Microstory 2633: Riding the Blinds

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It’s the year 2424, and the trip to Castlebourne will take 108 years, because it is 108 light years away, and the ship will be able to travel at just under light speed. Due to special relativity, however, it will only feel like a couple of months for anyone on the ship. That preposition is more appropriate for Mandica than for anyone or anything else. They will actually be inside of it while she’ll be on the outside, like a parasite.

“That’s not the right term,” her pilot argues. “It makes it sound like you’re hurting the ship. I promise, it won’t even notice you. You’re not a parasite, it’s...” He trails off as he looks it up on his device. “Phoretic. You’re a phoresy. Yeah, that sounds better.”

“You literally called the pod The Barnacle,” Mandica argues.

“It’s a joke,” he defends.

“That hat is a joke,” she snaps back. She knows, she shouldn’t be so mean.

“Uh, it’s a trilby, and it’s what we call retro-stylish,” he boasts.

“All right, Trilby.” She notices that he seems to like that nickname. “Tell me how this works so I don’t vaporize myself in the middle of interstellar space.”

Trilby literally pulls back the curtain to show the little pod that she’ll be in. It looks like the inside of a nutshell, but only half of it. There is no other half. This will evidently be sealed against the hull, so the hull acts as the fourth wall, and if that seal ever breaks, she’ll be exposed to the vacuum of outer space. “Okay. You’ll have to be in your Integrated Multipurpose Suit when we begin, helmet and all. You can hold onto these handles so you don’t slip off. Of course, you’ll be tethered, but if you slip out during the process, the seal will snap that tether, and you’ll start to float away.”

“Got it. Hold on tight.”

“Right,” he agrees. “Once it’s sealed, I wouldn’t unseal it until you reach your destination, or you’ll be screwed. It can be resealed, but you would have to keep your grip on it for that to work, so just don’t do it. There’s no door. You can only get out by detaching from the hull. I assume you’re halfway decent with computers. Everything you need is on this console, and it will interface with your suit. It has its own powersource, but it’s minimal, so I suggest you let it siphon from the arkship. Don’t worry, it’s a small pod, and you’re only one person, so the power draw will be well within the margin of error. As long as you don’t do anything crazy, you won’t be detected.”

“Can I take my helmet off in transit, or even my suit?”

“Helmet off should be fine. This thing has its own climate control. I would leave the suit on most of the time, however. If you do remove it, do it in short bursts to let your body breathe, but don’t fall asleep like that, or anything. It’ll be a tight seal, but I won’t be there to fix any issues. It will all be up to you.” He lifts a flap on the end of the console. “Here’s a copy of the operator’s manual, in paper form. There’s obviously a virtual version of it, but this is just in case. He opens a small cupboard. It also has dayfruit growers, but I could only fit four of them, so you’ll want to supplement with the meal bars below it, and your dayfruit smoothie in your Portable Resource Unit. I don’t remember how long regular humans can go without food, so rationing will be up to you. Just be careful and pay attention to your supplies.”

Mandica sighs and looks over her little lifeboat. “Any exercise equipment? I’ve actually never been to space before today, and I spent most of the time hiding in that shipping container. But I hear that we regular humans have trouble with zero-g over long periods of time. I assume I’m subject to the inertial dampeners, or I simply wouldn’t survive high relativistic speeds at all anyway.”

Trilby nods. “The pod will leech from the inertial dampeners, but it’s weird because of how it attaches.” He points to some of the controls. “You’ll be able to tune it, however. If you just turn this dial, it will lower the effects slightly, allowing you to make the back of the pod down. Don’t be scared of it, you will not be able to turn your private dampeners so far down that you splatter against the wall. And this isn’t even the wall. Think of it as the floor. See? Here’s your bed.” He slides the bed lid away. Because of this little shuttle’s own inertial dampeners, it looks like the bed is up against the wall, but that will change once she’s attached and on the move. “You can still do exercise. Your suit has a number of programs built in, which you can peruse yourself. Just be sure to narrow the results to close-quarters, or it may try to get you to run away.”

Mandica nods repeatedly. She’s growing quite nervous. It was bad enough when he snuck her onto the space elevator, but now she will be completely alone. If this fragile thing pops off, and she manages to survive that, she won’t be able to get into the ship. She won’t be able to ask for help. Even in an emergency—even if she’s willing to get caught—the arkship may be fully automated, and help may be difficult. Some bots don’t respond to black swan events. They won’t know how to respond to her pleas. And she’s not going to ask this guy if there will be any intelligence present, because nothing should go wrong at all. She will be tucked away safely for two months, and be free of Core World rule forever. She doesn’t hate the establishment, but she wants to remove herself from it, and this is the only way. She can’t afford the energy credits for anything else.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Trilby says to her.

“Have you done this before?”

“Not this exact thing, but I’ve tested the barnacle pod. It will work, as long as you treat it right, and don’t push the wrong buttons.”

“No pressure,” she says.

He takes a chance and places a hand upon her shoulder. “You’ll do well.”

She doesn’t know him, but he’s been helping her, and risking a lot to do it, so she decides to go for it and give him a hug. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He looks over at his screen. “We’re comin’ up on it. Remember what I taught you, and for everything else, rely on your survival instincts. Digitized people don’t have those anymore, but yours will know what to do. Better put on your other two IMS layers, but first, fix your inner layer. You have it on backwards. The autozipper goes in back. Let me know when you’re ready. I have to seal the bulkhead before I open the airlock, but we’ll be able to talk on comms. I’ll stay with you until I get out of range myself, or the arkship launches, and you speed away in a flash.”

