Microstory 2621: We’ll Build That Bridge When We Come to It, and We’ll Do it in Style

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August 26, 2526. The cataclysm has escalated. The ring fault surrounding the southern pole has torn open. Rivers of lava flow through the chasms, threatening to incinerate any who would fall to their deaths below. People are cut off from each other. Some successfully made it across before the mountains pulled away from each other, or already lived in the safe zone. Others could not make it in time. Soon, the land beneath their feet will turn to soup, or some other hazard will end their lives. Something must be done to bring these people back together. A bridge must be built. No one has ever constructed anything like this before, and certainly not at scale, but they are not wholly unprepared. The southern polar region is more mountainous than the north. That is the primary reason why it has fewer domes at this point, and why it is less populated. It is more difficult to travel between domes, and traditional forms of engineering are both tedious and slow. That is why they have been experimenting with new forms of construction, including the fast-woven graphene lattice.

Instead of laying blocks of material on one end, and slowly adding farther and farther towards the other side, drones fly clear across the gap. Fewer refugees are seeking shelter in the southern pole. An entire quarter of the Terminator Line is even more mountainous than the cap. And one advantage they have compared to the north is a newly built dome that is recently sealed, presently uninhabited, and fully available for temporary housing. So instead of dealing with an untenable onslaught of people, the leadership was able to dedicate resources to researching the threats. They realized that the ground was about to break, and began to plan for that as an eventuality. They still have to hurry, but this will work, as long as they’re careful.

They chose a spot where the two edges of the chasm are particularly close together. It’s not quite in the center of the Terminator Line, but they have sent volunteers in both directions in parallel to the chasm, on the dangerous side, to direct refugees to the right spot to cross. They have been gathering in an emergency pressurized inflatable habitat, but it’s quickly reaching capacity, so it’s time to make this happen. Timing is everything.

The southern pole is a little different than the rest of the planet. It’s run by an advisory-administrative government. There are two delegator boards, which come to decisions independently, and compare notes before making a joint decision, which they then delegate to the administrators. Each delegation includes a skeptic. It’s unfair to call them uneducated, but they are definitely meant to be out-of-the-box thinkers who are meant to question everything that they’re told. If you say left, they say right. If you say right, they say wrong. If you say wrong, they say wrung. Their job is to fight you, even when you start agreeing with them. It’s the devil’s advocate for the secular world. That’s what Thadeus Hogan’s role is, and he was here to make sure that what they were doing made sense. He’s done that, so now he’s mostly just here to watch.

Thadeus stands on the edge of the cliff. His consciousness is backed-up, both on the ground, and in orbit, but he’s tethered to a safety anchor in case he slips over the edge, and doesn’t want to waste time in a respawn pod.

“Ready!” the ordnance foreman cries from the perch. “Ready!” he repeats. “Fire!”

The artillery engineers activate the railguns. The cryogenic warheads soar through the air, arch over the chasm, and then plummet into the depths.

“Can I get closer?” Thadeus asks. When his guide nods, he leans over. The bombs crash into the toxic lava below. He can’t actually see it, but he sees the change. The thermal updrafts change from a sickly reddish color to gray. It just looks like steam.

“Why did we do that again?”

“We just froze the topmost layer of that lava,” his guide explains again. She knows he’s like this. Asking the same question multiple times is his duty, because if your answer changes, how can you be confident in it? “The fumes were chaotic and unpredictable, and just too much for the drones to handle. They were designed to fly in the Proxima Doma’s thin atmosphere, but to make that work, they’re slow. By switching from fumes to vapor, they fly through much more manageable paths. They surf the air, and safely find purchase on the other side.”

As the ordnance foreman sits back down, the head drone operator stands to take his place. “Prepare the drones!” she orders. “You have two minutes!” This is just in case something has gone wrong. They are a well-oiled machine, and the drones have been ready for hours. They had to wait to begin constructing the bridge to make sure the ground was stable enough. There is no point in building a bridge if the gap is going to widen another kilometer by the time everyone manages to cross it. He’s keeping one eye on his launchers, and the other on the barometric technician.

The technician is tracking the shifting composition of the air, and waiting for that perfect moment. He lifts his hand in the air. The head drone operator takes one last look at the launchers, but then focuses right on the tech. “Hold! Hold!” No reason he can’t have a little fun with it. This is a momentous occasion. Finally, he slams his hand down.

“Launch!” the head drone operator orders.

The drones fire into the unprecedentedly thick atmosphere. Thadeus loses direct eyesight of them too, but watches their progress through augmented reality. And he can still see the graphene scaffolding that the drones are pulling, spindling out like a silkworm’s silk. The drones are flying in pretty close tandem, but the pressure gradient isn’t perfectly smooth, so some lose attitude, and have to regain formation. Once they’re on the other side, they drop anchor, slamming hard into the ground, and digging in. Volunteers on the other side drive over in their rovers, and lower their suspension into hunker mode to provide extra support. It’s not sophisticated, but every kilogram helps.

“Launch the weavers!” the head drone operator orders now. The smaller drones fly along the skeleton lines. They distribute themselves along them, and begin wrapping the webbing around, over the gaps between them, and around each other’s lines. Over and under, over and under. They build tensile strength in perfect synchrony, and what results looks like a fully stable, strong, and lifesaving bridge.

The convoy master is on the perch now, having ordered the test rovers to the end of the bridge. The drones have finished their jobs, and it’s time to make sure the bridge will hold, and not kill anyone who tries to drive on it. The foreman nods her head, all the drones are back. The convoy master simply points to the rovers, and doesn’t say a word. The operators let them go, at high speed for the ultimate stress test. They make it to the other side. They go a hundred kilometers an hour, and make it there in two minutes.

“Send the first wave!”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 25, 2538

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When the away team appeared on the Extremus scout ship, Mateo revealed that he had a new plan, but that he didn’t want to put Ramses out. It would require him to do extra work. The thing was, the people of Extremus knew where they had gone. They had a record of it. This system looked just as good as any, but Linwood wanted to be alone and hidden, which he could not find here. It could only be found somewhere else, say maybe 707 light years away? Both Ramses and Romana agreed that it was a good idea. As the Actilitca had explained, this scout ship didn’t have a reframe engine, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be retrofitted with one. In fact, as Ramses inspected it, he discovered that it was specifically designed for one; it had just never been built and installed. So they had kept most of the old design, but had deliberately excluded the most valuable component. It was none of their business, what had caused the Extremusians to do this. It just needed to be corrected. Temporarily.

