Microstory 2412: Gulliver’s World

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Have you ever read this book? If you have, you’ll understand what this place is like, and if you haven’t, you’ll have no frame of reference for what I’m talking about. So I won’t get into specifics, but it’s a pretty simple concept. Imagine all the locations from the source material, and what they’re like. That’s how it is in the dome. Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Glubbdubdrib. These are all recreated here, including water in between them to simulate the ocean. It’s not as big as the ocean should be, because it has to be compact, but the land is all there, as it should be. Brobdingnag was clearly the most difficult part. It would be impossible to fit the entire continent in one of the domes, but they were able to build a representative region, just to give you the sense of scale. What would it be like to be a tiny person in a land of giants? That’s the question they’re trying to answer for you. There’s a short mountain range on one side of the fake ocean, so people on the other islands can’t see anything going on on Brobdingnag, so it’s not exactly as it’s described in the book, but it still does its job. It takes up the majority of the space, since the other regions are so much smaller. If you try to come here without being already familiar with the story, you probably won’t be too confused, because you’re not stupid, but it won’t mean anything to you. I suggest you take a few days to get up to speed, and then come for a visit. You can try to spend the night in each place, but I wouldn’t say it’s worth spending any significant amount of time here. It’s cool to see, but not the kind of place that you live. Everything interesting about it gets old pretty quick. I’m glad that made it, because it made sense; it’s just not as engaging as some of the other domes. I mean Fillory? If you get a chance, go to Fillory, that won’t disappoint. This one is better as a short trip.

Microstory 2411: Party Central

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Party, party, party! All aboard, party people! This is where the party’s at! It’s Party Central! That is a great name, because it’s true. It’s January 1, 2500, according to the Earthan calendar, and Castlebourne is officially open for business! They’ve been in testing until now, and while a ton of domes are still not open to the public, a lot of the earlier ones are. There’s plenty to see and do here after the hard work of thousands of testers who were here on the frontlines, making sure that the activities and adventures in the domes were enjoyable, worth your time, and safe. Except for the residentials, all of the domes were shut down yesterday, and will remain that way until tomorrow. Everybody’s here, getting their groove on, and having a great time. We’re all in the main hall right now, but there’s a reason they called this dome what they did. There’s a venue for every need, every niche, every theme. It’s basically if you took the concept of every dome on the planet, and squished them down to smaller scale. You like sports? There’s a venue designed specifically for people who like sports. You can play sports there, and eat bar food, and talk about the sports that you like. I’m not into them myself, so I don’t know what it’s like, but I’m sure it’s great. There are multiple levels to this dome, so you can hang out in the sky, if that’s your thing. I don’t know what else to say about it. As of this posting, the festivities are still ongoing. Even when they officially reopen the domes, we’ll still be here dancing and partying. You know what parties are like, well this is the greatest one ever thrown, and it never really has to end. Come on down, and when you’re ready, go find your bliss elsewhere. Or stick around, I’ll be here. It’s my home, I see no reason to leave.

Microstory 2408: Sportsdome

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Sports. Have you heard of them? Well, I like them. I’m pretty old. I was, in fact, one of the oldest people still physically capable of being upgraded enough to stick around back when life extension was in its relative infancy. I remember taking the train all around the country to see baseball games. I managed to see at least one major league game in every stadium. As the centuries went by, I watched as they faded from popularity. Some of them were outright banned—or effectively neutered—due to laws against violence. Remember hockey? That was basically just an excuse to fight on the ice. The whole act of hitting a puck into a net was more secondary to that urge to express one’s aggression and manhood. I never liked it, but they got it here on Castlebourne. They have every single sport somewhere here. Name one, they got it. Even the really obscure or really old ones that I hadn’t even thought of when I was growing up, still believing that I would die one day. Anyway, I think this dome is pretty cool, and I intend to spend a lot more time here. Unfortunately, nearly all of the players are androids, because we’re still in the early days of this planet, and like I said, sports in general have dimmed in popularity. It’s kind of creepy, because there was this glitch when I first showed up. They weren’t expecting me, and they didn’t sense my presence right away. Obviously, these things aren’t just playing games for no one to watch. They only do it when a visitor is around to see it. So there I was, walking onto the football pitch, and the androids were just standing there, staring into space. Of course, they weren’t staring, they were in dormant mode, but since they’re so lifelike, it looked really scary and unsettling. So that was just a little issue that I think will get worked out if people actually start to come here and see what all this stuff is about! Really try to give it a chance. I know it sounds so quaint. I mean, how interesting could it be to watch 22 people kick a ball back and forth? It’s a lot more nuanced. Just because you’re not in a virtual reality where the rules to some random game some random guy randomly came up with take ten years to learn doesn’t mean it’s not fun to watch. If you swing by, I’m sure we can find you something that you’ll like. For now, I’m going to see what jai alai is like. We didn’t have that when I was a young one.

Microstory 2252: No Dutch! No Dutch!

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Dear Dudes, Dutch. Doy. I asked to fill in for Nick today, instead of Kelly. It’s not that she couldn’t write it for him, but I’ve been a little bored, and I wanted something to do. I don’t know what we’re gonna do tomorrow, because the hospital still won’t want him working, and his website is his job, so I may write the next one too. We’ll just have to wait and see. If you don’t read his socials, then don’t worry, he’s okay. He’s not back here for a medical issue, but because he had his surgeries. They took out his index, and some of his bone marrow. Funny thing about that first thing, when I went to another universe, the scientists who studied me wanted to see if there were any physiological differences between me and them. They did all sorts of tests...consensually, and discovered that everything was the same. We all got ten fingers, one heart, and two butt cheeks. They also mentioned that the appendix was about the same. And I’m, like, “what the hell is an appendix?” That’s what they call the index. Apparently, their ancestors thought that it was a useless organ that doesn’t do anything. Which is strange, because back then, they also thought that a magical God created humans. Why would they think such an omnipotent entity would think to include something so strange and pointless? Anyway, I just remembered that, and thought it was funny.

