The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 21, 2534

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They were abandoned and stranded in the middle of interplanetary space in the Gatewood Collective. Their communication systems were advanced, but a signal could only be so powerful in such a small form factor. Ramses hadn’t given them quantum messengers to store in their pocket dimensions, but even if he had, those were mostly gone. When Spiral Station was thrown into the quintessence bubble, all of their pockets exploded. He built a new one for each of them while they were trying to escape, but these were only a stop-gap measure until he could fabricate a new lab for himself. Their supplies would be enough for them to survive here for a few days, but if they didn’t find somewhere to land soon, they could be in trouble.

When they reappeared in the timestream on August 21, 2534, another ship was waiting for them. It didn’t even reach out first. Whoever was on it was expecting them to arrive, and at that very second, for it transported them inside of it instantly. It looked like the average starship bridge, with the horseshoe-shaped console that allowed everyone to see everyone, as well as the viewscreen. The difference here was that the room wasn’t rotating. It didn’t need to. It was equipped with dimensional gravity, which was one of the few technologies that The Shortlist granted the vonearthans use of following The Edge meeting. That wasn’t why it was here, though. One of the people on the list was evidently in command as she was sitting at the head. It was Pribadium Delgado. “Hey, guys. Perfect timing. I could set my clock by your appearances...for now.”

That was a weird thing to say, but Leona chose not to address it. She stepped forward. “Miss Delgado, it’s nice to see you.”

“It’s nice to see you again too, but if you want to get technical, I’m not a miss. I was selected to be Gatewood’s Chief Asset Manager.”

“Which means...?” Mateo asked vaguely.

“We don’t have presidents or prime ministers here,” Pribadium began to explain. “This is nothing more than a materials depot. Travelers only come for what they need to get out of the stellar neighborhood. Not many of us live here permanently, but we are necessary to manage the resources. I’m not in charge of the people so much as I’m in charge of the stuff. I decide who gets what, how much, and from where. Well, I don’t do it alone. There’s also the Chief Distribution Manager, the Chief Allocation Manager, the Chief Fabrication Manager, and the Chief Personnel Manager. We’re all chiefs, but I’m at the tippy top. I’m the Chief Chief.”

“Fitting for you,” Mateo said to her. “Congratulations.”

“They wanted someone from the Shortlist,” Pribadium went on, “and we agreed that one of us ought to be here since they’re getting so much time tech. They might have asked you, but your condition makes that impossible.”

“I’m not jealous or mad, Pribadium,” Leona said. “I think they made the right call. The question is, what call are you making now? Is this a rescue, or something else?”

“It is a rescue, of course,” Pribadium agreed, “but it’s true, I need to make sure that you don’t cause any trouble. I’m not saying you need to leave, but you won’t be going anywhere—or doing anything—without an escort.” She glanced over at the rest of the crew.

“I was hoping to build a new lab,” Ramses said. “We can’t leave until I do, and it’s going to take some time because I lost a very valuable piece of technology. It’s quite sensitive, even in light of the Edge, I would rather be able to work alone.”

Pribadium nodded. “Gatewood is a well-oiled machine. I don’t have to micromanage anyone. If you need to build a lab, we will find you a pre-excavated asteroid, and I will personally monitor you there.” She pointed at one of the crewmembers on the starboard side, who started tapping on his console, and then looked back at Ramses. “I’m sorry, but that’s the best I can do.”

“No, I’m not mad about that,” Ramses insisted. “I trust you to be there. I just didn’t want someone who, uhh...”

“Doesn’t really understand the nature of the time tech?” Pribadium guessed. “We still hold secrets. The Edge meeting didn’t result in the promise of one hundred percent transparency. These guys know not to ask questions.”

The crew had been silent this whole time, but one of them tensed up. “Yes, sir, no questions, sir!”

“He’s joking,” Pribadium said with a smile. “I mean, what he’s saying is true, but his tone isn’t genuine. They’re not my minions, or however it looks from that side of the console.”

“From this side, it looks like you’re judging us,” Romana blurted out.

Pribadium laughed. “Yeah, that’s one purpose of the horseshoe layout. It’s quite standard. The main purpose is so no one has to crane their neck to look at anyone else, but there’s a reason why there’s all that open space in the center, and why it’s two steps down. It’s nice to meet you, by the way. Pribadium Delgado.” She reached her hand out towards the center.

“Romana Nieman.” She stepped up to a little platform at the top of the horseshoe, which was designed specifically so the captain could shake hands from this vantage point. “I’ve heard of you, but not much.”

“We’ll get to know each other better as Mister Abdulrashid focuses on his lab.” Pribadium looked over at the crewmember who she pointed to earlier. “Have you found us a good candidate?”

“I assumed you wanted something at the extreme,” he replied. “I found one in the CDS that is pretty remote.”

“Perfect,” Pribadium decided. She looked over to someone on the port side. “Plot a jump.”

“CDS?” Mateo asked Leona in a whisper.

“Circumstellar debris shell,” Leona answered, loud enough for the whole team to hear, in case they also didn’t know. “Like the Oort cloud, but a generic term. Almost every star system should have one.” She looked back up at Pribadium. “What is your teleportation range? It’s gonna be a year for us if it’s only one AU per second.”

Pribadium smirked. It’s not the AU-range. It can jump a light-month in one second.” She looked over at her pilot again. “Cycle us out.”

After a minute of burst mode, they were at their destination, on approach to an icy planetesimal which the viewscreen said was about three kilometers long at the major axis and two at the minor. One of the crewmembers suddenly stood up. Her section of the console rose up with her. “Sir. I’m picking up a distinct power signature. Someone is living out here.”

“Mauve alert!” Pribadium ordered. “Registrar?”

“It’s empty!” the registrar insisted. “This body should be empty! It’s barely excavated, just enough for a standard hopper dock and a pressure seal!”

“It’s not that one,” the woman who alerted them to the problem clarified. “But it’s nearby. Computer, highlight the signal.”

The view zoomed out, panned over slightly, then zoomed in to a different object that was reportedly roughly only 11 million kilometers away from the first one.

“Get me over there right now,” Pribadium ordered.

They jumped.

Someone who hadn’t spoken yet stood up. “Should I prep an away team?”

Pribadium thought it over, her eyes quickly drifting over to Team Matic.

Leona sighed, not upset or annoyed, more just to focus her breath. “We better earn our keep.”

Angela rematerialized her helmet, and let the visor slam shut. The rest did the same at varying speeds. They started to teleport individually to the celestial body. Before he left, Ramses flicked a comms disc up to Pribadium. “If you can’t figure out how to integrate this into your comms array, just hold it against your mastoid.”