Ramses engaged his forge core, and programmed the scout to begin its journey while they were out of the timestream for a year. Because of all the build time, it had only managed to traverse about 300 light years, but that should be enough. That was a greater distance than the current radius of the interstellar colonization bubble. He would be off of everyone’s radar, all the way out here, and safe. And if he wanted to pack up, and move out even farther, that could help too. Once the scout arrived at the brand new isolated system, it completed constructing his rotating habitat, and waited for the team to return.

“All righty, then. Are we ready to wake him up?” Mateo asked, bending down to unlock the stasis pod.

“Oh, hold on.” Romana changed her emergent nanites back into the sexy red dress from before, and sat cross-legged on the scout ship’s command console. “Okay, I’m ready,” she said once she had generated her holographic microphone.

Mateo stood back up. “Why do you have to be so sexual around me? I know that you’re an adult now, but do you have to be so...ugh!” he couldn’t think of the word.

“It’s not sexual. I’m a lounge singer,” she defended.

“Lounge singers are sexy! That’s their whole thing!”

“Funny, I thought their thing was singing.”

“Your neckline practically goes all the way down to your belly button!” Mateo complained.

“It’s an aesthetic,” she argued.

“We’re running out of  daylight, people,” Ramses jumped in. He took it upon himself to open the pod and let Linwood out.

Romana cleared her throat, and got back into position. “This next one’s for the lovers. Linwood, welcome to your new home. At laaaaast...!” She went on to sing part of the song before Mateo had had enough.

He threw up a holographic privacy partition in front of her, and focused on Linwood. He could do nothing for the sound, but she didn’t keep going much longer. “Your coin has been constructed. The rest of the habitat is underway, but it already has two escape pods, so you should be all set to move in. There’s a reason she called you a lover, though, and it’s not because you love spin gravity.” He held up his arm to gesture to the side. “We had something else created while you were asleep, which wasn’t technically essential.

Linwood’s companion drifted in from the back of the scout.

“My love!” he exclaimed. He leapt into her arms like the climax of a romcom. She held onto his waist and spun him around, and they kissed.

“Aww, old love,” Romana said, out from behind the partition, and back to wearing her normal clothes again.

“Your other models are still in storage,” Ramses told him. “You can rebuild them however you please.”

Linwood hopped back down to his own two feet, but continued to stare into his companion’s eyes, having missed her deeply. Finally, he broke his gaze, and looked over at Ramses. “Thank you.” He looked at the other two. “Thank you all.” He stepped closer to the viewscreen where his habitat was rotating inside of what may have been only a temporary comet. “I’m grateful to be here. Could you tell me, what year is it?”

“It’s 2538,” Mateo answered, stepping over to look at the view as well.

“That’s fast,” Linwood. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about your fancy faster-than-light drive. I obviously don’t know anything anyway, but there’s no one else here! Just the way I like it.”

“Remember, you can’t change your mind,” Mateo warned him. It will take you 150,000 years to get back to civilization. By then, Project Stargate will have reached this far, so you might wanna head out into the void.”

“That might be the plan,” Linwood said, nodding. “I won’t be telling you that, though.”

“Of course,” Mateo replied. “This here region of space is yourn now.” He made sure to make eye contact. “Don’t abuse the gift.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Linwood promised.

Mateo took a breath. “You can keep the scout—”

“But I’m removing the artificial gravity,” Ramses warned.

“That’s fine, I don’t need that,” Linwood said. He bounced his knees. “Yeah, this is interesting, but I don’t care to keep it.”

They would have given him a tour of his new home, but it was designed exactly like the old one. It had a lazy river running along the entire circumference. Along it were his multiple sleeping spots, his little bamboo forest, his garden, and all the other ecological areas. It looked like a nice place to live, whether you were a hermit or not. There was more than enough for one person, even along with his staff. It was only this large for spin gravity to work without being nauseating. Linwood and his lover said their goodbyes, and then went over to start their new lives. Ramses got to work on uninstalling the transdimensional gravity generator, as well as the reframe engine.

“What are ya gonna do with it?” Romana asked. “We can’t take it with us. I assume it’s too heavy.”

“It’s too massive,” Ramses corrected. He was on his hands and knees, digging up the components. “But you’re right, we can’t carry it away. I’m gonna shoot it into the host star at reframe speeds. It’ll take about nine hours.” He was answering, but clearly still depressed about his apparent slingdrive shortcomings.

Romana seemed to pick up on this. “Ya know, the solution to your problem is the problem, right?”

“What? I don’t—what do you mean?”

“I mean, the problem is the solution to itself,” she tried to reframe it.

“Yeah, I’m not following.”

Romana smiled at him. “Linwood Meyers is currently living at the farthest extremes of the galaxy. He and his habitat are even farther out than the Extremus. If the rest of our team were to attempt to travel farther than this, your slingdrive would evidently just default them right here.”

“Yeah, true,” Ramses agreed. “That’s what happened with the Extremus itself. Very annoying, we had to come out here more slowly as a hack-job workaround.”

She placed a hand on his shoulder. “What if you were trying to find Linwood? You wouldn’t need to know where he was. You wouldn’t have to calculate anything. You would just overshoot it, and let the machine handle the navigation. So turn that into a strength. If your machine is mapping technological establishments on the backend...then find a way to generate that map on the frontend. It will tell you where everyone in the universe lives. Even hermits.” She paused for effect. “Even Spiral Station.”

His eyes widened. He jumped up to his feet. “Oh my God! Romana, you genius!” He pulled her into a hug, and shook her excitedly a little.

 Romana was excited too. She held onto the hug, but then leaned her head back to smile at him, after which she kissed him on the lips.

Ramses pulled away, not too quickly, as if disgusted, but not into it either.

“I’m so sorry,” she apologized.

“It’s okay, it’s just...”

“I know.”

“I don’t really do that...”

“I know,” she repeated.

“With others.”

“Yes, I know. It was just a stupid thing. I’m a stupid, horny...stupid girl.”

“Romy,” Ramses said as she was walking away humiliated.

That was when Romana noticed that her father was there, appearing to have seen the whole thing. “I know. Too sexual. I don’t wanna hear it again.” She brushed past him, back out towards the common area.

“I’ll talk to her,” Mateo assured Ramses. “It’s not about you. Go ahead and strip the ship so we can get back to our family.” He went out to find his daughter. She was hyperventilating on the bridge, likely having a panic attack. “Ro.”

“I said I don’t wanna hear it.”

“I’m not gonna criticize you. I wanna help.”

“There’s nothing you can help with. I just need...” She trailed off, because she didn’t know what she needed. “I need to—I need to scream!” And so she did. She took a deep breath, and let it all out.

“Yeah!” Mateo encouraged. “There we go! That’s a good girl!”

