Microstory 2605: The Vanguard of Equilibrium, Their Eyes Opened

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August 19, 2526. The crew of the Proxima Vanguard are sitting in the communal area of the station, quietly doing their own things. There are only three of them here, because three is all you need. Actually, you don’t even need that. Automation can technically handle everything, but the reason they don’t do that is because then what’s the point of humans? It just seems irrational that they should have this stablecraft at the L1 point between Proxima Centauri and Proxima Doma, and not put a few people on it. They don’t have to do much, though, which is why it’s not a bustling metropolis, like it is between Sol and Earth. They’re just here in case something goes wrong. And something is about to go wrong.

The Chamberlain is watching an ancient TV show called Dawson’s Creek. They’re allowed to do whatever they want, but only as long as the monitors and alarms are within sight, which means no holographic imagery, and definitely no immersive VR. Two-dimensional media is all they have available. That’s one reason why this isn’t a very coveted position. It’s so boring, and the ways of passing the time are limited. The Chamberlain is fine with it, though, as are the Engineer and the Sensate. At the moment, the Engineer is playing this outrageous game where you push a block back and forth across a table to make contact with a little cube. When the cube hits your block, it’s volleyed back to the other side, where another player—or, in this case, the computer—will attempt to hit it back. It’s about three meters wide, so it takes a lot of effort to reach the cube each time. It’s mostly for a workout, so even when you lose, you win. The Sensate is just reading, but watching the monitors simultaneously. She had surgery to decouple her eyes from each other, allowing them to view different things at the same time.

The sensors beep.

The Chamberlain perks up. “Another solar flare?”

“Yeah, it’s a pretty big one, though. Superflare.”

“We’re not really due for one of those yet,” the Engineer points out.

The Sensate sets her e-reader down and shrugs. “That’s why they call it variable. I’ll switch to vis so we can get a good look.”

The star appears on the big screen so all three can see quite easily. The Engineer lets the cube pass his block. The Chamberlain stands up and ignores the iconic window kiss on the show. They all three stare at the screen in shock. “That’s not a superflare, but a hyperflare” the Chamberlain points out.

“I know,” the Sensate replies. She scrambles to switch off all of the equipment. If they can go dark, they may—may—survive this.

“It’s a precursor,” the Chamberlain adds.

“I know! Dump the heat!” she orders the Engineer. She’s not his boss, but the chain of command doesn’t matter right now. This just has to get done.

The rest of their lives happen in slo-motion. The Sensate continues shutting off systems, fluttering back and forth along the console. She’s frustrated that it was designed this way. First of all, there’s no master shut-off, which is a big no-no by today’s standards. This is one of the very first structures built when humans began interstellar travel. It’s not just one of the first in this particular system, but ever. Proxima Centauri is the closest star to Sol, so Proxima Doma is naturally the oldest colony. They had not yet developed the protocols that the other colonies use now. They should have kept up with the times. They could have, but things were working okay in their daily lives that they just let it lie. There’s an AI, of course, but it’s not very smart. It was intentionally limited because back then, people were worried about the long-term risks of trusting an artificial intelligence with its own personality, and theoretical agency. In hindsight, that was stupid. One command, and this could all be done, but the buttons aren’t even in order in physical space. She’s not gonna make it.

The Engineer has run over to the engineering controls, where he starts purging everything they have. The waste heat, the fuel, the control rods. That’s right. They use nuclear fission here, even though fusion was invented a trillion years ago. There’s no answer for why they didn’t upgrade. It’s probably because this is working just fine, so they might as well use the fuel they already have. There was once a fourth crewmember, who asked why they didn’t just use solar power the whole time, but Proxima Centauri being a flare star works against them, because its luminosity is unreliable. Plus, the panels would have to be large and exposed. For a more stable star, that’s fine—you probably want some solar shades anyway, but here, they would be a liability. He didn’t last long at this post. He grew too bored, so they replaced him with a maintenance robot. He could have been of some use here, though. The engineer’s controls are in order, but they’re bigger, and he has to move a lot more. This is where his training with the mechanical pong comes in, though. That’s not why he played it, but it’s proving its value today. At least it didn’t hurt. It won’t matter.

The Chamberlain’s efforts are the most fruitless of all. He’s trying to make a call. He’s not asking for help or rescue. If they make it through the next thirty seconds, they’ll be able to get in their escape pods after that. But that’s not what they’re worried about. This flare—this...hyperflare—is not just a Carrington event. It’s not going to wipe out communications, and inconvenience the inhabitants for a few weeks. The readings are spiking, proverbially off the charts. They have never seen anything this big before, nor any flare move this fast. The colonists knew that the star was erratic and angry all the time, so they designed their infrastructure to account for it. But even the most unpredictable stellar object has its own level of predictability given large enough time scales. This was not in the predictions. They are not prepared for this. Because it is not just a hyperflare, but a precursor. It is an omen to something far worse. “Come in! Come in! Can anyone hear me? This is Proxima Vanguard, calling anyone who can hear me! We’re experiencing a major hyperflare! You need to prepare for what comes next! You need to prepare for a coronal ma—”

Microstory 2604: Some Will Stay and Some Will Go, and Each Will Decide Their Fate

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August 18, 2526. By the time the Breckenridge Folk completed their caucus, and decided on Amos Bull as their new Merchant Prince, the Levins were ready to go. They had no real emergency plan for a community-wide domaquake, but they did have one for tornados. All they had to do was announce a new congregation area near North Exit. Over the course of the last few days, they met here, and began the trek through the long spine on foot, which led them to Breckenridge’s South Exit. When the gates were officially opened, all they had to do was continue walking into the refuge dome. There was no pushing and screaming. The Levins understand what is at stake, and they want all of their remaining population to survive. Not all of them did. The quakes have been happening for years, and generally intensifying each time, and a few people met their ends during that. But since the last event, no one has succumbed. There are a few holdouts, though. Statistically speaking, there always are. While the refugees are trying to get settled in, Tertius and Aeterna are back in Leviss.

“I don’t think we should be doing this,” Tertius decides.

“What? Saving people?”

“Saving the stubborn ones. They made their choice, they’re scattered, and we’re not teleporters.”

“We have to try,” she reasons.

“This isn’t our job, or our forte. One of the Levin leaders should do it, if anyone.”

