Microstory 2756: Skull and Bones

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The conveyor belt is heading for another void. This game has had so many chances already to kill them. If this is another attempt, it would be difficult to avoid. There is no way off this ride. Still, there may be a non-lethal obstacle in the darkness, or on the other side of it. Elise gets on one knee, and plants her other foot firmly on the belt. She holds her hands up defensively, prepared for anything. Well, almost anything.

She passes through the darkness, and catches a glimpse of the opaque dome they’ve entered before the belt ends, and sends her over the edge. She falls a couple of meters before landing on her feet on a mound of human bones. The others are starting to help each other up from the piles of thousands and thousands. It’s maybe a hundred meters wide, dimly lit, and getting dimmer. It’s noticeably cold, but not deathly so.

Elise spins around and opens her arms so when Zelda falls too, she can catch her.

“My hero,” Zelda says in a breathy voice from Elise’s arms.

“Just doin’ my job, ma’am.” Elise is really coming out of her shell now.

“Are these the previous secret hunters?” Minotaur asks, picking up a skull. “Does everyone die in here? From what? More acid rain? A deluge? A furnace?”

“Hold up,” Colley says. “Here, help me push these bones out of the way.”

Jolanda and Rage pull the bones between their legs to give him some space.

Colley gets on his hands and knees and examines the floor below. He then grabs a random femur, and snaps it in half. He puts on his loupe specs to examine the inside.

“Wait, how do you still have those?” Elise questions. “Isn’t this a new body?”

“They were in my locker,” Colley explains as he’s changing lenses. “They’re not my regular ones. They upgraded me.” He looks carefully. “Fake. They probably all are.”

“Plastic, or something else?” Rage picks up another bone and breaks it.

“No, they’re organic,” Colley answers. “The layering is asymmetrical, which is how the best machines do it, but it’s definitely bioprinted. They forgot to include the tendon entheses, and there’s no remaining viscera on the floor, or even residue.”

Elise wades through the bones to get to the wall, not grossed out anymore. “Look for an exit, or signs of Miracle’s friends. They may have already escaped.”

“Those bozos?” Miracle questions. “Not a chance.”

“I found a door!” Jolanda shouts. She’s on the far side of the dome.

“Don’t open it until we’re all over there!” Rage commands. “Elise, take safety.”

Because any door has just as much chance of being a trap as being their salvation, one player is always chosen to stay behind as the designated survivor. It’s also possible that they’ve been doomed, if the door has a time limit, and can’t be reopened, so the role is risky, rather than necessarily safe. Rage has a plan to cycle through the roster fairly.

Elise climbs up to a particularly high bone hill to have a better vantage point, and give her more time to survive if opening the door, say, also opens a drain in the floor.

Once everyone is in place, including Miracle and the strangers, Jolanda waves her hand in front of the entry panel. The door slides into its pocket, revealing...a second door. This one is different, though. Even from here, Elise can see that there are indentations on the door face that are vaguely in the shape of a human body.

“It’s a puzzle,” Colley decides. “We have to fill in the gaps with a full skeleton.”

“Rule number three,” Rage begins. “Don’t try to unlock a door that’s already unlocked.” She nods at Jolanda. “Go ahead, Jo.”

Jolanda takes hold of the knob, turns it successfully, and opens the door.

On the other side is what looks like a city square. Elise climbs down to get a better look. People are milling about, preoccupied with their own lives. They’re dressed in traditional early 21st century garb. Only two things look out of place. A man and a woman wearing the same blue shirt are balancing two bananas each on their head while they sing a song quite poorly. Two other women wearing the same purple shirts are running past them, and opening a mailbox that is conspicuously sitting out in the open.

“Other hunters,” Elise determines as she draws nearer. “This isn’t right.”

“This is obviously our way out,” one of Miracle’s people says.

“Hrockas Steward said that we wouldn’t be hunting around other people,” Minotaur reminds him. “Why break one of his few rules right at the beginning?”

“Who cares?” he asks. “I’m exiting and checking that mailbox for our next clue.”

“I don’t think we have clues,” Colley postulates. “We’re not racing, we’re not being eliminated per leg. I think we only have one goal, and we’re supposed to go straight to that. No, Elise is right. This is a red herring, or some kind of trick.”

“It’s a choice,” Miracle corrects. “If we walk out this door without solving the skeleton puzzle, we’re forfeiting the game. That’s probably where those two assholes ended up. They don’t know what they’re missing. Don’t follow in their footsteps.”

The guy sighs. “Okay, boss. We solve the puzzle.” He steps back in.

Jolanda closes the door back up, and everyone spreads out.

The puzzle is harder than it looks. They’re not just looking for a single copy of every bone. They’re all slightly different sizes, just like they would be if these once belonged to living beings. Each puzzle bone can hold in place on its own on the board, even if the one below it hasn’t been found yet, but only if it’s the correct one. Otherwise, it just falls out. Elise deduces that they used magnets. She turns out to be right.

Like Colley with his spectacles or Zelda with her parachutes, Minotaur never goes anywhere without their multitool. They found it in their locker too, and it includes a very small magnet. It’s not powerful enough to sweep the area for the right bones, but it’s easy enough to test one quickly and toss it aside before moving on to the next.

They created an open space kind of near the door, where they carefully stack the duds. That way, they don’t accidentally test the same ones multiple times. It’s Elise and Jolanda’s job to keep the used stack away from the untested piles by pushing bones around, and maintaining enough space between them at all times.

It starts getting dark in here, and no one has a light, so they open the door just so the natural light comes in for them. Unrelated hunters periodically come up, thinking that it’s important for their race. It’s Rage’s job to back them off by simply saying, “parallel play”. This is a known phrase that warns players that their games are intersecting, and that if they try to find a clue here, they will end up on the wrong track.

After several hours, they finally have the last piece. Fittingly, it’s the skull. It’s a good thing they’re done. The streets are still bustling, but it’s now dark outside too.

“Colley, you do the honors,” Jolanda offers since he served as their puzzle master. She closes the door again, allowing him to ceremoniously place the skull in the last slot. The whole skeleton glows, and they hear a whirring sound. Once Jolanda reopens it, they see the same street again, but now, even though it has only been a few seconds...it’s completely empty.