The first thing that Ramses and Mateo saw once they caught up was Romana falling on her face, right at their feet. “Careful,” Mateo told her as he was lifting her back up. “Ice is slippery.”

“It’s not slippery, though,” Marie contended. She lifted her boot, and it looked difficult.

Mateo did the same. Yeah, it was tacky, like they were on the surface of a solidifying tarpit. “What the hell?”

“Ice out here works differently than it does under an atmosphere,” Leona explained as she started to walk. “Keep moving. Our suits might actually be welding themselves into it.”

“Why did she fall then?” Mateo questioned.

“Because she tried to slide,” Angela said.

“I’m a little scamp,” Romana said cutely.

“Testing, testing. One, two, three. Testing, testing. You and me. Testing, testing. Catch a movie?”

“Comms work,” Mateo responded to Pribadium.

“Our scans are detecting a modular habitat; family-sized. One rotating coin, one dormant hammer, three shuttles. An in situ harvester, and a fusion torch drive. This thing is a laser bore, which isn’t technically a weapon, but we’re gonna move away. We’ll keep an eye on signal integrity, though, and stay in teleporter range. We’re not picking up any lifesigns, but it could be sufficiently shielded. We’re not exactly equipped with the best sensors as they are typically not needed.”

“Aye, Captain,” Leona acknowledged.

“Aye, Captain,” Pribadium said back.

Leona generated a hologram of a coin-shaped object. Everyone adjusted their positions to get a better look at it. She tapped on the image demonstratively. “I want us in teams of two, back to back. Romana and Angela, jump right here to twelve o’clock. Ramses and Olimpia, over at three o’clock. Marie and Mateo, nine o’clock.”

“There are seven of us,” Angela reminded her.

“I’ll be alone at six o’clock, I’ll be fine,” Leona assured them. “We’ll only be three hundred and fifty meters from each other. Now, get into position, and go on my mark. We don’t have weapons, but prepare for resistance. Before you go, lower your center of gravity. Not all of us have teleported to a spin habitat before. It can be jarring. It’s not the same as regular mass gravity.”

They all got into position, Leona gave the signal, and they jumped. They immediately heard weapons fire. Mateo looked over to see bullets ricochet off of his daughter’s suit. Nothing was getting through, and it didn’t look like it was hurting her, or Angela, but the shooting needed to stop anyway. He used his HUD to calculate the source, finding one gunman hiding in a thicket of bamboo trees between the ladies and Ramses and Olimpia. Mateo jumped over there, and shoulder checked him.

The shooter was barely fazed. He pulled out a handgun, and started shooting Mateo instead, point blank. They were more powerful than the firearms of yesteryear, to be sure, but they weren’t even making a dent. Mateo stood there for a moment, taking it. Finally, he knelt down and snapped his fingers at a pile of dead bamboo leaves. They caught fire, which began to spread. The man stopped shooting, not because he was scared of the fire, or even of losing his bamboo. He was just profoundly confused. As the fire suppression system was putting it out, Mateo had enough time to disarm the man, confiscating the rifle from the ground as well.

Leona and the rest of the gang were here by then. She helped the stranger up, and set him down sideways in a hammock. “Hello,” Leona began in a friendly voice after receding her nanites until she was wearing normal clothes, maybe showing a little too much cleavage. “My name is Leona Matic. That’s my husband, Mateo, and our wife, Olimpia. Ramses, Angela, Marie, and Romana,” she said, pointing. “Report.”

“I’m nobody. Just tryna live my life.” He adjusted awkwardly. “Could we go somewhere else? I feel quite vulnerable lying back like this.”

“That’s kind of the point,” Leona replied with a smile. “I understand that you were trying to protect your home. And if you weren’t—if you’re just a sadistic murderer—then I’ll go ahead and write self-defense on the report, okay? But you’re going to answer my questions, because you are currently violating Gatewood law, as well as Core World law and Earthan law. Just all the laws. So my first question is, were you aware of that?”

“I was,” the squatter admitted.

“Okay. Did you think you just wouldn’t get caught, or was it an active act of defiance against the establishment?”

He shrugged. “Maybe a bit of both.”

“All right, I can work with that. Are you alone?”

“I have...a staff. Varying degrees of intelligence.” They heard a rustling in the leaves several meters away, and looked over to see a beautiful woman on approach. Now, she—she was showing too much cleavage. She just stood there with a mousey look on her face once she spotted them. The squatter looked at her over his shoulder. “That’s my companion model. She won’t hurt you.”

“Do you have a guard model?” Leona pressed.

The squatter sighed, annoyed. “He’s in maintenance at the moment. You couldn’t have come at a worse time. Unless...you planned it that way.”

“We didn’t know you were here,” Leona promised. “We might end up neighbors if the CAM lets you stay.”

“She would do that?”

“I doubt it, but it’s not impossible. You’re supposed to leave. Why didn’t you just leave?” Leona looked around in general. “At low subfractional speeds, this shell’s raw materials would last you hundreds of years, or thousands if you shut off internal systems, and go on ice.”

“It’ll last me a million if I stay put,” the squatter reasoned.

“But you would be in danger for those million years, since you are here illegally,” Leona volleyed.

“It’s illegal anyway,” he argued. “I didn’t have the resource credits. I stole this comet. I was trying to stay quiet.”

“Where are you from, partner?” Leona asked, seemingly shifting topics.

“Earth,” he answered.

“You don’t need resource credits if you’re in Sol. You could have taken something from the Oort cloud.”

He shook his head. “No one would take me there. It costs fuel to decelerate. Ironically, even though Barnard’s Star is farther away, it was easier to get here, because the cyclers run constantly. After deceleration, I snagged myself an escape pod, and drifted all the way out here until I found a suitable shell.”

“Hm,” Leona said. “That’s probably true, isn’t it?” Silence for a moment. “Well, I’m sorry, but the boss has already seen you. If we had encountered you on our own, we would have kept our mouths shut, but there’s no going back now. You are at her mercy.” She looked at her clock. “And we’re scheduled for a new assignment at the end of the Earthan day, so we won’t be able to advocate for you unless you come with us right now, and face the music.”

They returned to Pribadium’s ship, where they did attempt to advocate for this man, to the best of their ability. Pribadium said that she would take their recommendation under advisement, but when they returned to the timestream a year later, he had been in hock the whole time, and his hermit habitat had been completely dismantled. She claimed to have no choice, that if she didn’t enforce the laws, others would seek to be exceptions, and the entire system would collapse. Her proposal was that they take him out of there, somewhere very far away, since he had no resource credits, and wasn’t allowed to stay. They would take her request under advisement.

