Microstory 2776: Jump

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The air escapes the rocket since they have no way of closing the bulkheads. Elise and Zelda strap themselves into the nearest seats as the inertial dampeners either don’t work, or don’t even exist. Elise feels her face collapse into itself as the apparent gravity increases. Back when she was much younger, high gravity training was required for space travel, even if you were just going into orbit. As the technology became more reliable, and redundancies were reinforced, they stopped treating everyone like an astronaut, and the first true passengers emerged. It has been centuries since she’s felt this, and she does not care for it. She turns her head to Zelda, who is, of course, loving it.

Several minutes later, the rocket has made it into orbit. The trembling stops, and the gravity stabilizes. They can finally relax and speak. Elise catches Zelda up on everything she missed after she was presumed dead. Their best guess is that this is not a new timeline, but the same one with more information. The girls sit there together, waiting for something special to happen, but it never does. This is a problem, because while the vacuum suit cartridge has its own carbon scrubber, it’s not the most efficient kind, and is only meant to be used in emergencies. That’s exactly what this is, but they should really get a more reliable source of air if they’re going to be here for a while.

Maybe this isn’t the final challenge, and never was. Maybe it was simply the hardest one yet, and the team has so much more to get through in any timeline. Elise doesn’t even really care about that anymore; she was only trying to save Zelda’s life and memories. If the hunt is going to continue, they have to get the rest of the team back somehow. Short of that, they have to reunite back on the real Castlebourne, and scrub the whole thing. But for now, all they can do is sit here and wait.

“There’s more we can do,” Zelda contends. “This is the same alien language that Colley encountered in the Empty Planet simulation, and the same one we’ve seen pop up every once in a while on this hunt. He figured it out eventually, so we can do the same.”

“Keyword is eventually,” Elise responds. “He beat Empty Planet because language and culture are his thing. I don’t know if we have time. He didn’t teach us.”

“We may as well try,” Zelda reasons. “One of these buttons shuts all of the bulkheads, and another one reestablishes air circulation. Or maybe a few of them, I don’t know, but the puzzle is here, we just have to solve it. We can do this, Elise.”

Elise sighs. “It’s alien. Maybe it doesn’t have the right atmospheric comps.”

“Then we’ll make it work. The hunt would not have led us here if it were impossible. The escape pod is a failsafe to get you out of the game, but you’re not supposed to take it. You’re supposed to be in here, and survive. Whatever we’re waiting to happen, it probably can’t happen until we turn on life support,” Zelda reasons.

Elise nods. “You’re right. There must be a way. The language is translatable.”

And so the girls start trying to understand what they’re looking at. They start by tracing the exposed cables from less dangerous systems to their controls. They figure out what turns the lights on and off, and which buttons open and close the panels. That gives them a baseline for what the alien symbols mean. From there, they incrementally learn what everything on the bridge does. It takes them hours, but they do figure it out.

Meanwhile, they start to understand what the ship is doing on its own. It doesn’t remain in a circular orbit. They’re climbing to a higher altitude. For what purpose, they don’t know, but Delta V will be lower farther from the planet’s gravity well, so it could be preparing to activate an ion drive, or something else, to leave Castlebourne entirely. They can’t let that happen, but none of these buttons says that there is a way to cross back over to the main dimension. The aliens probably couldn’t do that. The Facsimile is just the Custodians’ way of allowing the hunt to take the hunters anywhere in the world without interfering with the normal goings-on. It’s not actually part of the story.”

“Wait, I think this will do something,” Zelda says. She flips a switch.

An alien voice would occasionally make announcements through the speakers, particularly when they made some change. Knowing how to read the symbols, and understanding their spoken words, are not the same thing, so they have never been able to comprehend it. Until now. Now it’s all being said in plain English. Zelda flips the lights on and off a few times to confirm. “Lights on, lights off. Lights on, lights off—”

“Okay.” Elise pins Zelda’s hand down gently. “It works. That was the last piece of the puzzle. Now we just need to wait forty-two more seconds until that periodic announcement we keep hearing triggers again, and finally find out what it’s saying.”

“I think it’s counting down,” Zelda explains. “The second part is always the same, but the first part is always different.”

Elise nods. “That would be my guess too.”

“Eighty-three seconds to reintegration,” the voice says, confirming their guess.

They both widen their eyes. Reintegration? What exactly does that mean?

Eighty-three seconds pass. Sensors start going off. Proximity alert after proximity alert after proximity alert. They look through the viewports to see another space station. They’re fine—they’re not going to collide with it—but they’re clearly back in the real dimension. This is precisely what they were hoping for.

