Spaghetti West: Star Wars (Part VII)

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The stage was set. Sugar and Liselot navigated their still unnamed ship to Waizidi, also known as YZ Ceti d. It wasn’t a particularly inspired name for an exoplanet, but not all of them were. There were around 400 billion stars in this galaxy alone. A single individual owning one of them was not unheard of, but it was exceedingly rare this close to the homeworld. YZ Ceti was only about 12 light years from Earth, and should have been allocated to more general colonization efforts. The reason Pribadium was able to get away with it had everything to do with its proximity to Tau Ceti.

Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida was arguably the most important interstellar colony. Proxima Doma was the nearest, but it wasn’t very hospitable. Living there required building domes and other pressurized habitats, and only within a narrow band of habitability. Bida, on the other hand, was Earth’s closest twin. A transitional respiration adapter and a pack of gravity gum, and you were good to go.

YZ Ceti was less than two light years from Tau, which actually lowered its value. Waizidi wasn’t the worst planet around, but it didn’t have a comparable atmosphere, and had the same kind of narrow habitability band as Doma. It took work to survive there—too much work, especially for early settlers with limited technology. It was fine when that was your only choice, but in this case, it would be like driving by a free luxury condo to get to a refrigerator box in the alley. To be sure, had Pribadium not taken it for herself, it would likely be colonized right now, but with a minimal population. Nobody was crying into their milk that it was off limits. Most would not even give it any thought.

“Did you figure it out?” Liselot was pacing the room while Sugar was working.

“No,” Sugar replied. “No answers here.”

“So his sacrifice was for nothing,” one of the Denvers determined. He asked to be present to oversee the procedure, which was a perfectly reasonable demand.

“He didn’t sacrifice anything but a disposable body,” Liselot pointed out. “And I don’t know if you noticed, but since we technically killed one of you, the attacks have stopped.”

Denver!Two shook his head. “When he died, it sent an alert to them. It takes time to verify and update their records, but they will update them, and they will calculate that twenty-two of us are still around. The attacks will restart.”

Sugar stopped operating. She pointed the scalpel at Denver!Two. “Then why don’t we just kill all of you, and place you in virtual storage?”

Denver!Two approached the plasma barrier. He ran his fingers along it, letting it ripple like water. “Because then they’ll run a second tier test, where they’ll determine that our consciousnesses maintain coherence. They know that a dead body doesn’t mean dead. They’re just prioritizing physical substrates until the base reality phase is over.”

“They’re going to great lengths to destroy you,” Liselot pointed out. “Is there any information about them you can give us? Maybe you’re not lying, maybe you just forgot. If we knew where they were, she wouldn’t be cutting into him right now.”

Sugar sighed and went back to the post mortem, but she stopped again right away. “I’m done cutting into him. This is getting us nowhere. It was a bad call.”

Denver held up his hands defensively. “Hey, you wanted us to give you possible countermeasures. You didn’t accept an answer of nothing, so he came up with something. No one promised that it would work.”

Sugar snapped her gloves off and threw them into the hazard bin melodramatically as she stepped towards Denver!Two. “They know when you’re alive. You said it yourself, you’re sending a signal. If a signal is being sent, it can be traced. You just have to know where to look.” She turned her head to face Denver!One’s body again. “The brain is the most logical place to look, followed by the heart.” She stared at it for a moment before facing the second Denver again. “Any other ideas?”

“You think I don’t wanna help?” Denver!Two questioned. “You’re the only one who might have a shot against these people. I want it to stop as much as you. I’ve given you all I got. They’re from your side of the void, they have time tech. That’s all I know. I don’t even know why they hate me so much. I’m important, but I’m not a threat.”

“If they have time tech,” Sugar reasoned, “maybe you are.”

“Ah,” Denver!Two said, nodding his head. “You think I’m Teen Hitler.”

“I never said that,” Sugar volleyed.

“You didn’t have to.”

“Which one was Hitler again?” Liselot asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” Sugar said to her. “For now...I’m gonna turn him back on.” She went over to the terminal and reengaged the virtual interface. “Denver. Denver!One. Come in Denver!One, are you there?”

The bulge in the blanket stirred. A pair of hands reached out and pulled the sheets out of the way. Denver!One started kicking at them aimlessly like a tardigrade stuck between two microscope slides trying to get away from its own waste. He groaned. “Who dares wake the sleeping giant?”

“You’re not real, you don’t need to sleep,” Sugar complained. “Wake up.”

Denver!One groaned again as he gradually lifted his hand. As soon as he snapped his fingers, the bed was gone, he was vertical, and fully dressed, smiling into the camera. “I’m awake, mom, but I’m not going to school today. I need a personal day.”

