Microstory 2785: It’s Actually About the Whole Planet

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As people are activated in their pods one by one, Jande steps up and takes charge. He asks about everyone’s experience. They all had the same one—the exact same one. The room looked the same, the executioners were the same, even the audience sounded identical, save for their loved ones, who were swapped out respectively. Even the loners saw their parents, or someone else they once cared about. It’s unlikely that some were brought here on such short notice. Quantum casting is relatively easy, but people have their own lives, and the real slowdown would be explaining that this was a performative execution, and they should remain stoic the whole time while they watched.

For the most part, the contestants are fine with Jande playing the leader for now. They still think he was part of the operation from minute one, and they’re hoping he will share what he knows. It’s a fine line he’s walking here, letting them think that just enough to keep them cooperative, but not so much that it paints a target on his back.

They’re all wearing their birthday suits, and it’s rather cold in this room. It’s not until the last pod opens that a wall parts in half, revealing a hidden doorway. The other side is a locker room. It’s even colder, but they find clothes. They are t-shirts, shorts, and skirts, but they’re better than nothing. They get dressed, then start to look around for clues. There is nowhere to sit, which is weird for a locker room, and also frustrating because they’re still wobbly from the mind transference process.

Even the pros say it’s hard on them, probably because this is the weakest they have ever been. Jande spent all that time working out because he didn’t know this would happen. He already was in a baseline model. He should have realized that the coordinators don’t just want them to be unenhanced; they want them to be evenly matched. They’re all slender and lanky, but also short now. Everyone is pushing each other to get to the one mirror, but Jande doesn’t spend too much time in front of it. He’s uncomfortable, seeing himself with the same face but a wildly different body.

Ersence is running her fingers along the walls, looking for another seam for a door. She’s doing it carefully and methodically, and hasn’t used the mirror even once.

“What does it matter?” Jande asks her. “Whatever will happen will happen, and we won’t be able to control it. I think we have all seen that by now.”

Ersence doesn’t look away from her work. “We just died, I recall. I don’t like the feeling of being trapped. Everything my people want could be achieved with a rotating habitat. We could plant trees, and fill lakes. We could even have mountains. But a planet just hits harder. I don’t like enclosed spaces. If I can find a way out before these people let me out, then that’s what I’m gonna do, if you don’t mind...husband.”

“You two are married?” It’s the hermit who should not have even known that this competition was happening. “Forgive me, but, what’s the point? Are you just trying to maximize your chances? You have an 18% chance of winning, compared to my 9%?”

“Marriage is different for us,” Jande explains to the hermit. “It can be for love and partnership, but it doesn’t have to be. I mostly needed an employee.”

Ersence is not offended by this, but the hermit looks over as if in anticipation of her sadness. “Well, then I suppose my odds haven’t gone down, so that’s good.”

“Actually, they have,” an Eyrenlander jumps in. “Their odds are not only 18%. Working together gives them an advantage over whatever is coming to us. If we’re asked to push boulders up a hill, each of us is stuck alone, and it may be physically impossible in these raggedy bodies. But if you team up... Same number of people, same number of boulders, but two of us can actually get both of theirs done.”

“I just said, we are not a team,” Jande reminds the asshole Eyrenlander.

“Yeah, you did say that,” the Eyrenlander replies. “The other day, I was in a virtual construct where I told people I was a zookeeper.” He drops down to a whisper. “Wanna know a secret? I’m not really. Zoos don’t exist anymore.”

They stand in silence for a moment before the hermit breathes in and extends his hand towards Ersence. “Anyway, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Dare Finnian, but you can call me Dare.” He shakes Jande’s hand after hers. “Dare Finnian, call me Dare.” He starts going around the room, repeatedly saying the same thing in slightly different ways.

His ice-breaking triggers a massive wave of introductions. They don’t all shake hands, and they definitely don’t provide their life stories, but everyone gets a say. Except for one man. He’s standing off to the side, looking smug, but not making any reaction to anyone else’s words. He’s just standing there like he knows something no one else does.

Jande walks up to the mysterious stranger, who must be the last guy to register for this. “You’ve been quiet, cowboy. You got a name, or what?”

“Or what,” the man responds without blinking.

Jande looks him up and down. “You look a little familiar. Is that your real face?”

“What is real anyway?” Oh, he’s so mysterious and intriguing.

“I’m gonna need a name, sir,” Jande insists. “It’s a safety thing. No one here is anonymous, and I won’t let you be the exception, so out with it.”

“Found it!” Ersence has her hand behind a corner locker. “Here, help me.” A Bidan woman goes over and helps her remove the entire locker from its socket. Without hesitation, Ersence reaches for the recessed toggle and pulls it down.

The entire ceiling cracks in the center. The two halves lift up and away from each other. Simultaneously, the floor pushes the contestants up like an elevator, leaving the walls and lockers behind. The coordinators are truly leaning into the tropes with this thing; it happens in every movie about challengers in a deadly competition.

The floor reaches the surface, but it doesn’t stop. It keeps ascending towards the sky as a crowd of tens of thousands cheer from the stands. Jande just thought this was going to be a low-key, private matter, but it’s a spectacle. Cameras imply that they’re being watched by people all over the world, and maybe beyond. They really are taking a page out of the classics, like Gladiator and The Hunger Games series.

Not too far from their platform, a smaller one rises in tandem. Vantu Hidayat is on it alone, which is who Jande figured would serve as the third-party judge. “Assembled minds and remote viewers, thank you for bearing witness to this occasion! We have been working on this program for the last four months, and have finally reintegrated our candidates into new substrates!”

It’s been four months? It’s already spring, that’s not good.

“I know you’re all anxious to get going, but first, we have to inform the candidates of something we discovered while we were researching the charter!” Van looks over at the larger platform, and lowers his voice. “You believe that you will be competing for the fate of Quiratan, but centuries ago, it served as the first settlement on this planet. The Superintendent position would not oversee only one community. Winning this will place you in a supervisory role over all of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida.”

Microstory 2755: Please Don’t Hold the Handrail

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Two of Miracle’s guys don’t hesitate for a second. As soon as that door cracks, they’re running right for it. They evidently have no loyalty to their teams. Elise doesn’t know how long they’ve been training together, but she’s not finding it so easy to leave them behind. She didn’t even always want to do this. The only reason she agreed is because of the team. If they’re going to take that from her, what reason does she have to go on? She’ll have to think about this first, and ignore that door in the meantime.

