Microstory 2482: Teledome

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This is the biggest known ground-based telescope in existence. They make them bigger, but they’re all floating in space, because that’s the best way to avoid atmospheric distortions, and other artifacts. For those of you not in the know, Earth launched two arrays of telescopes for something called Project Topdown. These are currently on their way out into the two intergalactic voids adjacent to each face of the Milky Way Galaxy. They’re all about the practical applications. I won’t go the details, because you can look it up in the central archives, but I’ll say that the purpose of it is to map our galaxy, as well as peer into the local group, unencumbered by the light and other distractions that come from being within the “border” of our own galaxy. Of course, these are not the only telescopes in existence, and it’s not like we’ll ever dismantle the more local ones in favor of using Topdown exclusively. Earth still has its Bouman Interferometer Array, and other worlds in the stellar neighborhood are working on their own projects. Castlebourne isn’t trying to make any breakthrough discoveries with its Teledome, but it certainly seemed logical to build it anyway. At 5400 square kilometers, the Sugimoto Phased Radio-Optical Telescope takes up nearly the entire area of the dome. You might ask yourself, why is it even under a dome? It shouldn’t need to be. Other telescopes certainly aren’t. Well, dust; that’s why. The space within the confines of the dome is pristine, and very easy to keep well-maintained. If they had to worry about dust storms clogging up the sensors, it would be this huge constant chore. So instead of a geodesic dome, it’s a smooth one. And instead of diamond, it’s made of an ultra-clear polycarbonate. It’s not a single object, however. There are seams in it, but they’re bonded at the molecular level. So if it suffers damage, only that section has to be replaced, but that’s only in the event of catastrophic damage, because it’s just as self-healing as any other metamaterial. As for the telescope itself, the name tells you that it’s both radio and optical. It’s also not made of a single, uniform lens. Nanomodules can shift between states, allowing for the absorption of a wide range of frequencies on the light spectrum. There is an atmosphere on Castlebourne, however thin, and it does create artifacts on the image, but as I’ve been saying, they didn’t engineer this to be perfect. We have plenty of alternatives, and they’re always building more. If you want to see the telescope first hand, you can come here, but obviously, the prospectus includes a live feed of the image, and a constant readout of the data, for your own analysis and synthesis. So you don’t have to come here, but it’s cool to see anyhow, so I still recommend it.

The Sixth Key: Getting Their Rocks Off (Part IV)

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Clavia taught Echo...well, seemingly literally everything. She explained how the universe works, why it exists, and who exists in it. She told him about the people who were in charge, and those who simply lived their lives the best they could, ultimately having little impact on the events that unfolded. He was particularly taken in by her lesson on something called The Illusion of Self-Divinity Hypothesis. The theory seeks to understand why people conjure religious and spiritual concepts that go against scientific principles, and are very obviously untrue. They believe in God—or some kind of divine force—in order to establish themselves as the true source of power in a cold and indifferent universe. Science is true. Of course, it’s true, but it’s just as irrelevant as anything else that conscious beings come up with. Whatever is true about how reality works is true whether people understand it or not, or accept it...or, indeed, even if no one is around to contemplate the truth. They have no control over this, and that is a frightening idea.

If people have no impact on the grander truth of reality, what is the point in living? Their existence is insignificant. Humanity as a whole appears to be just as meaningless, so why continue? To protect themselves from this particular hard truth, they come up with tenets of the divine. Many philosophers have postulated that humans do this because they take comfort in the supposed meaningfulness of existence, and that’s probably true as well. But the core of these religious thoughts comes from the individual’s psychological need to hold power. Believers of a given religious school may all believe in basically the same thing. They have the same idea of the divine being, and that this being created them and the universe for some sort of reason. But each individual can come up with their own particular set of sub-tenets. This is important on its own, but their ability to shift their personal tenets at will is what’s key here.

If humans invented God, then humans must be more powerful than God. Since no version of God truly exists, the divine being’s power is wholly within the headcanon of the individual. This effectively serves to make the believer the god-being themselves. They can change their minds about the underlying rules of what they believe to be an ordered universe. Clavia seems to believe this one lesson to be particularly important as they talk about it at least a little every day. Their education lasts for years, all the while, the mysterious second wave of visitors or invaders keeps heading in this direction. She starts to regain some of the special power and knowledge that she had before, but she still can’t explain what’s taking them so long. Or she won’t. Echo decides that he’s going to be okay with this. She’s entitled to her secrets, just as she respects him with his. They spend most of the time in the dreamscapes that she constructs, so they can explore the inner workings of the universe through real examples. Today, all that apparently ends. She’s decided that he’s ready to graduate. They’re doing it in base reality.

Echo stands there on the top of the hill, looking down at the ground below them. He’s meant to picture an audience, but it’s not working. Well, of course it isn’t working. It’s not like he can just magically summon people for real. But his imagination, it’s just not very good. There’s no way to know if he was born like that, or if his upbringing resulted in the deficit. Really, it just makes him sad. He’s proud of himself, and he wants people to see it. He just wants to see people in general. Clavia’s simulations aren’t real. He wants real. The audience materializes.

Dozens of chairs suddenly appear on the ground, and a few seconds later, they’re all filled. At first, he starts to wonder if this is Clavia’s doing. She promised to always make him aware when they’re in a shared dream, but she doesn’t necessarily have to keep that promise. She’s fully capable of tricking him. But he doesn’t think that’s what this is. The people in the seats, they’re confused. Clavia’s a little confused too, but not panicking. She puts the tablet where she was tweaking her speech away, and stands back up. “Ladies and gentlemen, I know that you’re quite perplexed, but I assure you that you are entirely safe. If you will just bear with us, all will be explained.”

“Did I do this?” Echo asks her in a whisper.

“Of course you did, dear. You’ve always been able to do this.” That can’t be true. Clavia walks over to the wooden podium. “Thank you for coming to the first annual School of Clavia Graduation Ceremony. The Class of 2500 may be small, but he is mighty, and I hope all of you will welcome him into the Sixth Key with open arms. As he is our only student, Mr. Cloudbearer is valedictorian by default, but make no mistake, he would have earned this spot either way. In a group of a hundred trillion, I have no doubt that he would still be sitting up here with me today, preparing to give a speech.”

Echo stands up to whisper to her again. “I don’t think I can do that.”

“I told you to prepare a speech,” she reminds him.

“Yes, but I always thought I would be giving it to the wind. Now that there are people to hear me, I don’t know if what I wrote down is right.”

