colley directs Jolanda slowly. The assumption is that the river mouth ends at the fountain in the center of the square. It’s less likely that they would have to walk the entire length of the river in order to perfectly replicate what the believers on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida would do during their special annual holiday. They seem to be correct once they reach that fountain and no one has died yet. Assuming this will lead them further down the path to their prize, there’s now another puzzle to solve, though. And they don’t know where to begin.

Zelda sticks her face in the dark water. She then slowly starts diving deeper and deeper until only her feet remain, which Rage and Elise have to hold onto so she doesn’t sink to the bottom. After a few more seconds, she taps on her own hip, which they take to mean it’s time to pull her up. “It’s bottomless.”

“You don’t know that,” the other non-team member contends.

“I think we’re supposed to get in,” Zelda figures. “A leap of faith.”

The Bidan nods. “In my planet’s origin story, which we all know someone made up, the creator God takes a leap of faith in the River Dhel where she finds the energy she needs to conjure the star.” She points to a sculpture. “She is represented by a fish.”

That’s all Zelda needs. She jumps in headfirst. Nearly everyone else follow.

Microstory 2751: Checkpoint

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Thanks to Minotaur’s directions, Jolanda is able to negotiate them to the finish line. She presses the garage door opener just as Elise did before, but nothing happens.

“The second button, probably,” Elise suggests. She has been so helpful on this adventure. They never could have figured out where to find a key, how to open a door, or buckle their seatbelts on their own. She’s really pulling her weight.

The door opens to reveal only a hallway, so they all step out to cross the threshold on foot. It’s eerie; dimly lit with some of the overhead lights flickering, and uncomfortably narrow. Just like the main entrance to the warehouse, the door behind them slams shut on its own, locking them in. The wall to their left rises up, and disappears into the ceiling. On the other side is a torture room, for lack of a better term. They see a table full of scary and sharp instruments, oddly shaped beds, and even what appears to be an electric chair. Rage is here, inside a glass cage. She’s sitting in a toddler chair, her wrists tied behind her back, and she’s gagged. Her mascara is running down her face and she looks scared. She’s screaming unintelligibly at them.

“Nobody move!” Zelda orders. “That usually means there’s a tripwire or trap.”

They freeze and look around, but don’t see anything. They continue cautiously.

Elise goes over to Rage’s cage, looking out for booby traps. “Can you hear me?”

Rage screams again and nods her head.

“I appreciate your dedication to authenticity,” Elise goes on, “but at this juncture, the easiest way to get you out might be to kill myself where I stand, and seek help from the outside world. We’ll continue to play along, but if you’re genuinely being held against your will, we’ll treat it more seriously, and go meta. So if this is real, I want you to blink both eyes. If it’s still part of the team-building game, give me a wink instead.”

Rage winks.

“Okay.” Elise turns around and claps her hands. “Let’s find a way to escape this room. I don’t know of any pertinent quotes from historical figures.”

Five minutes later, Rage is out of her cage, and is able to spend the next twenty minutes helping them solve the rest of the clues to escape the room itself. She says that she asked an AI to design the puzzle on her behalf, so she wouldn’t know how to solve it either. She asks them kindly not to talk about anything but the room until that door reopens, and everyone respects that because this was the deal. She does assure them that this is the last exercise for now. There is no level beyond it until after the debrief.

“I was watching on the monitors,” Rage says after the game is over, and they’re walking into what she calls the lounge. “I only had a bot lock me up once you were at the end of the track. I want to thank you all for playing it straight, instead of finding some workaround. You could have asked to exit the trial at any time, and I would have obliged, but it didn’t seem to cross your minds. I hope you don’t feel tricked or disrespected. Zelda was right, I needed to see how well you five worked together so I would know how to plan the curriculum. It seemed more useful to throw you in the deep end rather than laying out what you would be up against. I’ve not yet synthesized the data, but just from watching you, I think it’s safe to say that we will not need much training. Despite not knowing each other, you breezed through the challenges, and didn’t argue with each other even once. I’m sincerely impressed and grateful.”

“I had a lot of fun!” Zelda announces. “There could have been a few more airplanes to fall out of, but I can’t complain. It’s only the first day.”

