Microstory 2776: Jump

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Laise here, go ahead.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now.

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

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

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

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

Microstory 2775: Course Correction

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The lab that Elise was in with Miracle and Reagan disappears, and is replaced with Elise’s own apartment in Abodome. The first thing she sees is the front door closing. Someone seemingly just left, so she needs to find out who. She sprints over to it and opens it back up. She looks down the hallway and sees herself. Well, she sees the back of her own head. She recognizes the outfit too. This is it. This is the day that she and her friends officially began their hunt under Treasure Hunting Dome. She has gone back in time, just as Rae and Mir said she would. The question is, though, what now?

They didn’t actually give her any instructions. They didn’t say what she was supposed to change. She doesn’t have any experience in this, and they know that. Or they will know that, because at this point in time, she hasn’t met either of them yet. What they did to her was isolate her from everyone she cares about. There is no one she can trust without risking the timeline, and even if there were, they wouldn’t be able to help her anyway. She’s going to have to figure this out on her own. First things first, treat this like any other challenge on the hunt. According to Rage’s explanation of how they typically go, the last challenge often involves memory. You have to keep track of where you went and what you did, and regurgitate that in some way.

Elise tries to sit down at her computer, but her chair isn’t designed with wings in mind. She has to use the kitchen stool, which isn’t comfortable either because she still can’t lean back, but at least she’s not leaning forward. She opens a new file and starts to retrace her steps. She starts more general, and becomes more specific, adding the minutest of details to get a full picture of what happened once the hunt began. She color-codes it by actions she took, actions others took, and actions done to them by the game. She then goes in and adds even more information, about things that she wasn’t there for. She lists things that other hunters did, and tries to guess what Hrockas and Azad were doing in the meantime. She makes it a full, comprehensive bible of the whole ordeal, from start to finish. She even goes back to include events leading up to minute one, even though some of it is already in the past from her current perspective.

There is one interesting development; a mystery which they never solved. When the hunters were circling the desert, looking for their next clue, Minotaur went missing. They said someone in robes grabbed them and they tried to get away and lost their jacket, but the attacker quickly caught up to them. Elise looks over at her bed where she laid the robe that Reagan hung over her at the very last second. She goes over to it and picks it up. “Could this be it? Was it me the whole time?” But if so, she’s not come back to change the past. She can’t; it’s inevitable. She’s merely following in her own footsteps. Nothing will go better this time, because this isn’t a different time. Unless there’s a third Elise around here somewhere. She suddenly starts to feel like she’s being watched.

Elise paces the room. “What was it Miracle said once about time travel? If you don’t have proof that something didn’t happen, there’s a chance it happened.” She stands there and ponders that for a moment. Then she goes right back to her timeline document and reads the part about the desert again. “If you don’t have proof it didn’t happen, it might have happened,” she whispers. She nods, a little excited and more determined. “Right there. That’s my shot. I don’t have to change it if I assume it’s already happened.” She grabs the robe, drapes it over her body again, and disappears.

Elise has spent weeks practicing teleportation and flying. She has worked out every day to build up her strength. She went to a biotailor to improve her substrate even more. They reinforced her wings and increased the density of her muscles while lowering the density of her bones. It’s a trade-off, but she needs to be both strong and light. Her mission doesn’t necessarily involve being better than she already was, but why waste this opportunity? She has to do something while the timeline catches up.

She learned a few things about her temporal abilities. She can teleport from the real world to the Facsimile at will. It takes an extra boost of energy, but not as much as she figured at first. She also learns how many jumps she can do before she runs out, and she learns that she can actually increase her numbers by being more efficient, and even processing more temporal energy from wherever it comes from. The time for training is now over, though. This is the show. She packs the essentials, some of which she had to...borrow from a secure location, throws her robe back on, and heads off to work.

She is in the desert now, and has been for a couple of days. She intentionally came a little early in case something went wrong, but she also isn’t entirely sure when her past self and her friends will show up. They didn’t have timepieces with them at the time. She knows where they’ll end up, however, so she’s on her belly, watching that spot with binoculars. The robe can shift colors, as most clothing can in the modern world, so she just looks like a crest in the sand dune. She has learned to be still and patient too. She didn’t set out to do that, but it came naturally with all of her other training.