Elise opens her bag and grabs one of the communicators that she packed.

“Activating reframe engines in eleven minutes,” the computer announces.

“Is that the thing that makes a ship move faster than light?” Zelda questions.

“Yes,” Elise replies in a panicky voice. She opens a channel. “Laise, are you there? Please respond, Laise. This is Elise Perkins. Please respond!”

“Laise here, go ahead.”

“Have you been tracking the team? Do you know where they are?” Elise asks.

“Yes, they’re in a highly secure facility,” Laise answers. “I’ve been trying to break them out for an hour. I’m only at Step 2. I could really use your help.”

“If it’s secure,” Elise realizes, “then it probably doesn’t allow teleportation.”

“That was my thinking,” Laise agrees. “That’s why I’m shutting off the power.”

“Good girl,” Elise says. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

“Sending the coordinates now.” A brief pause. “Power will take a few minutes.”

“I can’t jump that far in one go,” Elise explains to Zelda. “I have to start now. She affixes the communicator onto her nanite vacuum suit, and seals most of it up, leaving only the visor open. “You stay here. If you can delay FTL, do it, but don’t stop it.”

“Aye, Captain,” Zelda says. “And Captain,” she adds when Elise tries to turn away. “One more thing.” She takes Elise by the helmet and kisses her passionately.

Elise lets her go and smiles. “I love you.” She drops her visor and teleports away.

Miracle called this burst mode. She can only jump about a thousand kilometers, so the first time she does it, she’s still in the middle of outer space. She immediately jumps again. Then again, and again, and again, until she’s back down on the surface. She’s standing next to Laise now, who is still waiting for Castledome’s power to turn off.

Laise salutes Elise, then shifts her fingers to count down. “Four, three, two, one.”

After all of the lights shut off, Elise picks Laise up, and teleports away.

They’re deep inside the castle now, in what looks like a dungeon. All of their friends are chained up on the other side of metal bars, which Elise is somehow not able to teleport through. They must be on auxiliary power. Azad is here too, dressed in medieval garb, instead of his usual heavily armored IMS unit. He draws his sword.

“I don’t have time for this,” Elise complains. “The ship is about to disappear.”

Azad jerks his head towards another sword leaning against the stone wall. “Then you better hurry. Because I’m the only one keeping that cell locked.” He tenses up.

Elise doesn’t move. She looks over at her friends, who are watching them, but not speaking. She can’t do this. Obviously, if she wins, Azad will either heal in this body, or transmit to a backup. That’s not really even the problem, though she might feel differently if she does put that weapon in her hands. The real issue is that she doesn’t want to transfer. She likes the body she’s in right now, and she was so preoccupied with training that she never went in to duplicate her current DNA. She will lose her wings, she’ll lose teleportation...she’ll lose everything. But her friends need her.

While Elise is frozen like a coward, Laise picks up the sword. She attacks Azad instead, and damn is she good. Elise didn’t take the time to get to know her, or ever ask why Miracle conscripted her for her team in the first place. This might have been the reason, because she is kicking Azad’s ass. He might be letting her win because he secretly wants them to complete the hunt, but he’s making a good show of it at least.

After a few minutes, Laise manages to knock the sword out of Azad’s hands.

Elise runs over to pick it up, because they never do that in movies, and it often leads to a final blow by the villain. She’s not going to use it herself, though.

“Do I have to kill you?” Laise asks Azad sternly, the tip at his neck.

“The gate is on a deadman’s switch,” Azad replies plainly.

Laise nods. She looks away, then quickly drives the blade into Azad’s throat. At his final heartbeat, the gate slides open, leading to hugs and kisses all around.

“Uh, Elise?” Zelda asks through comms. “You better get back here. The ship enters reframe speeds in three minutes. I couldn’t slow it down, or stop it if I tried.”

Elise frowns at her friends. “It’s too late. We’ll never make it in time.”

“We could try to compound our temporal energy,” Miracle suggests.

“I don’t know what that means,” Elise says, though she can hazard a guess.

“We don’t have time to get into it,” Miracle begins, “but when you cross the streams of two sources of temporal energy, it can create a feedback loop, pulling more than they normally would on their own. It’s dangerous, though. We could miss our mark, which we absolutely cannot do since you’re the only one with a vac suit.”

“We have to risk it,” Jolanda decides. “If worst comes to worst, we’ll each end up in our respective backup bodies, and miss the window. I would rather try.”

