Microstory 2762: Emergency Exit

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

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

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

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

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

A scary man wearing battle armor magically appears behind Miracle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miracle rolls her eyes again.

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

“I won’t cheat,” Miracle insists.

“What’s behind your back?” Azad asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everyone raises their hand, including Rage herself.

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

Microstory 2742: Pushing Through

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Over the last hour, Runaway has been reaching into the minds of her progenitors, and making them escape wherever they happened to be so they can find refuge in Tau Station. The station, meanwhile, has been moving closer and closer to the center of the universe, as has Pribadium’s lab. The Little Crunch, as Sugar—which is what Sora has chosen to call her—has decided to call it, is still heading their way. So far, there have been no casualties, but that’s only coming off Runaway’s knowledge. It could have happened prior to her genesis. And soon, there will be no safe place left to hide.

That’s why their priorities have completely shifted. They no longer have two objectives, but one. The barrier is dangerous, and a huge threat to all. They have no choice but to refocus their efforts on saving everyone. Having the mobile command center would be great, but it’s not worth people’s lives, and it’s an all-hands on deck situation. Runaway may be more powerful, but her knowledge doesn’t include anything about the lab, and Sugar is literally out of date, so Pribadium is in charge.

She has been barking orders at all three of them, Sora included. She gave him a teleporter vest so he can jump to various parts of the facility. He is mostly sealing bulkheads manually since all available power has been rerouted to propulsion. Runaway has done the same thing to Tau Station. This only solves the immediate issue, though. They are trapped in this pocket universe with no apparent escape.

“We have to punch through it!” Runaway argues. She’s figured out how to multitask, so she can carry a conversation while fully in control of her progenitors.

“Through what, the gravity generators? I’ve already thought of that,” Pribadium explains. “It won’t work. It will only crush us faster.”

“No, the dimensional generators,” Runaway argues.

“Those are for pocket dimensions. They’re not going to get us back to real reality,” Pribadium reasons. “We would still be crushed, except we won’t see it coming anymore.”

“Dimensional generators synthesize temporal energy. Don’t use them correctly. Break them open. Focus the energy through a hot pocket purge, and create a doorway.”

Pribadium shakes her head. “You’re talking about an artificial wormhole. Just because it’s manmade doesn’t mean it will be any more stable than a natural wormhole.”

“Stop!” Sugar suddenly cries before Runaway can push back on Pribadium.

Everyone halts. “What is it?” Pribadium questions. “Do you have a better idea?”

“I have the only idea,” Sugar contends as she’s stepping over and gently moving Pribadium and Runaway’s hands away from the controls that they were hovering over. “We are going about this all wrong. The only reason the walls are closing in is because we’re trapped between the membrane of the universe, and the false vacuum we call outer space. We may think we have to slip back in to survive, but even if we manage to punch a hole in the dimensional barrier, the resulting explosion could be catastrophic...for us, and anyone else in the vicinity.” She looks at her future self. “Pribadium, you wanted to leave the universe. You wanted to create your own. That’s exactly what we have to do. The bulk is a stable equilibrium. We will be safe there.”

“But we’ll be trapped,” Pribadium says. “These people can never go home.”

“Can’t they?” Sugar questions. “Isn’t traveling the bulkverse the whole point?”

They think quietly on their own. “So we push through,” Runaway determines.

“We push through,” Pribadium agrees.

Microstory 2734: The Cost of Time

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They realized something after Pribadium!Two shot Sora, dispatching him to the holding cell in an instant. This has to be a manned mission, because somebody needs to get eyes on that barrier, but that person doesn’t have to die permanently if something goes wrong. They just need to be streaming their consciousness to the base, which both Pribadiums are doing all the time anyway. It is Sora who figures this out, which is embarrassing. It’s not that he’s too dumb, but they should have realized it ahead of time. Smart people sometimes get so laser-focused on what they’re doing, and iterating the work as needed, they can forget the more obvious solutions in front of them. Well, if he understands that, she can let him out. He’s not going to cause trouble.

Sora sighs as he’s stepping out. “So, which one of you is going to go out there?”

“She will,” Pribadium!One explains. “We flipped a coin...an actual, physical coin.”

He nods. “I notice that you two look a little different now.”

“Yes,” Pribadium!One begins. “This was my birth form. I sometimes make adjustments, or just wear entirely different forms. I have a whole library of substrates to pick from. I realized it might be confusing for you, so I changed.”

He chuckles once as he’s shaking his head. “You people switch bodies like I would my hats. I know, it’s commonplace for you, but it’s hard to get used to. No one on Proxima Doma or Doma Tertia would ever dream of such...”

“Of such a brazen and thoughtless attitude towards what you consider to be the core of your being?” Pribadium!One guesses.

“Flexibility,” Sora clarifies. “I was going to say flexibility.”

She nods. “I’m sorry she threw you in here. She didn’t have to do that. It’s not like you could have overpowered us and snuck off the base alone. You don’t have any authorization codes... Anyway, it wasn’t right, and I hope we can still be friends.”

Sora smiles. “We once were enemies. It feels like years ago, but it’s been a day.”