Welp, I think I have a little extra time, so maybe I’ll spend the rest of it telling you how I got my name. Most people assume that it’s only a nickname, but no, it’s real. Both in this world, and the other one, learning it has made people chuckle, or hold back chuckles. The Dutch are people from Nederland, or the language that they speak. My family is not from Nederland, nor even the area. Here’s the story. When my father was a child, he used to watch this old television program. Of course, as Nick has pointed out, we don’t have much of a library of fiction on this Earth, but this one was scripted, and said to have been pretty good at the time. I can’t remember what it was called, but in the first season, there was a younger brother in the family. They got rid of him in later seasons without an explanation, but he kind of became synonymous with the show anyway. The character was very protective of his toys and other belongings. Whenever anyone would come into his room, or try to do anything with his stuff, he would yell “no touch! No touch!” But he had this sort of babyish accent, and it sounded more like Dutch than touch. My father, being of about the same age as this kid, started imitating what he saw and heard. He’d walk around the house, yelling that catch phrase over and over again, emphasizing a D sound even more than the actor did. My grandmother tells me that it was annoying, but at least he didn’t really understand what the words were supposed to have meant, so he wasn’t actually ever trying to stop people from touching his stuff. Then he grew up, and forgot about all of this. But years later, as an adult, he watched some old home movies, and saw himself yelling that. His own dad was gone, but his mother was still alive, so he asked her about it, and she explained what that was. So my dad, being the jokester that he is, just started doing it again. He’ll periodically yell, “no Dutch! No Dutch!” usually at very inappropriate times. I think you can guess the rest. It became part of his personality, so when he and his future wife had a kid, naming him Dutch just made sense. I get my brains and good looks from my mother, but I got Aderyn ‘No Dutch’ Haines’ sense of humor. I think it’s a pretty good deal.

Expelled: Exploited (Part III)

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Elder was able to rig up a holographic bathroom. At first, it was nothing more than a partition that gave the user some much-needed privacy. Over time, with little else to do, he added more and more to the program, including the highly requested feature of a noise-canceling system, as well as some scent-masking. Eventually, it looked like they were in one of those extremely fancy and expensive bathrooms that only the wealthiest of people used. It wasn’t like a holodeck, so they couldn’t touch the double basin sink, or the clawfoot tub, but it made them feel a little less confined. This tactic was quickly expanded to the entirety of the tent, allowing them to pretend that they had more space than they did. They could transition views between a number of different environments. It could look like they were sitting in the middle of a serene forest, against a backdrop of mountains, or even in the middle of outer space. That one wasn’t used very much, but it was there if they wanted it. They could also use this to make the tent appear to be transparent, allowing them to see what the real world outside looked like. The imagery was bleak, and a little depressing, but it was often better than the claustrophobia-inducing opaque walls.

In addition to these cosmetic changes, Elder had a lot of other work to do. In order to transmit objects from inside to the outside, and back again, there was a small built-in airlock. It had to be flexible, so it could collapse into the pack where it was stored, of course, but it was enough in a pinch. He was able to program a tube of starter nanites to head out onto the regolith, and begin building them a larger, and more permanent, living structure. Once it was finished being constructed, they would finally be able to stand up, and walk around. It was hard to get exercise in this thing, so they were desperate for more options, especially since this planet featured fairly low gravity. Bicycle crunches were probably saving their lives, but they were becoming increasingly sick of them.

Bronach Oaksent claimed to be only a few hundred meters away, but he was nowhere to be seen. There were a number of geological features nearby, which could easily conceal him, particularly well if he had built his own shelter mostly underground. He could also be in a very small dimensional generator, which would be incredibly easy to hide. Even before he built the nanofactory, Elder designed a pebble drone, based on the kind of rocks that were present on this planet. Tiny cilia that were invisible to the naked eye pressed against the surface, allowing it to roll along in search of Bronach’s hiding place. It was a very slow process, but it used very little power, and each one could operate autonomously. Indeed, a larger drone design would be easier to spot, so this was the best way to do it if they didn’t want to get caught.

True to his word—in this sense, at least—Bronach never reached out. Elder didn’t detect a single radio signal, so he wasn’t trying to communicate anywhere else either. Elder would even be able to tell if he were using some kind of quantum messenger, which would be difficult to transport with its relatively high mass, or maybe not if his dimensional generator theory were true. There was still so much that they didn’t know, and it still wasn’t priority. Their focus was on survival. What he really needed was a real lab so he could start working on that time machine. Debra had wanted to leave Extremus, but she made it quite clear that she would prefer it to this.

“Don’t worry about the time machine right now,” Debra argued. “Just get me a place to stand up, and then a place to sit down. You are building chairs, right?”

“Of course I am,” Elder replied, “and I’m not worried about the lab right now. I’m just talkin’. The nanites are busy on the structure; me discussing the future doesn’t slow that down.”

“You should have brought more nanites,” she tried to reason.

“The amount of time it takes for them to replicate is negligible compared to the time it takes to actually build what we need. Packing more would not have significantly sped up the process. In fact, it might have slowed it down, because it would have been more difficult to get them through the airlock pocket, and on its way to the worksite.”

“The worksite is right there.” Debra pointed. The tent was pseudotransparent on one side right now, so they could watch the construction progress. The other sides were showing the ocean surrounding an atoll.

“That’s miles away to a nanite. Scaled up, that would be like if you drove around the equator of the Earth,” Elder tried to explain for the upteenth time. He hadn’t had to say that specific thing to her before, but she was one of the least educated people he had ever met. She didn’t listen. She seemed to think that the nanites were magic. If she knew their breakdown rate, she would...well, she wouldn’t understand that number, but if she did, she would throw a fit.

“I’ve never been to Earth.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I really don’t.”

“Stop fighting,” Rita interjected. “This is a stupid conversation, and I’m over it. Elder, how long until we can teleport into the new structure?”

“We’re not teleporting into it,” Elder contended. “We have precious little temporal energy left in the teleporter gun, and we need to save it.”

“If we’re so low, how are we ever going to go back in time?” Debra questioned.

“I will be able to harvest more with greater resources,” Elder clarified. “It would sure help to have some stored to catalyze the process, though, which is why I’m having the nanites build a docking cone. That’s mostly what still needs to be finished. It’s right there.” He pointed to it. A metal cone was gradually materializing towards them.

“And the time until it’s complete?” Rita reiterated.

“Only a few more days,” he answered. “I know what you’re gonna say next, but bear in mind that solar is our only source of power at the moment. The shelter would take even longer if I had the nanites build a fusion reactor at the same time, even though having fusion would eventually make them go faster. Plus, the basalt and sedimentary rocks have to be pulverized and reformulated into a sort of concrete to create the airtight seal that we obviously need. There is not as much metal in the regolith as I would like. But as soon as they’re done, we’ll have nine square meters to spread out in. It will all be worth the wait, I promise you.”

“And a real bathroom?” Rita asked hopefully.