Romana continued to scream until she ran out of breath, which was longer than a normal human would last, due to her increased lung capacity. She started to breathe heavily, but was no longer hyperventilating. “I really needed that. I don’t know why, but I did.”

“I have an idea why,” Mateo said to her. “But first, I need a hug too.”

She was crying on his shoulder, still not knowing why she was so upset.

They let go. “Leona, Olimpia, and I are married. Angela and Marie are sisters in a way that few in this universe probably understand, if anyone. Holly Blue and Weaver don’t spend much time together, so they probably don’t even get it. And Ramses? Ramses likes his team and his work, but he doesn’t need that kind of deep connection. You, on the other hand, feel very deeply. I’m not a psychologist, and I don’t know exactly what your life was like before we met, but you’ve been jumping through time longer than even I have. Your life has never had any permanence, which is why you have frequently volunteered to pause your pattern. You crave stability, and I can’t give you that. None of us can.”

“Are you saying that you want me to leave the team?”

“I absolutely don’t want you to do that, but that’s because I’m selfish. I don’t want you to grow up without me. It might take you thousands of years to be as old as I am now, but at least I would be there. I wasn’t before. I missed so much of your life, and while I believe it would be temporally unwise to go back in time to change that, I still kind of wish that I could. And I agonize over that, because unlike other people, I actually could find a way to change the past. Most people don’t have that kind of anxiety. All they can do is surrender to, and accept, their reality. But if you need to leave now, I don’t want you to stay because of me. Ramses is not your future husband, and unfortunately, if you stay with us, no one else is either. That’s why you’re so upset right now. Linwood Meyers is the most misanthropic loner I have ever met, but even he found someone to love, and he can’t live without her. Make that make sense.” He took a beat. “If you need to find your Leona-slash-Olimpia, I can’t stand in your way anymore. It’s hurting you too much, and that hurts me.”

Romana gazed up at him with a sort of eureka smile. She kept it on her face as she looked over at the viewscreen, showing Linwood’s coin rotating twice a minute in the middle distance inside this icy planetesimal. “Linwood’s love,” she said cryptically. She stuffed her forehead into her father’s chest and hugged him again. “I’ll be fine, dad. I know what I’m gonna do now.” She pulled away, and lightened up brightly. “I’m gonna figure this out. It’ll be gonna awesome!”

Mateo followed when she hopped back to the engineering section, where Ramses was still working. “Sorry for the mix-up, ol’ chap. You’re like a brother to me.” She patted him on the forehead.

“Romana, what’s going on? What did you figure out?” Mateo questioned.

“I’m goin’ out for a space-swim,” she said. “Let me know when it’s time to leave.” As her nanites were forming a vacuum suit from her feet up, she blew Ramses a mixed-signal kiss, and tipped backwards. Before she could land on the floor, she disappeared.

Even when they were ready to go later today, and she came back in, she refused to explain what her epiphany was. They would just have to wait and see.

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Microstory 2513: Original Hotel Owner

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I was the man who originally owned the hotel. I was told by a reputable source that the area was primed for rapid development in the coming years, and I wanted to get in on the ground floor. I spent a great deal of money on the construction, and in fact, too much. You see, in the construction game, cutting corners and handing out bribes are common practices. I had seen it in the industry before, and I wanted nothing to do with it. I did everything by the book. It cost me a lot more, and it took me a lot longer to complete the project, but it was something that I was proud of when it was done. I was proud of myself. Unfortunately, I was not the only one trying to make it big in the area, and they were all given false information too. I’m not sure who profited from the lie, but it was quite a believable one, for we all reinforced each other’s presumptions. If someone tells you there’s a great party in the house down the street, and they tell a hundred other people the same thing, and all those people go to the party expecting there to be a lot of people there, well...they found exactly what they expected, didn’t they? So I and the other developers took each other’s presence as proof that we were doing the right thing. The problem was, the interest really wasn’t there. It was the residential sector that didn’t support the vision. No one wanted to come this far out in the middle of nowhere Kansas. A few places survived, but most of us fell apart. I needed to at least make some of my money back, and I found it. Mr. Tipton paid me $11 million for my property. It was a hell of a lot less than I put into it, but a fair price for what the area had succumbed to. What came next, no one could have predicted. Landis Tipton had a monopoly on miracle cures that actually worked. Thousands a day flocked here to benefit. Too many came, in fact, and they all needed to eat, and shop for other things. The Foundation revitalized the area, and put some of my compatriots back in the black. He saved it, and from there, a brand new town was born. It is not mine anymore, which I find a little sad. Looking back, had I known what it would become, I might have asked to be Mr. Tipton’s landlord instead, so I could profit. But alas, the reason they raised so much capital in the beginning was because they wanted total control over their dream, and I would have been in the way of that regardless of my own prognostications. I played one small part in the journey that we have been on for the last five years, and have found a way to be satisfied with that. At least I did not stand in his way.

Microstory 2479: Glaciadome

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Brr, chicken! That’s what my dad used to say. Brr, chicken! It’s cold up here. There is not much dihydrogen monoxide on Castlebourne—compared to say, Earth or Europa, but there is some. Some of it is in the form of water ice, and some of that in the form of glaciers. The largest of these is called Sanaa Glacier. I’m not sure where the name comes from, but I’m guessing this Sanaa woman isn’t too happy about it. The Sanaa Glacier is up there in the northern hemisphere, not too far from Aquilonian Deep. It’s about 2.16 million square kilometers in area, which makes it the largest region on the planet that is not covered by domes. That is for an obvious reason, which is that glaciers, by definition, are always on the move. They move very, very slowly, but they are not still. They’re never still. You can imagine that erecting a dome on top of one is difficult at best, and quite risky. Yet they did it. Glaciadome sits right in the middle of Sanaa, which is the most stable part of it. It’s not immune to the glacier’s movements, but it’s your safest bet. It’s unlike any other dome on the planet. It’s totally unique. Instead of being made out of the usual graphene composite, its frame is instead composed of carbon nanotubes, which can be made to be more flexible. That’s why we use them for space elevator tethers. Instead of diamonds, the panels are made out of a more flexible polycarbonate. This allows the dome to shudder and shake as the glacier flows, and against the extremely heavy winds outside. There’s an old saying, if it doesn’t bend, it’ll break, and that’s true. Glaciadome will survive over time because it’s designed to withstand the stress of movement without buckling. It’s not completely impenetrable, and it’s not nearly as strong as the other domes, but it does its job, and it does it well. You can tell that it works too, because while you can’t physically feel the glacier’s flow unless you’re an advanced lifeform with the right onboard sensors, you can certainly hear it. It’s always screamin’ at ya while the ice breaks and slides. Why do this? Why build a dome on top of something so unstable, in such a hostile environment? Well, what the hell are we doing here if we’re not engineering megastructures for the sake of the challenge. Do you need any other reason? I surely don’t. Researchers live here to be closer to what they’re studying, such as the geologic history of this planet, the composition of the water and ice, and of course, the glacier itself. There are also some winter sports here, like dog sledding, and cross-country skiing, but it’s not as comprehensive as Winterbourne Park. A lot of it has to do with the novelty of the experience. You can live in an igloo, or an ice palace. You can go cold-weather camping, or just make snow angels. It may not be as exciting as one of the adventure domes, but it gives you what it promises. And for me, that’s enough.