“I looked at your brain,” Sugar informed him. “I saw nothing. Whatever signal you’re sending, I don’t know where it’s coming from.”

“Well, we tried.” Denver!One snapped his fingers again and generated a beach. He took off his shirt and pants and plopped down into a hammock. “Now, if that’s all...”

“Ambition,” Sugar said simply.

“What’s that now?” Denver!Two asked from his cell.

“That’s what I see when I look in your eyes,” Sugar answered. “Any of your eyes,” she added. “I don’t see someone who would rather lounge about in a simulation than be out there, doing things. There’s something you’re not telling me—something vital, which could blow this whole case wide open. So out with it, or I take control over your sim, and lock you into a Foggy Forest environment forever. No hammocks, no sleeping.”

“Kindness,” Denver!Two said. “Kindness and patience. That’s what we see when we look into your eyes. You wouldn’t torment him like that.”

Sugar turned around and tapped on the interface. Denver!One fell on his ass when the hammock disappeared, along with the beach and water. He was in the middle of the woods. It wasn’t haunted, because ghosts weren’t real, but it looked like it was, and given enough time, it would start to feel that way too. “Kindness for innocents”

“Okay, I’ll tell you,” Denver!One said quickly. “Just put me back.”

“Shut up, Denver,” Denver!Two scolded.

“You’re not the one trapped in here,” Denver!One spat back.

“And whose fault is that?” Denver!Two asked rhetorically.

“Our parents,” Denver!One said. “Valencia Raddle and Omega Parker. They had me, and changed their name so we would all have the same one. I have many enemies of my own, but none which would do what they’re doing. I stay out of Milky Way politics, but my parents didn’t, and their actions followed me to Miridir. They think hurting me will hurt them, which will hurt their true enemy, the Extremus.”

“The Extremus?” Liselot questioned. “The generation ship that left Gatewood 300 years ago.”

“The history is complicated,” Denver!One went on. “A faction broke off, and settled 16,000 light years from the Core Worlds. There was a quiet war, which despite seemingly insurmountable odds, the Exins lost. My parents were instrumental in turning the tide. Don’t ask for details, I don’t have them.”

“The Exin Empire,” Sugar echoed. “So you do know where they are.”

Denver!One shook his head. “No. They’re not in the Goldilocks Empire. I already checked. The empire is fractured, and I believe one new faction has moved off somewhere else. That’s why I came to Bida. I was going to use it as my base of operations while I looked for the Exins, but I...woke the sleeping giant. They started going after me, and at some point, they realized I was a dupe, so they sent more. I really wish I could tell you how they’re finding me.”

“There’s still one question none of this answers,” Sugar began. “Why do it like this? There’s overkill, and then there’s this; it’s ridiculous. Why not just send an assassin to shoot you in the heads? It’s obviously not working, yet they’re still trying?”

“Well, they have not tried in hours,” Liselot pointed out. “Not since we killed one.”

Sugar nodded as she was trying to work through the problem. She looked back at the screen. “You said you didn’t know how they were tracking you, and I didn’t find any means of doing it either. But there is one way that we would not be able to trace back to them because it doesn’t require you to have anything on you but your own mind.”

“What would this be?” Liselot asked.

Sugar remained in her head for a moment. Then she switched off the interface, and strode over to close the physical door to Denver!Two’s cell. She looked at Liselot. “These aren’t the kind of duplicates that you’ve heard of. In your world, if you want to make a copy of yourself, you just clone or bioprint a new body, then Control-C yourself into it. When you do that, you’re just copying the data, and it doesn’t maintain any connection to the original.”

Sugar hurried over to Liselot and teleported them both to her main lab on the other side of the planet. She started turning on the machinery that she needed. “Quantum entanglement, spooky action at a distance; these are the phenomena we use to make faster-than-light communication work, even if you don’t have time travel technology. When Denver copies himself, he doesn’t just make a clone. He pulls a version of himself from a temporary parallel reality, and to reach that microreality, he has to quantum tunnel to it. That leaves a mark.”

“I’m following you for the most part,” Liselot admitted, “but I can’t see where it’s going. What does this all mean?”

Sugar stepped into the recess in the wall and lowered the brainscanner over her head. She pointed. “I need you to push that purple button for me.”

“Okay.” Liselot dutifully went over and pressed the button.

After a few seconds, a figure appeared in the imaging chamber. Pribadium Delgado looked around until she spotted Sugar. “You called? I’m kinda busy.”

“I just needed to check our connection,” Sugar said to her alternate self. “Do you know the range of this thing? I need to find someone else, and they may be farther away. I built the tunneler, but I think you modified it after my last save state.”