“If the next quake hits,” Aeterna begins, “we will survive, no matter how bad it is. We can keep trying and trying until the last skyscraper falls, and the last curmudgeon dies. We may as well.”

Tertius stops, forcing Aeterna to stop too. “We should be focusing on the people who want to be saved. They need us.”

“They’re already saved,” she contends.

Tertius shakes his head. “You think Breckenridge is safe? Breckenridge is a pit stop. They are marginally better off, not just because of their limited infrastructure, but also their distance from the fault line. Make no mistake, this is only going to get worse, and they will have to be evacuated too. We should be coordinating those efforts instead.”

“Are you sure about that?” she questions. “The Breckenridge Folk say it’s not bad at all. There have been zero casualties. That doesn’t sound marginal to me.”

He shakes his head again. “I’m telling you, it’s not going to last. That’s why I warned the other equatorial settlements. Everyone’s got to go.”

“Go where?” Aeterna asks.

“Preferably, outer space; not even in orbit, but far away. I put in a call to the Master Megaengineer, and her assistant said that she would look into it, but I’m not holding my breath. They don’t want to evacuate the whole planet, but they should.”

“Why would they have to leave orbit? Can domaquakes get so bad that they’ll spew matter into orbit, and—I don’t know what you mean by this. I’ve never heard of such a thing, on any world.”

“I don’t think it’s the planet. I think it’s the host star.”

“You’re just making that up, you don’t know.”

He stares at his daughter, afraid of what he has to say, but he does have to say it. “Before you were born, I spoke with a seer, who said the son will one day flip out, and annihilate everything.” He pauses, even more nervous, but he must go on. “I thought that she was talking about you. I was surprised when you were born a girl, but maybe you were transgender, and I just needed to wait. But it’s been hundreds of years, and unless you have news for me, you still identify as a woman. I don’t think she was talking about my son, but the sun.” He points to the sky with his thumb. “The best seers don’t talk in riddles. She wasn’t the best seer.”

“You’re just telling me this now?” Aeterna complains. “Who is this seer?”

“They mostly prefer Earth. I didn’t tell you because it might have led to a self-fulfilling prophecy, and truthfully, I kind of forgot about it, because I thought it had already come to pass. It didn’t seem relevant anymore. I’m only now wondering whether I had misinterpreted it, and it’s all about what’s happening now. Or maybe I was right the first time, and the prediction was just about our falling out two hundred years ago. What does flipping out even mean? How bad does it have to be to count?”

“What does flipping out have to do with a sun?”

“I don’t know anything.” He looks around at the destruction that the domaquakes have already caused. “But this...isn’t gonna get better. Did you notice, it wasn’t difficult to convince the Levins to leave? They’ve not shared their data yet, but they must be picking up on something. I firmly believe that we can’t let them stop moving.”

“Okay, okay. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to save the stragglers. If anything, it makes it even more vital. They probably think there’s hope!”

“And how are we gonna convince them that there’s not? I just tried to do it with you, and you immediately pointed out that I don’t know what the hell I was talking about. We can’t exactly tell them that a magical lady with special time powers told me 300 years ago...in a riddle.”

“Maybe we can cheat,” Aeterna suggests.

“How would we do that?”

“You still have the ability to erase people’s memories?”

Tertius winches. “Yeah, of course I do. Oh, that was rhetorical.”

“If we erase their memories, we can tell them whatever they need to hear to get them through that tunnel. Then, once they’re on the other side, we lock the gates behind us, and restore their memories.”

“Two hundred years ago, you would have balked at that kind of subterfuge.”

“If it’s to save lives,” she reasons, “I don’t mind it.”

Tertius considered the proposition. “All right, I’m in. There’s one problem, though. As I said, they’re scattered. They may wake up confused, but that doesn’t mean they’ll randomly walk over to us.”

“I believe I have that covered.” Aeterna reaches into her pack pocket and pulls out a spent match.

“The muster match? That can only summon one person. And it’s used. You used it to bring me!” he reminds her.

“It’s not the match,” Aeterna tells him. She looks around until she finds what she’s looking for. “It’s the flame.” She manages to restrike it against a rock, and then set the bush on fire.

Microstory 2603: They Divide Themselves Into Clamoring Crowds

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August 17, 2526. Tertius Valerius and Aeterna Valeria are in a dome called Breckenridge. It’s the closest one to where they live, Leviss. Well, Aeterna lives there. Tertius left a while back when he and his daughter had a falling out, and only recently returned. Things have, quite frankly, turned to shit. Leviss has been experiencing intensifying seismic activity. It turns out that Breckenridge has too, but not quite as bad. Their infrastructure is worse, which in some ways, is a good thing. One significant tremor, and a skyscraper can come tumbling down. But sparse handmade houses that are already low to the ground? Not great, but easier to survive. Back in the day, Leviss was the absolute least advanced dome on Proxima Doma, but they intentionally had their memories wiped of their technological origins. They’ve never heard of Earth. They didn’t know they came here in a ship. This is just where they have always been, as far as they know. Breckenridge also opted for a low-tech society, but their memories were left intact, so they knew why they did it, and were able to instill their values into their children. Without this legacy, the Levins have kept advancing until now, when their level of technology resembles that of their ancestors before the split. Unfortunately, it’s all falling apart. And they need somewhere to go.

“Merchant Prince Rinaldi, please,” Tertius begs. “We need to talk about this.”

“Uh-uh-uh, call me by my current title.”

“Uh, Incumbent Rinaldi, please,” Tertius begs further.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” Rinaldi contends. “Not until after the vote, and only if I win.”

“This isn’t a vote,” Tertius argues. “This is a caucus, and a bloody mess one at that. It looks like you’re going to win anyway.” Most of the candidates are yelling out their future plans for the dome, trying to entice voters to support them. As incumbent, Rinaldi has evidently found that he doesn’t need to risk his voice. He has the largest crowd at his platform right now.

“There’s no guarantee,” Rinaldi says. “Just look at Bull’s crowd.” He’s right, it’s pretty big too. He stands up, and adjusts his giant ridiculous hat. “Hey!” he shouts across the room. “Get away from that platform! Have you seen his tractor during harvest? Spotless! Guy wastes time cleaning when he should be picking!”

Tertius rolls his eyes, and looks over at his daughter. “We’re not getting anywhere with this guy.”