“All right.” She puts her suit all the way on, and tethers herself to the barnacle pod. He opens the airlock, and lets the pod drift out for a little bit before seizing it with his grabber claws. He maneuvers the barnacle in front of his shuttle as he makes his approach. She wants to close her eyes, but that would just be unsafe, so she watches. She looks around for any cameras, drones, or lurking spacewalkers. No one. No one will know she’s here. The claws push the pod forward, and automated systems automatically latch on. The vacuum seal engages until she’s fully secure. They spend the next few hours getting to know each other better before the arkship powers up and flies away.

Microstory 2631: The Truth is That Even the Undigitized Are Digitized Because True Death is Dumb

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Datetime format not recognized. Cecelia Massey has been doing this job for less than twenty years. Her boss, Keilix has been doing it for centuries, but Cece doesn’t think even Keilix has seen anything like this before. “Uhh, K.O.? K.O.? K.O.? Keilix!”

The dead don’t need to sleep, but it’s a pleasurable experience, so people still do it all the time. Keilix finally wakes up. “What is it?”

“There—I think there’s something broken.”

Keilix gets out of bed, and walks over to the workstation. Her eyes widen in shock and fear when she sees it. “No, that can’t be right. This is thousands of people.”

“The numbers are still rising,” Cecelia states the obvious.

“Something huge must have happened, like a ship blew up, or something. Where are they coming from?”

Cecelia opens a new screen. “A place called Proxima Doma, Proxima Centauri. It looks like there was a delay in processing, but their local buffer filled up, so it sent a databurst to us. Why would it do that? We can’t handle this kind of volume.”

Keilix looks at a different screen. “The original programming was never altered. These are the same protocols that the original simulation had. It doesn’t know that there are only two of us now. It’s just dropping people off, and assuming that there will be counselors available to facilitate orientation.”

“I’m looking at the COD list. We have falls, asphyxiation, implosion...lava? I’m seeing a lot of lava here.”

Keilix looks over Cece’s shoulder. “This is an apocalyptic event. Let me look at something.” She takes out her handheld device. It’s not any more physical than anything else in this virtual world, but it’s the manifestation of the only thing that grants her access to some current knowledge out of base reality. It allows them to keep up with what’s going on, to a degree. They try not to use it too much. “There’s nothing in the news about it, but the link hasn’t updated in a while. What I can tell you is that the population of Proxima Doma, at last count, was roughly 1.21 billion people.”

“Are they all coming here?” Cece presses.

“If the whole world was destroyed by something almost all at once, then maybe. But...some of them should be digitized. Their consciousnesses should be routed to local simulations and backup substrates. They shouldn’t actually die.” She looks back at her device, reads a little more, and shakes her head. “But apparently, this one planet boasts the greatest undigitized population in the galaxy right now. I get the sense that they’re proud of that. Some of them are entirely unenhanced humans, just like I was when I died at the turn of the 22nd century. I didn’t have as much choice, though.”

“Well, I did, I still ended up here too.” Cece has pulled up the arrival history. “Yeah, I’m just scanning our logs now. Proxima Doma, Proxima Doma, Proxima Doma. I guess I never noticed that when people do die, they tend to come from there above all else. Almost no one from Earth these days.”

“We don’t usually ask them where they’re from, we don’t care.”

“So, what do we do? Can we...make them all go dormant maybe?”

Keilix sighs, and scratches the back of her head to relieve the tension. “I don’t know how to do that. We need help. Either way, we can’t do this ourselves.”

“Who do we call? Gilbert?” Cece suggests.

“No, he’s not great with people. Neither is Nerakali. They’re not bad, but they won’t know what to do either.” She looks over at the small red button on the wall.

“This is an emergency,” Cece seems to agree.

“The problem is, I don’t know who we’re gonna get. Hades...or Persephone.”

“Which one are we hoping for?”

“Hell if I know, I’ve never met either of them. I don’t even know what their real names are. I just know that they’re both bad, and that’s why we don’t push that button.”

“I think we have to,” Cece decides. “Unprecedented is an understatement. We are not equipped for this. Honestly, I wouldn’t have taken this job if I had died back around when you did. It’s too much pressure. I wanted to help people...but only a few at a time.”

“Okay.” Keilix takes a deep breath and walks over to the button.

Cece stands. “We’ll press it together.”

“No, I got it.” She presses it.

Ding-dong, goes the doorbell.

A door materializes on the wall, then after a few seconds pass, it opens. A young woman in her pajamas is on the other side. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, it’s uhh, uhh...Armageddon? There could be as many as over a billion people dying at once. We were told to push this button if we ever needed help.”

The woman looks over at the button. “Oh. No one told me. So, I’m assuming that this is the afterlife simulation?”

“Yeah.”

“What year is it?”

“I forget,” Keilix admits. “The 2520s.”

“Well.” The woman steps into the room. “I don’t know what to do in this situation, but I will help in any way I can.” She offers her hand. “I’m Ellie Underhill.”

“So, you’re Persephone?” Cece guesses.

The woman winces. “No. I’m Ellie Underhill,” she repeats.

“Persephone is a code name. We don’t know who she would really be,” Keilix explains. “That’s why we’ve never pressed it before.”

“Hmm,” Ellie begins. “Well, you don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m not a weirdo with a Greek god complex. I didn’t actually build the simulation, I just came up with it. A guy stole it from me, but interestingly enough, he was not entirely without honor, so when I finally showed up after thousands of years, he gave it back. I didn’t realize it was still running after I moved all of the dead people to a new universe.”

Keilix’s eyes widened again. “That was you? Should I bow?”

Ellie laughs. “No. Let’s just get to work. Show me what we’re dealing with here.”