Elder hesitated to answer. “Not quite yet. It’s coming, but think about it, how complicated the fixtures in a real bathroom are. There is a room walled off for it, but we’ll still be using our portable toilet, and rubbing ourselves down with dayfruit...” He trailed off, his mind scattered to a million pieces. Sometimes a keyword would switch his train of thought to the wrong track, even if he was the one who said the word. He went back to contemplating his latest project to solve one of their problems. Each of the five leaves of the dayfruit was packed with its own natural substance. They were using the sugar and salt leaf regularly, programming every other fruit to produce one, and every other fruit the other. The second leaf gave them an alcohol-based sanitizer, which could be used to disinfect wounds in a medical situation, as well as a body cleanser when water was scarce, as it was here. The third leaf was a soap for when water was plentiful enough. The fourth was basically a GMO super-eucalyptus, which had countless benefits, from toothpaste to a moisturizing topical ointment. The fifth and final leaf was a sort of user’s choice. If not programmed for something each time, it would just grow empty. Well, not empty, but layered, so it wasn’t completely useless, since it still functioned as toilet paper, but Elder wanted more out of it. He wanted to program it to produce a certain chemical compound.

Unfortunately, they were stuck with an inert fifth leaf. It was a heavily regulated trait, generationally encrypted by the institution that designed the dayfruit strain in question. In this case, that governing body was part of Extremus. No one here had the authentication factors, not even Lieutenant Suárez. When he had time, Elder had been trying to hack into it, but even geniuses had their limits. These seeds required a password for certain modifications, and if he wanted to subvert them, his only option might be to write his only version of the fruit from scratch. That was not out of the question, but they weren’t there yet. It would demand certain chemicals to even begin anyway. Digital DNA was useless without the organic material to begin the synthesization process. Nothing could come from nothing. Not even their world of temporal manipulators could this maxim be subverted.

“Old Man,” Rita shouted. “You’re in your head again.”

“No, you were telling us to rub dayfruit on our bodies,” Debra clarified.

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “I meant the sanitizer. We’ll have to keep using the sanitizer until we can find a source of oxidane.”

Rita nodded, but Debra was confused, as usual.

“Water. We need water. If we find a significant reservoir, we may be able to stop having to recycle our waste.” They added sugar to their drinking water to get rid of the urine taste, but...they could still taste it.

Rita shook her head. “When we go back in time, and get back on Extremus, I’m going to lobby for a change in policy. Earthan space explorers wear those standardized integrated multipurpose suits all the time. They debated doing that on the Extremus, but it was never our plan to ever go on spacewalks, so they ultimately decided against them. I think that was a mistake. We would be so much better off if we could go outside right now. I should be wearing an IMS. From what I hear, they’re comfortable enough.”

Elder shook his head to mirror her. “I should have packed one in my emergency kit. I guess that’s not why they’re on the recommended list, because the people who need them the most are already wearing them to be prepared at all times.”

“Could you fabricate one now?” Debra asked. She was being genuine this time, not critical or argumentative.

“I don’t have the materials,” Elder replied. “And...I wouldn’t know how to make one. It’s not the library, I don’t think. Do you know how to harvest and contain monopoles? I’m not saying that to mean. It’s just so far above my paygrade.”

“Well, that’s one layer,” Rita began, “but a vacuum suit doesn’t have to have it. The other layers alone would work well enough on their own, unless you think you might get shot out there.”

Elder looked towards the horizon. When Bronach left them, this was the direction he walked, implying that that was where his own shelter was—which was why he was concentrating the pebbledrone search in that region—but that could literally have been a misdirect. “We don’t know that that man doesn’t have projectile weapons. And anyway, no,” he went on. “The nanites aren’t constructing the structure out of the best materials possible, just what they can find. We do not have what we would need for additional clothing of any kind. We never will, not here.”

They all three sighed at around the same time, and went back to watching the docking cone inch towards the tent entrance, one conical section at a time. It really was slow, though, so they eventually broke out of the group trance, and started focusing on their own things. Later that evening, they watched another episode of Sliders together. It was the one where they go to a world that is free from the war because of a virus that only kills Kromaggs. It made Elder uncomfortable, but he tried not to show it. The ladies still didn’t know that much about his past.

A couple of days later, the cone was finished, and they were in the new structure. Rita couldn’t stop breathing a sigh of relief, and Debra teared up a little. Elder sat down on one of the built-in benches against the wall, and didn’t stand up for almost three hours. They didn’t call him Old Man for nothin’. Lying down, sitting up, and crawling were not good for his back in the long-term. Now that they had more space to move around, he was able to get some real work done. Their new airlock still wasn’t big enough for a person to step through, but that wasn’t the point. His hands could move faster than the nanites. He was able to collect building material, and build some larger equipment in here. The progress of their shelter continued to get faster and faster. He cut out some windows, and forged silica glass to protect them. They hadn’t experienced any dust storms, or these might have been too dangerous to consider.

With more space and more time, he was able to build larger drones too, which were able to travel farther from their immediate vicinity, and perform more detailed surveys of the land. They found deposits of magnesium and aluminum, and trace amounts of others, like silver and copper, which were vital components of some desperately needed technology, like better solar panels, and a fusion reactor. It took months, but these drones also found subsurface ice only about forty centimeters under the regolith. For simplicity’s sake, they ignored the first site, and focused on one that was a little farther away, but on higher ground, so a basic aluminum pipe could transport water from the boiler structure, down to them via gravity.

It was starting to feel a little like home, but only a little. They remained firmly in favor of finding a way back to the ship in the past. Debra talked a lot about their ultimate goal of traveling to Bronach’s location, but the other two were hoping to avoid it altogether. Rita was anyway. Elder still had plans for the fifth leaf, though if he never figured it out, he might be able to find a way to synthesize everything he needed in the normal way, especially with this silica for lab supplies. He was no chemist, though, that was the problem. He was counting on the dayfruit’s ability to formulate a programmed compound for him, rather than him having to mix it by hand. This plan wasn’t vital to their survival, but not having the weapon could prove fatal one day. He had relinquished his morals once; he could do it again if it was necessary.

They were on this dead planet for five whole months before Elder was even able to begin manufacturing the time machine, and it was shortly thereafter when he hit a snag. Harvesting temporal energy wasn’t as easy as he thought it would be. He might only have enough for one person for one trip with a smaller design.

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Expelled: Explicated (Part II)

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At first, the three of them did nothing. They stopped working, and froze, not sure whether someone really was outside of the tent, or if they were hallucinating. This planet was uninhabitable to humans, but that might not be true of any native species. No, that shouldn’t matter. It wasn’t just that the composition of the air was incompatible to human lungs. The very thin atmosphere was almost exclusively composed of carbon dioxide. It wasn’t completely impossible for life to evolve on such a world, though it wasn’t probable. There was another knock. Even if aliens did evolve, there was something very human about the practice of knocking on a door to gain someone’s attention, which might not translate very well to an alien race. An evolved alien on a carbon dioxide world was even less likely at any rate.

