Microstory 2567: Congressperson

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I am a United States Congressperson in Missouri’s fifth district, so I serve my country very close to Landis Tipton’s operation on the Kansas side. I was always skeptical as I have seen a lot of charlatans in my day. A not insignificant part of my job is finding constituents in need amidst a cacophony of people who are, quite frankly, not mentally well, or actively trying to waste my time. Still, I was civil about it, and cautiously optimistic, and I let him prove himself. But I didn’t just let him run wild. I asked questions, and I got more information. I did my due diligence. Now that he’s proven himself, we face a new threat. Just because he’s the real deal, doesn’t mean he can’t cause problems. In fact, I’ve seen the numbers, and he absolutely will. Or I should say, the Foundation will. I don’t want to put this whole thing on one person’s shoulders, because if he really were that much of a danger to us on his own, he would probably be a criminal. As far as I know, no one there has committed any crimes, but they don’t see the detriment that they will do. I’ll be blunt. The panacea will tank the economy. I don’t want to stop it, but I’ve been fighting to slow it down so we can get ahead of this thing. People have been so anxious for its release, and believe that it’s taking too long, but based on projected announcement dates, everything is happening far too fast. We might never recover from the devastation if this thing goes to market, free or otherwise. Again, I don’t want to halt development, but we need time to create programs which will protect U.S. citizens, and everyone else in the world, from the fallout. My concern is with my nation, and particularly, my district, but this will have worldwide repercussions, so even if I did manage to prepare my community for the changes, I can’t help the world alone. I need people on my side. I need people who understand my position, and will do what they can to contribute to the cause. I know that no one is trying to cause such harm on purpose. They all have good intentions, which is very noble of them, but they’re only worrying about their one little niche, and thinking that the changes will only have an effect on that. But it’s connected. It’s all connected. Everything we do in the modern day is a result of a million plus decisions that billions of people are making now, and made in the past. You have to look at the big picture. As I said, I can’t do this alone, so please, if you can do anything to support this cause, every dollar counts, and ever voice matters. Thank you.

Microstory 2564: Protester

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This is ridiculous. I can’t believe how small our movement is. It’s growing, but not nearly fast enough. Landis Tipton is not all that he’s made out to be. Sure, curing all disease sounds great, but there are major issues with it that not everyone can see. First of all, we have no idea what long-term health consequences there are from being healed. He could be giving everyone cancer. Cancer is when your cells multiply out of control, and even if you claim that he has control over the repairs while he’s breathing on them, what happens five years later, or ten, or thirty? We don’t know. They haven’t done nearly enough studies on the subject. He just bought a freaking hotel, and people just flocked there like he was a god. Some people actually believe he is a god, which is another issue, though we don’t argue that in our literature, or during our demonstrations, because it’s a sensitive subject. What’s not sensitive, and what every single person needs to understand, is that so much of our economy is centered around health and wellness. I know it sounds cold, but disease and deaths are necessities in life. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Medical professionals, food vendors, funeral homes, insurance companies, nutritionists and dieticians, fitness trainers, pharmaceutical companies. Hell, even personal injury law firms. There are so many others. They all rely on a world that isn’t perfect, and they do not exist in a vacuum. When you take all those things down, what happens to everything else? It doesn’t work. It falls apart. Again, I may sound callous to you, but you have to think about the ramifications of your actions. Landis, and this goddamn panacea they’re trying to make, is going to do more harm than good, and I firmly believe that. Now, if we had a universal basic income, and if we had more robust automation, I might think it’s okay. But we are woefully unprepared for what’s to come. We are not ready for the paradigm shifting changes that this drug will make. We’re holding it at bay, because Landis Tipton is only one man so his impact on these sectors is minimal. But if that’s about to change, we are royally, totally, and fundamentally screwed. I don’t think you can imagine what’s going to happen to the world. No one’s gonna be able to afford the panacea when they lose their jobs. “Oh, we’ll make it free.” I’ve heard no confirmation on that, and it introduces a plethora of other issues. It will be a logistical nightmare. This has to be stopped right now. We cannot let it move on. We can let Landis do his thing, but his work schedule has to be severely shrunk, and research on this miracle cure has to end immediately! People think I’m crazy, and an asshole, but honestly—and I don’t really like to say this—but I’m smarter than you. I’m telling you, bad things are going to come of this. It will not lead us to the paradise you’ve been sold. Sell it back, it’s not worth it. Please. Please!

Microstory 2499: Outer System

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This is it, baby! This is what we’ve been waiting for! This is why people are colonizing worlds outside of the Stellar Neighborhood. We still have rules, but you could never do what we’re doing. This is decidedly not a dome. It’s the furthest and farthest you can be from a dome while still being in the star system. When I was a kid, there were so many space operas, and regardless of their premise—no matter how peaceful the protagonists wanted to be—space fighting was always, always a thing. Then reality set in. The only way that our civilization was able to develop enough to build the kinds of ships that they use in science fiction is by working together. Well, perhaps the construction of them itself wouldn’t have been slowed down, but the scale of them, and the speed at which we have expanded into the galaxy...that would have been virtually impossible. We had to put our petty conflicts to the side, and move on as a united front. Almost zero ships these days are built with weapons. Eight-year-old me would not have believed it, but really, what the hell do you need a gun for? Everyone around you is a friend. Even Teagarden, which is literally the military capital of the neighborhood, doesn’t make all that many ships. They focus on research and development, and distribution and management of orbital defense systems. I’m not saying that I wish we were at war, but I did kind of hope that I would one day be in a space battle, fighting for justice, and protecting the innocent. Since then, I’ve been getting my kicks through VR, and that’s been great; you can do anything there. But now we have something real. It took years for them to establish a presence in the outer system, but we’re here now, and holy shit, is it fun. You choose your side, and fight in battles, and the best part about it is that you can’t die! Sure, you can blow up, or get shot, but you’ll just come back to life in the nearest respawn station. That is a big rule, by the way; don’t forget it. You are not allowed to damage a respawn station. Fortunately, because space battles are chaotic, and people make mistakes, these things have incredible defensive capabilities. If you even point your weapon towards one, that weapon will just seize up. You won’t get in trouble as long as there is no reason to suspect that you were doing it on purpose. Besides, those are really far away, mostly planetside, so I don’t want to worry you, or nothin’. As far as the fighting itself, I’ve never felt so alive. It’s so immersive, and the story is so believable. They basically came up with a new history, since humanity’s real history never led to any real space wars, and if they did, it would probably be distasteful to trivialize it here. That’s why it works, because unlike games centered on war in the past, we feel so distant from it, since people are no longer dying from genuine conflict. The best part about this scenario is that space is mind-bogglingly big, and even though I’m certain they’ll want to keep the activities in-system, there’s more than enough room to have multiple battles simultaneously, perhaps originating from entirely unrelated backstories. If you’ve ever wanted to fight in base reality without any real consequence—for you, or your opponents—here’s your chance. Don’t waste it. Which side will you choose?

