Microstory 2795: It’s a Short One Today

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Things have been going pretty smoothly for the last few weeks. The surface has been quiet, the solar system has been quiet. Automators are hard at work, cooling the region that was once known as Eyrenland. It won’t be instantaneous, but it will be habitable once again someday. They have to work this fast, because the intense heat is causing the region to grow. Or at least, that’s what it’s trying to do. The process will help the world overall recuperate after the damage.

Quiratan is still not the size Eyrenland was, but it’s getting there, and it won’t even take that long. It’s in a sort of fungal process, spreading outwards from the graveyard at an incredible rate. It’s not breaking the laws of physics, but it’s unstoppable. Most of the former Eyrenland farmers are working these fields now. It doesn’t quite need all of them—they have a lot of downtime—but they will eventually be spread more thin. Some of the original Quiratan farmers are not happy. Eyren wasn’t their only produce, but their others have all been literally taken over. The fungal uquira network feeds off of the carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, and everything else. It steals their nutrients, and then it consumes the plants themselves. It’s relentless and indiscriminate, and there is really nothing that anyone can do about it.

Centuries ago, scientists worked really hard to make Bidan land support the kind of crops that humans were used to eating, but uquirakind are native to this world. Jande has been stressing to these people that, if the uquira want to expropriate the land for themselves, they should kind of be allowed to do that. That is an important tenet of the Bidan culture, to be good stewards of the ecology. Humans will always be visitors here, no matter how many generations are born under this sky.

Speaking of sky, Jande has delegated the farming issue to the new Axiom of Eggs, Zanele, who has the most experience with it, and he trusts her. Instead, he has been focusing most of his attention on building out their orbital defense grid. It’s something they should have had this whole time. Qishra was great while it still existed, but it was not sentient. It wasn’t protecting them on purpose. There is plenty of danger in this system, whether anyone attacks them on purpose or not. They got complacent. This world was designed for them, and they took that for granted, not considering the fact that nothing lasts forever, just as the former Axiom of Safety, Anso Merritt would say.

Anso is out, and Dare Finnian is in. He would not have been Jande’s first choice, but once Zanele took Eggs and Ersence took Astronomy, he started reading the agreement more closely, which led it to the original charter. There was one extra option that Tamerlane didn’t even seem to realize since he didn’t dig this deep. It was called an Axiom-in-Holding, where the candidate automatically gets any position that opens up, regardless of the state of the position beforehand, or even whether it existed. He even got to name it himself, and chose Axiom of War because he thought it sounded cooler. Jande has been putting a lot of effort into keeping Dare from going off the rails. They have been having daily meetings to discuss their strategy.

“No, no, no,” Jande argues. “That would not help anything. If we add weapons to our array that only work on ships, we’re asking anyone who comes here to fear us. It’s still about defense, that’s it. We don’t even know if we truly have an enemy.”

“Oh, we have an enemy, and I’m the only one who is willing to do what it takes to stop them,” Dare volleys. “Step to the side. Let me do my job. Keep your hands clean.”

“Dare, I’ll give you permission—” he begins before the scene suddenly changes.

“—if you can prove to me what the threat is,” Jande finishes, but Dare isn’t in front of him anymore to hear it. He looks around. He’s on some kind of ship now, but he has no idea where. Someone teleported him again.

“Superintendent Jande Ter Avest?” a woman asks. “My name is Sugar Delgado, and you’re on The Spago. We need your help. The enemy is at the gates.”

Microstory 2794: Your Position Has Been Eliminated as Part of an Organizational Restructuring

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The competition has ended. The audience was rather disappointed about the anticlimax, but Bida needs leadership now. According to intelligence picked up by Vantu Hidayat’s ship, the black holes that kept appearing throughout Tau Ceti space, and once in the atmosphere, were not accidental. They were sent by some mysterious enemy. Van assures the people of this planet that they weren’t even the target, but just got caught in the proverbial crossfire. He also says that the attacks will stop now that the real target has been moved to a new location. He seems to be right about that...for now.

Tamerlane Pryce is not entirely convinced. He does not claim to know who this enemy is, but one which would be willing to wipe out tens of millions of people without even a hint of diplomacy is a permanent threat. It’s hard to argue with his logic. This world technically has a central government, but it operates like the wild west in many respects. Many families, and even individuals, live on homesteads, or wander around as nomads. They don’t need true governance most of the time, which is why the First Axiom’s primary responsibility is mediating minor land disputes.