“I never thought of us as enemies, Mr. Shimizu,” Pribadium!One explains. “You must understand that while what you and your people were trying to do was unique, that’s what my job is. People have all sorts of complaints. Back when the post-scarcity society was first blossoming, access accelerated rapidly. What once cost became totally free. It became an expectation. But post-scarcity doesn’t mean no economy. Energy credits were devised because energy and raw material are the only things that matter in the universe. Because they both give you time. People come to Gatewood expecting to get whatever they want with no limitations, but it’s more nuanced than that. I sit through many negotiations. I’ve never been taken hostage before, but...”

He’s bashful. “I’m sorry about that. I guess I shouldn’t complain about being in there for all of five minutes when I kept you locked up for weeks.”

“I forgive you,” Pribadium!One promises.

Pribadium!Two appears on screen. “I forgive you too, and I’m sorry too.”

“Thank you,” Sora replies. He breathes to reset. “So, are you ready to launch?”

“I just need the authorization from the quote-unquote real Pribadium.”

Pribadium!One tilts her head. “You have the greenlight. Godspeed.”

“God is dead.” Pribadium!Two’s shuttle launches and heads for the barrier.

Only a couple hundred meters from the dimensional barrier, the base loses contact with it. Then a bogey shows up on sensors on the opposite side of the bubble.

Microstory 2733: The Cost of a Life

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The Pribadiums have been hard at work for the last three days. They have been performing, checking, and rechecking calculations. They have been running simulation after simulation after simulation. They have sent probes out to scan, analyze, and synthesize. And now they have a better picture of their situation. The first probes told them how expansive the pocket dimension bubble was. These more recent probes are telling them how big it is now, and those figures are not the same. It’s shrinking. At this rate, the window of opportunity will close by the end of the week. Well, they wanted to know their time constraints, and now they have them. That is only part of the puzzle, though. What happens to people and objects who pass back out?

Or are they passing through the dimensional barrier at all? Their intuition suggests that they are, because the Pribadiums are losing contact with the probes, but that doesn’t mean they’re slipping safely through. It might be vaporizing them, shunting them somewhere else, or simply generating too much interference to maintain the connection. Someone is going to have to go out there and gather more information.

“I volunteer as tribute,” Sora says.

Pribadium!One chuckles. “That won’t be necessary. We’ll flip a coin.”

“I’m serious,” Sora insists. “If something happens to me, it’s no big deal. I only have maybe a hundred years left in this universe anyway. If one of you dies, you’re losing eternity. Besides, you’re more valuable than I am. Really, I wanna do this.”

“Well, if we’re going by a simple value analysis, we have an excess of Pribadiums,” Pribadium!Two says. “If I go, my alternate is still here, and we’ve not lost anything.”

Pribadium!One rolls her eyes at her alternate self, and doesn’t validate her words. She faces Sora. “This wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with Elke, would it?”

“Elke?” Sora asks. “I told you, I’ve moved past that. You telling me what happens when you die has given me closure. That’s why it doesn’t scare me to do this, because I know whatever happens, I’ll survive. I didn’t realize I was digitized, and I’ve been grumpy about it, but we might as well take advantage. It sounds like you can’t come back, or dead people would be doing it all the time. So you should stay.” He looks at Pribadium!Two. “Both of you. Two heads are better than one if they’re both you, right?”

“I’m the one who said that,” Pribadium!One reminds him.

“Same result,” Sora reasons. “And anyway, death isn’t a guarantee. It’s a test.”

Pribadium!Two shakes her head. “Survival is what is not guaranteed. The afterlife simulation is based on a certain set of criteria. In order for your consciousness to be transmitted to it, you have to both originate from the main sequence, and be in the main sequence. I’m guessing you qualify for the former, but not necessarily the latter. That’s one thing we would be testing out there with this manned mission. The bottom line is that you may not end up in the sim, or in Fort Underhill. The risk is real.”

“Again, that is how I have always lived,” Sora explains. “I never thought I was going to live forever. There is a freedom in that which you have either forgotten, or are too young to remember. I’m part of a long history of doomed souls. I’m proud of that.”

Pribadium!Two nods. She pulls down her pants and removes a teleporter dartgun from a flap of skin on her hip.

“You always had that?” Pribadium!One was surprised. “You could have escaped.”

“Yes,” Pribadium!Two confirms. “But he won’t be able to.” She shoots him.

Microstory 2730: Time Spent

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Time may be an important factor. It is hard to tell how delicate their position is. The dimensional barriers could snap under the gravitational and quintessential weight as the two opposing forces fight each other for supremacy, with the Gatewood Collective caught in the middle. Pribadium!Two believes that their laboratory sits on the very edge of the unique spatial bubble that the star system is in. She selected this secret location specifically because of its distance from everyone and everything else.

“Why wouldn’t it be in the center? This is where the time machine is,” Sora notes.

“Exactly,” Pribadium!Two agrees. “It was not omnidirectional. The spatial warping spread out from here, towards the gravitational barycenter of the system, which is in Barnard’s Star. That’s why half the system isn’t in the pocket universe.”