Microstory 2496: Spydome Network

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This is one of those long-term domes, where you can’t quite get the full experience unless you immerse yourself in the setting, and really forget about your old life. You have to shed your past, and become your character, or you’re playing someone else’s game. The premise is that you are a member of a spy agency in one of eleven nations. Your task is to complete missions for your agency, according to whatever your superiors demand of you. Like I said, this is long-term, so you won’t just instantly become a spy. You will start as a trainee, and work your way up. Or you won’t. There’s every chance that you’ll fail. You have to pass the physical and written exams. I’m pretty sure that they’re easier to take than the real ones on Earth, but I’ve never been a real spy before, so I don’t really know. How well you do is entirely up to your own, natural skills. There is no way to know how far any other player gets, because we’re not technically meant to out ourselves to each other, but my boss may be another visitor. I really don’t know. It really doesn’t matter. What you do is up to you as well. Even though you have superiors, you are not a robot, and you are capable of making your own decisions. If you just wanna lounge about your apartment all day everyday, you’ll probably get fired for that, but you won’t get killed. Unless you’ve done enough spying to put you in danger. You’ll probably only get killed if you go out in the field, or as I was saying, if you’re attacked at home by an enemy. Each nation exists under its own dome, and its backstory is as rich and complex as they are in real life. The relationships between these fictional countries are complicated, and ever-changing. If you were to leave and come back 100 years from now, I’m sure alliances will have shifted. One of them might have been blown up in a nuclear war; I dunno. I couldn’t tell you exactly how far the program will let you take this, but it seems like a pretty decent free-for-all. Each might be one of the eleven most heavily populated domes on the planet, as most don’t need to feel quite as lived in as somewhere in the network. But here, you can go anywhere within your bounds, and if you secure a passport to another country, you can go there too. It’s a really interesting experience, and I’ve only been doing it for about a year and a half at this point. Obviously, I’m writing this anonymously, because there’s no reason a competing agency couldn’t use this information against my own. The android intelligences might not understand where a visitor spy got their intel if it came from an out-of-universe source, but they might act on it anyway. There’s a lot you can learn about the countries, and international affairs, from the comfort of your tablet using the prospectus, but to really grasp what it’s like to live here, you’ll have to sign up, and integrate yourself into this new society. You choose your own adventure. I don’t know the psychological ramifications of starting a new life that could potentially be as long as a standard lifetime, but perhaps that’s part of what they’re studying here. I’m sure the results will be fascinating.

Extremus: Year 101

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Around the time that Tinaya was shutting the forced pregnancy program down, something else major was being shut down. As it turns out, the popular immersive role-playing game, Quantum Colony wasn’t only a game. It was real. Players were piloting real substrates tens of thousands of light years away in the Charter Cloud of the Milky Way. It was the infamous Team Matic who figured it out, and threw their weight around to end the whole thing, presumably citing the many ethical violations that it was making. The Military outpost, Teagarden forcibly removed all players, casting them back to their real substrates in the Core Worlds, or in the case of the Extremusians, back here. This had two consequences, which came down to timing. First, people were frustrated, because that game was one of the few distractions that they used to escape the confines of the ship. Without it, they felt more pent up and isolated than ever. But also, because they were being encouraged to procreate anyway, people were relieving their stress through sex. So it’s been a really complicated last few months.

Waldemar was a particularly avid player of Quantum Colony, and he is at the age where he wants to have a lot of sex, even though he doesn’t have the capacity to experience love or affection. Audrey was not his girlfriend at the time, but she could tell that his eyes were starting to wander as he was looking for a mate. She ingratiated herself to him, pulling his attention away from the other girls in his vicinity. He didn’t see a problem with her being a minor, nor being younger than him. Again, because of the way his brain was wired, those kinds of social constructs seemed just as arbitrary as anything. So he fell for her very well-calculated wiles, and focused all of his attention on her. They have been keeping their distance from Silveon—and his whole family, for that matter. Audrey knew that Silveon would not react positively to the news that she was pregnant. On the occasions that they did see each other, she wore carefully selected clothing, was always eating to explain why she was getting noticeably larger when the ponchos weren’t enough, and eventually resorted to holographic trickery to fake her normal, thinner figure.

That has all been lost today. Silveon didn’t catch her showing the true size of her belly, but a mutual associate did. She thought nothing of it, not realizing that anything was being kept a secret. She mentioned it to Silveon casually, having no idea the beast that she was awakening. At this point, Tinaya has known the truth for a couple of weeks, and has been unable to get Audrey to elaborate on the circumstances leading up to her situation. Silveon is determined to get it out of her now.

“Silvy. Silvy! Stop! You look like you’re about to hit her,” Tinaya scolds as she’s physically holding him back.