“It sends signals through the bulk now,” Pribadium answered. “Unlimited range.”

Sugar smiled. “Perfect. Thank me.”

“I’m welcome!” Pribadium’s image shut off.

“That was who you used to be?” Liselot asked.

“It’s more like I’m who she used to be,” Sugar explained. “Give me a moment.”

Sugar disappeared for a few seconds before returning with Denver!Two. She not-so-gently shoved him into the tunneler. “Don’t move. There are twenty-one more of you in hock that I can use for this, so don’t think I will be afraid to use deadly force.”

Denver looked around. “I don’t know what this is.”

“I know how they’re finding you,” Sugar said, “because I know who they are. I know who he is. He must have a machine not unlike this wherever he is.”

“I don’t understand,” Denver!Two claimed.

“I hope that’s true, or we would have a lot more enemies than we thought.” Sugar reinitiated the tunneler. It took a little doing, because it mostly tried to redirect them to the other twenty-two Denvers on this planet, including the one that was living disembodied in a simulation. Finally, though, she was able to force it to ignore those, and find the one she was looking for.

The imager turned back on. A twenty-fourth Denver showed up. He looked a little surprised to be there, but not shocked or nervous. “Clever girl.”

“You’re trying to kill yourself,” Sugar accused. “Why?”

“Yeah, why?” Denver!Two questioned. He tried to step off of his perch.

“No,” Sugar demanded. “Stay there or we lose the connection.” She approached the newest Denver. “What’s your beef with your alternates?”

The evil Denver shrugged like it was obvious. “They’re my alternates. They threaten my power. There should only be one Denver Strong.”

“But KBHs?” Sugar pressed. “Why go through all this trouble?”

She decided to call him Denver!Zero in her headcanon. Denver!Zero smirked. “Anyone capable of fending off a KBH attack is also a threat. I was trying to kill a billion birds with a hundred stones.”

“It’s not working, you didn’t kill anybody,” Sugar contended.

“Except for innocent plants and animals, like the uquirakind,” Liselot added.

Denver!Zero reached past the hologram’s field of view and retrieved a cup. He sipped it coolly. “I feel nothing, killing a mortal. If you don’t have the good sense to back your mind up remotely, you don’t deserve to live. At worst, I took a hundred years off their lives. That’s nothing to people like us, so who cares? Believe it or not, the KBHs, as you call them, were incredibly easy to send. Every time you push one back, it just goes somewhere else. Then they push it back, and someone pushes it to someone else. It’s like a game of Cosmic Ultimate Frisbee. You were doing my work for me, and they would have succeeded eventually. I’m a patient man.”

“Where are they now?” Liselot asked him. “We’ve not had to push them back for a while.”

“Such an eager beaver.” Denver!Zero laughed. “You want more black holes, I’ll send you more black holes.”

“We want it to stop,” Sugar demanded. “Forever.”

“I understand,” Denver!Zero replied. “How about I send you twenty-three more—no, only twenty-two—I’ll give you a freebie. For every Denver you kill, I’ll take a KBH away. Does that sound fair? Aiming black holes isn’t easy, but I think if I send you that many, one should end up destroying your base.”

“We’re shielded,” Sugar warned.

“We’ll see how well that holds up,” Denver!Zero decided. He turned off the imager.

Denver!Two finally stepped off the perch. “Were you bluffing? Will the shields hold up, or no?”

“Probably not,” Sugar admitted. “Fortunately for you, now that I know what the problem is, I can fix it. I wish you had been more honest earlier. No, I wish you had been honest at all, because you didn’t tell me jack shit.”

They all jumped back to medhock, where Sugar retrieved the drive storing Denver!One’s IDCode. Then they jumped over to regular hock, where the other Denvers were in their respective cells. She evacuated them all back to her ship’s hock. They were not happy about still being locked up, but they couldn’t be trusted.

The KBHs started coming. They appeared from all angles, and started ripping the planets apart. Before Sugar could jam up all quantum signals, one of them clipped the ship, and started unraveling it. They were lucky as hell. It left everyone alive, and all major systems operational. They were just now strung out. Fearing it could get worse, though, she teleported to outside the star system. They watched the Kugelblitz black holes ravage the worlds, pulling them apart, and rendering the entire area uninhabitable, even by modest standards.

“Hm,” Sugar said with a light chuckle.

“What?” Liselot asked.

“It really does look like...spaghetti.”

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Spaghetti West: Strange New Worlds (Part VI)

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While Sugar was talking into the microphone, trying to appeal to the masses, she was quickly generating a network portal for them to access. Though their systems were not entirely interoperable, everything was technically built on the same architecture. Computers were invented on Earth, so every civilization that spawned from it should be compatible with that technology, even if it required some tricky integrations. With Desulforudis, it was relatively easy, almost as simple as sending a web link for them to click.