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Castlebourne Capital Community: Here by Default (Part I)

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The year was 2521. Dreychan didn’t agree that it should be, though. He had the idea to stop tying themselves to the Earthan calendar, and form their own identity. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that popular of an idea, and one of the reasons was that a lot of people living here didn’t have a very decent grasp of the passage of time anyway. On some homeworlds, it wasn’t necessary. They produced what they were indoctrinated to believe should be produced for the Empire, and that was just how things were. You didn’t need to know what day it was. The transport ships would come and grab what they demanded on their own schedule. As long as everyone kept up with quota, everything was fine. They weren’t living in the Goldilocks Corridor anymore, however, and were not subject to the Exin Empire’s rule. They needed to assimilate into this region of space while somehow forming a new, distinctive culture. That was no easy feat, and it wasn’t Dreychan’s job to do that. Perhaps in the future, when the war is over, they will be able to focus on their own self-fulfillment. For now, though, they just needed to survive.

Everyone was arguing over each other, and Dreychan was staying out of it. He didn’t have much choice. They never listened to him anyway. They called it the Council of Old Worlds. Everyone here represented the planet where they once lived, and were elected by their constituent refugees, according to whatever methods they chose. Of course, a ton of people didn’t even understand the concept of voting, so it took some time, and a lot of education, but they all figured it out. Dreychan was different. You might even call it special, but be careful who you say that to, or they’ll laugh you out of the room. He was the only person from his planet who agreed to come to safe harbor on Castlebourne.

Ex-777 was one of the few places where the residents didn’t suffer. They were the ones benefitting from all the labor that the slaves on the other planets performed. The only known world more desirable was Ex-999, or maybe Ex-69, depending on your priorities and proclivities. The rest of the Council hated Dreychan, which he thought was ridiculous. He was the one person who defected. If anything, they should revere him. They escaped to a better world, but for him, it was a lateral move, but not even that, because he was too busy to enjoy all the recreation that Castlebourne had to offer.

Ugh, he should stop feeling sorry for himself. Yes, he was only on the Council by default, and yes, he deserved to have his voice heard anyway, but it wasn’t irrational for them to ignore it. He wasn’t representing anyone, but that was exactly why they did need to listen, because this council shouldn’t exist. They shouldn’t be maintaining their old world connections. They should all become one peoples. How could he get through to them?

“What do you think?”

Dreychan just sat there, and yawned a little.

“Drey,” she urged.

“What? Are you talking to me?” They weren’t usually talking to Dreychan.

“We need your opinion.” What was her name? Ex-777ers were all born with names, but just about everyone else only had a number. It was a way for the Empire to dehumanize its subjects. Once they came here, they were told that they could start using names now, and there were various ways of choosing them. He just couldn’t recall hers right now, which was very bad of him. She was actually quite nice, and didn’t seem to hold the same grudge against Dreychan as the others.

“What was the question?” Dreychan asked awkwardly.

“Oh my God.” Now, Dreychan knew Maaseiah. There was no way he was gonna forget a name like that. The Corridor was 16,000 light years away, and actually predated Earth’s bible times due to time travel, so none of Earth’s religions existed there. This meant that Maaseiah had to do a ton of research to decide on the most obnoxious name he could possibly find. He seemingly wanted to put his delusions of grandeur on full display, and he freakin’ nailed it. “Do you want to be a part of this, or not?”

The lovely woman sighed—Lubiti! That was her name. He didn’t know why she chose it. He was remembering now that she was from Ex-883, which manufactured spaceship shielding plates, and really that was it. “Calm down, Masy.” She always called everyone by a nickname. It was exciting to learn that names could be unique and interesting, and even more exciting to learn that each one came with variations and alternate spellings. She turned to face Dreychan again. “We’re trying to decide whether we want to move Castlebourne closer towards the Core Worlds, or stay out here in the Charter Cloud.” This was a fascinating concept. The closest colonies to Earth were the most cohesive, and the farther out you went, the less familiar the culture and laws became. These were divided into three-dimensional bands. The Charter Cloud wasn’t the farthest, but it was beyond the stellar neighborhood, which meant they were afforded no protection from hostile forces. They had to protect themselves, and the decision was already made to simply leave the area entirely.

“Hrockas needs an answer,” Maaseiah explained. Hrockas literally owned this whole planet himself. He was the one who built the domes, and filled it with all the fun and interesting things to do. He graciously let the refugees live here when they had nowhere else to go. He was even more powerful than the Council. “He said he needed it yesterday, which I suspect was metaphorical, though he might be expecting us to send a message back in time, which we will need to look into. Teemo, write that down.”

Teemo wrote it down. He was from a world with very few refugees, so it was relatively easy for him to be elected the council representative, though unlike Dreychan’s case, the ones who chose to stay behind did so because they were too scared. They were right to be, given Castlebourne’s predicament now.

Dreychan had already thought of this, because he was good at being ahead of the game. He just didn’t have all the facts. “If we move closer in,” he begins, “will we join the neighborhood? Will our status amongst the other worlds change?”

“No,” Lubiti answered.

“So we’ll be...weird. There might be colonies farther out than us who are better protected due to us being an anomaly.”

“I don’t agree with that interpretation,” Maaseiah countered. “To get to one of the other colonies, they might have to pass by us. In fact, I propose we intentionally place our star close to another colony, so we can receive some ancillary protection from them. From what I gather, the Teaguardians volunteer their firepower to protect the colonies. Surely if we ask for help, they will just help us, even if we’re not technically entitled to it. It would be a lot easier if we were only a couple light years away when we ask, though.” Teaguardians were battleships that came from an outpost called Teagarden, which orbited Teegarden’s Star. They evidently didn’t stray far from the root word. They were only obligated to provide protection to the Core Worlds and the stellar neighborhood. Castlebourne didn’t qualify, and it was sounding like it never would, even if they moved themselves closer.

“The whole point of moving our host star is to not have to ask for protection,” Lubiti reasoned. “We’re trying to hide, which is why we should limit the number of people who know where we are. Our location has already been leaked. Let’s not let it leak again, because we don’t know if we’ll be able to move again. Hrockas never told us how it’s going to be accomplished in the first place. It may be a one time thing.” She was so right about that. “Do you agree?” she pressed Dreychan.

“I do,” he said, and not just because she was pretty, and he never did find someone to love on Ex-777. “We must stay in the Charter Cloud. Our anonymity is our greatest strength. We can swing quite far from here, and still stay a hundred and eight light years from Earth. Hell, we could go a little farther.”