Minotaur jumps out of their seat too. They only manage to intercept the second guy, body-checking him against the wall as the first one slips over the edge right on the other side of the door and plummets to his death. Minotaur stands up and catches their breath. They’re not used to an analog body either. “You’re welcome.”

Miracle stands from her own seat and casually walks towards the lethal exit. She stands before her former teammate as he’s catching his breath too. She slaps him hard.

“I’m sorry, boss. You just talked so much about the prize. He and I started coming up with what it could possibly be. We think it’s unlimited energy credits. We could go anywhere. We could do anything. You know what, I’m not sorry,” he goes on as Miracle spins around and places her back to him. “What did you expect, pulling me out of Bloodbourne like you did? Running for my survival is what I do best. That’s why you—”

Since she turned around, Miracle has been mocking him with her facial expressions, and by mimicking mouth movements with her hand. She suddenly donkey kicks him in the chest, sending him over the edge to fall to his death too. She takes a deep breath, and half a step forward. “Does anyone in this room need me to define the word alliance for you, or are you at least slightly smarter than a panda bear?”

Rage calmly stands now, in just the same way Miracle did before. She approaches her slowly before suddenly jamming her forearm against Miracle’s clavicle and pinning her to the monitor, cracking it. “I know what an alliance is, but I don’t work with killers. You stay out of our way, and we’ll leave you alone too, but if you ever treat any one of my people like you did your own friend, you will wish you had jumped out too. Savvy?”

“Savvy?” Miracle echoes in an accent. “Are ya lost, love? This isn’t Piratedome.”

“Do. You. Understand me?” Rage reiterates, squeezing her chest even harder.

“Ooo, buy me dinner first, and I’ll understand whatever you say, Mistress.”

Rage angrily lets go and turns away from Miracle. She has spoken about this with the team before. It is absolutely crucial for her to temper her anger so her nickname remains firmly ironic, rather than simply not technically accurate. She centers herself with her eyes closed for a moment. “Zel, you’re up. Remember, they know what we’ve done. The tricks you used last time probably won’t work in this place.”

Zelda gets out of her seat and picks the sconce that Elise used to free her up from the floor. “I need silence,” she announces before she drops it into the pit. “Fifty meters.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Elise determines. There was something wrong about the way the sconce sounded compared to the way the men did. Their shouts actually didn’t sound right from the start, but she initially shrugged it off because she doesn’t know the acoustics of this room, or the pit. Now she suspects they’re vastly different than they appear to be. The void before them might not exist at all.

Elise takes her shirt back off, and uses it as a glove to remove a shard from the monitor that Rage broke. She sets it on the floor, reflective side up. She then gently nudges it towards the blackness to get it in the right place. Once it’s partway into the dark, she pays especially close attention to the way the light bounces off of it at the threshold. She bends down and starts to retie her shoes while she speaks. “A few years ago, I took a course on volumetric emitter placement. These days, an AI will decide where to place them for optimal image projection, so it’s become a lost art, but designers, architects, and engineers used to have to plan it carefully.

“Which of you has seen the movie Thunderbolts*?” Elise asks the whole group.

Colley raises his hand. “It’s a perfect example of combatting historical superhero fatigue in the early to mid-21st century media by actually lowering stakes.”

“Remember the elevator scene?” Elise presses.

“You don’t mean...” Colley begins.

“I need you,” Elise encourages. “You’re the only one who doesn’t need me to say it out loud, which might skew the results for us. Get over here, we’ll be fine.”

Colley walks over to join Elise. “Up or down?” he asks, sighing.

“Sideways,” Elise answers him. She turns him around then turns around too so they’re back to back. “Leading foot is one, trailing foot is two. Ready...one.”

Colley plants his left foot against the wall while Elise plants her right one.

“Now two.” They both step fully off the ground, holding themselves up by applying pressure to the walls with their feet, and each other’s backs. They begin to chimney walk through the darkness. One of them always makes sure their leading foot has something to press up against before the other tries their side. They could always end up with a wider hallway, or some sort of opening that completely destroys their plan, at which point they would have to go back. They can see nothing in this void.

They don’t end up having to go too terribly far, though. After only a couple of meters, they are out of the holographic void, and into the hallway on the other side. A people mover is running at incredible—and incredibly unsafe—speed below them. That’s what it was. The men who were sent over the edge merely fell on this, and they cried bloody murder because they were being suddenly dragged away into the unknown after believing that they were gonna fall to their deaths. This doesn’t explain the sconce, and it doesn’t explain why their friends aren’t responding to their shouts now.

“We’re gonna have to go back,” Colley determines when they give up.

He’s right. The belt is moving far too fast for their puny human legs to carry them the wrong direction to explain it to the others. If they don’t chimney walk back, their friends will assume that they fell to their deaths too. They prepare themselves mentally, call upon a second wind, and make the hard return journey to the chrysalis chamber.

Once they reappear from the void, Jolanda and Minotaur help them get off the walls safely so Elise and Colley can explain the situation. Rage then conceives the plan.

Elise should feel tired, but she’s wired, so she volunteers to be on carrying duty. She and Zelda hold each hunter by the shirt and pants, low to the ground. They toss them into the void from that position, allowing them to fall onto the belt with a far lower center of gravity. It isn’t painless, but those first two guys probably had it much worse.

Finally, only the two of them are left. “How do you wanna do this?” Elise asks.

“I’m strong enough.” Zelda picks Elise up and drops her onto the belt on her own.

As Elise is flying down the hallways on her ass, she looks back to see Zelda surfing on it like a pro. What a total badass. Elise may be falling in love.

Microstory 2715: Leaning Forward and Ready to Leave

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It’s over. Well, the first part of Isavet’s plan is anyway. She has learned what she needed to, and she had a plausible reason to learn it. She was born under the Nordome Network, or whatever it is. It was her home. She was just following what the gamemakers set up for her. Had she left, started a life on the outside, and then tried to commit to this training, it would have looked suspicious. Or rather, it could have. She doesn’t actually know that, because she doesn’t know what life is like away from the Nordic nations. She is going to leave soon, but she has to find her family first.