The tent began to bulge inward. “Hello,” came a voice through the fabric. He sounded very curious, as if he wasn’t sure whether anyone was in here.

“How is he talking?” Airlock Karen questioned, more fearful than the others. Rita was a trained professional, and Elder knew who was out there.

“Conduction,” Elder explained vaguely. “Can you hear us?” he cried out.

“Oh, yes.” The blackmailer was still being creepily cheerful as if all this was very reasonable and to be expected.

“You got what you wanted...” Elder said, pausing for a moment. “We’re here. What do you want?”

“I want you,” the blackmailer replied.

“You want me for what?”

“Haha, sorry. I lifted my helmet from the tent, forgetting that you can’t hear me without it. I want you...to do whatever you must to survive. I’ll be doing the same a few hundred meters away. Once you adapt well enough to travel from your tent, come find me. We won’t speak again until then.”

“This is a game to you?” Rita figured.

“More like a test, Lieutenant. I need to know what you’re made of. How many of you will last? Which ones? I’m building something here. Well not here, and not now, but I will, or rather, I will have. You just have to decide how badly you want to be a part of that. Come talk to me when you know, and when you can.”

“What are the odds?” Elder asked him. “What are the odds that we pass your test, and make it all the way to your settlement?”

He laughed again, and waited to respond. “A hundred percent.” They could see the bulge from his helmet disappear as he began to walk away.

“Who the hell was that?” Karen asked.

“I still don’t know, but I intend to find out.” Elder looked at the ladies. “But not right now. Our priorities haven’t changed. Food and water. If you’ve ever cared about anything else in your life, pretend that they don’t exist. From now on, the only things that matter are the four majors: air, shelter, water, and food, in that order.”

They went on with their business. Airlock Karen—who requested to be called Debra instead—even pitched in, helping to assemble the dayfruit growers to double their productivity. Meanwhile, Elder programmed the genetic makeup of the fruit, optimizing for geoponics rather than hydroponics. The kit that he had curated wouldn’t have enough water for all three of them if they had to use too much of it for food production. There was another option that he was considering. The blackmailer obviously had his own plan for survival, and was probably sitting pretty in another dimension, or something. He knew that this was all going to happen, and wanted it to, so he was fully prepared. There was enough juice for Elder to teleport to the blackmailer’s location, but he needed to know exactly where that was, and what he was getting into. If there was any form of teleportation resistance technology, it could spell Elder’s death. So maybe there was a fifth priority in addition to the major four: information.

There would be a month’s worth of meal bars for one person, but even if there was enough for everyone, they wanted to save them for an emergency. A worse emergency, that was. They planned on rationing over the course of the next several days, but stop after that to focus on the dayfruit. They would only return to the bars if something went wrong, and they had no choice. They had to be so careful with every move they made. One little mistake could lead to their doom, and they wouldn’t even necessarily see it coming. Spilling a cup of water could be devastating, so everything sensitive like that would be going in the collapsible sink to protect it from their shuffling around. It may sound like a small gesture, but carelessness was a consequence of hunger, thirst, and isolation. They had to be extra afraid of mistakes.

Once the four majors were set or in motion, Elder was able to focus on that fifth priority. He had recorded the conversation with his blackmailer, and commanded his tablet to find a match from the Extremus manifest. Since the comparative sample was muffled through the tent, the AI came up with a couple dozen possible matches. But Elder had heard the man’s voice during their first and only face-to-face meeting in his lab. He would recognize it if he concentrated. He stuck the earbuds in, and prepared to narrow down the list when he noticed Debra saying something. He couldn’t hear a single thing with these things in, so he had to take them out again right away. “Sorry, what?”

“Do we get to listen to your music too, or not?” she repeated.

“It’s not music,” Elder explained.

“What is it?” Rita asked.

He didn’t want to tell them. “It’s an essay from an Earthan science journal about chromatin remodeling and epigenomic reprogramming for enhanced nutritional yield in solanum mirabilis with an emphasis on the optimization of the upregulation of nutrient preservation for extended unrefrigerated life terms in suboptimal conditions, vis-à-vis our current conditions in a hostile environment with little to no consumable resource replenishment options. Are you interested?”

They stared at him until Rita said, “oh. I already read that. It’s pretty good, albeit a bit rudimentary,” she joked.

Elder smirked, and took out his handheld device. He swiped it over to guest mode, and tossed it to them. “All the best music is on there, but only from the late 21st century, and earlier. I prefer the classics.” The masses appeased, he put his buds back in, and started to focus on the voice samples. He was a bit distracted when he noticed that the girls chose to watch something instead of listening, projecting the film on the wall. It was The Martian, of all movies. Their eyes did not betray an acknowledgement of the irony. Or maybe they were just studying it for good ideas.

Fifteen minutes later, Matt Damon was in the middle of recording his first message while stranded alone on Mars. Elder was pretty sure that he found the right voice from the eleventh sample, but he needed to listen to the others to eliminate them. “Bronach Oaksent,” he couldn’t help but say out loud after listening to the sample for the fourth time, as well as one more listen of the very similar eighteenth sample.”

“Is that a band, errr...?” Debra asked him.

The cat was out of the bag now, Elder had to come clean. “That’s who did this to us. That’s who’s outside the tent.”

“You’re telling me that’s the name of a human being?” Debra pressed.

“Apparently, so.” Elder was still chilled from the voice sample itself, the words of which reiterated his belief that he had found the right suspect. I don’t care what happens to this ship in the end. Your definition of extreme is limited to space, when you should be more motivated by time. That’s where all the real power lies. Bronach wanted Elder to build that time machine, so he could go back and do something nefarious with it. Elder’s initial thought was to kill himself to prevent that from being possible, but in many years, he had come across multiple chances to sacrifice himself for the greater good, and he had never made that choice before. That was one reason he was in this mess in the first place.

“Who is he?” Rita asked. “I don’t recognize the name.”

Elder looked back down at the profile he had pulled up. “He’s no one. No family, no community ties, no job, low contribution score.”

“Maybe he altered his own records,” Debra offered. “He’s smart enough.”

“How would you know how smart he is?” Rita asked her.

“Well, he pulled this off, didn’t he?”

Elder regarded her with mild disgust, split evenly between Debra herself, and Bronach. “No higher education. He was homeschooled.”

Rita flinched. “Oh.”

“Oh? Oh, what?”

