Microstory 2757: Point of No Return

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Omni Flash 1.1

Jolanda tries to walk out the door into the empty city, but Rage warns her off, saying that something is still wrong. They must have assembled the puzzle incorrectly. Perhaps it poisoned them and caused them all to lose time, or there’s just something weird going on that none of them can explain.

“I can explain it,” Miracle says as she walks right outside. “We are in a Facsimile.”

“I don’t know what that means.” Rage is in the doorway to protect everyone else.

Miracle rolls her eyes, and waves her arms like she’s parting the Red Sea. “Would you please? I need everyone to see and hear me.” She sighs. “I didn’t know we would encounter time travel on this journey. I thought it was possible, but I guess I gave Hrockas too much credit. I don’t have the time or bandwidth to explain everything, so let’s just go over the basics. Has anyone seen an old show called Stranger Things?”

A few people raise their hands, including Colley.

“There’s an evil world in that show that looks just like ours, except there aren’t any people in it, and it’s horrific. There are all sorts of vines and mold covering everything, and toxic particles float around all the time. Spoiler alert, what they eventually discover is that this copy of the world was created on a particular day in the past, like a snapshot of a single moment. That is basically what this is, but without the horror overtones. Well...there was that one time when zombies and other monsters were fabricated here in secret so they could be let loose on the populace—”

“I remember that,” Zelda jumps in. “I was trying to relax in Mildome when a serial killer from Bloodbourne suddenly attacked. They weren’t too hard to kill, though.”

They all look at her like she’s crazy.

“What? I don’t only spend my time in Adrenadome. I like bees and butterflies.”

“Well,” Miracle continues, “now you know, this is where they came from. I can’t tell you not to worry about lingering monsters, but let’s hope not. The person who controlled them no longer has control over this place. He was sent away. We actually fought alongside each other against a bigger threat, but he never returned. I’m just trying to give you an idea of where we are, and what we’ll find. Any questions so far?”

“Yeah.” Rage raises her hand. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Miracle sighs again. “Hrockas can force me into any substrate he wants, but he can’t stop me from using my powers. Those are based on my neurology, so he would have to kill me to get rid of them.” She squares her shoulders and makes sure that everyone is watching. She disappears, simultaneously reappearing on the ground a few meters away. She screams in agony as she holds her head. “Ah, you son of a bitch, what did you do?” More screaming.

A gargantuan holographic screen resolves in the sky. It’s Hrockas again. “Nuh-uh-uh. No time powers. You think I didn’t plan for that? This world is littered with temporal suppression fields. Good luck turning them all off.” He blinks away.

Elise helps Miracle back to her feet. “Don’t do that again. We get the idea.”

“I’m still not sure I believe it,” Rage reasons. “I can think of four major explanations off the top of my head for what she just did.”

“I have seen people do what she just did before,” Jolanda admits. “I was born on Proxima Doma. Before you ask, I wasn’t on the surface or in low-orbit when it was destroyed, but I did become a refugee. They ferried us to Gatewood where we could choose our final destinations for free. I ultimately opted to transmit my consciousness here, but not before I witnessed a riot that had to be quelled by a bunch of teleporting cops. I don’t think they were faking it. What would have been the point?”

“I’m sorry you went through that.” Minotaur gives Jolanda a hug from the side.

Miracle nods. “The faster-than-light technology some ships use now? Researchers didn’t simply finally figure it out. People like me gave it to them. They had this big meeting in the year 2400 with the, uhh...sort of council. I had nothing to do with it because I’m not on the Shortlist, but there’s a very low chance that your life has not been impacted directly by a time traveler one way or the other, for good or bad.

“Miss Shin, if you were a refugee, you probably spent some time on The Tangent, or at least you saw it. Their artificial gravity was a gift from that council. Hrockas has a number of friends with powers and patterns. A team of them was instrumental in making Castlebourne what it is today, and he continues to employ others. For the most part, they try to keep the tech more conventional, but there are some things normal physics can’t handle.” She gestures at the world around them. “This is proof of that. I’m betting they keep it up and running just in case they ever need it, for times like these.”

“So, what are we facing?” Zelda asks Miracle. “How dangerous is this tech?”