Caleb takes her back, but she doesn’t let him follow her this time. Helping with her revenge efforts was noble and very nice of him. She appreciated it. But she is in no physical danger here. It is deeply personal. He respects her decision to end the simulation here. He gave her his contact information, so they can reconnect on the outside. He and his men are going to go back down south, and continue on with their ancient Norse ways. He doesn’t know when he’s going to leave, but it probably won’t be too long. You’re evidently supposed to stay for a lifetime, but you don’t have to, and it kind of feels like he’s grown bored of it. And he probably wants to connect with Isavet, though in other ways, and he can’t do that unless he’s on the outside too.

“Father,” Isavet says. She has finally found them. She has found Ronan at last. She doesn’t see anyone else here. “Where are mother, Vith, and Leif?”

“They’ve gone, my child,” her father says. He takes her into a big hug. “This is no place for a boy like Leif. I am here to invite you to come with us. Now, I’m sure you’re nervous, and you have every right to see this world as—”

“I want to leave,” she interrupts. “I completed my work, and I want to see what else is out there. I may be okay with the violence here, in a way that Leif never was, but it’s still not real. It was only catharsis. I needed to see it through, because that is how you raised me. But now I’m ready to see how you live. Take me out of here, father.”

He smiles proudly. “Okay,” Ronan says. “Let us head for the nearest exit.”

Isavet nods, and follows him as he walks off, not bothering to break down camp. “How did you know that I was back? Can you watch me on your cameras?”

“No, I’ve been here. That is why I told you where we would be.”

“What?” Isavet questions. He shouldn’t have stayed here, all this time. He had no idea how long she was going to take. It could have been years. That might not mean much to immortals like him, but she would have felt really, really bad about it, instead of just really bad. “I can’t believe you did that. Do you not miss your son?”

“I do, but you’re important to me too. What you said, needing to see this through? I respect that immensely. I do not have access to security cameras. I had to stay.”

Isavet frowns. Her guilt will remain at least another several months, she’s sure.

Ronan stops and bends down over a patch of grass. “I wish to officially declare my intention to leave the simulation. Please raise the lift for egress.” The ground parts for him. A block of it ascends from the ground. A door opens leading to a small room. “It’s okay, Isavet. This will take us to our new home. Our family awaits.”

She trusts him. Isavet steps in first, followed by Ronan. The doors close on their own. The chirpings of a bird she is not familiar with soothe her as the walls and floor shake. She’s not scared, though. This is what is meant to happen. After a few minutes, this lift object stops. The doors reopen. The first thing she sees is a computer.

Microstory 2706: A Leif on the Wind

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Ronan is back. He asked the Custodian preparing him for reëntry if he could return with extra supplies, and she said that he could, since that wasn’t the reason he walked out in the first place. Had he simply been out of what he needed, it would have been against the rules. He considers it compensation for what he endured, even though it wasn’t Castlebourne’s fault. They don’t make him go through the sunken boat trial again. He simply exits a regular elevator, and carries his new stuff through. He recognizes this part of the woods. It is surprisingly close to where he lives, but it’s not the same elevator he took to leave a few weeks ago. Just before the new elevator sank back into the ground, the Custodian warned him that they would be dismantling it immediately. Which is fine, and it’s obvious that they will replace it with a new one later somewhere else, so they are no more trapped than they were for the last several years.

Not wanting to lug all this stuff, he whistles. It’s the sound of a bird that Ronan studied before they came here. The nightingale thrush doesn’t exist in the simulation, for whatever reason, so he uses it as a signal to the people he knows and trusts. Mayumi and both versions of Talus, therefore, also know it, but he doesn’t see them coming here, especially not the one who is on his way to virtual prison. He has to find a way to push that out of his mind. To be fair, however, it’s about to come up. Gia never had the chance to say goodbye to the boy she raised. Isavet didn’t either. Vith probably won’t care. He could see the darkness in Talus from the beginning. He just didn’t know how to help.

Vith walks up now, having heard the song. He’s holding his bow, having presumably been hunting. Ronan asks him how things have been, and Vith assures him that they have been okay. Isavet has been a great help with the baby, which makes Ronan smile. Yumo—wait, that’s right, another complication. Oh, that is maybe a problem now. They named Yumo after Mayumi, but she is no longer a bright star in Ronan’s past. It certainly isn’t too late. The little guy doesn’t know his own name yet. They still have time to come up with something better. But what, and what would Gia think of it? He’s afraid to even mention it, after all this.

They must have been through so much, waiting for him to come back. It’s good that the child’s siblings helped, but the boy needed his father. At some point, Ronan is going to have to leave. That’s what he has always planned on doing, after the farming portion of the experience is over. Every second away from his family not at least fighting for them is a second wasted. Then again, that trial was his way of fighting for them. That doesn’t mean he wants to go back and do it all over again, but it’s taught him some things. It’s taught him what kind of father, and what kind of Norseman, he wants to be. And a true Norseman would face his wife. He would tell her what needed to be done, and while he probably wouldn’t necessarily listen to her input, that is what Ronan is going to do. He and Vith return to the house. It looks the same as it always did. He half-expected to come back to it having been burned to the ground, just to throw a wrench into the game. But it’s fine. He can pick up where he left off.

After he tells Gia how the excursion went, he brings up the point about Yumo’s name. She’s receptive to his position. She’s a little too receptive. “Actually, I’ve not been calling him Yumo since you left,” she admits, seemingly worried about his reaction.

“Well, what have you been calling him?” Ronan asks.

“Leif.” A bit dark, given what it’s a homophone of, but okay.

Microstory 2691: Mettle

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Ronan and Mayumi are at the entrance, waiting for the elevator to lift up to the surface of their first dome. He’s staring at the screen, which is playing footage of the Nordome Network, as if they’ve not already bought into the adventure. He’s not paying attention to the video itself, but the fact that it’s on a screen. They weren’t invented until the 19th or 20th centuries. That seems like so long ago, and they’re jumping so much further into the past than that. But he’s not really thinking about that either. He’s thinking about that screen; about how it’s the last one he’ll ever see for decades. His character is 29 years old, and Mayumi was made to look about 18. Historically, she probably would have been younger, but there are limits to how authentic they’re going to be. This is wild west of the Charter Cloud. Castlebourne’s laws don’t care how old someone appears to be, as long as the totality of their experiences make them an adult. He’s never heard of any substrate-play which—he doesn’t want to think about it. They’re both adults. Their characters have been married for a year. She’s pregnant. That screen.