Now she was the one with a secret that she wanted to keep. But there were four people in the entire world. If she couldn’t tell them, she couldn’t tell anyone. “His records were probably erased, but not by him. The homeschool label is an old spycraft tactic. It’s to prevent anyone from looking deeper into someone’s past. When you’re homeschooled, there are no records, so snoopers won’t be surprised when they don’t find anything.”

“He’s a spy?” Debra asked.

“Not necessarily,” Rita answered. “Some people actually are indeed homeschooled. But given our present circumstances, it’s a safe bet that he’s been highly trained in espionage and manipulation techniques.”

“He talks in probabilities,” Elder revealed. “This suggests that he’s highly calculating.”

“So, I’m right,” Debra figured. “He’s smart.”

“You were right,” Elder admitted, not upset about validating her, but worried about what she was right about. What was Bronach planning, and what did these two have to do with it? A time machine on its own wasn’t too terribly dangerous all the way out here. They were over a thousand light years from the stellar neighborhood, which would limit his ability to alter the past. He would need other technologies, like a reframe engine, or maybe just stasis. If he wanted to change history, coming all the way out here was a hard way to go about it. There was a reason that he got on Extremus, and a reason that he got off when he did. None of this was random, and they couldn’t trust their intuitions. This profile didn’t give them enough information about who they were dealing with. Maybe Elder really should kill himself. But where would that leave Rita and Debra?

Rita shut the movie off, seemingly no longer in the mood. She tapped on the device until some classical music started to play for them all to hear. She carefully lowered the volume. “The carbon scrubber is functioning optimally, right?

“It is,” Elder replied.

“Air, check. The tent is sealed up properly, no leaks?”

“No leaks.”

“Shelter,” Debra jumped in.

“The toilet’s ready to go,” Rita went on.

“Yes. Water. Gross water.”

“Lastly, the dayfruit seeds are growing.”

“Slowly, yes,” Elder confirmed.

“Food,” they chanted roughly simultaneously.

“We’ve had a hard day. Turn your screen off. Let’s just go to sleep.”

“We’ve not even talked about that,” Elder said, realizing now that the lower priority issues were still issues. “The sleeping bag only fits one person. I mean, I guess two people could fit if they were willing to snuggle...”

Rita smiled. “I’m a Lieutenant, remember? I can sleep anywhere, anyhow. You too share the bag; sleep back to back, I would recommend. I’ll be fine.”

“I sleep in the buff,” Debra divulged. “I just don’t feel comfortable any other way.”

“Then use the clothes that you’re not wearing as a pillow,” Elder suggested. We’ll use the actual pillow as a barrier between us.”

“Okay.” She was a difficult person, but not without the capacity for humility. Even Karens had people who loved them, and those people weren’t insane.

“We should be conserving power anyway, so sleep is a good idea, and it’s healthier to do it when it’s cooler.” He reached over to the microfusion reactor to cycle down the isofeed. A reactor shouldn’t ever be turned off completely, but he could limit the amount of output, including the waste heat, which was their main source of warmth here. The lights dimmed, and Rita turned off the music. “No, as long as you two are fine with it, keep the music on. It’s good for you, and don’t worry about the power.”

“I’m fine with it,” Debra said.

They continued to listen to Clair de Lune as they quietly got ready for bed. Elder removed most of his clothes too, but not everything. He just needed his own shirt and pants for a pillow. Rita crawled over to the other side of the tent to curl up into the fetal position. Debra squirmed a lot, probably because she was used to having all the space of a full-sized bed, but she didn’t complain, so that was nice. He had extra melatonin sleep masks, but he didn’t want to offer her one, and have her be offended. It was time that they started to learn how to live together, because they were going to be stuck with each other for a long time. He made a mental note to offer one to the both of them tomorrow, framing it as if he were remembering that he should have worn one himself. Yeah, that should work. For now, they would all just have to figure it out on their own.

Over the course of the next week, they developed a routine. They had nothing better to do besides continue to survive, so they shared stories from their pasts. Elder didn’t tell them why he was on the run, but he did discuss his life on Earth centuries ago. They were receptive and nonjudgmental. But they were still going a little crazy. They needed to find a way to spend some time apart. The bathroom situation was uncomfortable at best.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 7, 2398

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Leona is sitting in her wheelchair while Mateo is sitting up in her bed. He’s mindlessly flipping through channels on the TV, but it’s impossible to find something good. He’s sure there are plenty of great programs here, but they always make him a little uncomfortable. It feels like Third Railers are on a slightly different frequency than normal people. Their idea of entertainment isn’t wrong or even weird, it’s just a little too different than what he’s used to. It’s hard to explain what he doesn’t like about it, but he can only stomach about ten minutes of it before it makes him shiver, and he has to change it to something else.

“I’m getting hungry,” Leona notes.

Mateo checks her watch. She’s not allowed to wear jewelry while she’s checked in as a patient, in case they need to take her out for tests. It shouldn’t matter now since no one is running any tests of the sort, but they don’t want to piss the hostage-takers off any more than they already are. “Rations were meant to come an hour ago.”

“I hope they’re late because patients in critical need of nutrition are taking priority, and not that they’ve decided to starve us.”

“Want me to go out there and check?”

She shakes her head vigorously. “Nope. I don’t want you to draw attention to you or us at all. Maybe you could sneak back over to Cheyenne’s room again, though?”

“Okay.” He peeks his head through the doorway. The coast is clear—too clear, like a scene in a horror movie that you think is maybe a dream sequence, but it turns out the killer’s not dead, and he’s found her, and the hospital floor is totally empty only to increase tension, despite how unlikely that is. Mateo slinks down the hallways, and slips into Cheyenne’s room.

Marie is in there with her. They’re playing a card game across the bed. “Problem, or is she still just worried?” Marie asks.

“The second thing,” Mateo answers. “Have you heard anything? Are they going to let us out anytime soon?”

“It depends on what you mean by soon,” Cheyenne replies. “Santiens are pretty hardcore. They won’t stop until they’ve purified everyone they deem to be unclean.”

“Yeah, and you’re sure that doesn’t mean they’re going to kill them, right?”

“Positive,” Cheyenne assures him.

A group of heavily armed people belonging to a religion called Santienism took over the hospital when they learned that a group of Suiliens were involved in a bus crash, and were brought here for treatment. According to Carlin and Moray’s research, the two sects were once one, but Santiens broke away when they became obsessed with using natural remedies to cure disease. This caused the Suiliens to both metaphorically and literally dig into their own beliefs. They sleep in the dirt, and don’t ever bathe, believing that nature is the closest thing to divinity. Neither one of them believes in real science, and members of both sides get sick a lot because of their unhealthy habits. When their medical issues become too much for them to bear, they will go against their convictions with real doctors, but they are not meant to visit the same facilities due to a self-imposed policy of segregation. These are extenuating circumstances.