“Yeah, there’s almost always one skydiving or basejumping challenge on a treasure hunt,” Rage agrees. “I didn’t get approved for a plane here, but we’re not stuck. We can always go to Adrenadome to do other training. We can go to any of your prime domes, or anywhere for that matter. There’s no time limit. If y’all wanna take a break for a couple years to relax in Polar Tropica, I won’t argue. Based on what I just saw, though, this is the team I want. If I could brag, I think I knocked it out of the park, assembling you. I’ve worked with a lot of teams under Escape Dome, and I’ve never been happier. As I already said to each of you individually, you can leave whenever you want, but I really hope you stay. I want this to be the six, and I will wait until everyone agrees that we’re ready.” She pauses for a moment. “Minotaur, Elise...out of the bunch, you were the most hesitant to come out. How are you feeling now?”

Elise and Minotaur exchange a glance, not having known that about each other. Elise is very curious now, what it was like when Rage tried to recruit the others. Were they as confused, or did they understand the reasoning instantly? Colley can solve clues, and the other girls are used to living fast. Their skills are more obvious. Elise still doubts her value here, and she’s afraid that everyone else sees it too. She’s going to respectfully bow out. She has to. She will only bring them down. There’s no way that a treasure hunt benefits from someone like her. Rage will understand; Elise believes that much about her. This is the right decision, for herself, and for them. “I wanna keep going.” What?

“Great!” Rage says. She’s ecstatic. She could probably sense Elise’s continued reluctance, and is just as surprised by the answer.

Elise is surprised too. Did her subconsciousness respond before she could? She had no idea she was going to agree. What did she just get herself into?

Jolanda, Zelda, and Colley all volunteer to stay as well, to less fanfare

“Minotaur?” Rage presses. “Remember, there’s no wrong answer.”

Minotaur sports a poker face before finally saying, “you son of a bitch, I’m in.”

This does feel like a heist, doesn’t it? Elise doesn’t know all that much about Treasure Hunting Dome, but you don’t play thieves. It’s more of a race where if you find the prize, you’re entitled to it. Still, Rage claimed that there was some deeper level to the whole thing, so maybe they really will be doing something that no one has ever done before. Maybe they’ll have to break some rules. Maybe they’ll have to break them all.

Whatever ends up happening, Elise is out of her comfort zone now. That’s probably a good thing. She has spent so much time on her own, only occasionally working with others when the skill she was learning demanded it. She doesn’t have any surviving family or lasting friendships. It’s not that she dislikes people, but you don’t need them to survive in a post-scarcity society, like the ancestors did. Socialization is a skill which she never thought to develop. Skilldome doesn’t offer it. Perhaps they should. It’s a lost art for some. She’ll suggest that to them, but first, it’s time to party.

They don’t run any exercises for the rest of the day. They eat, they drink, and they interact merrily. They don’t do any training the next day either...or for the rest of the week. Only after that do they get to work, running drills and teaching each other various things. A week after that, they go on their first field trip to a dome that none of them has been to before.

Microstory 2748: One One Cocoa Full Basket

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Elise Perkins has dropped her rapping iron again. All of her tools can float except for that one. It keeps sinking to the bottom of the pool, and every time she dives down to retrieve it, she ends up pushing all of her other tools away, so she has to swim around to get those back too. She has taken so many courses here, but has never found a class called Keeping Track of Your Stuff 101. She did find underwater basket weaving, though. She knows it started as a joke, but she’s having fun with it, despite the drops.

Her basket is fairly complete at this point, so she uses it as a little liferaft for her other tools while she very carefully sinks below the surface herself, and slowly swims down to find the rapping iron. It’s an awkward shape, so it doesn’t always land right below. The chlorine stings her eyes as she’s hunting for it. She could have designed a body for herself that doesn’t feel that kind of inconsequential pain, but she wants to immerse herself in the culture. She wants to feel what her ancestors felt when they were doing these kinds of things. She wants to be authentic.

She spots it. Huh. It’s right next to another one. Wait, no. That one isn’t a rapping iron. What the hell is that thing? No one else is in the pool right now. Did they really drop something earlier, and it was never picked up? It’s not like the droids to make such a mistake. She swims towards it, but before she can catch it, the second metal object latches itself onto her iron and they both begin floating upwards. She keeps grasping at them, but they’re moving too fast. She follows them up to the surface, only noticing then that someone is standing on the pool coping. Are they trying to steal her tool? Who the hell would do that? It’s not worth anything. They can get their own!