There is no Axiom of Foreign Affairs. There’s an Axiom of Eggs, who handles eyren exports, but the star system is protected by a small fleet of Teaguardians. And they’re mostly not even Bidans. Out of all protected worlds, the ships here are manned by the fewest number of local conscripts, and in fact, Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida has no other permanent population in orbit. If you’re here, it’s because you want to live on the surface. If you want to live in space, well, you can do that anywhere, such as Sol or Vega.

Jande and Tamerlane have a meeting today with all of the Axioms, but Jande wants to meet with one in particular ahead of time. The Safety Department is the closest thing this planet has to a police force. Theoretically, if a crime were to be committed, they would step up to investigate and process, but it’s just so hard to break a law. There aren’t many to break. Even if someone had a predilection for murder, the victim’s mind would simply transfer to a backup, allowing them to accuse the attacker right away. Most residents want to be left alone so they stay out of trouble too. That’s kind of the name of the game here. Bida isn’t for everyone. It’s mostly for individualists.

“What can I do for you, Superintendent?” Axiom of Safety Anso Merritt asks.

“Hm.” Jande narrows his eyes just a little. “I’ve spoken with a few other civil servants already. There is always at least a hint of sarcasm in the way they address me.”

“Well...” Anso begins. “This is Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. We’re a well-oiled machine. Many of my compatriots might think they earned their spot by dedicating their lives to it, but no one lasts more than a couple decades, and there’s very little work to be done anyway. Maybe they feel threatened by you, like you’re about to fire them all.”

“I assure you, I have no intention of removing anyone from duty,” Jande says sincerely. “There were two positions to backfill, they were backfilled. That’s all for now.”

Anso nods. “All I’m saying, even if you did drain the swamp, so to speak, it would be no big deal. Everything is temporary. Even you and I, we are only droplets in the River of Creation. We splash into the air for a brief moment, but then we return to the mixture. We still exist, just not as distinct individuals.” He smiles. “Atomah welcomes.”

He speaks of the creator god of this planet, as conceived in the most common religion here. Atomah leapt into an impossibly deep and impossibly fast river, which triggered the creation of the star system, or something like that. Jande doesn’t believe, so he’s not too familiar. Though, religion and science live together in harmony on Bida, which he appreciates on principle.

Most think the reason Bidans were able to return to religion was because enough science had been explored, with all meaningful daily friction being surmountable if so desired. It’s not about using metaphor to explain something that already has an explanation. It’s about creating comforting stories while not worrying about the true, mundane structure supporting it underneath. Some require more of that comfort to face the infinite expanse of time that lies before them in their now immortal lives. It’s why Ersence’s people are godless. They need science more than anyone, because in their fragile mortal bodies, it is only science which can keep them alive literally.

Anso smiles warmly. “I see that I have engendered a moment of introspection.”

Jande shakes it off, and for some reason, doesn’t want Anso to know it’s true, so he skips to the takeaway. “I did not realize you were such a religious man. I recognize your ability to do your job as it stands. Protecting others is the highest calling, and I don’t need a god to believe that. What I need is someone who is willing to take things a step further. There has been no war in this galaxy for hundreds of years. I fear that time is coming to an end. We in the stellar neighborhood all love and accept each other, even amidst persistent struggle, but as vonearthans expand, and time marches ever forwards, our values diverge. We may be on the precipice of a new era.”

“The interstellar enemy,” Anso agrees. “None has existed before.”

“That’s right,” Jande confirms. “There have always only been eleven Axioms on Bida. It’s almost sacred. I’m not sure whether it’s best to add a new department entirely to strategize against this new threat, or ask one of the others to pick up more responsibilities. You would be the obvious choice, but an aversion to violence—”

“Would not be tolerated in an Axiom of War,” Anso interrupts.

“I was thinking maybe Axiom of Defense. It’s not the same.”

Anso sits down, leans back, and relaxes. “You’re right. I would not be a good fit for the job. My current position has traditionally been more of an afterthought than a necessity, unlike the Axioms of Energy or Conservation. I have been doing this for a little over a decade now. That’s long enough. Unless you think this unseen enemy could stoke internal distrust among our people, I say shutter Safety, and add Defense. And use that opportunity to appoint a new Axiom. I don’t know the scope of your power. Can you declare it unilaterally, or would you only manage the election?”