“We vote,” Rage says. “Raise your hand if you wanna risk it.” She looks over at Laise when everyone raises their hand. “Are you back in? Are you with us?”

“Damn right,” Laise says. “I regretted leaving the second I did.”

“Do it,” Rage says to Elise and Miracle.

There’s really nothing for Miracle to teach Elise. The latter already knows how to build her energy for longer jumps. She’s never been able to reach 8,000 kilometers before, and certainly not with any passengers, but she has the idea. She can feel it. As she’s holding Miracle’s hands, she can feel the power. It’s intoxicating. With every wave of energy, it feels like they’ve reached their limit, but then they let more and more in.

Elise focuses on Zelda again. She is their target. If they can get close to her, they’ll all be safe. The power feels good, but they may be reaching an actual limit, because the pressure is also getting to be a little much. She keeps pushing, though, no matter how much it hurts. They build until their hands are shaking, and then they build more until their whole bodies are shaking. A glowing white light starts bursting from their eyes, and their pores. If they don’t try this now, they could quite literally explode, and since we’re dealing with time travel, they might not all end up in their backups.

Now.

Elise wakes up on the floor. The architecture suggests that she’s back on the alien ship, but it’s nowhere she’s been before. It is definitely not the bridge. She stands up and wobbles a little before catching herself on a chair. She takes deep breaths to regain her balance while she stares at the door. Once she’s ready, she exits.

The others are in the corridor with her, having seemingly just woken up as well.

Minotaur leads them back to the bridge where they find Telman standing there patiently with a cool poker face.

Telman waits for everyone to file in. “Welcome...to Level 2.”

Tangent Point: Reads Like Science Fiction (Part VI)

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Breanna Jeffries didn’t want to tell Reed about the man in the photo, but he didn’t actually need her to say anything. He asked his AI, Thistle instead, who informed him that the man was still on board, and also where to find him. His daughter had recently given birth to a baby girl, and while most of the evacuees were gone, she had chosen to stay here. The child had already been through so much, they wanted her to wake up every day with some level of familiarity and comfort. The doctor who delivered it eventually evacuated from Proxima Doma as well, and was still here too. She asked the mother if she could continue to look after the baby, and the mother agreed. “You said there was something weird about the birth?” Reed asked this doctor.

Dr. Duward looked almost paranoid. “You understand that most kids being born these days gestate in artificial tanks, right?”

“I do.”

“That’s because giving birth kinda sucks,” Dr. Duward explained the obvious. “Proxima Doma has—I’m sorry, had—more live births than anywhere in the galaxy, which is why I still have a job. I’ve been doing it for 550 years now. If you’re trying to do that math, I was twelve years old when I had to deliver my older sister’s baby. Mama was drunk, daddy was at work, and I was in charge. Since then, I have successfully welcomed over 100,000 new human beings into this universe. Every single one of the mothers was in pain, whether we gave them drugs or not. Granted, traditional births are my specialty. Nanomedicine can make even live births painless, but that’s just not what I do. They come to me because they don’t want that. This woman, Aeterna refused any sort of pain relief. She refused an IV; everything. The baby just slipped out. She came in to inform us that her water broke, and it was time, then she crawled in bed, and let it out. No struggle, no contractions, barely any labor time. It started, and it was done. We have some impressive transhumans in the galaxy, but I’ve never seen anything like her.”

“How’s the baby?”

“Little Dilara is fine,” Dr. Duward replied. “We performed the very basic tests, and followed procedure, but didn’t have to provide any unusual treatments. She cried a little bit but stopped quickly. I hesitate to say this, but it was almost like she was putting on a show...like she knew we expected her to cry, but after that, she quieted down and just lay there against her mother’s chest.”

“Who else have you told about this?” Reed presses.

“No one,” Dr. Duward answers. “Like I said, she came in so quick, the only people there were me and my nurse. And she won’t tell anyone unless I order her to.”

“No bots need their memories erased?” he suggested.

“We didn’t use bots down there. Traditional births, remember?”

“Right. Well, I need this family on my side, so keep it to yourself. In fact, if you could just move on and pretend like it never happened, that would be for the best.”

“This sounds important to you,” she noted.

He sighed. “What do you want?”

“I want the quantum signature for New Earth.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Reed replied honestly.

“I gave a consultation to a Teaguardian a few weeks ago, and overheard them talking about it. They’re about to go on assignment there, and are actually happy that you delayed their departure. It’s very hush-hush, but they said it was 121 light years away. They’ll have to give it a huge berth because I think it’s a protected human preserve. No advanced interference. It sounds like it’s basically a base reality ancestor simulation. They’ll need a good OB/GYN.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t have access to that. I’m just a Bungulan captain.”

