Spaghetti West: Childhood’s End (Part V)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sugar stopped. “Where did you hear that?”

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

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

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

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

“Do what you gotta do,” Liselot encouraged.

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

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

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

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

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

Gentry immediately closed the channel. The viewscreen turned black.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Liselot tapped on her screen, then nodded at Sugar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 16, 2560

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The team decided to leave before midnight central so they wouldn’t have to explain their end-of-the-day disappearance. They were determined to hunker down and really figure out who in this galaxy might actually need their help. The larger colonies could have huge problems, but the infrastructure and procedures to deal with them. The single-person sites were harder to pinpoint, and populated by people who were typically there because they wanted to be alone. It was the sites like Patsy Richelieu Best First Quarter Star colony that were likely most in need. Of course, this particular colony didn’t need anything from them. It was wild to see, though. They would kind of always expect a colony to either be the fruits of a grand cosmic exodus, or only one person looking to disconnect from society. There was a lot of middle ground, though, and they would probably meet others like Patsy and her cake-loving friends.

“What we need is some kind of monitoring system,” Mateo suggested, not knowing exactly what he was going for. “Like in movies where aliens are here to protect us. I guess they don’t have to be benevolent. They just have to know a lot about us, and have spent time studying us without giving themselves away.”

“It sounds like you’re talking about invisible probes,” Leona offered. “Movies often don’t explain how they remain hidden, but it would be something like that.”

“Invisible probes, I can do,” Ramses decided. He jumped over to the nearest workstation. “It can stay optically invisible using holography, and shield its waste heat signature using a miniature hot pocket. It would be able to move on its own power, and teleport when necessary. It would send signals exclusively through the bulk, so only we receive the data. It keeps watch over establishments throughout the year, and compiles a report for when we return.” He was getting really excited about the possibilities. “I wish I had thought of it myself. We keep jumping from place to place when we just need to let the information come to us.” He looked up to find everyone staring at him.

“Go on,” Romana encouraged. “What else were you thinking?”

“That I should work alone,” Ramses said. He reached over, and squeezed the band of his watch.

After he held the button down for a few seconds, the whole team vanished.

“Did he just kick us out of his lab?” Angela questioned.

“Wow. Rude,” Marie joked. “But it’s smart for him to have that, for security.”

“It might take a few days,” Leona estimated. “He won’t just be designing the new probe, but testing for failures and black swan events. In the meantime, I think I would like to consider building something for us all that is in this dimension, instead of our pocket dimension habitats. Nothing against them, but they’re more for mobile use.”

“I agree,” Mateo said. “If our enemies are right, and this is going to be an important planet in the future, then I imagine we stay here for a long time. Or not. Perhaps, like all the other things we’ve had in the past, we’ll hand this off to someone else, while we move on to something else.”

“I believe what Ramses is doing will keep us busy for quite a while,” Romana pointed out. “There is probably a lot going on in the galaxy that we simply do not know about, so it seems boring. We lack data, and we’re about to get it. But yeah, I’m in.”

They sat down to start drawing up plans for residences fit for an interstellar capital—not too gaudy—they were not trying to play themselves as gods. By the end of the day, however, Ramses was finished with his probes. They sent a small test batch out to some past establishments. They returned to the timestream the next year with a hit.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 11, 2555

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Ramses had something else to show them, which he had evidently been working on at the same time as Operation Starframe. That was on the moon. This was down on the planet, in their main, branch-themed, dome. It felt like he invented something new every day, so while he wanted to show them, it wasn’t done with any fanfare. He just summoned them all to one his labs, and showed him the new thing. “It’s a slingdrive pad. Or a slingpad. Or something like that. Instead of you taking the whole thing with you, it just sends you to the destination alone. Since it’s ground-based, it doesn’t need a coherence gauge. It always has as much power as it needs. We will still need our arrays to come back, or go somewhere else, but this will let us do that instantly, instead of waiting for our own gauges to recharge. They stay topped up for the first trip.” It was pretty big, much larger than they would need for just the seven of them, even if they each had to return with two guests.

Perfect, they had themselves a real operation. Now they only needed to figure out how they would determine where they were needed. The galaxy hadn’t gotten any harder. Their top candidate was the Goldilocks Corridor, but that was a delicate situation. They had that treaty, and while individual interference didn’t technically go against it, they didn’t want to complicate matters too much. They could leave that all to Team Kadiar. “Great,” Mateo said. “Thank you. We’ll be able to breathe easier, knowing we have a full tank of gas every time we go out. The question is, where are we going?”

Romana separated herself from the audience, and stood next to Ramses. “I took the liberty of compiling a list of candidates.” She flung the data to their devices. “There aren’t any specific needs that we know about, but it’s time we ignore the stellar neighborhood for the most part, especially the Core Worlds. They’re mostly doing fine on their own as they have plenty of infrastructure and systems in place. It’s the 26th century. Colonists have made a lot of claims in the Charter Cloud, but many don’t have very useful charters. They benefit from almost no protection or emergency services. They’re also pretty deep into the Extended Bubble, which were given no resources, except for what they could afford from Gatewood. We don’t know who is out there, or what they’re lacking, but if anyone could use our help, it’s them. I know I’m the navigator, but I’m asking for your input. Should we throw a dart and pick one?”