They have locked the building down so that no one can come in, and no one can leave. They have installed signal blockers to prevent communication to the outside world, which is why Mateo and Leona were unable to make their rendezvous with Ramses. They don’t know if he and Alyssa left without them, or if they’re still waiting in that park upstate. All they would have had to do, though, would be to check the internet for current events in the area. This isn’t national news by any stretch, as things like this happen from time to time, but it’s noteworthy enough to be reported on locally.

It’s been two nights since this debacle began, and now it’s early morning. How long exactly does it take to purify a bus full of your enemies, whether that means killing them, or not? Mateo looks towards the door, but that’s not what he’s thinking about. This is a team of action. They don’t do well just sitting around, waiting for other people to make things happen. His instincts are telling him to go out there, and make the situation better...or maybe make it worse instead, but brief.

“Don’t do it,” Marie urges him, knowing him well enough to predict his impulses. “This isn’t our problem.”

“We’ll be out of here by the end of the day,” Cheyenne believes.

“No, you won’t, and it’s your problem now.” One of the hostage-takers is standing in the doorway, aiming a gun at them from his waist like a buster in a film noir.

“We’re not doing anything wrong,” Marie protests.

“What religions are you?” the man with the gun asks, stepping closer menacingly.

“Unaffiliated,” she replies.

“The marker on your door indicates that you’re Caducean.”

Cheyenne leans forward to look at the faith indicator, but she can’t read it. “I hadn’t noticed. My friends must have put that there. Caduceans tend to receive priority treatment.” Caduceans do believe in science, and most medical professionals affiliate.

“Lying about your faith is an offense.”

“It’s not illegal.” One might think it would be, but not as long as the lie isn’t accompanied by other crimes. Still, some find the practice irreverent. In this case, he should just let it go as he obviously has more important stuff going on right now.

He relaxes his hand, but keeps his gun at the ready. “There are too many people in this room. One visitor at a time. One of you has to go back to your room, or downstairs with the other non-patients, depending on which one agrees to leave.”

“I’m going,” Mateo says.

“No, I’ll go,” Marie insists as she’s standing up. She gives Mateo a look that hopefully means don’t bring Leona into this, just stay here, because that’s how he’s interpreting it.

Ramses suddenly appears out of nowhere. “Oh. You have company over. I’m so sorry to disturb you.”

“Where the hells did you come from?” the gunman questions angrily.

“Umm....the bathroom?”

“The bathroom is behind me.”

“We don’t have time for this.” Ramses takes Mateo and Cheyenne by the hands, and teleports them to the rendezvous point in the park. Leona is already there, as are Winona and the AOC. Ramses makes one more jump to the hospital for Marie.

“What’s going on?” Mateo asks Winona.

She shakes her head and sighs. “Those guys who bombed the studio; they only did it to steal money, but nobody knows that yet. Someone was inspired to try to fix what they thought was a mistake. There is a bounty on Leona’s head. We had to act.”

Microstory 1862: Full Sets

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It wasn’t that big of a deal when I got started. Back then, we only had three channels, right? So people had to find other ways to entertain themselves. I mean, that sounds like people wished there could be more channels, so they wouldn’t be so bored all the time, but obviously no one was really thinking about that. They took up hobbies that people before them had done. Maybe it was the same old, same old, or maybe it was updated, but nothing is ever really new. It’s always just some kind of new sort of way of doing something that we’ve always done. I got really into collecting things. Our parents traveled a lot, leaving us to be raised mostly by my uncles. It wasn’t weird in those times for rich people to place their children in the hands of others. They didn’t want me and my siblings to get in the way, so we never went with them. Even once we were older, and didn’t need constant attention, we didn’t go on family vacations. In retrospect, my parents were kind of assholes. They were the ones who sent me down the path towards my dark and inescapable habits. They thought they were great, and it was true, we were so excited to see them whenever they finally did show up that we accepted whatever we could get. Ancient Greek coins? Parisian stamps? I’ll take ‘em. A magazine in a language I’ve never heard of, and will never be able to read? Yes, please. Toys, toys, and more toys; sign me up, please and thank you. We loved all the gifts, because they were coming from them, but we would have rather they had just been around more. I wish they could have raised me right, but I doubt they would have done a better job. That brings us to where we are today. My siblings ended up okay, but I never recovered. I took those coins, and those stamps, and those novelty toys, and based my life around them. I began to collect on my own, and like I was saying, it wasn’t a problem until it was a problem.

The word you’re looking for is hoarder. Some people become as such by not being able to get rid of things. They don’t deliberately order magazines just to stack them. They subscribe to a given periodical, and then just keep each one. I’m not like that. I am a discerning hoarder. I have a very particular compulsion. I don’t just want a whole bunch of cats, or even a whole bunch of dead cats. I want sets. I want every size of every color of a given series of highly absorbent towels. I want one of every item in a line of kitchenware from a certain brand. I don’t buy junk at random, and drop it all somewhere in my house. Each one has to belong, so I end up with a comprehensive—and truthfully, beautiful—collection to put on display. Because that’s the whole point, to showcase my collections to others. It’s not my fault that I don’t have a big enough place to do it right. If I lived in a mansion, you wouldn’t think any of this was weird. No, you would walk into my classic English literature room, and see my copy of Tarmides of Egypt, as well as all of his other works, along with his contemporaries. That’s what belongs there. And there’s a room for the stamps, and one for sports balls, and another for a generic license plate from every single unique region in the world, and so on, and so forth. That last one has always been my dream, I don’t actually have a complete set. If I did, I wouldn’t have the space for it, because I can’t afford that mansion. My parents were the ones who were rich, not me. So here I am in my wee little flat, where I look like a crazy person who’s oblivious to the state of her world. Whatever, my great-niece was telling me about haters, and that’s all people are. I regret nothing.