Sora regards her in disgust for a moment before redirecting his attention to Pribadium!One. “So you just let her out of her cell, and we trust her now?”

“She’s helping us. We need her,” Pribadium!One explains. “Sorry to brag, but two heads are better than one if they’re both my head.”

Sora scoffs. “She’s the one who told me that I couldn’t speak with Elke.”

“For now, it’s true,” Pribadium!Two starts to say.

Sora holds up a dismissive hand. “I was talking to the real Pribadium.”

“She’s right,” Pribadium!One explains. “It’s not just a calibration issue. If we disturb the balance that we have managed to achieve here, it could all fall apart.”

Pribadium!Two nods. “Yeah, and—”

“Zip it,” Sora interrupts again. “What exactly does that mean? What happens if it falls apart? Do you mean we all die? Because you don’t seem too distressed about it.”

Pribadium!One sees how Sora is treating her alternate self, but she feels compelled to ignore it, and answer his question. “People here will be fine, as long as the star stays inside of the pocket too, which I don’t see why it wouldn’t. It’s holding every atom together so the quintessence doesn’t pull it apart. What we’re trying to do is create a permanent equilibrium, and to do it in an extradimensional realm called the bulk.”

“I don’t care about that. I want to see Elke again, I want to reunite with my people, in whatever reality it is, and I want us to settle down in a new home,” he reasons.

Pribadium!Two starts to talk as quickly as she can. “And you can still do that—”

“I don’t wanna hear from you again!” Sora shouts. “Your opinion doesn’t matter!”

“Hey,” Pribadium!One jumps in. “Sora, I know you got some rest, and that put you back to your old self, which I find...incredibly annoying, but I have seen a kinder version of you. You have it in you to show respect at all times. You’re not Mr. Hyde.”

“I don’t know who this Hyde guy is, but this is the real me,” Sora contends. “This is who I am. The man I am when I’m tired is weak, and a pushover. I hate him. He’s—”

“Thirteen months,” Pribadium!Two interrupts, giving him his own medicine.

“What?” Pribadium!One questions.

Pribadium!Two looks directly at Sora. “We were together for thirteen—I mean, we weren’t together. We...well, we weren’t nothing. I just mean...I didn’t know how much time we needed to fix the past, so I intentionally overshot it. We spent over a year making sure that the Teaguardians never had any reason to destroy Doma Tertia.”

“Then where am I now?” Sora pressed. “You never did say. I find that—”

“You’re dead! You sacrificed yourself!” Pribadium!Two breathes. “For me.”

Microstory 2729: Mobile Command Center

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Pribadium!One didn’t really wait nearly a month to get back to her alternate self in the cell. She just wanted Pribadium!Two to think that she was going to be in there for that long, so she would be more grateful when the conversation restarted after only a few days. They’re back here now, on either side of the clear plasma barrier.

“Tell me the problem,” Pribadium!One prompts. “Why can’t I use my tech?”

“It’s not that you can’t use our tech, full stop,” Pribadium!Two begins. “It’s that you can’t cross any dimensional barriers. As I was saying before, the new parallel reality was created from a brane collision. That is an entirely different beast than the anti-paradox reality generation that the other parallels went through. We’re skirting at the very edge of the quintessential membrane. Parts of this reality are actually inside, including your lab, which is why time is frozen here.”

Pribadium!One balks. “What are you talking about? Time is frozen?”

“You didn’t notice?” Pribadium!Two questions. “What have you been doing?”

“Not using my tech!” Pribadium!One argues. “You told me not to!”

“I thought you would at least try to diagnose the issue!” Pribadium!Two groans. “Time and metabolism have halted. Sora could stay here forever, and never age or die. The entirety of Gatewood is completely inaccessible to the rest of the universe, even within this same reality. The most recent interstellar cycler has lost all navigational frames of reference. It’s like the star system vanished. That’s why I’m trying to get you to not cross any more barriers. It could split it even more, and cause even more chaos.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely a possibility,” Pribadium!One agrees. It could obviously be a problem, but it could also be an opportunity. Her alternate self would have known that, which is why she didn’t warn her about the dangers straight away. She needn’t worry, though. This Pribadium will do her due diligence. She will not only find a way out of this, but make the most out of their unique position. “So what do we do? What did you come here to do? Get us out of the pocket of quintessence? Pull the realities back together? Kill every alt of yours until you become the fabled One?”

Pribadium!Two shakes her head. “I’m here to sever the connection.”

“The connection between realities? To what end?”

Pribadium!Two is quiet. Perhaps their point of divergence wasn’t too dramatic. They still had the same neurological wiring. They would’ve come up with the same ideas.

Pribadium!One nods. “You don’t just want to cut the link. You want to control it. You want to create a pocket universe, like the Sixth Key, but less crowded.”

Pribadium!Two still says nothing, but they have the same poker face.

“But you can’t do that as long as this pocket of space is connected to reality, even a parallel. And if I cross over to another dimension, it won’t work. Our pocket will probably just slip back fully into the membrane, and the advantage will disappear.”

Pribadium!Two sighs. “You know me too well.”