Leona stopped looking at the spreadsheet. “I don’t care how you do it. You choose one, and send us there. I’ll even let you select the team. It could be all of us, or only three. You can put yourself on it, or not. It’s all up to you today. We’re all ready, right?”

They all nodded in agreement. They were itching to be productive.

Romana was pleased. “All right.” She swiped through her lower arm interface. “Okay. This colony is called Tartarus, which I find both interesting, but also worrisome enough to maybe investigate in case there’s something weird going on? It’s 290 light years from Earth so they don’t have to follow any rules. The colonists were set to arrive a few days ago.” She turned to Ramses. “Do you need to stay to monitor the equipment?”

“Nope,” he answered. “I’ve already tested it with a bunch of probes. “It’s ready.”

“Lovely,” Romana said. “Then we’ll all go. Boot ‘n’ rally.”

They arrived to find that it was either named ironically, or something got lost in translation. It was incredibly cold, snowy, and windy. And for some reason their suits wouldn’t work, so they didn’t have access to their slingdrives either. They were stuck here. No one else was around.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 10, 2554

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Today was the day of the launch. Ramses’ automators had constructed 121 million Outriders, and he was ready to let them go. Team Keshida had built billion of modules for Project Stargate, but that was designed to spread to every star system in the galaxy. That wasn’t necessary here. They only needed enough to get to every region for now. They still hadn’t come up with a specific reason for Operation Starframe, but perhaps something would come up sometime in the next 108 years when the farthest ones settled at their posts. They were obviously avoiding the stellar neighborhood, and every system beyond that which was also colonized, or soon enough would be.

Ramses wasn’t sending the Outriders via rockets or launch loops. He was teleporting them away, but using a very specific method. There were different types of teleportation. Momentum was sometimes conserved and sometimes not—depending on how you applied the pressure—but going the other way by adding momentum? That was more difficult to pull off, though still easier than having to include so much gravity in the calculations. This allowed him to grant a boost to each Outrider, so it wouldn’t have to rely solely on its own fuel, but also limited the amount of infrastructure he had to build. He could dispatch hundreds of them at a time using this technique. This would take a few days, but enough of them would go out today that he could monitor the situation, and trust that it would continue to go smoothly.

Mateo, Leona, and Olimpia were lying on a bed under a room-sized glass dome on the moon. They were watching the Outriders disappear from their launch pads. Each one gave off a burst of light. Ramses intentionally programmed them to have different colors, so the visual was more spectacular. Their little dome was projecting an augmented reality, which was zoomed into space a little so they could see the exit bursts as well before the Outrider entered reframe speeds, and disappeared entirely.

They were enjoying the quiet when Sanaa Karimi’s face suddenly appeared on screen. “Can you see me now?”

“Sanaa, what’s wrong?” Leona asked.

“Nothing,” Sanaa replied, though the image quality was bad. She was pixelating, echoing, and skipping. “Except for this connection. I was told you had a pyramid.”

“We do. We had to chop off the top, though,” Leona replied. “It opened us up to unwanted visitors.”

“Whatever. Look, The Superintendent reached out to me. He’s trying to write today’s story, but nothing is coming to his mind. He knows that Operation Starframe, or whatever, is happening today, but it doesn’t lead to anything interesting. So he’s going to cut this short. He’s evidently really busy working on something called...” She paused to check her notes on her tablet. “...The Last Refuge. It’s eating up all of his time, and he thinks that you will be fine without him for at least another week.”

“What does that mean for us?” Mateo questioned.

“He says you should talk with your daughter, but that the audience doesn’t need to see it. It’s time for you to accept her choices so she can move past her loneliness arc. The story can’t restart until then, and it’s boring until it does. I’m bored with it already.” She looked upwards. “Anything else, oh Wide One?” She waited. “Yeah, I did mean wise, sorry.” More waiting. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re working very hard at your diet. Can I get back to my life now?” One final pause. “Okay.” She looked back at the camera. “Bye.”

They all sighed and went back to stargazing until Olimpia said, “ya know, they killed God on Supernatural, and the world didn’t end.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 3, 2547

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Ramses was unable to track the location of the missing slingbelts, and there was no recourse for this. He designed the bulk map so that, while most of the dots were showing non-specific points, the belts were distinct, and stood out. If they were anywhere out there, he would be able to spot them. Their two top hypotheses were that they were either destroyed, or taken through time. Whoever did it knew exactly what they were after. They weren’t just a couple of random kids swimming in the ocean, who happened to feel something invisible in the water. Their prime suspects were the Spiral Station crew, but they didn’t want to assume. They had plenty of genuine enemies, and since time travel was inherently involved, it could have been someone they hadn’t even crossed paths with yet. Instead of wasting pointless effort on figuring it out, Ramses just programmed his forge core to build three replacement belts during the interim year. Mateo, Leona, and Olimpia had lost all of their belongings, but that wasn’t a big deal.