Sugar wanted their input. She wanted them all to respond to her queries, and tell her how they felt about Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, the Milky Way Galaxy, and just sort of everything, including their own government. Their answers were surprising. They weren’t just isolationists. That didn’t even begin to cover it. They were hateful, mean-spirited, and if Sugar and Liselot could be so bold, potentially downright evil. The AI which aggregated their responses reported a great deal of comments that it interpreted to be racist, though their vocabulary was just a little different than standard English.

It was heartbreaking and hard to read. An entire civilization of misanthropes. How did they ever manage to survive together? If they bonded with each other over hating everyone else, she couldn’t see a common thread. There had to be something deeper...something preventing them from imploding. The two of them stood there for a moment, trying to think of a solution to this. How could they get through to the Desulforudisians?

Liselot’s face suddenly looked puzzled. “Wait. Why would we need to do that?”

“Why would we need to...try to understand these people?” Sugar assumed. “Oh, um...you’re right. We can just write these people off. They live in the sticks of a distant galaxy, and an examination of their technology shows that they are not capable of reaching anyone we care about, not even Dardius. Though, we do need to find out if they have any enemies. Maybe someone else is trying to attack them, and Bida just got caught in the cosmic crossfire. The detectives call it victimology.”

“All right,” Liselot said with a shrug. “Punch it in.”

Sugar said it out loud as she was typing, even though she could have plainly used voice-to-text. “At the risk of the answer being literally everyone in the universe, who might have reason to attack you with charged Kugelblitz black holes?”

They waited for everyone to input their respective answers. The whole world had stopped for them, like an extremely cynical and depressing remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, which was saying a lot.

Liselot rolled her eyes and took it upon herself to command the aggregator, “filter the answers that say some variation of everyone. They’re either trolls, or stupid.”

Then there it was. After removing every result that just basically blamed every non-Desulforudisian, only one remained. They don’t care about the Desulforudisians, or the Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bidans. They’re trying to kill me. If your planet is being attacked, it’s because there must be another dupe of me hiding out there too. I’m surprised he made it that far, but I suppose it proves our enemy has intergalactic range.

Sugar and Liselot exchanged a glance. Sugar then zeroed in on that one reply, cancelling the global address. She used voice-to-text this time. “Where are you?”

What are you going to do with me? the mysterious target asked.

“I’m going to get you off this world, for one. My ship can handle a black hole or two. We need to get you away from these, uhh...innocent people, and then we’re going to find your Bidan dupe to pick him up too.”

The next response took a long time to come through. “Oh, no thanks.”

“Ah,” Liselot said. “He’s hiding out here on purpose. He probably knew the KBHs were coming, and chose certain planets specifically because they were more likely to have the means of combatting the attacks.”

“Yeah, that’s my guess too,” Sugar agreed. “I don’t know if he thinks we can’t track him, or what...” She started fiddling with the console to trace the pings. She sighed.

“Problem?” Liselot asked.

“Maybe it’s that he knows we can’t track him.” Sugar growled.

“If he’s the type of guy to get an enemy to send countless singularities after every version of him, no matter who gets in the way, we shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Sugar violently rubbed her eyes. “Okay. We’re goin’ nuclear.” She opened the global address again. “This is happening because of one person. We don’t know who they are, or where they are, but they do not belong on your planet. They’re a foreigner. It sounds like you don’t like those. If you have any information, tell us, and we’ll be on our way. If we never find them, we never leave, so there’s your incentive.” She slammed the microphone toggle off, annoyed at having to resort to this.

Liselot peered at the screen. “Lots of different coordinates. They can’t all be our guy. They’re turning on their neighbors, trying to get us to do their dirty work.”

“Yeah, we found the keystone holding this all together. This could end the world,” Sugar mused, “eventually. Thistle, synthesize all tracing data we were able to gather from the target. Cross-reference it with the tattle-tales. Isolate the most likely coordinates. Re-ping our mystery man if you have to.”

“Processing...” Thistle reported. “Coordinates locked; dead zone.”

“Why would it be him if it’s a dead zone?” Liselot asked, noticing Sugar’s smile.

“He doesn’t wanna be caught, so he blocked all signals, and out of every patch of land on this God forsaken world, it’s the only area like that. If you want to hide, you don’t go somewhere remote, you get lost in a sea of people who look just like you. Stay here.”

Sugar teleported herself to the dead zone. Under her feet was a broken device. It was still slightly warm from having recently been in use. She looked around. She wasn’t the only person here. It looked like some kind of homeless encampment. So they did have some hate left over for internal use.