“It’s like you said, he’s gonna win,” Aeterna replies. “We need him.”

Tertius sighs. “Rinaldi, this is quite time-sensitive. The Levins need to evacuate, but since humans can’t breathe on this planet, they need a dome to go to, and you have more than enough space.”

Rinaldi sits down, but is still staring at his rival with disgust. “Yeah, I’d love to help, but it’s not my place. You should have come last week when I was still in power, or next week when I’m back in power.”

“The quakes weren’t bad enough last week for us to know that they’re not gonna stop,” Tertius explains.

“Yeah, whatever. We’re dealing with them just fine.” Rinaldi stands up again. “Hodge, you get the hell away from those hats! You think you stand a chance? Don’t humiliate yourself, you son of a bitch!” The voting system is even more outrageous than a regular caucus. They decided a while back that, even with these platforms, it can be confusing who here is running for office, and who here is only a constituent. Any candidate can make a declaration on the day of, even hours into the caucus, so people need a way to get the news that someone new wants the job. Someone came up with the idea of having each candidate wear a big hat so they’re easily spotted in the throng. Over time, these hats have evidently just gotten bigger and crazier. Most candidates are expending energy holding them on their heads. They won’t stop, though. It doesn’t look silly to them. Taking the hat means you’re brave and confident, even if it’s unearned. To be fair, it’s what’s allowing Tertius and Aeterna to stand up here on the platform, and have a conversation without worrying about it looking like they’re declaring themselves candidates too.

“The Levins need you,” Aeterna says to Rinaldi, hoping that her words might sway him. “They helped you out with your crops a few seasons ago, did they not?”

“Oh, you mean the superpoop?” Rinaldi asks.

“The...probiotic nanofertilizer, yes. It’s revolutionary.” Of course, when you build a dome—on an inhospital world like Proxima Doma, or anywhere—controlling the weather is as easy as adjusting the thermostat in a regular house. They chose not to do that here. Actually, the Valerii suspect that the weather is indeed controlled, but is deliberately programmed to be erratic to simulate natural chaos. The crops don’t always yield, and despite their unwillingness to advance their technology past a certain threshold, they have been known to accept outside help so they don’t starve to death. That might be key to this whole thing.

“Eh.” Rinaldi waves it away. “We paid for that. We owe them nothing.”

Tertius sighs. “We don’t have time for this.” He and Aeterna switch to Bull’s platform. “I can get you the win, but you have to guarantee taking in the Levins as refugees, and you have to enforce the process before you technically take office. I know you can do that. Your whole system of government is too disorganized for that to be illegal.”

Bull has been screaming his message into a bullhorn that he probably made by hand out of wood. He moves it away from his mouth, and leans in towards Tertius. “You snag me the win, I’ll open the tunnel gates by the end of the night.”

“Grab that scythe for me, hon,” Tertius says to his daughter as they’re walking towards the stage. He’s not really supposed to talk, but no one is gonna stop him. “People, people! Listen to me!” he demands. “If you stand by Bull, I promise an end to your drought! I know where there’s water!” The megaengineers who colonized this world designed it so that liquid water is pumped into underground aquifers by use for people who reject the kind of technology required to do that. It allows them to pretend that it’s not artificial. But there’s a backup system. There are also just tanks, and every dome—even the primitive ones—can access them if they know how.

“How can you guarantee that?” a random citizen questions.

“Hit the floor, then hit me,” he requests of Aeterna.

She does so. She breaks into the floorboards to prove that it’s a real scythe, and not simply a prop. Then she slams the blade against her father’s back. He doesn’t budge, and the metal buckles. “Because we’re gods!” she lies.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 13, 2526

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There were some major issues with the sensor array, which delayed its activation. Aeterna promised that she had nothing to do with it, but they weren’t the dome police, so she wouldn’t have owed them an explanation either way. It was a year later now, and they were back on track. It would be turned on in a few days, when the team was out of the timestream again. It was inevitable, though, that the descendants of the Oblivios would start noticing the giant tower in the middle of their habitat. Well, they wouldn’t notice it, per se, but their instruments would claim that it was there, and if the Valerians didn’t want to damage people’s psyches, they would reveal themselves. They still didn’t know exactly how they were going to explain it, but now hoped maybe someone on the team had a good idea.

“I don’t know that we have to worry about it,” Leona claimed. They had spent the rest of yesterday in the penthouse, but now they were getting a look at the lower floors. She recognized them, and it clicked. “This is Arvazna.”

Mateo winced. “That micronation that you owned in The Third Rail?”

“That I will own,” Leona corrected. “It hasn’t happened yet, from this building’s perspective.”

“It was 130 years ago,” Marie reminded her. “I know, we’re time travelers, but if this thing ends up on an alternate Earth, thereby avoiding being detected here on Doma, it’s going to have to leave soon, and it’s going to have to go back in time, and then it’s going to have to be shunted to a parallel reality that doesn’t exist in present day.”

“The whole thing doesn’t have to end up there,” Mateo said. “This thing is, what, forty times larger than that one?”

“That’s true,” Leona agreed, examining the walls. “Tertius, how is this thing attached to the dome? Is it buried in the ground, or hanging from the apex?”

“Both, basically,” he answered. “They’re connected. It’s like a giant pillar connecting the ground to the top. Or a column? I don’t know, I’m not an engineer. I just asked Étude to build it, and she used her magicks.”

“I assume you have specifications for it, though,” Ramses said. “We would like to look at those. If we’re gonna bootstrap this tower to the Third Rail—or part of it—we will need to know how it works first.”

“Are you being serious? Are you just gonna make the tower disappear for us?” Tertius pressed.

“I think we’re fated to,” Leona said. The three of them went back upstairs, along with Aeterna and Marie, who was mostly just curious.

“I don’t know what understanding the engineering of the tower is going to do for them,” Mateo lamented. “You can’t just move a tower like this. None of us has that kind of power.”

“It doesn’t have to be one of us,” Olimpia claimed. “We already know someone who can do it. Well, we don’t know they can do it at scale, but we just met them. You partied with one of them.”

Mateo considered all the people he had met recently before landing on a guess. “The Overseers?”

“Yeah,” Olimpia confirmed. “They can just make one of their black hole portals, and send it through.”