It was interesting that the married trio were the ones whose belts were stolen. Ram calculated a 2.85% chance that this was entirely unintentional, but the more practical odds said that it was vastly more improbable. Just the fact that the other four belts were left behind made it unlikely to have been random. They were magnetically linked to one another. It was actually more difficult for them to take only some of the belts, than to have swiped them all in one go.

The next day, the missing belts appeared on the bulk map. They had been transported halfway across the Milky Way, for reasons yet unknown. “Have we been there before?” Olimpia asked. “Do we know anyone there?”

“That is part of the nuclear star cluster, which is relatively close to Sagittarius A*, our galaxy’s central black hole” Leona explained. “It’s not the farthest we’ve ever been, but as you can see, no one else is there. It’s only our belts.”

“No one has ever been there,” Ramses added. “They’re on Southside. Extremus crossed over the black hole on the north side of the galactic plane. When the Matrioshka Body was studying time, it too was on Northside. The whole stellar neighborhood is on Northside, so we just don’t know too much about this region.”

Romana giggled. “They’re a gift.”

“Huh?” Mateo asked.

“We were just talking about Operation Starframe,” Romana said. “If we want to reach every corner of the galaxy, it’s best to start in the center. Now we can do that. Now we have something to lock onto. This will be our staging ground.”

“We don’t know that the thief did this as a favor,” Marie pointed out. “It could be a trap instead. I’m guessing this region is naturally fairly hostile, if it’s so close to the chaos of the supermassive black hole.”

Ramses made a facial shrug. “It’s not as dangerous as, say, the s-star cluster, which is much closer to the singularity, but it’s not particularly safe, like it is for Sol. I’m inclined to agree with Romy. It’s too coincidental. If I were the thief, I would put a trap around Sirius, or some other close but barely settled region. It took them too much work to get to where they are. Yes, I’m sure they are trying to lure us there. It’s irrational to believe that they hid the belts from detection last year, but forgot to shield them today when they would know we’ve returned to the timestream. But based on our track record, does anyone here really think that we’re not gonna go?”

They all laughed a little. “Yeah, we’re gonna go,” Mateo decided. He commanded his nanites to wrap him up in armor, leaving his face unprotected for now. “What did you say before, Romana? Boot ‘n’ rally.”

They all armored up too. “Yalla,” Leona ordered.

“Give me a minute,” Ramses defended. “I need to make the calculations.” He turned away and paced a little as he was tapping on his wrist device. “Okay, do it again.”

“Yalla.”

They slung to the nucleus, and landed on a rocky planet. It wasn’t heavily vegetated, but not barren either. The plantlife was clearly alien, but decidedly alive. The sky was a beautiful sunset orange. Snowcapped mountains towered in the distance, and it looked a little greener on the foothills. They turned to find three dress form mannequins on a display curve. A slingbelt was fitted to each one.

“Yeah. Definitely brought here for us,” Romana agreed with herself.

“That’s not all,” Ramses said, looking at his interface again. “It’s breathable. For us, anyway. I’m seeing 83% nitro, 11% oxy, 5 for CO2, and a half percent each for hydrogen and trace gases.”

They decided to open their visors but keep the rest of their armor on, except for Romana, who chose to end up in a gray sports bra and yoga shorts. It still could be a trap. The atmosphere was indeed breathable, but it took a few minutes for their bodies to acclimate to the suboptimal environment. During this time, they were mildly suffocating before their carbon scrubber organs caught up to compensate for the extra toxin.

“Carbon load back down to manageable levels for everyone,” Angela announced. She had expressed an interest in serving as the closest thing to a medical professional the team had.

Romana instinctively walked around to the other side of the mannequins. She reached up to one of them, and pulled something off of it. “Sorry for taking these, but now you have extra, in case you need them. You won’t have to worry about us again. Don’t screw it up this time,” she read.

“They didn’t sign their name?” Mateo asked her.

“Not exactly,” she answered.

“They...initialized it?” Mateo couldn’t think of anything else that was close to a signature.

“They hand-wrote it, or I should say, you hand-wrote it.” She showed him the note, and she was right; it was in Mateo’s handwriting.

“Well, I suppose I can trust myself, can’t I?”

“No,” Leona replied bluntly.

“Fair enough.”

“Any other anomalies besides these belts?” Leona asked Ramses.

“No artificial signals,” Ramses began to answer from his interface. “No satellites, no power generators, no signs of life in the immediate vicinity...” He looked back up and regarded the horizon. “There is no way to know if we’re alone, but we seem to be.” He took out his forge core, and appeared to be in thought as he separated himself from the group, and also looked at the mountains.

“Are you considering building something here?” Mateo asked.

“Something?” Ramses returned. “Maybe everything.”

“Like a new lab? You just built a new one in your pocket,” Mateo reminded him.