“You’re not actually listening to her,” Rage complains. “We can’t trust her.”

“I’m not trying to be your leader,” Miracle defends. “I’m only giving you the facts. What are we facing? No way to know, but throw your rule book out the window, because it no longer applies. Time travel is a very loose term, and a misnomer. Many who can manipulate spacetime don’t simply move forwards or backwards. Some can turn invisible by basically showing you what’s behind them instead of them. Some can duplicate themselves by pulling from microrealities. Hrockas may only be using this dimension to separate us from gen pop, but he also might be planning to throw temporal obstacles at us. Rage, you can listen to me or not, but if it’s that second option, I have an incredibly unfair advantage, because I’ve seen this stuff before.”

A deafening silence falls, making this city even more a liminal space than it was when they first set foot out here. Miracle could be wrong. The people they saw before might have been volumetric images. Or the dome they were in simply spun around to the other side, which was made to be a replica of this, but never populated. There are other explanations for what happened to them, but on the off-chance that Miracle isn’t mistaken or lying, they have to pay attention to her. Trust, but verify.

Elise stands over by her friend. “Rage is the leader. That’s not changing. Miracle, let’s call you the advisor.” She gestures to her main teammates. “We’ve been working together for weeks, and we know what each other has to offer. We’ve settled into our respective roles, so that can be yours. But until further notice, we must all be in an alliance together. Do you disagree, Miss Brighton?”

Miracle smiles. “I do not. Like I said, I don’t wanna lead. Advisor feels right.”

“Rage?” Elise asks, hoping that the tensions don’t escalate.

“Very well,” Rage decides. “I’ll listen to you, Miracle, but I promise nothing regarding my actions. If I want to make a different call, that’s what I’ll do.”

“Sounds good.” Miracle turns around. “Now. First thing we need to do is check for—” She takes a step forward, and suddenly disappears. A few seconds later, they hear her screaming from the heavens, right before she splats on the ground. “...Time mines.”

Microstory 2756: Skull and Bones

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Omni Flash 1.1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Microstory 2755: Please Don’t Hold the Handrail

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Omni Flash 1.1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Remember the elevator scene?” Elise presses.

“You don’t mean...” Colley begins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Microstory 2753: Dropoffs Only

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Omni Flash 1.1

The football match started right after this Miracle Brighton woman claimed that she and her team were interested in the same thing in Treasure Hunting Dome. Rage didn’t have a chance to talk to her afterwards, because they were separated into different locker rooms, and then she couldn’t locate her again. Rage says that she’s not entirely surprised. The possibility of an ultimate secret prize isn’t something that she randomly came up with on her own. The rumor has been around since Treasure Hunting Dome first opened. Over the decades, with no proof that anyone ever won it, however, most have lost interest. They assume now that it doesn’t exist. Perhaps the rumor was started by the planet owner, who wanted to build hype, or it started organically. The fact that nothing has ever come of it has only served to intrigue Rage more, and Miracle evidently had the same idea. They try to find her on the local network, but no luck.

They train with each other in the Sandbox warehouse for about another week, but they have to be careful, because their efforts are not being made in secret. If they wanted complete privacy, they would have needed to go to a different planet. No one has ever said anything, but it’s plausible that the Custodians who run the game will use the team’s experience against them. If they get really good, for instance, at driving on the right side of the road, they might end up with a task where they have to drive on the left. And if they practice both, they might not get any driving challenge at all, and it will have been a waste of time. There’s no way to know, which also means there’s no reason to keep doing this indefinitely. They all agree that it’s time to dive in head first.

Before the big day, they check into the Apex Suite at the Palacium Hotel for a good night’s rest. Minotaur was able to secure it for them on short notice because they know someone who knows someone who knows someone. They would have been—

Smoke. Smoke and fire. Elise wakes up to find her room ablaze. She checks her consciousness stream and finds that it’s been severed. Her last upload was three hours ago. If she doesn’t get it turned back on, and dies here, the person who boots up in her backup body won’t really be her. It will only be a copy who thinks she’s Elise. How can this place be on fire? Things don’t catch fire anymore. It just isn’t done.