Microstory 2458: Diamond Dome

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Would you believe it, centuries ago, diamonds were considered a precious commodity? They’re still precious, but they’re not nearly as rare and luxurious as they once were. Our ancestors would cut them up into pretty shapes, and fashion them into pretty jewelry. We don’t care about that. We care about function over form. Carbon is one of the most versatile elements in the universe, and as it turns out, its diamond form is actually extremely commonplace. It was hard to find on Earth when people were digging it out of the ground with shovels and pickaxes, but when you have the automation and power to manipulate entire planets, you start to see how abundant things are. We use diamonds because the stuff is durable and reliable. It’s also clear, making it a perfect, semi-natural alternative to glass. There are lab-grown polycarbonates out there that we can use instead, and to be sure, those are here on Castlebourne too, but nothing beats the OG super-material. We could also grow diamonds in a lab, but there’s plenty of it in this world, so why not take what the Lord giveth. Now, what exactly is it used for? Well, it’s the primary material for the domes. Most of the domes here aren’t perfectly smooth. They’re geodesic, which means they’re made up of a skeleton called a space frame. Traditionally, these were metallic, but these days, we use metamaterials; particularly graphene. Between the struts for the space frame, they affix transparent triangular panels, which allow you to see the other side. Why do they do this? Most of the domes use holographic skies anyway, so you’re seeing whatever the image is programmed to be. Well, I don’t really know. The tour didn’t explain that. It wouldn’t really be better if the entire dome were opaque with no hope of seeing the outside for real. Using a framework with clear panels is the most common way to design these things, and I just think they look nicer. You can turn the hologram off, and see the true Castlebournian sky, but if they weren’t made this way, that would not be possible. I guess it just gives us more options. A lot of people are afraid, believing that clear equals unsafe, but obviously that’s ridiculous. They think some meteorite could crash through, and suck out all the air, but that’s not really possible. Like I said, it’s made of diamonds, and even if it weren’t, your concern is unwarranted. Even if one panel does falter, these things are so gigantic that it would take days for all the air to escape, at worst. If it’s only one panel, it would take years. At any rate, there would be plenty of time for a drone team to fly up there and replace the panel, or panels. If there is so much damage that the dome rapidly becomes unbreathable, well, whatever caused that damage probably killed everyone on the surface anyway, so the air would be the least of their worries. Okay, I’ll end this on that happy note. Safe travels!

Microstory 2445: Dune Buggy Paradise

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This is the largest habitable desert in the world. Now, you may be asking yourself, how could it be any bigger than any other? Every dome is the same size as all the others, isn’t it? True, but this one makes better use of that space, because it operates in three dimensions. We’re talking about multiple layers here. It’s quite ingenious, really. I don’t mean that you can wander about on the bottom layer, and then take an elevator to a higher ones. You have to walk or drive up ramps to get to other levels, and you don’t just multiply the area of one by the number of layers to get the total area. The upper layers are nowhere near as big. They’re like giant catwalks, criss-crossing each other in random configurations, looping around, and dipping down. It’s all very chaotic, and hard to track. Here’s the most mysterious—and I think, best—part of this whole place, there is a layer near the top of the dome which no one has been able to figure out how to reach. There doesn’t seem to be any path leading to it, but we can clearly see it. At the right angles—and with good enough vision—you can even make out a dune buggy parked on the edge. It’s gotta be some kind of prize, but as I said, no one has managed to reach it thus far. Even if you found some roundabout way, like with an extremely long grappling hook, how would you drive it down? It’s about a kilometer higher than the next highest layer. Maybe it’s a joke, or the creators are taunting us. Or it’s just straight up unfinished, who knows? Another special thing about the way this place is designed is what happens when sand from one layer falls over the edge. Well, it doesn’t. It can slip over, but then fly back up to where it belongs. You don’t have to worry about sand falling on your head all the time like rain thanks to people on the higher layers. It’s not just regular sand that they harvested from the surface of this planet. It’s smartdust. It’s all smartdust. I hear tales of people claiming that it has flown around in other instances, and formed ominous shapes, which they interpret as the dust trying to communicate with them. It could be true, though I’ve not seen it for myself, but even if it were, there’s a scientific explanation for it. Smartdust is fully capable of moving around, and forming larger shapes, like tiny artificial starlings. Overall, this is a pretty nifty place. It could be pretty boring, with its one niche being hardly distinct from other domes. There are other deserts, and at least one other racing dome, but combining them here is more than just the sum of its parts. I think it’s worth the trip. You don’t have to race if you don’t want to. You can just drive around, people are pretty respectful about boundaries.

Microstory 2444: The Sandbox

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This dome isn’t for everyone, but it’s available to anyone. Do you have an idea for a new dome, or an improvement on a preexisting dome? You can come here to conceptualize, pitch, and even engineer these designs. Not everyone here has the educational or working background to translate their thoughts into functioning prototypes, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have their voices heard. I’m not either of these people. I don’t have any ideas, or the means to implement them. But I did want to hear from other people, and they were totally cool with this. Some meetings have closed doors, but it was always very clear. They have a constantly updating map on their prospectus, which shows you when and where the next meetings will be, and whether you’re allowed to just show up to watch and listen. It’s not even always about some crazy and unique concept that’s meant to blow people’s minds. I was at this one pitch from someone from a planet that I had never heard of because it was mostly just a number. She was asking whether they might consider building smaller domes for smaller communities. I can’t tell you whether they’re going to do that, but it’s not a bad suggestion. I’ve always wondered why every dome has the exact same dimensions regardless of the theme. My gut tells me that they constructed all the domes in one go, pressurized them, and only decided afterwards what the purpose of each one was going to be. That would be an all right excuse, but there’s still a lot of land out there that hasn’t been domed over, mostly because the terrain doesn’t allow it, but again, if it’s going to be smaller, that might be okay. Or, instead of that, you could have one large dome with lots of smaller domes inside of it, which might be good enough for what that woman was looking for. Anyway, the Sandbox is for ideas. If you have even only one suggestion, you can send this dome a message, or take the vactrain to it. They seem to be really considering the feedback that they receive. If an idea grows from there, it looks like they sometimes begin building models or prototypes here before making an investment at full scale. A lot of those were kept secret, though, and even the ones I did see, I don’t feel comfortable reporting. You’ll just have to come see for yourself, and find out what they’re willing to show you.