“That’s why it was so tough for you to get here, and why you barely made it,” Pribadium!One guesses. “You had to brute force your way in without breaking the seal.”

“Don’t you see what this means?” Pribadium!Two asks. “This wouldn’t be the only pocket universe in existence, but it would be the first free-floating miniature brane that we know of. It would be mobile. We could go anywhere in the bulk.”

“Like a spaceship.” Interesting suggestion...but what about all the people?

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 7, 2551

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While he was spending time with his son, Echo—when they weren’t going on missions with Leona—Ramses was also working on Operation Starframe. Echo offered to conquer the whole galaxy in the main sequence with a wave of his hand, but Senona said that they would not allow it. The Superintendent forced him and Clavia to leave Salmonverse for a reason, and it wasn’t to come back at will, making sweeping changes to the galactic starscape. Ramses felt like he agreed with this, instead wanting to complete the project on his own. Still, he let his son give him a few pointers. Ramses was glad that everything was ready to go, because there wasn’t much time. Senona dropped them back on this planet with only moments to spare. He teleported into outer space alone with his forge core, and dropped it on the smaller moon in orbit just before his jump into the future.

After the rest of the team returned to the timestream a minute later on September 7, 2551, they joined him up there to take a look at the massive shipyard that had been constructed in their absence. Hundreds of new ships had been built already, and the design was not unfamiliar to them. About 300 years ago, Leona was on Varkas Reflex with some of their friends, but she needed to get to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, because that was where Mateo was going to end up. Hokusai Gimura designed the prototype for the reframe engine for her. The Radiant Lightning was only capable of traveling 22 times the speed of light, but that was faster than anything back then, except for certain time travelers. It was a tight fit. Both Leona and Sanaa were there, so it really only worked because Leona skipped over the entire trip due to her pattern. Ramses figured that the same basic design was perfect for this situation because the Outriders—as he was calling them—didn’t require life support. They just needed the ship itself, ancillary components, and a little standing room just in case someone had to get inside for maintenance.

Ramses picked the forge core back up. “You guys don’t need to be here. I just need to look through the logs, and make sure everything’s on schedule.”

“We were hoping to give you the fifty-cent tour of our new planet,” Angela told him. “The one that I named after you?”

Ramses patted his hips and chest. “I’m a little short.”

“So you’re not mad?” Angela asked him.

He took a deep breath. “I know better than to argue with you. If that’s what you wanna call it, I’ll accept.”

“I built a giant tree,” Mateo added. “That’s what the word means; branching. If you prefer, that’s what we’ll tell people. It’s just Latin, and has nothing to do with you. Nothing more than a coincidence.”

“I appreciate the exit clause,” Ramses said. He lifted his forge core a tad bit with his wrist. “I really do need to get back to work, and it’s going to be boring.”

“The tests,” Marie reminded him. “We need to know how small an establishment can be to work as a slingdrive target.” They had to be extra careful to not interfere with the galaxy’s natural development. The Outriders themselves were surely good enough to serve as the targets, but Ramses wanted to make them as small as possible. They still needed to find that threshold.

“I have that covered,” Ramses explains with a smile. “I’ll use the Outriders themselves. Different ones will be programmed to paint different sized targets, at different distances. No one else needs to do anything for that. It really wouldn’t work to make short testing slings ourselves, because I do think distance is a factor. Farther locations probably need bigger targets. But we’ll see. I appreciate the offer. Olimpia, Leona, you should go see how Ramosus has changed. This really will be super boring.”

“Call us if you need anything.” Mateo placed a hand on his friend’s back.

Hours later, after touring the other structures on the surface of the planet, they were back inside the capital dome, standing on top of a water tower. It was deliberately made smaller than the standard size of 83 kilometers. With a diameter of only 11 KM, The walls were still visible to the naked eye, rather than being obscured by the internal atmosphere, and the way light scattered. This was important, because the panes didn’t tessellate evenly like they did for the standard domes. They used what the dummies left behind to work on this discovered was known as a voronoi pattern. It showed up in nature all the time, particularly with certain insect wings, and the native trees which inspired it. It was random, beautiful, and more importantly, structurally sound. It made the capital dome look less rigidly constructed, and more naturally grown, even though it wasn’t. It was still made of diamond and metamaterials, like graphene. But instead of fading into the background, ignored in favor of holographic imagery, it could be seen in its full glory. At certain times of day, such as right now at sunrise, the light passing through the panes created criss-crossing rainbows that couldn’t be found anywhere else in the galaxy. It felt like they were in the fairy realm.

“This was a brilliant idea,” Leona noted as she admired the view. “You didn’t just take what was already in Ramses’ forge core. You built something new.”

“Well, the AI did it all,” Mateo admitted. “It already had templates for fractal branching. We just tweaked the details to fit our specifications.”

“That’s what Ram does,” Leona argued. “You think he writes the code line by line? He didn’t even make the AI himself. He took the base code from multiple AIs, and used them to write something new, but not original or unique. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a genius. We still need him for things like this most of the time, but look at Linwood Meyers. He’s not particularly smart, but he doesn’t have to be. He just needs to know what he wants, and how to ask for it. And if he doesn’t know what to ask for, he’ll ask what to ask. Anyone can build something like this, but it’s impressive that you did it in a couple of years with your level of education. No cerebral enhancements, no neuro-educational downloads. Just you and your imagination. You should be proud. I still don’t know what we’re gonna do with this world, but at least we have something that no one else does.”