“I suggest you find it,” the doctor said. She was not who he thought she was just a moment ago when they first met.

“I don’t like being blackmailed.”

“I don’t like being ripped from my home, but things happen.”

Reed nodded. “I’ll get you to this New Earth place, but I need to speak with the family first.”

“Go right ahead.” Dr. Duward stepped off to the side.

Reed walked down the hallway, and rang the doorbell.

A man quickly opened it. “Hey. They’re both sleeping,” he hissed.

“That’s not what the door indicator says.” Reed pointed at the indicator tube, which lit up for different conditions, such as sleeping, emergency, or unoccupied.

“I don’t know how that stuff works,” the guy said. He looked back to make sure that mother and baby weren’t awakened, then slipped out of the room, and closed the door behind him. “Can I help you?”

“First of all, I’m Captain Reed Ellis—”

“I know who you are, I’m not impressed. What do you want?”

“The Vellani Ambassador. You seem to be a crewmember of it. Tertius Valerius?”

“Not really anymore, why?” Tertius questioned.

“There are whispers that it can travel faster than light,” Reed said.

Tertius folded his arms. “Lots of ships can do that.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say lots. It seems to only be Teaguardians, and yours. Do you work for Teagarden?”

Tertius snorted. “No. The Ambassador is a stateless vessel. Well, I think it technically flies the Castlebourne flag now, but that’s more of a matter of logistics.”

“Well, anyway. You are aware of the circumstances of the Tangent, aren’t you? I commandeered it.”

“I know.”

“Your daughter bene—”

Tertius waved his hand dismissively to interrupt Reed again. “Don’t play on my sentimentality. Just spit it out.”

“As of today, we’re maybe one-third of the way through our rescue efforts,” Reed continued. “Months from now, when it’s over, and the last evacuee is safely off the platform, I have promised to release the hostages, and forgo my leverage. What I have not promised is to return the Tangent and turn myself in. My crew hasn’t done that either, and I don’t want them to have to. I don’t know where we would go, but if we try to run with what we’ve got, they’ll catch us. I don’t want to hold hostages past the rescue. I certainly don’t want to hold them forever. I don’t want to condemn my people to decades of prison either, though. You have no obligation to do anything for us. If you refuse, you and your family can stay as long as you want, or leave whenever you want. You are in no way hostages. I’m asking you with my tail between my legs, and my hat in hand, will you help?”

Tertius stared at Reed, presumably in thought. “Over a hundred years ago, the brightest minds in history you’ve never heard of held a meeting. It was called The Edge. They had developed certain advanced technologies, and limited their use to a select few who needed it. I won’t get into who these inventors were, or anything about our subculture, but the year 2400 marked the end of that exclusivity. It was inevitable that the general population would uncover the truths. So these inventors agreed to hand out some of these technologies to some others, in some ways. Don’t ask me for details, anything I happen to know about The Edge is still not common knowledge. What I’ll tell you, however, is that The Vellani Ambassador operates under a special form of FTL that was not a part of any agreement, with Teagarden, or anyone else. That will probably never be made public. It’s too powerful, it’s too dangerous, and it has some serious theoretical applications that could quite literally destroy the universe. The reframe engine, however, is a different story. That is what the Teaguardians use. It caps out at 707c. That’s a fundamental physical limitation of the mechanism, and there’s no going beyond it.”

“Okay. I’m not picky. Even simply being on par with them would be useful.”

“Well, I’m not an engineer, I don’t know how to build a reframe engine. The way I understand it, it’s only half of the equation. In order to reach maximum reframe, you have to already be able to reach maximum sublight. Can the Tangent do that?”

Reed sighed. “It can’t. It uses classical fusion, not antimatter.”

“That’s going to be a problem,” Tertius said. “Let me put it this way, if this thing were moving at its maximum speed, and traveled one light year, how long would it feel like on the ship?”

Reed tapped on his wrist device to make the calculation. “About 1.73 years, but it would take two years in realtime.”

Tertius nodded. “If someone smarter than me installed a reframe engine, it would take you 1.73 years. That’s what you would experience, and that’s how much time would pass for everyone not on the ship. That’s what the reframe engine does. It makes those two numbers the same. It doesn’t just arbitrarily go fast. You still have to reach certain speeds, the engine just consolidates the reference frames. It reframes the passage of time so everyone ends up on the same page.”