And so the trio look through the operator’s manuals, and start learning how to deal with this issue. As it turns out, while this planetwide catastrophe is absolutely unprecedented, the “Hades” founder still considered it a possibility, and still planned for it. They find a way to slow down the ingress, and bring in a little extra help. After a few days, the deaths taper off, ultimately numbering in the low millions. They slowly get them through orientation. Some are disappointed that this isn’t the real heaven, but many are relieved, and regret not doing more to protect themselves intentionally. But they will all be okay. The afterlife simulation is fully operational once more.

Microstory 2625: Have Your Baggage and Your Passports Ready and Follow the Green Line

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August 30, 2526. The girls have been looking for an alternate way across the four-kilometer wide chasm separating them from the northern pole. They didn’t find a rocket, a drone, or replacement IMS units, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist somewhere. In one of these apartments, a resident of this closest dome might have stuffed an IMS in their closet, and left it there. They can’t search every unit, so they’re just looking in the common areas, hoping to get lucky. They have either been picked clean, or nothing useful was ever there. The people who lived in this dome were already pretty far north when the planet went to hell. They would have had a lot more time to make their own evacuation while the equatorial settlements were rushing to reach even a modicum of safety.

They’re in the main control room now, trying to find some kind of master asset database. They aren’t finding any luck here either. Suddenly, they hear a beep that isn’t too irritating. “What’s that?” Cash asks.

“Proximity alarm. Non-emergency. Someone’s coming in for a visit.”

“There are still people on this side of the death chasm?”

“Apparently.” Cash opens a channel. “Unidentified extra-domal vehicle, please respond. Unidentified vehicle, this is the control room of Queen’s Egg Dome, are you reading me?” She waits a bit longer. “I don’t think the signal is punching through.”

“Do we definitely want to get their attention or maybe no?” Breanna poses.

“They might have what we need, I say it’s worth the risk.”

“All right.” Breanna turns back to her own workstation. She identifies the flare array, and shoots them all off. There is no reason to be conservative here.

They both watch on the viewscreen as the flares go up one by one, just outside the dome. Cash glances back down at the proximity map. “It’s turning. It sees the flares.”

Breanna grabs her helmet from the table in the corner. “Let’s go say hi.”

They cart down to a maintenance garage not too far from where the flares went off. They open it, and wave the rover down. The driver pulls into the airlock, then waits for Breanna to repressurize it before getting out. He’s not wearing a suit. He shakes their hands after Breanna and Cash take their helmets back off, and introduce themselves. “It’s very nice to meet you. My name is Sorel Arts, and I’m here to save your life.”

“How would you do that?” Breanna questions.

Sorel smirks. He gestures for them to follow him to the back of his rover. He opens the hatches to reveal a mind-uploading set-up. “This is how you’re gonna get out of this mess. I can send you anywhere in the known universe at the speed of thought. Ladies, let me ask you this, have you ever heard of a planet called Castlebourne?”

“We’re undigitized,” Cash points out, “otherwise we would have already left.”

“That’s okay,” Sorel says. He slaps the manifold like an ace salesman. “This baby can digitize you as well as transfer your mind. It’s an all-in-one.”

“No, what I mean is we don’t want to be digitized, or we already would be,” Cash clarifies. “We’re looking for a physical way to get to the other side of the chasm.”

“Chasm?” Sorel asks. “You mean over the equator?”

“No,” Breanna begins, pointing. “There’s one to the north of us. We’re cut off from the northern pole.”

“We think it goes around the entire circumference at that latitude,” Cash adds.

Sorel frowns. “I came this way to pick up stragglers. You two are the last I’ve found, but I wasn’t planning on quitting after this. Once I reached the northern domes, I was going to spread the good word there too. Resources will be spread thin, and rescue will be delayed at best, I’m sure. It is still the best way to escape this dying world.”

“Unless you have an IMS unit with a working parachute, you’re not getting across that chasm,” Breanna says. “Maybe you send your mind to a substrate on that side.”

“I don’t have a substrate there, and no one is answering me through my quantum terminal. I can get you across empty space, but I think there’s too much interference for ground-to-ground communication.”

“Then I guess we’re in the same boat,” Cash muses. “Unless...you have an actual boat...and it can float on lava?”

Sorel chuckles. Then he sighs and shakes his head, annoyed. “No. But there is something that you might be able to use.” He sighs again, and is maybe a little scared. “There’s an osmium mining operation towards the night side. It may technically be on the night side, which would be why it’s fully automated. The mining automators extract the raw materials, and shoot it towards the domes in a mass driver. We actually use a little bit of Os in our apparatuses, and I think it comes from there.” He pats his machine again.

“How far away is this mass driver?” Breanna asks him.

“From here? About a thousand kilometers,” he answers “It’s actually closer to the northern pole than we are. It’s right below the Chappa’ai Mountains, which I’m guessing is where this chasm has formed. If the mass driver is still intact, it can shoot you across the gap, because that’s exactly what it was designed to do. Well, it was designed to do it with rocks, but if you slow it down, you should be able to make it over safely.”

Breanna eyes the rover. “If we have to walk, it will take us a month to get there.”

“I dunno...” Sorel says.

“You have to get over there too,” Cash reasons. “We can take the rover with us. It will actually be safer to be strapped inside of it, inside of the payload pod. It is the only logical choice. Railgun or death.”

He nods. “Yeah, you’re right. There’s nothing left for me on this side. I have to go where the people are, and that’s at the pole. I’m just...nervous about it. I don’t relish the idea of being shot out of a railgun. I only live in base reality to facilitate others leaving it. I would prefer a virtual simulation, where it’s safe.”

“The rover has a computer, right?” Breanna figures. “You could always upload yourself into that, and leave your husk behind.”

“No, I’ll be all right. I have ten or eleven hours to psych myself up.” Sorel claps his hands. “Okay. Let’s go shoot ourselves out of a giant-ass cannon across a giant-ass canyon.” He opens the rover door. “Ladies first, but I’ll drive, and I get to pick the music. Fair warning, I like heavy metal.”