The Seventh Stage: Painting Rocks (Part V)

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Echo is standing in front of the blue wall, painting wispy white clouds on it, paying close attention to details. It would look complete to anyone else, but to him, the work is never done. He can always add one more curve...one final flourish.

Clavia walks up to him. “There you are. What are you doing?”

“Painting this wall. It ain’t gonna paint itself,” Echo replies, still watching what he’s doing.

“It’s literally going to paint itself,” she counters.

He smiles. “I know. Sometimes I just need a break to unwind. Like you with your little headplays.”

She nods. “Fair enough.”

“What’s the count?”

“Three thousand, seven hundred and four.”

He drops his elbow, and looks over at her. “Technically at quota. We’re ready for move-in.”

“Like you said, in the technical sense. We still need to figure out how to convince a supermajority to do it, or it’s not really helpful.”

“We also need to figure out how to do it without loading everyone onto a proverbial bus, and driving them here.”

“It’s time to talk to Cedar,” Echo realizes. They have been dreading this day for a long time. They like him, but they don’t know how he’s going to react or respond to this news. There are whispers that the Cloudbearer twins are building something, but no one knows what, and all of their guesses are wrong; though off by varying degrees. Cedar ran his campaign for power on a foundation of intercivilizational unity. He believes that the only way to keep the Reality Wars at bay is if there’s no one to fight against, because everyone is on the same side. The amount of space between people in this universe could tear them apart. It’s the distribution. Cedar is probably gonna have trouble with the distribution.

“Yeah, we have no choice. Do you think he’ll be mad we didn’t read him into the situation earlier?”

“He’s serving as Head Advisor to our parents,” Echo replies. “He was too preoccupied to worry about this. That can be our excuse for keeping it a secret from him.”

“Good idea.” Clavia takes her brother’s hand, and transports them both to what essentially amounts to a holodeck, though on a much grander scale. They’re standing on an island floating in the air. At least, that’s what it looks like to them. It’s just an illusion. The “air” around them is clear purplish water. They can still breathe, of course, and talk just fine. The sky above is much more unambiguously an ocean. It’s upside down. Waves jut down, and spray a sweet misty rain down towards them. Some of it tastes like chocolate, other drops like honey. Their feet are planted firmly on the ground, though they feel like they could float away at any second. All around them are crystalline structures, also purple, since that is the theme. A stream gives way to a waterfall that slips over the edge, and disappears into the oblivion below, though again, it’s just invisible floor. Between them and the sky are giant turtles, swimming around. One of them nods and winked before moving on.

They aren’t alone on this floating island. They summoned Cedar, and are currently patiently waiting for him to get his bearings in this new world. “This breaks the laws of physics,” he notes. “I’m assuming it’s not real?”

“No,” Echo replies. “Our powers do have some limits.”

“You’ve been gone for nearly a month,” Cedar points out.

Clavia smirks. “We’ve been gone longer than that.”

“Framejacking, or temporal acceleration?”

“Both,” Echo answers. Time is moving faster in this universe, so more gets done in a shorter amount of time in comparison to the Sixth Key, but their own minds are also operating at much higher speeds, allowing them to think and act more quickly.

“This is what you’ve been working on?”

Echo laughs. “This took only a few seconds to construct. We got the idea from Castlebourne. Most of the domes on that world are physical, except for the holographic sky. One of them is nearly all holography. You can make it look like anything. We chose this today. Isn’t it cool?”

“Yeah,” Cedar agrees. “What am I doing here, though?”

Echo clears his throat. “What is the number one cause of tension and conflict in the Sixth Key?”

Cedar dismisses his words with a wave of his hand. “Don’t pitch me. Just tell me what you’ve done, and what you want. You’re gonna need to learn this for when you take over in a more meaningful sense. We’re in charge of undecillions of people back home. No one has time to beat around the bush or be polite about it.”

“Very well,” Echo decides. He reaches up and pantomimes pulling a stage curtain open. As he does so, a tear in the hologram appears in the far, far distance. Behind it, they see what looks like regular outerspace, but as the curtains separate even farther, a figure appears. It looks like a big metal statue of a humanoid, or perhaps just a big robot. It’s hard to tell what scale they’re working with here, so Echo has to explain. “Have you ever heard of the matrioshka body?”

“I have,” Cedar confirms. “I went to a sort of school like you did. That’s where the afterlife simulation was housed, before it collapsed, and everyone was transported into Fort Underhill. The Sixth Key shares interdimensional space with them now. I never knew what happened to matrioshka body, though. That it?”

Echo shakes his head. “That. Is MB-3704.”

Cedar laughs. “You made your own? That’s impressive.”

Echo and Clavia exchange a look. “He said it was three-seven-zero-four.”

Cedar is confused, but only for half a second. Then his face drops into a frown. “You made 3700 of these things?”

“Yeah,” Echo says.

Cedar starts to pace around and shake his head, almost in disappointment. “Why? What do they do?”

“Well, they...have people live in them.”

“Who lives in them?”

“No one yet, that’s what we’re asking you for.”

“Asking me for what?” Cedar questions. “I told you, get to the point. Stop trying to be dramatic.”

“We need you to transport everyone from the Sixth Key who wants to live here. Send them all to their new homes...all at once.”

“I can’t do that!” he cries.

“We’re gonna let them consent,” Clavia defends. “We’re not gonna make anyone move, but this will be better, and I think there will be a ton of interest.”

“Think about it,” Echo begins before Cedar can make another argument. “There are hundreds of billions of stars, but we don’t have enough resources for everyone. How is that possible? Because stars radiate a ton of their energy away, even with dyson swarms. Matrioshka brains are more comprehensive, and more efficient. And matrioshka bodies are just stylish and cool.” Honestly, I don’t know why no one ever thought of it before. I thought that was the point of the original matrioshka body, and its successor, Big Papa.” There ought to be far more than two of these in existence. The Parallel was more than capable of doing it, but they chose not to. They still orbited stars. Even the interstellar settlements were quite literally few and far between. Why? Why keep the stars? Aesthetics? Safety? Ethics? Probably all of the above. Or. Echo and Clavia are just that clever.

“That’s not my point. I literally can’t do it. I don’t have that kind of power.”

Echo and Clavia are both confused. “What are you talking about? You already did it. You moved them all from their original realities, to the Sixth Key.”