“Just speak from the heart,” she says. It’s a cliché, but reasonable advice.

“Okay.” He’s still nervous, but determined. At least he’s determined to be determined, if that makes any sense. He’s about to sit back down so Clavia can finish her introduction, but she points to the podium with both hands, indicating that she already is. So he steps up to it.

“You got this,” Clavia encourages as she’s sitting back down.

He looks out at the crowd before him. Some of them are still confused, but they’re intrigued more than anything. It seems harmless enough; a graduation ceremony. No one has tried to run away or attack them, or even stand to question. He’s gonna be okay. This is gonna work out. “I was born alone.” Wait, that’s not what was in his notes. “I did not have parents.” That isn’t true at all. “I didn’t even have a planet.” That’s really not true. They’re standing on it right now. “I had to create it myself out of random scattered atoms in the void. I don’t know how I did this. I just knew that I had to. I had to...make form. My consciousness was floating in the nothingness for who knows how long. Still, even with two arms, two legs, I was alone. I conjured new lifeforms in my imagination. They cared for me, and taught me how to live. But it was really just me. I know everything. I know...everything.” He points to someone in the front row. “You may look like Leona Delaney, but you are Arcadia Preston. How would you like to feel like yourself again?” With a wave on his hand, she transforms into someone new. The man next to her is stunned, but pleased. It’s her husband, Vearden Haywood.

“I am the divine manifestation of your reality,” Echo goes on. “You have been chosen to come here and bear witness to the rise of my power. You live in different parts of the galaxy, and originate from each of the five original parallel realities. I will send you back to where you belong, and you will tell of my grandeur. You will warn the leaders of your society that they are nothing compared to me. You will halt all wars, and cleanse yourselves of all hate. You follow me now.” He pauses for effect, and it’s enough time to get himself out of the trance, if only for a little while. Who is this man, resonating Echo’s vocal cords, and flapping his lips? He is no powerful divine entity. He’s just Echo Cloudbearer; a simple man leading a simple life on the outskirts of civilization. None of what he’s saying is true, and it’s certainly not right. He turns his head to look at Clavia. She’s smirking. Or is it more of a grimace? He didn’t do well with his emotion detection tests. He might not be cut out as valedictorian after all.

Clavia gestures for him to continue.

His darker self is trying to take back over. The real Echo can’t stop it. He’s not strong enough. He didn’t know that he needed to fight. Clavia never taught him. He studies her face one last time before his chin forces itself away. She’s quite happy. This was her plan all along. She was never teaching Echo anything. She was fostering this other evil force. She was turning him into this. He lets go. “I am the man who invented God, and became God. There is no truth beyond what I make it. There is no will outside of mine. I am all that exists, and you are all still alive...because I deem it so. Please know that I ask this with absolutely no sincerity.” He takes another dramatic pause, but Echo’s good soul is too weak to break free this time, and resume control of the body. It’s over. “Are there any questions?”

There’s an explosion in the back. Over a dozen people appear out of the spacetime tears, and reassemble themselves into solid beings. He doesn’t recognize any of them, except for one. She looks exactly like Clavia. She doesn’t stand there with the same air of self-importance, though, and she doesn’t appear to be the leader. Someone else steps forward. “My name is Hogarth Pudeyonavic. I am here to negotiate for the freedom of the citizens of the Sixth Key. My first demand is that you release the prisoners.”

“They’re not my prisoners,” Echo insists. “They’re my audience.”

Hogarth holds firm. “If you do not send them back to where they belong safely, I will do it myself, and send you somewhere not so safe.”

“It’s okay,” Clavia decides, placing her hand upon Echo’s shoulder. “We don’t need them anymore.”

“What did you do to me?” Perhaps the good part of Echo does remain.

“I helped you come out of your shell,” she replied. This is the real Echo. Everything you told these people is true. I’ve shown you. You just need to put the pieces together.”

Echo turns his head forwards again. While he’s contemplating Clavia’s claim, he waves his hand again, and spirits the audience away. The exploding invaders are all that’s left, but he’s not paying them any intention. He’s going back over his lessons. He’s rewatching the Big Bang, the coalescence of Earth in the Sol System, the splitting of reality, the Reconvergence, and the consolidation of the former peoples of these realities. That’s not it. That’s not what she’s talking about. It’s something else. Something small. No, someone small. She’s curled up in the middle of nothing, trapped in the space between spaces. She’s trying to find a way out, and back home to her friends, but growing frustrated. She shouts. Energy flows out of her, and into the void. Within the cloud of infrasubatomic dust, a galaxy takes shape. It’s small, but only from this perspective. Hundreds of billions of stars, waiting to be populated by the refugees. It’s the Sixth Key, and above it, its creator. Olimpia Sangster. He wasn’t born alone. She is his mother. And he has to find her. He scowls at Clavia.

“Oh, shit,” she says. “That’s not what I meant.” This asshole tree is goin’ down.

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The Sixth Key: His World Rocked (Part III)

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Clavia detailed her history, and how she came to be the consciousness of a tree. She’s actually an amalgamation of multiple people. They were all dying next to this tree’s parent—for lack of a better term. The tree was dying too, under attack from a small but powerful enemy. It provided them with one last hope in the form of a seed that could one day be replanted. The fruit containing this seed ended up in the mouth of one of the allies, a woman by the name of Ingrid Alvarado, who is now the primary intelligence of the new tree. That wasn’t blood on her face that Echo saw when she first showed up here. It was the juice of the fruit. Her body was dead, though, so at least he didn’t bury someone alive. It’s a good thing that he did, because it’s what allowed the seed to find purchase, and grow into the magnificent specimen standing here today. The humanoid form of Clavia is an extension of it, and as of yet, it’s unclear how far she can stray from her home. For now, she’s been mostly staying in the garden. Together, they hope to work through ways to protect themselves from any hostile forces.

Echo doesn’t know how fast the ships can go, but his original guess was that it would take two years for another one to arrive, if it ever did. They evidently detected Clavia’s birth, but it was a year before the first strangers came. If it took them a year to get back to wherever they came from, no one else will be able to make it until another year after that. According to Clavia, however, this is wrong. The people here are capable of traveling a lot faster than that. They can cross the whole galaxy in a matter of moments if they use the right equipment. Echo doesn’t really have the frame of reference for what she means, so she has started giving him some schooling. His parents educated him in science a little while they were alive, but it seems they deliberately chose to leave some things out. He now believes that they didn’t want him to develop too much of a sense of wonder for what might be hiding amongst the stars. It’s not that they were trying to protect him from the dangers, but they no longer had the means to reach such great distances, or even communicate to others. They didn’t want him to long for something that he could never have.