“My understanding is that I get to choose,” Jande answers. “I’m still reading through the handbook. It’s a little...dated.”

“Well, if it’s easier, I can resign. Then it becomes my fault you have to find someone new, and since it will be vacant anyway, you can tell the people that the title and job description are changing along with it. Timing is everything. If you already have a plan, it will look like you conspired to get rid of me, but if you take forever to create it, you could look incompetent. We’ll keep talking before my blind suicide.”

“Blind suicide?” Jande questions.

“Yeah, you don’t select a substrate to transition to. You basically send your mind into the quantum network, and it transfers you somewhere pseudorandomly.”

“Hmm.” Jande reflects on the past. “Is there any way to tell if someone did that?”

Spaghetti West: Childhood’s End (Part V)

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The mysterious local ship or space station was wasting time and resources trying to fire on Sugar’s ship. She had no offensive measures of her own, save for the hot pocket, which was currently empty because up until this point, they had no reason to conceal their heat signature. The defensive measures, however? Well, those were stacked to the ceiling. It was designed with an EM shield, a TP field, and a GD yield. The first one was the most common. Every interstellar vessel needed to have it, or compensate for it with an extremely robust—and costly—physical hull. The teleportation field was simple enough, but at the very least, it required knowledge of temporal manipulation in the first place. The geodesic yield was a different story altogether, and these strangers instantly assumed that Sugar’s ship would not be equipped with it.

The first two defensive methods were no match for extremely high-energy particles, which were sometimes known as exotic particles. They were just too small and too fast. Even an endless supply of power would make the task an improbable proposition. There was an entire star system called Toliman, which colonists avoided due to an unusually high concentration of ultra high-energy cosmic rays. To protect against them, you don’t just have to know about time travel, you have to have an intimate understanding of advanced spacetime mechanics.

The GD yield didn’t deflect these particles, it basically just moved out of their way. It warped spacetime around the ship, so that when particles attempted to collide with it, they instead passed around the breadth until reaching the other side. From the particles’ perspective, nothing happened—they simply maintained their respective constant vectors the whole time. This was the best way to handle it without going the transdimensional route because it prevented energy exchange, which would be the inevitable result of any means of deflection. Again, even if you had the power to simply swat the particles away, doing so would generate subatomic reactions that could result in secondary damage, especially at scale from trillions of these collisions.

The first thought these strangers had was to beam them with exotic particles. They didn’t ask questions, they didn’t assess the threat, they just fired. And instead of starting small, they went straight to one that most vessels would be powerless to survive. Whoever these people were, they were not nice, and they were not messing around. Someone would have to do something about that.

Sugar could have just stood there and waited them out, but now she was just pissed off. If they wanted to play dirty, she could get creative.

“So what are you doing?” Liselot asked her after Sugar quickly explained how they were able to protect themselves from the onslaught.

“I’m dialing down the GD yield,” Sugar explained.

“Won’t that hurt us?” Liselot pressed.

“It would,” Sugar said, “if I turned it off entirely, but I’m just creating a few billion collisions, the irony being that if they didn’t ever fire, I wouldn’t have any ammo against them. Until they showed up, we had no reason to mask our heat signature, so the heat shunt was off. I’ve now turned it on, and I’m diverting the energy to it. Once it builds, I’ll purge it and fire right back, targeting their weapons array as a warning. Every time they hit us, we’ll hit them back just as hard, like Sebastian Shaw.”

“Is that a band, errr...?” Liselot asked, trailing off.

Sugar stopped. “Where did you hear that?”

“I told you, I’ve never heard of him.”

“No, that phrase, is that a band, errr. That’s a common time traveler phrase. We say that all the time. I didn’t know it had made its way into the general population.”

“I don’t know that it has,” Liselot replied with a shrug. “It’s just something I said. Is it a secret code, or something?”

Sugar sighed and shook her head. “No. Never mind.” She looked back at her screens. “Hot pocket is full; that was fast.” She leaned over the console. “Unless you have any objections, I’ll fire it.”

“Do what you gotta do,” Liselot encouraged.