Microstory 2754: Starting Line

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Elise opens her eyes. She’s floating in artificial amniotic fluid. No, that’s not what it is, it doesn’t taste right. It tastes more...leafy? Like spinach that’s gone bad, or kale that hasn’t gone bad, because kale is the worst food God ever created. She’s trapped. She’s trapped in something opaque, which is not how body switching works. You’re supposed to be in a glass box, or in more advanced equipment, a clean and sterile pod. It’s not this, whatever this is. This is all wrong, and she’s panicking. She squirms around, looking for a way to escape, but doesn’t find it. She’s going to have to make her own.

She tries punching and she tries kicking, but neither of them work. That’s what makes her realize that this isn’t simply a pod. It’s a chrysalis. And that’s not how butterflies get out of their chrysalises. Elise feels around to make sure she knows where down is, and then she starts to spit. Opening her mouth amidst all this goo necessarily forces more goo back into her mouth. She thought it tasted bad before, but now it’s making its way down her throat. She starts to retch, and then she vomits. Even though it’s disgusting, the bile, saliva, and other fluids accelerate the mission.

The enzymes in Elise’s saliva weaken the chitin enough for her to tear through it. She can see light now, and feel the air. She vomits more so she can start breathing again. She continues to tear at the chrysalis until the opening is wide enough for her to get through. She tries to aim away from her own sick, but that’s stupid, because she’s already covered in filth. Elise reaches out to the floor with her hands, clumsily slipping on the fluids, but it slows her down enough to keep her from faceplanting.

She’s on her back now on the cool white floor of a small room. It’s not too small, though. It’s big enough to fit ten other chrysalises. Her whole team is here, plus the other team. Wait, there should be twelve in total, so who are we missing? She frantically starts knocking on the other chrysalises. “Jolanda? Rage? Is that you? Who’s in there?” she starts to say, looking for her people.

She can hear them moan back to her, but no one replies with words.

In the real world, with a real butterfly, you don’t want to help it get out of its chrysalis. The struggle is real, but it is not pointless. It’s a crucible, which strengthens the insect so it can literally spread its wings and fly. But they’re not in the real world, they’re in a simulation. It may be a base reality simulation, but it’s not natural. The others don’t need to go through what she just did. Elise stumbles over to a wall and wrenches a sconce from it. She starts tearing at the nearest chrysalis. Yeah, sometimes you gotta spit on that thing, but sometimes you need good old fashioned brute force.

A woman tumbles out of the chrysalis. It’s Miracle.

Elise catches her, and gently lowers her to the floor.

“Oh, thank you,” Miracle says. “I’ve forgotten what this feels like.”

“You’ve used this form factor before?” Elise has never even heard of it.

“Yeah, buncha times,” Miracle replies. As she’s resting on her hands behind her back, she looks around before her gaze returns to Elise. “You take left, I take right?”

They divide and conquer until the other nine hunters are free. Thankfully, all of Elise’s teammates are here. It’s Miracle who is missing one of hers. The girl she was trying to safely fly down to the ground, and who was wearing her shirt on backwards on the football pitch, is missing. Miracle says that she had an emergency mind transponder, which she probably used before she hit the ground. There was no way to know that they would survive it.

It’s different, though. Elise feels weak, and not just because she just had to force her way out of a chrysalis, and then help five other people do the same. Her vision isn’t as strong, her joints are achey, and she feels hunger in a way that she hasn’t since she was a kid, before she became immortal. This is a regular body, like the kind everyone had back in the days before humanity had even reached the longevity escape velocity. Her consciousness stream isn’t just unlinked. It doesn’t exist. There’s no backup plan now. If she dies, she truly dies, and she’s guessing the same goes for everyone else.

Once the last person is on his feet, the ceiling lifts up and to the side like the lid of a cardboard box, revealing only a dark void above them. It begins to rain once more, but this time, it’s just regular water, instead of acid. Well, it’s also a bit soapy. The room fills up around ten centimeters of water and suds before the drains open up and start to wash all the gunk and junk away. Next come the blowers to dry them off. They all just stand there and accept it, because there’s no door to exit, and they want to get cleaned off, even if at the end of this is, they get decapitated by a Jigsaw wannabe. They are here to play a game at any rate, and this appears to be the start of it, for whatever reason.

After they’re sufficiently dry, seams appear on the back wall. They slide upwards, revealing eleven chairs in front of eleven lockers. Each one is labeled with one of their names. The hunters proceed to their assigned lockers, retrieve the generic clothes that were placed there for them, and get dressed. But nothing happens after they’re done.

“I think we’re supposed to sit down to trigger the next phase,” Elise figures.

They follow her advice, and once that last butt hits that last seat, the wall in front of them transforms into a monitor.

A man appears on screen. “Hello, and welcome to Treasure Hunting Dome. My name is Hrockas Steward, and I own the planet of Castlebourne. Now, you may be wondering why I would record this message, and whether I do it for the other 69,814 domes presently in service. The answer is no. This is only for you. You twelve—forgive me, eleven—contestants have selected our Premium-Ultra Package. This is the rarest of hunts, which will take you on a journey few have traveled. In regular hunts, you would be out in the open, encountering Ambients who are simulating locals from various locales. You will not be doing this. You are on a special mission to find a unique prize.

“It’s important you understand that I am not admitting that such a prize exists. This is confirmation of absolutely nothing. You are being isolated from the other players so your hunt does not influence or interfere with anyone else. Everyone who expresses serious interest in this track experiences the same thing. Or do they? You may never know. You may not even survive. You have become decoupled from your consciousness streams so if you die along the way, your alternate selves will move on with their lives with no memories of these events. Even if you do find what you’re looking for, you might never be able to reveal its secrets. Thousands before you may have succeeded, but never returned to tell the tale. You will receive your next clue on the other side of this door.”

The seams of a door appear on the third wall.

“Oh, and one more thing. Those teams you worked so hard to build? They’re useless. Only one person can win this hunt. Good luck to one of you. Aaaaaaaaaand go!”