Looking back, their reasoning was sound, but it is now out of date. Their shuttle is not irreparable, not with a superintelligent tree around. Clavia is getting smarter and stronger every day, which is good, because someone else does appear to be on their way here. She once again doesn’t know who they are, or what they want, but the two of them are going to be more prepared than ever. Despite their ability to travel so quickly, the oncomers are moving at a really slow pace. Clavia doesn’t know why that is either, but they’re going to take advantage of the delay.

 They spend the next week on an intensive crash course so Echo can learn all he needs to know about the universe. He learns that it’s made up of five conflicting cultures, which were once separated across different realities. Each one had everything they needed until they were thrown together and suddenly had to share their resources with each other. That was a hundred years ago, and this new society had been on the brink of war ever since. The only thing that has kept them together is the result of a series of diplomatic discussions amongst the leaders, and a healthy interest in everyone minding their own business. They’re still pretty separated, which sounds like a bad thing, but it seems to be going well. At least for now. What they need is a true leader. They need someone to unite the civilizations. Everyone needs to be following the same rules, and listening to the same visionary. For some reason, Clavia believes that Echo can be that leader. He’s not so sure. He’s never led before. Until recently, he hadn’t even met anyone before.

“You didn’t talk to people in your simulations?” Clavia questions.

“They were mostly only there as background,” Echo explains. “I don’t think that the program was all that sophisticated. They allowed me to feel like I was doing a number of activities, like swimming, piloting a spacecraft, or even flying through the air. However, they didn’t have any socialization functions, as my parents would call them.”

“Hm. Well, I have simulations of my own, and they don’t have any limits. Would you like to try one of them?” Clavia offers.

“Sure, I wouldn’t mind seeing something new.” Echo doesn’t want to seem too eager, but he is.

“Do I have permission to touch you?”

“Go ahead.”

She opens her arms, and walks up to him, taking him into a hug. His mom and dad hugged him all the time, but this is different. He’s feeling something he hasn’t ever felt before. Sure, there were stirrings, but nothing this substantial. They’re probably bad thoughts, so he shoves them to the side, and lets Clavia do whatever she’s trying to do.

He finds himself falling through the air. No, it’s more like the ground disappeared, and now air is rushing up past him. New ground gets larger and larger until he’s standing upon it. It’s not a desert, nor a garden, but the trees of a city. Cars are moving next to him. They’re honking their horns, and yelling unintelligibly at each other. People walking by him on the sidewalk are talking, to each other, and on their little computer boxes. Flashing signs litter the tops of the nearby buildings. He can read most of the words, but he doesn’t know what their purpose is.

“Advertisements,” Clavia explains. She’s walking up to him wearing something that she wasn’t wearing before. Her dress was simple and unremarkable, only there to cover her skin. It wasn’t all that different than what Echo wore before he put on his father’s suit. Her outfit now is stylish and fancy. Her pants are gray and slick. She has a gray jacket over a white blouse, showing some skin in between the two sides. Echo is having those stirrings again, so he shakes it off, and tries to focus on her eyes. And that hat. What kind of hat is that? “A fedora,” Clavia answers.

He didn’t ask that out loud. He just thought about it. “Huh?”

“I can read your mind in here,” Clavia says. “This isn’t like one of your simulations, where you just connect to a piece of technology. We’re sharing a brain, and with that, our thoughts.”

Oh, that might not be good.

She smiles. “It’s okay to look. You’ve been alone your whole life. It isn’t natural. They should have given you friends...like these.”

A man wearing a chef’s uniform walks up to Echo out of nowhere. “Hey, Mister Cloudbearer. How you doin’?”

“Good, good, thank you.”

“All right, my man,” the cher responds.

“Hey, Echo.” It’s a young woman. She’s quite pretty, and she looks interested in him. She smiles but doesn’t stop walking by.

“Echo, what’s up, dude?” A teenager is standing on a mailbox. Some people are paying attention, but others are ignoring him. “Check this out!” What is he holding? It’s long, and has wheels on it. He’s never seen it before, but the word suddenly comes to him. It’s a skateboard. The kid holds it out in front of him, then jumps off of the mailbox. He lands on the board, and starts rolling around, much to the annoyance of the nearest passersby. One of the wheels hits a pebble, and he falls forward, but still manages to land on his feet. “Ah, boofed it. Maybe you can show me again later?”

“Sure, kid.” Why did he say that? Echo never taught this non-existent person anything.

Other people start approaching Echo. They all act like they’re friends, and that they admire him greatly. He’s on top of the world here; a real popular guy. He was once afraid to talk to other people. He didn’t think it would ever happen anyway, but he was scared out of his mind that he would screw it up if the unthinkable happened. But you know what? Even though none of this is real, he did encounter four people the other day, and he handled it well. He wanted them to leave, and they eventually did. He won the argument. Despite his lack of experience, he could do this. When this new group of people come here, he’ll take care of them too, no matter what they want from him, or the tree. If they don’t have honorable intentions, they’re gonna wish they did.

“All right, that’s enough,” Clavia declares. The crowd freezes, though they’re all still looking at Echo enthusiastically.

“You can make anything?” Echo asks her.

“Like I said, it’s not like one of your parents’ sims. I don’t have to program anything. I just...think of it. What else do you want to see?”

Echo looks up towards the sky, and thinks about it. “Hmm. The whole galaxy.”

“Easy,” she says. The street and buildings in front of them begin to roll away. Then the entire planet that they’re standing on does the same, like a giant marble spinning through outer space. The two of them keep flying backwards as the stars fly away from them, and then start to streak across the sky. Suddenly it all stops, and they can see a galaxy, rotating at an angle in the middle of a black void. It’s so beautiful, glowing with the fire of hundreds of billions of suns.

He admires it silently for a few moments.

“Not one second has passed for us in the real world,” Clavia claims. “I can teach you so many things while we’re in here. I can make you feel like you’ve lived an entire lifetime in one day. I can show you what life has been like for everyone else; in the five original realities, and after the creation of the Sixth Key. I can turn you into the leader that I know you can be.”

“What do you get out of this?” Echo asks.

“Why would I need anything out of it? Is that how your parents raised you, to need something for your efforts?”

