The election is over, and there is no going back now. Ovan is going to be
smart about his takeover of the ship. He isn’t going to suddenly start
trying to order the security team around. He drops a few hints here, makes a
quippy remark there. Everything he says out loud says fine when you first
hear it, but if you think about it too hard, you realize how some people
could interpret it to mean that the passengers should become hostile towards
the crew, probably without even realizing it. He’ll grow bolder as his plans
begin to bear fruit, but right now, Halan has other things to worry about.
“How do we know he’s not one of them? He and Vesper could have been working
together,” Omega suggests.
“We don’t, but I’m not getting the sense of that,” Halan says. “I feel like
Ovan, and his drive to take over the ship, is completely separate from the
people trying to kill me. Getting rid of one Captain is not going to do the
passengers any good if they have a problem with the entire crew. I’ll just
be backfilled by the Admiral, or maybe even the Bridgers. No, Ovan wants
this to become a fully civilian operation. More to the point, he wants to be
in charge.”
“Why didn’t he just get on the Captain’s track?” Omega questions.
“He’s not the right age. It’s a timing issue, you see. It’s the reason why
the crew shifts in and out at different times. My shift lasts for 24 years,
but if everyone was like that, everything would have to change hands all at
once. That’s a logistical nightmare. By staggering them, we allow for people
to apply for positions even when they come of age in the middle of a cycle.
Still, on the individual level, this can potentially exclude a lot of
people. There is no law that says a 32-year-old can’t become Captain, but
it’s unlikely he would ever get the job, since he’ll be in his fifties by
the time he’s done.
“That’s not that old,” Omega argues. “I’m 64 if you count my rapid aging as
part of my lifespan, rather than just subtracting this year from the year I
was manufactured.”
“True, it’s not,” Halan agrees, “but if there is a single worst character
flaw that Ansutahan humans have, it’s probably ageism. Life expectancy used
to be a lot lower for us, since medical science was stunted by a number of
factors, all stemming from the fact that we were constrained to one
continent. Younger people have always been better at securing leadership
positions, and then they are strongly urged to step down when they get too
old.”
“Why does that same unwritten rule not apply to Ovan’s position as Passenger
Chair?” Omega asks.
“It’s a shorter term. Even the term limit is shorter than a captain’s shift.
Anyway, he might not have known what he wanted until it was too late.
Captain’s track starts in the single digits. There’s a decent chance that my
successor was born here. Now let’s get back to Vesper’s co-conspirators.”
Omega nods, but still isn’t convinced that they should be focusing on this.
Yes, the extremist group hiding in their midst is a greater threat, but they
don’t know where to begin. At least the anti-crew movement has a face. And a
punchable one, at that. Even so, he keeps his mouth shut, and concedes to
the Captain’s decision. Most problems need to be solved either way.
“Indeed,” he says simply.
“So,” Mercer begins after having been silent most of the time. “Omega’s
right about one thing.”
Halan gets it. “We still don’t know how to find these true Extremusians.”
“First order of business, I believe, is we should try to come up with a new
name,” Mercer decides.
“Agreed,” Halan replies. “We are true Extremusians. If anyone on this
ship is under the impression that they are somehow special, and different
from the lot of us, then this misunderstanding must be rectified.
Henceforth, in all reports, they will be known as...” He trails off, not
knowing what would be a better word to use.
It is then that Omega realizes that he already came up with a name for them
in his own headcanon. “True Extremists,” he offers.
“Hm.” Halan considers this. “I imagine that could be quite insulting to
them. It is close enough to what they apparently call themselves for us to
pretend our words are an accident, but different enough for them to know in
their hearts that we do not respect them.”
“Perfect,” Mercer says. “To begin again, how do we root out these True
Extremists? We must get them to reveal themselves without realizing they’re
doing it, and without alarming the rest of the ship.”
“Right,” Omega says. “And why exactly can’t we tell the ship that they’re
out there?”
“For the moment,” Halan explains, “they appear to be rather contained. I do
not think there are very many of them, and I do not think they are
recruiting. Vesper strongly suggested he was from a planet that they
consider to be Extremus. I don’t know exactly how they arrived there, but
they take a strong disliking to everyone else. Still, we don’t need to turn
anyone to their side, and the only way to do that is to prevent any would-be
sympathizers from finding out they even exist.”
“Well, it’s not the only way, sir,” Mercer clarifies for him. “It may be the
best, but honesty is always an option.”
“I am aware of that, Lieutenant, thank you.”
Mercer knows he’s being sarcastic, and to combat that, he closes his eyes
and nods respectfully so as to make it look like he’s taking the response
sincerely.
Halan moves on, “any ideas?”
“The Elder Shuttle,” Omega says cryptically.
“What about it?”
“Advanced, powerful, compact. Time travel-capable, self-sustaining...and
coded to my DNA.”
“Where would you take it?” Halan questions.
“May 29, 2272,” Omega answers.
“We are nearly 7,000 light years from their position,” Halan argues, “and we
still don’t know where they were teleported to. You would have to hunt for
them, and who knows how long that could take?”