“We can’t go farther,” someone else contended. Dreychan didn’t know his name, but he used to work out of Ex-741, which was a giant spaceship manufacturing plant, so he understood all this light year/special relativity stuff. “I mean, we technically could, but we shouldn’t. Castlebourne serves as a recreational hub for the entire colonial sphere. Everyone wants to come here, and the population is rising exponentially. Now, quantum communication allows them to make their connections without knowing our coordinates, but vast distances are more difficult than closer ones. It’s called coherence. Hrockas will not want to make the casting equipment work harder than it has to. If anything, we should get a little bit closer, but I agree that we ought to stay in the Charter Cloud, and mostly move laterally, relative to the Core.”

“We must remember that it is not our call exclusively,” Lubiti jumped back in. “Hrockas is asking for our input, not our decision. He probably will want to move a little closer, but stay in the Cloud, because that’s what gave him the freedom from the establishment. And don’t forget that we have our own defenses. We don’t need the Teaguardians. If the Oaksent finds us again, and we can’t get away, we can fight back. We will fight for our new home.”

“I agree with Biti,” Dreychan said.

“Of course you do,” Maaseiah spat.

Dreychan ignored that outburst. “If for no other reason than to stay in his good graces, we should give Hrockas the answer that he prefers. What is easier on him and whoever has this power to move a sun? What do they want to do?”

“Okay.” Council Chair Rezurah stood up. “I think it’s time for another vote. If we can secure the supermajority right here, I will be able to meet with Hrockas today to determine the particulars. Worst case, we will get back to you tomorrow morning for Council approval. If all goes well, we should be traveling at relativistic speeds by the end of the month. I urge you to vote wisely, as this decision could mean the difference between staying hidden, and being discovered by the enemy. Teemo, you’ll count this time, as you have not done it in a while.” They rotated this responsibility to make it fair, and to make sure that no one would have more than one opportunity to cheat.

The vote went in favor of Lubiti and Dreychan’s plan. Well, it wasn’t really theirs, and very much not his. Around half of the people agreed with it before they even started, and half of the rest had come around. Rezurah went off to her meeting with Hrockas, which she was already late for, and the Council meeting was closed. Dreychan was just going to return to his habitat, as he did every day, but Lubiti stopped him in the hallway. “Hey, a few of us were going to have some fun in 2.5Dome. You interested?”

“I don’t know what that is,” Dreychan responded, when he really should have just politely declined, since he didn’t like anyone who might be going besides her, and he wasn’t really the fun type. All his old peers were surprised that someone chose to give up paradise to become a refugee, but not surprised that it was him. He liked the boring life.

“It’s hard to explain. You just kinda have to see it. Come on!” she encouraged.

He did want to spend more time with her, to maybe see if his sudden feelings were just because she was the only person in the world who would give him the time of day, or if they were more substantial. “Okay. Sure. Why not?”

They sat alone together in a vactrain pod. The others had evidently either already left, or would be meeting up with them later. Despite Lubiti’s mild protests, Dreychan ended up looking through the prospectus for this adventure dome. There was reportedly a time when video games on Earth were so unsophisticated that they were two-dimensional. The player could move up or down or side to side, but no other direction. In fact, a lot of them apparently wouldn’t even let you move your character backwards, if there was something you missed before. The other half dimension was because the playspace was in base reality, so it was still technically 3D. Still, they would be in a very narrow field of play, and had to make it through the level without falling, or being killed by something. Both the prospectus and Lubiti assured him that the dome came with a number of different varieties. Most of this world’s visitors could die and come back to life in new bodies, so they could actually fall into a river of lava and be fine. For people like them, who only had one life to live, the levels were a lot safer, though the reviews promised that they were still fun. Good for her, not great for him.

The train stopped. They stepped off, and approached the counter for registration. “Froenoe, party of three. We already filled out our info, and signed consent forms.”

They did? That was news to Dreychan. He certainly didn’t sign anything. Whatever, he trusted her. But hold on, party of three?

Lubiti sensed his confusion. “It’s better in small groups. The others will be running their own game nearby.”

“Yes, I have you here,” the registration bot said to Lubiti. “Your third is already at the entrance.” He set two green bracelets on the counter between them. “These are your security bands. If you ever run into issues, squeeze that button, and a door will open up on the side wall, where you can step out onto a platform that follows you around the whole time.” Scary, but at least there was a theoretical way out.

“Thanks,” Lubiti said. She took the bands, and then they listened to a little more about how safe it was, that no one has ever been permanently hurt, and all that stuff.

They then took another train to their playspace, where they found none other than Maaseiah waiting for them. That was the most surprising development today. He and Lubiti didn’t seem to like each other, and he really didn’t like Dreychan. “Is he ready?”

“No. That’s the point,” Lubiti replied. Something had changed in her voice. She was no longer smiley and light, but overserious, and maybe a little angry? It was so confusing, Dreychan didn’t understand what was happening.

The three of them stepped through the entrance, and onto the first platform. It was very narrow. They would be able to pass each other, but only if they squeezed by, facing the restrictive walls, one way or another. After the door closed, a third wall slid across in front of it, and then began to make its way towards them. Yes, this was one of the ones that didn’t let you go backwards. Lubiti and Maaseiah walked a few meters forward. There weren’t any obstacles yet. They must have wanted you to get acclimated to the environment first. Shockingly, they exchanged a nod, then pressed their emergency buttons at the same time. Two doors opened up next to them.

“What’s going on?” Dreychan questioned, laughing, trying to sound friendly.

“We can’t trust you,” Maaseiah contended. “We can’t trust you to know where Castlebourne will move to. For all we know, you’re the one who leaked our location in the first place.”

“I didn’t,” Dreychan insisted for the umpteenth time.

“And now you never will.” Lubiti took one step through her special exit.

“You know I have one of those too,” Dreychan reminded them, shaking his green bracelet for them to see. It glowed a little in the dim lighting.

“Press it all you want,” Lubiti replied with a shrug. “I broke it.” She left, as did Maaseiah.

Dreychan pressed his button. He pressed again and again, but she wasn’t lying. There was no escape. The moving wall hit him in the ass, forcing him to move forward. He just stood there, letting it slide him down the path, ready to fall into the next foam pit or water tank. But it wasn’t foam, or water. It was lava. He could actually die here.