They’re here. Elise watches Azad transport them all before leaving with Hrockas and Telman. Now it’s just the hunters. She can’t hear, but she knows what they’re talking about. She waits until they spread out, triggering her window. She teleports directly to Minotaur, and after a brief struggle, relocates them to the rocket maze. Then she returns to her perch to wait for her next move. She sees them reunite and argue about what to do, and she sees Miracle teach her how to take control of her body. She watches as her past self gets trapped on the surface with Colley, where they both surrender to their budding romance, only to be caught by the others after they complete the underground maze. They all then go back down there to learn the truth about Rage.

This is it; it’s happening. Elise knew that she would be successful with Mino, because it already happened to her, but this is the real change. This is what she’s been actually training for. The ship blares as it begins to ascend. The ground shakes and gives way. Future!Elise has to start hovering to keep from slipping down the dune like an ant in an antlion’s pit. She slowly gets closer to get a better look, still worried about being spotted by someone. Past!Elise is now trying to hang on to both Colley and Zelda, but she’s not strong enough yet. Colley volunteers to let go, but Zelda beats him to it.

Future!Elise uses her friend-finding ability to teleport to exactly where Zelda is. She grabs her by the waist, and jumps them both back to the inside of the rising rocket.

“Whoa! How did you do that?” Zelda asks, trying to orient herself. “How did you do that? What are you wearing? How is your hair green now? Where’s Colley?”

“He’s fine.” Elise replies. She takes out two vacuum suit cartridges, placing one on Zelda’s chest, and the other on her own. The nanites emerge from the cartridge and wrap themselves around them to protect them from space exposure. She did it, they won. Didn’t they?

Microstory 2766: Winner’s Circle

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It begins as a pinprick of consciousness as Elise becomes acutely aware of the passage of time, even though there are no external stimuli. She isn’t truly thinking about anything. She is only mindful of her own ability to think. At first, she believes there might be a tiny light before her, but it may simply be her imagination...but does she even have an imagination anymore? She tries to come up with other things to occupy her mind, but nothing comes. She can’t even articulate in her head an idea of what ideas she should be able to come up with. No categories of thoughts, no things, no things to do or have done. She is nothing more than a thinking thing. A thinking thing called Elise. So that’s something at least. She is someone. She is a someone with a name, and if she has a name it must mean there are other someones with their own names. But who?

Elise quietly screams at her own brain. Wake up. Think. Think about something, anything. It doesn’t have to be important, it doesn’t have to be major. Don’t just sit here in the silence like a moth in the dark. A moth? What is a moth? It must be something, or she wouldn’t have a word for it. What is a word? What are things? What is anything? Go back to the moth. A moth is...a moth is something that is. It’s something that...flies. It has wings. Flying wings. And hair and eyes. Elise should have eyes. She has seen things before. She has seen moths. She has smelled the hot and cold nights as the weather transitions from summer to autumn. There she goes thinking about more things again. This time, it’s the seasons. There are two others: winter and spring. Spring is her favorite. Tofu is her favorite food. She eats. She is a person. She has a mouth.

She is Elise Perkins and she is in a race. No, an expedition. A quest? No. It’s a hunt. It’s a treasure hunt. She is a treasure hunter. Her name is Elise Perkins, Treasure Hunter. She has a mouth, a nose, and lucky her, two eyes. Also two ears. She’s hearing something. She’s hearing something with her ears. It’s...it’s talking. Other people. Other people with names. She can hear them. She can hear, but she can’t see. Why? Eyelids. She opens. Still dark, but less dark. A hint of light. Light behind...a visor. Her mouth, it doesn’t only eat. It also speaks. It screams. “Help!”

The visor slides away.

“Elise?” someone asks. “Elise, can you hear me? Are you there? Elise!”

“She opens her mouth but the words won’t come. Who said that? It sounded like the way Elise sounded like when she could sound like something. But she doesn’t sound like anything because when she opens her mouth, the words won’t come out.”

“You can’t use your mouth,” a different person claims. “You don’t have an airway anymore. But the helmet can convert your thoughts into sounds. Just think what you want to say, and it will come out. Go ahead and try again,” they encourage.

“Rubber baby buggy bumpers,” the helmet says. “Gina Linetti Spaghetti Confetti.” A face. Elise’s famous two eyes have adjusted to the light and can see when there is something that isn’t light. “That is definitely a face. It’s a very pretty face. She used to know what to call it. Whatever the face’s name, Elise may be falling in love with it.”

The face smiles. “Thank you. My name is Rage. You are Elise Perkins.”