Sugar pushed the button. Their own energy beam was released from its hold all at once, hitting the supposed enemy so hard and fast that it didn’t have time to protect itself. That was what happened when engineers designed for offense; they sacrificed defense in service to it. They had diverted all of their power to the energy weapons so that their own EM shield was severely underpowered, and practically useless. In seconds, the weapons were disabled, leaving the strangers as sitting ducks.

A console began to beep. Liselot looked over to it. “I think they’re calling.”

“You’re my comms officer now. Go ahead and open a channel,” Sugar requested.

After Liselot did as she was asked, a woman appeared on the main screen. “This is Supreme Chancellor Gentry Ruvow. We attempted to end your lives quickly and painlessly, but you have chosen the difficult route. Please switch off all defensive and offensive systems, and prepare to be boarded. In exchange, my operatives will no longer make it painless, but we will still make it quick. If you resist or attack again, the full force of the Desulforudisian Guard will descend upon you, and nothing will keep them at bay. Respond now with your surrender.”

Sugar smiled. “Supreme Chancellor, we will not be surrendering—”

Gentry immediately closed the channel. The viewscreen turned black.

“This, kids, is why it’s sometimes necessary to bury the lede.” Sugar sighed. “Okay. The global address system we installed so we could reach out to all of Bida. Do you think you could modify it to address the planet down there, whether they call it Desulforudis, or whatever? I need to work on a few other things.”

“Yeah, if you could do it, I can do it,” Liselot agreed.

Meanwhile, a number of ships launched from their space stations, or even from the surface, all heading towards Sugar and Liselot. They would not be able to take them all on. Orbit was no longer a safe place to be. Sugar didn’t understand what these people had against Tau Ceti, but she was going to find out, no matter how much they resisted.

After a few minutes, Liselot said, “I’ve done it.”

“Great. Just in time.” Sugar flung the hardware identifier code over to Liselot’s workstation. “Route communications to this buoy. It’s equipped with its own miniature hot pocket, and can scramble regular radio waves on a quantum level, so they will not be able to trace it.”

“Where are we gonna be?” Liselot asked as she was uploading the new program, and taking the initiative to launch the buoy.

“On the surface. I have a nice little patch of land picked out for it. Well, it’s a building. Brace for minor atmospheric disturbance.” They didn’t need the equilibrium generator again this time, though entering an atmosphere always did throw off the artificial gravity controls, especially if done so quickly. This planet came with a protective teleportation barrier, but she rather easily bypassed it. The natives still didn’t understand who they were up against, and continued to underestimate the two of them.

In a moment, they were parked on top of the Capitol Building, which was where Ruvow was talking to them from. “Reopen the channel to that asshole first, not the whole planet yet.”

Liselot tapped on her screen, then nodded at Sugar.

“Supreme Chancellor? Supreme Chancellor, are you there?” Sugar asked. “Supreme Chancellor, I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re no longer where we were before. If you attempt to fire on us again, you will literally only be hurting yourselves. I suggest you answer so we can work this out. I realized my mistake when I first responded to you. I tried to be nice. I should have started with...I’m not fuckin’ around! Answer the goddamn phone, or I poison the well with your own people!”

Ruvow’s face reappeared on screen. “You insolent little—”

“No, you’re gonna listen to me now,” Sugar interrupted. “You have been sending us black hole after black hole after black hole, and when we show up to put a stop to it, you don’t even apologize? You just try to kill us? What kind of monster doesn’t even take a second to find out if they’re murdering innocent children on a school trip, or a hospital ship? That’s ignoring all the people you tried to kill on my home planet in the first place. I want an explanation, and I don’t want any more threats out of your little mouth.”

Ruvow narrowed her eyes. “We have not been sending you black holes. You have been sending them to us!” She started out calm before devolving quickly by the end.

Sugar shut her eyes in frustration. “Did you ever think that maybe that wasn’t us, and you should ask us about it first? Again, what kind of monster are you?”

“We don’t ask questions,” Ruvow replied. “If someone invades our space, we destroy them. That is our way. We have established ourselves in this system, and that should be enough. Merely being present makes you a threat. I don’t know if I believe the black hole weapons aren’t from you, but it doesn’t matter. Now exit your vessel and surrender to the operatives who are now surrounding you on the roof.”

Sugar pantomimed turning down the volume, prompting Liselot to do it for real. “I’ve heard of these people...total idiots. I thought we sort of bred them out of the population because they kept putting their hands on hot stoves and eating glass, but I guess some managed to survive long enough to invent the aerosol can.” She glanced over at navigation. “I know where we are now. We’re in another galaxy. My people call it Miridir, but you may know it as Andromeda XXI.”