The door bursts off its hinges, and falls to the floor. Jolanda scrambles back up. She scoops Elise off the bed, and carries her out to the common area. It’s on fire too.

“I’m not streaming!” Elise warns.

“None of us is!” Jolanda is still carrying her as she finds her way across the room.

Zelda is holding a chair, pounding the leg against the edges of the window.

“We’re two kilometers up and that’s security glass!” Elise warns. “It won’t break!”

“Not without some help!” Zelda says. “Stand by Mino, Jo!” She keeps pounding.

“I think you can put me down now,” Elise tells Jolanda.

“We agreed that I would be the one to take you out,” Jolanda replies.

“What?” Elise questions. “What do you mean, take me out?”

Rage appears to their left, holding Colley like he’s also a little baby.

Zelda stops striking the glass, and puts her steampunk goggles on. “Ready?”

“Do it,” Rage orders. She grips Colley tighter. “Everyone turn off your lungs!”

Zelda takes Minotaur in one arm, then reaches out with the other to grip the doorknob of what’s either a bathroom or a closet. She yanks it open. It explodes.

Fire rushes out of the room, and crashes into the window. It’s destroyed instantly, and in that same instant, all six of them are sucked out.

Jolanda never lets go, but now she looks more worried than ever. Even though she has less experience skydiving, she doesn’t have none. They wouldn’t have done this if they weren’t each packing the right equipment, like parachutes and/or wingsuits. Why does she look so scared? She holds Elise tighter with one arm while she maneuvers her other one, hovering her watch above Elise’s face.

It takes a second for Elise to realize what Jolanda is trying to show her. Their altitude is about 35,000 meters and falling. They should not be anywhere near that high. That’s damn near the apex of the whole freaking top. Despite its name, that’s not where the Apex Suite sits. It’s just at the top of the building. She turns her head enough to look back up, but whatever they just fell out of has now been covered by clouds. She can see the other two pairs, though. Wait, four—no, six. Other people are also falling alongside them, presumably from some nearby suite that was also on fire. What is happening?

They keep falling for about a minute before Elise gets her head turned enough to see land below. It’s coming up fast. If Jolanda doesn’t do something soon...

“You can turn your lungs back on!” Jolanda shouts. “Or don’t, you don’t need them! But you do need to hold on tighter, with your arms and legs! I need to pull!”

Elise tightens up and buries her face in Jolanda’s neck. She may be falling in love.

Jolanda pulls the ripcord. The parachute flies out of the back of her belt. Elise’s legs slip off, and begin to dangle, but Jolanda wraps her arm back around her to compensate. After a few seconds, the initial shock wears off, and now they’re just floating. They’re actually going to be okay. They’re going to survive this.

Elise gets another look around now, and starts to run attendance. Rage, Colley, Zelda, and Minotaur; everyone’s here. She looks in the other direction, at the strangers. They’re actually not strangers. She recognizes Miracle’s face. She’s holding the girl who did a backflip on the football pitch. Instead of a parachute, they’re staying aloft via Miracle’s white feathered wings. Which is all sorts of crazy, but it’s clearly working.

As they’re drifting towards the ground, Elise feels something bite at her arm. Some kind of bug? She can’t get a look at it to check. She’ll just have to tough it out. But then she feels another bite on her other arm. She also sees rain begin to fall all around them, which doesn’t feel like a coincidence. She looks up in horror to find holes forming on the parachute above them. The holes are growing as something begins to shred the material. Rain plus stinging plus tearing equals only one thing. Acid rain.

Either someone is trying to kill them, or they’re just having a little fun, and they don’t know that the team isn’t streaming properly. The fact that they were somehow moved to the very top of the dome leads her to believe that this is attempted murder. Hours from now, when the unscheduled data gap triggers emergency resuscitation procedures, her latest backup will wake up with no idea what went wrong. She will have no reason to suspect foul play, but at least some version of Elise will exist. With that, there is a modicum of hope for justice.

After only a few seconds, the parachute can’t take it anymore. It violently rips apart, sending Elise and Jolanda away from each other. Not that it matters. At this height, even their advanced substrates won’t survive it. Elise keeps falling and falling until she runs out of room and splats on the ground.