Reed leaned his head back at hearing this, and regarded Tertius. “That’s why there’s a maximum speed overall. You’re not actually breaking the light barrier.”

“Bingo.”

“But this Ambassador, it goes faster. It indeed breaks the light barrier. True FTL.”

“I wouldn’t tell you how it worked, even if I understood it. I won’t even name it for you, because that alone would give you too much information.”

“Would they be willing to help, though?” Reed pressed. “Maybe they can just pull us away once, and then leave us wherever, just so we can find someplace to hide, and maybe some lasting peace.”

Tertius looked up at the walls and ceiling. “The VA’s mission is not unlike yours. They rescue people from bad situations. The difference is, they didn’t steal their ship to do it. The intelligence that designed it is still there. Well...the person who designed the special FTL tech isn’t, but they gave their contribution away freely. Anyway, the people they rescue are innocent. The people they’re rescuing them from? Not so much. You...are neither. Mirage would understand why you did what you did, but she wouldn’t reward you for it. She would expect you to accept the consequences of your actions. I know her well, I can hear her say that in my head. Before you ask, the person who came up with the magical FTL isn’t available until...” He tapped on his handheld device. “Let me do my own calculations...August. And even if we were able to find him on that date, he would only be able to help you for a day, and then you would have to wait a whole year for his return.”

“Huh?” Reed didn’t understand all this FTL stuff, but he wasn’t even following the logic of what Tertius just said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tertius replied, shaking his head. “The point is, it can’t be done. I would love to help, but it’s just not gonna happen. I can reach out to Mirage, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. And if by some miracle, she does say yes, you’re not keeping the Tangent. It would be like trying to stuff a skyscraper in the trunk of your car. At best, she would ferry all the people somewhere safe.”

“That’s all I can ask.” Reed pulled up his contact card. “You can reach me any time. It has my quantum signature on it if she’s on the other side of the universe, and wants to talk to me personally. Now, before I leave you, how big is this reframe engine?”

“I think it scales to the size of the vessel,” Tertius answered. “I can probably get you the specs, but you’re gonna be done with the evacuation in, what, a few months? It’s gonna take longer than that for you to build one from scratch.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you, Mister Valerius. I’ll let you get back to your family now. Please do stay in touch. I’ll give you anything you need.”

Reed walked away and returned to his bridge office.

Shasta was already there, which was good. “Hey. I wanted to let you know, Vasily has been asking for you. I have no idea what it’s about.”

“That can wait,” Reed decided, possibly forever. “We have more important things to worry about. I need ideas for how we can prolong the southern evacuation. We need to stall for time while we come up with a more long-term solution to our little problem.”

Shasta considered it for a moment. “Well, if that’s what we need, that unauthorized express trip was actually good news. Maybe we need more time to inspect all the tethers. Maybe the constant up and down placed too much stress on them, and they all require maintenance. And maybe to prevent that from being a problem again, we need to slow the trips moving forward.”

“Okay, those are all good ideas. Let’s start working on it, but obviously don’t explain to anyone why.”

“I don’t even know why,” Shasta admitted.

“Good. I’ll tell you later so it’s easier for you to spread the new plan. Slower ascents and descents. But not too bad. It doesn’t need to take years, and in fact, that would backfire on us. Just maybe another month.”

“Got it, I’ll talk to Trilby to calculate the math on that. He won’t ask questions.”

“Actually, I need to talk to him myself. I’ll go with you.” His device beeped, so he stopped to check it.

It was a message from Tertius. Found this while I was digging up the specifications for the reframe engine. I didn’t realize that The Shortlist gave Teagarden access to this tech. It might have come in handy a few months ago.

Reed tapped on the file, and read the overview. “On second thought, I’ll talk with Trilby later. Go ahead and do your thing. I need to set up a meeting with someone else.”

It was only a few hours later. Reed was back in the dusty hot interrogation room of a virtual environment. President Burkhart Abrams resolved in front of him, sitting in the chair. “What am I doing here, Ellis? Something wrong with the evacuation? Can’t stay in place? Are you demanding pizza for all the gunmen and hostages?”

Reed threw a tablet on the table hard enough to make it break in the real world, but it landed undamaged. “If you already knew, then this won’t come as a surprise, but if you didn’t know, then I encourage you to verify it...quietly.” He needed to test him.

Abrams reluctantly picked up the tablet, and started looking over the info. He threw it down with nearly as much gusto. “This reads like science fiction.”

“It’s not, it’s real. I’m guessing you didn’t know about it, because you’re not that good of a liar. So now you have to ask yourself, for the first time in all of this, are we on the same side?”