“I know that,” Elise replies. “I am Elise. I have a face. I have a head. Do I have anything else?” She tries to tilt her chin down, but it won’t move. She can’t move at all.

Another person sighs. “You don’t have anything else. You only have a head.”

“Mino? A little more tact?” someone says to the person who has no tact.

“It’s okay,” Elise insists. “I am Elise Perkins, Treasure Hunter, a.k.a Ladymoth. I don’t need anything more than a head, because my head is where I do all my thinking.”

“Do you remember what happened?” the Rage face asks.

“I remember...” Elise begins. “I remember ice.”

“There was ice on the track during the race,” Rage confirms. “You sacrificed yourself so that your friend, Jolanda could make it across the finish line. You managed to defeat the last automated racecar, so she didn’t have to get there quickly. She had time to get out of her car, find your head, and carry it across with her. Now we’re in the winner’s lounge. Only six of us could win. I’m not sure what that means for you yet.”

“We’re not sure what this means for any of us,” Zelda adds. Yes, that’s Zelda.

Elise’s memories are starting to come back to her now. She feels like she’s becoming herself again. They lounge there for about an hour. The normal humans eat while Elise focuses on her recovery. The Custodians are not letting them out of this room, or they would seek medical attention for her. For now, she’s sitting on a snack table. Watching her friends talk is helping a lot. After they’re done eating, she finds that she’s pretty much back to her old self. She is centuries old, so there are a ton of memories that have not yet resurfaced, but they’re not paramount to her core.

While they’re just sitting around doing nothing, the lights begin to flicker. It’s not like a lightbulb is burnt out, though. It’s clearly intentional, like the theatre warning the audience that intermission is over. Out of the corner of her eye, Elise can see the door open, though she’s not at the right angle to see who. She needs her legs back.

“Hello,” comes the voice of a man. She recognizes it, but can’t place it.

“Hello,” Colley says, intentionally positioning himself directly in front of Elise.

“Please, Mister Rochelle.” Hrockas, the owner of the planet. That’s who this is. “Do you honestly believe that I am not cognizant of the severed head you’re keeping on the table? If I didn’t want death survival to be an option, I would not have commissioned those helmets in the first place. The plan was to keep any heads in their comas while the winners moved on, then transfer their consciousnesses to their respective backups so they could recall as much of the hunt as they were here for.”

Colley steps off so Elise can see. “We can’t trust you. You’re not taking her.”

Hrockas nods. “Now that you have reinitialized her, taking her is no longer a decent option. The reason we left you in here for so long is the producers and I needed to figure out how to move forward. The truth is, not anywhere near this many was expected to survive. Some of the bots were easy, but some were hard. You destroyed them all, and through a loophole, managed to keep your entire group together on the other side. It’s impressive, I admit. But the challenge we had planned will no longer work. Funnily enough, however, the challenge reward is now more relevant than ever.”

“Whatever the reward,” Jolanda says, “it’s not worth it if Elise can’t compete.”

Hrockas smiles. “That’s the irony. The sudden death challenge is quite literal. Whoever wins, dies...and will be given a superior substrate. It would be cruel to force you to compete if the one person who genuinely needed it stood no chance. That’s what we had to change. Now it is no longer physical, but a contest of wits. Elise has a shot.”

“I forfeit the challenge,” Colley volunteers immediately.

“That’s fine,” Hrockas says, “but it comes with a penalty for the next challenge.”

The others forfeit too. Elise is getting a new body.

Microstory 2763: Steady as She Goes

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The storms return, which gives them the freshwater they need, but are hell to sail through for a ragtag group of non-sailors. They knew that there would be skills which none of them possessed, but they didn’t think it could be this. Regular domes aren’t big enough for these long-haul trips. Sailing seemed like such an unlikely challenge. They figured they would be literally separated from the rest of the hunters—as they indeed are—which would limit the amount of space they had to work with under Treasure Hunting Dome. It didn’t occur to them that they would end up in a place like this.

They’re making a lot of mistakes, but at least they’re not getting killed for it. They just need to find land. Even if it’s not where they’re meant to be, it would be nice to have a break from the water. Four days of this would be hard on anyone, even genuine sailors.