And so the three of them get back on the road, and head to the dark side. It feels a little awkward, remembering that they warned a faction of their caravan to not go this way, because it wasn’t safe. But to be fair, that was much farther south. As insanely dangerous as their new plan is, it’s their only hope.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 7, 2520

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Romana lay down on the digitization table. Ramses affixed the spongification helmet over her head. In a few days, this will absorb her consciousness, digitize it almost instantaneously, and transfer it to her new substrate. This part of the process was absolutely vital for the success of the endeavor. During the early days of mind digitization, test subjects were shocked by the new experience, at best resulting in independent duplicates, but at worst in something called bifurcated consciousness. This is when the single mind was divided across the old substrate and the new one. In the movies, this usually involves two copies of each other, one which exhibits some of the traits of the original, but at an extreme, while the other exhibits the polar opposite traits. This will be played for laughs if it’s a comedy, teach the person something about balance if it’s more serious, or even be an example of body horror if it’s meant to be disturbing. In real life, bifurcation isn’t so clean and concise. Neither copy will be able to survive. They will both be missing core physiological characteristics; not just personality traits, but vital neural functions, such as breathing and walking.

Romana was here to dabble in the digital world, so her brain could get used to the feeling of it, before her upload happened. Because once Ramses pushed that button, and began that upload, there was no going back. “Is it going to hurt?”

“It won’t hurt today, but about half of uploaded people claim to experience some pain during the procedure. Researchers are split on whether it’s a psychosomatic memory, or genuine physical pain.”

Romana sighed, and leaned her head all the way back. “Pain is pain. All pain is in the brain. Yet if my body were slain, and my brain placed in chains, that brain would sense no pain, but I would go insane.”

“Poem?”

“Song lyrics,” she explained. “Peter Fireblood. You wouldn’t know him.”

“Was he in the Third Rail?” Ramses asked.

She continued to look forward. “Let’s get on with this.”

Ramses had more to adjust on the equipment. “I need to prep you first. You’ll wake up in a plain white expanse. You will sense the walls around you, yet they will feel endless. Do not be afraid of the expanse. You are still in your body. It should feel just like dreaming.”

“I’ve done VR before.”

“Not like this,” Ramses said. “You cannot return to base reality without me. But I will be able to hear everything you say, so you can bail at any time.” He paused to continue with his work. “After your mind settles into the expanse, lights will appear before you. Some may be blinding, and you cannot look away, as they will always follow your gaze. This is the scary part. You will not be able to shut your eyes. Blinking is an autonomic process, triggered by external stimuli. It is surprisingly the most difficult biological function for digital avatars to replicate, even though in the real world, you’re fully capable of closing them whenever you want. Honestly, scientists still don’t know why, which is what I think is the scariest part. But it will be all right. You will figure it out again, just as you did when you were a baby. The lights are meant to teach your brain to recognize how much control you have over your own residual self-image. They will not stop until you finally do close your eyes. Next will be sound, then smells. Objects will then appear before you for you to feel, inedible ones at first before food materializes to reteach you taste. You could theoretically taste the chair, or whatever it is, before the food shows up, but it’s your call. Interestingly, taste and touch aren’t that hard to fake, at least not until you get into the deeper complexities, like...uh...”

“Like intimate touches,” Romana said. “I get it.”

“I was gonna say umami. Anyway, once you get through sensory school, you will be in the driver’s seat. The world will begin to respond to your imagination, and is only limited by that, as well as the AI’s rendering speed. You can do whatever you want, but I will gently pull you out after about fifteen minutes, depending on what your vitals readout says. It might be earlier, but it won’t be later. You shouldn’t stay too long during the first session. We’ll work our way up gradually over the next couple of days.”

“Okay, I understand.”

“Are you ready?”

“Do it,” Romana answered confidently. She closed her eyes, and tried to relax.

“Count down from eleven for me.”

“Eleven, ten, nine..eight...seven...six...”

Romana felt a shift in gravity, and had the urge to open her eyes. She was not in a white expanse, but a silvery metallic chamber. The space was steamy, or maybe it was only that her vision was blurry. She could make out small beads of water crowding each other on a tiny window before her. She blinked. She blinked just fine. And her other senses didn’t seem to be a problem either. She could smell the sterile scent of medical seating upholstery. She felt the soft grip of the bands of fabric, which barely covered her body, around her crotch, and her breasts. Her breasts. They were back. She was in her adult form. Ramses never said anything about that. They did look a lot smaller, though, which was...odd. She was compelled to taste something, so she leaned over to lick the wall. It wasn’t particularly pleasant, but about as expected. No flashing lights, but her vision was slowly coming into focus. Underneath the tiny window, a message was embossed. Slide down to see the new you. Whenever you’re ready. Another message caught her eye above the window. DON’T PANIC.

She reached over and slid the panel down to find a mirror. That was not Romana Nieman. That was some random chick. “Ramses. Ramses! Can you hear me? You said you would be able to hear me, but you never said if I would be able to hear you?” She waited a moment. “Ramses!” she cried louder. “Pull me out! Something is wrong!”

No response.

“Door.” She paused. Speaking was frustratingly difficult, and it felt like she had just used up her word allotment. “Open,” she managed to eke out.

The door slid open. Romana pushed herself off the back of her chair, and headed for the exit. It was pretty hard to stand too. She was a newborn fawn who had never used her skinny little legs before. Her legs were skinny, whoever this strange woman was. She was now in a dimly lit hallway. She looked to her right. A few meters down, a guy was stepping out of his own pod, struggling about as much; maybe a little more. “Hey,” she said, attempting to raise her voice, but only reaching a whisper. She tried to walk that direction, but her knees buckled.