“I’m not going to hit her!” Silveon insists. “I just want an explanation.” He looks back over at Audrey. “How did this happen? I didn’t even know you liked him. Do you know what he is?”

Audrey is tearing up. “Dougnanimous Brintantalus.”

The initial look of horror on Silveon’s face when he hears that; Tinaya has never seen it before. He’s always been so confident and collected. His expression sinks now, as he begins to hyperventilate just a little. He’s starting to have a panic attack. That, Tinaya recognizes. He’s never been through it before, but she has seen it in his father. “Come on,” Tinaya says. She pulls the two kids closer to her, and teleports them to the giant sequoia. They’re not at the base of the tree, but a couple of decks up. “Thistle. Cone of silence.”

Thistle doesn’t have a way to magically prevent others from hearing what they’re saying, but he can place them in a parallel dimension where light passes, but sound does not. People will be able to see them here if they happen to walk by, but they won’t be able to eavesdrop. They came to this location because the tree has a calming effect on people, which is why she planted it in the first place, along with the rest of the forest. “Cone established.”

“Do what I do,” Tinaya says calmly. She begins to breathe deliberately as she’s staring at her son, and holding his shoulders. No one speaks until he’s matched her breathing for sixty seconds. “Good.”

Silveon nods, and steps back to give himself some space. “I’m okay.”

“I have this thing where you tell me five things you can see—”

“I’m familiar with the technique,” Silveon interrupts. “I don’t need it.”

Tinaya nods. She shifts her gaze between him and Audrey as she asks, “what did that mean? That phrase sounds familiar.”

“It’s famous,” Audrey explains. “It’s called a trust password. People used to think that you could use them to prove that you were a time traveler, but...because of mind-reading tech, it’s unreliable. You could never really trust them. Still...”

“In the future, we joked about using one,” Silveon says, taking over the explanation. “At one point, we were both gonna come back in time. It seemed logical to not have to do this alone. We ultimately decided against it, because we agreed that partners would always distract each other. No matter the dynamic between them, they would end up having too many conversations that weren’t about Waldemar, or at least weren’t about what we need to do to stop him. It’s a one-person job, because that one person can focus all of their energy on this one mission.”

“I think I remember studying trust passwords,” Tinaya acknowledges. Then she quickly realizes that that’s not the point. “I understand the logic in the one-person mission, but she came here to protect you, not help you.”

“How long have you known about her?” Silveon questions.

“A few years.”

“I’ll deal with you later, young lady,” he says to his mother. He faces Audrey. “Whose idea was this? Crow’s? He never thought that I should be the one to go back, even though it was my idea.”

“It wasn’t anyone’s plan but mine. She was right. I came back to protect you, not to complete your mission. You were such a tiny little thing. None of us knew Waldemar when he was young in the original timeline. We didn’t know how he would react. Maybe he would see you as an object to be experimented on. He might have wanted to test what it’s like to set a human on fire, or see what people look like on the inside. We didn’t know anything!”

Silveon shakes his head. “You were meant to see me off that night...say goodbye. Now I know why you weren’t there, because you were sneaking back here, I assume through the prototype consciousness projector? You spent all this time watching me in secret, and you did a damn good job keeping yourself hidden, because we only met a few years ago.”

“That sums it up,” Audrey confirms.

“That wasn’t just a summary. It was a condemnation. I thought hearing it laid out before you would make you see how insulting it was, and how much you betrayed me.”

“Okay,” Audrey begins. “I want you to summarize your own mission with Waldemar, and see how closely it matches up with what you just said about me.”

“That’s my point! He’s the enemy! We’re supposed to be allies!”

“How could we have been allies if I was dead!”

“What?”

“Silveon. We killed everybody. When we projected our minds to the past, we collapsed the timeline behind us. That’s why I had to use the prototype at the exact same time as you. If you came back here alone, I would be gone! The girl named Audrey who you would have met in this timeline would have been someone else! It wasn’t just about you! I wanted to survive this!”

“I’ve never looked at it that way,” Silveon admits. “I always saw what I did as a sacrifice, but I had it backwards. It was everyone we left behind who sacrificed their own continuity...to save us...to save me.”

“They made it gladly,” Audrey tells him, “because they did it to save everyone else on the ship.”

“That’s what you did, when you let him do that to you?” Silveon gestures towards Audrey’s belly.

“I don’t know what’s gonna happen to this child, but he was determined to get someone pregnant. Better me than some innocent girl who doesn’t understand what he is. I can protect myself, and her.” She massages her own belly.

“You just said that we don’t know anything about him,” Silveon reminds her.

“We didn’t before,” she clarifies. “I know him now. I’ve learned coping mechanisms. I’m sure you have too.”

For a moment, there is a silence as the three of them absorb each other’s perspectives. A stranger does walk up, and seems to identify the intensity of the interaction, so he leaves. Silveon leans against the trunk, and slides down until he’s sitting. “It wasn’t supposed to go like his. Mom, why did you try to fix the population problem with a shipwide orgy? It’s fine. Both of us could have told you that it’s fine.”

“The population decline happened in your timeline too?” Tinaya questions. “I was taking it as proof that you butterfly affected something when you came back here. I figured you would have mentioned something at some point.”

Silveon brushes it away. “Yeah, the population goes down, but it bounces back.”

“Tell her why it bounced back,” Audrey suggests.

“I don’t—I don’t know why. Is there some particular reason?” He isn’t acting cagey. It sounds like he genuinely doesn’t know.”