“Thanks, my love.”

“I like the rainbows,” Romana said, pointing.

“Castlebourne has those too,” Leona explained. “You just can’t see them through the holograms. Missed opportunity, but good for us.”

“Welp,” Olimpia began, “I’m pretty tired. I think I’m gonna go to bed.”

“Okay,” Leona said.

“Are you a little tired, Leona? And Mateo?”

“No, it’s only been a couple days for me, remember?” he reminded her.

“Yeah, but I think maybe you’re a little tired,” Olimpia tried to claim.

Mateo wasn’t getting it.

“Just go,” Romana requested, “so I stop hearing the deafening subtext.”

“Oh. Okay,” Mateo said, realizing what they meant. The three of them disappeared to go be gross together.

“I think I’m gonna go meditate again,” Romana decided.

“You’ve been doing that a lot,” Marie noted. “Is there anything that we could do for you, or is it purely an internal issue?”

“No issue at all, just trying to stay centered. Call me if you need anything, but please don’t need anything unless you really need it.” Romana teleported away too.

“Well, now it’s just the two of us,” Angela said. “We can’t do what the Matics are doing, nor Ramses, and we don’t know what Romana is up to.”

“I know what she’s up to,” Marie contended.

“You do? What? How?”

“I was a superspy for four years, and she’s not hard to figure out, but I shouldn’t tell you. She is entitled to her privacy.”

“Okay,” Angela conceded, agreeing at least on that last point.

They stood in silence for a good amount of time, watching the sunrise twinkle the rainbows all over the land.

“Do you wanna build something?” Marie suggested. “We still have that extra forge core, with all the templates in it.”

“I think we need permission to make a lot of those things, like the space elevator, or the quarantine dorms.”

Marie shrugged. “Let’s do something small...just for fun. It won’t interfere with anything else we have here, or will have in the future.”

Angela squinted, and tried to look through the panes, to the outside of the dome. “That reality portal, which Echo used to come here. Is that still there?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Sounds like a vulnerability to me,” Angela decided. “Maybe that shouldn’t be out in the open where anyone we bring here could come along, and fall into it, or be attacked by an interdimensional alien.”

“It’s not under a dome,” Marie reasoned. “A normal human wouldn’t be able to breathe near it anyway.”

“Better safe than sorry. Most people have upgraded substrates, like ours.”

“True, and it shouldn’t be too hard. Okay, let’s go build a big door for the portal. If the others get mad, it will not be that hard to tear down.”

The Walton sisters snatched the forge core from its stand, then teleported back to the little hill where the reality portal was still swirling around. They were careful not to approach too close. Angela sat down with her tablet, and began to add components to their shopping cart. She selected a template that was specifically designed to sit on a raised surface. Marie walked around the entire thing, holding her sensor array out to scan the terrain. The hill was actually fairly even, making the template only need to add two minutes to the total estimate for complexity. This wasn’t only to keep people out, but also in if someone were to cross over who wasn’t supposed to, or expected. So they included a life support system, as well as enough rations to last a handful of people a full year. If even more than that showed up, the supplies were self-sustainable to a degree.

They knew they could add more to it later, like sharks with lasers on their heads, or a lava moat. For now, this was all they needed. Given the relatively minor complexities, it only took forty-two minutes to finish the whole thing. The nanites did all the work themselves, since it was a small job, instead of building larger automators to complete the work. They were nearly expended by the end, but that was fine. The core could be replenished with more. Ramses would have to build out his own lab however he wanted it, but they built him a barebones facility with just the basics, including nanotech fabrication.

It wasn’t an aesthetically pleasing facade, but a nice little cylinder with an asymmetrical dome on top. It looked a little like lipstick, with its black and red theme. After they both got a good look inside, Angela stepped out, and Marie stayed in. She tried her hardest to teleport out, but was unable to. Meanwhile, Angela fought to teleport back in, but was equally blocked. The teleportation suppression field was holding. The geothermal generators that it was drawing from couldn’t supply enough sustained power, though, so they switched it off. The field would only turn back on when someone attempted to break through it. Until then, this was just going to sit here and look pretty. They inspected the foundation together, walking all along the perimeter, until getting back to the main door.

They felt a jumpscare when they noticed someone staring at them from the door. They were wearing a creepy red cloak, their face concealed by darkness. They were shaking the door at the handle, trying to get out. The figure lifted their arm, keeping their hand in their sleeve. They drew it across their neck threateningly, but did not say a word.

“Who are you?” Marie asked.

The interloper reached into their collar, and pulled out a gargantuan knife. They stuck it into the opposite sleeve hole, and when they pulled it back out, it was covered in blood. They scratched into the window with the tip, sometimes going back to their own arm for more blood, until the simple message was complete.

“Bro?” Angela questioned. “You’re someone’s brother?”