Elise makes one final push. She takes hold of her rapping iron, as well as the magnet, and the string it’s attached to. She yanks it away, which causes the figure to totally faceplant into the water. Serves them right. But now there’s a problem. What if this stranger is a serial killer? Now she’s in a very vulnerable position with a person who she has just royally pissed off. She breaks the surface quickly, and swims the rest of the way to the wall so she can pull herself up. She hears a bunch of splashing behind her.

The stranger is flailing about, trying to keep their head above water. They’re panicking, and can clearly not swim. Well, maybe it’s not so clear. They could be faking.

This is ridiculous. Elise is immortal, and there’s security all over the place. She doesn’t have to be afraid. So she jumps back in, thankful that she learned to become a certified lifeguard not two months ago, and rescues the non-swimmer.

The stranger is still panicking as she scrambles out of the water, and lies on her back on the deck to catch her breath.

Elise stands there patiently, wringing water out of her hair, and adjusting her bikini, which magnet girl nearly tore off of her during the struggle.

The woman rolls over to her side, and stands back up. She stares awkwardly at Elise. “This is not how I wanted this to go. How embarrassing that I should not know how to swim. I just...didn’t think you would pull me in.”

“I didn’t think you would try to steal from me,” Elise replies.

“That was only my way of introducing myself. I thought it would be funny.”

“Well, it wasn’t. It was just confusing, and honestly, a little scary for me. I change substrates when I feel like it, but I never let my body die. I have an aversion to pain.”

“I get it,” the woman says. She takes a deep breath, and holds out her hand. “Hi. I’m Ciaragie Benetton, but everyone calls me Rage. Don’t worry, it’s ironic. It might not seem like it, but I’m typically very cool under pressure.”

“My name is not important,” Elise replies. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I would like to get back to my basket.” She starts to scan the surface because now her tools will have scattered all over the place. She sees her basket first. It is completely mangled and broken. She looks back over at Rage. “You ruined it. I’ll have to start over.”

“I’m sorry, Elise. I should have said just hello, like a normal person.”

“How do you know my name?” Elise questions.

“I came here to find you,” Rage explains as she’s stripping naked. “I’m putting together a team to compete under Treasure Hunting Dome. I believe that there is a secret, hidden level to be played. I believe there is a prize which no one has ever heard of, let alone attempted to locate. I’ve been going around, finding the best of the best from people who have experience in other domes. I myself have spent decades in Escape Dome. But I also have a navigator, and adrenaline junkie, even an anthro—”

“I’m sorry, what the heck does this have to do with me?” Elise asks. “I’m not the best of the best at anything. I spend my time learning archaic skills, like underwater basket weaving, and bricklaying. You must have me confused with someone else.”

Rage shakes her head. “No, you’re who I’m looking for. I don’t know what you know about Treasure Hunting Dome, but the challenges often involve exactly things like those skills. Some are inherent, like digging through a haystack to find a data-needle which contains your next clue. But for some of them, completing the challenge is just what tells the Exemplar that you deserve the clue, so they hand it to you.”

Elise sighs. “It’s not really my thing. As I was saying, I enjoy the quiet. I don’t wanna go on an adventure. When I’m not here, I’m reading classics in Branch of Babel, or relaxing on a boat in Raindome. I don’t do fun. I don’t do challenges.”

“You don’t wanna do anything with what you’ve learned,” Rage presses. “So you can weave a basket underwater. So what? It’s not like the world needs more baskets. You don’t even need a basket. You could print one in minutes.”

Elise points to the water. “That was supposed to be mine. It was going to be something that I made myself. No, I don’t need a basket, but I want a basket that’s one hundred percent unique. It wasn’t programmed, it wasn’t generated. It would be mine. My house is filled with things that I have created with my own two hands. I made the house itself...on my own...from scratch. That’s what makes me happy. I do it for me, and no one else. I don’t expect someone like you to understand that.”

“I understand,” Rage argues. “Oh, I understand better than you think. The prize for winning an escape room is getting out of the escape room, which you already were before you voluntarily went in. We collect the same things. We collect experiences.” She holds her hand out again, but this time not to shake. “Come with me. Let’s experience something neither of us has before, which I believe no one in the universe has. You might not be able to put a physical object in your home, but you’ll never forget it.”