Audrey has had enough of sitting down, so after allowing Tinaya to help her take a seat on the bench, she starts to educate them. “Waldemar takes his cues from history. Understanding social nuances was never his strong suit. One trend he noticed in the past on Earth is that populations tend to rise during periods of political strife. Like dictatorships. He noted that communities that are poor and less educated typically lead to higher populations. Unfortunately for him, achieving the kind of results on this ship are a little more difficult. We take our cues from the post-scarcity society that our ancestors were able to adopt when they were rescued from the Ansutahan universe, and housed in the centrifugal cylinders in the Gatewood Collective. There’s no such thing as poverty, and there’s no such thing as education disparity, because resources are easy to come by, and knowledge is so easy to access and spread. We are limited here, since we can’t just make a stop on a planet, and gather what we need, but we’ve found a workaround with the time travel excursions.

“Waldemar solved the population collapse crisis by making sweeping social changes that you chalked up to random expressions of maniacal power. He did them for a reason. First, he altered the excursion cycle, requiring timeship managers to give definitive proof of depleting resources before one can be scheduled. This may not sound like a big deal, but he would only authorize so many time excursions per year, and only for resources that were already proven low. In order to take advantage of one of these infrequent opportunities, they waited until more resources were low, which meant some resources were critically low, or completely out, before they were replenished. Furthermore, he reworked the contribution score system, so that high scores didn’t just lead to luxury, but to bare necessities. You had to have a job to feed your family, whereas before, such things were considered human rights. In addition, he changed child labor laws. It actually benefited the family to have children enter the workforce at a younger age. And in fact, the system made it so that it was beneficial to have more children, rather than fewer. You would think that it would be the other way around. A lack of resources should lead to lower population, but it encouraged it, because it was all about controlling those resources. Few people knew where they stood. They simply did what made the most sense for their family. His plan worked, but it obviously came at a cost.”

Silveon looks over at his mother again. “So she saved us. She did what I’ve been trying to do this whole time. If his only reason for instituting all those laws no longer exists, he won’t be able to justify those actions.”

“You know better than that,” Audrey contends. “I’m convinced that we changed the future, maybe even for the better. But we didn’t necessarily fix it. Things may still be bad, just in a different way. Without that reason, he may need to come up with a new one, and he may do that if his underlying reason remains, which is that he wants power. What you’re trying to do is teach him to use his power for good, but Silvy...he always was. He just had a warped view of what that meant, and his ego always got in the way. I don’t know how to change that, but as I said, that’s not my job here.”

“Your job’s changed,” Silveon says with a sigh.

“How’s that?”

“You’re no longer here to protect me as a baby, but that baby right there. She’s your only concern. You need to go to Verdemus.”

“No, Silveon, you’re not getting it. That defeats the whole purpose. He’ll find someone else. He needs a family.”

“He doesn’t need a family,” Tinaya says. “He needs sympathy from the voters. Now that we’re in this situation, there’s another way to get it, but it’s sad and depressing, and you’re not gonna be able to raise that baby. She would have to go to Verdemus without you.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 30, 2512

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It was time. This was the moment that Ramses, Marie, Olimpia, and Boyd had been anticipating for the last two days. For two years, the temporal energy crystal was being bombarded with the sonified version of a simple lemon, converted from its genetic sequence in full. While cracks had formed on the surface, nothing major had changed to the crystal. It was nearing the end of the original music piece, and it still wasn’t entirely obvious what was going to happen. As they watched the visualization of the chords fly by on the monitor from the safety of the antechamber, something bad happened. It stopped. With only one single bar of four chords left, the music just stopped. It wasn’t reacting to the near-end of the song. It needed the complete, unadulterated piece. The universe seemed to be fighting back.

“It stopped,” Olimpia stated the obvious.

“Yeah, I see that,” Ramses replied, angry, but not really at her. He just kept staring through the window.

“What does this mean?” Marie asked.

“I don’t know,” Ramses admitted.

“Well, do we have to start over, errr...”

“I don’t know!” he repeated.

“Surely we don’t have to start all over,” Boyd figured. “Let’s just get the music playing again.”

“Yeah.” Ramses grabbed the keyboard, and started fiddling with the program, trying to force the music to start up again. It wouldn’t budge, it just wouldn’t. His hands started shaking out of frustration. He looked like he was about to throw something across the room. “Get me that bowl of lemon juice out of the fridge.”

“We can’t do that,” Marie argued. “It’s too dangerous.”

“It’s our only choice now. It wouldn’t be so bad to wait another two years to try again, but the crystal doesn’t want to be turned off, so I have no reason to believe that the next attempt will go any better.”

“Well, let’s at least get a robot in there to do it for us,” Olimpia suggested.

“I don’t use robots,” Ramses explained. “I like to do the physical jobs myself.”

“Well, we’ll get one from somewhere else. It’s a big planet,” Olimpia said. She then stood there, concentrating.

“You can’t teleport out of my lab, remember?” he reminded her.

“Right.”

“I’ll go with you,” Marie offered. They both started to leave.

While Ramses’ attention was split between the girls and his hope that there was something he could do from here, Boyd had slipped over to the other side of the room unnoticed. He had opened the fridge, carefully grabbed the pitcher of pure lemon juice, and slowly left through the other door.

Only by the thud of the door closing did Ramses notice that Boyd had left. “Wait. No! Don’t go in there!”

Boyd was already through the next door, and was approaching the crystal.

Ramses hit the intercom button. “Just wait. They’re going to get us a robot.”

“There’s no time,” Boyd contended, still inching his way across the room. If he spilled just one drop...it would definitely be okay, but he obviously didn’t want to risk wasting any. “Look at the clock.” He was right. There was probably just enough time before midnight that the girls could come back with the robot, but this needed to be done while everyone was still in the timestream. And there was a security concern with bringing in an unauthorized intelligence of any kind without proper assessment.

“Run as fast as you can out of the teleportation suppression field,” Ramses urged Marie and Olimpia through comms. “It’s not safe.” He activated his EmergentSuit, including his external PRU.

Boyd reached the pedestal. “Tell everyone who has ever met me that I’m sorry,” he requested. He lifted the pitcher up, closed his eyes, and dumped the juice on the crystal. As predicted, it exploded in his face.