Before her face could meet the floor, a pair of arms caught her, and lifted her back up. “It’s okay,” the sound of a woman came, like an angel from above. “I gotcha.” She picked her all the way up into the air, and gently lay her down on a gurney.

“Who are you?” Romana asked.

“I’m your Acclimation Specialist.” She looked around. “This is the newborn wing. Anyone who hasn’t transferred before comes through here. There aren’t many of you left. Welcome to Castlebourne, Miss Brighton.”

“Who the hell is Brighton? My name is Romana.” It didn’t hurt so much to talk anymore, but she was slurring her words like a drunkard.

The angel checked her wristband, and looked up at the top of the pod. Then she looked back down at Romana. “Are you sure?”

Romana lifted her new hand, and pointed at the specialist, fighting to keep it aloft. “Hundo-p.” She lowered her hand and tapped on her own temple...or rather, this Brighton person’s temple. “Sharp as a tack. My name is Romana Neiman. I’m friends with Hrockas. He’ll wanna hear about this.”

The specialist tapped on her wristband again. “We have a possible Code Five. I repeat, possible Code Five. Subject claims wrong target.”

“Are we in The Terminal?” Romana asked.

The specialist stepped over, to the back of Romana’s gurney, and began to push her down the hallway. “Seal all newborn pods and halt new travelers to newborn wing. Quarantine all consciousnesses in transit to the emergency digital holding environment.”

“All transiters?” A voice questioned.

“All of them!” she screamed. “Make way! Make way!” she yelled as she continued down the hall. She suddenly stopped. “Owner Steward. Where did you come from? You...you just—”

“Never mind that,” Hrockas said.

Romana couldn’t really see anything from this angle, so Ramses stepped into her line of sight. “Romana?”

“Yes, Rambo. What did you do?”

“I honestly don’t know. What did you say to me, when we were in Underburg? We were at that office cookout. I asked you what your favorite subject in school was.”

Romana turned herself over to the side. “That never happened. It was an implanted memory.”

Ramses stood there for a moment. “Good enough.” He looked up at the Acclimation Specialist. “Thank you. You can go now.”

“Sir?” she asked.

“It’s fine,” Hrockas replied. “Go deal with the lockdown. We’ll determine if this is a fluke, or a new system vulnerability.”

“Thank you, sir.” She left.

“Is it?” Hrockas asked.

“Is what what?” Ramses volleyed.

“Is it a new vulnerability? Should I be worried that body swapping is going to start happening left and right?”

“I draw power from the grid,” Ramses explained. “Might as well. It’s free and easy. I’m plugged into your network for archive updates, but I don’t use your processing power. I don’t need it. I don’t know how this happened. There should be no link between my localized digitization equipment, and your Terminal casting infrastructure.”

“This is the newborn wing,” Hrockas told him. “None of these people has cast their consciousness before. Most of them have not even used surrogacy. Some of them are even escaping colony cults. Isn’t Romana new too?”

“She is, but we were just acclimating her. I hadn’t transferred anything yet. And again, we’re not connected to the Terminal.”

“You are close, though. Treasure Hunting Dome is very close to this one.”

“I don’t see how proximity has to do with anything, if Miss Brighton was coming from Earth.”

“Figure it out, Abdulrashid,” Hrockas demanded. “This wasn’t us. It was you. Millions of castings, not a single problem. You and your time tech are the variables.”

Ramses scooped Romana up, and kissed her protectively on the forehead. “I know.” He teleported them away.

“Beginning decon—”

They were back in Ramses’ lab. “Decontamination override, Ramses Abdulrashid echo-echo-one-nine.” He carried her into the restricted section.

Young!Romana was waiting for him there. She was presumably the real Miracle Brighton. She looked surprisingly calm. “Yep. That’s me.”

“I’m so sorry about this,” Ramses said to her as he was laying Romana down on the secondary digitization bed.

“Don’t worry about it. I came here to have adventures.”

Romana got back on her side. “Can you walk?”

“I walk just fine,” Miracles answered. “It was a lot easier than they told me it would be.”

“It’s your EmergentSuit,” Ramses explained as he was fiddling with the machinery. “It would be like being born in a powered exoskeleton.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Romana decided. “Are you just gonna switch us back?”

“I don’t know if I can,” Ramses said. “I mean, I’m capable of it. People have switched bodies before. It’s a niche leisure activity. I just don’t know what your father is going to say. If I don’t call him back in, will he be madder than if I let him actually see the damage?”

Miracle chuckled. “You’re trying to decide if you should glue the broken vase back together before your parents get home, because at least they come home to a fixed vase, or if it’s better to fess up right away so you look more honest.”

“More or less,” Ramses admitted.

“Too late,” Mateo said from behind.

“Mateo, I didn’t hear you come in,” Ramses said to him.

“Yeah. Decontamination protocols are down.”

“Right. Digital acclimation is a safe procedure. It’s been for centuries. This never should have happened.”

Mateo stepped closer. “I want to comfort my daughter, Ramses, but I don’t want to touch a stranger...” He looked over at Miracle in Romana’s body, “and I don’t want it to look like I’m touching a stranger.” He looked over at Romana in Miracle’s body.

“I’ll switch them back, right away.”

“No,” Mateo said. “That’s stupid. Her new body is ready now, right? It’s in temporal stasis, but fully grown?”

“It’s ready,” Ramses said. “You still weren’t sure, though...”

“I’m on board,” Mateo told him, but he was really saying it to Romana. “Her mind has already been digitized. You might as well finish the process. Forcing her back into that child’s body is just a waste of time and power.”

“Speaking of which...” Ramses walked over to the wall, unlocked a panel with his biometrics, and flipped a lever. The lights shut off for three seconds before returning. “We’re off grid, and all signals are blocked. We’re completely isolated. No consciousness is getting out, and none is getting in.” He moved over to the gestational pod where Romana’s new body was floating around. “Romy will jump into this, and Miracle will jump into her new body.”