“That is millions of light years away. How is it colonized?” Liselot questioned.

“It’s a long story,” Sugar began, “but this isn’t Dardius, which is the only planet I’m personally cognizant of as being populated here. I’m guessing this is some kind of offshoot faction from there...isolationists in the dark forest.”

“The dark forest hypothesis was virtually debunked centuries ago. If you want to keep people out of your home, you tell them that it’s your home, you don’t make it look available.”

“I know. Like I said, they’re stupid. But they’re also under attack. If they’re getting their own procession of KBHs, our conjecture of natural causes no longer sounds viable.” It wasn’t just happening to Tau Ceti, which meant the black holes were no accident. Only happening at one location? A tragedy, but at least it followed a plausible natural pattern. Many locations, each only experiencing one black hole? Okay, that would be even more believable because of the randomness. But two systems—constant bombardment? That was a directed attack. Someone wanted to hurt Tau Ceti, as well as the Desulforudisians, and perhaps understanding their common thread would tell them who. Who would have motive to destroy them both when the two worlds were millions of light years apart, and had not even heard of each other?

“Volume back up, please,” Sugar ordered. She looked back at the Supreme Chancellor, who was still sitting there, surprisingly patient. “Someone is attempting to hurt us both. We have a saying where I’m from. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

“We have a similar saying. It goes, the enemy of my enemy is still my enemy. I can have more than one enemy, and do. All are enemies.”

“Well, that’s quite a mouthful but... Suit yourself.” Sugar turned her head. “Lise, open a global channel now. I wanna talk to everyone who lives here.”

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Extremus: Year 142

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The plan did not work as well as Waldemar and Faramund hoped. Some thought Waldemar was faking being an idiot while others claimed they thought he was stupid the whole time. This experiment has mostly served to show him who his friends are, and who his enemies are. So that’s something. He’s afraid that some have fallen through the cracks, though. What if his true enemies are smarter than that, and know how to keep themselves hidden? They could be conspiring against him right now, and he would have no idea. He needs help. He needs someone he knows might be powerful enough to track everyone on this ship. And she just so happens to be his girlfriend.

He’s sitting on the couch with Sable now. He knows he can’t trust her fully, but they’ve been getting along, so he will take this risk. It’s the only way. “Do you love me?”

“Of course I do, Waldy,” Sable replies. “What is this about?”

“I need something from you, but you may not like it. You may not agree with it.” He sighs. If she blabs to anyone it could ruin him. He won’t be able to control an uprising. Even some of his loyalists will fight back. This ship needs stability. No one else can give them that. They wouldn’t even try, because they don’t have the stomach for it.

“What is it?” Sable presses. “You’re making me a little nervous. Just say it.”

“I have reason to believe that there are people on this ship who don’t like the way I’m running things. I believe that they are plotting against me. Finding every single one of them might not be possible. It might even be multiple parties who have nothing to do with each other. I could never truly know. Unless I track everyone. The ship’s privacy controls are unalterable. Believe me, I’ve tried. They’re hardcoded into the design.” Probably to prevent this very thing. “So I need a workaround. I know that you’re an expert in time tech. I think you can help me. Would you be interested in that?”

“You want to spy on everyone?” Sable presses. “Would anyone be exempt?”

“Besides you and me?” Waldemar asks rhetorically. “No. No one can be trusted.”

“How can you be sure you can trust me?” Sable questions. “I could be faking my relationship with you. You don’t know. You can’t read emotions, let alone thoughts.”

“I don’t know it,” he admits, “but I have to ask someone for help, and you’re the best. There’s a way to know what’s happening on Extremus by peering through spacetime. It subverts all cameras, all spatial locks, everything. It can’t be avoided.”

“Are you sure that this technology exists, or are you simply guessing?”

“I know the tech exists,” he says. “What I don’t know is if you have it. Don’t deny that you have abilities. I remember killing you once. I thought it was a dream, but now I’m certain that you traveled back in time to undo it. It’s fine, I’m not mad. I don’t actually have an inherent problem with secrets. I just don’t want people to use their secrets against me. I don’t have the time or bandwidth to get people in trouble for every little thing they do. The surveillance tech would only be used to find rebels, full stop.”