They’re sitting here with a couple dozen other people who are entering the simulation at the same time. The walls are gray and metallic in a very rustic way, almost like their means of bridging the gap between the modern era, and the Viking Age. Or maybe it’s just a cheap way to build since all this thing has to do is take you up to a forest that’s meant to look like one you would find in Danmörk on Earth. As he’s still watching that screen, getting a little bit of cold feet, Ronan starts to realize that the only reason the metaphor is creeping into his mind is because of what’s actually happening to his feet. At first, he thinks someone spilled their water, but then he sees that there’s way too much of it. The walls are leaking, and the pod is filling up fast. Others have noticed as well, and start to get worried. There are rules about what your substrate has to be. You can’t come in here as a condor, or have advanced physical traits, like the kind of strength a true Norsemen wouldn’t have ever been physically capable of achieving. And you can’t have gills. His and Mayumi’s consciousnesses are still streaming to the remote servers, and he suspects everyone else’s is too, but they still don’t want to die.

They’re floating now, the water is so deep. People are trying to find some kind of emergency hatch, or a way to contact help. Ronan looks over. The display is still showing the hype video, but it’s starting to shutter and shake. The lights are flickering, they’re about to die. Something bad must be happening on the surface, like a simulated hurricane so powerful that it’s breaking the fourth wall, and literally leaking into the infrastructure of the dome. All four walls suddenly separate from each other and fall away. The rest of the water rushes in so they’re fully submerged. He finds Mayumi, and holds her close to his chest as he looks up. There’s a light, filtering through the water, showing their way to escape. They kick their legs and breach. Ah, their supplies. Some of it is floating around, but some of it isn’t buoyant. The ocean floor isn’t too far away. He might still be able to reach it. “I’m going down for the tools!”

“Okay!” She yells. It is storming, though it’s probably not a hurricane. Splintered slabs of wood are scattered about, which weren’t in the elevator. It’s a shipwreck.

Ronan takes a deep breath, and dives back down. As he’s searching for their tool basket, he spots the elevator pod. The walls are coming back together as it’s dropping back down into the shaft. This is obviously not anywhere close to being an accident. The Custodians set up an elaborate way to introduce them to the world of the Norsemen, and they did it in spectacularly terrible fashion. He absolutely loves it, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to go back up there with nothing. He spots the basket, so he adjusts his heading, and goes for it. Someone else reaches it first. The stranger starts picking up the tools that fell out, and putting them back. Ronan is about to fight him for it, because that’s what a Viking would do, but then he sees something else. A young man is drifting around. His eyes are closed. He’s clean-shaven, wearing farmer’s clothing.

Ronan can’t vie for the tools and save the boy too. He doesn’t know who this is, but if he’s half as enthusiastic about this simulation as Ronan and Mayumi is, he wouldn’t want to die on his first day. Would they let him back in? Is there a waiting period for screwing up this badly this early? Plus, Ronan isn’t even sure that he’ll survive at all. You do not have to be immortal to come here. You have to sign a bunch of waivers, just like Mayumi did with baby Talus, but they will let you in if you really want to test your mettle. Yeah, he has to save this guy. He adjusts his heading slightly once more, and reaches the kid. He takes him by the underarms, and swims them both up.

“Ronan!” he hears Mayumi call. “Ronan, over here!” She’s holding onto a big wooden door. The guy who stole their tools is trying to find refuge on it too. “Get the hell off!” she demands, physically pushing him away. She wasn’t even there when he stole from them, but she has ver good instincts.

Ronan drags the victim over to the door, and together, they lift him onto it. Okay, back then, no one in the world had any clue how to perform CPR, but Ronan has his own rules and limits. He’s not going to compromise his integrity for what essentially boils down to a game. He went down there, and pulled this guy up, so he’s going to get the water out of his lungs, and make him breathe again, even if it’s not historically accurate. While Mayumi steadies the door, Ronan presses on the victim’s chest, and provides rescue breaths. He only does it for a few minutes, and never needs to take a break.

The boy lives. He instinctively turns to his side, and spits the water up. He coughs and breathes erratically as he fully returns to the land of the living, or rather the sea of the living. “Thank you!” he says when he gets the chance. “I’m an idiot.”

“It’s quite all right, son,” Ronan says. “Are you here with anyone?”

The boy shakes his head. “My character is an orphan who just escaped indentured servitude in search of a better life in Danmörk.”

Ronan smiles, and slaps him on the back, incidentally causing more water to spill out of his mouth. “Well, you’re gonna find it.” He looks over at the thief, who is trying to grab onto a skjöldr. It keeps flipping around, and as the storm starts growing even worse, he ultimately loses the tools to the deep. “Stop!” Ronan orders. “It’s gone! If we’re going to make it to that shore, we have to do it together!”

He continues to lead the participants. He figures out how to bring them all together, so no one gets pulled away by the waves. They make their way towards the land mass, which started out about a kilometer away. Man, these people really know how to make life interesting. He didn’t sign up to start this whole thing with practically nothing, but it’s the best thing that could have happened to him, and is only invigorating him. Now they have to really build something here. Now they have to fight for survival. The first step in their long journey is over, and it’s probably the easiest one they’ll run up against. They’ve made it. They start climbing up the beach. And so it begins.

Microstory 2673: Verbal Disagreement

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Resi goes back to his hotel room to get some sleep as they will be leaving in the morning. Some of the other Fold Leaders are waiting for him at his door. He unlocks it and lets them in. “I’m sorry this hasn’t turned out how we wanted it to. I was just about to pick up the tablet they gave me to look for a new island for us. If we can get ourselves there, even if it’s not much, I know we can survive. It won’t be Yana, the Bungulans won’t have helped us. The only issue is the boats. We’ll need to steal fishing boats.”

“We already have a plan to steal a boat,” Selda says. “The one that brought us to Anchor Island. It’s more than big enough for all members of House Kutelin.”

“Are you crazy?” Resi speaks quieter, hoping they will too. “Do you have any idea how advanced these people are? They built an elevator...in the sky. You’re not gonna capture a ship of theirs. Even if you did, how long before they just blow you out of the water? Actually, I’m sure they’re more sophisticated than that. They can probably just turn it off remotely, or pilot it somewhere else. You have not thought this through.”