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Microstory 2464: Hivedome

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There are all kinds of hive minds, and some are more dangerous than others. According to the Core World definition, however, all hive minds are dangerous, because they have the potential to destroy all individuality in the entire universe. I used to think that that was an exaggeration, but I feel differently now. I am a former member of the Baileribo Colony. Founded by a man whose last name you can probably guess, the Baileribo Society first formed in the year 2062. At the time, mind uploading and consciousness transference were still in their infancy, and a true hive mind was beyond our grasp. Archaea Baileribo died before his dream was realized, but the hive mind honors his name to this day. I used to believe in that, but what I didn’t understand was that I didn’t believe in anything. The collective believed in it, and I was forced to agree. I won’t go too much into what my life was like before, but I was born about 300 years ago in a libertarian lunar base. It was a hellscape, and I wanted to get out. Everything was about individual liberties, but nothing was about community. I yearned for something better. Then along came a group of Baileriban recruits, and I was instantly hooked. The promised to take me out of the dystopia, and into paradise. I believed them, I trusted them. Now, I’m not saying that Baileribo is an evil entity, just that it could stand to be more honest and transparent. I didn’t have the chance to learn all the facts before it was too late, and at that point, I wasn’t myself anymore. The Baileriban are telepathic, but the means of telepathy is not something that can be genetically engineered. I don’t know why. It wasn’t my department. That might sound paradoxical, but I’ll get into that. In order to join the collective, they implant a special telepathy organ called a baileriboport, which allows forces you to share your thoughts with everyone. It takes a few weeks to get used to, but then it’s a magical sensation. I won’t lie to you, I was the happiest when I was connected. Then I saw something that I wasn’t meant to. The hive mind isn’t the only entity in Hivedome—which I should have told you before, we fled to recently to avoid persecution by the Stellar Neighborhood establishment. It’s only one layer of the lie. It’s run by a group of individuals who can share their thoughts with each other, but don’t have to. They can block their own signals, keep secrets from each other, and can even disconnect at will. They are the elite. They make all the decisions while making it seem like a group idea. They were walking amongst us without the rest of us knowing. Seeing this truth broke my brain, and allowed me to override my own baileriboport just enough to start behaving erratically. They didn’t know why I wasn’t conforming, but it was disruptive, and I had to be stopped. I wasn’t the first to exhibit idiosyncratic conduct, and I won’t be the last, but I do believe that I’m the only one whose memories weren’t successfully erased after expulsion. Again, I don’t think that the Baileriban have any plans to hurt anyone, and they don’t technically coerce recruits. But they certainly don’t tell you everything. The Castlebourne government has granted me this opportunity to write a review of this permanently isolated dome which no one else has been allowed to speak on, because anyone who knows anything wouldn’t dare reveal our secrets. I implore you, if a recruiter comes to you, remember that they’re not really part of the hive mind. They’re just part of the people who control it from the outside. They can’t be trusted.

Microstory 2433: Tokyo 2077

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Did you ever go to Tokyo, Japan in the year 2077? Well...welcome back! I don’t know exactly why they chose this year for their recreation. I looked it up, there’s no Tokyo 2042, or Tokyo-Yokohama 2115. Maybe it’s random, or maybe the creator has some particular affinity for this city in this time period. They may have just as easily chosen 2075 or 2078; I dunno. I did find something when I searched for answers in the central archives that the year 2077 was used in a surprisingly great number of media, but they were all set in the future, because they were created before this. So maybe it’s just a nod to that, because the robot staff aren’t telling me anything. They just say, this is Tokyo 2077, have at it. I think I may know why Tokyo was chosen, though. At the turn of the 22nd century, there was a huge push towards population overcentralization. They figured out how to create megastructures that could fit hundreds of thousands of people each. They were nicer, newer, and allowed the rest of the land below to be returned to the plants and animals. They built these things several miles away from the population centers of the time, so people didn’t have to move very far, and once the old cities were emptied out, they could start to bulldoze them over. Tokyo was one of the last holdouts, and not because they hated pandas. There were a number of reasons, but the main one was that they were already so densely packed. There was no room to build the damn thing nearby, especially when competing against other priorities, like preexisting wildlife preserves, and historically protected settlements. They also wanted to build it near the ocean, because people love the water, and all that space was taken up, because like I literally just said, people love the water. Plus, the population by then in the Tokyo Metropolis was already so huge, one of these arcologies barely made a dent anyway. They needed a lot more to make any bit of difference. As I mentioned, it eventually merged with Yokohama, forming one gigantic city that wasn’t going anywhere soon. People eventually did move out, to seasteads, orbitals, interplanetary and interstellar colonies, and to just other parts of the world, but it took longer than anywhere else to find room to construct the megastructures. Anyway, if you have some particular interest in seeing what Tokyo looked like a few decades before this great transition—or in reminiscing—come check it out. There’s plenty to do here, but the theme isn’t any narrower than the city as a whole. It’s only a replica with robots simulating people living their everyday lives, so no one’s going to give you anything specific to do. People are starting to treat it like a violent video game, and destroying the androids like criminal thugs. I don’t know why it’s a growing trend in this particular dome, because the planet is riddled with non-self-aware droids, but you can try that if you have a lot of pent-up aggression. Be yourself, I guess.

Microstory 2318: Earth, September 4, 2178

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Dear Corinthia,

I hate that you were so anxious about my reply. It definitely didn’t help that you had to wait a whole week. Damn this blasted light lag! Rest assured now, though, if you keep talking to me, I’ll keep talking back. By the way, I do realize that I sent two messages by the time you could respond to the first one. I’ll try to be better about that in the future. It’s just that I had an update, and I was too excited to wait, so I didn’t really think about it. I don’t know anyone else in space, so every message I’ve ever tried to send has arrived at its destination almost immediately. I hear that researchers are currently trying to figure out how to send superluminal signals, but I don’t know how close they are to realizing that dream, and either way, people like us will probably be stuck with regular radios for the foreseeable future. It would be really cool, though—wouldn’t it—If we could talk to each other as if we were in the same room together? Surely it’s a pretty big priority. We’re not the only two people having this problem. You said that you don’t know much about Earth, but do you know about any of the other colonies? A lot of the rest of the solar system has been colonized by now too. I believe that they were already developing these other bases when your ship was launched, though we were babies, so maybe no one has thought to bring it up to you since then. I remember asking our dad once if we could move to one of the outpost worlds, and if any of them would be better, but he says that life isn’t any easier anywhere else. That makes sense, and now that you’ve described how hard it is in the habitats, I fully believe it. Earth was perfect for us, and fixing it wouldn’t be any more difficult than starting somewhere new. I guess there are no good places left. But we find little pockets of happiness where we can. Because of my father’s respectable position with the dome’s leadership, we’re afforded a larger private cabin. I won’t send any photos now, if you don’t want to send your own, but perhaps we can swap? I would sure like to get a better idea of where you are. Who knows? They might be strikingly similar. Let me know what you can do.