“No, I didn’t.” He starts to look around on the ground. Guessing at his needs, Echo manifests a chair for him to sit in. Cedar hunches over and stuffs his face in his palms. “That wasn’t me. I didn’t do any of that.”

“What? It had to have happened,” Clavia argues. “Everyone’s there.”

“I’m not saying that it never happened,” Cedar tries to explain. “I’m telling you that I didn’t do it. I have powers, but not like that. That’s insane.”

“Then who did?” Echo asks him.

Cedar looks up to meet Echo’s gaze. “I have no idea. They didn’t tell me. They have to keep it a secret, even from me and my family, even now that it’s done. We were...a misdirect. It’s like sleight of hand. We were the left hand that distracted everyone so no one would see what the right hand was doing. I don’t know if anyone knows who saved everyone during Reconvergence. All I know is that it wasn’t me.” He pauses before adding, “I just took credit, per my instructions.”

Echo and Clavia manifest their own chairs to sit in. They sit there in silence for a good five minutes before Echo decides to speak again. “Time is not linear. If something exists at any moment, it exists in all moments. If you know something about the past, you can change it. Keeping it a secret was smart. Even if someone were to go back and kill you as a child, it wouldn’t stop the creation of the Sixth Key. You’re like a bodyguard, there to take a bullet if one ever comes flying through. That’s how I would have done it if I were there.”

“Maybe you were,” Cedar reasons. “Maybe you two are the ones who created the Sixth Key; you just haven’t done it yet from your own perspectives.”

They exchange another look. Clavia decides to explain. “There’s a small group of people on a planet in the Sixth Key who are aware of what we’ve been up to. Just a few billion people. They were our test group. We’ve already tried to transport them to our new universe. We don’t have that kind of juice either. Stars are easy. Giant metal statues are easy. Moving people? That requires a level of precision that we do not possess; not with hordes anyway. We could probably move them a couple thousand at a time, but that’s all but useless for our needs. That’s a meaningless rounding error compared to the total population.”

“What about Ellie Underhill?” Echo asks after another bout of silence. “I don’t remember how many she transported into Fort Underhill.”

“It was only 120 billion,” Cedar replies. “Not quite a rounding error, but still not good enough. Besides, she gave them all new bodies; it was a whole different animal.”

“So what we’re saying is that we need to find the person who actually did move everyone from the five realities to the Sixth Key. We need them to do it again.” Clavia starts to pace. Finding someone out there in the abstract is not something that she’s ever done before. She always knows who she’s targeting, or roundabouts where they are. This is a mystery individual, who might be in either of two universes—or, hell, maybe neither of them. They could have also done it subconsciously, like how Echo lived before he became self-aware and realized his true potential. Maybe it’s not just one person. Maybe it was a group, or somehow everyone. Maybe through the spirit of survival every single living organism consolidated their untapped collective power into one brilliant miracle. Ugh, Clavia doesn’t know, but you know who would?

“Hey, boys!”

Echo nearly falls out of his chair, but catches himself by spreading his feet apart. He stumbles away from her. “Debra. How did you get out?” She still looks like his sister. She’s still occupying that body, and nothing about it has changed. But Echo knows. He would always know. “What did you do to Clavia?”

“Relax, she’s still in here; on the first stage. She gave me control of the body, because you need me.”

“I need you for what?”

“I can find your mysterious god-being,” Debra spits back like he’s an insignificant little ant on the ground. “I found you, didn’t I? You were alone on a nothing planet in the middle of the universe. I knew exactly where you were. I intuited that you existed in the first place.”

“We can’t trust you,” Echo contends.

“Believe it or not, I’ve changed. Living with those people, doing those plays...it’s changed me. I’m no hero, but I’m not a villain anymore either. Clavia maintains full veto power. She can come back whenever she wants.”

“Prove it. Let me talk to my sister again. And don’t try to trick me, I’ll know.”

“I know.” Debra actually does what is asked of her, and temporarily returns control of the body to Clavia.

“She’s not exactly right,” Clavia says. “She doesn’t need my body, she needs my brain.”

“Can’t you just do it? You have all her power, don’t you?”

“It’s more complicated than that. You would understand if you could be inside my head. You would get it if you could see the construct that I’ve constructed.”

Echo steps forward, and places a hand on each of Clavia’s shoulders. “I bet I can. Show me. I think it’s about time that I meet your little brain buds.”

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Microstory 2434: Canopydome

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Around the turn of the 22nd century, a major effort began to rewild Earth. Most of the population were moving to megastructure arcologies, seasteads, and space habitats. The cities of old were taking up space where life could be thriving instead. By now, the amount of horizontal space that humans take up is practically negligible. But these endeavors weren’t the very beginning of it. Closer to the middle of the 21st century, people were fed up with how their ancestors had treated the planet. They hadn’t even considered bulldozing entire cities yet, but they still knew that more needed to be done to recover the ecosystems that had already been destroyed. In particular, they were worried about the Amazon rainforest. So many trees had been taken down, and with them, the little critters that used that region as a home. They fought back against corporate greed, and began to restore what was lost. This was during the beginnings of worldwide universal basic income programs, so it was easier to push back against certain institutions. Four hundred years later, not only can we restore whole ecosystems, but create them from scratch. That is what they’ve done here under Canopydome. While nowhere near as large as the one in South America, or other parts of Earth, it’s still nice. When an individual is standing there, under the canopy, it’s not like they can tell how expansive it is. That’s the thing about a rainforest, which sets it apart from other forested environments; you’re wrapped up in the foliage, and can’t see very far. When you’re in it, it feels like this is all there is, and if you’re alone, you feel that too. At the moment, there isn’t much fauna in Canopydome, so the animal calls you hear are from hidden speakers, but I was promised that this will change in the future as more organisms are bioengineered to sustainable levels. They explained how there is actually another rainforest dome, but it’s not at all accessible to the public. It only exists to introduce various species to a comparable environment, and let them figure out how to survive on Castlebourne, before anyone shows up to gawk at them. Apparently, there are a lot of domes like this which serve this purpose. That makes sense. Regenesis is a delicate process, and slow if you wanna do it right. They could make them as realistic automatons instead, but I think they want to be as authentic as possible. One of the reasons they’re doing this is to preserve life, not just so it appears that life exists here. If you’re afraid of large animals, my advice is to come here now before they show up. In contrast, if you want to see those animals, then I advise you to wait. We’re probably talking about five or ten years depending on your definition of the climax community—or more appropriately their definition of it.