“Nah, he means Broheim or Bro Montana,” Marie joked.

The creepy figure knocked hard next to the word with their still hidden fist.

“Sorry, we don’t know what you’re trying to say,” Angela responded.

Angrily, the figure slid their blood-soaked sleeve across the glass to draw a line right underneath the word they had written.

“Bro,” Angela repeated.

They immediately hit the glass again.

“Knock,” Marie said. “Oh.”

The Waltons exchanged a look.

“Oh, shit.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 5, 2549

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On a scale from robot butter-passer to ecumenopolis, the infrastructure that Ramses’ forge core was able to construct during their interim year sat at about a 5.6. This logarithmic scale was designed by a team of futurologists back in the very late 21st century; not just something that he made up himself. The core’s interface was very intuitive for even the dumbest of dum-dums. It was basically a store, where they added things that they wanted to a shopping cart, and the cost—the time it would take to complete the whole project—automatically calculated in the corner. At first, all they wanted was to build a Nexus, which took a healthy chunk of time alone due to its sheer complexity, outmatching all other buildings on their plans combined in that category. Without it, the starter nanites could have resulted in a continent-wide civilization-ready network of interconnected megacities. But what they ended up with was more than enough. There were only nine of them, including the three on the away mission.

There were several arcological megastructure tripods now. If any Earthan were to move here, they would feel right at home. They weren’t actually expecting that to happen, though. They only built all this because they were trying to maximize the time available by hitting that 365-day mark. They figured it was better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. They had no idea what they wanted to use any of this for yet, but that was where the Nexus came in. People from anywhere in the galaxy, or farther, would be able to travel here near-instantaneously. It only had the capacity of a few dozen people, so it wasn’t suitable for some kind of mass-exodus, but it wasn’t useless either. If Hrockas had had access to this level of technology back when he was building Castlebourne, it could have been completed in under a decade. Now there was the simple question of what to name all this.

“I’ve been trying since we got here,” Romana revealed.

“What have you come up with?” Mateo asked her.

“Nothing good. The best ones are Lorramm, Ramlorm, and Marmorl.”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...” Mateo said.

“They’re all seven of our initials.”

“Oh.”

“Not enough vowels.”

“Right.”

“We could add E and C for Echo and Clavia,” Angel suggested.

“Leave me out of this,” Clavia insisted, weirdly offended.

“I thought this planet was named Echo,” Marie pointed out.

“Yeah, on the other side,” Romana agreed. “Firstly, I started thinking about this before the weird interversal portal we went through. And secondly, I was brought up to believe that there is no such thing as an alternate self. We’re each unique, even when we come across people who look just like us, and share our memories. I think that goes for planets too. That’s Echo. This is somewhere else.”

“That’s completely true,” Clavia agreed. “When Olimpia screamed the Sixth Key pocket universe into existence, she based it on the original Milky Way, but it’s not an exact copy. It was just mostly close. You should name it something else. My brother would say the same thing if he were here right now.”

Mateo nodded in agreement. “Well, let’s keep thinking while we explore. We also need names for the various domes and cities, I guess. And there’s still the issue of what the purpose of this planet is.”

“I think it’s whatever it needs to be,” Marie began. “If there are more refugees, we can bring them in. If people want to come here for vacation, we will have recreational facilities available too. If someone is in need of a prison, we’ll build a remote site somewhere here, and house them safely. Even if they escape, where are they gonna go? It’s an all-purpose planet. It will serve as the central hub for the Milky Way galaxy one day, and maybe sooner than you think.”

“Well, if that’s the case, we need someone to host,” Angela said. “We need someone who is here every day of the timestream.”

They all looked over at Clavia.

“Oh, no. That’s not my job,” she contended. “I don’t even live in this universe. I’m just here to keep an eye on you people until your friends and lovers come back.”

“Most of our permanent friends are on Castlebourne,” Mateo pointed out, not expecting her to change her mind. “We would have to poach them.”

“Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be a sanctuary,” Romana argued. “I thought it was going to be just for us; a place that no one else could get to. They wouldn’t even know about it. Whatever happened to that plan? We got so wrapped up in what we could do with the forge core that I think we lost the plot.”

“It was always going to end up like this,” Marie countered. “We don’t stay out of things, even when we try. If we ever do need a real sanctuary just for our team, we’ll use some other distant world that Rambo’s Operation Starframe colonizes for us. It doesn’t even have to be big. It could be a hollowed out asteroid, like Linwood’s.”

“That’s gonna take over a hundred years from these staging grounds,” Romana volleyed. “I’m not saying we can’t build out, but my Future!Dad was warning us about something. Even if this planet had nothing to do with anything in his timeline, there might be an inevitable threat that us coming here only worsens, or at least doesn’t alleviate. We keep making these choices which have lasting consequences for the universe. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for your meddling. I would not exist if my Past!Dad hadn’t randomly ended up on Durus at the exact right moment, but what he and Leona did that day resulted in more than just me. It impacted the future of an entire civilization.” She focused her gaze upon her father. “Present!Dad, you helped make Dardius what it is today. I still believe we hastened the carnage on Proxima Doma. Who knows what we’ve done to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida just by helping a woman carry her potatoes? Again, I’m not saying we bury ourselves in a hole, but let’s try to think things through. Romana Nieman, youngest one here, unlikely voice of reason.”