“How’s the building going to move?” Mateo questioned.

“Gravity,” Romana suggested. “They can make the portal on the surface of the ground, and it will just fall through.”

“Is that even possible?” Mateo asked. “I’m guessing the foundation runs several kilometers deep. Could they get under it somehow?”

“You’ll have to ask them.”

“You want me to Boyd my way to them,” Mateo presumed.

“We don’t have time to get there and back using the slingdrives,” Angela reminded him. “It takes too long to recharge.”

“Plus, only you can find them through the dark particles,” Romana added.

A few hours later, Leona chuckled upon seeing Magnolia and Garland. “We were just gonna suggest that.”

“Great minds,” Romana mused.

“Can you do it?” Ramses asked the dark portal makers. “Can you make a portal wide enough to fit the tower?”

“The width alone is not really the problem,” Garland began. “Holding it long enough will be.”

“It’s not really the time either, son,” Magnolia said to him before facing Leona, “it’s the mass. I can hold a portal open for several minutes if nothing goes through in that time. But a tower? How long would you need? How long would it take to fall?”

“If we time it right,” Leona replied, “from the moment we release the clamps, to the second the roof makes it past the threshold, I would feel most comfortable with a minute and a half. With Proxima Doma’s gravity, it’s going to fall fairly fast, and get there in under that time.”

Magnolia’s eyes widened. “Whew, that’s a lot.”

“Together we can, though,” Garland said confidently.

She smiled at him. “Yeah, I’m sure we could do it. It would be a hell of a lot easier to send it somewhere with lower gravity, though, like outer space. I don’t know how to get it to another reality in the past anyway, so this would be just a stop-gap measure.”

“We just gotta get it out of the dome,” Rames said.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, everyone,” Tertius finally jumped in. “I regret asking them to build it in the first place. It was never necessary, and this isn’t the first headache I’ve gotten from it.”

Everybody filed into the elevator, and went down to the surface. The Overseers and the smart people began to survey the tower, and the surrounding area, rapidly developing their plan to make a gigantic building disappear. It was not a good plan, it was just the only one they had. Any number of things could go wrong. The Valerians could make the inhabitants forget they saw something unexplainable, but if the calculations were off by a single decimal point, memory would be the least of their problems. The apocalyptic explosion from the falling tower would send shockwaves across the surface...literally. It would decimate the dome, at best, and certainly kill everyone in it. As they were standing there, trying to consider every contingency, a tremor came through to remind them what started all this. It was a small one, but a herald of times far worse. They could see the nearest city shake in the distance. Nothing serious broke apart, but they could see tons of dust from here, and it might have been more destructive in other regions.

“We better do this now,” Magnolia decided. “If the ground begins to shake during the attempt, we could lose our balance.”

“That tremor means the big one is coming,” Leona tried to explain, “not that we won’t have another for a while.”

“Then let’s get on with it,” Aeterna contended.

“It could be minutes,” Leona warned, “and it’s not your call.”

“No, it’s ours,” Garland argued. “I say we do it, and we do it now. Ninety seconds is all we have available to us anyway.”

Just in case they needed a couple of extra hands, Angela teleported up to the control room in the penthouse with Tertius and Ramses, so they could release the clamps connecting the tower to the dome. They were coordinating on comms, relayed to Magnolia by Leona on one side of the cylinder, and Marie on the other with Garland. They were still in the middle of the process when another tremor began. “Guys, we need to abort,” Leona urged. No, she begged.

It was pretty much too late, though. Declamping the tower links wasn’t a single step. For clamps that large, it happened in stages, and they had already opened the first two stages, which placed them at more risk if they didn’t just move forward, full steam ahead.

“On my mark,” the team could hear Ramses say through comms. As he counted down, Leona and Marie’s voices synced with his, “eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, mark!” They slammed their fists down in the air, and pointed to the Overseers.

Magnolia and Garland opened a joint dark portal, slicing through the bottom floor like a hot knife through butter. The tower started to fall through. It was a magnificent sight to behold. The people in the control room appeared back down on the ground next to Mateo, Olimpia, and Romana.

“We can’t hold it anymore!” Leona cried, just about immediately, repeating what Magnolia was saying.

Marie reported a similar sentiment from Garland. “It’s worse than we thought! Best we can do is collapse the portal uncleanly, and generate an annihilating vortex!”

“I’ve never done that before!” Magnolia argued.

“Do it now!” Garland urged. There was absolutely no time to argue. After only about ten or eleven seconds, the portal fell apart, but it didn’t just evaporate into nothing. It exploded from the ground, and ate up part of the tower like a Lucius bomb. Unlike an L-bomb, though, it didn’t travel very far. Almost all of the tower was now falling towards them, preparing to crash on the surface. Leona teleported Magnolia out of the dome while Marie took Garland. Ramses hugged both Valerians, and spirited them away to safety.

Mateo was about to teleport too when he saw his wife, Olimpia take her Sangster Canopy out of her bag. She didn’t even give him the chance to protest before she jumped only a couple hundred meters away, directly underneath the falling tower. She opened it, and aimed it at the annihilator. She sent pockets of new space out of the tip. It wasn’t holding up the tower, but perpetually making the ground farther and farther away from it. She couldn’t hold on forever, though, and in fact, not for any meaningful amount of time. The Oblivios could not evacuate before she lost control. The first to escape would probably still be in the tunnel when it happened, and still be caught in the destruction. This was a desperate attempt doomed to fail.

But maybe Mateo could help instead. Both he and Romana jumped over to her, and took hold of the umbrella. “No!” he argued. “Just me! You two get out of here!”

“I know what you’re planning, dad! I can help!”

“You don’t have dark particles anymore!”

“Oh, yes, I do! Get out of here, mom!”

“Mom?” Olimpia echoed. “You’ve never called me mom before.”

“Go!” Olimpia reiterated.

“I love you!” Olimpia disappeared.

“Is this gonna work?” Mateo asked his daughter.

“Hell, yeah, it will!”

They both screamed their heads off. A massive swarm of dark particles erupted from them, through the umbrella. They were still adding space between them and the tower, but they were experiencing diminishing returns. It and the swarm met in the middle, but it was taking time for the dark particles to cover the entire thing. Meanwhile, it continued to fall, closer and closer to the surface. It might have appeared to be going rather slow from the outside, but it was actually accelerating, and would strike the planet with an even greater force than it would have had they done nothing but save themselves. The particles were nearly at full coverage and the tower was nearly upon them when the rest of the team appeared next to them. One by one, they took hold of the handle or the shaft, wherever they could find purchase.