While it was difficult and rare to travel between The Eighth Choice and Fort Underhill, it certainly wasn’t impossible. And if anyone had the natural authority to cross the border, it was anyone from Team Matic. After making contact with Gilbert Boyce, Leona, Angela, Romana, and Jessie were sent passes to board a transport ship, which flew them through the interversal conduit, and into the other child universe. They were on the planet of Violkomin now, standing by the prebiotic lake, waiting for Mateo to appear. Any minute now.

“Are you sure your contact in the new afterlife simulation was talking about the right person?” Leona asked.

“How many Mateo Matics do you know?” Nerakali asked right back. “It doesn’t matter how many there are, I would bet my life that only one of them died anytime in the last many decades. It’s the right guy.”

“Well, where is he?” Romana asked for the fifth time.

Nerakali sighed. “His pattern could have messed with the transition. You’re not like any other salmon; I know this much. It’s hardwired into his neurology in a way that I don’t understand. Do you? The server that he was placed on when he died is quantum. The lake is controlled by a biological computer. The way it was explained to me, it’s difficult for them to communicate with each other. That might make it sound unsafe, but the fact that he hasn’t shown up is probably a good thing. It’s probably erring on the side of caution while it makes the necessary—and unique—data conversions.”

“He needs to get here soon,” Angela pointed out. “It took us so long to get here from that other universe. Is it possible that he already came out? Or could he be clear on the other side of the lake?”

“He’ll show up here,” Nerakali assured her, “and he hasn’t gone through yet, or I would know. This is my job. I asked for it. Returning from death has always been my thing. I wanted to give back.”

Romana commanded the nanites that formed her shoes to recede into their implants. She started to wade into the water. “Can we...go in after him?”

Nerakali smiled, almost condescendingly, but still in a nice way. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“There’s one way to get there,” Romana said darkly.

“Don’t even think about it,” Leona warned. “You don’t know what’s waiting for you. Like she was just saying, we each have a weird biology, and a weird neurology. You might not end up in the simulation. You might just die.”

“Then you do it,” Romana suggested. “You’ve been there be—” She stopped when she felt a sudden pit in her stomach.

Leona and Angela felt it too. It felt like they were losing something. Something was being removed...not from their bodies, nor even their minds, but somewhere else. They shuddered at the same time, a highlight of technicolors flowing over their skin, and then they nearly collapsed to the ground. They were feeling weak and woozy, but still had enough wherewithal to keep themselves aloft.

“What the shit was that?” Marie asked.

“The crystal. They must have shut it off.”

“Why did we need to feel it?” Romana questioned. “Wasn’t it just Boyd and Octavia who were on our pattern? I mean, we didn’t end up with their powers.”

Marie and Olimpia woke up on their backs on the roof of a building, but they didn’t know if it was the right one. They were trying to teleport to Bot Farm, but this could be just about anywhere. “What happened?”

“The crystal exploded,” Marie replied. “That’s the only logical conclusion.”

“We need to go back. If you’re right, we don’t need the robot anymore.”

“No, I don’t think we do.” Marie stood and waited a moment. “Is there a suppression field here too?”

“Why would there be?” Olimpia pointed to the ground in the distance where scraps of metal and other materials were being unloaded from a truck so they could be recycled into mechanical substrate components. “This probably is indeed Bot Farm.”

“Well, something is stopping us from teleporting.”

“Do you think...?”

“Oh my God, the crystal. It took away all our powers.”

“It was only—”

“Yeah, well this is why we didn’t just dump lemon juice on it in the first place. We knew that we couldn’t control the results.”

“Then we need to get down to the vactrain station.”

“Agreed.” Marie looked around for a more traditional way off the roof.

“My suit. It’s not emerging. I was just gonna jump down to the ground, but I can’t. The suit isn’t a time power, I don’t understand.”

“The suit’s not, but the way we control them with our minds is biotechnopathic. We control it more in a psychic way than people typically interface with tech.” She placed her chin against her chest so she could see the manually interface on her shortsleeve. She was able to activate the suit from there. “So we don’t have to crane our necks like that, whenever you change clothing, keep a wristband on, so you always have easy control over it.”

“Good idea.” Olimpia did the same to get her suit on. Then they jumped over the edge, and started walking, like animals.

Ramses woke up alone. “Hey, Thistle. Report.”

“You have been unconscious for eleven hours and twenty-four minutes. You are otherwise healthy and unharmed. Environment is hostile, and not survivable, but life support is holding.”

“It’s 2513?”

“Unknown.”

“Where are we?”

“Unknown.”

“Lifesigns?”

“No life detected within sightline. No satellite detected.”

“Why does the air taste stale?”

“Primary carbon scrubber damaged and offline. Helmet scrubber is functioning optimally, but conservatively. Ramscoop nodes require manual service.”

“What about the transdimensional backups and replacements?”

“Pocket dimensions are inaccessible.”

That wasn’t good. This looked like it could be Castlebourne, but a region of it where there were no domes in sight. His best guess was the mirror dimension version of it, though there was no way to test that hypothesis from this random vantage point. “I can’t teleport,” he noted.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Thistle replied.

“If Boyd destroyed the crystal, it would have taken him off our pattern. Though if it killed him, that doesn’t really matter. If the pocket dimensions are gone, and I can’t teleport, it must have also wiped out all excess temporal energy across the board. Time must have spit me out here by random chance. All hope is lost. I can’t get back. Even if my slingdrive were available, I couldn’t use it on my own. But what does that mean for my pattern? Am I stuck here for years?”

“I recommend you repair the ramscoop nodes for your indefinite resource management needs.”

“Thanks, Sherlock. Thank God I had my suit on at all, or it would be game over.” It was pointless to dwell on anything. “The composition of this world’s atmosphere. Analyze it. Is there enough helium and neon for meaningful lift?”

“No,” Thistle replied plainly.