“Yes, we have,” Medenn contends. He makes one tap on his handheld device.

There’s a knock at the door. Vantu, who still fancies himself Resi’s bodyguard, opens it. “It’s Arumay, boss.”

“Let her in, and make sure the door’s closed. How did you get here?” he asks her.

“I was able to find a backdoor into the Bungulan systems,” Arumay begins. “I called a minisub to come pick me up. Yeah, I was a little skeptical, but it obviously worked. I could take control over the whole system from here, maybe even the island. That would be ridiculous, but I think it’s possible.”

“Arumay, have you ever heard of a honeypot?” Resi asks her.

“You think I don’t know what I’m doing,” Arumay complains. “These people are all lovey-dovey, we don’t need money or work to be happy, let’s just fly in a spaceship and smile. They don’t have any network security, because they don’t need it. It would be like your right foot locking the door so your left foot can’t get in. It’s just unnecessary. When they gave us the tech that we use on Yana, they locked us out of their network, but they engaged a connection so you could maintain contact with the rest of our House. That was my way in. Trust me, I’ve not slept this whole time. I’ve been checking for traps and alarms the whole time. The only action I took was calling that minisub.”

“I trust you, Arumay, but we can’t get away with this,” Resi insists.

“Boss, you don’t even know what our actual plan is,” Selda claims.

“There are only two things you would want to do with that boat. You either want to take over Yana, or to take over Anchor Island. Even if we manage to take initial hold over the latter, the Bungulans will fight back and win. But they may leave us alone if we only attack our own people. They’ll just write off that one little boat, and let it go. Am I close? Did I get it? I’m right, aren’t I? It’s okay, you can admit it.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Medenn admits, “but what you described is an idea, not a plan.” He gestures to the group to everyone but Resi. “We have a real plan.”

“I’m not a part of this, sir,” Vantu counters.

“I know you aren’t, Van.”

“Please,” Arumay pleads. “This is bigger than you now, Res. Everyone wants you to remain our leader, but if you don’t listen to the plan, and sign off on it, they will cut you out of it. They will move forward. You gotta meet us halfway.”

Resi looks at her, and then over at the other mini-traitors. “If I refuse?”

Medenn tenses up. One of the ones who hasn’t spoken prepares to hold him back.

“Oh, I see,” Resi realizes. “You won’t let me go. Will you hurt me?”

“No,” Arumay promises. “I won’t let that happen. But they may...detain you.”

Vantu steps a little in front of Resi. He cracks his knuckles. “Try it. I was gonna Kidjum into Enaiyo, but leave the House after a few months to join island security. I’ve been wanting to swing these fists my whole life. Just give me a reason.”

“No, that won’t happen,” Resi tries to mediate. He breathes deliberately, hoping it will be contagious. “Selda, when you chose House Kidjum, did you sign any papers?”

“No. What are you talking about? Was I meant to sign something?”

“Did anybody sign anything?” Resi asks rhetorically. “No? So you just...said out loud that you were House Kutelin. You could have just as easily said you were House Caterpillar, or House Ice Cream. There was nothing official. I asked you where you wanted to go, and you told me. Out of all of us here, and everyone on Yana...hell, everyone in the universe, I am the only member of House Kutelin. I am the only one whose Kidjum told him to join. You’re all only guests. If I kick you out, you’ll be out.”

“We’re still taking the boat,” Medenn assures him.

“That may be, but you won’t be doing it under the Aether banner. You’ll be...unkidjumed at best.” Resi balks at his own words. That’s it. That’s the solution. That’s what Speaker Sherman was going on about. In order to stop the exile, they have to reject the premise in its entirety. He thought he was distancing him and his sister from the traitors, but he’ll really be helping them. He looks down and sighs.

“What?” Arumay questions. “You were building to something, but then you stopped. Even if you kick us all out, we’ll take that boat. We still need a place to live.”

“You already have it. Whether you like it or not,” Resi determines, “you are no longer House Kutelin. You never really were. Only I am. I am the only exile here.”

“You can’t do that,” Selda argues. “You can’t just say that and make it happen. You gave us something we didn’t know we deserved. Now we’re in it. Even if we don’t call ourselves Kutelin anymore, we still aren’t assigned any of the other four Houses.”

“They’ll let you back in,” Resi says, sure of himself. “All they want is Tamboran cohesion. Kutelin was a deviation. You have to reintegrate. It’s the only way. Please don’t commandeer a ship. Zenith was telling me a little bit about themselves. Someone once took a giant spaceship from them, so they’re pretty sore about it. They may not be prone to violence, but they’ll go there if they have to.” He starts to leave. “No. Vantu, you stay here. I’m kicking you out too.”

“Sir. My alliances have not shifted,” Vantu says firmly.

Resi nods. “I can’t tell any of you what to do, but I urge you to Kidjum. Show that they work. Follow the system. I’ve been fighting for a life of hardship. That was foolish. I treated the status quo like a dystopia, but it’s not. It may not be the lovey-dovey paradise the rest of the Core Worlds have, but it was working. Let it work once more. Again, I don’t need your permission to do this. I’m going to Zenith and the Speaker, and explaining my decision.” He turns, and immediately feels a pain in the back of his head. Then everything turns black.

Microstory 2653: The Once and Future Owner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Microstory 2636: Don’t Forget To Bring a Towel

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Trilby throws a silky towel at her. “I hope you understand that I removed your clothes to provide you with medical treatment. I would have been waiting for you on the landing pad, but you showed up way too early. Why didn’t you go down on a slower trip, with the animals? That would have been a lot safer for your fragile human body.”

“They would have caught me,” Mandica explains briefly. “What is this?”

“Temporary,” he says. “I call it the cloak of invisibility. You will be perfectly visible to the naked eye while we’re out there, but the identity sensors won’t spot you. You will appear as an infrared aberration, caused normally by too many people beaming data to each other’s devices at the same time. We will take a particular route to where we’re going so that sort of thing doesn’t stand out.”

She frowns at the towel. Yeah, it isn’t a cloak, it is a towel. No hood, no draw string. It is see-through, but still just a big cloth square. “Will I not look a little odd, walking around with this thing over my head?”