The door opens.

Microstory 2751: Checkpoint

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Thanks to Minotaur’s directions, Jolanda is able to negotiate them to the finish line. She presses the garage door opener just as Elise did before, but nothing happens.

“The second button, probably,” Elise suggests. She has been so helpful on this adventure. They never could have figured out where to find a key, how to open a door, or buckle their seatbelts on their own. She’s really pulling her weight.

The door opens to reveal only a hallway, so they all step out to cross the threshold on foot. It’s eerie; dimly lit with some of the overhead lights flickering, and uncomfortably narrow. Just like the main entrance to the warehouse, the door behind them slams shut on its own, locking them in. The wall to their left rises up, and disappears into the ceiling. On the other side is a torture room, for lack of a better term. They see a table full of scary and sharp instruments, oddly shaped beds, and even what appears to be an electric chair. Rage is here, inside a glass cage. She’s sitting in a toddler chair, her wrists tied behind her back, and she’s gagged. Her mascara is running down her face and she looks scared. She’s screaming unintelligibly at them.

“Nobody move!” Zelda orders. “That usually means there’s a tripwire or trap.”

They freeze and look around, but don’t see anything. They continue cautiously.

Elise goes over to Rage’s cage, looking out for booby traps. “Can you hear me?”

Rage screams again and nods her head.

“I appreciate your dedication to authenticity,” Elise goes on, “but at this juncture, the easiest way to get you out might be to kill myself where I stand, and seek help from the outside world. We’ll continue to play along, but if you’re genuinely being held against your will, we’ll treat it more seriously, and go meta. So if this is real, I want you to blink both eyes. If it’s still part of the team-building game, give me a wink instead.”

Rage winks.

“Okay.” Elise turns around and claps her hands. “Let’s find a way to escape this room. I don’t know of any pertinent quotes from historical figures.”

Five minutes later, Rage is out of her cage, and is able to spend the next twenty minutes helping them solve the rest of the clues to escape the room itself. She says that she asked an AI to design the puzzle on her behalf, so she wouldn’t know how to solve it either. She asks them kindly not to talk about anything but the room until that door reopens, and everyone respects that because this was the deal. She does assure them that this is the last exercise for now. There is no level beyond it until after the debrief.

“I was watching on the monitors,” Rage says after the game is over, and they’re walking into what she calls the lounge. “I only had a bot lock me up once you were at the end of the track. I want to thank you all for playing it straight, instead of finding some workaround. You could have asked to exit the trial at any time, and I would have obliged, but it didn’t seem to cross your minds. I hope you don’t feel tricked or disrespected. Zelda was right, I needed to see how well you five worked together so I would know how to plan the curriculum. It seemed more useful to throw you in the deep end rather than laying out what you would be up against. I’ve not yet synthesized the data, but just from watching you, I think it’s safe to say that we will not need much training. Despite not knowing each other, you breezed through the challenges, and didn’t argue with each other even once. I’m sincerely impressed and grateful.”

“I had a lot of fun!” Zelda announces. “There could have been a few more airplanes to fall out of, but I can’t complain. It’s only the first day.”

“Yeah, there’s almost always one skydiving or basejumping challenge on a treasure hunt,” Rage agrees. “I didn’t get approved for a plane here, but we’re not stuck. We can always go to Adrenadome to do other training. We can go to any of your prime domes, or anywhere for that matter. There’s no time limit. If y’all wanna take a break for a couple years to relax in Polar Tropica, I won’t argue. Based on what I just saw, though, this is the team I want. If I could brag, I think I knocked it out of the park, assembling you. I’ve worked with a lot of teams under Escape Dome, and I’ve never been happier. As I already said to each of you individually, you can leave whenever you want, but I really hope you stay. I want this to be the six, and I will wait until everyone agrees that we’re ready.” She pauses for a moment. “Minotaur, Elise...out of the bunch, you were the most hesitant to come out. How are you feeling now?”

Elise and Minotaur exchange a glance, not having known that about each other. Elise is very curious now, what it was like when Rage tried to recruit the others. Were they as confused, or did they understand the reasoning instantly? Colley can solve clues, and the other girls are used to living fast. Their skills are more obvious. Elise still doubts her value here, and she’s afraid that everyone else sees it too. She’s going to respectfully bow out. She has to. She will only bring them down. There’s no way that a treasure hunt benefits from someone like her. Rage will understand; Elise believes that much about her. This is the right decision, for herself, and for them. “I wanna keep going.” What?

“Great!” Rage says. She’s ecstatic. She could probably sense Elise’s continued reluctance, and is just as surprised by the answer.

Elise is surprised too. Did her subconsciousness respond before she could? She had no idea she was going to agree. What did she just get herself into?

Jolanda, Zelda, and Colley all volunteer to stay as well, to less fanfare

“Minotaur?” Rage presses. “Remember, there’s no wrong answer.”

Minotaur sports a poker face before finally saying, “you son of a bitch, I’m in.”

This does feel like a heist, doesn’t it? Elise doesn’t know all that much about Treasure Hunting Dome, but you don’t play thieves. It’s more of a race where if you find the prize, you’re entitled to it. Still, Rage claimed that there was some deeper level to the whole thing, so maybe they really will be doing something that no one has ever done before. Maybe they’ll have to break some rules. Maybe they’ll have to break them all.

Whatever ends up happening, Elise is out of her comfort zone now. That’s probably a good thing. She has spent so much time on her own, only occasionally working with others when the skill she was learning demanded it. She doesn’t have any surviving family or lasting friendships. It’s not that she dislikes people, but you don’t need them to survive in a post-scarcity society, like the ancestors did. Socialization is a skill which she never thought to develop. Skilldome doesn’t offer it. Perhaps they should. It’s a lost art for some. She’ll suggest that to them, but first, it’s time to party.

They don’t run any exercises for the rest of the day. They eat, they drink, and they interact merrily. They don’t do any training the next day either...or for the rest of the week. Only after that do they get to work, running drills and teaching each other various things. A week after that, they go on their first field trip to a dome that none of them has been to before.