She switched her watch to megaphone mode. “I’m looking for someone who doesn’t belong here. Anyone who tells me which one it is gets a minishuttle, fully stocked with a bed, hygiene amenities, and a food synthesizer.”

Everyone pointed to the same guy. When he realized he had been caught, he disappeared.

“Do you all have teleportation abilities?” Sugar asked the unhoused.

They shook their heads.

“Your prize will be here in a moment.” Sugar adjusted her watch to breach-scanning mode as she was walking over towards the spot where the target was standing. Her watch locked onto the next coordinates, so she jumped away. She had to jump a few times, but she kept following his trail until she caught up with him.

“Just leave me alone!” the man screamed, not bothering to escape again.

“You answered my question! You obviously want this to end!” Sugar shouted.

“You can’t make me go,” he argued. “It would be a death sentence.”

“I’m the only one who can save you,” Sugar reasoned. “These people are holding back the KBHs for now, but how long do you figure it will be before one of them gets sick of it, and turns on the others? What happens when a KBH threatens a competing nation, or whatever it is? This is not a sustainable sanctuary for you. Come with me willingly.”

“They...they can always find me,” he explained. “If I leave, these people will be safe, but I’ll be more exposed. Are you sure your ship can survive that?”

“I’m quite certain,” Sugar confirmed. “It doesn’t have to exist in realspace.”

He tried to wrap his brain around it. “Fine.”

She took his hand and teleported them back to the ship. “Thistle. Did you already prepare that minishuttle I promised?”

“I’m preparing a full-sized shuttle,” Thistle answered, “based on the scope of aid.”

“Thank you,” Sugar said as she was dragging the stranger into the cell. “Once it’s ready to go, stripped of its flight capabilities, go ahead and dispatch it to ‘em.”

“They’re going to kill each other over it if there’s not enough for everyone, or if others come to take it,” Liselot warned.

Sugar watched the shuttle disappear from the hangar. She just kept staring at its now-empty dock. “That’s not our problem anymore. We’ve done enough for these jerks. Thistle, take us back into orbit, and activate a trans-ejection burn in any random direction. Get us away from this fly speck on the ass of the universe as fast as possible.”

A duplicate, by all philosophical measures, was their own unique self. Sure, the two versions could share a lot of the same memories, but their neurology was different, and every second that passed following their split increased the divide between them. Even so, on the quantum level, there was enough similar data to match them. It was like the modern version of a paternity test, which was perfected in the 21st century. They weren’t 100% the same, but close enough within a margin of error, and that was all it took to find the target’s other dupes.

Now that Sugar’s ship had experienced passing through a wormhole safely, it was better at it. It learned how to compensate for the gravitational perturbations during transit, allowing for a much smoother trip. None of these wormholes ever took them to the point of origin, as far as they were aware, and no pattern emerged. Each time they pushed a KBH back, and tried to follow it, they ended up in a random star system, quite often doubling back to worlds they had already been to, thanks to a likely tracking delay.

Most of the planets were in the Miridir galaxy. None of them was welcoming. Some were almost as hostile towards visitors as Desulforudis. It sounded like they specifically left because they didn’t like how soft Dardius had become. It wasn’t Sugar’s place to judge or help. She just fired up her quantum locator, scooped up the alternate hiding out there, and bounced. None of them gave her his name, but they all looked like the same guy, so it wasn’t hard to be sure that she had found the right one.

Finally, they had some evidence that they had rounded all of them up. They were back in the Tau Ceti system. She beamed up another human target, and waited for another attack to give them another window out of here. It never really came. Sure, more KBHs appeared, but every time she pushed one back and entered the wormhole, it spit her out somewhere around Tau Ceti again.

“This must be it,” Liselot decided. “We have them all, and now the KBHs are coming because this is where they all are.”

“Well, I don’t want to overload the defense grid, so we should leave. I must say, I’m rather glad it at least brought us back to the Milky Way, so we wouldn’t be so far from home. I don’t know what it’s going to take to find that damn source, though. It could be in Miridir, for all we know.”

“Well, where are we gonna go?” Liselot questioned.

Sugar stared into space for a moment. “Three hundred years ago, a seer asked me to personally colonize Waizidi, and set up a facility there. No one is allowed to go there but me, which I was able to accomplish using an ungodly amount of energy credits, and a colonial law loophole that allowed me to install defensive measures back then which are illegal today. Honestly, I forgot it was a thing. They didn’t tell me what to do with it. They just had me set the trap, and I moved on with my life in other places.”

“That’s only about one and a half light years away,” Liselot pointed out.