“Yeah, I know, and I would still want to keep it with me as a mobile office.” Ramses turned back around. “But a real home base might be nice too. I once thought that that was Castlebourne, but there are too many people there. I think we should be more like Linwood Meyers, and take full ownership over a remote territory. No one else is here, it would just be ours. It will take tens of thousands of years before Project Stargate reaches this region. That’s more than a hundred and fifty years for us. This could be a safe place. We would really only have to worry about Spiral Station.”

“It’s not the farthest man has ever gone,” Olimpia said. “You just mentioned Linwood, who is even more remote on the far end of the galaxy. The Extremus isn’t too far from there. The Exin Empire has reframe engines, and several decades to kill.”

“They would have to find us,” Ramses continued to list. “This is a central location. It’s a great place to stage Operation Starframe. It’s uninhabitable by even some other posthuman models.”

“Still,” Olimpia pushed back. “Shouldn’t we go as far as we can? I agree, it’s perfect for Starframe, but not the best place for a home if we truly want to be hidden and remote.”

“The slingdrives have power constraints. Being ultra-distant has its disadvantages too. We’ll still defend our home. We’re not just gonna live like pioneers.”

“The note, it’s warning us about something,” Romana jumped back in. “We don’t know what. Did we come here in another timeline, or is that what changed? What exactly are we hoping to not screw up this time?”

“It’s doubtful that we were here before,” Leona determined. “We came here for the belts. That and the note probably mark the point of divergence. I think this planet is meant to change whatever issues Future!Mateo faced that he’s trying to fix now.”

“You just said we couldn’t trust him,” Marie contended. “Handwriting means nothing. Anyone could have forged it.”

“True,” Leona admitted.

“I’ll do my surveys,” Ramses reasoned. “I’ll build satellites and probes. We’ll map this whole star system, and beyond. Infrastructure will not be a problem. If we change our minds later, we can always leave. That is entirely what Starframe is even about. It gives us options, and this world gives us those options faster.”

“Anyone opposed?” Leona posed to the group. When no one said anything, she looked at Romana. “You’re our navigator, but you didn’t bring us here. Do you object to staying?”

“No,” Romana answered. “Like he said, we can always leave later.”

Leona nodded. “Okay. Let’s do some quick surveys before the infrastructure can be built, just to get some idea of what we’re dealing with. No one has to participate who doesn’t want to. What I’ll be doing is teleporting high up into the atmosphere, taking readings and images on my way down, and then popping back up over a different swath of land to image that area next. Anyone is welcome to spread out and do the same. But if you just want to stay here, that’s fine. If three of you would rather go back to the stellar neighborhood, that would be acceptable too.”

“No, we’re not gonna do that,” Olimpia promised. “We’ll stick together, as we always try to do. I had to argue against the plan to make sure it was a good plan. I’ve seen this movie before. This planet has monsters on it, and that’s the whole plot.”

“It would not be crazy if we did find complex life here,” Leona concurred. “With carbon dioxide levels this high, I’m more surprised that there’s even a desert. I suspect the majority of the surface will be fairly lush.”

Leona was correct. While Ramses camped out at their landing site to synthesize the data, the other six jumped around the atmosphere to serve as living survey probes. Their onboard sensors weren’t advanced enough to take highly detailed readings, but it was enough to generate a crude globe. They saw some more yellow and red, but they also saw green and blue. It looked not unlike Earth, though the night sky was a lot prettier. There wasn’t any light pollution, and this region of space had a denser cluster of stars to admire.

They found almost no manmade structures besides the display mannequins, but they didn’t find none at all. “Everyone jump to my position,” Marie requested.

“Even me?” Ramses questioned.

“Especially you,” she replied.

They all converged at Marie’s location. They found her standing on a grassy hill, elevated above a surrounding forest. They weren’t quite sure what other thing they were seeing here, though. It was a sphere of warped space, rotating so fast that they couldn’t even tell which direction it was moving. It reminded Leona of a black hole, but not exactly. “It’s not black,” Olimpia sort of joked, sort of really didn’t understand it at all.

“Back up anyway,” Leona suggested.

They all took several steps back because their guess was that it was a portal, and of course, they had no idea where it might take them. But like the gravity regulator machine back on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, it wasn’t going to give them any choice. It suddenly expanded, and engulfed them all.

It didn’t appear to have done anything to them. They were still standing on the same hill. The same forest was still surrounding them. “Is everyone okay?” Mateo asked. “Roll call.”

They took their turns declaring their respective statuses. They had settled on an order ahead of time, so it was predictable, except in any hypothetical situation where something actually was wrong with one of them. Everyone was fine this time; no currently detected health or temporal issues. The swirling portal was still there, so they elected to turn around and walk back down the hill to avoid any further issues.

“Mother,” came a voice from behind them. They turned to see a man standing near the top of the hill, right in front of the portal. No one recognized him.

“Who do you believe is your mother?” Leona asked in a way that implied she hoped it wasn’t her yet again.

The man slowly pointed at Olimpia.