They do manage to fish during lulls, which is where Elise shines since that was one of her early skills. She has never fished in an ocean setting, but it’s not too hard to adapt. While these creatures are fully organic and edible, they are not real fish. They literally don’t have normal complex brains. They were very simply programmed to swim pseudorandomly and react to stimuli, such as each other and the light. It’s only the basics of cognitive function. They don’t even feel hunger or pain. Hopefully not.

Minotaur and Miracle find even that almost too far past vegetarianism but they’re too hungry for their pride, so they partake as well. One thing is they’re not entirely sure it’s true in this case. That was Elise’s experience, and how it works in most of the galaxy, but it’s entirely plausible that these are regular fish. That would not be illegal, whether on Castlebourne or in the stellar neighborhood. However, she doesn’t think they are because they don’t fight the catch as hard as something which evolved to survive would.

Finally, after the relentless struggle, they see something. It’s not land that they can stand on, but they rise above the surface. Tall rocks, looking almost like fingers, are scattered all over in their path. A fog rolls over the water, but not so thick that they can’t see how eerie the obstacles are, nor the means of avoiding them.

“It looks like we could go around,” Jolanda muses, looking at Minotaur.

Mino stands on the bulwark and holds themselves up via a rope. “That’s the question. If this were a movie, there would be some contrived reason why the characters have to go this way. That’s where the MacGuffin is. But the audience would be screaming at them to not be stupid. So far, this hunt has felt very movie-like. While the challenges have not been specific analogs to any story we’re familiar with, at times, it does feel like we’re meant to play into the tropes, rather than try to outsmart them.”

“Should we take another vote?” Jolanda offers. “Be safe, or follow a path?”

“I will warn you,” Minotaur goes on, “something bad will probably happen if we go in there. We’ll shipwreck, or someone will fall overboard. These early consequences are designed to show how high the stakes are, so the audience feels something for the survivors. How much loss there is after that depends on the subgenre and age targeting. I’m not saying we should vote against that, but we still don’t know what we’re looking for, so the motivation to go this way is a little bit lacking from my perspective.”

Their fearless leader stares at the horizon and at all the deadly, jagged rocks. It does look like an obstacle course that the gamemakers expect them to play straight. But the possibility that subverting those expectations actually gets them what they need is a tempting offer. Elise can see the debating raging in Rage’s eyes.

“What are ya thinkin’, boss?” Miracle didn’t seem like the type to defer to anyone else, let alone another person with a strong personality, but since she came back with a new face, she’s been a team player. She doesn’t have an ego anymore. Elise almost wonders if it’s not really her. While researchers tried in the early days of mind- transference development, they never figured out how to prove identity when anyone can look like anyone. It’s a risk you live with since the technology couldn’t be stopped.

“We came here for a goal,” Rage begins. “We each signed on not even knowing what that goal was. Not only is it possible that that’s exactly where it’s waiting, but if we take the safe route now, we’ll be defeating the entire purpose. We decided to go north, let’s not head east or west now. I’ll hear arguments against, but I don’t wanna vote.”

No one says anything. Colley doesn’t look like he agrees, but he’s also missing Laise, which may be making it hard for Elise to read his facial expressions.

They raise anchor once more while Zelda is climbing back up to her perch. She continues to direct them as they begin to navigate the deadly rocks. To the starboard side, Elise sees something moving in the fog. She moves over and squints. At first, she sees several heads bobbing around each other until she realizes that it’s a single monster with multiple heads in the distance. She has heard of this before. Colley once spoke of the famous story. She runs over to the port side where she sees the second monster, or part of it, anyway. A dark mass is swimming in circles just under the surface. Neither is making any attempt to attack the boat. For now, it appears they chose right.

“What?” Jolanda questions. “What is it? Do you see something?”

Elise looks up to Zelda, who is regarding the underwater monster with her spyglass. She lowers it and meets Elise’s eyes. Then she quietly returns to her work.

“Nothing,” Elise replies to Jolanda. “It’s just beautiful here.” Why did she choose not to tell anyone about it? What did it matter? If the monsters aren’t going to attack, why not prove that this was the right call? Maybe because they don’t know that yet, because straight ahead could end up much worse. After all, those monsters look pretty casual for having missed a meal. Or maybe she just liked keeping a secret with Zelda.

They continue sailing between the rocks. It isn’t easy, but they keep a close eye on that water at their respective posts, and don’t ever run aground. They go slowly so the fog never obscures something they can’t avoid. Gradually, they realize that it’s lightening up, and they can see better with each passing moment. Then comes the cave. The opening is more than large enough for them to sail right on through, which means that is exactly where they need to go, as scary as the darkness might look from out here.