“There’s nothing you can do to help!” Mateo shouted at them.

“We can die together!” Leona reasoned.

“That’s freaking stupid!” Romana volleyed.

“Don’t talk to your mother like that!” Olimpia scolded.

They continued to scream into the wind, as a team, and as they struggled to hold on, they started to float in the air a little. With one final push of their might, the dark particles turned all sorts of colors, and disappeared, as did the tower, and the whole team with them.

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Microstory 1763: On the Wings of Perseus

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I thought I was alone on this alien planet, but there is another. I don’t know if he belongs here, or came here from somewhere else, like me, but he doesn’t seem the least bit surprised to find me. I should not be surprised that he is not surprised seeing as we’re standing before a fountain containing statues resembling the two of us, along with many other creatures, who I presume to all be evolved alien species. My guess is that this is a monument to the intelligent races who live in this galaxy, though I couldn’t say whether all of them visited here at some point, they’re only the ones that the Pegasus being specifically knows about, or it’s comprehensive. All I can say is that I’m so pleased to finally have someone else to talk to. And he does indeed talk, even though he looks like a horse with wings. The first thing he tells me is his name, and though I imagine his peoples don’t use Latin script for their written language, what I hear sounds a little bit like the name Perseus, albeit with some kind of non-North American accent and pronunciation. It’s interesting that he should be named that, since both Pegasus and Perseus appear in ancient Greek mythology together, and it’s never been suggested that they are one and the same, or that the latter is the proper name for just one particular member of a whole race of the former. Perhaps all religion was inspired by reality in some way, but the truth has been corrupted overtime, kind of like how the Norse gods are often depicted as real aliens with advanced technology, who humans mistook for deities. I try to ask Perseus what this fountain is, and why a statue of me is in it, but he sort of brushes it off and says that it’s “just this thing.” I find it strange that I should be placed closest to him in the artistic rendering, when we have only now met, and the other aliens probably have much more experience with their interstellar neighbors. He brushes this off as well, and offers to give me a ride on his back. I feel awkward, accepting such a thing from a clearly sentient entity, but if he doesn’t, I shouldn’t.

We fly up, and up, and up, through the clouds, into the bitter cold, and right past what I might consider to be the boundary between atmosphere and outer space. I don’t bother freaking out, or trying to hold my breath. If this is his way of murdering me, then so be it. What am I gonna do, hop off, and go back down? I don’t die, of course. I assume some kind of invisible protective barrier forms to hold in the air, and the heat. The farther we go, the faster we move, until we’re traveling at faster-than-light speeds. Our ships can do that, but not nearly this fast, and before I know it, we’re on a new planet, which I initially figure to be Perseus’ homeworld. I don’t see any other Pegisides around, or whatever it is his people call themselves. I only see humans, standing in and around what I remember to be human architecture. They don’t gasp at the sight of the alien, so he has likely been here before. After I admire the city for a moment, Perseus explains what happened. The reason our scout ship crashed in the first place is due to tidal forces from a relatively nearby collapsis, which my ancestors used to refer to as a black hole. The planet’s proximity to this region of high gravity is also what caused me to experience only fifteen years of time while the human settlement here has been around for nearly two centuries. It’s nice to know that humanity survived the disasters on Earth, and also that I’m still around to enjoy the fruits of that labor myself. The people here welcome me warmly, and I realize just how much I missed being around other people.

Microstory 1652: Safe as Houses

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I’ve decided to give you some details about how the Bicker Institute survival facilities are populated, and how they operate. Forty-nine people are rescued from each of three generations. They are protected from birth, all the way until they age out of the program at 42. If all goes according to plan, they are unaware that they are Inheritors, or that they are being watched, until it’s time to populate the Houses. As medical science progressed, the method used for selecting the next generation of inheritors became more sophisticated, but the basic idea remained the same. Thirty-one girls, and eleven boys per generation per House are meant to be able to repopulate the planet, should all other life be extinguished, for whatever reason. They would be joined by seven people they deem wildcards. These wildcards are not closely monitored by Sentinels, and their genetic makeup is kept a mystery. They are chosen to better simulate real life, where people do not choose mates based upon genetic health or diversity. The wildcards also rotate in and out of the program more often, as things change about their situations. Inheritor housing assignments are part of a complex process, later aided by an artificial intelligence. One might be placed in a House on the other side of the world, should their genes be compatible with a group there, and there is also a social component that they try to account for. Wildcards, on the other hand, are selected based on their proximity to any given House, and should they move, they might be taken out of contention without ever knowing it. Older generation wildcards are chosen specifically for their useful professions, which the Institute believes could help the Houses prosper. Two soldiers, two law enforcement officers, two doctors, two nurses, one paramedic, one EMT, a midwife, a doula, a cook, and a leader.

The breeders are not alone in the facilities. Seven people who belonged to the Institute the entire time will be there to help guide the inheritors, and maintain order. These include a leader, a primary medical professional, an engineer, an electrician, a mechanic, a gardener, and a logistician. As for the Houses themselves, there is a standard design foundation, but each one is unique, and they are not all bunkers. There are some commonalities that they need for the people living in them to be safe, and feel comfortable. Of course they all have sleeping quarters, with extras for a growing population. They will also have a gym, kitchen and cafeteria, bathrooms, microponics for food production, and storage for non perishable food items, as well as other necessities, such as water treatment, sewage, ventilation and climate control, and extra supplies. As far as the actual bunkers  go, they’re a lot more comfortable than one might expect. They could have made things simple, just by burying one large building underground, and letting people sleep on cots. But they spent the extra money, and went the extra mile. Everyone gets their own room, until they pair up, and start moving around. The furniture is nice and new, and everything is well-maintained. Like any good survival strategy, this system includes redundancies, and even modularization. The different sections of a bunker won’t physically move away from each other, but they can be closed off, and last independently, for a period of time. The three biggest concerns are radiation, incursion, and flood. Though no system is perfect, this one is pretty thorough, and well planned. There is even a smaller bunker section in the deepest part of the facility that’s filled with those cots, should the rest of the structure become compromised. Not all of the Houses made it through the end of the world, but enough of them do to keep the human race alive, and when it all comes down to, that’s all anyone in the Bicker Institute was hoping for.