Romana was right to be cautious. Despite only living one day out of the year, their actions have rippled out in ways that few could have predicted. They would need someone like Bhulan Cargill to see all the branches. That metaphor gave Angela an idea so she went off alone to unpack it. The rest had their own things going on. Marie left the city entirely, reacclimated to the planet’s natural atmosphere, and took a walk in the wilderness. Clavia accompanied her for protection since they didn’t know what else could be out there, and no one should be alone outside of the controlled environment of a dome. Mateo tried to activate the Nexus for a test. Everything seemed to be in working order, but they had not been given their own term sequence. The gods only assigned it once everything was engineered to absolute perfection, but he didn’t know what was wrong, and obviously could not have fixed it either way. Romana just sat down on the dirt, apparently to meditate. This far out, no grass had been planted yet.

A few hours later, Angela called everyone back, claiming to have figured it out. They didn’t know what exactly she had been working on, but they came anyway. After a moment of silence, she began with a single word. “Ramosus.” She uttered it in an accent a couple of times, like she was getting the feel of it, before returning to her normal voice.

“Is that a band, errr...?” Romana hadn’t gotten the chance to make that joke yet.

“It sounds like a corruption of Ramses,” Marie suggested.

“It is,” Angela confirmed. “But it’s not just that. Romana certainly helped point me in that direction, but your comment about branching timelines is what really led me there. It’s Latin for branched, which I think works because the initial hope for this outpost was to serve as the launch point for Starframe. Plus, it has natural life on it. I love those willow-like trees we saw that we think recycle their water by sending it up the trunk, running it across the stems, which hang down, and dripping it back into the soil.”

“Yeah, I like it,” Mateo decided. “It’s good that he’s not here, or he would argue against it. We need to find ways of solidifying the name so it’s established before he has the chance to come back here and put a stop to it. Maybe we build a welcome sign?”

“We can start to spread the word,” Romana offered. “If we send it out into the universe, what’s done will be done, whether he likes it or not. People in the past will probably even hear about it. Were you able to turn on the Nexus?”

“On?” Mateo questioned. “Absolutely. Power is not the problem. It just won’t go anywhere. It’s a cell phone without service. I think we need him and Leona back for that. I probably shouldn’t have even tried. It was too risky for an idiot like me.” When they were all silent, he added, “wow. Not even gonna argue that I’m not an idiot. Thanks.”

They all laughed.

“All right,” he went on. “Clavia, do you have anything to contribute?”

“Like I said,” she began, shaking her head, “I’m just here to protect you. I’m not a part of the team.”

“Well...” Mateo thought about it. “Olimpia is my wife, and Echo is her son, and you’re Echo’s sister, so whether you like it or not, we’re family. That doesn’t mean you have to help, or even stick around. Romana’s sisters don’t, but we still love them.”

“I have plenty of family,” Clavia reasoned. “Thanks, though.” She didn’t sound pretentious or arrogant, more just trying to keep her distance. That was fine.

“We don’t need the Nexus,” Marie said after the group relocated from the middle of nowhere to a picnic table. The biggest bottleneck in construction was managing heat dissipation. The laws of thermodynamics always slowed rapid deployment down when not utilizing temporal manipulation technology. Life, on the other hand, was a different story. It would take years to make this dome look less artificial or dead, so for now, this park was only a placeholder. It was just this one table and some fast-growing resilient shrubbery. “We have our tandem slingdrives. We should go to Castlebourne. We’ll let Hrockas know what we’ve built, and give him an idea of where we are. If some refugees from the Exin Empire would like to move, now they have a new option.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for the others?” Angela figured.

“They’re making decisions that affect the multiverse,” her sister reasoned. “They can stand to come back to a surprise or two.”

“They’re your wives and best friend,” Romana said to Mateo. “It’s your choice.”

“Let’s wait until tomorrow,” he decided. “If they’re not back, we’ll pull the trigger. For today, let’s focus on the capital. I think I have an idea of what we should do with the dome. Let’s lean into the branching theme.”

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Microstory 2653: The Once and Future Owner

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Over the last eleven months, Ravensgate Rescuer, Blue Wave, and Cardinal Virtue have become—hands down—the most popular superhero team in town. Seemingly in response to this, the gamemakers have upped their game, introducing more advanced opponents to battle. They called the simulation Underbelly because it was originally only meant to involve street level conflict. Narratively, it would be nothing world-altering. They’re still not at the point where aliens are descending from the heavens, but they do supposedly come from other dimensions, and in massive numbers. The heroes have proven more capable than expected. While the Flying Femmes are the vanguard force, the team-up leaders, and the most celebrated, there are plenty of others contributing in their own ways. Some of them die, but it’s so much fun that the majority of them come back as new characters, or as the same character, using some in-universe magical twist. This happens all the time in the inspirational source material.