Microstory 2749: Mind the Gap

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Omni Flash 1.1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Unverified attribution,” the guy counters.

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

“Colley Rochelle,” he returns.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Zelda recites.

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

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

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

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

Extremus: Year 130

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Pollo AI text-to-video AI software

As angry as Audrey is at Silveon for forcing her through the Nexus, she lets go of it pretty quickly when she meets her daughter. Silvia Husk is 28 years old now, and she feels so grateful for this incredible opportunity. Her alternate self has done a great job of raising a productive and well-rounded individual. One thing that Extremus!Audrey—as they have decided to call her to distinguish her from Green!Audrey—was worried about, was how Silvia would handle this situation. Audrey herself would be a little freaked out in her shoes. It would be weird for her to suddenly have two mothers, but Silvia hasn’t been struggling at all. It sounds like she had quite the happy childhood, and has grown up into a beautiful, confident young woman. Extremus!Audrey is sad that she missed it all. But at least they have this time now.

Today, Silvia wants to show Extremus!Audrey something. Green!Audrey isn’t coming. It’s unclear if that’s because she’s already seen it, or if it’s something that will only be between the two of them. “This is only between us,” Silvia says, answering the question right away. She unlocks a safe under her bed and pulls out a teleporter band. “This is off the grid. It’s scary to use, because it relies on line-of-sight, and where we’re going, we can’t see it from here. We’re gonna have to jump to the sky a few times before landing where we wanna be, but I promise, it will be worth it.”

Audrey smiles at her precious daughter. “I trust you.” She’s never been in the sky before. She’s hardly spent any time outside her whole life. She sleeps under the stars nearly every night, even if that means teleporting to the other side of Verdemus for the right weather conditions. The immersion holograms really don’t do it justice. Nothing beats true nature. And that must be where they’re going now, because if it’s off the grid, it’s not going to be a clone factory, or a space elevator station. Plus, she said to wear her swimsuit underneath her clothes. She lets Audrey bound their wrists with a tether so if they die, they die together, and then they jump away.

They immediately start to fall. Audrey doesn’t know where to look, but that’s not her job. She smiles over at her girl, who is enjoying herself a little too much. Before they get anywhere close to Splat City, though, she looks over and jumps them back up to a higher altitude, but at a different longitude. They do that a couple more times before reaching their real target, and man is it a close call. They’re standing at the very edge of an island cliff. If Audrey were to take one step back, she would pull them over. And they could really get hurt before Silvia managed to jump them to safety again. She steps forward a few meters, then undoes the tether herself. “This is beautiful.”

“It’s an island. Pretty small, comparatively speaking. It’s basically just a tall-ass rock in the middle of the ocean. The satellites have mapped it, of course, but it’s entirely untouched. As far as I know, I’m the only person who has ever been here. I actually love to freefall. It’s one of my favorite things to do. That’s how I ended up finding this place, just from flying all over the world.

“That’s really cool, Silvy,” Audrey says sincerely. “I’m so thankful for our time together. I wish I had been able to raise you.”

Silvia begins to tear up. “There’s something else I never told my mother. And I wouldn’t tell you, but I think you have the right to know.”

“You can tell me anything,” Audrey promises. “And you can tell her too.”

Silvia fights through the tears. “I’m more like my father than I would like to admit. I’m not a tyrant, or anything, but I inherited something from him.”

“You’re psychic.”

“Only in one very weird sort of way,” Silvia goes on. “I can’t...read people’s thoughts like grandma, or feel their emotions like dad. It’s more like I see the timeline of their thoughts. I can see where their consciousness began, and...” She trails off.

“You can see where it is.”

“Yes. I know when people are going to die.”

Audrey nods somberly. “I was gonna potentially live forever. There’s this thing we have on the Extremus—”

“The Question, I know it. Mother has trusted me with a lot of secret information. She said she never considered not telling me the truth. It must have been hard for you, having to stay with my father for so long. Mother thought he might get worse over time.”