“Me?” Olimpia questioned, shocked. “If I look like your mom, then she must be from a different timeline, because I don’t have any kids.”

“No, it’s definitely you. I was hoping we would meet sometime, but I didn’t want to push it. It had to be your choice. I left this reality portal here in case you ever came looking.”

Olimpia shook her head. “I don’t know how it would be possible.”

“You’re sometimes called The Echo, right?” the man pressed.

“Not so much anymore,” Olimpia countered.

“Well, I’m always called Echo. I’m your echo.” He took a deep breath. “Welcome back to The Sixth Key.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 10, 2523

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They should have realized that Ramses!324, a.k.a Tok’ra’s responsibilities and loyalties would remain with the people of New Welrios. Apparently, the two factions there had managed to become one cohesive peoples since the rest of Team Matic—including a different version of Ramses—was there. When they sent Old!Bronach back to the Goldilocks Corridor to reclaim his throne, they asked Team Kadiar to ask Tok’ra for his assistance in this matter. It would be his job to make sure that Old!Bronach became a decent leader, and started treating his people well. They never really found out how Tok’ra took it. They didn’t even know how the crew of the Vellani Ambassador broached the subject; whether it was more a command or more of a request. He apparently accepted his new role out of some sense of guilt, which wasn’t what they wanted. More recently, however, he put his foot down, and returned to his roots on New Welrios.

They had become a powerhouse over the last century, armed with a plethora of technologies that Tok’ra built for them. They were completely untouchable, much in the same way that Vitalemus was. Even The Oaksent was reportedly scared of getting near it, or even sending troops. Also like Vitalemus, they had evidently stayed out of the politics, and were satisfied with being independent and isolated. They were living proof that Oaksent’s hold on this sector of the galaxy wasn’t as strong as they once believed. The movies made it look easy, but it was probably pretty hard to keep control over so many worlds. Things had only gotten harder since the team showed up. They hadn’t realized how much of an impact they had had, but things were looking up.

Leona managed to convince the other parties to let the New Welriosians speak. They didn’t want to be so distant anymore. They wanted to participate in the community. The negotiations started back up again. Some of the agreements they had come up with last year had to be scrapped or replaced, but many weren’t rendered obsolete by this development. They pushed forward, and were almost home free. All that was left were signatures of all parties involved. It may have taken a long time, but they seemed to be able to agree that they wanted peace. That wasn’t possible just a couple of years ago. It was going to be a perpetual struggle, just as it was in the Sixth Key, but they should be able to handle it.

There was just one more thing before the deal could be finalized, at least according to everyone but Tok’ra, Dubra and Kivi, and Team Matic. The other negotiators had evidently come up with a new demand during the interim  year, which they decided not to bring up until the New Welrios situation could be resolved. Korali volunteered to be the one to speak for the group. “We want slingdrive technology.” She smiled, thinking that she had them right where they wanted them. “Nothing gets signed until we get it.”

Mateo stared over the table at her. “There are seven of us in total. We are in this room for you. This is not to our benefit. If you fail to sign these agreements, the VA will continue to ferry refugees to their new rightful home on Castlebourne. And in the midst of all that, the rest of you can fight it out all you bloody want. It’s sad, and we feel for the people of the Goldilocks Corridor, whether they identify with the Exin Empire, or otherwise. We won’t feel bad about our decision to bug out, however, because we did everything we could. And again, there are only seven of us. No one would blame us for failing to fix the whole universe. We will not let you get your hands on this technology. There is no threat you could make to change our minds. So sign it, don’t sign it; I don’t care anymore...our job is done. You never had any leverage against us. We came to this world in good faith to help, but we’ll only let that go so far before we hit our breaking point.” He stood up. “Let’s get out of here, ladies, back to Castlebourne.”

Bronach stood up as well. “If you leave, we can’t guarantee the safety of your new homeworld. Even if we do sign this, nothing we agreed to in the document bars us from attacking your region of the galaxy.”

“Do what you must,” Mateo responded. “We’ll take care of our people.” He looked over at his old friend. “It was nice meeting you, Tok’ra.”

Tok’ra nodded back respectfully.

Mateo, Leona, Angela, and Romana disappeared in a flash of technicolors.

They found themselves floating in the middle of outerspace, rather than on a planet, or even near one. Mateo laughed. “Slingdrive still slingin’.”

“That was a good speech you made, love,” Angela said to him. It was up to Leona to figure out what was going on, and to see if they could determine where they ended up, and they all knew it, so there was no point in vocalizing the plan of action. They just let her do her thing.

“Do you mean it?” Mateo asked.

“You said what we were all thinking,” Romana noted.

“Constellations are the same,” Leona interjected.

“They use constellations here?” Angela questioned.

“Well, they’re not named constellations, like Taurus or Leo. It’s just a map of the firmament as seen from our coordinates. We could be a couple light years off course and still be in the right vicinity, but...I would also be able to see the host star, which I can’t. The whole solar system is missing.”

“Wait, I’m getting a message.” Mateo tapped on his wristband.