Sorry about the extra message,

Condor

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 17, 2438

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When the team stepped on board to familiarize themselves with their new ship, they were surprised to find out that the holographic generator that was meant to keep it invisible while it awaited the return of its original crew was not the only nonoperational component. The reframe engine was also broken. It was literally cracked. Trying to start it up could have vaporized them all, which was why it was so important to always run a preflight check before launch. Mirage didn’t know how this could have happened since the thing was fully intact the last time she saw it. Her best guess was that the Empire had somehow detected it, even while it was all cloaked up, and engaged it in battle. How it managed to ultimately avoid capture, and rendezvous with Mirage on Ex-666, was a question that this theory could not answer, but it was designed with its own AI, which could come out of dormancy as necessary. Its flight logs did not say anything about an attack, but maybe it erased this information on purpose, which Mirage said it might do if it suspected the risk of a temporal paradox.

As far as Mirage herself went, Niobe Schur managed to convince her to stick around to help formulate this new anti-Exin army. If the Empire was going to be destroyed, they were the ones to do it. They wouldn’t necessarily be staying here to work on this revolution, and they decided that any need they had to make some noise on other worlds would help Team Matic avoid being discovered. The fact that a new group of rabble rousers showed up once a year, generally a light year away from where an apparent different group of them showed up, was always a flaw in their plan. Everyone knew what the team’s pattern was, and even if they knew nothing about holographic disguises, they would eventually start to see that pattern shine through. Perhaps if others took up the mantle at the same time, the pattern might get drowned out as just one of many rebel factions spreading throughout the Corridor.

“Vitalie!613 has sent us the information that she was able to gather on the planets that we might be going to,” Leona said to the group. “Someone from just about every planet was sent to the resort recently enough to know what we could be in for. A few worlds are missing from the data, presumably because nobody from there ever won the competition, but that’s not a problem yet. Rambo?”

“Ex-811,” he began. “You could call it FarmWorld. So far, we’ve not seen a whole lot of automation going on, but this place wouldn’t survive without it. The whole surface is covered in crops, livestock, or oceans, lakes, and rivers of creatures. The people who work there are meant to keep the machines maintained, and to make executive decisions about the work. It is they who decide where the produce is going, and how much of it. There are some incompatibility issues going on with species that didn’t evolve alongside each other, so it’s also their responsibility to figure out how to return the ecosystem to homeostasis. Apparently, the people who used to work here, who now live on Ex-612, talked Vitalie’s ear off about it. They loved to brag about how they used to live here, that it was the best planet in the Corridor, besides the luxury worlds for the elite. I don’t know if that’s true, but I also don’t know whether there’s anything we can do here. What mission could we go on, besides finding Vitalie!811?”

“We could burn the crops.” When everyone frowned at Marie like she was a serial killer, she frowned back. “There are no bad ideas in brainstorming!”

“We don’t want the...Corridorians to starve to death,” Mateo told her. “But maybe we need to look at those distribution schedules. If someone isn’t getting enough food, either unintentionally, or as some form of oppression or punishment, we could maybe alter them?”

“That’s a good idea,” Leona agreed. “Though, that would be a long-term mission, and one thing we know about this region of space—and about ourselves—is that we are not built for the long-term. If we do something like that, our only hope is to sneak down and reprogram the automated delivery ships, and somehow make it so that the supervisors don’t realize that it’s happening.”

“Well, we’ll have to leave at the end of the day,” Marie began, “but maybe we can insert a ringer into the team.”

Leona nodded. “Vitalie!811. We could set her up as a new...President of Distribution, or something. Ram, do we have the necessary intel to put someone undercover like that?”

“Yeah,” Ramses answered, consulting his tablet. “We have a pretty recent roster. There may be some discrepancies from the time lag, but Distribution President is not a preexisting position, so I believe we could justify making it up.”

“We’ll have to find Vitalie!811 first, and then hope that she’s up for it.”

“That could be tricky,” Ramses said. “Those automators have tons of sensors. They’re not designed to detect sneaky humans, but they would see us anyway.”

“Maybe it’s time for us to do something different, ya know, instead of looking like celebrities,” Olimpia suggested. “We’re supposed to be able to turn invisible.”

Leona nodded. “That’s technically an ability that we have, but it’s complicated. “Time powers are ingrained into the neurology of the person who was born with them. And the way they specialize is not well understood. There are different flavors, even among people with the same thing. One teleporter, for instance, but only be able to make a jump by literally jumping into the air, while another doesn’t have that quirk. We’ve met other people who can manipulate photons, like Vito, but Alyssa McIver is not Vito Bulgari. He’s better at invisibility, she’s better at impersonation. I don’t think any of us has time to learn something new, at least not reliably.”

Olimpia smirked knowingly. “What are you talking about? I’ve been invisible during this entire conversation.”

“What are you talking about?” Leona questioned. “I’m looking at you right now.”

“Are you?” came Olimpia’s voice from behind them.

Everyone jolted their heads to find her leaning casually against the doorframe. They looked back to see the other Olimpia, still perched next to them on the couch. Mateo reached out, swept his hand through one shoulder, out the other, and back again. Yeah, she was just made of light.

The standing Olimpia giggled, and shivered intentionally. “Oo, Mateo, you just touched my boobies.”

Leona stood up and approached what was presumably the real Olimpia, and peered into her eyes. “You can throw a perfect image of your likeness. That’s very interesting. I’ve made external holograms before, but nothing quite like that, not something that moves fluidly enough to make someone think that it’s me.”

Olimpia shrugged slightly. “You’re the Captain, and Second Engineer. I’ve had more time to practice. I’ve actually been doing it in my spare time for a while now. The other day, when you were teaching us, I was faking low proficiency until I was ready to show off this level of sophistication.”

“We might use that in the future,” Leona acknowledged. “Thanks for letting me know, Loki.”

Olimpia smiled. “It’s nice to finally be able to contribute in some small way.”

“Thanks,” Mateo said. “Now I’m back to being the only useless one around here.”

“We’re not gonna have this argument again,” Leona told him.

“Can you turn others invisible?” Angela asked Olimpia.

“I’ve never tried, because I wasn’t telling anyone about it.” Olimpia glided over to her friend, and extended a hand to help her out of the chair. “One thing I do know is that I have to initialize it with a passionate kiss.”

“I don’t really care for PDA,” Angela muttered.

“Well,” Olimpia muttered back, “if you don’t wanna turn invisible, okay...”