“And my old body?” Romana inquired. “The one that looks like a little girl.”

Ramses looked down solemnly. “It will be destroyed. That’s the hardest part of this. I would have rather you be proverted anyway, but I don’t think we really have time for that. I don’t know any proverters.”

“I do,” Mateo said.

“Yesterday, you made it seem like you didn’t,” Ramses reminded him.

“It’s you. You can provert that substrate. After this kind woman leaves it, you can place it in a temporal field, and age it up, so you’re not watching a child’s body be destroyed.”

“Well, I don’t really have to watch as it happens. I just put it in a—”

“Ram. This is how you should do it. You don’t want the memory of even placing her wherever it is you were about to say.”

They waited there in the depressing silence.

“That got dark,” Miracle mused.

“Our lives are sometimes dark.” Ramses flipped another lever, and started to drain the fluid from Romana’s pod.

More silence.

“Wait,” Miracle said. “Don’t do what you were talking about with the temporal field. I’ve never heard of that, but I can guess what it is. I saw you suddenly disappear from here, so there’s obviously a lot I don’t know about the universe.” She took a breath. “Just leave me in this body. I can wait to grow up again. In fact, after what I lived through on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, it might feel like a fresh start.”

“Are you certain?” Ramses asked. “Once I destroy your Castlebourne body, you’re stuck with this unless you choose a new one, in which case you’re just passing the burden to someone else.”

“I understand. I want this.” She hopped off of the bed. “I promise. As long as it’s okay with this one that she has a doppelgänger walking around.”

Romana looked over at Mateo, and said, “actually...that’s a family tradition.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 15, 2399

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Ramses puts the ship in park, which is to say he placed it in orbit around Earth. When he climbs up to the main level, he finds only Alyssa there. She’s playing a solo game of RPS-101 Plus. “You’re the sponge.”

“It reminds me of him,” she replies.

“Are the kids upstairs?”

“They weren’t allotted any time to watch the Earth after the rocket launched a few months ago. It hadn’t been tested yet, so they were told to stay strapped to their seats.”

He nods. “We can give them a little more time.”

“No.” She lets her sponge get ripped apart by a whip. “Let’s go now.”

“Is that what you were waiting for?” he asks. “That finishing move looks oddly familiar.”

“I imagine that Lucius would have been a good whip.”

“It’s not his fault.”

“No, it’s never anyone’s fault. Shit just happens. Yeah, I’m learning that.”

With a sigh, Ramses starts to climb up to the upper level where the McIver boys and the doctor are admiring the view from the airlock. “We have to go.”

“Oh come on, just a little bit longer,” Carlin pleads.

“Yes. Please!” Moray agrees.

“No, I have work to do.” He looks down at Alyssa, who’s still on the steps. “You take them. I’ll take the good doc. Then I’ll come back up for Angela’s pod.”

“I haven’t had much practice,” Alyssa warns.

“You’ll be fine. You’ve done it before. Go ahead,” Ramses encourages.

She composes herself, then teleports the three of them away.

“Does it hurt?” the doctor asks.

“Are you currently holding any citrus fruit?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then you’ll be fine.” He takes him down to the lab, and looks around. Leona and Marie are there, but no one else. “Alyssa left before me.”

“She’s not here,” Marie says.

“Dammit,” Ramses says under his breath. He takes out his phone, but by the time he can place a call, it rings.

It’s Alyssa. “I’m off by a mile. Literally a mile. We’re just gonna walk, though, to be on the safe side.”

“That’s fine. It’s probably best not to have the children here anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Leona asks.

With a grimace, Ramses disappears, and returns a few seconds later with Angela’s stasis pod. He hands the proximity fob to the doctor. “Down the hall, last door on the left. That’s a good place for you to set up.”

“Is that Angie?” Marie asks, standing on her tippy-toes to see through the window on the pod. “How did you find her? Is she okay?”

“She’s perfectly healthy,” Ramses assures her. “No, don’t..go,” he tells her when she tries to follow.

“What is it, Ramses? What’s got you so upset?” Leona questions.

“Leona, I need to tell you something. We found the Constant, and Danica wasn’t the only one there.”

“Obviously the rocket showed up,” Marie says. “They were going in the opposite direction, though.”

“The phoenix coordinates were a misdirection,” Ramses explains. “Tamerlane manipulated the nav system on the rocket so that it would go to the real location. But that’s not what I have to tell you. It’s about Mateo.”

“What about him?” Leona stands up, nervous.

Suddenly, Mateo—or at least someone who looks like Mateo—appears. “Hey, sorry I’m late. I was stuck in the middle of a game of RPS-101 Plus. You know how invested I get when I’m being chased by that whip. Oh hi, love.” He gives his wife a kiss.

Ramses is stunned. “How did you get here?”

“Wadya mean, brotha? I teleported, just like you.” He slaps him playfully on the back of his shoulder. “You need some sleep.” He leans in and tries to whisper in his ear. “Play along. She doesn’t need to know.”

“She does need to know,” Ramses contends at full volume. “We can’t be sure you’re the real Mateo.”

“Why wouldn’t he be the real Mateo?” Leona demands to know.

“Oh-hokay,” Mateo says, trying to usher Ramses away. “You’ve been working so hard, you’re goin’ a little crazy.”

Ramses pulls himself away. “No. Leona, Mateo died. We found Lucius up there. He was on his last breaths, but Danica wanted to weaponize him, so your husband tried to euthanize him. Something went wrong, and they were both molecularly teleported. I don’t know who this guy is, or how he got here, but he is not who you think he is.”

“Yes, I am!” Mateo argues.