“Well, how do I know if I can trust you? You say that that’s all it would be for. You might even mean it at this very moment, but you could always change your mind.”

“You can always turn it off,” Waldemar says. “You will retain that power.”

Sable appears to think about it. “Hm. That’s not good enough. I would have to suspect that you’re abusing it and then turn it off. Besides, you’re in a tricky spot, being the captain. You should distance yourself from this anyway. I won’t give you the tech—which I admit, does exist, though I would have to make some modifications—but I would give you the intel. I retain full control over it. I surveil, and report my findings.”

Waldemar considers her proposition then offers her his hand. “Deal.”

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Microstory 2734: The Cost of Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I forgive you,” Pribadium!One promises.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 7, 2551

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thanks, my love.”

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

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

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

“Okay,” Leona said.

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

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

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

Mateo wasn’t getting it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You do? What? How?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah, I think so.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who are you?” Marie asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Bro,” Angela repeated.

They immediately hit the glass again.

“Knock,” Marie said. “Oh.”

The Waltons exchanged a look.

“Oh, shit.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 19, 2532

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It wasn’t really accurate to say that the slingdrive explosion sent the space station to somewhere else in the universe. They were actually not in the universe at all anymore, and in fact may not have even really moved, in the three-dimensional sense. The totality of the cosmos include a seemingly infinite bulk of universes called branes, floating around, occasionally colliding with each other. The stuff that the bulk was made out of was known as bulk energy, but it went by other names. When bulk energy would leak into a brane, it essentially created a tiny new pocket of space, and this phenomenon was once known as dark energy, because scientists couldn’t explain why it was a thing. After settling into a more stable quantum state, it became known as your average, everyday vacuum energy. Each of these leaks caused the universe to expand, which stretched the brane out, which caused it to thin, which caused more leaks. That was why the universe was not only expanding, but why this expansion was accelerating. But if the outside of a brane was bulk energy, and the inside was vacuum energy, and these two things were virtually the same, what was the difference? What was the barrier? What was the membrane part of the brane? Well, it used to be called dark matter, but it was now known to be quintessence. As the fifth fundamental force, quintessence was repulsive, and served as the mirror image to the attractive force of gravity.

Quintessence was there to hold everything together. It didn’t like to touch anything else, but it liked to touch other quintessence. So it naturally formed clumps, like two raindrops sliding down a window, ultimately coalescing into a single, larger drop. This was why 3D space existed, because it was being contained. Without it, matter and energy would just be floating around that bulk as formless blobs at best, inherently at its own equilibrium, and having no reason to make anything of itself. You owe your entire existence to quintessence. But was still dangerous and unforgiving, and despite being so repulsive to baryonic matter, it wasn’t a one-dimensional sheet, but a massive clump with thickness. This was how the slingdrives worked, not by escaping the universe, and then returning to it, but by only piercing one layer of the membrane, and sliding alongside it to a new destination. And if it was possible to get into it, and get out later, it was possible to succeed at the first thing, but fail at the second. It was possible to get stuck. Team Matic, and a few opposing individuals, were stuck. To make matters worse, they weren’t all stuck together. To make matters even worse, they weren’t all stuck with friends.

They were alive, and had been for about a year, but divided, and communication was difficult. The space station was supposed to be a sphere, but it wasn’t like that anymore. It had become unraveled, as if God herself had come by with a grapefruit peeler, and spiraled it out to slurp it up like linguine. Lots of metaphors here, but when there was nothing to do, they came up with such things to occupy their time. When this happened, all pocket dimensions, and other temporal anomalies, burst apart. Reserve water flooded the chambers, dayfruit smoothie spilled out, and slingdrive components broke apart. Everyone had the basics, like carbon scrubbers, food synthesizers, and the power to run them, but they weren’t left with ways to retain their sanity. No inter-sector talking, and no teleportation. Not even their team empathy could penetrate the barrier.