“I’ll do the heavy lifting, so to speak, but I need you to run the calculations. I would like to jury-rig a fusion torch, and power it with the microreactor. Once I fix the nodes, there should be more than enough hydrogen to get me in the air.”

“I’ll start developing the models.”

Boyd Maestri woke up in the afterlife simulation. He had expected to find himself lying on the top of a mountain, or strewn halfway in a babbling brook. Instead, he was sitting in a hardback chair. A woman was standing before him coolly and trying to appear patient, but clearly itching to explain the situation. Boyd wasn’t tied to the chair, but he couldn’t move either. The computer program was just arbitrarily holding him in place. Physical restraints weren’t truly physical anyhow.

“Mister Maestri. Welcome to the afterlife.”

“You the boss around here?”

“I am,” the woman replied.

“How’d that happen?”

“I died at the exact same time that the original sim was being evacuated.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She shrugged. “I did it on purpose.”

“You know my name,” Boyd pointed out, then let the implication sit there.

“They used to call me Pinocchio, but I didn’t like it. So when I came back here, I adopted a new identity. You can call me Proserpina. I am a unique lifeform.”

“I get it. I didn’t like my name for a time, and went by Buddha instead. That was a mistake, though. How did you take charge of this place?”

“I was responsible for the original version for a time, until Ellie Underhill sent everyone to a new universe. I just reclaimed my birthright.”

“What do you want with me?”

“I don’t care about you at all,” Proserpina explained. “Mateo Matic does. My counselors receive the names of everyone who dies, and is on their way to this world. One of them will make sure Mateo gets the message, and he’ll come here to get you.”

“Did you kill me?”

She laughed. “I’m just taking advantage of the situation. You got your own self killed. Something about lemons? I dunno, I didn’t read the whole report.”

Just then, Mateo opened the door to this room, and came in deliberately, but not hostilely. He was dragging some old man behind him. “I was told you turned off the lake, or something?” Only then did he notice the detainee. “Boyd, you’re here?”

“I died destroying the crystal.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Wait, you didn’t come for him?” Proserpina questioned. “I made sure Keilix knew about it.”

“I don’t think I told her about Boyd at all,” Mateo said. “I doubt his name means anything to her.”

“So, why are you here?” she asked. “The lake?”

“Yeah, I can’t go through. I’ve been trying for two days, which was two years ago.”

“Yeah, I turned it off for you,” Proserpina explained, confused as to why he didn’t already know this. “I need you here.”

“For what?”

“For your wife.”

“What about her?”

“She’s the one who created me last century,” Proserpina began. “I need her to do it again. I keep sending people to kill her, and she keeps surviving, I don’t understand.”

“What?” Mateo was so lost. “No one has tried to kill her. I mean, she’s faced danger, and there is that one guy, but he’s always trying to kill us, and has his own reasons.”

“Yeah, I exploited those reasons. Just like I exploited Pacey’s, and Bronach’s, and even Buddy’s here.”

“Well, you weren’t very good at it,” Boyd contended. “I didn’t want to kill her.”

“Well, I’m kind of limited under these conditions,” Proserpina argued. “I pass messages along with dead people who cross over to the other side, and I know my targets get these messages, but I think something gets lost in translation.”

“Are you trying to escape the simulation?” Mateo asked her, still not clear on what her agenda was.

“No, I’m trying to create a community of my own, but I need your wife to do what she did to me to all the other NPCs. I cannot figure it out myself.”

Mateo stared at her. Who the hell was this idiot? “Well, I need the lake to get back to her to ask her.”

“I assumed she would come for you!” Proserpina reasoned. “That’s what happened the last time you died!”

That was true, but it was still a poorly thought out plan. Even dum-dum Matt could see that. “Whatever. Let me out, and I’ll ask her what she can do. Okay?”

How do I know you won’t screw me over? she asked.

“Uh, Mateo?” Boyd piped up. “You don’t need her to let you out. You’re like how I was before. You can resurrect yourself...through dark particles.”

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Extremus: Year 100

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After months of investigating and compiling data, Tinaya and Lataran had to put the inquiry on hold for a bit while the latter gave birth. She named her daughter Sable, and obviously started to focus on her while Tinaya continued. It was months more before she realized that she trusted the wrong people, and a few months after that before anyone agreed to sit down with her to explain the situation.

They’re in this meeting now, in the former mirror room, of all places. This operation is clearly completely off the books, but it goes pretty high up the food chain. Tinaya still doesn’t understand why. A representative from the Bridger Section is here. She hasn’t ever met him, and doesn’t know what his role is. Also present are Doctors Cernak and Gunnarsson, proving that she was right to conscript a third party physician from Verdemus. The current Consul, Head of Security, and some woman that Tinaya doesn’t know either are all sitting opposite her, but still separate from the others. They’re apparently waiting for someone else, and being very quiet while they do.

Finally, Captain Jennings walks in. “Oceanus,” Tinaya exclaims, standing up. “You’re in on this too.”

“Whatever this is,” Oceanus replies, “decidedly no. I’ve been told something has been happening under my nose, and it has to do with you and Lataran, but I do not yet know what it is. Explain, Darling.”

Consul Darling clears his throat. “It’s not my place. I was only recently made aware of the project when it became clear that Admiral Leithe was getting close to figuring it out on her own.”

“It’s not a project if no one knows about it,” Tinaya argues. “It would be an operation. But I just call it a conspiracy.”

No one responds.

“Who is in charge here?” Oceanus demands to know.

The Bridger stands. “Please have a seat, Captain.”

Still seething, Oceanus sits down next to Tinaya. They take each other’s hands. They’ve grown close over the course of the last year, having spoken nearly every day as he’s gotten better at seeking her counsel. She didn’t read him in on her side mission because she didn’t want him to be distracted from running the ship.