“What are we thinking?” Miracle asks. “Is there a monster waiting for us?”

“No, there’s no third monster,” Elise slips up and says.

“What do you mean?” Rage questions, a puzzled look on her face.

“Nothing,” Elise answers. “Steady on, or...whatever you’re meant to say.”

“Steady on!” Rage shouts up to Minotaur, who has been steering lately.

They enter the cave. It becomes so dark, they have to navigate with lanterns. But then they see a glow up ahead. Is this it? It can’t be it. Hrockas wouldn’t have offered to get them out if there were only two more challenges ahead. It’s pretty significant, though. It’s a gargantuan pile of treasure. Real, physical, golden treasure.

What a disappointment.

Microstory 2758: Headwater

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The survivors look up at the sky, expecting Hrockas to reappear to announce Miracle’s death, like this is some kind of dystopian survival game. He doesn’t do that, though, and doesn’t need to. They all saw it. Miracle’s first teleportation could have been a weird trick of the mind, but it’s harder to explain it away this time. It looks like various forms of time travel are possible, and that one of these forms killed her. She will survive, or at least one version of her will. She will have no memories of her life after she was taken from her hotel room, and thrown out the window at the start of this. It’s unclear what she’ll think happened, or what she’ll do now. She may try to fight her way back, but if they really are in another dimension, that might be impossible.

The stakes have officially been raised. Death is plainly on the table, and the traps might be unpredictable, and even inexplicable. They have no idea where any other mines could be hiding. Hrockas wouldn’t have let them get this far if there were no way out, though. If he actually didn’t want them to find the treasure, he probably would have simply erased their memories. That’s not illegal here in the Charter Cloud of the galaxy.

“This is another escape room,” Rage determines. “I’ve even played one very similar to this before. They were regular land mines, of course, but the trick is finding the only safe path between them. We need to get to higher ground.”

“I will take care of that,” Zelda volunteers. She tries to jump up to a beam attached to the outside of the dome, but she can’t get that high in her tiny frame.

Minotaur helps her up. They’re taller, so they follow on their own with less issue.

They can’t climb up too far because they’re constantly curving away from the street, eventually reaching a point where they would lose the perspective advantage.

“See anything notable?” Rage shouts up to them. “Darkened squares? Anything?”

“There’s nothing!” Zelda cries back. “Minotaur is getting nauseated!”

“Come on back down!” Rage tells them. “It’s not safe!”

Everyone has been looking up at them, of course, but Elise has just now realized that Colley has been looking in the wrong direction. His eyesight is darting back and forth across the sky, and he sometimes turns completely. “What is it?” she asks.

“Has anyone here been to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida?” Colley asks.

“I have,” says one of the only two remaining hunters from Miracle’s team. Elise has not even gotten the chance to learn her name yet, even though it would have been plastered on her locker at the starting line. “I was born on a stasis ship that was part of the original fleet because my parents were awake the whole time as Shepherds.”

“Do you know Bida’s constellations?” Colley presses. “Because I don’t...except for that one.” He points. “That’s the feather duster, which is how I know this is a clue, because we’re a hundred light years from Tau Ceti. It has to be on purpose.”

The girl looks up as well. “Umm...I think you’re right, but I’m not much into the astrology. Unlike Earth, my ancestors never needed stars to navigate. Colonists contrived constellations for fun, according to what I remember. I think that might be the River Dhel, though. It’s the most important one for many of the world’s superstitions because it reflects the real river for a brief window every night.”

“When is the window?” Elise asks her. “And does anyone have a watch?”

“I have a watch on my multitool,” Minotaur says as Jolanda is helping them back down to the ground. “Why do we need it? What did we miss while we were up there?”

“The window depends on what day of year it is,” Colley explains. “We would need a Bidan calendar, and we would need to know what time it is—”

“We don’t need a Bidan calendar,” the Bidan girl argues. “I know we don’t need it because we don’t have it, and had no chance of taking one with us. I just need to know what time it is right now. It doesn’t even have to be the right time according to anyone in the outside world. Hrockas would have accounted for that when programming it.”

“She’s right,” Elise agrees. “You have a timekeeper because he wanted you to.”

“It’s 20:42,” Minotaur answers. “It’s true, I don’t know what planet.”