“They did not, but in the regular simulations, I often had to wait in line, like if I wanted to go on an amusement park ride, or order food. I couldn’t carry on a conversation with one of the backgrounders, but I could hear them talk to each other. I noticed a drive towards balance. Unfairness meant one person having something that the other did not. They wanted everything to be even. No one wants to lose, or sacrifice. And I always had to pay. It was fake money to me, but real to them.”

“Well,” Clavia begins, “I’m not one of your background actors. I’m a tree.”

Echo chuckles. “True. I recognize that I don’t know how humans work regardless. Yes, Clavia, I would love it if you showed me.”

She smiled wider. “Great. Then let’s get started. How about we go back to the beginning, during a little event that we call...the big bang?”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 10, 2492

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After waiting for the slingdrive to get back to the green, the three members of the impromptu away team returned to Castlebourne. They held an emergency meeting, so they could get all the way through it before the timeslippers disappeared for a year. After this happened, Team Kadiar evidently took care of it, and no longer needed anyone else’s input on the matter. They would be dealing with Korali and her agenda according to their own procedures and mission protocols.

Today, Team Matic was worrying about something else. The rescue missions and beta testing were going fine. The refugees were becoming less anxious about their new lives here, and really trying to dig in; put down some roots. The more people who became comfortable with relaxing, and using the recreational domes, the more it normalized the concept, and the more people who were willing to give it a shot too. They were establishing a new society here, and it was going pretty well. Unfortunately, the grand opening was in more danger than ever. Until recently, it was illegal to cast one’s consciousness to interstellar distances permanently. Doing so would place the onus on someone else to properly handle the traveler’s former body. People were typically willing to take on this responsibility, but that wasn’t enough to make it part of state policy. Those details had since been ironed out, and most restrictions that were limiting Castlebourne’s potential as a destination planet were out of the way. There was one left, though, and it had to do with the power demands of such a distant casting.

“How far are we again?” Olimpia asked.

“We’re 108 light years from Earth, so varying distances from other core colonies,” Hrockas replied. He was really stressed out, and spending all of his time trying to charter the rights to casting at scale. That was what this region of space was called; the Charter Cloud. The Core Colonies belonged to a unified sociopolitical community, and to a lesser extent, the rest of the stellar neighborhood belonged as well. It afforded them certain rights and protections, usage of certain technology, and aid. The charter systems lay beyond this region, but not so far beyond that they were completely on their own. They could request certain assistance, and technological advancements to help them in their development. There were no guarantees, but it was fairly common. Hrockas, for instance, already proved himself to have healthy relationships with the right bureaucrats when he managed to secure an arkship. But now, that was probably what was holding him back. He had already chartered so much, and the government wasn’t convinced that what they were getting out of this relationship was worth letting him charter even more.

Quantum terminals were a marvel of technology, and a major game changer in the pursuit of interstellar colonization. Whereas a ship might take decades or longer to reach its destination, an individual could travel there in a matter of minutes. This technology was what made it worth it to found Castlebourne so far away from the stellar neighborhood, and the entire point of this project. Unfortunately, while spooky action at a distance was harnessed long ago, it wasn’t free. The greater the distance between two quantum computers, the harder it was to maintain coherence, the more energy it took to power communication, and the higher the bandwidth they both needed. This was the source of the government’s reluctance. Sure, they didn’t have a problem with one or two people transferring or surrogating their minds there each day, but Hrockas wanted orders of magnitude more visitors. And the colonies didn’t want to give him what he needed to achieve these objectives.

While he was obviously granted permission to take ownership of the star system well over a century ago, the current administration was now arguing that they had no obligation to provide him his customers. It just took too much power. He was asking for too much. If they didn’t reach an agreement soon, he would not meet his goals. He had been dealing with this for years, but with particular intensity over the course of this last year, but now he was out of ideas.

“What about relay stations?” Mateo suggested. “Like, you cast to a world in between Earth and here, and then maybe another one between here and the first relay. Would that lower the power requirements?”

“It absolutely would,” Hrockas agreed, “but most of the ideal candidates lie within the managed territories. They don’t want to give those up either. I’ve already asked to use the preexisting intermediate quantum terminals as repeaters, but they don’t wanna do that either. Those are the property of their respective colonists, and I have no right to them.”

“Well, what if we built our own?” Olimpia offered. “Star systems are big. Surely there’s enough room for two independent quantum repeaters, or whatever.”

Hrockas nodded, but he was clearly about to slam that idea down too. “Yes, I’ve thought of that, but it would take another century to build here, and fly the full distance. They won’t let me cast an engineering team, or take control of local automators remotely, in order to build these new repeaters in situ. The issue remains, I don’t have rights to those territories, or their resources. For a couple of them, I could probably negotiate with their owners on my own, but that would only work with the colonies closer to me, which doesn’t solve the problem, because even they are too far from the core. I need access to the stars that are under the strongest control of the central government.”

“Did you ask Team Kadiar?” Leona suggested. “They have an FTL ship, don’t you, Captain?” she asked Dubravka.

“I do,” Dubra confirmed, even though everyone knew it was true.

The Vellani Ambassador is busy with their rescue missions. I’m not going to take time away from them for such petty reasons.”

“I wouldn’t call it petty,” Dubra said. “We’ve already discussed the potential for Operation Escape Artist.”

“Don’t talk about that here,” Hrockas requested of her. “I don’t want the others to be made aware of it.” He looked at those not in the know with grave concern.

No one on Team Matic batted an eye. They were curious about what Operation Escape Artist could possibly be, but it was none of their business, so they had no right to look into it, or ask after it.

“I think I can do it...without the VA,” Ramses volunteered.

“Did you build another slingdrive?” Leona questioned, having not yet heard anything about it yet.

“Kind of.” Ramses was hesitant to clarify.

“Explain,” Leona ordered. Then an expression of fear flashed on her face. Mateo knew that she was still doubting her continued role as a captain without a ship.

“It’s not a ship...per se.” Ramses’ eyes darted over to Mateo. “Nor a...slingdrive...per se.” His eyes darted to Mateo once more.

“Oh,” Mateo said. “It’s me? I’m the slingdrive?”

“With a...firmware update, you could be,” Ramses replied.

“Setting aside how impossible what you’re implying sounds like, why would it have to be him?” Leona pressed. “What’s different about him?” Ramses exchanged glances, much to the Captain’s annoyance. “Someone tell me what’s goin’ on.”

“I suppose the secret was going to get out eventually,” Ramses decided.