Trilby laughs heartily. “Odd? Sweetheart, you’re on Castlebourne now. My next door neighbor is a giant beetle, and is probably smarter than me. They might as well call this world Substrate City. You’re not going to stand out. There is no way to stand out on this planet. Everyone is here to formulate their unique identity, and they change by their whims all the time. Now. Functionally, you’re rare. There are a few communities here who are just as unenhanced—less unenhanced, in fact—and they are not insignificant, but most people change bodies like you might change your hairstyle. But don’t worry, you can’t tell, and people are careful around each other, because there’s no way to know. No one’s gonna shoot you with a gun under the assumption that you’ll survive.” He taps his middle finger on a screen. “I took the liberty of building you your own modified prospectus. The green domes are fine. You’ll be safe in any of those. I’m talkin’ your residential areas, your museums, your educational historical recreations.

“Yellow, a little more dangerous. They have ways of protecting visitors. If they’re a normal human, the Custodians will make accommodations. They might even separate the unenhanced from the enhanced so there’s never any question. Red are no-go zones. Most of them are specifically designed for people who have disposable substrates. A visitor might even end up getting a whole fleet of bodies to switch to one by one. If someone like you without the spoof lenses were to try to sneak in, the sensors would flag them so fast, their head would spin off. Apparently, there was one guy years ago who got stuck in a dangerous game and nearly died because the people who were trying to murder him hacked the system. They won’t let that happen again. They installed new sensors all around the world, and are constantly checking. You will be walking around basically as an admin. They’ll let you in anywhere, but that’s why I made this list for you, so you can decide what you’re willing to risk. You need to understand your options.”

“You said something about spoof lenses?”

“Yes, it’s not just those. They have multiple ways of tracking identities, the most common of which is an eye scan. They also—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Mandica interrupts. “If people are changing bodies, and your neighbor is an insect, how would a retinal scan even be possible in a place like this?”

“It’s not only a retinal scan. The retinal scan is a second stage identifier that the system will only perform if the first stage scan turns up blank. Everyone capable of transferring their consciousness is given a unique watermark, placed upon their optic nerves. I don’t know if you know this, but humans have a natural blindspot in their eyes due to where the optic nerves connect to the eyes. Your brain fills in the blanks, but you can’t see light that hits that spot. Fortunately for optic void scanners, though, light does still hit that spot. They shoot an invisible laser into it to read someone’s watermark, to know who they are. They don’t even have to keep their eyes open. It can pass through eyelids, and many other materials. For a normal person, if it doesn’t detect that watermark, it will default to the retinal scan, and register your preferences and restrictions.” He points at the invisibility towel. “The scanner can’t pass through that, so it will see infrared interference, and not see your unregistered eyes.”

“Why do I need the towel if I have these spoof lenses?”

“You don’t have the spoof lenses yet. The woman who’s getting them for me is on the other side of the planet. We have to travel to her first. Before you ask, she can’t come to us, because she’s also protecting you from brainwave scanners. That’s another thing you need in order to be a ghost. They’re becoming more common. They’ll never do away with the optic void scanning system, but spoofing an authorized watermark is easier than fooling a brain scan. Don’t tell anyone, but about zero-point-zero-zero-one percent of the time, a cloned or bioprinted body doesn’t produce the watermark correctly, and it has to be fixed, either with a new replacement, or a visit to the optomeger.”

“This woman with the brain scanner—”

“The baseline imager. A brain scanner verifies your brainwaves. The baseline imager is the thing that inputs in the data. It’s highly regulated. There are only a few of them in the world. People would notice if she borrowed it and took it on a vactrain.”

“I see. The baseline imager woman; can she be trusted?”

“She’s already done for me what she’s about to do for you,” Trilby explains. “She holds a special office in a special government for a special community. They were refugees fleeing oppression, and live here permanently, not simply as visitors. Apparently, her now-husband initially refused to be enhanced, so she’s sympathetic to that sentiment, even though he’s now just like her, and I am too. The only reason she’s keeping him out of it is so that he can have plausible deniability, but I told her about you, and she thinks you and the Superintendent would get along.”

“Okay, I think I have all the information I need. I should say, I trust you. Let’s go out there and walk around like ghosts, me moreso than you.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

And so the two of them leave the apartment. Trilby already has his spoof lenses on, but Mandica has to stay under the towel the whole time. He seems to have been right. People don’t even just ignore her. They smile and greet her as if she is just another regular person on this bizarrely accepting planet. She doesn’t see any giant beetle people, but a few who look decidedly unhuman. A lot of animals, but also alien-like beings that don’t match to something that ever existed on Earth. She’s starting to feel more comfortable here, like she can actually breathe and live a life. 

After only a few hours, they have made it to a dome that’s just called Capital. They enter a gorgeous woman’s office, who holds her hand out, sporting a very kind smile. “Hi. I’m Deputy Superintendent Yunil Tereth. I hear you would like to stay unregistered. Why don’t you have a seat?”

Tangent Point: Consensus (Part V)

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Reed was in a virtual simulation again, along with Delegator Chariot, as everyone was allowed to come as a duo. They were in a much more comfortable environment than the one that they had been using separately. Now was the meeting where they were all coming together to hammer this out. As the Tangent approached Proxima Doma, they had to come to an agreement. There was only one elevator platform, and it couldn’t be in two places at once. Both poles were going to be evacuated, but each one would take months, so who had the honor of going first?

They were all sitting around a table. It was a purple theme, evidently based on a known diplomatic ship called the Vellani Ambassador. Portraits of the crew were even on the walls, suggesting that this simulation took real imagery from base reality. The meeting was small. Two representatives from the northern pole, two from the southern pole, and two from Teagarden. Most star systems were afforded a couple of Teaguardian ships to watch over them in case something happened. Obviously, that had already proved insufficient, but they were still here, and would be able to help with the evacuation procedures. The platform was going to hover over each pole, and expend massive amounts of fuel to do it. They needed resupply to make that work, and for constant transport off the platform. Every body weighed it down, so evacuees weren’t going to be staying there for long. Climbing up the tethers was only the first step.

The leader of the Teagarden’s contingency held the rank of president. It was one rank above captain, and the president assigned to the Proxima Centauri system was indeed here in this construct, but in a secondary capacity since he was not the highest ranking member. No, more Teaguardians were dispatched from neighboring systems, including Bungula. There were presently eleven of these ships in the system. But still, not even the coronel of those eleven Teaguardians was in charge. This went all the way to the tippy-top. Matar Galo was only called in for really big issues. Reed would have thought that she was too busy with other things, but apparently, this took precedence. None of this was real, but she was nearby in base reality, in one of those Teaguardians. Reed really wanted to know how they traveled faster than light.