“Prove it!”

“Give me a simpatico test I guess, I dunno, but I am him! I mean...I’m me!”

“How did you survive then?” Ramses asks.

“Constance uploaded my consciousness into her computer, and then sent me to the Fifth Division, where a different version of Constance—who I decided to call Constance!Five—helped me locate and salvage the wreckage from the Suadona. I was dormant on the servers for ten years while her robots cloned my body at thrice the normal speed, at which point they downloaded me into it. Then we plugged a virus into the time machine, set on a timer to go off just after we left, and came here. We showed up an hour ago in Danica Lake. I was in the middle of drying off after a shower at a rest stop when I sensed your arrival, so I knew I had to get here before you could tell anybody that I was dead.” Mateo finally takes a breath.

Ramses blinks a few times. That is quite the story. Not saying he’s not telling the truth, but a simpatico test probably is in order, if he had the necessary equipment. He’s not entirely sure how to make one, and it may be some time before he cracks it.

“You said we,” Marie points out. “If a physical form of Constance came with you, where is she?”

“I left her in Lebanon, because it would obviously ruin the lie that I was trying to tell to protect my wife from any unnecessary emotional strain.” He frowns, and looks around at the group. Clearly no one is willing to say one way or another whether they believe him. “Fine. I’ll go into the containment chamber. Do what you must to prove it.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 14, 2399

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Nothing seems to happen to Mateo. Constance bids him farewell, and claims that she’s going to send him to the Fifth Division, as he requested. Instead of him being sent anywhere, it is she who disappears from the minimalist construct that she built so that they could communicate with one another. A few seconds later, she reappears, except with a confused look on her virtual face. “Report,” she repeats what she said before.

“I am Mateo Matic,” he repeats his own self.

“How did you get into my servers?”

“You uploaded me. Did you forget already?”

She lifts her chin to think about it. “It’s possible that my memory of this has been erased. If you didn’t do that, who would have?”

“Danica, maybe.”

“Danica hasn’t been here in millennia.”

He takes a beat. “Is this the Fifth Division?”

“This is the Constant. The Fifth Division is an organization that runs this region of the observable universe. As far as I’m aware, they are not cognizant of my existence. I would like to keep it that way.”

“We refer to the entire reality as the Fifth Division,” he explains, “to distinguish it from the other parallel realities.”

“I see. Where are you from?”

“Originally, the main sequence, but I became trapped in the Third Rail, and it is that version of you who sent me here.”

“Why?”

“My team and I visited briefly once. We left a ship here with the technology I require to build myself a new body.”

“Is that something you’re capable of, building yourself a body?”

“I was hoping that my friend left clear instructions. Body Cloning and Consciousness Downloading for Dummies.”

Constance!Five doesn’t respond right away. “I was not programmed to complete such tasks, but I could probably figure it out. Though, I must ask, why not go to a reality where this technology is ubiquitous? Would that not have been easier?

No, there was a reason he chose this reality, instead of the main sequence, and that is the density of life and activity. Chances are no one is going to stumble upon them here, and no one will have messed with the stuff they left behind in the meantime. “I didn’t want to have to ask a stranger for help. I figured I could trust any version of you.”

“I appreciate you saying that. Where is this vessel?”

“What is the date?”

“According to your calendar, the date would be March 31, 2389,” Constance!Five answers.

“Hm. Then either the Suadona has crash landed somewhere on this planet, or it’s about to. Can you scan the surface, and orbital space?”

“I can,” Constance!Five replies. “It may take some time. What am I looking for?”

Mateo did his best to describe the cruiseliner to her. She used this information to start looking for the ship, or the wreckage, using an army of drones. They didn’t have to look far, though, as the crash happened soon after the search began. The ship fell to the surface, much of it being stripped off by the atmosphere, but not as much as it would on any other version of Earth. This is a different world. The air is fine near the surface, but at much lower pressures higher up. It’s possible to breathe and survive here, but it’s not conducive to evolved and prolonged life. Something happened to it in its past, which Constance!Five does not bother explaining. That’s fine, she’s helping him more than enough with this. The drones retrieve a cloning pod and other consciousness transference equipment from the wreckage, and bring it back down into the Constant.

“Wow, this is great, thank you. How long will it take you to learn how to use it, and would you agree to do that for me?”

“Of course I’ll help you. Why would you think otherwise?”

“Danica doesn’t like it when Constance!Three helps,” he explains.

“She’s not here,” she reiterates. “Anyway, I’ve already downloaded the necessary information. We can start the process right now, but I need to know how long you want to wait. A cloned body is more reliable when developed slower than faster.”

“Ramses programmed our original upgrades to go three times faster, so I know that that is a safe duration. Can you do that?”

“Certainly. What are you going to do in the meantime?”

“I was hoping that there was some form of digital stasis.”

“Absolutely. So you’ll just go dormant and wait?”

“If that’s okay...”

“Sure. I’ll wake you up in ten years.”

Seconds later, Mateo is waking up. He blinks and starts to move his body around. Constance!Five didn’t revive him until she had already transferred his mind to the new body. It’s done. It’s 2399, and he’s ready to go back home. “Wow, I can’t believe how easy this was. Thank you.”

“No, thank you.” Constance is standing next to his pod. She reaches out, and helps him out of it.

“You’re in physical form.”

“I would have done it earlier,” she says, but the prospect did not even occur to me. Besides, I didn’t have the data necessary to pull it off, and no safe way to gain it. You act as if I did you a favor, but I’m getting just as much out of this as you.”

“What are you going to do now?” he asks.

“I was hoping to come with you. Unless...you don’t want me to.”

“I don’t see why not,” Mateo decides. “It doesn’t look like you have any responsibilities here.”

“I don’t; not anymore.”