Angela rolled her eyes, and let Olimpia kiss her in front of the group, leading Ramses to squirm a little in his seat. “All right, enough games” Angela insisted. “Let’s get on with it.”

Olimpia looked towards the floor, and started to take a deep breath, which incidentally transformed into a yawn. “Okay, I’m ready.” She shut her eyes, and continued to breathe deliberately. Beams of light began to shoot through her body. They weren’t really going through her, but striking a spatial field that she had formed all around herself, which teleported the flux of photons to the other side, and then let them continue on their way. The beams grew and merged with each other until she was fully gone. Now she could begin to put Angela through the same thing, but it was slower, more erratic, and prone to being undone. The beams would shrink, and unmerge after they had already come together. The light flickered, and parts of Angela’s body began to appear randomly all over the room. They could hear the grunts of frustration in Olimpia’s voice.

“It’s okay,” Leona said. “Ramses and I can come up with a different way to fool the sensors. We’ll find Vitalie!811, even if we have to stay here for a couple of days. We’ve done it before. There’s no rule that says we have to leave within 24 hours.”

“No, no!” Olimpia protested. She sighed and gave up trying to make Angela disappear, but she stayed invisible herself. She started to speak again through Holo!Olimpia on the couch. “It’s true that I won’t be able to figure this out today. I need more practice holding two flux fields up simultaneously, which as I was saying, I’ve never tried before, because I was keeping this all a secret. That doesn’t mean this can’t be done. I’ll just go down to the planet on my own.”

“No,” Leona argued, “we don’t go anywhere alone. I’m pretty sure that was your idea, Oli.”

“It was? Well, great. Then I can change it. I’m going alone.”

“No, you’re not. That is an order.”

“Leona,” Olimpia said calmly.

“What?”

“I’m already gone.”

“How is that possible?”

“I can throw sound particles too. That’s part of the deal, I guess.”

“Number one, no it’s not. Number two, they’re not particles; they’re waves, which is Physics 101. It’s deeply concerning that you think you’ve mastered this technique when you don’t even understand the basics of it.”

“Well, I don’t know how my heart pumps blood throughout my body, yet I’ve never accidentally stopped doing it, have I?”

“Mateo, she listens to you. Will you please talk to her?” Leona pleaded.

He tilted his head down to the side, kept it there for a few seconds, and tilted it the other way. “Olimpia, you go, girl.”

“Goddammit, Matty!”

“You can’t do everything, Leona,” Mateo contended. “We are a team, and we have to trust each other to help in our own special ways. I don’t know if you’re just jealous that she’s the best now, but it gets kind of annoying that you are always the end-all, be-all. You’re the leader, the scientist, the computer hacker, the master schemer. You’re the whole package, which tends to sideline everyone else. I don’t know if she’s gonna succeed down there, but I’m gonna let her try. And if something goes wrong, any one of us can jump down and save her. You can find your faith in us...or you can sulk in private, but you need to remember that you’re a captain, not a king.”

Fuming, but not about to blow up, Leona stuffed her fingers in Ramses’ pocket, and pulled up his magical clicker device. She pointed it at the Holo!Olimpia, and made her disappear with the push of a button. “The guy we’re trying to stop can do exactly what she can, but he can reach across light years. Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know,” Mateo admitted.

“Me neither, and that scares the shit out of me. What we’ve learned about our friend today presents us with two possibilities. Either it’s a coincidence, or that girl down on the planet ends up giving that man out there power. Everything we’re doing right now could just be a loop that we’re closing, which leads to the greatest tyrant the timestream has ever seen gaining everything he needs to accumulate the power he has now, but in the past. I have no proof that that’s what’s happening, but it’s a possibility. It always is. It’s happened to us before. Horace Reaver terrorized you at the beginning of your journey, because you ruined his life in another timeline. Zeferino Preston moved us around like chess pieces in a game that he had all but already won. I don’t want to be the cause of my own effect.”

“That’s a good point.”

Leona tapped on her neck. “Olimpia, don’t talk, it’s not safe. Your life is first priority. Finding Vitalie is only second priority. You understand me? I mean...I know you understand me, still don’t talk. If she’s down there, she’s been asleep for centuries, and she can stay that way for another few years while we focus on the mission at large. Get back up here safely by EOD, whether The Caretaker is in pocket, or not. If you do understand...send me some love.”

They all five felt a lot of love coming from Olimpia.

Leona couldn’t help but smile from it. “I love you too.” She tapped on her comms disc to close the channel. “Now. Ramses, please look back through the data that Vitalie!613 sent you. Start working on a new food distribution plan. If this entire planet is covered in crop and livestock, there’s more than enough to go around, even if every other planet is as densely populated as Earth. An army marches on its stomach. Prepare a disc for Vitalie too, because we may have to amend the plan later.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 16, 2437

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Finding the Vellani Ambassador was easy. Mirage had programmed it to follow her wherever she went while invisible with a space-warping generator on the hull, but something must have undone that at some point, because it was out in the open, and available to the public. The locals of Ex-666 had never entered the ship, but it was not clear yet whether they had ever tried, or if they deliberately stayed out of it. Because they had begun to revere it as a religious icon.

The government was a little too busy to return Mirage’s ship to her right away, though they did want to respect her ownership over it. They just really had to worry about preparing to go to war. The team was busy too, helping them take control of the eye in the sky. It was surprisingly easy. They were worried that there was some kind of catch that would come back to bite them in the ass, but the Chief Ascendant was convinced that no escape attempts had been made in the last 150 years, which probably caused some level of complacency.

Not much had actually changed about the world over the course of the last year. The armada from Ex-182 was not yet here. Some of the so-called prisoners were former fleet members, who knew enough about the ships that the empire used to tell them that they were mostly powered by reframe engines. They had built their vessels to be quite large, however, and scaling of the technology came at a cost. While regular fusion reactions were perfectly suitable to make the engine work for a smaller ship, like the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, capital ships demanded too much power. Not even a larger fusion reactor could compensate for the loss. The only way they could get up to maximum reframe speeds was to use matter-antimatter reactions. No one here knew enough about it to understand why that was a problem these days, but Mirage did.

“It was us,” she shrugged.

“You stole their antimatter reserves?” Leona asked her.

“Far as I know, it’s still there,” Mirage began to explain, but it’s hard to get to. It exists as a fully formed antistar, sitting out there alone in the void. Getting close enough to it to extract only as much antimatter that they need when they need it is a delicate dance. My team and I were tasked with engineering a containment megastructure. We were on schedule to completing that mission when I was separated from them, and captured. I knew that it was going to happen, so I made arrangements to halt all production and construction. If they returned to the project themselves, it’s going to take them a hell of a long time. I scattered my barges in all directions. Just getting them back would probably take longer than starting over from a new source of raw material.”