“For now, it’s Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida,” the Bidan decides, “and we’re too late. The reflection happens at the same time as the lunar culmination every year on the same night between 20:24 and 20:31. It’s a holiday. We took too long to figure out the clue.”

“Point out the river again,” Colley says. He moves over to stand next to her. They quietly work out exactly which stars make up the constellation while he looks down at the ground, a little off to the side, away from Miracle’s still dead body. “We got it.”

“You remember where the stars were fifteen minutes ago?” Rage asks him.

Colley clicks his tongue and taps on his head. “Hrockas can force me into any substrate he wants, but he can’t stop me from having an eidetic memory,” he echoes Miracle from before she hit an apparent teleportation mine and fell to her death.

Rage takes a breath. “Okay, we’ll draw for lead. Colley, you’re out of the running this time since you have the map. Our new Bidan friend is too for the same reason.”

“No, please don’t draw,” Jolanda says. “I’ve not been contributing anything to the hunt, and need to feel useful. I’ll take lead. I had a conversation with myself shortly before my consciousness stream was cut. I’m prepared to wake up without memories.”

“Okay, we have a volunteer.” Rage looks around at the group. “Any objections?”

No one objects, so Jolanda stands in front. Colley stands behind her, but far enough away to be hopefully safe from the blast of a land mine. It will hopefully not happen at all, but they’re not too naïve to be prepared for it. Everyone else walks in a single-file line behind him and the Bidan. Colley directs Jolanda slowly. The assumption is that the river mouth ends at the fountain in the center of the square. It’s less likely that they would have to walk the entire length of the river in order to perfectly replicate what the believers on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida would do during their special annual holiday. They seem to be correct once they reach that fountain and no one has died yet. Assuming this will lead them further down the path to their prize, there’s now another puzzle to solve, though. And they don’t know where to begin.

Zelda sticks her face in the dark water. She then slowly starts diving deeper and deeper until only her feet remain, which Rage and Elise have to hold onto so she doesn’t sink to the bottom. After a few more seconds, she taps on her own hip, which they take to mean it’s time to pull her up. “It’s bottomless.”

“You don’t know that,” the other non-team member contends.

“I think we’re supposed to get in,” Zelda figures. “A leap of faith.”

The Bidan nods. “In my planet’s origin story, which we all know someone made up, the creator God takes a leap of faith in the River Dhel where she finds the energy she needs to conjure the star.” She points to a sculpture. “She is represented by a fish.”

That’s all Zelda needs. She jumps in headfirst. Nearly everyone else follow.

Microstory 2756: Skull and Bones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Microstory 2755: Please Don’t Hold the Handrail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Remember the elevator scene?” Elise presses.

“You don’t mean...” Colley begins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Microstory 2754: Starting Line

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Elise opens her eyes. She’s floating in artificial amniotic fluid. No, that’s not what it is, it doesn’t taste right. It tastes more...leafy? Like spinach that’s gone bad, or kale that hasn’t gone bad, because kale is the worst food God ever created. She’s trapped. She’s trapped in something opaque, which is not how body switching works. You’re supposed to be in a glass box, or in more advanced equipment, a clean and sterile pod. It’s not this, whatever this is. This is all wrong, and she’s panicking. She squirms around, looking for a way to escape, but doesn’t find it. She’s going to have to make her own.

She tries punching and she tries kicking, but neither of them work. That’s what makes her realize that this isn’t simply a pod. It’s a chrysalis. And that’s not how butterflies get out of their chrysalises. Elise feels around to make sure she knows where down is, and then she starts to spit. Opening her mouth amidst all this goo necessarily forces more goo back into her mouth. She thought it tasted bad before, but now it’s making its way down her throat. She starts to retch, and then she vomits. Even though it’s disgusting, the bile, saliva, and other fluids accelerate the mission.

The enzymes in Elise’s saliva weaken the chitin enough for her to tear through it. She can see light now, and feel the air. She vomits more so she can start breathing again. She continues to tear at the chrysalis until the opening is wide enough for her to get through. She tries to aim away from her own sick, but that’s stupid, because she’s already covered in filth. Elise reaches out to the floor with her hands, clumsily slipping on the fluids, but it slows her down enough to keep her from faceplanting.