“Why the hell would we be on the same side? Teagarden is only letting you do this because you have leverage. You and I are not friends.”

“What about Matar Galo? Is she a friend?”

“She’s my superior officer.”

“Right.” Reed leaned forward, and repeated, “right” as he was swiping to the next page. “And because she’s your superior, she had no obligation to tell you about this.”

“If it’s true...if it exists, then no, of course she didn’t. She didn’t invent military secrets. What are you driving at here?”

Reed shook his head. “You commanded two Teaguardians for Proxima Doma. These people were your friends. You were here to protect them, and the one time when they really needed you, you couldn’t do shit. You just sat there, staring at the screen, utterly hopeless. Useless. A giant paperweight floating in space.” He angrily pointed at the tablet. “If you had this kind of technology, you may have been able to save them all.”

Abrams scoffed and shook his head.

“Maybe not all, but a lot; at least more. I wouldn’t have needed to steal a damn thing. It wouldn’t have occurred to me. I just didn’t think we had any other options. But she—she had this. Your military had this.” He swiped over again. “Apparently, Gatewood has it too. Why does Gatewood have it? Nobody lives there!”

 “You’re right. This would have been a game-changer, but if she didn’t come here with it, she must have had her reasons. Maybe it’s not ready. Maybe only a tiny shuttle has a prototype of it. We don’t know. This document doesn’t say anything about the actual operational deployment. It just claims that it exists, and it’s in the Teagarden’s privileged data vault. I’m not going to ask how you got your hands on it, but this...this means nothing. It proves nothing.”

“Burkhart, this is real. They have teleportation, like freakin’ Star Trek. They left your friends to die when they could have just beamed them into the sky. They didn’t even read you in. They did nothing.” Reed pointed to his own chest. “I did something. I came here. I risked everything to save the people that you were sworn to defend. Aren’t you angry about that? I would be livid. I am.”

“Maybe I am. Maybe I believe you, and I’ve never been more pissed off about anything in my whole life. What the hell does it matter? The south is stable. The elevators are working. There’s no point in rocking the boat now. Just finish your mission, and turn yourself in, like you promised.”

“I never promised that.”

Abrams dismissed it. “That’s not my problem. They’re not gonna give us teleportation. What are you gonna do? Try to steal it?”

Reed shook his head. “No, not that. Like you said, we don’t know where it is. But I need to steal something else, and to make up for being unable to do anything for the Proxima Domanians before I showed up...I want you to help me.”

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Tangent Point: Consensus (Part V)

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

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

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

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

“Yes, sir, it is,” Reed replied.

“Delegator Chariot?”

“Agreed,” Jodene replied.

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

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

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

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

“What happened here?” Matar Galo questioned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We do,” Reed responded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reed only cleared his throat.

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

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

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

“Not all of them,” he reasoned.

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

“Us?” he echoed.

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

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

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

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

“This all started because of your illegal move.”

“Touché.”

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

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

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

“I didn’t approve that.”

“They were anxious to get back up here.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A beetloid,” Reed thought out loud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 22, 2535

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Ramses and Leona were going to have to spend all of their time in the new lab. Since the former lost his forge core, he wasn’t able to build everything they needed in only a year. He kept a data chip on his person too, which at least stored all of the equipment specifications, but it couldn’t build anything, so the process was slow. There wasn’t much waiting for them when they returned. Most of the resources available out here had been used to excavate and habitize the celestial body itself, so the lab would even have a place to sit. Instead of dragging him to some central location, Pribadium opted to lock the prisoner up here, so part of the work was dedicated to constructing that as well.

Not useful in the lab, Mateo decided to go visit the prisoner. “How are they treating you?”

“They’re fine.” He was down, and couldn’t look Mateo in the eye. This facility was entirely automated, so he probably hadn’t spoken to a human-level intelligence in almost a year.

“Linwood, right?” Mateo asked. “Linwood Meyers?”

“That’s what they called me, back when they called me anything.” His accommodations weren’t just some tiny cell with concrete walls. It was a luxury condo, not much worse than the coin habitat. The psychological toll of not having a choice, however, was the real problem, and there were probably missing amenities.

“What did you have in your personal crabitat that you don’t have here?” A crabitat was a kind of habitat that hermits lived in. Just a bit of play on words.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I wanna help. What are you missing?”

“Well, I didn’t just sit on my ass on the beach all day,” Linwood said. “I spent most of my time in simulations. My coin was just to keep me alive while I did that, and the planetesimal was there for raw materials.”