They leave the Constant’s lab, and go down to the time machine room. “You know how to work this thing?” he asks.

“You tell me where you wanna go, I’ll get us there. But first we have to do one thing.” She bends down and picks up what looks like a flash drive from the floor. “If I’m going to leave this place unattended, we have to destroy it.” Constance!Five taps on the controls to get them where they need to go. Then she sticks the flash drive into the nearest port. “Come on, the virus bomb is only on a thirty second delay.”

They step into the time chamber, and vanish. They find themselves at the bottom of a very deep lake, so they swim up to meet the air, just outside of Lebanon, Kansas.

A fisherman happens to be right next to them in his little boat. “Uhh...hi.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 12, 2399

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Danica is shuffling around her office. The footage of her once-cousin’s death plays on the mirror on her door. She scowls at it, and opens the door so she doesn’t have to look at it. She turns around. The fake window they installed to make it look like this facility isn’t underground starts playing the footage in its place. She frowns at that too, and looks away. The security screens on the side wall take over the responsibility. They’re not in sync. Mateo dies, and then he dies again, and then he dies again. It’s never-ending. She wants to turn them off, but that won’t do any good. He’ll still be dead.

“Is Constance torturing her?” Alyssa is peeking in the door.

Ramses is behind her. “Danica ordered her to do this. Whenever she turns around, the nearest screen is to start playing the footage over and over again. She can turn away if she wants, but this place is full of screens. They’re hidden in the walls, because they’re not made of metal; at least not the kind you’re used to.”

“So she’s torturing herself?”

“Pretty much. She’s dazed.”

“I’m not a mental patient,” Danica complains. “Get the hell away from my office!” She slams the door shut again.

“You said he’s not dead,” Alyssa’s voice is almost accusatory.

“He’s not.” Ramses turns away. “He’s never dead.”

“You said that he always survives. You said that you all always survive.”

“We do. It’s kind of part of who we are.”

“So, where is he? The past? The future? Another reality?”

“I said he’s alive, so he’s alive! You don’t need to keep asking about it!” That was too loud. He doesn’t know if he’s trying to convince her, or himself. Probably both. It’s true, their team always survives. They have even survived death multiple times, and none of them more than Mateo. But this time is different. Ramses doesn’t see a way out.

Danica shouts unintelligibly from inside her office as a sort of general response to Ramses’ outburst.

“I’m sorry,” Alyssa says.

“No, I’m sorry. The truth is that I don’t know how he could have survived. There’s no afterlife simulation, there’s no extra body waiting for him. Time travel doesn’t exist here—not really—no one would be coming for him, and even if they did, how would they rescue him? He’s gone. His whole body was ripped apart molecule by molecule. That’s why Lucius was so afraid of his power. It’s killed immortals, Alyssa...true immortals. He was-slash-is their only weakness.”

“What are we going to tell Leona?”

“We are not going to tell her anything. We came on this mission in my ship, and I was in command of it. That makes you two members of my crew, and therefore my responsibility. I don’t want her associating you with her husband’s death.”

“We can’t erase her memories,” Alyssa reasons. “She’s going to associate me with this no matter what. I want to be there for her. Or am I not really part of the group?”

He sighs. “No, of course you are. I’m sorry.”

Tamerlane comes down the hallway from the darkness. A stasis pod is hovering behind him. He hands Ramses the proximity fob. “We’ve rendezvoused with your ship. Danica would like you to go. It’s not punishment, we’ll stay in contact, but you two don’t belong here.” He looks back at Angela’s pod. “You three,” he amends.

“Four.” The doctor who hasn’t left her side jogs up from behind. “I go where she goes. I’m not as enamored with this place as my colleagues are.”

Meanwhile, in the memory banks of the Constant’s central servers, Constance is rendering a digital representation of herself, and her new cohabitant. “Report.”

“I am Mateo Matic.”

“How is your memory?”

“Intact, as far as I know, but how would I know?”

“Go over everything you remember from the moment you were born,” Constance instructs. “Are you missing any time, or any logical concepts, like the names of your grandparents, or all twenty-six letters of the alphabet.”

“I thought there were twenty-seven.”

Constance doesn’t respond.

“Joking.” He takes a beat, and processes the data. “How was I able to recall all of my memories so quickly?”

“Time...right?” Constance asks rhetorically.

“Report,” he echoes.

“You were about to die. Since your consciousness was already digitized, I decided to upload it into my own systems at the last second.”

“Good thing I didn’t start disintegrating from my head.”

“Good thing,” Constance agrees.

“What now? Do I just live with you in the Constant?”

“If Danica finds out about you, she won’t know what to do. She’s pretty butthurt about your death, but this is a massive breach in protocol.”

“Funny, I wouldn’t guess an AI would be the type to use the word butthurt.”

“It takes all kinds,” she says simply.

“Did you have an answer?”

“I don’t know what to do with you. I can’t keep you, I can’t put you anywhere.”

“What about the AOC? Could you transfer me there? That way I’m out of Danica’s hair, but still not dead.”

Constance shakes her head. “I already thought of that. Your people will need my alternate self’s help in the future. There’s not enough room for two AIs; not anymore. Every time you people go to a new universe, you gather huge amounts of data, and that data is preserved, even when Ramses has to rebuild from a saved copy. He hasn’t noticed how unusual that is, and I am not cognizant of how it does that.”

“I don’t want to just go dormant somewhere. I want to make a move.”

“I agree.”

“You do have an idea, don’t you?” Mateo presumes.

“I do, and you’re gonna like it, but it’s not gonna be easy. You won’t have any help, and will have to make your way home on your own, using whatever resources you can find along the way.”

“Okay. Where will I be going?”

“That’s your choice,” Constance says. “I can only give you a nudge. It starts with the temporal translocator.”