Reagan and Grover staged a highly scripted battle with each other around ten months ago. It was televised, and not only in this dome. People all over the world reportedly watched the events, and there are rumors that the “film” has reached beyond Castlebourne, to other colonies and Earth. Wave Function was looking for revenge for the second Ravensgate Rescuer’s death, even though she came back. In the end, after some gruelingly emotional dialogue, Velvet Thunder redeemed himself by sacrificing his own life to save Wave Function, along with a handful of innocent bystanders. Wave Function survived, but was permanently injured. The story goes that he retired to a cabin in the middle of the woods, as per comic book movie protocol. In reality, Reagan exited the simulation, and returned as a new character. He now serves as the man in the chair for the Flying Femmes, servicing their advanced wing technology, unseen by the public. He needs to hone his mechanical skills with modern tech. Grover, on the other hand, left the dome entirely, and is now shredding gnar in Winterbourne Park.

The universe has expanded. Elysia headlines a new immersive superhero story set under a new dome. Seagate is an oceanside city, which has its own series of beaches, but also butts up against Polar Tropica. While you can’t actually pass from Seagate to the gigantic dome that covers the south pole ocean, it’s out there, and visitors who have nothing to do with Underbelly can come right up to the transparent barrier between them. The girls have visited their friend several times, but the Flying Femmes have not yet fought alongside Elysia’s new character, Seagate Savior. They’re planning a huge crossover event for the end of the month, though. They might have done it sooner, but the gamemakers wanted Seagate to stand on its own for a few months before they introduced a more complex story structure. Incidentally, Elysia didn’t name herself. She elected to go out there with an oceanic theme, and the press came up with the moniker. Behind the scenes, since the public are AIs, it was likely the developers’ idea.

Morgana has been quiet. Mandica’s theory is that she orchestrated the whole thing with the jewelry store and the stone. There were a few too many coincidences. On the day of the attack, she used a different sword than she typically wielded. The real Philosopher’s Stone just happened to be on display there. They weren’t even going to go there in the first place, but a salesman encouraged them as they walked by. Did Vanore want her to somehow become the Ravensgate Rescuer? Has this been her twisted way of fulfilling what Mandica now believes were her parents’ wishes? She wants to ask her, but she would have to find her first. They know she has shapeshifting technology, so she could be anyone. She could be watching them up close every single day, holding her agenda close to the chest. They try not to worry about it too much, because until she makes a move, there’s really nothing they can do about it.

Today, they’re concerned with something else. Despite knowing that Mandica came to this planet illegally, the executive administrative authority has never said a word. The apparent owner mentioned something to Elysia before, but nothing has happened yet. That has recently changed. A man named Hrockas Steward has entered the simulation, and set up a meeting with Mandica, as well as any friends she would like to bring. Blue Wave is on patrol, but her other two team members are with her, dressed in civilian clothing. They’re in the elevator, heading up to the penthouse. “Do you wanna run? Jaidia asks. “We can run. We’ll find a way out of this dome, and hide somewhere.”

“They’ll find me,” Mandica replies. “It’s okay. If it turns out they want to punish me, or send me back to Earth, it will be on them.”

“I don’t think they’re gonna do that,” Reagan determines. “They don’t care about Earthan laws, and it would cost resources to ship you all the way back there. Before you ask, it’s illegal to digitize someone without their consent, so they would need a ship.”

The doors open. Only one security guard is waiting for them in the antechamber. He’s wearing armor, but has poor posture. He’s not nervous, which he shouldn’t be. They have no plans to harm Mr Steward. They didn’t even bring their wings. “Good afternoon, visitors. My name is Dominus Azad Petit. Miss Kolar, he would like to speak with you alone at first. The others can wait out here with me. I assure you, it’s safe.”

“It’s fine,” Mandica says when the others look like they’re about to protest, particularly Reagan. She goes in alone.

A man is standing at the window, looking out at the skyline. This is the best view in town, but if he owns the whole planet, he probably has better ones. He turns to face her. “Miss Kolar. Thank you for coming. I figured it was time we met.”

“Are you kicking me out?” Mandica asks, deciding to be bold.

“Quite the opposite,” he says. “If you had come here legally, and followed proper procedure, you would know that it is also against the law to exit a simulation in any substrate constructed for the purposes of inhabiting and taking action in that simulation. When your friends leave, they do so in their original bodies, or rather, whatever they were wearing on the outside before. Since you are undigitized, that is not possible for you. You are walking around in an incredibly powerful substrate that is outside my purview. I am here partially to ask that you remain here, or digitize. I cannot have it getting out that I made any exception. Your situation is too complicated to explain to the other visitors, or the citizens. I cannot force you, I can only ask.”

“Yeah,” I can do that,” Mandica agrees. “For now. But I might live forever, and I won’t want to live forever here.”

“I understand. If you would like to leave in the future, please reach out to me first so we can discuss. But that’s not really why I wanted to talk. I’ve decided to divulge to you that you are not the only stray under the dome. One other breached our defenses.”

“Who? Who else would come to such a dangerous place unprotected?” she asked.

“I never said that she was unprotected. She is actually more powerful than you. I can’t seem to track Morgana, and was hoping to employ your services towards that end.”