“Might as well be now.” Mateo stood up, and stepped away from the table. The nanobots that composed his emergent suit were currently thickened out to look just like a regular IMS. This was unnecessary for them to function at optimal efficiency, however, and made them feel bulkier and less streamlined. He now commanded them to thin all over before removing them entirely from some parts of his body. Once he was finished adjusting the layout, it looked like he was wearing a short sleeve spacesuit with shorts instead of pants. Very impractical, but more comfortable.

Leona stood, and began to inspect her husband. “You are much farther along on this project than I thought you were,” Leona was still looking at Mateo, but clearly speaking to Ramses.  “Last I heard, it was nothing more than a dream.” She snapped Mateo’s waistband.

“It’s in alpha testing,” Ramses admitted.

“Well, if he’s survived this long, I suppose it can’t be all bad. But he is not qualified to install quantum repeaters that orbit a star.” Now she looked Ramses in the eye. “You’ll install them in my substrate as well for beta.”

“As you wish,” Ramses agreed.

“This is all very interesting,” Hrockas interjected, “but I don’t have any quantum repeaters. There is nothing we can do this year if one of you six has to do it.”

Leona nodded at him. “Grand opening is 2500. We’ll have it done by then.” She looked down at Ramses again. “Assuming the second upgrade is a viable option.”

“Hogarth taught me a shit-ton last year,” Ramses reminded her. “I believe that I can successfully miniaturize the technology that needs to be miniaturized, and shunt what I can’t into a pocket dimension.”

“These already have pockets,” Mateo revealed. He extended a feeding tube from the choker necklace that he was wearing. Ramses’ original design granted access to the food pocket dimension from an implant that was injected directly in the mouth, but having the dayfruit smoothie suddenly materialize on his tongue proved to be incredibly unsettling. Other people may have no problem with it, and Mateo had no issue with the palate implants for air and water.

“Cool,” Leona said, seemingly unimpressed.

“I can install your suit today,” Ramses promised, “but the upgrade will have to wait until tomorrow. I want to run a few hundred billion more simulations.”

“Do what you gotta do,” Leona instructed.

That was the end of the meeting, so everyone started to leave. Hrockas asked Leona to stay behind, and didn’t have any problem when Mateo and Olimpia chose to stand by her. “I just...”

“Go on,” Leona encouraged.

“I wanted to thank you for all you and your team has done. I started this all alone. I always planned on being alone. But your builder has accelerated construction on all the domes, your engineer deployed planetary defenses the likes of which have never been seen in this sector of the galaxy. Every time I have a problem in need of solvin’, you step up without ever asking anything in return. I don’t know how to repay you. I’m not old enough to remember a time when people exchanged currency for goods, but you are. Do you...want something like that? I hear gold used to be worth a lot. You know there’s a Wild West dome. I built it where it is specifically because there are real gold deposits there.”

“We have no use for money or precious metals either,” Olimpia explained to him.

“Ram uses metals,” Mateo added, “but he would have said something if he were lacking.”

“You don’t have to attempt to pay us in any form,” Leona assured Hrockas. “This is just what we do.” She took a breath, and looked around. “I do believe that our work here may be coming to a close, but we’ll probably continue to use this as a sort of home base, as long as that doesn’t lead to unforeseen consequences. The whole reason Ramses is doing what he’s doing right now is so we can go anywhere we’re needed.”

“Well, I really appreciate you selecting my little world as one of those places where you were needed. My dream is not exactly essential to the advancement of mankind. I didn’t know that anyone needed a refuge until you told me. They weren’t in the original plans either.”

“That’s okay,” Leona comforted. “You didn’t question it when we asked. You just gave us the space. We need to thank you for that.”

Hrockas smiled softly and nodded.

They left the room, and proceeded to Ramses’ secret lab. Leona wasn’t happy that he had been keeping this whole thing from her, but Mateo defended him. He argued that everyone was entitled to at least a little privacy. The team didn’t have many opportunities while spending nearly every day together, so they had to find small corners or moments which belonged only to them. The two of them found theirs. They watched as Leona stripped down, and climbed onto the scary-looking medical chair, just as Mateo had days ago.

Ramses had her read the literature, and then prepared to initiate the machine. “This is gonna look like it hurts...and it does. But it won’t last forever, and she will survive.”

“Do it,” Leona ordered.

Ramses turned it on, and let the laser robot arms start doing their thing. It was more horrifying to see from this angle than it was when Mateo was in the chair. It didn’t help that he was watching his wife tense up in agony. But the man was right, it was over quickly, and the pain began to subside immediately.

Leona stood up, and played with her new nanites a little, releasing them, changing the design of her faux clothing, and pulling them back in. She disappeared, and returned thirty seconds later. “Teleportation is a lot smoother.”

“It’s because you’re lighter,” Ramses explained.

“Me next,” Olimpia volunteered.

Ramses himself was the last to undergo the upgrade treatment. He showed Leona what to do, and how to watch for calibration errors, then he climbed in the chair, and told her to hit the button. It started out just as the others had. The lasers cut into his skin, implanted the gel matrices, then sealed the incisions back up. This was when things changed. The ground shook, and sparks shot out of the machine. The robot arms started uncontrollably swinging every which way. Everyone grabbed one, and tried to hold it in place, so it wouldn’t go wild. It didn’t last very long anyway, though. A web of technicolors enveloped them, and flung them through the spacetime continuum, into the unknown.

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The Fifth Division: Rockhead (Part II)

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The people who work in the Garden Dimension are not pleased to learn that Briar de Vries pushed the prisoner down a well, but they let it go when they realize that A.F. is no ordinary man. He’s in a posthuman body, reluctantly gifted to him by the infamous Team Matic. He’s not immortal, but he’s harder to hurt, and quicker to heal. The walls of the well are smooth and wet. It was designed with an ancient aesthetic, but constructed using modern techniques, so it hasn’t experienced any wear and tear. He’s not getting out of there unless he can leap tall buildings in a single bound, or fly on his own power. He’ll survive, but not for long. Briar hasn’t clarified what he thinks his endgame is, but they’re letting him do what he thinks is best, for now.

It’s the next day now, and everyone appears to be up to speed. Hogarth Pudeyonavic’s artificial universe, Fort Underhill predominately houses people who used to be dead. Now Ingrid realizes why they didn’t call it Fort Hogarth, or something. She may have built it, but it was Ellie Underhill who used her immense powers to resurrect 120 billion people from the afterlife virtual simulation they were in, into new substrates in base reality. She evidently did it all at once. The thing about this situation, though, is that there was no longer anywhere for them to go when they died. Their bodies are no more invincible than A.F.’s. Some of them had spent thousands of years in the simulation, having died on Earth in ancient times. To them, coming back to a physical plane of existence wasn’t really a gift, even though the servers they were being stored on were about to be shut down.