Romana and Franka were alone together in one sector, having to figure out how to be civil with each other, if not sisters. Mateo and A.F. were in another sector, and it took everything they had not to tear each other apart. Marie was all right as she was with Dutch. They met Dutch years ago in another universe. They didn’t really know how he ended up here, but in order to survive, he ended up having to go into stasis with Romana during the period where half the team was in the Goldilocks Corridor, and the other half was on Castlebourne, which had been physically moved to another region of space. Truthfully, they had kind of forgotten about him, and just sort of left him there in his pod. He didn’t seem upset, because no time had passed for him, and he was a pretty easygoing guy. The sector with the most number of people contained Ramses, Angela, and Octavia. They weren’t hostile with one another, but it was rather awkward, and the two members of Team Matic had to learn to get along with this stranger whose alternate selves they didn’t even know very well. Leona and Miracle were trapped in the fifth sector, and that was weird too, but unlike with Mateo and A.F., they weren’t too worried about killing each other. Fittingly, Olimpia was alone again in the final sector. When was this girl gonna catch a break?

The spirals of the space station were not uniform, which meant that some of them were able to see each other some of the time. They didn’t understand why at first, but there were some theories floating around about passing suns, which they tried to share with each other during optimal times. While it didn’t feel like they were moving, they maybe were. It was dark the majority of the time, so the windows showed them absolutely nothing but the black. Periodically, however, light from some unknown source would bounce off of them, allowing them to peak into other sectors. They would leave messages for each other by gluing pieces of paper together into shapes, mostly letters. If they were lucky, they would happen to be there at the right time, and could use hand gestures to convey information. There was no quantum communication, nor even radio signals. These brief moments of connection were the only way for them to know that everyone was still alive and well enough, albeit depressed and pessimistic. The smarties worked through the problem, though they couldn’t do it together, so it was slow-going. They finally thought they had a solution, but it would take coordination.

“Do you have any idea what the hell you’re doing?” A.F. questioned.

Mateo sighed. “My wife was clear on how to do it. I wrote it down.”

“You’re the worst person to be responsible for this.”

“Yes, well, Ramses is in the cargo bay, and Leona is basically in a bathroom.” That was the worst part of all of this. The other sectors had the means to access the sewage lines, but not officially or...pleasantly. Leona and Miracle weren’t actually in a bathroom either, but the stasis chamber was equipped with better access.

“I’m saying that I should do it,” A.F. reasoned.

“I’m not trusting you with it, and I’m taller.”

“Oh, by, like, a centimeter.”

They had done something similar to this before. When trying to escape the kasma—from A.F. and his army—the quintessence was trying to crush them too, or let them crash into it. Olimpia used her magical Sangster Canopy to create extra space in front of them, cutting through the membrane until they were free, and in the greater bulk again. They would come to realize now that she was channeling bulk energy. It wasn’t easy back then, but even harder now. Olimpia’s window appeared visibly the least often, and she reported issues with her umbrella. As it turned out, it needed some power. She had to tap into the fuel cells of the station, which was not something she knew how to do right away. All these little studies, experiments, and instructions were why it had taken months to solidify the plan. It was now finally time to implement it.

Olimpia’s would be the toughest job, but Mateo’s was not voluntary either. Right now, a magnetic field was the only thing preventing the quintessence from crushing them into what Leona was calling proton soup, and that was keeping Mateo up at night. While the field was great, it was also what was trapping them in the membrane. What they needed was to make it spit them out, and that was a delicate and nuanced procedure that he didn’t know if he was prepared for. The field couldn’t simply be switched off. It had to be oscillated and directed, matching progress with Olimpia’s work at creating an opening for them, because there was no way to steer. They still couldn’t talk, so Leona and Ramses came up with a very tight schedule, and taught it to both of them beforehand. If they both started at the right time, and followed the plan correctly, they shouldn’t need to communicate.

He was standing on a ladder, staring at his watch, waiting for the right moment. There was a very small margin of error here. He could start adjusting the field generator a few seconds early, or a few seconds late, but no more than that. He was breathing deliberately now; in through his nose, out through his mouth. He noticed A.F. copying him, but didn’t say anything. Six, five, four, three, two, one, go. Mateo reached up, and tried to connect the wires together. A paralyzing sensation spread throughout his whole body, and sent him flying backwards, onto the hard surface of the floor, but not before slamming his head against the edge of the counter.

Meanwhile, Olimpia was having her own troubles. The blasted umbrella wouldn’t open. There wasn’t a problem with the mechanism, it was just that her hands were sweaty, and she was incredibly nervous. Oh, no. She was late. She was too late! No, she had to just start. If she didn’t get on it, there was no going back. They couldn’t just wait until the next communication window, and try to coordinate again at a later date. There was no way for Mateo to know that she had given up. And if he made his adjustments thinking that she was creating space when she wasn’t, they would all die. Proton soup, she didn’t like the sound of that. Open, open, OPEN! It opened. NOW!