Sugar nodded. “It will take us less than a day to get there using the reframe engine.” She took a deep breath and started tapping on the console. “Thistle. Plot a course. I’m also uploading a hazard map into navigation which will show you the path to avoid my booby traps.” Sugar looked back at Liselot. “If my traps have held, it should be empty. They can send as many KBHs as they want; it will hurt no one. But I need to know something.”

“You need to know who those men in hock are,” Liselot figured.

Sugar went back down the corridors where the cells were packed with human targets of unknown origins. “The first man to tell me his name gets to go free. I will make contact with friends of mine who can get you tens of billions of light years away in an instant, but I need to know who I’m saving. Because the way I see it, if you’re all dead, the KBHs stop coming, no matter where your bodies happen to be.”

“Denver Strong!” they all cried at the same time.

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Microstory 2786: The First to Fall

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Tamerlane Pryce. That is the name of the mysterious last-minute addition to the candidate pool. Jande knows that name. Everyone on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida knows it, and probably beyond. In the early days of colonization, he was responsible for an ambitious—but ultimately abandoned—planetary project. Back on Earth in the ancient days, they used to have these things called zoos. They locked animals in cages, and let people gawk at them. Over time, various state regulations attempted to make these facilities more and more ethical, and that pattern never really stopped.

Zoos were eventually outlawed, replaced with less harmful methods of using animals as entertainment, but these weren’t all that great either. They were a lot better, but still dangerous, and in some cases, still exploitative. Space colonization sat on the cusp of basically doing away with the animal entertainment industry altogether. It was ultimately replaced with simulated environments, but the early Bidans didn’t know that at the time. They figured the best way not to disturb animals was to pretend to be them.

Pryce was placed in charge of cataloging every species on the planet, and developing the mind transference technology that would allow a user to become whatever creature they wanted, and live amongst the native population. The project didn’t last long. There was such fierce backlash that they shuttered the program, and transitioned the world to a less invasive culture. Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida is what it is today because early settlers were very deliberately trying to avoid Pryce’s vision. They live in harmony with the fauna now. Many believe they owe Pryce everything, but that’s a bit of a stretch. The question is, where has he been all this time?

“I’m not the Pryce you know,” Tamerlane explains as Van is introducing the rest of the contenders. “It would be hard to explain to you, but in your terms, I’m a dupe. I never did what the history books said I did. That was all someone else. But I was informed that I have always been entitled to a piece of the pie, so I’m here now.”

“And finally,” Van announces, “Jande Ter Avest!”

Jande steps forward and waves at the crowd and cameras. What is he doing?

“As you can see folks,” Van goes on, “they’re all very confused. To them, it has only been a few hours. That is by design. We want them to be disoriented. We want them to be a little shaky. It will make them want it more. And what is it they want?”

“Oversight!” the audience yells, as if they rehearsed it, which they probably have.

Jande is getting the feeling that this is not the first episode of this reality show. They probably produced a whole introduction while the candidates were dead.

“Oversight, that’s right!” Van agrees. “They wanna be the fabled Superintendent. Now, lots of cultures have this rank. It scales however high you want. But from what we read in the charter, Bida does things a little differently.” He’s a lot more charismatic than he seemed when Jande first met him. “Most Superintendents are there just in case. They’re all about staffing. If someone gets out of line, and bureaucracy is too slow to correct them, they can step in and push them out. This means that a Superintendent has to be above reproach, so it’s pretty important that deciders get it right.

“It’s even more important for us, because the Bidan Superintendent will have a great deal of responsibilities, and even more power. We’ll get to that as the competition heats up. Hint-hint, wink-wink. But for now, candidates...we need to see where you stand.” He waits a moment. “Seriously, look down. Where do you stand?”

Jande looks down at the floor. A glowing number 1 is now under his feet.

“Say it out loud! Say it proud! Where do you stand!” Van encourages.

Most of the candidates call out their numbers, and they are all weird. They don’t go from 1 to 11. They go as high as 815, which is where Dare Finnian sits.

“This is your qualified rating, or QR. Now, we’re really excited about the QR, because it’s not actually in the charter. It was very vague about this, but we came up with a scoring system between one and eight-fifty. Everyone is starting in a different place, because you all have pasts. As you can see, the Quiratani are ranked significantly higher, but they won’t stay that way for long.” He lowers the mic and looks over at the closest drone camera, which is of a different design than the others. “Can we drop ‘em?”

Part of the floor starts collapsing into nanites, leaving only circular platforms underneath everyone. One of the Eyrenlanders is too far away from his number, and he slips over the edge. He has to grab on for dear life, or he’ll fall to his death.

Dare hops over to Pryce’s platform, then to the Eyrenlander’s, and helps him up.