Elise stares at Rage’s hand with a frown. That’s a pretty convincing argument, she has to admit it, if only to herself. “I’m not promising anything, but I am willing to listen. Tell me more about this Treasure Hunting Dome.” She doesn’t take her hand.

Rage smiles as she drops her arm. “Let’s meet the team first.”

Microstory 2682: Seeing The Whole Thing

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Resi can see the future, there is no longer any doubt in his heart about that. The problem is that, no matter how hard he tries, he has been unable to return to the vision he twice had of the eruption of Central Mountain. Brooke has her special techy spaceship, which she used to study the volcano, which said that nothing about it suggests it’s going to become active anytime soon. That is more worrisome than anything, because if Brooke is right, and Resi is also right, then something insane and unpredictable is going to happen that changes the equation. The trick is determining what that might be, and Resi thinks he may know why the answer isn’t coming to him. As of now, all of his predictions are sourced from past and present data. They’re still supernatural, for lack of a better term, but he’s not just randomly pulling information that doesn’t exist yet. He has to anchor it to something that is real. He doesn’t have to be physically touching an object to know what’s going to become of it, but it sure helps.

The fact is, Resi has nothing been very close to the mountain before. It just hasn’t been a meaningful aspect of his life. The higher you go, the less arable the land is. He’s not one for backpacking. Some class projects have involved hiking it, or even climbing all the way to the summit, but he never ended up doing that. That seems to be something that has to happen now. Brooke offered him a ride to the top, but that might not be enough. What if the problem happens lower down, and just causes the eruption up top? What if there are clues along the way? She pointed out that there is too much acreage to cover, and he agreed, but he has to start somewhere, and it can’t be at the end. That’s what’s blocking his understanding of this terrible future. He keeps trying to skip to the end. Of course, that’s what it sounds like fortune-telling is, but again, he doesn’t think he can just tap a future date, and jump to it. He thinks he has to fast-forward. He doesn’t have to sit through it all in real time, but he does have to see it all. So he’s going on a trek. He’s finally going to see what all the fuss is about.

Brooke is gone now. She has other things to do with her life outside of Yana, and outside of Bungula. She charges him to keep quiet about what he learned about her, which will not be hard, because she hardly told him anything. He’s not going to be alone, though. Caprice and Chaya are both coming. They don’t think that they’re going to have any apocalyptic visions, too, but they want to help, and it’s safer for him to not be alone. If something bad happens, someone may need to call for rescue. They’re only a few kilometers into the journey. They’ve not even reached the switchbacks yet when Chaya informs them that someone has been following them the whole time.

“Okay!” Resi says quite loudly. “Spread out! Shoot anyone but each other!”

“No! Don’t do that!” Kartica comes out with her arms up.

“I was never going to. Don’t you know me yet?” Resi questions.

“I dunno, you may have changed, man,” Kartica points out.

“Why are you here?” Resi presses. “You weren’t invited.

“I know, but you need me. You’re going the wrong way.”

Caprice looks up. “I think we can see where the mountain is.”

“Yes, you’re going towards the mountain, and you’ll even be on a trail, but it won’t be the right trail,” Kartica insists. “The mountain...is basically a cone. If you’re trying to see the whole thing, the switchbacks will only keep you to one side of it.”

“What makes you think we’re trying to see the whole thing?” Resi asks her.

“Please.” Kartica is offended. “I’ve not taken my eye off of you since we met. I can show you where to go. It will give you a clearer picture. I want this more than anyone. I want it more than you. You were hesitant before, when I begged you to tell me what was going to happen. Don’t leave me out of it. Please.”

Resi stands there thinking about it. He takes a swig of his special medicine. It still isn’t curing him, but it’s treating his symptoms. It’s keeping him vertical. Unfortunately, he believes he may be experiencing diminishing returns, and it will stop doing anything at all, probably sooner than later. “Fine, you can help. But try not to commit suicide on the way, okay?”

“I couldn’t if I wanted to,” Kartica claimed. “They locked me out of the respawn system. If I die, that’s it for me.”

Foreshadowing.