Microstory 2750: Directions

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Now that she realizes there’s another platform on the other side of the gap, Elise can make out the edge. Her flashlight gloves aren’t illuminating Zelda, though, and neither is the glowstick over there. She tries to scan back and forth, but nothing. “Zelda!” she cries. “Zelda, did you survive that? Keep shakin’ that bush!”

“If she fell to her death, we should have heard her screaming,” Colley reasons.

“Not necessarily,” Elise returns. “Some adrenaline junkies die so often that they don’t even have the reflex to scream in fear anymore.”

“You said there was another chute?” asks the girl in the yellow shirt, whose name Elise still doesn’t know.

“That’s what it looks like,” Elise answers. “I would sooner throw my body against the exit than try to do what Zelda did. If she couldn’t make it, I could never.”

“Such a compliment,” Zelda’s voice comes. She’s upside down, hanging over the doorway.

“How are you back on this side?” Colley questions.

“Rule number two,” Zelda begins, “in an escape room, there is always a second way. Come on, I’ll pull you up one by one. The catwalk is narrow, but doable.”

Elise goes up first. She and Zelda then help the others up too. They walk single-file along the three walls until making it to the other side, where they find another door. This one opens up to a garage. It’s barely big enough to fit the land vehicle that’s parked here. Unlike the last room, this room is pure white and glowing. It’s pristine in an eerie sort of way. There are no other doors. The vehicle has nowhere to go. It’s also locked.

“If there’s one thing I know from the few escape rooms I’ve tried,” the yellow-shirt girl says as she’s sidestepping around the car, “is that if they give you a lightswitch, you always flip it.”

All these people have done escape rooms before. Elise has never tried. They take skill, but not definable skills. They’re not in Skilldome.

She flips the switch. The lights turn off for a few seconds before being replaced with blacklights. The walls are absolutely covered in graffiti. “I’m Jolanda, by the way. I don’t remember if I said that.” She’s looking at the writing and images, as is everyone else. “I saw this in an ancient show once. He hurt his leg real bad.”

Colley sidesteps around the car now, going the other direction, and looking at the graffiti carefully. “I see the pattern. It’s a coded language.” He runs his hand along the paint. “It’s actually not that complex.” He points at various sections of the walls with both hands like he’s making connections in his head. “I’m guessing Rage doesn’t want us to spend days in here. Just give me a few minutes to compile the vocabulary.”

“What’s your specialty again?” Minotaur asks him.

“Anthropology, history, linguistics, culture,” Colley answers as he’s still looking over the imagery. “I cracked the mystery of Empty Planet in record time.”

“I’m not familiar with that one.” Elise is probably showing how sheltered she is.

“You pretend you’ve landed on an alien world where all the aliens have disappeared. You have to figure out what happened to them, and where the om—never mind, that’s saying too much.” He looks over at Jolanda. “Is there a keypad on that car?”

“Yes,” she responds. “It’s alphanumeric. Did you crack this code too?”

“Not yet,” Colley says. He’s staring up at the very center of the ceiling, where a circle about half a meter in diameter is suspiciously blank. “I’ll be asking you to turn them off and on again in a particular sequence. Always flip when I say to, with no delay.”

“Okay.” Jolanda gets into position.

Colley is still staring at that blank spot. As he instructs her when to turn the lights off and when to turn them on, he deliberately changes tempo. She has to flip them at the right speed for the new images to appear one by one. Elise doesn’t recognize the glyphs but Colley seems to know exactly what he’s seeing. “Stop, I got it. Here’s the code. One, seven, three, four, six, seven, three, two, one, four, seven, six, castaway, three, two, seven, eight, nine, seven, seven, seven, six, four, three, temple, seven, three, two, volunteer, seven, three, one, one, seven, eight, eight, eight, seven, three, two, four, seven, six, seven, eight, nine, seven, six, four, three, seven, six.”

The door opens. “I’m driving of course,” Jolanda says, getting in the driver’s seat.

Everyone else gets in too, even though they don’t know how to get out. Elise is in the back. She watches Jolanda stare at the console, evidently not knowing what to do.

“Uhh...I don’t see a start button. Machine...go!” Jolanda attempts.

“Here.” Something Elise actually knows. She leans forward and flips the visor down. The keys fall out, so she catches them in her other hand. She sticks it in the ignition, and turns it. She tilts her head when it revs up. “Hm. Either this is gas-powered, or it’s simulated to be. To be safe, we better open the door.”

“How do you do that?” Jolanda asks.

Elise reaches up again and presses the button on the garage door opener.

The wall in front of them recedes from them, splits in half, and slides to either side. Jolanda smirks when she sees the traffic on the expansive roadways ahead of them.

“We don’t technically have to drive,” Colley points out.

“Yes, we do,” Jolanda and Zelda say simultaneously as if having rehearsed it.

“Hold on to your butts,” Jolanda warns.

“Samuel L. Jackson,” Colley cites, “circa 1993.”

“Wait!” Elise interrupts. “Those straps are called seatbelts. You put it around your chests, and buckle them securely to keep your body in place.”

“You may have learned how to drive safely,” Jolanda warns as she grips the steering wheel, and decidedly doesn’t put her seatbelt on. “I learned how to drive well.” She slams on the accelerator, and shoots them onto the track.

Immediately, a robocar nearly collides with them, but she doesn’t let it. Each time Elise thinks they’re about to die, Jolanda finds a way out of it. She doesn’t ever turn her head. She can watch straight in front of her while knowing everything else that’s going on around them. It’s a wild ride. Elise can’t help but keep checking her mind stream. She trusts that Rage chose this driver for a good reason, but Jolanda was right; Elise only knows how to drive safely. She has to try to relax and let the chips fall where they may, so to speak. After ten minutes, they find themselves right back where they started.

“How the hell did that happen? Is this another puzzle?” Jolanda questions.

Elise unbuckles, leans forward again, and retrieves a map from the glovebox.

“Give that to me,” Minotaur requests. They spend a minute looking it over. “Okay, I know the route. You can drive the same speed, but follow my instructions.”