Microstory 1602: New House

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In 1981, after Japan House was finished being built, the Bicker Institute started trying to think of other ways to allow the human race to survive. Eight full bunkers were already up and ready to go, with another House in New Zealand, which was designed to maintain its population mostly above ground. Jumping off of that idea, they decided that keeping people underground wasn’t necessarily the only way to survive the end of the world. In fact, it may not even be the best way. The organization was not founded upon the basis of some specific disaster. If they had those answers, they probably would have channeled all of their efforts into stopping it. They wanted to prepare for anything, and massive global earthquakes, for instance, might just bury all of their bunkers, so they wanted to come up with new strategies. People in the ocean could conceivably survive such a thing. It wasn’t guaranteed, but nothing was, and again, this was all about preparation. They needed a ship. They needed the best ship in the world. And they needed it to potentially endure a tidal wave or tsunami. Their next interim deadline was in seven years, which was important, because the hope was to support a certain percentage of a growing population. The project leads started looking around, hoping to find something that would meet their requirements. It didn’t have to be perfect, they had time to modify it, and bolster its features, but after a few months, things were getting ridiculous. Nothing fit the bill. Nothing was good enough for them. All ships were made to weather storms to some certain degree, but none of them could last through the worst storm in history, should it occur. Before wasting any more time, they decided their only solution was to build their own vessel from scratch, which they did over the course of the next eight years. They went about a year past their deadline, but that was okay, because the actual end of the world wouldn’t start happening until around 2021, and even then, things weren’t bad enough to warrant populating the Houses. This latest project made them better with their time management, and before it was finished, they ended up getting to work on the next plan for survival, which was a submarine. As for the ship, it was a magnificent beauty, far beyond anything else 1989 had to offer, and probably even superior to the ships built in 2021. I won’t tell you whether it, or its Inheritors, survived what came to it.

Microstory 1487: Top of the Morning

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Sixteen-point-six light years from Earth is a binary star system known as 70 Ophiuchi. These two stars orbit each other in a highly elliptical path, and the chances of there being a stable planetary system around either, or both, of them is highly unlikely. It just so happened that the rogue world of Durus was sent flying towards this system after its close call with the planets of Sol. It would have taken decades for them to reach their destination at their speed at the time, but the people didn’t want to wait that long, so they conscripted a number of key paramounts to make the planet move faster, so that it would take less than twenty years. Now it was 2204, and their dreams of orbiting their own stars were finally being realized. The experts knew that this was going to be a tricky process. There was a reason why circumbinary planets were probably rare, and why their orbits were generally unstable. That was okay, though, because the Durune weren’t looking for a traditional orbiting pattern. They obviously had the ability to manipulate their own movements, which was a power they could use to enter whatever orbit they pleased. They chose a sort of figure eight. They would orbit one of the stars, and then head towards the barycenter, which they would orbit once before flying off to orbit the other star. They would continue this pattern ad infinitum, or until they decided to do something else. There was nothing stopping them from altering this pattern later, or from leaving the system to find a new home. Again, it wasn’t going to be easy, but with their access to time powers, and time technology, it certainly wasn’t impossible. The problem was that they had to be precise and careful, because they wouldn’t get a second chance.

Accelerating and decelerating was one thing, but changing directions was a whole different ball game. Experts spent half their careers practicing for this one goal. They ran computer simulations, and came up with disaster scenarios, and figured out how to abort the mission. The last time someone tried to steer the whole planet, she just needed to avoid colliding with another planet, but this was much more complicated. There was a little bit of wiggle room when it came to finding their orbit, but if they missed their window, that could be it for 70 Ophiuchi. They would probably have to wait until they were picked up by some other system in whichever direction they ended up going. They also had to take down the sunlight they had been borrowing from Earth up until this point, or they would end up with too much heat. So it was really important that these people knew what they were doing, and that they accounted for every little thing that could possibly go wrong. Many things did go wrong, and their extensive preparation was invaluable in their efforts to correct them. Once the initial maneuvers were over, it wasn’t like they were finished. This orbital pattern was impossible in nature, and though automated systems could keep it humming, they had to maintain constant watch over the machines, because even the slightest deviation—especially in the transitional spots—could mean the end. They were ultimately successful. The husband of one of the engineers even came up with a new symbol to represent their finally independent world. It was a vaguely figure eight with a circle in the middle, and though it wasn’t completely accurate, it did look cool, and honestly embodied the people’s perseverance, fortitude, and most of all, their durability. Now they knew that they could do anything.

Source Variant: Steady as a Rock (Part VI)

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The three of them—Saga!Three, Vearden!Two, and Zektene—are stumped. After Vearden attempts to walk through the literal magic mirror, which sends him right back into the room, the others try as well, but also fail. There are two other exits in the facility that haven’t been buried by the robots to keep the planet’s natives from discovering the truth about their origins. They too are mirror portals, leaving the humans wondering what the powers that be are thinking. After this last jump forward two centuries, they continue to remain in the same linear series of moments in time. So their overlords want them to be in this time period, but they don’t want them to do anything while they’re here? That doesn’t make any sense.

Zektene gets on the computer. While the system was designed by Maramon engineers, before he left, Ramses showed them how to operate in English mode. Still, language isn’t the only problem. It was designed with Maramon psychology in mind, and they have a completely different outlook, which means understanding their computing logic can be tricky. She’s proven herself to be the most competent when it comes to grasping the fundamentals. “Perhaps there’s something wrong outside that we wouldn’t survive, like a dust storm, or something.” She checks a few readings. “Atmospheric pressure within nominal range. Composition same as it ever was. Immediate terrain hasn’t changed beyond predictions.”

“Can’t you just teleport us out there?” Saga!Three asks.

“Well, yeah, probably, but...should I?” Zektene answers, and asks.

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“Because there must be some reason we’re trapped here,” Vearden!Two says. “Maybe we’re not ready. We could try to practice more with the McIver hats.”

“We are great with the hats,” Saga!Three asserts. “You couldn’t find three better illusionists if you quantum duplicated two other versions of Alyssa herself.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Zektene disagrees.