“He did, but I still hold out hope. I think maybe this was the best thing for him, and the ship. I think maybe my presence was just getting in the way, or really, that it was no longer helping. My chapter there is over, and from the way you’re sobbing, I’m guessing that this isn’t the start of a new chapter, but more of an epilogue.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry you won’t get to see the Extremus planet.”

Audrey looks back out at the grandeur. “I did. This is what the mission was for. It doesn’t matter how far from the Core Worlds we traveled. That was never what we were truly looking for. I have no regrets, not even your father. He gave me you, if only for a year.”

“If it helps, I’m not sure if this truly spells the end. There’s something weird about the consciousness stream. It does end, but then... Then there’s something else. Like, a locked door that I can’t see past. Maybe there’s an afterlife. A true one, beyond the buffer.”

“Maybe,” Audrey agrees.

“Well.” Silvia wipes the tears from her face. “The good news is, you’re not in any danger. You literally can’t die today. If you want, I can tell you exactly when—”

“No, I’m fine with a little bit of mystery. I don’t need to know everything, but it’s nice to know we at least have the day.”

“Yeah. So. How about it?”

“How about what?” Audrey asks.

Silvia shakes her eyes towards the edge of the cliff. “Let’s go. I’ve done it many times myself. I assure you, it’s perfectly safe, as long as you clear about a meter from the edge.”

“Oh, is that it?” What a ridiculous suggestion.

“I told you, you can’t die.”

“And what about you? Can you see the end of your own stream?”

“No, but I don’t want to live my life cowering in the corner.”

Audrey considers the proposition. She definitely believes Silvia when she says that she won’t die, but that won’t make it any easier. It won’t make it any less scary. But she doesn’t want to be fearful either. She frowns, trying to make it seem like she’s gonna say no, but then she turns it upside down and pulls her shirt off. “Well, come on! If we’re gonna do it, let’s not waste time!”

Mother and daughter hold each other by the waist, and stand on the very edge again, but this time overlooking the water, smiling at each other. Without counting down or speaking, they turn towards the unknown, and jump off.

Audrey dies about a year later, just in time to make it to the big afterlife simulation in the sky before it apparently collapses.

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 2607: You Ever Find Yourself Hanging off the Edge of a Building, You’re Gonna Wanna Do At Least One

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Pro text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3.1

August 19, 2526. Breanna and Cashmere’s joint escape pod is dangling from the side of the dome, but they don’t know how long the parachute is going to last. It might tear or slip off any second now. Breanna finishes synthesizing their status, and coming up with a plan. “We’re too far in the center of this pane.”

“What does that prevent us from doing?” Cashmere asks.

“We can melt the frame of this dome using an overboosted impulsive burn, and break a pane off. If the pressure doesn’t suck us right through immediately, we can then slip in and jump to safety.”

“Why don’t we release the parachute, and use the remaining thruster fuel to glide down on the outside of the dome?”

“Because there’s not enough fuel.”

“We could supplement it with the back-up parachute.”

Breanna shakes her head, knowing that Cashmere can’t see her. “We can’t control our descent in this thing. Whatever expanded the atmosphere is causing unpredictable weather patterns. We could end up knocking against the dome over and over again, leading to severe blunt force trauma. It’s a miracle that the main chute didn’t snap. We can’t risk the back-up. If it fails, we’re done for. No, the safest way down is for us to use our own personal chutes, free from the confines of the pod, and as far from the dome structure as possible.”

“I’m not arguing with you,” Cashmere replies, “I just want to make sure you have all of your options. Sometimes really smart people like you don’t see the dumb obvious things that people like me can’t see beyond.”

“It’s not the worst idea, but something happened to this planet, and until we figure out what, I only want us taking minimal risks.”

“Okay,” Cashmere begins, “I’m in. But how do we get the thrusters to where they need to be?”

Breanna hesitates to answer, because this is the hard part. “I sent a flutterby drone to inspect our situation. The canopy is hanging off of a maintenance dock. There’s currently no repair beetle on charge, thank God, or it wouldn’t have been able to snag. Most of the suspension lines are hooked separately, however, on a rectenna. They’re holding us up higher. If those lines were to let go, the pod would drop down far enough for the thrusters to be kissing the frame below us.”