Microstory 2749: Mind the Gap

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After Elise and Rage get dried off and cleaned up, the former follows the latter to the vactrain station where they head for a dome called The Sandbox. Rage evidently wants the team to meet each other on neutral ground. Before they embark on the treasure hunt, it’s prudent for them to get to know each other first, and learn how to work as a team. Rage expects them to be here for the next few weeks. She hasn’t yet explained why this particular dome. Elise has never heard of it before. She still isn’t sure why she was picked for this at all. She hasn’t excelled at the skills she’s attempted. She just likes to try new things. It was time for a break, though, so she’s not complaining.

It might seem like overkill, but according to Rage, this will be an important crucible. If anyone decides to quit, it’s a lot better if they do it before they begin the hunt. Losing a member doesn’t immediately disqualify the remainders from moving on. Everyone could leave by the end of it, and as long as the last remaining player sticks around, they can succeed. But obviously Rage doesn’t want that. She wants them to be perfectly in sync. She told Elise that she doesn’t know what that looks like, but that will precisely be the point of the exercises.

It’s making Elise a little nervous, all this uncertainty, but knowing that she doesn’t have to commit to anything right away has taken some of the pressure off of her.

After the vactrain lets them off at their destination, they take a smaller one to the other side of the dome, to an entrance where no one else is around. Also weird, so Elise checks her consciousness stream to her backup bodies, and they’re all fine, so she presses onwards.

They have to walk across a meadow before they get to a big warehouse in the middle of nowhere. It feels even more remote now. There’s not even any other infrastructure, and it doesn’t match the normal institutional architecture of Castlebourne. Is this where Rage lives? What is the Sandbox even for?

Elise steps inside when Rage holds the door open for her. As she’s scanning the antechamber, spotting the other people here, she hears the door close behind her. She turns around and tries to open it but it’s locked. She tries for a few more seconds, but it’s hopeless.

“She locked us in?” one of the strangers questions. She’s wearing a graphic t-shirt and baggy camo pants. She, along with the others, look just as confused and anxious.

“I don’t suppose anyone has superstrength?” Elise asks.

“No,” the guy replies. “Rage told us to come with standard human substrates.”

“It’s a trap,” someone else determines. They’re sitting on the edge of a metal table, one foot propped up on a chair, and the other dangling loosely.

Elise tilts her head. “I’m still connected to my backups. If she wants to kill us, it’s not going to work on me at least.”

The person who figured that it was a trap stands up and takes a knife out of their pocket. “I can kill anyone who wants to get out of here the easy way. I can’t promise to make it painless, but it’s an option.”

“Let’s look for a bloodless way first,” a girl in a yellow shirt suggests.

Elise looks back down at the handle. It doesn’t have a keyhole, but it looks like the one on the other side of the room does. She walks over to it. “I can pick it, if anyone has something I could use. Whatever is on the other side could be worse, though.”

Graphic tee girl pulls a bobby pin from her hair and hands it over. “If you’re going through hell...keep going. Winston Churchill.”

“Unverified attribution,” the guy counters.

“Then I’ll take the attribution—Zelda Frances,” she self-cites.

“Colley Rochelle,” he returns.

“I’m Elise Perkins,” Elise adds as she’s finishing unlocking the door. She doesn’t open it, though. She straights back up, and hands Zelda her pin back.

“Can’t do it?” the girl in yellow asks.

“No, it was easy,” Elise answers. “We just need to all agree to open it.”

“As long as we’re streaming, the danger isn’t real.” Knife-wielder heads for the door without waiting for permission. “I go by Minotaur,” they add as they’re opening it.

Elise has to grab Minotaur by the shirt collar when they slip right over the edge. It’s dark inside; they can’t see how deep the drop off is, but Elise won’t be able to hold on alone much longer. Colley runs over, and reaches down to pick up some of the slack.

“Rule number one,” Minotaur says as they’re standing back up. “look before you leap. I’m humiliated. This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered a trapdoor.”

“I think we all realize by now that this is a test,” Zelda says. “Rage wants to see where we are, so she knows how to train us.”

“She doesn’t need to be tested too?” Elise questions. She puts her flashlight gloves on, and cautiously reaches into the room. The pit is wide and deep. Her lights don’t have the range to show her the bottom, which means it’s too far for them to dangle and fall safely. She gets a look around at the rest of the open area. At least two packs are hanging on the wall, over a very narrow ledge. “I think they’re parachutes,” she announces.

Zelda gently moves Elise out of the way so she can peek around the corner, holding Elise’s hand up to control the flightlight. Without saying a word, she leaps over to the ledge, and holds one of the packs to brace herself. She opens a zipper and takes out a glowstick. She cracks it in her teeth with one hand so the other hand can keep holding on. “I need quiet, please,” she requests, even though no one is talking.

Zelda drops the glowstick down into the pit, listening for it on the bottom. “Thirty meters. We would never make it. There are only two packs anyway.”

“So they’re just there to tease us?” Elise asks her.

Zelda looks over her shoulder. She cracks a second glowstick, and tosses it behind her. It lands on the other side of the pit, which is at the same elevation. She smirks.

“No,” Elise says. “You can’t be serious.”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Zelda recites.

“You shouldn’t try it,” Elise warns. “That’s at least fifteen meters, probably more!”

“It won’t be my first time.” Zelda takes her belt off and anchors it to the hook where the pack was hanging. She bites down on the belt to stay aloft, leaning backwards over the pit while she puts the parachute pack on. “I’ll find out what’s on the other side. There must be a drawbridge or something, or there would be a pack for each of us.”

“Or we’re meant to share,” Colley offers.

“Not possible with this maneuver.” Zelda holds onto the hook with her index fingers as she crouches on the ledge, facing the wall. After preparing herself mentally, she pushes off like a cricket. At the perfect moment, she releases the speedchute, using the force of the deployment to propel her just far enough to cover the gap. Hopefully.