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 2346: Vacuus, April 16, 2179

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Dear Condor,

I think it’s a lovely idea for us to celebrate “together” and to be looking at the same stars at the same time. From where I’m standing, Libra is as good of a selection as any. I don’t otherwise have any favorite stars or constellations, and it sounds like you don’t either. I do like to look at them, and didn’t even think about the fact that you can’t unless someone gives you access. So I guess the toxic gases in your atmosphere sit low enough that there are pockets of clean air above it. According to my research that I just did ten minutes ago, Mauna Kea isn’t even the highest peak in the world, so there must be a decent number of these undomed safe zones. Did you and your father transport people to and from these places too, or just the domes? To answer your question, we do have our own observatory that I can access through a tunnel. If we time it right, I won’t have to worry about registering for remote viewing, or anything. There will be a sliver of time where no one’s using it, and I’m sure I could ask for permission. It was one of the first things they built, so they could track the Valkyries, but it’s not as good as the one you’ll be seeing through, and isn’t all that important anymore. I never said, but our settlement is not the ideal location for a large telescope, so our main one was built at an outpost several kilometers away. A small team operates there in person while researchers use the data as needed, and allowed, remotely. Since our local observatory doesn’t serve that much purpose, I doubt I would have much resistance if I just ask to set up my little one-person birthday party there. As far as the clothing goes, send me the design for the outfit, and I’ll have it made. I’m in need of some new clothes anyway, so it won’t break my budget to buy something. In fact, I usually get myself something special around my birthday anyway. I obviously get a discount if I return material for recycling, and I’m done with some of my old stuff.

Searching for Australia through the telescope,

Corinthia

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 1, 2483

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After adjusting to the lights of the infirmary, Romana looked over at her father, but seemed to be focusing on her own breath. It started to look like she was trying to speak, but she was home now, and everything was going to be fine, so there was no reason to rush this.

“It’s okay. I’m here, and you’re safe. Only talk if you can,” Mateo encouraged.

She struggled to bring her lips closer together to formulate words. She didn’t look like she was in any pain, though, and the pod didn’t indicate that there was any medical issue to be worried about. She didn’t make a sound until she was ready to produce the word, fully and clearly. “Report.”

They told her what had happened, and asked if she remembered anything.

“Nothing,” Romana answered. “Ramses turned his new machine on, and then I woke up here.”

“That might be for the best,” Olimpia hoped. It didn’t appear that she was ever tortured or abused, but there was no telling how difficult it was to be trapped in Buddy’s particles. They might try to find out more information later, but for now, they were just grateful that she was back.

Romana needed physical help getting out of the pod, and then into the tub to be washed up. Olimpia graciously assisted with that. Mateo didn’t feel comfortable participating, and Romana probably preferred it this way too. While she had no apparent memory of the dark particle prison, she still looked traumatized. Perhaps the ordeal had a nuanced impact on her psyche, or maybe her mind was repressing it to protect itself. This gave Mateo an idea, to find a way to let her use his rendezvous card, so she could speak with Dr. Hammer. That was against the rules, but if it could improve his mental health, the Center might make an exception. And anyway, once he made sure that Romana was better, Mateo probably wouldn’t need the support group anymore.

He gave the two of them space, and went back to the bridge. “What’s the word with this thing? Are we in danger of another tangent?”

“Probably,” Leona replied. “But the risk can be mitigated with some careful planning.”

“Two jumps,” Ramses added. “I can probably only muster two good jumps a day, though it’s best that we spread them out by several hours. And I’m only guessing that due to our past experiences. We’ve obviously pushed the limits before, but it hasn’t always worked out, so for the sake of a successful jump, we should probably consider that the safety margin. That doesn’t mean I know what’s causing it. It could be a design flaw, an inherent limitation from the ship that the slingdrive has been retrofitted to, or it could be because of the quintessence itself. Perhaps it doesn’t like people to mess with it until it’s had time to settle down. I need more time, and more tests...again.”

“Before, when we were testing the navigation function,” Mateo began, “it was to save Romana’s life. Now we’re okay. Now we can afford to take a little time. Do what you need to do, but take the pressure off.”

Ramses nodded with a frown.

“And don’t feel bad about what happened,” Mateo continued, noticing that this was not his friend’s real concern. “Buddy is an antagonist who took advantage of an accident that you even predicted. We all knew the risks, including her. I’m not holding it against you, and I would like to see the day when you don’t hold it against yourself. Romana will be fine. She’s back now, and the tethers are holding. We’ll never lose her again. I love you, man.”

“Love you too,” Ramses replied.

“There’s something else,” Leona said, now that the serious conversation was over. “It’s about the Insulator. While he was getting us back, I was conducting my own research.” She stepped to the side to reveal the glass object sitting on the console. “As you can see, it’s missing the dome that’s supposed to go on top. Glass insulators have no moving parts, yet it’s been removed as if it could be popped off like a snap fastener. We scanned for the dome out in the black while we were at our last pitstop, but it might be lost forever.”

“Cool,” Mateo said. “I don’t care about it, though.”

“You should,” Leona insisted. “I was able to make minimal contact with the inhabitant. I can hear her, but she can’t hear me. Mateo, it’s Dubra.”

“My sister?” Romana was here, totally naked, but not worried about it.

Olimpia rushed up, and wrapped a towel around her body. “Sorry, she suddenly hopped out of the tub, and ran off.”

I could hear their conversation in their minds,” Romana explained. “If Dubra is in there, I can turn that minimal contact into a real conversation.”

“Be my guest,” Leona agreed, moving away even farther.

Romana stepped up to it, took a deep breath, then lifted her arms, apparently to prepare to touch it. Her towel fell right back off of her.

“Maybe you should get dried off and clothed,” Mateo asked.

“I got this.” Olimpia was wearing a splash tunic, which was a hydrophobic garment caregivers used to aid someone in bathing, whether as a family member, friend, or medical professional. She pulled it off of her own body, and dropped it over Romana’s, since the latter didn’t seem to be bothered by the mixed company. Now Olimpia was the one without clothes on, but that was fine.

Romana adjusted the shoulders of the tunic, then refocused on the task at hand. She placed fingers from both hands upon the Insulator. She stood there for a few minutes, occasionally showing mild signs of active listening. She nodded definitively, and separated. “Okay.”

“Okay, what? Is she all right?” Mateo asked.

“Yeah, she’s fine.”

“Is that all she said?” Leona pressed.

“No, she said quite a bit.” Romana was acting like these were perfectly complete responses.

“Such as what?” Ramses asked.

“Oh, uh...sister-sister confidentiality.”

“That’s not a thing,” Mateo argued.

“Yes, it is.” Marie was walking onto the bridge, followed by her own sister.

“I’ll just talk to her myself. How do we get her out?” Mateo questioned.