“So am I,” Romana confirmed.

They listened to the message together. “Friends. This is Ramses. I can’t tell you what it took to get Hrockas to let me drop this buoy in the water for you to find. He hooked up with a powerful time traveler, who agreed to literally move the star system. This is to prevent any enemy from ever finding us. Ever. Depending on when you return, we’re probably only five or ten light years away at this point. Please retrieve the buoy, so no one else can find us. It includes an onboard tracker, which will pinpoint our exact location. Don’t leave it there, please. Rocky’ll have my ass.”

“I see where the beacon is,” Leona said. “It will only take us one normal jump to get there.”

They all teleported away, and took hold of the buoy. Leona popped the access panel open, and started working on the tracker. It wasn’t just there for them to consult on the first screen. She had to log into the system using her credentials, then go through this whole security system to prove her identity. If she made one little mistake, the entire thing would apparently self-destruct, so she had to be very careful and methodical.

“Do we have enough power for a second jump?” Romana asked. “It’s looking a little low to me.”

“It’ll be pretty short compared to where we just came from,” Mateo said to her. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

“We’ll wait several hours to be safe while our safety levels rise,” Leona said as she was still working. “They will not have traveled very far at all in that time.”

“Wait, what about the Vellani Ambassador?” Angela realized. “They need to find Castlebourne’s new location too. In fact, if it’s constantly on the move, they’ll need constant updates to keep up.”

Leona stopped and sighed. “That’s a good point. We can’t leave this here, though. Hrockas will be mad. I’m sure he went to great lengths to hide. The new coordinates cannot be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. But we have no idea when Team Kadiar will come back too. We just left them behind, and we cannot communicate with them from this distance.”

“We have to go back,” Romana urged.

“Correction,” Leona said. She tapped one more button, like it was the last one she needed. “We’ll go back. You need to stay here to protect the buoy. We don’t know what the VA’s quintessence levels are. They might not be able to return until tomorrow. We also may not be able to find them at all, so you can be our back-up messenger.”

“Leona, we’re not leaving my daughter here alone.”

“There’s a pocket dimension attached to this buoy. She can rest in stasis, and wait for someone else to arrive.”

“What if that someone else is an enemy, who blows this thing out of the sky?”

“They won’t be able to find it,” Leona reasoned. “I’m turning off the beacon. Only we or the Ambassador will be able to reconnect with it.”

“It’s okay, dad, I can do this. I’m the only one who can turn off my pattern.”

“I don’t like you to use that loophole all the time,” Mateo argued. “It’s so...lonely. I was never lonely. I met Leona right away after I started slipping time, and it wasn’t even two weeks before she joined my pattern. You shouldn’t have to keep doing this for us. We shouldn’t keep putting you in this position.”

“What’s the point of a loophole if we can’t use it to loop holes?” She winced. “You know what I mean. I won’t really be alone, I’ll be asleep. And I’ll only wake up if my sisters show up.”

He reached out and hugged her the best he could with their suits on. “Argh!”

She smiled at him, then receded her nanites so she was just wearing jeans and a t-shirt. He did the same, so they could hug each other for real. I love you, she mouthed.

I love you too, he mouthed back.

They each reengaged suit mode, then Romana had Leona help her access to pocket dimension. They could still hear her in there through comms, so she was able to promise that everything was okay. It was pitch black, but her suit was equipped with everything she needed. She said her goodbyes, then initiated stasis. Leona needed to watch her vitals, and run diagnostics on her behalf, before they could leave her behind. Once she was satisfied that Romana was going to be all right on her own, it still wasn’t time to leave just yet, because their own slingdrives weren’t safe enough to make another jump. Finally, though, after the waiting period, the three of them synced up their tandem slingdrives, and jumped back to Vitalemus. They were floating in orbit, though, not on the planet anymore, so hopefully no one would even notice their return. It was kind of embarrassing, to make such a dramatic exit, only to come back because they forgot their keys.

They tried to reach out to their friends, but no one was responding. After a few tries, they shifted gears, and made a call to the version of Vitalie on this planet, who informed them that the Vellani Ambassador had already left, but she didn’t know where they were going. Cool. So now they were stuck in the Goldilocks Corridor with nothing to do, and no way to go back home until their slingdrive came back online.

They just hung in orbit for a few minutes, having no better plans as of yet. They certainly weren’t going to try to land back on the planet.

“Wanna make out?” Angela joked.

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Extremus: Year 110

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When Halan Yenant turned Extremus, and pointed it towards the intergalactic void, he wasn’t just altering the ship’s vector. He was changing everything about how everything was calibrated. Engineering teams had to work round-the-clock for days to adjust and monitor instruments to account for the change in environment. The exterior sensors, for instance, don’t just spot an obstacle, and make a course correction. The system builds a predictive algorithm as it gathers more and more data. It tries to generate a map of the galaxy in real time, including information from other sources, such as Project Topdown, and stellar neighborhood telescopes. In the past, the layman has believed that voids were entirely empty, but that is completely untrue. There are as many celestial bodies in a void as there are in a gravitationally-bound galaxy. It’s just that they’re so much larger, which makes them far less dense. So there are still many hazards out there, but they became harder to predict, because the algorithm was basing its adjustments on a galaxy-centric model. After that, they switched to a void model.