“And armor.”

“And armor,” he acknowledged.

“So, they didn’t let you keep your VR setup. Do you know why not?”

“Takes power,” Linwood admitted. “There’s plenty of it here, but I wouldn’t be able to manage it myself. They would have to let me have a dedicated bot to do it, and that’s just giving me too much. I have a holoscreen, with basic entertainment, but nothing immersive. And also...”

“Also what? You can tell me,” Mateo encouraged.

“I wasn’t always in sims, and even when I was, I wasn’t always alone. There’s a reason why I built myself a staff.”

“You need companionship,” Mateo realized. “They destroyed those too? They destroyed life?”

“They boxed their consciousnesses, and are storing them somewhere. They only destroyed the substrates.”

“Harsh system they designed here. Why did you choose Gatewood? Why not Proxima, or the Alpha system?”

“I wanted to be alone. Those are too heavily populated. I know it seems ridiculous. In any case, I would be millions and millions of kilometers away from civilization, but I want to be very isolated. I’m afraid of people.” He gestured at his environment in general. “I was right to be.”

“Well, you’re not dead yet, which should really be your only concern.”

“I’m not entitled to life extension procedures here either. Reactive medicine only. I will die eventually.”

Mateo nodded. “Well, that settles it. The Gatewood establishment wants us to take you away from here, so that’s what we’ll do. You’ll get your dwarf planet, and all the equipment you need to hermit back up, including your staff.”

“I don’t need a dwarf planet,” Linwood said, “I’m not greedy.”

“My wife says that you can live off the in-situ resources in a dwarf planet for around a hundred billion years or longer.”

“They’re too valuable,” Linwood contended, shaking his head. “No one would let me keep that.”

“We can take you somewhere so far away, it won’t be another 150,000 years before anyone can reach you. In all that time, you can burn some hydrogen going into the intergalactic void, where you’ll never be found.”

“Well, it’s not really practical to move a dwarf planet...”

“That’s your call. Burn bright and fast, or slow and long. Either way, you’ll have that choice, and like I said, you’ll also have tens of thousands of years to change your mind. Change your mind a thousand times, whatever. But the only option you won’t have is coming back to the stellar neighborhood. At least not quickly. We can take you out, but we won’t come back if you get bored, lonely, or homesick.”

“How do you have the power to do this? How do you have FTL?” Linwood questioned.

“We’ll place you in stasis, and not wake you up until we’ve arrived. You will never know how we did it.”

“Do I get to choose the direction, at least? So I at least have some idea of where I’ve ended up.”

“You’ll be on the other side of the Zone of Avoidance. Someone else will work out the particulars with you.”

“Not that I’m not grateful, but why would you do all this for me? I tried to kill you when we met.”

Mateo winced. “That was a year ago. I’m over it.” Obviously, it hadn’t been a full year for the team, but he genuinely wasn’t holding onto any grudge. The guy was trying to protect his home, and the bullets were no match for their armor. Not a big deal.

Linwood narrowed his eyes at him. “Are you...aliens?”

Mateo thought about this for a moment. “We’re all aliens now, aren’t we? It used to be that there was only one dominant species. You could carry on a conversation with another human, and that was pretty much it. Sure, you could engage in some basic communication with your pets. Elephants buried their dead, dolphins handed people their phones back, but by and large, it was just us. Now, I doubt there’s an official record of how many species there are. How could there be? You could genetically engineer yourself to be quite literally unique, making you incompatible with anyone else. So either alien needs to take on a new meaning, or simply be retired as a concept. I know what you’re asking, if I came from an independent evolutionary line, and the answer to that is no. I was born on Earth, in Kansas. But the true spirit of your question is why should you trust me when I’m behaving in a way that you don’t understand? In that sense, yes, I’m an alien, because my experiences in this universe have diverged from your own in unprecedented ways. You don’t have to understand, just accept the gift.”

“I accept the gift.”

“Great! In the meantime, as it will take another year at least before we can leave, I’ll speak with Pribadium about better arrangements. I get that she might not what to build you a master escape artist who can get you out of here, but you deserve companionship. That is a basic human right. Or whatever you identify as, if not human.”

“I would appreciate your assistance. That’s quite magnanimous of you.”

Mateo returned with a tight nod, and then left the visitors area.

Pribadium was standing just outside the door. “Making promises that you are not authorized to keep?” she asked.