Microstory 2481: Treasure Hunting Dome

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This is like a cross between a race and a treasure hunt, but multiplied by a thousand. Obviously, if there was only one hunt going on at once, it would immediately become impossible to complete, like a million or more players trying to golf on one course. The surface under this dome has plenty of room, so they take it up. Of course, there are different levels of difficulty, and different lengths. You can choose a hunt that only typically takes a couple of hours, or one that can last for days, or even weeks. Like a real treasure hunt—or one you might find in media—you solve clues, or solve puzzles to get more clues to solve. Like a challenge competition, some of the clues can be earned through otherwise unrelated tasks. You might have to complete a Rubik’s Cube in order to unlock a secret hidden inside, or you might have to figure out how to milk a genetically engineered cow that’s as big as a house before an android will hand you your clue. One of them necessarily leads to the reward, while the other is arbitrary, and could theoretically be anything. This isn’t a criticism, just a clarification that there’s a healthy mix of tasks to complete, and while some of them might seem silly, or make you feel embarrassed, they’re all meant to be fun. It gets even more complex, because you’re sometimes working alone, and sometimes with a team, and sometimes against others, and you don’t always get to choose your team. If multiple people arrive at the same challenge or puzzle, you may be required to work with them, or compete against them. It really just depends. And those other people may be on the same treasure hunt with you, or on an entirely different one, which just so happens to intersect at this same point. You can also select a hunt that involves being on a team already, and even that sometimes goes up in the air, because they may make you compete with each other for individual rewards. They always tell you what you’re meant to do, though, so don’t worry about getting overwhelmed by the rules. They obviously won’t tell you how to complete a given challenge, but they’ll make sure you understand it well enough to at least make an attempt. As I said, there are all sorts of different ways of going about this, and you have the power to choose your own destiny. I’ve run four hunts at this point, and I can recommend all four, but I can’t recommend any hunt that I’ve never been on. No one can. I doubt there’s even time for any given person to try every single variation, because I think they’re intending to retire some to make space for brand new ones. It changes all the time, just like life itself. One final note. There are some out there who believe that there is some sort of overarching plot here, and a secret hunt which will lead to genuine, valuable riches. I don’t know anything about that, but my advice would be to stick with what you’ve been given. You can’t get into this dome without choosing a particular hunt, and they’re gonna keep you on task. Even though you’re expected to figure things out on your own, it’s not a free-for-all, so don’t even try.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 17, 2398

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Everybody found their own room, and slept in The Constant that night. They didn’t make any plans for the next day, but it seemed as good a place as any. They stayed close to each other, even though they consisted of two parties of strangers. The next day, with nothing better to do, Ramses and Leona start looking into the database, or what’s left of it. There’s a lot still here, but it becomes clearer the more they look through the directories that a lot of data has been stripped. When Danica left, she knew someone else could find this place one day, and she didn’t want them to have access to certain information. The fact that she didn’t just run out all of the sudden, or die without warning, was already obvious. She had the wherewithal to seal up the top of the main elevator, and dismantle the elevator car itself. If she recorded some kind of log that might give them an idea why she’s no longer here, she took that with her too.

The little girl, Trina runs into the room, holding a small black box. “What is this thing?”

Leona isn’t paying her any attention, so Ramses takes it from her, and looks it over. “I have no idea? Wait. It looks like some kind of magnetic memory storage device.”

Leona turns her head. “It’s a video cassette tape.” She turns back.

“Where did you get it?” Ramses asks Trina.

“I think it was a library, but this is the only thing that was in it.”

Now Leona’s interested. “How big was this library?”

“Like, four stories tall, and maybe endlessly long?” Trina ballparks.

“And that’s the only thing you found?” Leona presses.

“Yeah, it was in this thing.” She hands Leona the case.

Jim Carrey is dreaming of himself lying on the snow next to Kate Winslet. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

“Is it a movie?” Trina guesses.

“Yeah.”

“Is it good? It must be good if they cleared out the entire library, except for this one thing.”

“Did you find it fallen on the floor, as if someone had dropped it, or still sitting on the shelf?”

“It was on the first shelf I saw when I walked in, facing the door. I looked through several aisles. They were all empty.”

Leona and Ramses give each other a look, but they’re not thinking the same thing. “Computer, where do you keep the VCR?”

The computer doesn’t respond vocally. It just lights up the floor and walls to lead them down to the legacy technology sector. Leona follows it, and Ramses and Trina follow her. They find the VCR already connected to a box TV, rather than tucked away somewhere. She expects to blow dust off of the top, but it’s perfectly clean. There’s a robot in here somewhere who’s been maintaining the bunker. Leona inserts the tape, and presses play.