“Ah, look at that!” Van notes. “They still think they’re friends!” He nods, and looks up at a leaderboard that has appeared in the sky. “Survey says...850! This is a competition, people. If you die, you’re done. There is no helping. There is no empathy. There is no mercy,” he adds in a grittier voice. “Hey, I don’t make the rules.”

Dare jumps back over to his own platform, head literally held high, unashamed.

Van waits for him to finish up. “Okay. That will not be the last time we see someone go over. The first challenge has just about begun. Candidates, I recommend you move to the centermost spot. It’s simple, but deadly. The game is called Still Hunter. The more you move, which doesn’t include blinking, swallowing, or facial tics, the more your platform will fall away. Eventually, you run out of platform, so don’t...move. The challenge doesn’t end until our first death. I’ll give you a few minutes to scratch your itches and do a little stretching, and then we’ll start the clock. Oh, wait, what’s this?”

A woman who is neither Quiratani nor Eyrenlander has jumped off of her platform, and grabbed onto someone else’s shaft. She survived, and is now sliding down.

“Looks like we have a runner,” Van explains. “I’ll have to confer with my associates so we can figure out what we’re gonna do here. In the meantime, I hope you’re all situated, because the clock starts in four, three, two, aaaaaand go!”

Jande does not remember the escape artist’s name, but he’ll learn it because she never leaves the arena. She walks back in an hour later with her head hung low. “They won’t let me quit. I failed to read the fine print.” She goes back to her post to suffer a penalty for trying to leave. She has to stand on one leg for twice as long as she was gone.

The gamemakers probably expected the challenge to last a lot longer than it does, which is what you get for only making it last until the first person falls. One of the cocky Eyrenlanders cannot stop moving. He appears to be particularly not well-suited for a baseline human body. He unwillingly chips away at his platform little by little. It turns to dust and sloughs off in inconsistent volumes. Only five minutes after the attempted quitter’s return, he loses his footing, and plummets to his death.

The competition has taken its first casualty. At the end, Jande has retained his rank, having barely lost any of his platform. Dare, on the other hand, lost none of it at all, and jumped up to second place with a new score of 24. He is the biggest threat now.

Microstory 2737: The Whole Universe

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Sora takes half a step forward. “You—”

“I will handle this,” Pribadium!One insists. “You have done quite enough, Mr. Shimizu.” She looks at her alternate self. “You were killed in a streaming dead zone,” she explains bluntly. “You were on a manned mission to explore and investigate a dimensional barrier. There is a gap between your memory and the moment of cessation. It is not entirely clear how long, though. Your consciousness may have been transmitted to the afterlife buffer. You may be a duplicate. I am sorry for your loss.”

The other Pribadium blinks as she looks between the two of them. “What is the last thing I should recall? Because I don’t remember any of that. I don’t know this dimensional barrier, I don’t know him, and I don’t know you.”

Pribadium!One winces. “I’m Pribadium, an alt of you.” She gestures towards her own face. “This is how we originally looked.” She stops for a moment to think. “Well, it’s not exactly how we used to look, but it’s fairly close. Who do you think you are?”

“I’m Pribadium,” the dupe contends, almost combatively. It doesn’t seem right to think of her as Pribadium!Two since so much has evidently been lost. “I don’t recognize your face at all. I don’t know what you mean by alt. I’m the only me that has ever been.”

Pribadium!One points to a nearby mirror. “Do you recognize that face?”

The other Pribadium walks towards it and touches her own chin and cheek. “Yes, this is the Stonehenge model. It explains why I have a British accent I suppose.”

“What did I do?” Sora questions. “Did I pull the wrong backup? I grabbed the second most recent one. I assumed the most recent one was you. It was time-stamped earlier today. There were no other iterations. How did this happen?” He is distraught.

Pribadium!One sighs. “There should have only been two, and you’re right, the most recent one would have been me. If you had pulled the wrong one, what should be happening is that she thinks she’s me. But she doesn’t think she’s either of us. Her mind has been entirely corrupted.” She clears her throat. “Pribadium!Three—that’s what we’re going to need to call you—I need to run some tests on you. Do I have your consent?”

Pribadium!Three stares at who she perceives to be a stranger. “I will run the tests. I don’t trust you, and I don’t need you.” She strips off what little clothing she has on, climbs into the nearest medical pod, and begins to operate it herself. She programs it for a full diagnostic run, which will include periods of unconsciousness. “I’m locking you out of the pod, but I would like you to leave the room as well.”

Pribadium!One starts to pull Sora away when he doesn’t move immediately.

“I’m sorry,” Sora desperately apologizes to the mysterious duplicate in the pod.

“It’s okay,” Pribadium!Three replies. “Je pense, donc je suis.”