Mateo looked back into the little prison where Linwood probably heard that. He closed the door behind him now. “All he wants is his favorite entertainment, which keeps him occupied in there, and some companionship, which keeps him from going insane. This doesn’t have to be punishment, which is what prisons were back in the dark ages of the 21st century. You’re just trying to keep him from roaming free, so what exactly is the problem?”

“The problem is optics,” Pribadium said. “We can’t have people thinking that our response to illegal possession is getting whatever they need to live comfortably anyway.”

“No one is coming all the way out here, stealing an entire icy body, making it a home, hoping that you will give them a different home. They’re not unhoused. They just want to leave wherever they already were before. You cannot provide them with anything that they couldn’t get on their own somewhere else without all the headache of dealing with your rules, and the risk of being locked up like this.”

She shook her head. “I’m not trying to torture the guy, but I have to draw lines somewhere. You’re right, this won’t inspire a bunch of people to come here with the hopes that I will give them free room and boarding, but they might risk stealing material because they know that getting caught isn’t a big deal. We’ll give them whatever they need until we can get rid of them, and they’ll be fine.”

Mateo sighed. “Those cameras in there. Are they for security, or a reality show?”

“Huh?” She was confused about the sudden shift in the topic, and the topic itself.

“Is it to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself or break out, or is his life being broadcast for people’s entertainment?”

“They’re just for security, of course, I’m not a monster.”

Mateo nodded. That wasn’t what he was thinking. He knew what the answer was, but getting her to vocalize the answer was necessary for him to prove his point. Or rather, it was better that she walked the path with him, instead of him just jumping there. “We are taking him clear across to the other side of the galaxy. Who the hell cares about the optics? You don’t have to tell them about it. Like I said, the VR keeps him inside. He’s not making phone calls or anything.”

Now Pribadium sighed. “I appreciate your point of view. It’s just not as easy as you say. You have no idea the kind of pressure I’m under, running an entire solar system of resources. I am being scrutinized by everyone; not just the other core worlds, but everyone, because this is where everyone comes to get their shit. Even if it’s a state-sanctioned colonial mission, we’re only six light years away, so Earth usually chooses to come here for their resources too. We’re the biggest store in the universe. Practically a monopoly.”

“I know what it’s like to be scrutinized,” Mateo argued. “It wasn’t technically an entire star system, but there were billions of people who were looking to me for guidance in their everyday lives. And that’s people, not assets. I didn’t have the benefit of much established institutionalism. They expected me to help come up with the new laws. That’s why I was there.”

She put her tail between her legs. “I kind of forgot about that part of your life. Running Dardius must not have been easy.”

“It wasn’t, but it was rewarding, and everything was so much easier when we were able to be generous and hospitable to people, rather than restrictive. I know, you have your laws, and I respect that. Just don’t become a tyrant. Not only is that bad for people, but it’s bad for you. It doesn’t ever end well.”

“I appreciate your advice.”

Mateo smiled awkwardly. “I’m not trying to mansplain your job to you. I apologize if I strayed in that direction.”

“It’s okay. Mansplaining isn’t much of a thing anymore as gender isn’t as important as it was in your time.”

“Right.” They stood there in silence for a bit. “It’s been a long time, and I don’t feel like we ever knew each other all that well, but would you be amenable to a hug?”

“I would like that.”

They hugged.

“Do you know how it’s going in the lab?” Mateo asked once they released.

“I never gave you an answer on whether I was gonna give the guy VR and his companions back.”

He turned his chin up thoughtfully. “I know you’ll do the right thing. You’re not a monster, right?”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “The lab people are fine. I offered my assistance, but he, uh...”

“Doesn’t know you,” Mateo finished, knowing full well that it wasn’t what she was going to say.

“Yes, let’s go with that.”

“Does he think that we’ll be ready to go by the end of the day next year?”

“I would assume so. I also offered to make his lab better during his interim year, but he declined. I think he’s treating this as quite temporary, so he’s limiting his projects to only what he needs to get you guys out of here. You should know, though, that you are welcome to stay. I do have some leeway. I can essentially put you on the payroll without actually giving you any jobs, which would allow you to live here. Plus, not existing for most of the year works in our favor. For the optics.”

“That’s very kind of you, but it looks like you have everything well in hand, and we typically try to go where we’re needed.”

“I understand. I just want to make sure that our relationship remains healthy.”

“We’ll always be friends,” he promised. After a proper beat, he continued, “I’m gonna go check on my wife.”

“Which one?” she asked after he had already passed her. “You dog,” she joked.

He looked back with a wide smile. “Why, you wanna split me into thirds?”

She shrugged. “I’ll consider it.” It almost didn’t sound like a joke.

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