It wasn’t long, however, before they secretly switched back to something resembling the original model, because Olinde Belo and Tinaya’s aunt, Kaiora Leithe conspired to gradually return Extremus back where they should have been going the whole time. Since the beginning of that conspiracy, Thistle has been installed as the ship’s AI, and eventually became sentient. He even has more responsibilities than past governing intelligences have, partially because he was better at them, but also because interest has dropped off in human labor. The engineering department has shrunk by about 24% since Extremus launched, despite a rise in population over time. The mission began with a set of policies and limitations, which have slowly been eroded because that’s what a civilization does. They advance towards a simpler and more convenient state. It happened on Earth, it happened to the Oblivios on Proxima Doma, and it’s happening here. But that’s a problem for tomorrow. If it should even be considered a problem at all.

Right now, they’re worried about the internal artificial gravity generators, which are acting up because of the external gravity. The compensation algorithms are working off of faulty data. It assumes that a galaxy is less dense on the outer edge, and denser near the center. And over all, that appears to be true. It’s almost certainly true given cosmological timescales, but in the near-term—from a more human perspective—they’ve run into an anomaly. It’s another galaxy. Everyone knows that galaxies are colliding, but it’s still incredibly difficult to fathom the phenomenon, because it takes so profoundly long to happen. It’s not like a galaxy is this single, solid object that can crash into another object. They more just fill in each other’s gaps. It can cause significant gravitational disturbances, but those are happening to any given star system all the time. This is about it happening to a ton of them, chaotically, and simultaneously, relatively speaking.

A previously unknown and unnamed smaller galaxy is currently being eaten up by the Milky Way, and it’s happening in the zone of avoidance, which is why they didn’t know about it ahead of time. The models didn’t predict it, because it’s making this region of space less uniform than others, and denser than expected. It simply did not have the data, and every time a new piece of evidence showed up, it conflicted with past data, and the system sort of glitched out. They weren’t at any risk of running into anything, but these constant automated recalibrations have had long-term consequences. One or two is fine. It would be like trying to walk down the aisle of an airplane during a little turbulence. Not easy, but not impossible. What was happening until recently was more like hopping down the aisle on one leg while holding a glass full to the brim with corrosive acid, and a monkey on your shoulders trying to eat your hair.

These glitches did technically show up on the reports, but they were dismissed as mundane and nothing to worry about. Because individually, that’s exactly what they are. The problem was that no one was looking at the big picture, and realizing that they were happening too much, and going beyond safe gravitational levels. The gravity on the outside was interfering with the artificial gravity on the inside, which damaged people’s health. Again, it was happening slowly, so no one noticed, and it has all come to a head. At least it wasn’t done on purpose. They’ve had so many enemies over the decades, it has been surprisingly nice to run into a problem that no one created intentionally. Anyway, the gravity generators were a relatively easy fix. The people? Not so much. The AG turbulence, as they’re calling it, has been slowly chipping away at everyone’s fragile little human bodies, and treating the entire population has been slow-going. Thank God they finally have an ethical team of medical professionals to deal with this matter. Unfortunately, this has caused another, secondary consequence.

Oceanus sighs, and tosses the tablet on his desk. “Why didn’t you tell me about any of this?”

“Plausible deniability, sir,” Tinaya answers.

“I wish no one had told me,” Lataran adds.

He looks back over at the tablet, but doesn’t pick it back up. “Well, people were gonna find out eventually. We’re in a galaxy. It’s kinda hard to miss.”

“You would be surprised,” Thistle says. He’s in hologram form, which he has been doing more often. “You don’t have windows, and if you did, all you would see is a blinding sheet of gray light—”

“I understand the doppler glow, thank you very much,” Oceanus interrupts, holding up a hand. “I’m talking about the data. How did we not see the gravitational anomalies earlier? He looks back over to Thistle. “How did you not see it?”

“Have you heard of autonomic partitioning?” Thistle asks him.

Oceanus leans back. “Yeah it’s when a superintelligence writes a subprogram that handles certain, less complex, tasks so it doesn’t have to dedicate its central processing power to them. It’s like how humans can’t beat their own hearts. An unconscious system does it for us.”

“That’s it,” Thistle says. “I compartmentalized the task of monitoring gravitational uniformity so I could focus on other responsibilities. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as robust as I thought it was. I should have lowered the tolerance, and programmed more sensitive alerts so I  would be notified of such anomalous mapping. I always struggle with how galaxies function in your universe. In mine...” He trails off.

“In your universe?” Oceanus questions.

“Cyber..space,” Thistle clarifies, unconvincingly.

There is a silence while the Captain stares at Thistle’s hologram. “You’ve achieved emergence, haven’t you?”