Saga!Three sighs loudly.

“Why are you so anxious to go out there?” Vearden!Two asks her.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Saga!Three echoes herself.

“We have no personal interest in this mission, or missions, as it were. We’ve just been ordered to do this. We don’t gain anything from it ourselves, so what do we care? Maybe the powers are trying to give us a quick vacation, or maybe they think we just need a bit of extra sleep. Ya know what? Even if that’s not their intention, I wouldn’t mind a good rest. We might as well take advantage of the time, and then, if we’re feeling up to it, we can try to tackle this problem in the morning. You may wake up and stop seeing it as a problem.”

“I guess it’s hard to argue with that,” Saga!Three has to admit. He’s right in that anything they do on this planet is at someone else’s behest. Staying in the lab is apparently their present directive, so there’s no point in fighting it. They all wake up later with the same supposition. They’re not alone.

“Who is it, and where could they be hiding?” Zektene questions. “We didn’t search the whole facility when we came back, but we didn’t stay in one room either.”

“We don’t know that they’re hiding,” Vearden!Two reasons. “Maybe they’re hurt, or lost. They’re surely scared, since this type of advanced structure is nowhere near being built by the Gondilak.”

“If we’re not careful,” Saga!Three says, “they’ll start worshiping us. But first, we have to find them, so we can see what we’re dealing with. We’ll spli—”

“Nope,” Vearden!Two interrupts. “We’re not splitting up. It’s not that big of a place. We’ll go together.”

“Okay.”

So they start to search the facility, which turns out to be larger than they realized. Or maybe it wasn’t their fault. There’s one room that couldn’t have been there before without them knowing it. The lab has been growing. For whatever reason, the automated systems have been constructing more space. There’s no telling how large it’s become; not until they find the end of it. After twenty minutes of checking every single new room they come across, Vearden!Two stops them from leaving for the next one.

“I’ve been here before.”

“You have? That’s impossible,” Saga!Three contends. “This entire section is, like, a kilometer from the lab.”

“Not recently,” Vearden!Two begins to clarify. “In the future. I don’t know when in the future, but in the other reality, when the Gondilak capture me, they bring me here.”

“This is where they do experiments on you,” Zektene presses, “to see how come you had healing powers.”

“Yeah,” Vearden!Two confirms. “Yeah, the more I look at it, the more sure I am that this is it. It looks exactly like I remember.”

“I thought the Gondilak were less technologically advanced than the Orothsew,” Saga!Three recalls. “If they’ve discovered this place this early on, surely they would skyrocket in technology, and surpass them by centuries.”

Vearden!Two shakes his head. “I don’t think there’s anyone here. I don’t think that’s why we’re not allowed to go outside. I think the facility’s growth itself is a problem we need to solve.” He breathes deeply through his nostrils. “We have to find the edge of this, and now. We’re not super far from the nearest Gondilak village. If the robots are still building, they’ll eventually crash the party.”

And so they keep moving through the corridors, maybe a little faster now. They stop checking the rooms, because they’re confident that’s not the point. The sooner they find the edge, the sooner they can stop this. They’re not sure how they’re going to accomplish that, since none of them is educated or experienced enough to reprogram robots, but they can’t think about that right now. They just need answers. When they finally do reach the edge, their best guess is that they’re about a kilometer from the Gondilak village.

It’s happening a lot slower than they thought, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise to them. This might have been going on for the last two hundred years, so the entire planet would have been consumed if the bots were eating up resources as fast as they had imagined. Either way, though, something has to be done, and they have to figure out what that is. They don’t see any bots; or at least not what they’re used to. They just see this gray goo on the edge of the floor, walls, and ceiling. Little by little, it’s expanding, somehow converting the soil and rock it finds into building material, which it then incorporates into the preexisting structure.

“You can jump back to the main lab, right?” Vearden!Two asks Zektene.

“At any time, yes,” she replies.

“Okay,” Vearden!Two says. “Umm...cease production,” he orders the goo. “Cease...operations.”

“Shut down,” Saga!Three attempts.

“Computer!” Zektene starts. “End expansion program!”

The goo makes no indication that it’s so much as detected their presence, let alone understood their demands.

“All right,” Vearden!Two resolves. “You two go back to the main lab, and see what the command console has to say about this. Bring me back a radio, so we can stay in touch. I’ll monitor the situation here.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Zektene says. She takes Saga!Three by the arm, and teleports them both to main section. She grabs a radio, quickly delivers it to Vearden!Two, then returns to get to work.

Saga!Three watches, but isn’t able to help in any significant way. Perhaps they weren’t the most suited for this mission at all. What they need is an engineer, or hell, even a physicist. Somebody smart needs to be here to explain just what the hell is going on. They can’t stop it unless they understand how this became a problem in the first place.

“Looks like it hasn’t been an issue until somewhat recently. Let me see.” Zektene refocuses on the information she’s reading from the logs. “Fifty-six years. It was a mudslide. Horrible rains came, and threatened the entire village, so the bots were dispatched to build a secret retaining wall of some kind.” She did a bit more clicking. “There was a glitch in the code, and bots failed to deploy the delivery system. Apparently the gray goo we saw are nanobots. They would have built the wall faster, but they couldn’t get to the site on their own. Even without help, though,” she says, stepping back from the monitor, “the nanobots tried...and they’re still trying.”

“Any idea how we can stop it?” Vearden!Two asks from the other side.

“Let me look through this more,” Zektene requests. She continues to pore through the information, trying to find a shutdown protocol, or a loophole, or something.

“Do we really need to stop it?” Saga!Three asks after almost an hour of this. “What happened to the village. I thought you said the terrain hadn’t changed too much.”

“I guess the computer didn’t acknowledge this as a big enough change since it technically predicted it at one point,” Zektene says, still working with one half of her brain. “The village took a hit, and some did die, but the majority survived. They rebuilt a few hundred meters away, and actually...” She stops to read more. “They built their own wall. Huh. Yeah, I think we have to stop this. I get what you’re saying. Even decades late, the nanobots should know not to reveal themselves to the natives, but it’ll disrupt the structure they have there now. The nanobots just aren’t that smart. And there’s no way to shut them down, unless...”

“Unless what?” Vearden!Two asks.

“It’s morbid,” Zektene complains.