Hogarth came up with a solution. It is she who has the power to demolecularize her body, and respawn elsewhere. Someone—it’s unclear who; perhaps Hogarth herself—replicated this ability in everyone. Now they all respawn. It’s relatively rare, because they’re kind of living in a utopia, so it’s not like people are dropping like flies, but it’s a nice contingency. Visitors from Salmonverse can still die in most places in Fort Underhill, but they too are protected as long as they remain in the Crest Hotel, as a safety feature for diplomatic reasons.

Ingrid is looking down the wall at the prisoner. A.F. seems very calm. She can’t fully make out his face this far away, and in this poor lighting, but it kind of looks like contentment from here. She needs to get him out of there. She needs to talk with him herself. This well-centric moral lesson was a stupid idea. There’s a rope here, but it doesn’t feel like it’s sturdy enough to hold a person. It’s just meant to pull up water in a bucket. This unique jail was meant to be relatively self-sufficient. When you water some of the ground on the bottom of the thorny walls, nutrient-rich mushrooms grow in a matter of hours, reportedly providing all the nourishment a prisoner needs.

Killjlir Pike—who Ingrid is convinced made up their own name—walks in from the corridor. Ingrid heard them coming a mile away. As a seasoned warrior, Ingrid knows how to be stealthy. She wasn’t arbitrarily handed the job of running the entire offensive branch of her civilization’s military. She earned it. She earned it in her enemies’ blood, and her own. She sometimes can’t help but sneak up to people, even when surprise is not her intention. Killjlir is the polar opposite. They have no personal experience with war, nor bloodshed of any kind. They were indeed handed their role as leader of their people. The Andromeda Consortium is an incredibly bizarre and dysfunctional web of alliances that always opposed the Detachments, over which Ingrid presided in the Fifth Division parallel reality. These alliances are based on an incomprehensible mess of so-called hierarchies. Two factions can war with each other, and they can recruit allied factions into that, even if there’s a conflict of interest. Literally, one faction will fight this war on both sides. It doesn’t make any sense.

Killjlir’s official title is First Among Us. The Andromedans might be fighting each other every which way, but they all answer to Killjlir. The way the Consortium apparently sees it, the First World is superior to all others. But this doesn’t make sense either. Not only is the First World not the planet where humans originally lived, because that was in the Milky Way, but it’s not even the first planet that was settled in the Andromeda Galaxy. They discovered it something like three hundred years later. They don’t dispute this fact in their history, they just don’t see the problem with using the term. Only a First Worldian can become First Among Us, but that’s the only requirement. Ingrid believes that the successor is chosen due to their attractiveness, but she’s never heard anyone admit that. They don’t have to have any diplomatic experience, or leadership skills, or even basic intelligence. That’s what leads Ingrid to believe that it’s only about superficial qualities, but again, she doesn’t really know. All she knows is that Killjlir is an idiot, and they don’t get along. The sentient tree forced them both to represent the interests of the Fifth Division collaboratively, but it was clear from the beginning that Ingrid was going to have to do all the work.

“What are you doing?” Killjlir asks?

“Getting some water,” Ingrid lies.

“You’re gonna drink water from where there’s a person?”

“What’s it to ya?”

“I can help. Do you want me to help?”

“You don’t know what I may need help with,” Ingrid reasons.

“I bet I do.” They glide over to look down the well. “How’re ya doing down there?”

“Oh, I’m great!” A.F. responds. “How ‘bout you?”

“Hang in there! We’re gonna rescue you!”

“We are?” Ingrid questions.

Killjlir closes their eyes, and shakes their head to silently respond to Ingrid. “Hold your breath!” they call down to A.F. They take a little bottle from their oversized sleeve, pop the cork, and drop the whole thing down the wall.

In an instant, the water shoots up like a geyser. A.F. is sent flying into the ceiling, where he’s impaled on a couple dozen thorns, which hold him in place while the water settles back down. Ingrid is speechless as she sloughs the chemicals off of her body. It’s not just water, but some kind of hyperreactive polymer. She’s never seen it before. “What. The. Fuck!”

Killjlir tilts their head as they’re looking up at A.F. Blood begins dripping down on their faces, which Ingrid is too upset to block, and Killjlir seems curious about it, as if they’ve never seen blood before at all. “That was more powerful than I realized.”

“Was that your first kill?” Ingrid asks them.

“No,” A.F. ekes out from the ceiling. “She’s not killed me, I’m fine.” He groans and struggles to move, millimeter by millimeter, until pulling himself back off of enough thorns to let gravity take over. He falls down, smashing his face on the well between them before crash landing on the ground.

“Sorry,” Killjlir says, like their only crime was forgetting a friend’s middle name.

“You’re lucky he’s hard to kill,” Ingrid scolds. “We would have been screwed. And I need to talk to him.”

A.F. laughs as he’s still lying facedown on the dirt. “It’s too late.”

“I knew it,” Ingrid says angrily. “You wanted to be down that damn well. Or at least you didn’t care.”

He rolls himself over, revealing a bloody smile. “Did you really think we didn’t know about respawning? Do you really think that the First Explorer didn’t tell us everything? She’s omniscient!”

“She’s called the First Explorer?” Killjlir asks, with an air of seriousness that Ingrid has never seen in them before. “Tell me, is she called the First Explorer?”

He laughs again. “Yeah.”

Killjlir pulls a dagger out of their other sleeve. Their newfound stoicism has not subsided. They kneel by A.F., and unceremoniously drive the dagger into his neck, through his brain, and out the top of his head.

Ingrid doesn’t know whether she should be impressed, or horrified. Probably both. “Was...that your first kill?”

Killjlir hastily removes most of their elaborate dress, and tosses it down the well. They’re now wearing a sleek and stylish uniform. “Help me.” They bend back down, and lift A.F.’s dead body’s shoulders up.

Still shocked, but following her instincts, Ingrid reaches down and grabs the legs. Together, they bend him at the waist, and throw him back down the well, rear end first. “What are we doing here? What the hell is going on?”

Killjlir takes off their gemstone necklace, sets it down on the edge of the well, and hovers the water bucket over it. “Get ready to run. If you get cut by a thorn, don’t stop. Just keep going. I’ll heal you.” Without another word, they smash the gem with the bucket, and scrape it all down the well with everything else. There’s an immediate boom, and the ground trembles. The top stones begin to break apart, and crumble into the hole. Killjlir takes Ingrid by the arm, and ushers her out into the corridor. They then quickly let go, and run in front.