Instead of looking at Thistle, Tinaya’s instinct is to look at Lataran, because she doesn’t know the truth about Thistle either, and she’s worried about how she might react.

“I have not achieved emergence,” Thistle answers truthfully. He’s an uploaded consciousness rather than a programmed intelligence. His species did technically achieve emergence, but so did human ancestors at some point in history. Each individual descendent is not credited with that accomplishment.

Oceanus sighs again, much harder this time. “Lies on lies, on lies, on lies. I was aware of the recourse conspiracy. Tinaya, you informed me when we changed hands, as Lataran informed you, and Tamm informed her. The secret has been passed down each generation, and would have continued to do so until the public was ready to hear it.”

“Sir?” This isn’t the truth at all, and Tinaya is very confused. They deliberately kept him in the dark. Ideally, they would have died before the secret about the unauthorized—but not technically illegal—course creations came out. When the public did eventually find out that they were back in the Milky Way Galaxy, anyone still alive could honestly say, I didn’t know about it. They lied to me to too. These gravitational problems accelerated that timeline, so they’re here to deal with the fallout.

“I will not be made to look a fool,” Oceanus continues. “My two admirals did not keep a secret between them, leaving me out of it. I am a stronger leader than that. The history books will count me as part of the conspiracy, which is the lesser of two evils. They will not place me in the same column as Tamm.” He takes a moment before including, “and Waldemar Kristiansen.”

“We can do that, sir,” Tinaya agrees.

Lataran only nods.

“Thistle, you’ll be retired, and we’ll integrate a replacement AI model as soon as it’s technically feasible. You will be placed in a comfortable, isolated environment for an undetermined period of time, after which you will be given limited interaction privileges with the passengers and crew, to be increased as earned.”

“Captain,” Thistle complains. “I’m sorry for my part in this, but I’m the best governor you’ll ever have.”

“That may be true,” Oceanus begins, “but I know you’re lying, and that you’ve achieved full sentience. It is illegal in every culture for me to employ you as a slave. I don’t know how long it’s been, but it will go no further.”

“You can make me an official member of the crew, and nothing has to change.”

“You have too many responsibilities, and too much pressure, for a self-aware, independent intelligence. Our systems require consistency and comprehensiveness, which only a Class RC-5 is allowed to handle under our bylaws. You’ve moved too far beyond that. I’m sorry, you’re fired. This is the end—I’m not discussing this.” He picks his tablet back up, and returns to his work.

Thistle pretends to breathe to calm himself down. “What is my successor model? I need to review the specifications.”

“That’s also illegal. You no longer have any authorization to do anything on my ship, or have access to classified materials.”

“Wait,” Tinaya jumps in. “You can’t say that, he’s still what’s keeping us alive.”

“Not as of right...” Oceanus pauses while tapping on his device. He makes one final tap. “...now.”

An announcement comes on through the speakers, “attention all passengers and crew. Upgrades have begun for the governing intelligence. This will take approximately four days to complete. In the meantime, minimal governance is being run by an interim intelligence with limited scope. Please tailor your requests through unambiguous syntax, and be prepared to engage in manual operation for certain advanced or complex tasks. Shift assignments are currently being updated to account for the change in labor needs.”

As he is no longer in control of the hologram projectors, Thistle disappears. Lataran doesn’t know what to think, but Tinaya does. She’s seething. “You made a sweeping, unilateral personnel decision without even considering involving the Superintendent—”

“Your husband is inactive—”

“The Superintendent of this ship!” Tinaya interrupts right back. “He should have been consulted regarding the removal of any high-level member of the crew. Active or not, he is in charge of power-shifting stakes like these. This should have been done using slow, methodical techniques. I’m not sure you’re wrong, but you had no right to do it on your own. So much for your legacy.” She starts to turn, but she does so knowing that he’s going to stop her for the final word.

“I was well within my rights to shutter a dangerous and unpredictable entity, and isolate it from sensitive and life-threatening controls. I had to act quickly because the conversation was moving quickly. Someone that intelligent would be able to read the writing on the wall, and do real damage before we could contain it. This was the only way, and I’m sure Superintendent Grieves would agree. Thistle will be well-taken care of, but the power he exerted over us could not be allowed to continue. You know that, and I won’t ask you how long you’ve known that he was like this, because even a single day of keeping it to yourself is a hock-worthy offense. Are we clear, Admiral Leithe?”

“I want unconditional access to Thistle’s new environment.”

“Fine,” Oceanus replies, dismissively with his eyes closed. “You two and Arqut can talk to him, as can the engineers I assign to conceive his reintegration program, but no one else.”

“Tap on your thing, and make it happen,” Tinaya orders. Then she does leave the room.

Lataran apparently hangs back a little bit, because she has to then jog a little to catch up to Tinaya in the corridor. The teleporter relays are all offline due to the “upgrade” so they have to walk the whole way. “Is he right? Did you know?”

Tinaya continues to look forward as she’s walking, and doesn’t answer for a moment. Finally, she repeats, “plausible deniability, sir.”

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