Mateo opened his eyes. Well, he opened them as much as he could. His eyelids were heavy, and were his lashes clinging together like Velcro? His head hurt and felt sticky. He lifted his hand and reached for his neck. Some kind of fluid. Was it blood? Red. Yeah, it was blood. He could surely live, in this superadvanced substrate that Ramses has cloned for him. There was something else wrong, though. He was meant to be doing something. It felt very urgent and important. What was it? He shot up at his waist. “Magnets!”

“Yeah, buddy, I got it,” A.F. replied.

Mateo looked over to see A.F. on his ladder, his arms buried in the ceiling access panel. He didn’t look back over his shoulder, but kept his focus on the wires. If he wasn’t fulfilling the plan, what else would he have been doing? “Are you doing it? Are you doing it right?”

“Yes, I’m not an idiot,” A.F. replied, sighing with annoyance.

“I didn’t know you were paying attention to Leona’s messages.”

“Again, not an idiot. If there were nine other people here with us, I would have expected them to learn the procedure too.”

“Well...I appreciate it.”

“Do you think I wanna die any more than you? You think I wanna kill you so bad that I would sacrifice my own life to do it? I’m not crazy either. I doubt there’s an afterlife simulation relay module anywhere near here.”

“No, probably not.” Mateo massaged the back of his head, knowing that he was risking getting an infection from all the touching, but confident that his body would survive that too. He paused awkwardly. “So...is it going okay?”

“I’m doing what we were told to do, and we’re still alive. Maybe you can look through the windshield to make sure we don’t accidentally pass our turn?”

“I’ll get on it,” Mateo joked back. A.F. wasn’t such a bad guy when he wasn’t trying to kill all of them. They obviously called a truce because it was profoundly irrational for them to try to reenact Hell in the Pacific, but Mateo didn’t know how long that would last after they got out of this mess.

“Right,” A.F. replied quietly.

Mateo suddenly started to hear something. It was a crunching, crackling sound, but only in one ear. He stuck his finger in it, and tried to scratch out the noise. He looked at the tip, worried that blood was pooling in his ear cavity, but it seemed to be okay. It didn’t even quite sound like it was in there, but more behind it. Oh, the comms disc. It had been so long since he had been able to use it. He tried to regulate that instead, standing up, and wobbling around as he searched for a better signal. Voices began to emerge, and become clearer. “Hello?”

“Mateo?” Ramses asked.

“Yes, it’s me.”

“That’s my dad, everybody, he’s here too!” Romana said jovially. 

“Is that the whole roster?” Marie asked.

“Yeah, the whole station is out of the membrane. We’re in realspace now.”

“How is Olimpia?” Mateo asked.

“I’m fine,” Olimpia answered. “I’m still using my umbrella. I’m afraid to let go. I still can’t see anything.”

“A little extra vacuum energy never hurt anybody,” Leona promised. “Nonetheless, you can indeed let go. I assure you, we’re free.”

“Are we still a spiral?” Angela questioned.

“Nothing to be done about that,” Franka said. “My station is a spiral now.” When did she get her own comms disc? She responded too quickly to not have heard it herself.

“I can help you seal up the damaged sectors so the bulkheads open again,” Ramses offered.

“I’m sure I can figure it out on my own,” Franka said.

“So, uh...” A.F. began. “Since you’re talking to people, can I stop futzing with these power crystals?”

“Oh, sorry,” Mateo said, embarrassed. “Can confirm, we’re safe now.”

A.F. let go, and climbed back down the ladder. He took a breath, and stared at his enemy for a moment. Finally, he reached out with a friendly hand.

Mateo looked down at his own. “It’s a little bloody.”

A.F. chuckled. “I’ve been trying to get your blood on my hands for decades. This will have to be good enough, I guess. Let’s call it a draw.” He shook Mateo’s hand.

“I would love to not have to run from you anymore.”

“This doesn’t make us friends.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” Mateo agreed. He took a beat. “What happens now?”

“Now...I leave you in her hands.”

“Whose?”

“Proserpina’s. Good luck.” And with that, A.F. disappeared.

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