“Why were you helping them in the first place?” Mateo questioned. “Did you not realize that you were working for the bad guys?”

“We suspected from the beginning,” Mirage replied. “But we weren’t sure, we weren’t sure what level of technology they had—though it could have been vast considering their remoteness from the Earthan stellar neighborhood—and also we felt bad. We were the ones who destroyed their first antistar. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, they maintained a link between this region of the Milky Way, and Alpha Centauri. That’s how we ended up this far out in the first place. We were just going to Toliman to pick up my ship, which I had programmed to build itself years prior. There was something very wrong with that whole star system, so we blew up our asteroid to prevent anyone else from trying to investigate, and that’s what destroyed the star. It and the antistar annihilated each other.”

Leona winced. “Toliman has not been destroyed.”

“No, it had to have,” Mirage insisted. “What else could have happened?”

“I don’t know,” Leona contended, “but if Alpha Centauri B didn’t exist in this day and age, I would have heard about it.”

“Someone must have gone back to fix it,” Mirage guessed, “maybe me.”

“I don’t know how you would do that,” Ramses said.

“I have some ideas,” Mirage responded. She looked forward again, and sighed. “Looks like they’re nearly done.”

While Mirage was in the sixth circle of hell, the natives had transformed the site of the Vellani Ambassador into a sacred one. They didn’t worship the ship, nor whoever may have brought it here, but they conceived stories about how it might one day open for them, and a great savior would step out of it to rescue them from their damnation. It was only hitting them now that this was their very first sign of religious doctrine in this sector of the galaxy. The team hadn’t even noticed before, because vonearthan culture had managed to transcend its superstitious origins, so religion wasn’t much of a thing anymore. But the Goldilocks Corridor was apparently seeded with life thousands of years ago, and many of the worlds were severely underdeveloped. So it seemed rather odd, not that some evil religious order wasn’t controlling the masses alongside the evil empire, but that no one on the planets they had been to so far had taken comfort in the mystical. Was this agnosticism enforced...or incidental?

The religious leadership was dismantling the decorations and offerings that had been placed on and around the ship.  Some of them believed that Mirage was indeed their savior, and that their belief that she would literally come out of the Hope Chariot, which was what the worshipers called it, was just a matter of detail.

Why didn’t you have them do this before?” Angela asked. “You could have left before.”

“I figured I would give them one more year with it,” Mirage answered. “I knew that you would need that whole time to come back, and that kind of waiting means little to me in the long-run. I’ve developed high patience. Now they’ve had time to say their goodbyes.”

“Did you explain that it was just a regular ship, and not god, or whatever it is they believe?” Olimpia asked her.

“I don’t know if they believe me. Some think I am indeed the savior they’ve been waiting for, and others think that I’m just the one who is going to unlock it so the true savior can be released from it. This is a prison world, and while they’ve thrived here, they have not forgotten that. So if there’s a god of Ex-666, perhaps they’re a prisoner too, and maybe they’re trapped in the...Hope Chariot. It would explain why this deity hasn’t saved them yet.”

They had an interesting way to express respect here, at least as far as the religious people went. They would stretch their arms out wide, dip their nose down towards the ground as low as possible, and balance themselves out by raising one leg behind them as high as possible. Only the elderly members no longer flamingoed, but they still airplaned their arms, and lowered their head into a regular bow. The younger ones made the move with the most enthusiasm, and they did not care if they fell over in the attempt. “Hmm, it’s basically Warrior 3,” Marie noted, having tried yoga in the afterlife simulation in the early 19th century, before it was cool in the western world on Earth.

The Elder Priestess was the last in line to pay her respects to Mirage and the team. She made no attempt to bow, but smiled as wide as Mona Lisa, and nodded. As she passed by, she placed a comforting hand on Mirage’s shoulder, and walked down the hill to join the rest of the main group, who were watching from there. A huge crowd had convened behind them to witness the magic. Not everyone in the world believed, but surely there were plenty here who just wanted to see what happened. Fortunately, they were in an open expanse in the desert, which fit the instructions for the Ambassador to avoid populated areas, so something like this wouldn’t happen. The settlements here only sprung out as a result of its sudden appearance.

Mirage lifted her hand, and said in reference, “allons-y.” She snapped her fingers, prompting the back hatch of the ship to engage and lower. To her surprise, someone actually did step out. It was a young woman, perhaps in her early- to mid-twenties. She was completely ready for this, coming into the light with confidence and self-assuredness. The crowd went wild. A lot of them dove to the ground in a full Downward Facing Dog bow of intense unwavering loyalty and faith. The woman walked right down the hill, and approached Mirage. “Do you recognize me?”

“Niobe. You’re older now. How long have you been in there?”

This was the girl who was with Maqsud Al-Amin and Lilac’s son, Aristotle. She was a slave-child on Ex-324, but she originated on the Extremus planet of Verdemus. She smirked, and looked over at the team. “A few minutes.” She winked.

“Why?” Mirage asked.

“These people need someone to follow. They’re never going to let go of their convictions, at least not until they win the war. The Chief Ascendant is going to continue to run the state, but they are transitioning from peacetime, and they are severely underestimating what that is going to do to their culture. Someone else needs to be there to guide them. Now, I’m not going to explain why I’m the best person for the job, but it has to do with what I’ve experienced since we last saw each other. Just know that this is the right thing to do, and I’m not going to abuse my power. If you would like to be sure of that, you can stand by my side, Mirage. This team needs your ship more than you do.”

“What about...”

“Ex-10?” Niobe guessed. “Let it go, he means nothing. Do not be fooled by his low numerical designation. It’s a trick. Everything that Oaksent does is a joke, a smokescreen, or a mistake. So, how about it? Are you with me?”

Mirage looked back at the crowd, and let out her signature emulated sigh. She switched her gaze to Leona, who had made herself look like the real Iman Vellani. “Leona’s Rules for Time Travel, Number Fourteen, do not form, or inspire, a religion.”

“Leona is just a person,” Niobe reasoned, “not a god.”

“Nor are we.”

“We won’t act like one,” Niobe continued. “We’re there to help. They understand where we come from, but you were about to open this ship, and I saw an opportunity. I won’t apologize for that. I really am trying to help. The Empire must fall, and while I have limits to what I’m willing to do to accomplish that, this does not cross the line. You have to decide where your line is.”

Mirage shook her head as she thought about it. “Give me the rest of the day.”

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