Microstory 1691: In All Things

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Biological optimization was always sort of in the back of the minds of the people who lived in Moderaverse, even before they earned their name. I couldn’t explain why it is that this version of Earth was so different than others. I couldn’t explain why such a thing ever happens at all. What changes are made that cause this divergence, and why? I suppose that it doesn’t truly require an explanation. It just is. The Moderaversals just reached what they would call technological completeness, and left it at that. That’s what it really comes down to. Most cultures develop a high level of curiosity, and nothing can stop them from pursuing knowledge. They might be held back by religious hangups, or they may be limited by other conditions, such as pandemics, or extreme gravity. But the strongest of them will survive because they had a drive to be better, more advanced. This, I suppose, is an extension of the evolutionary concept of the survival of the fittest. The reason humans always become the dominant species of their world is not because they decide to be better at life. They’re better at life because those fit to survive are the only ones who will survive. Nothing evolves to be subservient, weak, and averse to survival. Such traits always disappear, because anytime they show up in an individual, that individual will struggle to persist, and pass on their genes. So once the species evolves enough to have intelligence, they’ll start using that intelligence to improve themselves. Then it will just keep going until there is nothing left to learn, if such a state is even possible. The Moderaversals, on the other hand, experience no such desire. They have determined that life itself is good enough, and as long as it never ends, they shouldn’t worry about advancing beyond it. They don’t need faster ships, or cooler tech. All they care about is relaxing, exerting as little effort as possible, and living in harmony with nature.

It was a long road to reach this point. As I said, the dream was always there, but it wasn’t always practical. Everyone starts somewhere. No one quite remembers how exactly the movement got started, or who started it, but it was kind of like a nonreligious religion. I guess it was more of a philosophical way of life, where people started to reject modern technology in favor of simpler lives, but still with less work. A true simple life would involve waking up while it was still dark, and working until it became dark again, but they certainly didn’t want that. That wasn’t chill. They got rid of most of their worldly possessions, which included a lot of art. That was one interesting side effect of the movement. Art does not require technology, but the enjoyment of it often does. For them, it meant no more movies, no more television. If they wanted to see a play, admire a painting, or hear music, they would have to go witness it in person. Over the decades, even as technology progressed, the movement grew. The great thing about it was that it was adjustable. Some people eschewed all electricity, while others just tried to unplug more often. Eventually, there wasn’t as much demand for certain things as there are in other universes. Most people didn’t care about looking for life on other planets. They didn’t care about cooling down supercomputers, or building extremely realistic virtual simulations. They just didn’t ever want to die. So that was the kind of science that students started getting into, and the more that started the help them, the less they relied on other things; from the hyperfast pocket devices, to even just clothes. When you can regulate your own body temperature, clothing seems a lot less necessary. There wasn’t really any sort of opposition to this movement. No one decided to move off, and do their own thing somewhere else. They all just fell in line, and got with the program, until doing anything all day other than pretty much nothing was essentially unthinkable to nearly everyone.

Microstory 1653: Flipsides

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Not all of the dichotomies from Flipverse were bad, or hostile, or violent. There was one in particular that was pretty innocuous. It wasn’t without its controversies, but it was created with the best of intentions, and designed just to be fun and entertaining. They called it Flipsides, and it was a reality show that featured a tournament style competition, which pitted two different types of people against each other. Every season was about two somewhat opposing lifestyles, if only superficially. The first, for instance, was city-dwellers against rural-dwellers. The second season was athletes versus scholars. You might imagine the criticism that the producers endured over the years—accusations of playing into stereotypes—but for the most part, it did okay. It lasted for eleven seasons, and mostly only ended because of other social changes that were going on in the world at the time, which made pursuing any entertainment endeavor difficult. The contests were varied. They took place in different locales, all over the world, and no specific contest was ever repeated. Some were in swamps, others in the mountains, and they even went into orbit around the planet. The audience would vote on various things, such as which contestants would compete in which location. Anything could happen, including the rules being changed mid-game, just to make things more interesting, but no one was ever given an unfair advantage, unless they earned it in some other way. Many tuned in, not just for the competition itself, but the drama that surrounded the contestants. How they lived together during the season, even after people were eliminated, was an important aspect of the social experiment; perhaps most important. There were group challenges, and bonus challenges, and these led to secret advantages, or better accommodations, which could result in social complications. People fell in love, and fell out of love, and had fights, and were occasionally kicked off for causing too many problems, or quit. The impact of the show went beyond the broadcast itself. Many contestants were elevated from it, and started getting noticed for the other things they did in their life. The final season spawned a documentary, where some of the most favored contestants were followed around in their daily lives, as they kept in contact with each other. While proper physics of Flipverse always had a little bit of scifi stuff going on with it, it was actually the leads of the docuseries that uncovered until then unknown secrets of the cosmos, and changed the course of history for the entire world.

Microstory 1612: Absolute Zero

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As we’ve discussed, concurrent realities are rare, but they do come up. Salmonverse has a handful, while Area Double Universe has thousands. Today, I want to talk about a brane that has only two realities. There’s no name for it, to distinguish it from others, as far as I know. All I know is that it’s a scary and dangerous place, and I can’t recommend it for vacation if you’re looking to relieve some stress. As a spirit, I hesitate to make a claim about whether evil exists, or if life is just all about choices, but this brane sure makes a compelling argument for the former. From my perspective, one of the realities appears to be the primary, while the other is reliant on the outcome of events from the first. Let’s say you were from this universe, and you happened to be a chef, and restaurant owner. You keep prices low, treat your employees well, and give your day-old bread to the homeless. You’re not perfect, but on the whole, you’re a good person. Your alternate self will be just as bad as you are good—I mean, exactly as far from absolute zero. On the other hand, if you’re a serial killer, your alternate self would be a saint. But their life would be incredibly difficult, because people are good in general, so that makes the alternate reality pretty bad. So that would be terrible on its own, but at least the main reality would be able to move on, and ignore their counterparts, right? Wrong. Whereas most of the time, you have to advance science enough to figure out how to access other dimensions, that sort of thing sometimes just happens to some people in this world. You could walk through your front door, and end up inside the alternate, and would have to hope you survive long enough to make it back home. Fortunately, if you do manage to not die, you will get back home. People remain permanently connected to their reality, and they will eventually be summoned home without having to do anything special. So there’s not a whole lot of interaction between the two realities—not on a large scale—but it does occur in isolated cases, and it does cause problems.

Enough of this back and forth travel happened throughout history that the governments and experts got together, and started trying to come up with solutions. They decided it was their moral obligation to do something about the other side. Could they destroy them? Could they teach them to be better? What if they shared knowledge, or resources, or disciplinary techniques? After years of study, and a whole lot of incidents that did not go well at all, they came to a single conclusion. The only way to stop everyone from being so evil over there was to stop being so good on the main side. They tried to institute programs, which were designed to teach people to just be okay. No more saints, no more sinners, just regular people who were doing all right. Everyone was expected to get average grades in school, and do the bare minimum at work. Don’t make waves, and don’t change the status quo. Just live your boring life throughout the day, and then go to bed. Certain things were outlawed in the hopes of making this easier. There was no more music or entertainment. Everyone ate meal replacements, and cooking anything else was strictly forbidden. All these things made people too happy, and if they were happy, their alternate was miserable. As you might have guessed, these measures did not work in the least. You can’t just make people be different. A rebel faction rose up, and became more and more violent over the years. Before they knew it, the main reality was more evil, and the secondary reality was full of good people just trying to do the right thing.