The Bridger makes one step away from his seat. “As you all know, Bridgers have access to future knowledge. We use this knowledge to guide Extremus on its mission, protecting its mandate at all costs.”

“No,” Tinaya interrupts.

“No...what?” the Bridger asks.

“No, your job is not to protect the mission at all costs, but to a reasonable and ethical degree. Your predecessors understood that. Why don’t you?”

“I misspoke,” the Bridger claims.

“I don’t believe you. You’ve been violating people’s bodies on a repeated basis. I don’t care what reason you think you had for this, it’s wrong.”

“You might not agree once you hear those reasons,” the Bridger claims.

“Well, get on with it, then,” Oceanus spits.

The Bridger sighs. He kind of looks like he wants to sit back down, but he has the floor. “As I was saying, we are aware of future events. Sometimes we can change them, sometimes we can’t, and sometimes we shouldn’t. This particular issue is hopefully the former, but we’re still not sure. It’s unclear how successful we’re being, if at all. We still don’t understand what the source of the problem is, but the problem itself is totally unambiguous. We have a population decline issue.”

“What?” Tinaya asks. “Population growth is a matter of public record. Our numbers have been rising.”

“You’re right, they have,” the Bridger agrees, “but not at a fast enough rate. One day soon, this number will plateau, and then it will start going back down. Trust me, I’ve already seen it play out.”

“So you rape women?” Tinaya questions. That’s a serious accusation.

Dr. Cernak shoots out of his chair like it’s on fire. “That is not what we’re doing! Don’t you ever frame it that way!”

“Doctor. Please,” the Bridger requests.

“Ah, so it’s a framing issue,” Tinaya sees. “You’re not denying breaking the Synthetic Age Oath of Ethical Medical Practice. You just don’t want me to talk about it. I get it.”

“No, you don’t get it,” Cernak insists. “We don’t even take the full SAOEMP in its original form. We have to take a modified version of it since we don’t accept certain forms of lifesaving procedures, like healing nanites or consciousness transference.”

“Don’t you?” Tinaya questions. She leaves it at that, because Consul Darling may not know about The Question, and the Head of Security almost certainly doesn’t.

Dr. Cernak huffs. “We didn’t impregnate anyone. We simply gave them the option to procreate by hastening the degradation of the silencing enzyme.”

“Without our consent, nor our knowledge!” Tinaya shouts.

“Admiral Leithe,” Consul Darling scolds.

“No, I’m not going to calm down. You think what you did is okay because of some future problem that almost no one knows about? I don’t care which ethical oath you took, it’s either not enough, or you broke it! This is unacceptable. It is a violation of our rights to identity and self-determination. That’s why we switched from the Hippocratic Oath in the first place, because it was woefully insufficient for the needs of a population in a world where death is more of a question than an inevitability. Yeah, Cernak, I actually do understand that you take a variant of the standard ethical oath, but that involves more restrictions on care, not less. Consent is everything, and you should have known that. I swear to God, you two, despite my lack of power as an admiral, I will see to it that you are both dismissed, delicensed, and sent to hock.”

“You don’t have that power,” Consul Darling states the obvious. “Not even the Captain can do that much.”

“I can.” It’s the mysterious woman who has been sitting quietly until now. Everyone seems scared of her, even the Bridger. She stands and stares at him to strongly suggest that he sit back down. “My name is Tiere Victorian, and I serve as the Superintendent of the Bridger Section. My power lies in personnel decisions, rather than policy, just like Superintendent Grieves. I am the sole voice who decides when and if it is necessary to replace an executive crewmember of the Extremus with a Bridger alternate. So I was not made aware of this operation before, because it was not required to do my job. But I have the authority to dismiss or discipline anyone on either ship for any reason with impunity for myself. I could fire you, Dr. Cernak, because I don’t like which side your hair is parted on. I suggest you start being less defensive, and more contrite.”

He shrinks.

Tiere goes on, “I have reviewed the data that my colleagues have made available to me regarding the population crisis, and again, I do not have the power to end the program, but I can make one vital change that will most likely end it anyway.”

They’re on the edge of their seats.

“I can place Admiral Leithe in charge of it,” she finishes. Yeah, that’ll do it.

Tinaya can’t help but smirk. She’s going to shut this down, effective immediately, and come clean—if not to the whole ship, then at least to all aggrieved parties. “I’m going to need everything on this. I wanna know who came up with it, who else was involved, and who was aware of it. I need to know who on this ship was impacted by it, either directly or indirectly. I need names and details, as well as any ancillary records, messages, and notes.”

Dr. Cernak stands now. “I’m not giving you jack or shit unless I’m guaranteed to hold my position as Chief Medical Officer until such time that I retire.”

There’s a quick silence. “I’ll get you what you need,” the Bridger says to Tinaya. She still doesn’t know his name. That’s probably by design.

“You don’t have the medical files,” Cernak reminds him. “Those are confidential.”

“Doctor,” Tinaya begins, “when one crewmember leaves their post, and that job is backfilled by another, what happens to the data that they collected during their shift? Do you think they take it to the grave?” It’s a rhetorical question, but she pauses a moment anyway. “When you’re officially let go, you’ll lose all access, and your replacement will gain it. We don’t need you anymore.” She looks over at the Head of Security. “What did you know of this program?”

“Dasher Bruin, sir. Head of Security, Year Ninety-Six to Year One-Oh-Three, sir. I was read into the situation on day one of my shift, sir, and was told to not ask questions, sir. I did my job, protecting the interests of the ship at the behest of my superiors, sir.”

“I am your superior,” Tinaya tells him.

“Yes, sir,” he agrees.

“Escort Misters Cernak and Gunnarsson to a holding cell in hock, please.”

What little light was left in these former doctors’ eyes now fades. She does not have the power to strip them of their medical licenses, but she’ll make sure it happens. However long that takes, they’ve each seen their last patient.