“So get your flutterby to cut the lines,” Cashmere suggests.

“They’re made out of a graphene-infused fiber. The flutterby isn’t nearly strong enough to cut through that. I’ll have to go out there, and use the emergency escape torch.”

“No, I’ll do it,” Cashmere volunteers.

“You don’t have the experience.”

“And you do? Hung off a lot of domes lately? I know how to use a torch, and it should be me, because I’m on top. I would have to move out of the way to let you get out instead. That just doesn’t make any sense.”

Breanna obviously already thought of that logic, but it’s not her place to delegate work. She has no rank, no authority. She was only on that ship as a passenger. To be fair, the same goes for Cashmere. Though, she is more of a nomadic tourist. “Okay, but you can’t cut them all at once. We want the pod to slip as slowly as possible so the drone dock still holds the canopy.”

“Got it,” Cashmere says as she’s shifting to prepare to leave. “One at a time. Red wire, green wire, blue wire. Give me yellow, I’ll paint you the world.”

“Okay, take my hand,” Breanna offers, reaching down. “When I open the hatch, it’s probably gonna break off, and you could go flying out after it.”

Cashmere obliges. “M’lady.”

“Ready. Four, three, two, one, mark.” She pops the hatch open. It does go flying off its hinges. Cashmere starts to slip out of the pod, but Breanna manages to hold onto her. “Mag, mag, mag!” she urges.

Cashmere magnetizes herself to the bottom of the pod, but doesn’t stay there long. She begins to climb, letting Breanna give her a boost, and taking the torch along.

“Keep shakin’ that bush,” Breanna shouts. “Let me know how you’re doing!”

“Almost through the first line!” She doesn’t have to announce it when she does make it through, because the pod violently drops down a little.

“Keep one eye on the canopy to make sure it’s holding!”

“Aye, captain!” Cashmere returns. She keeps working on the suspension lines, breaking through them one by one. Finally, with the last one, the thrusters are close enough to the frame.

“Okay, come back!”

“Just burn!”

“It’s safer in here!”

“There’s no door anymore!”

“Just get your ass back down here!” Brenna demands.

Without another word, Cashmere finally reappears. She carefully steps onto the floor of the pod, and remagnetizes. “I love it when you comment on my ass,” she says as she’s hugging Breanna for safety, and only for safety, right?

“Shut up. Is everything sexual to you?”

“Sex is everything,” she defends.

Breanna rolls her eyes. With the hatch gone, she has to use the manual controls on the side, which means she has to physically feel for how much fuel is being dispensed. No readouts here. She’s gonna burn fast and hard. If the fire goes out, and that frame hasn’t melted, they’re gonna have to take their chances out here, and hope the wind carries their gliders to safety. “Four, three, two, one, burn.” She pushes the flush lever to the side with her thumb. It hurts because it’s stiff, and doesn’t want to be moved. She only has to hold for a few seconds, though. The flutterby reports that the diamond pane has turned, revealing a small gap between it and the frame. Plus, the fuel has run out. The gauge was broken, having claimed higher levels.

“What do we do now?” Cashmere asks.

“Shit, I don’t know,” Breanna responds. “We might need to get out and kick it with our f—aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!”

Microstory 2592: Renata Jumps Out of the Emergency Exit, and Falls About One Story Down

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Pro text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3.1

Renata jumps out of the emergency exit, and falls about one story down. She lands on her feet, bending them to absorb the shock, and stopping herself from hitting her face by holding her hands out at her sides. Quidel is clear at the back of the plane, still by the ramp. He runs over when he sees her do that. “Are you okay? What the hell were you thinking? Just because this thing was never in the air, doesn’t mean you weren’t high up.”

“I’m just testing my limits,” she answers casually as she’s brushing the dust off of her hands.

“Well, you’re not invincible, and you can still feel pain.”

“I can’t feel pain if I don’t want to, and just be glad I didn’t jump out of the crew door.”

He looks up at the cockpit, which is closer to three stories high. “You would break your legs. Even an android can’t survive that, unless it’s specifically designed to, which you’re not, because that would be a waste. This isn’t Underbelly.”