Microstory 1590: Isolated

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Prompt

I have the ability to feel other people’s pain, but I can’t do anything about it, so I’ve moved out to the middle of nowhere, and plan to avoid people as much as possible.

Botner

Not just to protect myself, but also to help the curse on my life disappear as soon as I can. I’m stuck here, in the middle of nowhere, by my lonesome. No one knows where I am. And that scares me more than I can explain, as it means that they’re all waiting for me to turn up again, and either find me or confront me. I’m not good at hiding things. I have a very bad conscience. It feels as if my chest would burst from the weight of what I’ve been through. But I’m not alone in the house, or in the hills. I have a loving cousin who understands my curse, and who has promised to hide me and help me as much as he can. I have friends, too, who believe in me and who I can talk to about anything. I feel my power is growing, too. I’m seeing power in objects around me that wasn’t there before, and my curse is helping it happen. It’s getting harder to hide. I’m only hiding myself because it’s safer than talking to my neighbors, who think I’m a dangerous psychopath. Even though I’m not. With...

Conclusion

...everything going on in the world right now, I should look quite normal as a hermit, but you know people, they talk. For the last week, my satellite internet has been down, and I don’t know how to fix it myself. I keep trying to force myself to go into town to get some help, but I just can’t do it. It hurts too much. Now that I know how much easier life is when there’s no one around to mess with my feelings and senses, I can’t go back to how it was. I don’t want to spend another minute around another person. My cousin hasn’t attempted to come help me, even though I missed our weekly video chat check-in. He’s given up, as have my friends. I look around the cabin for something to do, but I didn’t bring a whole lot of entertainment with me, because I was intending to stay connected to the world virtually. Another week goes by, and I still haven’t worked up the courage to seek help. I have, however, given the simple life a real shot. My garden is blooming, and I am loving the long walks I take through the woods. Maybe I don’t need the internet at all. Even without my curse forcing me into it, maybe this is the best life I could have asked for. Right now, I’m farther from my home than I ever have been before, and it turns out I’m pretty close to some campgrounds. I hear music in the distance, but there’s only one tent within my pain-sensing range. It must be empty, though, because I’m not feeling any pain, emotional or physical. I turn back, glad that I didn’t run into anyone else, when a woman appears from around the bend, holding a stack of firewood. It’s amazing, I don’t feel anything but serenity, love, and joy from her. I don’t know if that means she isn’t feeling any pain, or there’s just something different about her. I wonder what my life could be life if we were together, just me and her. I would no longer have to be alone, and my curse wouldn’t matter anymore. She smiles at me politely, completely unaware of how incredibly magnificent she is, and how great it feels just to be around her. I can’t tell her, either. She wouldn’t understand, and it would just make her uncomfortable. All I can do is tip my hat, walk past her, and move on with my life without ever seeing her again.

Microstory 1499: The End of Durus

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Two hundred years after Savitri became the first human on Durus, the eleventh major form of government, the Solar Democratic Republic officially ended. Technically, it should have ended a long time ago, if not once the rogue world left 70 Ophiuchi space, then certainly when nearly the entire population was evacuated through the Nexus. Survivors, called remainders, ultimately agreed that this most recent event was the greater shift than those others, however. The thirteenth remainder in charge of waking up from stasis, and being available to solve any problems, was a woman by the name of Kyra Torosian. Nothing of note happened for the first few months of her shift. A couple of the pods experienced some power irregularities, but these were simple repairs. None of the Dardieti team were awake at the time, for she was not considered a threat to them. She spent her days zipping throughout the bunkers on a scooter that one of the children left there when he evacuated, and carrying on full conversations with her completely unresponsive friends. They had access to entertainment from Durus, Dardius, and even Earth, but she wasn’t much for that kind of art, so she really just wasted the days away. She was the type of person who could sit in a chair for hours, doing nothing else, and not grow bored. Her mind was just too busy with her imagination for it to matter much what her environment was, as long as it wasn’t uncomfortable, or sometimes even if. One day, Kyra was wandering the halls just outside the Nexus room when she thought she heard it start to power up. Of course, she assumed that someone from Dardius was coming to check on them, so she ran inside, and mentally prepared herself to greet them professionally, and in her words, well-spokenly. She never knew exactly what happened, or whether anyone was actually trying to come through, because it all went wrong. The machine exploded, and sent a wave of energy throughout the entire section.

What no one knew at the time was that the explosion was an accident, and happened to all Nexa in this universe. Because they involve time travel, they didn’t explode all at once, and the damages were not irreparable, but this did cause a number of problems for everyone who needed to use them at certain times. The explosion was powerful, but it was pretty contained, so no one else on Durus was affected, or even immediately made aware that it happened. Kyra would later have to start waking them up, so she could let them know. Obviously, the explosion didn’t kill her, which was a universal result. Others experienced superficial injuries, but nothing serious. What set Kyra apart was that she came from a bloodline of paramounts. While there was never enough temporal energy on Durus for her to have exhibited any powers before, she was genetically predisposed to developing them, and the Nexus explosion was enough to do just that. What was unclear was whether she would have developed the same power under different circumstances, or if the explosion also decided what she could do. Evidence suggested the latter. After waking key remainder leadership, along with the team from Dardius, Kyra went about figuring out who she now was. It was like she became a walking Nexus. When someone touched her, they would be transported to one of the other Nexa, and if someone made the appropriate hyperdimensional metamathematical calculations, they could also transport to her. Unlike regular Nexa, Kyra could also transport herself anywhere in the universe that she wanted; it didn’t even have to be tied to the network. Every time she jumped somewhere, it would recharge her temporal energy, like a perpetual motion engine, and the more she did it, the stronger she became. Over time, she would end up with enough power to move entire planets through the network, which she used to move Durus to its new home. Not even the Nexa could do that. It wouldn’t be there forever, though, because her power continued to grow. The remainders would come to use their unique position to fight a great war against a multiversal threat. Until then, the remainders had to decide how they were going to use this advantage, and whether they would be able to convince any former Durune to return to their homeworld. While they worked on that, they figured they ought to shift to yet another form of government. This one would be called the Kyran Nexus Tempocracy. That was not all, though. The remainders would also decide to change the name of the planet to Torosia, in honor of her.