Matar Galo cleared her throat. “Welcome to the evacuation dispute between the northern and southern poles of Proxima Doma, Proxima Centauri, as it relates to the emergency rescue efforts provided by the Bungulan Space Elevator Platform known as The Tangent. I am your host, Matar Tiare Galo of the Teagarden Stellar Neighborhood Aid Service, and I would like to remind you that these evacuation procedures happen at the pleasure of Teagarden. The Tangent is a stolen vessel, and while we have tentatively agreed to the continuation of this mission for the sake of hostages, we do so under heavy duress. This is not a question of whether Executor Reed Ellis has the authority to maintain his command over the Tangent, nor what rights the Bungulan government has over it. That is a separate issue, which is why no Bungulan representatives are present. It is important to note, however, that decisions are subject to change, and what we decide here may be rendered irrelevant before certain actions can be completed, or indeed even begin. Furthermore, Executor Ellis, while we recognize your leadership for the time being, it is not up to you which pole receives aid first. It is up to them to come to the decision between themselves. You are here predominantly as a guest, and will listen respectfully, speaking only when appropriate. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir, it is,” Reed replied.

“Delegator Chariot?”

“Agreed,” Jodene replied.

“Very well,” the Matar continued. “This is not a structured debate. I am here to facilitate discussion, but I am not an official moderator. The representatives from the poles are free to proceed as they see fit. I will only step in if talks devolve into unproductive or unrelated speech, or escalate towards violence.” She paused for a moment before prompting, “go ahead.”

Reed had already heard all of their arguments, and was prepared to hear them all rehashed here. There were more people in the north, so they needed to be cleared out more quickly. The south argued that that was a failure in leadership. The reason things were better for them was because they made a concerted effort to rescue those who lived in the lower latitudes. They built a four-kilometer bridge in a matter of hours after the ring faults broke apart. They figured they ought to be rewarded for their hard work, not punished for being too good. And besides, there were fewer people because a giant mountain range made the southeast arc of the Terminator Line too treacherous to colonize. The northerners were going to contend that there was a brand new dome in the south pole, which was more than enough to sustain the refugees for a while. The north was maxed out, they needed help the most. The south could be rescued faster due to their lower population, but that didn’t really matter. The number of people who could be transported—and more importantly, the number of people who were waiting for transport—would be the same, regardless of which side got to go first.

“We’ve already worked it out,” Delegator Sarkozi began with a weird smile. “The southern polar region concedes its bid, and congratulates the northern pole on its win.”

They swung their chins towards Xaovi Rue, who nodded. “The northern polar region accepts the southern pole’s concession, and happily welcomes the Tangent to begin evacuation procedures as soon as they are in place.”

“What happened here?” Matar Galo questioned.

“You said you wouldn’t get involved unless you had to,” Delegator Sarkozi reminded her. “Things are fine, we came to a decision amongst ourselves beforehand.”

“Yeah, well, that sounds suspicious,” Matar Galo says. “It sounds like we could be dealing with blackmail, or something worse, like an abduction.”

“Your mind goes to 21st century b-movie intrigue,” Xaovi argued. “It’s nothing like that. We’ve decided to snag the quickest win first. It will take a little bit longer to evacuate the south as it will the north, so the math just makes sense to us now.”

“That’s not true,” Delegator Chariot insisted. “The northern polar region has a much higher population, even though the northern hemisphere suffered more deaths during the initial evacuation.”

“Delegator Chariot, you were not asked to weigh in,” Matar Galo scolded. “That being said, I too would like an explanation.”

“We’re not leaving,” Xaovi replied. “Most of us aren’t, anyway. This is our home, and we’re going to make it work. The ground is stable, and anything we’ve lost, we will rebuild. Make no mistake, we will not prevent anyone from evacuating from the north. In fact, we encourage it. It will just give us more room, which we need. The new carbon scrubbers we added are great, but we don’t want it to last forever.”

Reed shook his head, but kept his mouth shut. He wanted to argue that they were being foolish. Researchers still didn’t understand the long-term effects of living on that planet. The cataclysm appeared to end months ago, but they didn’t know for sure that nothing further was going to happen. Lava could be trickling in through natural underground tunnels. They just didn’t know. The whole reason he and his people stole the Tangent was to execute this rescue. They were only here for these people. Colonizing this world had turned out to be a mistake. It was unsafe. They couldn’t go back in time to fix that, but that certainly didn’t mean they had to stay. They were being stubborn and stupid. The only logical response to this mess was to get the fuck out.

“Executor Ellis,” Matar Galo began, “I appreciate you biting your tongue.

“Call him Captain Ellis,” Delegator Chariot all but demanded. “Even if you don’t agree with how he came to power, he does have that power now. He commands a full channel of crewmembers.” The two of them had grown closer over these last few months. Jodene had a hard time rectifying this in her head. The mutiny was immoral, that much she believed, but she had come to believe in the mission too. She was quite conflicted about it, and he tried not to push her. They held their philosophical discussions when they weren’t putting out fires together, but they never argued. She had come to see things in a new light due to the success of their work. They suspected that the Teaguardians felt about the same way. Their attempts at stopping them midflight were laughably weak...almost unbelievably ineffective.

“Very well,” Matar Galo said. “Captain Ellis, I think we all know your position here, and in this case, I must admit to agreeing with you. Premier Rue, I urge you to reconsider. You and your people can always return, but if you don’t leave now, there will be no second chances. After evacuation is complete, I will be demanding the Tangent move on from here. Whether you’re first or second, once the platform leaves, it’s gone. You won’t be able to change your minds.”

“Actually, I won’t bite my tongue,” Reed jumped in. “If you do end up changing your minds after we’ve left, I will not be returning. Matar Galo and the Bungulan government will not need to convince me to leave permanently. The hostage crisis will be over at that point, and I will relinquish my leverage. Xaovi, don’t do this. Clarita, persuade it not to do this.”

“As I was saying,” Xaovi went on, not letting Clarita speak, “I will force no one to stay, but I won’t force them to leave either. If you would like to try your hand at convincing them to get in those pods, go ahead. I’ll give you the broadcast codes freely. We’ve been listening to our people. They want to stay. I will be staying with them.”