She’s on her back now on the cool white floor of a small room. It’s not too small, though. It’s big enough to fit ten other chrysalises. Her whole team is here, plus the other team. Wait, there should be twelve in total, so who are we missing? She frantically starts knocking on the other chrysalises. “Jolanda? Rage? Is that you? Who’s in there?” she starts to say, looking for her people.

She can hear them moan back to her, but no one replies with words.

In the real world, with a real butterfly, you don’t want to help it get out of its chrysalis. The struggle is real, but it is not pointless. It’s a crucible, which strengthens the insect so it can literally spread its wings and fly. But they’re not in the real world, they’re in a simulation. It may be a base reality simulation, but it’s not natural. The others don’t need to go through what she just did. Elise stumbles over to a wall and wrenches a sconce from it. She starts tearing at the nearest chrysalis. Yeah, sometimes you gotta spit on that thing, but sometimes you need good old fashioned brute force.

A woman tumbles out of the chrysalis. It’s Miracle.

Elise catches her, and gently lowers her to the floor.

“Oh, thank you,” Miracle says. “I’ve forgotten what this feels like.”

“You’ve used this form factor before?” Elise has never even heard of it.

“Yeah, buncha times,” Miracle replies. As she’s resting on her hands behind her back, she looks around before her gaze returns to Elise. “You take left, I take right?”

They divide and conquer until the other nine hunters are free. Thankfully, all of Elise’s teammates are here. It’s Miracle who is missing one of hers. The girl she was trying to safely fly down to the ground, and who was wearing her shirt on backwards on the football pitch, is missing. Miracle says that she had an emergency mind transponder, which she probably used before she hit the ground. There was no way to know that they would survive it.

It’s different, though. Elise feels weak, and not just because she just had to force her way out of a chrysalis, and then help five other people do the same. Her vision isn’t as strong, her joints are achey, and she feels hunger in a way that she hasn’t since she was a kid, before she became immortal. This is a regular body, like the kind everyone had back in the days before humanity had even reached the longevity escape velocity. Her consciousness stream isn’t just unlinked. It doesn’t exist. There’s no backup plan now. If she dies, she truly dies, and she’s guessing the same goes for everyone else.

Once the last person is on his feet, the ceiling lifts up and to the side like the lid of a cardboard box, revealing only a dark void above them. It begins to rain once more, but this time, it’s just regular water, instead of acid. Well, it’s also a bit soapy. The room fills up around ten centimeters of water and suds before the drains open up and start to wash all the gunk and junk away. Next come the blowers to dry them off. They all just stand there and accept it, because there’s no door to exit, and they want to get cleaned off, even if at the end of this is, they get decapitated by a Jigsaw wannabe. They are here to play a game at any rate, and this appears to be the start of it, for whatever reason.

After they’re sufficiently dry, seams appear on the back wall. They slide upwards, revealing eleven chairs in front of eleven lockers. Each one is labeled with one of their names. The hunters proceed to their assigned lockers, retrieve the generic clothes that were placed there for them, and get dressed. But nothing happens after they’re done.

“I think we’re supposed to sit down to trigger the next phase,” Elise figures.

They follow her advice, and once that last butt hits that last seat, the wall in front of them transforms into a monitor.

A man appears on screen. “Hello, and welcome to Treasure Hunting Dome. My name is Hrockas Steward, and I own the planet of Castlebourne. Now, you may be wondering why I would record this message, and whether I do it for the other 69,814 domes presently in service. The answer is no. This is only for you. You twelve—forgive me, eleven—contestants have selected our Premium-Ultra Package. This is the rarest of hunts, which will take you on a journey few have traveled. In regular hunts, you would be out in the open, encountering Ambients who are simulating locals from various locales. You will not be doing this. You are on a special mission to find a unique prize.

“It’s important you understand that I am not admitting that such a prize exists. This is confirmation of absolutely nothing. You are being isolated from the other players so your hunt does not influence or interfere with anyone else. Everyone who expresses serious interest in this track experiences the same thing. Or do they? You may never know. You may not even survive. You have become decoupled from your consciousness streams so if you die along the way, your alternate selves will move on with their lives with no memories of these events. Even if you do find what you’re looking for, you might never be able to reveal its secrets. Thousands before you may have succeeded, but never returned to tell the tale. You will receive your next clue on the other side of this door.”

The seams of a door appear on the third wall.

“Oh, and one more thing. Those teams you worked so hard to build? They’re useless. Only one person can win this hunt. Good luck to one of you. Aaaaaaaaaand go!”

The door opens.