Ingrid does get cut as she’s racing down the tunnel behind a person she thought she knew well enough. They have seemingly been faking their entire personality this whole time? Is the same true for the rest of the Andromedans? Are they not as dumb as they come off? Is there a method to their madness that goes beyond anyone’s comprehension? They keep running until they get to the exit, not looking back, but knowing that the bower is collapsing behind them, and getting sucked into the well.

Once they’re free, Killjlir stops suddenly, spins around, and wraps their arms around Ingrid. The wood and thorns continue to be pulled away, as do some leaves, blades of grass, and other plants which happen to be nearby. It tries to pull them down with the debris, but Killjlir is steadfast, digging their heels into the ground more and more the stronger the implosive force becomes. When it’s all over, they’re standing in a barren patch about the size of the thorn barrow that once stood there.

“Can you tell me what happened now?” Ingrid requests as the dust settles.

“That’s what I would like to know.” Leader of this dimension, Storm Avakian is standing next to them, just removing her hand from Briar de Vries’ shoulder, who presumably teleported her here from wherever.

Before anyone else can speak, a thunderous roar screams down at them from the sky. The comfortable minimal sunshine that once blanketed these lands during the day brightens more than it ever has since Ingrid arrived. It’s blinding. The dimensional barrier that Onyx was talking about is flickering as bolts of lightning shoot along the surface. “We’re too late,” Killjlir says. They sigh and look at Storm. “Prepare for war.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 9, 2491

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When Team Matic landed on Castlebourne for the second time, they discovered that automators had constructed tens of thousands of dome habitats in Vendelin Blackbourne’s absence. They believed this to be a runaway computer problem, but it turned out that Hrockas was making use of these domes to turn this planet into the number one destination for all vonearthans. Even so, after Ramses halted production in the middle of development, they never restarted building more domes. They decided to focus on the ones that had already been made. After all, 83,838 should be enough to tide over the whole population of the galaxy for decades, if not centuries. That 0.3 dome, which was left unsealed, was the last ever made, and it now served a special purpose. This was now where the Vellani Ambassador landed after each mission. Passengers were unloaded, and moved into a maze of self-contained quarantine habitats. It was here that they remained for a period of forty hours while they were tested for contamination, and to get them acclimated to this world’s surface gravity.

Fortydome was built away from most others, not particularly intentionally, but they were taking advantage of its remoteness to protect the rest of the population. There were only two ways in or out; via the vactrain, or up through the opening of what the refugees were calling The Bowl. Hrockas was considering changing the official name since it indeed resembled a bowl, and wasn’t technically a dome. At the moment, the Bowl was empty. Team Kadiar deliberately made it so by not executing any missions in the days leading up to Team Matic’s return to the timestream. Number one, it was good to have the whole place cleared out for major cleaning and disinfection protocols, and the original crew may need the ship for their own goals while they were around. This appeared to be the case today.

“They didn’t give you a name?” Leona asked.

“They spoke on behalf of their superior officer,” Romana replied. “They were very cagey about it, but it was quite important to them that Mateo be there on this day, and they insisted that their intentions were pure.”

Leona looked over at her husband, who looked intrigued. “You have heard of lying, right?”

Mateo shrugged. “I’ve heard of taking a leap of faith.”

“I’m not going to stop you from going, but I’m not going with you,” Leona said. “There’s a chance that you won’t even make it on time. Ramses and Hogarth have not yet modified the slingdrive to stay out of the fourth dimension.”

“You’re not gonna stop me, though?” Mateo asked, unconcerned about anything else she mentioned.

Leona looked back at Romana. “The VA is theirs now. We have no alternative. A captain without a ship is no captain at all.”

“You have never been the captain of the vessel,” Mateo reasoned. “You’re captain of a crew. We still need a leader.”

“Everyone’s become so capable,” Leona argued. “You don’t need me anymore.”

“I will never believe that,” Mateo tried to explain.

“I appreciate that. At any rate, if you think you should go, I think so too. “You can’t be alone, though. You might as well feed two birds with one worm, and spend some time with your daughter. There...there’s your order from a bona fide captain.” Leona disappeared.

“I suppose we don’t need an engineer anymore either,” Mateo pointed out.

“No, you don’t,” Mirage agreed from her speakers.

“Still...someone should say it,” he decided. “Yalla.”

Mirage engaged the subfractional engines, and launched into space. Once they were clear of the edges of the dome, she activated the teleporter, and jumped right into orbit. She then fired up the reframe engine, and sent them into interstellar space.

“Wait, why are we going so far away?” Mateo asked. “Can’t we use the slingdrive from anywhere?”

Mirage appeared as a hologram. “There’s a lot of quantum interference from Castlebourne, and I want to get away from the other time travelers. We’ve realized how sensitive it is, so this is protocol. It won’t be long now.”

“What about us?” he pressed. “She and I metabolize temporal energy.”

Romana took off her jacket, and plopped it over the back of a chair as she was walking towards a wall. The door of a standing pod slid open on its own, and she stepped up into it as she spun around 540 degrees like a ballerina. She smiled at her father. “That’s why we’re not gonna be here.” She jerked her head over to what looked like another pod. Before Mateo could walk towards it, he witnessed Romana’s door close back up. She quickly disappeared.

“It’s based on Dubravka’s timeslipping power,” Mirage explained. “She’ll be back in five minutes. “You need to get in yours too.”

Mateo did as he was told, entering his pod, and stepping back out of it what felt like seconds later. They were now orbiting an alien planet, evidently 16,000 light years away. Someone intercepted the Ambassador while they were on a rescue mission last week. They relayed a message containing these coordinates, and reportedly fully agreed to let Tertius erase their memories of the meeting from their minds. Mateo watched it through the floor viewscreens. “I think I’ve been here before.”

“The locals call it Ex-18118,” Mirage revealed, now back to her disembodied self.

“Yeah, I left Korali here. She thought she would be dead by now, but...hopefully that’s not true. If I’m not here to reunite with her, I don’t know who it could be.”

“Her child?” Romana suggested.

“Maybe.” He took a deep breath in preparation. “Exact surface coordinates?” They appeared on screen. “Okay.” He spread his arms wide, and wrapped them around Romana. They stood there in the hug for a few moments before he teleported them down to the rendezvous spot.