Microstory 2731: The Choices We Make

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Pribadium!Two offered to explain to Sora what happened to his alternate self, but he decided that he didn’t want to hear it, at least not right now. They all three split apart, and went to their separate corners. They need to decompress from everything going on, and process all the new information. If they miss their window to create a mobile pocket universe, then so be it. It was never going to be an instantaneous endeavor, and it’s prudent to wait a bit anyway. This is a huge undertaking, which will have massive ramifications in this universe, and who knows how many others?

Pribadium!One is lying in her equilibrium chamber now, thinking about Sora. When they first met, he was a clear opponent. She was trying to get him to calm down and see reason, but she never thought she would feel bad for him like this. The story he told about his crush on Proxima Doma was heartbreaking. She teased him with the chance to get some closure, and then about immediately took it away from him. It wasn’t fair, and she’s going to have to figure out a way to apologize for it, besides simply literally saying the words. He obviously needs some space right now, though.

A door alert. It’s Sora. When she commands the AI to open the door, he walks in. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were sleeping. I can come back later.”

“No, it’s okay.” Pribadium!One stands up and hangs there mid-air.

His eyes widen. “How are you doing that? I thought antigravity was impossible.”

She lowers her legs one by one like she is climbing down a ladder, towards what’s considered down. “It’s not really antigravity, per se. Though, I suppose we could make that happen too if I figure out how to contain quintessence. I have some friends who built a machine that uses it, but it was awkward between us, so I never got the chance to study it in depth. Anyway, no, this is an equilibrium chamber. Another friend of mine developed it, and now they use it extensively on Varkas Reflex. People stay in simulated environments for years on end. This perfectly distributes the pressure on your body, so you don’t suffer the negative health effects of extended immobility.”

Sora stares at the apparatus, curious enough, but obviously not really thinking about it. Their goals are unaligned, and one of them might have to relent one day.

It’s not just about him, though. He’s not the only person they have to worry about. Thousands of colonists who just so happened to be on this side of the host star have the right to decide what to do with their own lives too. She’s just glad that most people escaped the bubble. She placed her lab away from the activity even though it placed her in the line of fire of the upcoming obliteration blast, because she knows exactly when it will arrive, and has ways of avoiding it. Now that doesn’t matter anymore. “Did you want to talk about something?” she asks as she’s stepping out.

“I don’t need to talk to Elke,” he answers. “Before you say anything, I realized that she made her choice. Whatever her reasons, I wasn’t worth sticking around for. We knew each other for years. Her suicide took years, but she never gave up. If she survived it—if she didn’t end up killing herself again on the other side, then that still has nothing to do with me. It never did. So you two go ahead and do whatever you need to do with the weird universe thing. I’m not much help, but I’ll be here. I’ll support you.”

“This wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with what she said about us?”

“About how we were together in another timeline? No. This is my choice.”

“Okay,” Pribadium!One says. “I’ll speak to my alternate self in the morning.”

Microstory 2728: Talking to Yourself

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This. This is why Pribadium doesn’t like to travel through time, because it causes headaches. Just because someone looks like you, doesn’t mean they share your values. Even if you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are a version of you, you might not be able to trust them. They have been through different experiences. Even if you literally split from each other moments ago, one of you was standing on the left, while the other was on the right. That may not seem like much to a human observer, but that can alter your whole perspective, and with each passing second, the differences only compound. Many time travelers recommend not seeing your alternates as that at all, but as entirely distinct people. Trust, but verify, as you would a stranger.

With Sora’s help, Pribadium!One has locked Pribadium!Two in a special holding cell. Since she’s the one who created it, one might assume that she has a way out of it; that she knows its secrets. It doesn’t work like that. Pribadium knew that something like this could happen. It was designed with that in mind, which is why the codes are random. She didn’t think she would ever have to use this feature, but it was always a possibility. She can’t risk the other her finding a way out just by drawing from their memories. One of them is the prisoner, and one of them is the warden. Only the warden has the code, and it was given to her as soon as that door shut tight.

“Are you going to give me the chance to explain myself?” Pribadium!Two asks.

“What good would that do?” Pribadium!One snaps back. “We’re a liar.”

“You used the collective singular there,” Pribadium!Two points out, “yet you’re othering me at the same time. You can’t have it both ways, so to speak. Hear me out.”

“You threatened to kill me, and now you want me to talk and listen to reason? Oh, honey. Our point of divergence must have been more significant than I knew.”

“I was never going to kill you,” Pribadium!Two contends. “I just wanted to shock you for a sec, so you wouldn’t simply roll your eyes and use the communicator anyway.”

“And look where that got you,” Pribadium!One points out, pointing at the cell.

Pribadium!Two shakes her head. “But it worked, didn’t it? Now you can’t use that communicator because you’re wondering what might be worse than me killing you.”

“But you just said that—”

“It doesn’t matter that I was lying,” Pribadium!Two reasons. “You can’t take that risk. You’re too smart for that. So tell me, do you want me to explain why you can’t use that communicator, regardless of whether you calibrate it for the reality that we’re in?”

Pribadium!One shakes her head again. She doesn’t know what to do in this situation. Hearing her out could do damage, even if it’s only words. Still. Even if the only reason Pribadium!Two doesn’t want her to try it is because it might reveal that this is the main sequence, and the rightful reality in the universe, it’s not a great reason. They would work it out. She wouldn’t let the other reality die. They’re not monsters. Right?

“I can practically see the gears turning in your head,” Pribadium!Two muses. “Have a seat, and I’ll explain. It’s not only about the transversal communicator.”

Pribadium!One stares at her alternate self. It probably won’t hurt to hear the explanation, but she can’t give someone who threatened her life the satisfaction. “When we were down on Doma Tertia, Sora left me in a cell alone for twelve days.”

“No,” Pribadium!Two argues, knowing where this is going.

“I will see you in twenty-four.” Pribadium!One leaves.

Microstory 2721: What Are You in For?

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Pribadium is in what passes for a cell around here. She thought this might happen, but she ordered her people to make no attempt to rescue her. It’s not like they can do any real damage. Even if she didn’t have a secret means of escaping, they would be dealing with a virtual immortal. Her consciousness is streaming to a backup body on her ship. Well, it’s not streaming at this very moment. They were at least smart enough to install a signal jammer. Which is illegal, of course, and more than enough grounds for her to remove them with prejudice. She still doesn’t want to do that, though. She sees this as a challenge now, and solving it means more than the outcome itself.