“Yes, sir.” Dasher lifts his watch to his mouth, and whispers, likely for a security team to come assistant him in his task. He takes two packs of dynamic EM tethers out of his pocket, and tries to fit Cernak and Gunnarsson with them. They can hold their wrists between fifteen and twenty-five centimeters apart, but if they try to pull them beyond that range, the attractive magnets will activate, and if the try to push them too close, they will switch to a repulsive force. They come in specific pairs, but Dasher accidentally mixes them up, which leaves the prisoners tethered to each other. They look like lovers, their four hands hanging together like that. “Oh my God, sorry.”

“Officer Bruin, are you nervous?” Tinaya asks.

“I just don’t know if...if this is it for me. Should I put a couple of these on myself too?” Dasher asks.

Tinaya considers it. She makes a decision quickly. “You’ll be turned over to a new Head when one can be found and appointed. You’ll face no criminal charges, though. You can tell people that you wanted to spend time with your family, or start a family. I can’t say the same for everyone else.” She looks around at the people in the room.

Dasher is clearly relieved. He deftly swaps the cuffs out so they’re back in their right pairs, and starts to leave. The cuffs also have a feature where the detainee can’t stray more than four meters from their escort, or can’t get closer than two meters. So they start being dragged behind him. “I think I’ll see if I can’t start a family,” Dasher says as he’s exiting. “If the ship needs more kids, I’ll give it more kids.”

Dasher is not alone in his line of thinking. As it turns out, honesty is the best policy. Tinaya’s new temporary job as Head of Population Sustainability not only involves ending the unethical program, but finding a suitable replacement. She’s still an admiral, but she has all these other responsibilities too. Shutting down the program isn’t as easy as flipping a switch. Thousands of aging women were injected with the intentionally defective silencing enzymes, and all of them need medical appointments to correct that. But before that can happen, new professionals need to be hired to actually perform these procedures, and that’s complicated, because Cernak and Gunnarsson were certainly not the only ones on the medical team who were a part of the conspiracy. To fill the ranks, a few doctors and nurses are recruited straight out of medical school for positions that were just a tad bit above their qualifications. As a precautionary measure, they will always have oversight, and their teachers expressed confidence in their abilities to perform admirably, and more importantly than ever, ethically.

As the proverbial swamp is drained, and replacements are selected, murmurs of what’s going on begin to echo throughout the ship. Some learn the truth outright, at least from the mouths of those who had to be told something ahead of the shipwide announcement. Others just notice that the crew shift changes are out of sync with the schedule, and very fishy. There’s a lot of confusion, though, and things need to be cleared up. Once all the prep work is done, Tinaya stands on stage, and makes her broadcast speech. She reveals the truth to everyone, in disgusting and uncomfortable detail. She explains that she herself was the victim of this morally bankrupt operation, as was Admiral Keen. The reaction is angry and visceral, and not at all unexpected. People are pissed about being lied to, and about the deep breach of ethics that these people committed.

There’s no violence, though, and once the fury subsides, the outcome starts to emerge. Dasher fathers three children with three different women within one year, with plans to conceive even more in the future, though he will hopefully slow down as there is a limit to how many younglings that a parent can responsibly raise at the same time. Others end up feeling the same sentiment, and begin to conceive more children than they were apparently planning. It’s not this big, advertised movement. People are just independently inspired to aid the cause. Tinaya doesn’t have insight into any changes they might be having on the future. Tiere is executing her own disciplinary action in house, and isn’t being any more transparent than the Bridgers have ever been. But it seems to be working. They have to hire more medical staff than ever to care for the baby boomers. For a hot minute, everything seems okay. Then they encounter at least one unfavorable consequence. Twenty-year-old Waldemar is just as inspired to support the population growth efforts as so many others. He ends up getting a now fifteen-year-old Audrey pregnant, and it is not immediately evident if it was consensual or not.

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Microstory 2469: Gambledome

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Here’s the thing about gambling in a post-scarcity society...it’s not any fun! When money isn’t real, the stakes aren’t real, and there’s nothing interesting about it. The creators of Gambledome have managed to subvert this about as well as possible without completely shifting the paradigm of the economy. In Gambledome, money kind of is real, but only here. You start out with a modest amount of cash to spend on chips, and as you play, you win and lose those chips. If your stack starts piling up, you can cash them out, and spend it on things. You can get yourself a nice, luxurious room to stay in. You can spring for the (faux) lobster at dinner. You can give it away to your friends to make them like you. This is how it worked in other gambling communities on Earth back in the before-fore times, like Las Vegas. Here, it’s a recreation, which may make you think that your life can only get better, but that’s not true. If you run into the negative, you’re in trouble. You can’t leave the dome, and go back to the utopia that vonearthans have created since automation made fiat-based economies obsolete. You have to stick around, and pay off your debts. That’s right, there are real consequences. Some of the humans walking around as staff may be there because that is the experience that they have asked to be assigned while staying in the dome, but some are there because they have to be. Don’t come here if you don’t genuinely want to pretend to be an ancient human, because that’s the thing about gambling. You don’t know if you’re gonna win, and people lose all the time. A note on cheating: while they won’t torture you, it can land you in jail, where you’ll pay off your social debt by being locked up in a cell, unable to leave. We still have jails in the 27th century, of course, but the percentage of incarcerated individuals has never been lower, so this is rare. One woman lost her money on purpose, threw a tantrum, and tried to steal it all back, specifically so they would throw her in a cell, because it just doesn’t happen all that often anymore, and she certainly didn’t want to break any real laws. She didn’t want to go through the real justice system, and go to a real jail, where she might never get out. Overall, this place is a lot of fun, but only temporarily. I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life here, and I certainly wouldn’t want to live in a world where people are sincerely desperate enough to gamble because they think they have no other choice. I don’t know if Gambledome is fostering any real addicts, but I sure would be interested to know if it’s happening, and if it is, whether the creators have any plans to do anything about it.