“I don’t know what that means.” She looks around at the desert. They are in a very remote region of Osman, miles and miles from the nearest city. They’re not trying to go anywhere in particular here. They’re just trying to keep this device far away from Libera. It’s not that she can’t get to this dome, but perhaps she won’t find them here if they’re well-hidden. That’s Spycraft 101. Lycander says that the dome has security cameras that allow beings on the outside to monitor progress, but the don’t cover everywhere. They don’t see everything. Even Ambients don’t permanently record what they see. That would be too much data to track and manage, especially since most of it is innocuous. So they should be safe enough running into a local, and not thinking that their coordinates are going to leak out. “Where is this MIS contact of yours?”

He looks over her shoulder, so she turns around to see a roofless off-roader heading their way. “She’s right on time, as per usual,” he says. She looks back at him. He’s smiling. He likes this girl. That could be dangerous. Relationships are always a risk, whether they work for the same agency, a different one, or if they’re a civilian. That’s Spycraft 101.

“She’s pretty,” Renata notes as the car draws nearer, but not near enough to make out enough detail for her to make that claim.

“For the last time, androids do not have telescopic vision. It’s not necessary. It just adds bulk and complexity to an already overengineered design. Why are you lying?”

“I’m a spy. It’s what we do,” Renata explains.

He sighs. “Since you were fishing, I’ll bite anyway. Yes, she’s beautiful. But you should know that we’re not supposed to be friends. Some spies are players, and some are not, and we’re not supposed to distinguish each other. We’re to treat everything as real, and not talk about the outside world.”

“Fair enough. I won’t mention anything about how my entire reality has just crumbled, and I don’t know what to believe anymore, and I’m having a massive internal existential crisis that I can’t talk to anyone about because I can’t trust anyone who knows the truth too, and I have never felt more alone.”

He gently tugs at her shoulder so she’s facing him again. “Is that true?”

Renata scoffs. “No. Take a joke.”

He knows she’s lying.

“What joke?” Lycander asks as he’s walking up from the plane, having secured it appropriately.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Hello, it’s nice to meet you,” Renata says as the Elbin agent pulls up. “My name is Renata Granger.”

The agent steps out of the car, and peers at her over her sunglasses, sizing her up. She chuckles at Quidel. “Found another one, huh? she asks him in a posh Elbin accent. Or maybe it’s actually British?”

“The first one, I think,” Quidel replies.

The Elbin woman smiles. “The one you’ve really been after this whole time.” She takes her sunglasses off completely, and gets a better look at Renata, like a vet examining a pregnant cow. “She understands where we are?”

Quidel notices Renata’s confusion. “That’s what I was trying to tell you, but had only gotten to the background info. You can be open and honest with Martina. She’s helped me move other conscious Exemplars and Ambients to safe places.”

“Call me Demuri, or just Demo,” she says, shaking Renata’s hand. “I chose to use a different name when I came to Spydome, but like he said, we’re all friends here now.”

Quidel nods approvingly. “She is not why we’re here, though. We need to secure a package. The person who’s after it has god-tier powers.”

Demo takes her glasses off again, and looks at him incredulously. “I don’t know what that means. Is that some kind of codeword that I was supposed to have memorized?”

“No, she has actual magic powers. According to these two, she disappeared before their eyes.”

Demo shrugs. “Holograms. Easy.”

“We were on a catwalk. They should have detected her footsteps. Before I killed my last substrate, she did show up suddenly, so I should have heard footsteps while I was still there with them.”

“Okay, well neither invisibility nor teleportation is a thing, in any dome. Not even Underbelly, which is designed to give you superhuman powers, can break the laws of physics, so I don’t know what they think they saw, but they didn’t see that.”

“I sure hope you’re right,” Quidel says, shaking his head. “I just wouldn’t bet on it. I trust them. I trust their perspectives.”

“I’ll accept that,” Demo acknowledges. “Regardless, we need to get to the safehouse. Fair warning, they are not luxury accommodations.”

“I’m a robot, so I can sleep anywhere,” Renata says.

“I wish I hadn’t ever said that to you,” Quidel complains.

“I’m glad you did,” Renata contends. “That’s when I finally started waking up.”