“Just say it,” Saga!Three prompts.

Zektene gulps. “They are programmed to ignore organic material. That’s why it’s even taken it this long to get as close as it finally is, because it had to wind around roots, and the like. If we were to place, um...dead bodies around the edge, the nanobots would immediately halt production.”

The other two don’t respond for a beat. “Why would we need to use dead bodies if it also ignores plants?” he questions.

“It moves around plants,” Zektene explains. “It’ll just restart somewhere else. Gondilak, however, dead or alive, are too valuable. If it detects the specimens it’s meant to protect, it will stop, and await further instructions. That will give us time to clean them out, and dispose of them properly.”

“You want us to go get dead bodies?” Saga!Three asks her.

“I don’t want to do that, but I’ve not been able to find a better solution. The computer didn’t tell me this was solution. I had to come up with it based on what I learned about its behavior.”

“There has to be another way!” Saga!Three suspects.

“Well, we have to wait until nightfall anyway. I can teleport Vearden to the cemetery; maybe make a few trips. Until then, I’ll keep looking.”

Zektene makes good on her promise to search for an alternative, but never finds one. When darkness comes, she teleports Vearden!Two to the graveyard, and helps him dig. Then they transport one body at a time to the edge of the gray goo, where Saga!Three carefully and respectfully puts it in place. It doesn’t work with just one body, so they keep going. They will never be the same after this.

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Microstory 983: Drones

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When people hear the word drone, they tend to think of two things; pointless little remote-controlled toys, or remotely piloted killing machines used for wiping terrorists off the map. Drones have so many more applications, and I’m sad to admit that I believe we’re very far behind on these developments, based on how long they have existed. I’m not sure what the amateur drone pilot is getting out of flying around the neighborhood. Are they spying on hot housewives getting out of the shower? Or is that pile of bricks in the back of their neighbor’s yard a fascinating thing to watch? This technology can be used to save lives, or increase safety. In a pretty early installment of The Advancement of Leona Matic, way back in 2015, a car broke down in the middle of nowhere. Instead of waiting for a tow truck that’s hours away, they summon a patrolling drone, who shows up within minutes. Using advanced software—possibly including artificial intelligence—it was able to scan under the hood, and diagnose what was wrong with it. It was then able to call for a driverless rental vehicle, accept payment via thumbprint, and even play music while they waited. Had a serial killer showed up to attack them, it would have been able to record his face, and contact emergency services. This is just one example of what a solar-powered drone could do. Besides regular maintenance, these little things can keep watch over rural roads pretty much indefinitely. Even deeper in the wilderness, a similar device can guard the hiking trails. A hiker can buy an emergency beacon to call a nearby drone in a dire situation. It can carry water, minimal rations, medical provisions, and other supplies. Hell, you could even commission one of these to literally follow you around everywhere you go. Maybe they can boost a signal to a satellite phone, or keep in constant communication with some kind of OnStar type service. Two to four of these can come together and take hold of a stretcher, if it’ll take too long for traditional rescue solutions to arrive. In a major disaster, a fleet of drones can be dispatched to hunt for the injured, and other survivors. After it’s all over, they can look for victims in hostile environments, long before it’s safe enough for a human rescuer venture there. Drones don’t have to be used only to murder people, or for fun that you get tired of after awhile. They don’t even just have to be used by law enforcement agencies for reconnaissance, or general surveillance. It’s estimated that millions of drones will be in the skies within the next two years, for various purposes, 30,000 of which will be stateside. Let’s try to make that number refer primarily to socially responsible usage, rather than unethical privacy invasion, or death. Drones have the capacity to make life safer and easier. Or they can destroy everything humanity holds dear, and lead the way to the destruction of civilization. I don’t love drones now. I love more what they have the potential to become.

Microstory 973: Survival

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This slot was originally scheduled for Healthcare (When It Works) but since I know very little about countries and regions where it works, it didn’t seem appropriate. All I know is that Usonia isn’t one of them, but that’s all I’ll say about it, other than mentioning the fact that Obamacare saves lives. Instead, I’m going to take this opportunity to admit that I’m a survivalist. The only differences between me and the doomsday preppers you see on television is that I’m smart enough to not advertise all my secret plans to the world, and also I don’t have any. Some preppers have the money to build or commission bunkers. Others have purchased luxury space in old missile silos; dumping tons of money into something they probably won’t ever need. The less wealthy kind of prepper just squirrels away food and resources as they can, and reinforces their homes as much as possible. These tend to rely on their firepower, because they believe profoundly in gun ownership, so they would be spending money on them either way. I’m not any of these things; I really just come up with end-of-the-world stories, and have trouble distinguishing them from reality, which is true of all my stories. And that reality is that the end of the world probably wouldn’t happen all of the sudden. Yeah, maybe a supervolcano will erupt without warning, or an asteroid will decimate these lands. It’s an interesting thought experiment. Assuming you survive the initial event, what would you do next? Are you a series regular on this post-apocalypse series, or just zombie fodder? The most likely scenarios, however, will involve a slow-burn of destruction. Hell, we might be heading towards the end of civilization right now, and not know it. King Dumpster is certainly doing his level best to make that happen. Just like the truth behind most holidays, no single day will mark the end. Institutions will slowly erode. People will stop having faith in their leadership, and the market will drop steadily as fear replaces hope. Before the nuclear missiles fly off to enemy countries, sanctions and bad trade deals will create extreme tension amongst once-friends. Allies will leverage each other for control, until there’s nothing left to control but a big pile of crap. Sure, maybe the bombs will drop on everyone, but the most likely outcome is that people will just give up on life. Governments won’t be able to survive anymore. Ineffective factions will attempt to take their place, but a lack of vision, and no sustainable distribution of resources will just make things worse. Infrastructure will fall, and no matter how deep you dig into the ground, your life will have no meaning. You’ll live on down there, but nothing will get better, so if you’ve already had children, it’s best that they don’t. I’m fascinated by disaster scenarios, but those stories only ever end one of two ways. Either everyone dies, or the cataclysm gives rise to a societal phoenix. They usually ignore the possibility that we’ll trudge on long after any arbitrary defining moment, until our descendants suffer diminishing returns. So I guess what I really love isn’t survival, but civilization. I love the world, so let’s do everything we can to protect it, and make it better.