“I’ll have to build her a new substrate,” Ramses reasoned, “but I don’t have her DNA, so I can’t make her look as she did.” He consulted his watch. “And it will take me a real year.”

“Go on and get on it,” Leona said. “Just give her something temporary, and we’ll transfer her to something else later. She might know how we can acquire a sample of her DNA somewhere in the past.”

“Let Romana ask for consent first, please,” Mateo suggested.

“Yes,” Romana said. She went back to briefly speak with Dubravka. “She’s in. Something temporary is fine. It will take some effort to make her the real thing, and she wants to be involved in that. I’m so glad I won’t have to wait a whole year to meet her for real. I really don’t care for telepathy.”

Romana had to wait an entire year before she even had a chance to meet her half-sister in person. She was sixteen years old when Mateo and the team returned to the timestream. Instead of jumping forward like she was used to, she found herself stuck in realtime. She spent that year trying to stay busy by helping Hrockas to prepare for the Grand Opening. There was nothing else she could do. Ramses and Leona were the only ones with any hope of figuring out what might have gone wrong, and more importantly, how to fix it. She certainly couldn’t understand it herself. She didn’t have a whole lot in the way of a formal education. She knew what little she knew thanks to books that her family was able to procure for her over the years, but her unstable lifestyle was not conducive to studying in a classroom. She didn’t have access to Ramses’ ground lab either, or she might have tried to initiate Dubra’s download process herself.

She was depressed, and feeling left behind, but she had all year to come to terms with missing the bus, and the delay in the big family reunion. She also grew up hearing stories of Team Matic’s fantastical adventures, with their top-notch engineer and captain. Together, they could fix anything. So she was confident that they would solve the problem quickly.

“You noticed these, right?” They were back in the realspace infirmary on the Vellani Ambassador. The patient was sitting on the exam table, legs hanging off the edge. Leona was no doctor, but she had a penlight, and she knew how to point it at someone’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Romana replied. “I’ve tried to flush them out, but they’re not exactly...tangible.”

“What are you talking about?” Mateo was standing off to the side, arms crossed, and thinking about the most painful way to tear Buddy’s limbs off of his body.

“The dark particles,” Leona answered. “There are still some in there, floating around. I can’t tell exactly where; behind the cornea, maybe? Or they’re in another dimension...”

“Then figure it out!” Mateo cried.

“Stop it,” Leona instructed. “We’ve talked about your anger.”

Mateo took a deep breath. “I know it’s not your fault, I’m sorry.” He pulled the rendezvous card out of his sleeve pocket. It was red, just as anyone would expect out of someone this angry.

“What are you thinking?” his wife asked.

“I’m thinking that Dr. Hammer is not just a psychiatrist. She has diagnostic equipment that Ramses wouldn’t be able to develop, or know how to use properly. She may have even seen this before.”

“That’s not what that card is for,” she reminded him.

“My daughter’s back, I don’t need therapy anymore. I need her to be healthy.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing.”

“No,” Romana jumped in. “I know what you’re saying. But Matics are time-skippers. It’s what we do. I don’t wanna lose that.”

“I’m just making sure you understand your options,” Leona told her.

“My options,” Romana began before a pause, “are to find the man who did this to me, and make him fix it.”

Mateo shook his head. “I get the impulse. Believe me, I want to ring his neck. But Rule Number Fifteen is probably the most important one when it comes to us, so if you’re going to be a part of our team in any capacity, you will need to learn to follow it. Buddy is powerful, fragile, and whimsical. In my experience, that combination equates to sudden outbursts of excessive retaliation. His objective is to bring a fruit from the past into the future. He has the power to simply go back to the past, and pick one whenever he feels like it. He’s going to extreme lengths to accomplish something stupid and pointless. You can’t reason with someone like that, and we certainly can’t fight him. We try to handle this on our own. Locating him is a last resort.”

“Okay,” Romana agreed. “Then can someone help me get back down to the planet? I want to be there when Dubra wakes up.”

“Okay, but then we’re talking about Snake Island,” Mateo called to her as she was trying to leave.

“Whatever, just let me get this gown off!

Leona sighed. “We’re not going to Snake Island.”

“Leona...”

“We’re not going to Snake Island. We like Dr. Hammer, but we don’t know her all that well. Your own cousin became an adversary in the Third Rail. We need to be cautious, and follow the rules. Now go get your daughter, and go down to see your other daughter.”

Ramses’ ground lab was a lot bigger and better than the one he had in the pocket dimension attached to the ship. He had been wanting this forever, and finally found a place to build it. Starter nanites constructed it for him while they were gone, with the first room being dedicated to the Insulator of Life, as well as the equipment necessary to produce a new body.

Mateo peered at it, floating there in its amniotic tank. “What DNA did you end up using, since we don’t have hers. I assumed it would just be one of those public-use template things.”

Ramses was running through his tasklist before the download procedure. “Uh...don’t worry about it.”

“I wasn’t too terribly worried before, but now I really am. What did you do?”

“It’s fine, don’t—it’s fine.”

“Ramses Abdulrashid,” Mateo enunciated like a disappointed parent.

“Yours,” Ramses answered. “Yours and Leona’s. I mixed them together, like what would happen if you had your own kid.”

The room grew extremely tense. “Oh,” Romana said quietly and accidentally.

“Ramses. Leona and I did conceive twins. She lost them.”

“This isn’t either of them,” Ramses reasoned. “Couples have multiple kids, they don’t look the same. The DNA always combines differently.”

“Ramses,” Mateo said once more. “You can’t give my daughter that I had with Serif a body created from what might have become the daughter that Leona and I had together. It will remind her of that trauma.”

“Well, I can’t undo it.”

“Make her a new one.”

“What?”

“Make a new body.”

“Well, what am I meant to do with this one?” Ramses questioned.

“Whatever you do with it, don’t tell anyone; least of all my wife. Start over, and just use one of the templates.”

Ramses breathed deeply, and looked over at Romana as if she would somehow be able to alter the outcome of this situation. It didn’t matter how either of them felt about it. This was Mateo’s decision, and nothing was going to change it. Mateo shut his eyes and nodded. “Okay. It will be another year for us. I’ve obviously developed a method of accelerating time to expedite the maturation process, but I still don’t have it down to less than a day.”

“Sorry, kid,” Mateo said to Romana. He then looked back over at Ramses. “Get it going, and automate the process. Then focus on my other daughter. Let her jump with us. She shouldn’t have to wait a whole other year.”

Ramses got to work on the second major project, but couldn’t figure it out. The team jumped forward without her, and came back to a seventeen-year-old. Fortunately, she wasn’t alone. Now with access to the lab, she was able to initiate the download process herself, and meet Dubravka for real. They had grown quite close over the last several months.

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