Sora’s eyes widen, recalling that as the phrase he used for her as well. Still, he allows himself to be dragged out of the room. “Did you hear what she said?”

“Yes, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s only a coincidence,” Pribadium!One is not sure she believes that, though. She opens her mouth to continue, but he interrupts.

“Don’t say what you’re going to say. I know, I was rash and impulsive. I’m sorry.”

What’s done is done, so they just wait out in the corridor for Pribadium!Three to finish. She comes out half an hour later. “I know what I am now. I’m not Pribadium.”

“Who are you then?” Pribadium!One presses.

“I’m the universe.”

Microstory 2736: Introducing Pribadium!Three

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Pribadium didn’t think that Sora—or anyone, for that matter—would be able to bypass her security protocols, so she doesn’t rush to chase after him. Once she sees him enter the substrate library, however, she grows worried. She immediately tries to teleport into the room with him, but the closest she gets is outside in the hallway. He has managed to not only breach the sector, but lock her out if. How did he do that?

She bangs on the hatch. “How are you doing this?” She bangs on it more.

Sora looks at her through the view window with a frown. He holds up an object so she can see. It’s a cephalobud, and it looks like it’s already been used and spent.

Pribadium invented it a few decades ago. It’s somewhat comparable to other neural drives, except this model can pull information directly from the timestream. It allows a user to download whatever digital data they want into their brains. Unlike other kinds, this will transfer knowledge even if you’re not digitized. It’s very dangerous, especially for a normal human like Sora. Time travelers have different neurology and biology, and that’s who she designed it for. It was kind of a weekend project that she forgot about. He must have found it in her lab, though, when she left him alone earlier.

“Your external security is extremely robust,” Sora explains, “but your internal security is laughable. I didn’t download the secrets of the universe, but I did capture the specs of this base. I thought you might turn on me, and I would need to escape.”

“You’re the one who has turned,” Pribadium argues. “Don’t do this.”

Sora looks around, presumably searching for Pribadium!Two’s next substrate. “I like this one. She looks even less like you than you two before. It will be easier to tell you apart.” He approaches the console, and starts working it like a pro.

“Sora, this isn’t what she wanted. She’s literally gone to a better place. It’s fine.”

“You don’t know that,” Sora responds as he keeps working. “You two split from each other over a year ago, according to her. She and I apparently...” He trails off. “You don’t know her anymore. She was a different person, and I’m going to give her a choice.”

Pribadium shakes her head. “That goes against every principle you have. If you truly felt that way, you would have digitized and enhanced yourself years ago, yet here you are, a totally normal organic human. You of all people should understand our ways.”

“I’m not normal anymore.” He taps on the back of his neck where he would have applied the cephalobud. “Now I know why people do this. It’s better to have power than to not. Even if you don’t use it, it’s better to not let others have power over you.”

Pribadium sees the pod power up. “Don’t! You still have time to undo it!”

Sora hovers his hand over the interface and turns his head to look at Pribadium. “She’ll thank me one day, even if she’s mad now. Elle pense, donc...elle est.” He hits it.

The stasis pod continues to power up as Sora stands back. He watches it as he sidesteps over and unlocks the hatch for who now has to go back to being called Pribadium!One. They both watch now as the IDCode downloads and unpacks itself in the new body, rewiring the neural pathways in realtime to bring Pribadium!Two back to life. This wasn’t part of the plan, but there is nothing to be done about it now. Now that she’s alive, she will want to stay that way, which Sora would probably point out means she always deserved to. Duping is philosophically complex. Millennia after it was first being contemplated, ethicists have still not figured it out.

The pod opens. The new Pribadium!Two climbs out. She regards them. “Report.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 7, 2520

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

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

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

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

“Poem?”

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

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

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

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

“I’ve done VR before.”

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

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

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

“Okay, I understand.”

“Are you ready?”

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

“Count down from eleven for me.”

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

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

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

No response.

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

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

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

“Who are you?” Romana asked.

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

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

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

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

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

“Are we in The Terminal?” Romana asked.

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

“All transiters?” A voice questioned.

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

“Never mind that,” Hrockas said.

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

“Yes, Rambo. What did you do?”

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

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

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

“Sir?” she asked.

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

“Thank you, sir.” She left.

“Is it?” Hrockas asked.

“Is what what?” Ramses volleyed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Beginning decon—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“More or less,” Ramses admitted.

“Too late,” Mateo said from behind.

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

“Yeah. Decontamination protocols are down.”

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

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

“I’ll switch them back, right away.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I do,” Mateo said.

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

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

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

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

They waited there in the depressing silence.

“That got dark,” Miracle mused.

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

More silence.

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

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

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

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

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