She could teleport out, no problem. If it were anyone else, she probably would. Time travel isn’t entirely a secret anymore, though most view it through a technological lens. This guy acts like he knows something about the biological component. That’s one reason she’s sticking around, because it’s the best way to get Sora to explain what he knows. So she will stay here and play the prisoner as he asserts his dominance. And while he believes that he’s gaining the upperhand, she’ll learn what she needs to know.

He opens the cell door. “Are you ready to talk?”

Pribadium yawns. It wasn’t part of the plan, but it’s a nice touch, so she doesn’t fight it. “Close the door, you’re letting all the darkness out,” she jokes.

She imagines that he’s frowning, though she can’t see his face. He shuts it, and doesn’t open it back up for another four days.

Pribadium has barely moved a muscle. That’s what people like her can do. They can statue themselves up, and remain almost perfectly still for days on end. She still has to breathe, and blood continues to flow through her veins, but she doesn’t need food or rest, and she certainly doesn’t need to talk to him, so when he asks her again, she remains silent. He is so mad that he leaves her in there for eight more days.

When he opens the door again, he doesn’t say a word. He gruffly walks over to the wall that she’s been leaning against, scoops her up, and drags her back to the diplomacy room, which has been altered to make it look more like an interrogation room. The artwork on the walls is gone, and was replaced with a mirror. It might be an actual two-way mirror, or it’s just designed to resemble that. If these mortal humans are young kids who were only born a few decades ago, they might not understand how that technology works. “Why have you not tried to escape yet!”

“You locked the door,” Pribadium points out.

“How would you know?” Sora questions. “You never even checked it.”

“I guess I just assumed you weren’t dumb enough to keep it open. Was I wrong?”

“Of course not, but it pisses me off that you just sat there the whole time.” This is the thing about mortals. Two weeks is long for them. It takes time out of their short lives. She remembers feeling like that when she was normal. She doesn’t anymore, and these people have the same choice. Why are they not exercising their rights?

“Well, I wouldn’t want to piss off the man who is keeping me locked up in a room, now would I?” she snaps back. “Tell me, what’s your endgame here?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Sora asks. “When your weapon of mass destruction shows up, you’ll be killed too. They’ll have to act, and then we’ll have the tactical advantage, and before you say anything about your backups, we took care of those. No version of Pribadium Delgado will survive. So stop smiling, and answer my goddamn questions!”

Microstory 2709: A Map and a Name

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This place turned out to be a dangerous one. It was perfectly fine in the beginning, but it seemed that the Custodians wanted to take this time to remind the family that there is no such thing as safety. The first few years were peaceful, which lulled them into a false sense of security. For the last seven years after that, however, they faced raid after raid from rival Danes who wanted what they had. Ronan couldn’t leave. He had to stay and protect their land. They considered picking up their door, and moving everyone again, but that wasn’t what a true Norseman would do. He would stay and fight. He always thought he would eventually go off a-viking and seek out the battle, but he clearly didn’t have to. It always found them. He didn’t usually know if he and Vith were fighting other players, or NPCs, but it didn’t matter. Their responsibility remained the same: defend the home, protect the girls and the child.

Leif is ten years old now, which is older than Talus was when he started showing signs of an antisocial disorder. Leif is a completely different kid, just as Gia promised. He is gentle and thoughtful. He eats meat, because he has to, but he doesn’t go on hunts. Ronan found him with a rabbit once, which gave him a powerful flashback to that day with Talus, but Leif wasn’t hurting it. He was holding it on its back like a baby, and petting its neck and chest. It made Ronan wonder whether this was the right world for him. Was he simply not built for it? Did he deserve to try something more his speed, like Raindome? Or maybe something else with a lot of animals, like Canopydome? It doesn’t have to be on Castlebourne either. They could take him to Earth, or one of the other colonies. They just didn’t know. It has been hard to explain to him that none of this is real. They no longer have the flexible display to illustrate the technology that they’re missing here. He might have to see it for himself so he can make a decision.

Isavet is not like Talus or Leif. She grew up to be a fierce girl, who looks just like her mother, but acts just like Ronan, specifically when he’s fighting the raiders. Over the years, she has talked about seeking revenge against their attackers. Ronan and Gia wouldn’t let her go; not because she was a girl, but because she was too young. They always said, though, when she came of age, if she wanted to go a-viking, they would let her. Has that day finally arrived? Was this the last straw? Even Ronan is feeling legitimately angry about it, and he better understands just how contrived this world is. That’s a funny word to use for it, though, when you’re standing before your own house as it’s burning down, including the door that you fought to protect for so many years.

Everyone is angry, except for young Leif. He never got attached to the house. He prefers unsettled nature anyway. But Isavet is on a whole other level. She stands with the flames to her back as the wood crackles and crumbles to the ground. She tenses up and screams her head off. She knows this is a simulation. She knows that no one genuinely holds anything against her. But she’s fully engaged. She holds nothing back. Life is really black and white for her, and motivation doesn’t matter. She had a house, she had a door, and now she has neither. She’s going to get revenge now, whether her parents help or not. This is happening. So Ronan and Gia better get on board.

The next day, after the fires have died down, and the ruins are now only smoldering, Ronan hands Isavet a pack of supplies. “You’re an adult now, girl. I don’t want you running off, looking for trouble. You are not ready. Your anger alone will not get you through this. You will train first. You will seek help. I can no longer leave. I must stay with your brothers and mother. If you want this, you need to do it right. In there is a map to the nearest city, and a name. Stay away from the mercenary camps. They will not help you. They will take more than they give. We have a blacksmith friend in Hedeby who will teach you what you need to know. I had intended to go to him myself, but never got the chance. If you give him my name, he will give you a room and lessons.”

“Thank you, father,” Isavet says. “I will find you when I can. Unless I die, but it will be a noble death. I promise you that.”