“I love you,” says Joel.

“Meet me in Montauk,” Clementine whispers back.

That’s it. It’s stuck between 1:30:50 and 1:30:55, repeating those two lines over, and over, and over again. The tape keeps skipping. Ramses thinks he might be able to fix it, but Leona stops him. “It’s a clue.”

“It’s a clue for what?”

Leona pauses the video, and echoes the last line herself. “Meet me in Montauk. Meet me in Montauk.”

“Does that mean anything to you?” Trina asks.

“That sounds like a city. Is that where we’re meant to go?” Ramses questions.

Leona tilts her head, considering the words, and what they may mean in a more figurative sense. Thinking she has it figured out, she runs off. The other two follow her again, down the hallways, and into the main living area. Heath, Alyssa, and the boys are already there, chatting about this and that.

“Is everything okay?” Heath stands up to help in whatever way necessary.

Leona ignores him, and heads straight for the corner of the room. She stares at the wall. “Where’s that sledgehammer?”

“Why do you need it?” Heath asks.

She just turns to him and scowls. He’s not really in a position to question her. Intellectually, she knows she shouldn’t blame him—that it could never have been his idea to use a time bullet to blow a hole in a concrete ceiling five kilometers up—but she can’t help but be angry at him anyway.

He steps over to the main elevator shaft, and retrieves the sledgehammer.

“Rambo,” Leona says, “he’s still recovering. Could you do the honors?”

Ramses accepts the tool from Heath. He gets in position, but doesn’t swing. He places the business end against the wall that she’s staring at. “Right here?”

“Yes,” she orders.

He does as he’s told, bashing the hammer against the wall over, and over, and over again. The facility is constructed out of metal, probably graphene, and maybe other metamaterials. There’s no wood, or even brick anywhere. They wouldn’t last very long. Why is this made out of wood? Once he’s gotten through, they find a door on the other side. He knocks the last of the wall out of the way, and wrenches it open. A light flickers on to reveal an upright stasis pod. There’s only one reason to design a pod like that, and it’s if the user is literally kept in stasis. Time is probably moving at infinitely slow speeds, so almost none will have passed since they stepped in. As long as you have power, it’s the only way a normal person could survive for many thousands of years, if not longer. Other methods allow for too much aging, radiation poisoning, and other failures.

Leona uses the touchscreen to command the pod to open. When it does, Mateo steps out. “You’re here!” she exclaims. “You’ve been here the whole time?”

Mateo takes her by the shoulders, and pushes her out. He looks around the main living area to take stock. “Is everybody who came down here in this room right now?”

“What? What are you talking about?” Ramses asks.

Mateo screams in his face, “is everyone here!”

“Yes.”

“Then run!” Mateo sprints across the room, to the little secondary elevator. He holds the door open, and ushers everyone in one by one. First Leona, then Ramses, Trina, Carlin, Moray, and Alyssa. Heath and Mateo squeeze in last, making it a very tight fit. But it’ll be worth it. Mateo pops open the firefighter access panel with a flathead screwdriver that he has in his pocket. He reaches in, but waits. “There are more people in here than I thought there would be. Make sure the young ones are in the middle.

Moray has to adjust a little, but it’s about as good as they’ll do.

Mateo pulls the switch. They shoot upwards, faster than any elevator should safely move. They can feel the g-force desperately trying to squish them into the floor. But it’ll be worth it.

“Oh my God!” Heath shouts.

“Whoopee!” Trina cries.

At some point, the elevator car starts to tip over. Everybody begins to yell in fear, even the little one, because they’ve reached the surface, and now they’re coming back down. They don’t crash, though. They can feel themselves bouncing, rolling, bouncing, and rolling. When the ride finally ends, the door opens automatically, allowing them to see the giant air bags that released automatically, which are now gradually deflating.

“What the hell was that?” Leona demands to know.

Before Mateo can say anything, they hear a boom. A plume of dirt rises into the sky. He runs over, and the rest are compelled to do the same. They hear rushing water as they near the road, and after they get over the hill, they can see the crater. It’s filling up with water, resourced from pipes that they barely have time to see before they’re covered up.

“I say again...what the hell was that?” Leona repeats.

Mateo catches his breath. “It’s Danica Lake.” He falls to the ground, and passes out.