Matar Galo breathed. “Captain Ellis, Delegator Chariot, I assume you have a plan in place. You know the logistics of how you’re going to get people up the tethers?”

“We do,” Reed responded.

“Then do it,” the Matar ordered. “Maneuver the Tangent into position over the north pole, drop the lines, and start pulling people up. No more decisions need be made, this meeting is over.” She stood up. “Thank you all for coming. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get to a quantum meeting with the Altaren ambassador.” She de-resed. There was something different about it, though. It didn’t look like it did from most simulations. It was more like the flickering of a hologram. Maybe this wasn’t so virtual after all.

Reed and Jodene de-resed as well, waking up in the former’s office. He was leaning back in his chair while she was lying on the couch. Shasta was still in the guest chair, doing something on her handheld. “How did it go?” she asked them.

“We’re going north first,” Reed answered.

Shasta started to leave. “I’ll inform the pilot, and prep the ground crew.”

“I wanna be on that,” Jodene said to her.

“We’re meeting in Drop Bay One in twenty minutes to go over safety procedures,” Shasta told her without turning around.

Jodene turned back to Reed after the door reclosed. “Don’t think I didn’t catch the way you worded your little speech in there. You said you would be giving up the hostages, but you never said you would be giving the Tangent back to Bungula.”

Reed only cleared his throat.

“You’ve said you would before. It was one of your main arguments, that this was temporary. What’s changed?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She smirked. “You think you can escape. With four torches, you think you can escape? Reed, the Teaguardians have FTL.”

“Not all of them,” he reasoned.

“The ones who do will catch up. They could be clear on the other side of the neighborhood, and they will still eventually catch up to us.”

“Us?” he echoed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she echoed him right back. She stood up. “You said you would go to jail willingly. Obviously, you don’t actually—”

“I don’t care about me,” he explained. “I care about them.” He gestured towards the door. “Even the original crew has been helping us, and some without much convincing. I’m worried about two things here. I’m worried about Teagarden’s superior firepower, and I’m worried about Bungula’s grudge, and plans for revenge. Neither party has what the other does, so we either need to take away Teagarden’s advantage, or Bungula’s motivation...not both. And I do mean we. I want you with me...all in.”

She nodded. “Let’s see how the evacuation goes. I won’t place my chips on a square until I see where the ball is gonna land.”

“Well, you can’t wait, the casino would kick you out. It would be an illegal move.”

“This all started because of your illegal move.”

“Touché.”

Sixty-nine days later, the northern polar region was evacuated to the extent of their inclinations. Matar Galo stayed in the star system to spearhead a campaign to change people’s minds, but it was impossible to know for sure if her words made any impact. On an individual level, they didn’t know what anyone was planning to do before she started speaking on it. The numbers did seem to go up in her favor, but that could have been the result of poor polling methods. It was now time to move on to the southern pole. The very last elevator pod was just coming up the tethers. It was mostly only carrying the Bungulan ground workers, but also a few Proxima Domanians who agreed to stay down there for over two months to help coordinate.

“Wait, they’re already here?” Reed questioned. “As of thirty minutes ago, they hadn’t even left yet.”

“They made it an express trip,” Shasta explained. “A quarter hour total.”

“I didn’t approve that.”

“They were anxious to get back up here.”

“Were the Domanians with them even trained for the high-g acceleration?”

“The report didn’t say, but they were on it, plus one single final straggler.”

“I would like to meet them,” Reed ordered, “the Domanians, and whoever decided that it would be an express trip.”

Shortly thereafter, they arrived. He first spoke alone with the two crewmembers who claimed responsibility over the decision to pull the elevator up at extremely high speeds. Express trips were not uncommon, but they did not have time to install inertial dampeners in every single pod, and the stress it placed on tethers outweighed the benefits of it anyway. That was why they hadn’t been doing it like that the whole time. Now those tethers would have to be thoroughly examined, and potentially repaired or replaced entirely. They were sent to hock—probably while covering for other responsible parties—for twenty-four hours, and would be assigned tether testing duty. They accepted their fairly light punishment without any argument, and would not be a problem moving forward.

He was now standing before the five Domanian volunteers, looking over the report. “What’s this thing with you?”

One of them peeked over the edge of his tablet to see what he was seeing. “That’s Heracles, our beetloid. He saved Calypso’s life, and has been all-around helpful.”

“A beetloid,” Reed thought out loud.

“You don’t have those on Bungula?” the apparent leader asked.

“We do not. Something like that might come in handy on the Tangent. Would you be willing to provide us with its specifications?”

“We don’t have them,” a man said. “He’s a survivor, like us. None of us designed him, though.”

Reed nodded. “Forgive me. I should have started with introductions. I’m Captain Reed Ellis. And you are?” he asked, holding his hand out to the leader.

“Breanna Jeffries,” she answered, shaking his hand. He shook the hand of the rest as she listed them off. “This is Cashmere Hartland, Notus Konn, Calypso Rotola, and Sorel Arts.”

“It’s nice to meet you all. According to this report, you did a fine job on the ground when you could have done the bare minimum to satisfy the Delegator’s impromptu enlistment. If it were me, I would have just let you up here with a tight nod, but she was in charge down there. I am wondering what the plan is next. Have you thought about where you might want to go? Teagarden is facilitating ferry trips to the interstellar cyclers. Some are going to Earth, others to Bungula, but that’s proving...politically challenging in this situation.”

“Are you asking us to stay?” Breanna questioned.

“There’s plenty of room for a bunch of go-getters like you,” Reed explained. “We could sure use your help with the southern evacuees. It’s going to be a much bigger job, and you already know what you’re doing.”

“I wasn’t a part of that,” Sorel said. “I was transferring people off-world digitally, mostly to Castlebourne, and would like to continue doing that, if you’ll allow me to take a pod back down to the surface.”

“That can be arranged,” Reed determined. “The uploading option makes it easier on us, so we’re in favor of it. And the rest of you?”

They exchanged looks and came to an unspoken consensus. “Yes, I think we can keep going. We never made any plans for the future.”

“Great,” Reed said. “One more thing. What can you tell me about these two?” He showed them a picture of this group from Elevator Ingress months ago, standing next to a man and a woman who looked like they could be related. He had seen the man before, in a portrait at the meeting on the Vellani Ambassador.

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