They found themselves next to a calming clear pond. This was exactly where he left Korali five decades ago. Did she just never leave? “Thanks for coming.”

It was her, still alive after all this time. She looked just as young as she was when he last saw her. To his knowledge these people didn’t have anti-aging technology or powers. They lived and died, just as people on Earth did in the early 21st century, and before. “How are you...?”

“I’m good.”

“That’s great, but I mean...” He trailed off again.

“I know what you wanted to say. How am I still alive? Still young? Still painfully sexy and gorgeous?” She reached behind her back, and came back with one of the standard codexa that stored the central archives from the stellar neighborhood. There was no way to know whether this one was the core compendium, the grand repository, or the aggregate records. Leona gave her a copy of all three, only leaving the virtual stacks out of Korali’s library. “It’s the compendium,” she said as if reading his mind. “This tells me how to stay practically immortal.”

“That’s possible, all the way out here?”

“As it turns out,” Korali began, “the planets in the Goldilocks Corridor were terraformed with the same plant life that you can find on Earth. I have everything I need, right within a few square kilometers. I just needed the information, which you graciously gave me.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing, just living off of the plant life?”

Korali giggled. “No. I’ve been real busy. Once we felt sufficiently powerful, we left this settlement, and returned to civilization. We staged a coup, and literally took over the whole world. They didn’t have weapons, so it wasn’t even hard.”

“That wasn’t our plan for you.”

“I know, but we had to make changes. We read the aggregate records too. Some interesting stuff in there. As it turns out, Oaksent isn’t special. Everything he made he stole from someone smarter. What he’s done here has been done a million times before, just with some extra scifi shit. Same story, different dick.”

“So you’re against him now? Full-on?”

“I probably hate him more than you do,” Korali contended. “You’re just a visitor. I was actually oppressed. I’ll never be able to thank you enough for opening my eyes to the truth. You didn’t have to, you could have just killed me. That’s what he would have done in your shoes.”

“So, this is some sort of resistance base?” Romana asked.

Korali darts her chin to look at Romana like she didn’t realize she was standing there the whole time. “It’s nice to meet you.” She held out her hand. “Korali Stinger.”

They shook hands. “Security Officer Romana Matic of the Vellani Ambassador.”

“Any relation?”

“I’m his daughter.”

Korali took a moment to absorb the new information. “Hm.” She went back into the conversation. Not exactly.”

“How do you keep them from blowing you out of the sky?” Korali asked.

Korali held the core compendium codex back up. “Like I said, we learned things. Thanks again for that,” she said to Mateo.

He nodded politely.

“Anyway,” Korali went on, “no, we’re not a resistance base, we’re a refuge.”

Both Mateo and Romana were surprised, and suddenly uncomfortable, because it felt like maybe this conversation was a little less friendly than it started. “Oh.”

“Hey, it’s okay. Why are you worried?” Korali laughed. “Do you think I feel threatened by Castlebourne’s involvement in our affairs? Do you think I think there’s not room for the both of us in this galaxy?”

“Is there...” Romana asked, “room?”

“Of course!” Korali replied. “I’m here to ask you for help! Those motherfuckers are constantly attacking us. They don’t even know where you are. This was a great idea when I came up with it, but it’s a lot of goddamn work. You seem to have some magical form of faster-than-light travel that the central archives don’t even speculate about. You show up daily, and leave mysteriously. I think it’s time we retire Ex-18118, and just let you handle it. But I wanna be involved. I’m not planning on retiring myself.”

“Well, that’s out of my hands,” Mateo admitted. “I’m not part of the project. I don’t exist.”

“I’m aware of that,” Korali said. “I asked you here because I told you that I didn’t want us to wait 47 years to see each other again. We obviously failed that, but at least it hasn’t been 48, right?”

“So this is just a social visit?” he asked.

“Pretty much. I’m glad you brought her, though. Are you who I need to speak with?” she asked Romana.

“The rest of the crew didn’t come with us,” Romana answered. “None of us would be able to make such a decision unilaterally.”

“It’s urgent, but I wouldn’t call it an emergency,” Korali determined. “When you’re ready to discuss a partnership, you know where I live. I’m guessing you’re not interested in telling me where you do.”

“Not my call either,” Romana told her.

“We’ll be right back.” Mateo took Romana’s hand, and jumped them back to the ship.

“Mirage, why have you been so quiet?”

“She has technology,” Mirage said as a hologram. “She would be able to hear us.”

“Even though our comms work through bone conduction?” Mateo questioned.

“Even with an inducer,” Mirage began, “there is some sound leakage. She has a device that can detect faint sounds, and greatly amplify them.”

“She’s trying to eavesdrop on us,” Romana noted. “That’s not a good sign. It sounds like she was one of them. Are you sure she’s switched sides?”

“I’m not,” Mateo acknowledged.

“Her allegiances have shifted, but not to us,” Mirage said. “This is a resistance base, not a refuge. I mean, I suppose you could argue that it is, but its purpose is to consolidate control into a new empire.”

“She’s Bronach 2.0?” Mateo shook his head.

“Not from what I can gather. She wants power, like him, but she doesn’t want to oppress people. She believes that Earthan technology and knowledge is the best path forward for the Corridor. She’s probably brought you here so we stop taking all of her people away. You see, every single person we escort to Castlebourne is a potential member of her army. They’re expressing dissatisfaction with their lives, and that’s who she’s been trying to target. They’re the ones that she could theoretically fold into her competing society instead.”

“We’re in her way, but at the same time, she needs us, because Castlebourne currently has over 300,000 people.” Romana started to work it out in her head. “So she won’t attack, but she’s trying to play us.”

“I don’t understand how her strategy will ultimately lead to you transporting people to her planet, but maybe I’m not smart enough,” Mateo said.

“No, I don’t know either,” Mirage said. “She may be intending to change her tune after developing a rapport, and arguing that people from the Goldilocks Corridor belong in the Goldilocks Corridor. I don’t think she knows how far away we are, she may just be guessing that we’re near Earth.”

“This is good to know,” Mateo began, “but I meant what I said down there. This isn’t my decision. We have to go back so you can brief your team.”

“You’re right, but we can’t leave without saying goodbye.”

“I’ll handle that,” Mateo glanced over at the local readout for the slingdrive’s coherence gauge. “Just plot a course to safe territory with the reframe engine so we can wait it out until it’s time to make another jump.”

“Aye, Captain,” Mirage joked.

He smirked, and saluted her.

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