“We’re headed farther north,” Ronan explains, “to the tip of Danmörk. The seas are rougher. It will be a tougher daily life, but it’s remote, and raiders will have little reason to attack. We will rebuild.” He looks around, in case anyone is watching, which is ridiculous, because they’re pretty remote already. The raiders won’t return to claim their spoils until later. “It’s near the wall. You always wanted to see it. You can there. That is incentive to return to us.”

“Okay, father. Goodbye.”

Microstory 2708: The Fear of History Repeating

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It was about another month before they were ready to head out. They mostly abandoned the old house how it was, though of course, they pulled the door off of the hinges, and replaced it with a much cheaper one that Vith cut himself. They got on the road, and started walking. Isavet spent most of the trip in the cart, holding baby Leif, while the others walked. Vith would go off on his own to scout ahead or hunt, and then catch up with them later. Maybe he isn’t going to leave the simulation after all.

After several days, they felt as though they had traveled far enough. They weren’t looking for some kind of paradise; just a nice patch of land to call their own, where they could put down new roots. They found a clearing that had seemingly been untouched by man. It sat up against a ridgeline, so it was well-fortified on one side already. It was perfect. It was far enough from others that they could start over, but not so remote that they were entirely unprotected from invaders. What mattered was that it was closer to the border of the next dome, which was where Ronan would be headed eventually.

Ronan leans their special, expensive door up against the face of the ridge. He stares at it with a smile on his face while Vith is starting to unload the supplies. “Thank you for making me bring this. We’ll build a bigger and better house this time; one more fitting of this door.”

“I’ll help,” Gia says. “A woman can get her hands dirty, even in these times.”

“Of course, she can,” Ronan replies with a hearty laugh.

“I can help too!” Isavet exclaims. She’s playing a game where she taps Leif somewhere on his body, like an ear or a shoulder, and tries to teach him to match it on her body. He’s surprisingly good at it. He gets it right a few times, and gets really close for the rest. He already understands body parts. That’s some high-level stuff for his age.

Ronan starts to think about young Leif. Like Talus, he will grow up in this world, under this dome. Are they doing him a disservice, keeping him from seeing the outside world? Is that what happened to Talus? Would he have turned out differently had Mayumi been more honest about what she wanted out of life? Well, if she had been honest, Talus never would have been born in the first place, so that is an impossible question to answer. They also agreed to put all that behind them anyway, so he should really be focusing on the family that he has left.

Gia frowns at him. “I know that look. I know what you’re thinking about. He’s not going to grow up to be like him. He’s a completely different kid, born under entirely different circumstances. We will still need to litigate that when we get out of here.”

“I know,” Ronan agrees. He lowers his voice “I just want him to be happy. I want him to have a choice. This should be against the rules. Having a kid in a simulation should not be allowed, so people aren’t burdened with these questions.”

“Are you regretting having Leif?” Gia asks in a whisper.

“No, of course not. I just...what if Talus’ behavior had nothing to do with his genetics? What if this place made him that way? And what if the same thing happens again? He got sick. He almost died. That could mess anyone up.”

“He won’t remember that,” Gia assures him. “He was far too young. He still is. He will have a very happy and safe childhood.”

“I hope you’re right,” Ronan says. “I hope you’re right.”

She wasn’t, and he didn’t.

Microstory 2707: Walking Out With the Door

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It’s been another year now. Leif knows his own name, and responds to it. Isavet has taken quite a liking to him. She doesn’t quite understand what Talus did, but she knows he was a bad boy, and seems to be trying to compensate for him. Ronan and Gia often talk about how close they might have been to Talus doing something to her. They grew up together as babies, so he never would have seen her as a threat to his status, but he might have held hate against her for some other reason. They don’t know what was going on in his head. They never will, and they have decided to take this as a blessing. For the most part, they don’t talk about Talus at all, especially not openly.

Ronan’s mind drifts outside the dome when he’s alone, often towards Talus’ new place on Varkas Reflex. He thinks about him from time to time, wondering how he’s doing. He’s probably having the time of his life. A significant portion of the population chooses such a life on purpose, and stays forever. Ronan could get everything he has here in there, but it wouldn’t feel right. He would always know it’s not real. He’s clearly not the only one. It’s why Castlebourne is the fastest growing colony in the galaxy, when it really should be Varkas Reflex, or it shouldn’t matter since you can technically do VR anywhere. One day, Castlebourne may sport the highest population of all. That will be an interesting time. According to projections, he will be done with this particular simulated experience by then, but who knows? The winds could shift.

They’re thinking of moving, just to separate themselves from the community. It has grown since they first arrived. A few other people have settled land near their farm. And they all know what happened, to some degree, so the looks Ronan and Gia get can be really uncomfortable, and take them out of the Norse experience. It wouldn’t be narratively unreasonable either. People moved all the time in this culture. But there’s one thing that would be hard to take with them. Ronan isn’t sure if he wants it, though.

“I think we should do it,” Gia says. “I think we should take it with us. You built that very nice wagon for us. If we moved far up to another beach, it wouldn’t be too difficult of a trip. It will take us several days regardless.”

Ronan keeps staring at it. “I built this house around this door. I did it for Mayumi. I did it for...” He trails off, not wanting to say his name.

“It’s our door now,” Gia points out. “It may be worth more than anything else we have combined. Some rich person was very upset, but has had nearly a decade to get over it. But the fact that you’re agonizing over it leads me to believe that you’re ready?”

Ronan looks at his wife now. “I think I’m ready. It’s time. This phase of our lives is over. How does Isavet feel about it? Is she attached to this house?”

“She might want to leave more than any of us,” Gia explains. “She may understand more about what happened to Leif than we thought. I catch her sometimes, staring at his crib when he’s not in it. She moves it to where it was when...” She trails off too. “Vith can’t find a wife here. We should look somewhere else.”

Ronan chuckles. “Vith doesn’t want a wife.”

“He does if he wants to stay immersed,” Gia says.

“He may not want to do that either,” Ronan calculates. “He’s changed more than any of us in some ways. He may be ready to leave too, but go in a different direction.”

“Well, we’ll let him decide that, and I won’t ask him about it. You shouldn’t either. Now come on, we are not packing up today. Dinner is almost ready.”