“That’s the self-sustaining part. It was engineered with something that I
haven’t mentioned yet, because it’s dangerous technology, and Veca and I
agreed it would be best if no one else knew. But I suppose now is the right
time.”
“What?” Halan prompts. “Some kind of highly destructive weapons system that
would be capable of taking out our ship?”
“Nothing like that,” Omega assures him. “It has no weapons at all. It does,
however, have—”
“A quantum replicator!” Valencia has since retired from her position as the
temporal engineer. Unlike other jobs, however, it’s important that she
remain available in case they need her for an emergency. Just about anyone
can learn engineering, but people like her are rare, so while August Voll
has taken over as head of the department, Valencia still helps out. She’s
more like a consultant now.”
“How did you know?” Omega asks.
“How did you get in this room?” Mercer asks.
Valencia is the one who designed the teleportation systems on this ship, and
all the ways they can control who has access to what sections, and when. If
she wants to bypass a restriction, she will, and she’ll do it with her eyes
closed while she’s composing a new sonata. Knowing this about her, Omega
rolls his eyes, and emphasizes his own question. “Did Veca tell you?”
She smiles, and removes something from her ear to present them with it.
“It’s a sangsterbud.”
“What the hell is that?” Halan doesn’t like people inventing things without
him knowing about it.
“Simple tech,” she says. “All it does is transduce future soundwaves—in this
case, from about five seconds—and plays them for me to hear.”
“Why are you wearing it?” Halan presses. “Knowing what people are going to
say just before they say it isn’t that helpful unless you want to prevent
them from saying it, or in this case, show off what you can do.”
“I’m just tryna figure out who I am now that I’m no longer Head Temporal
Engineer,” Valencia says.
“I offered to extend your shift,” Halan reminds her. “Now that Vesper turned
out to be a mole, we’re down one member of the already small team anyway.”
Valencia shakes her head. “August needed the job. She deserved it. I just
underestimated how bored I would be. Now I see there’s more for me to do. I
can go on this mission with Omega. Together, we can find out what happened
to Rita, and those other three people who we don’t really care about
personally.”
Omega shakes his head too. “No, the mission could take years. I can go,
because I’m immortal. You don’t wanna die out there, in that tiny little
ship, with dumb ol’ me.”
“I’m immortal too,” Valencia reveals.
“You are?” Halan asks. “Extremus is generational. We all agreed...”
“Yeah, I broke the rules,” Valencia confirms. “I guess you better kick me
out, and force me on the Elder Shuttle.”
“Can we come up with a better name for that too?” Mercer poses.
“What kind of upgrades do you have?” Omega is pleased to finally be around
someone else like him again. No one else on this ship understands him, and
they never will.
“Cellular countersenescent.”
“How do you accomplish this?” Omega is even more interested now.
“Antintropic technology that I invented myself. I got the idea from my
refrigerator.”
“Holy shit. Is it a constant process?”
“As we speak.”
“Holy shit,” he repeats.
“Could you dumb it down for the rest of us?” Halan requests.
Omega opens his mouth to explain, but realizes that Valencia should do it.
He gives her the floor.
She begins. “When your cells lose the ability to replicate themselves, they
become senescent. They are essentially dead, but they’re a problem, because
they sort of just sit there in your body. On the whole, this is what causes
you to degrade and age. It’s obviously a complex process, but the most
important aspect of longevity treatments is our ability to reprogram the
body, and command it to undergo a process called transdifferentiation, which
basically means the organism reverts to a less mature state. That’s what
allows the vonearthans to live incredibly long lifespans.”
“So that’s what you did to yourself,” Mercer figures.
“No. I’m not allowed to do that. I’m not even allowed to access the research
that allows the vonearthans to do that. But I did do something similar. I’m
a temporal engineer, so what I do is command my cells to become young again,
but by essentially reversing the flow of time for them. This creates issues
for the natural laws of entropy, but it’s fine on smaller scales, like my
tiny little body. It wouldn’t be okay to do that to the whole universe.
Anyway, when a cell of mine begins to deteriorate, it releases a chemical,
which triggers something I’ve deemed a tempomere to activate the
countersenescence. So you see, I’m perfect for this mission. I don’t belong
here anymore, and I won’t age out there.”
“What does any of this have to do with that quantum regulator?” Mercer
questions.
“Replicator,” Omega and Valencia correct in unison. She continues alone,
“it’s exactly what it sounds like. Place one grape in there, push the
button, and you’ll have two grapes. It’s technically the same grape, but one
of them was stolen from an alternate reality. Now put those two back in the
replicator, push the button, and you have four. Rinse, repeat, and eat as
many grapes as you’d like. As long as you got power, and at least one copy
of something that you need, you got as many of that thing for replacements.”
“This one has a fairly extensive database,” Omega adds. “We can
spontaneously generate an object without ever actually bringing it on board.
Evidently, Old Man spent a lot of time encoding everything he could get his
hands on.”
“Great,” Valencia says. “Even better. Does it have ice cream?”
“Hold on, I haven’t agreed to anything,” Halan warns the both of them. “If
we’re doing this, we have to be careful. We can’t let anyone else know about
it, not even Old Man. If you show up in the past to meet him before he has a
chance to invent the damn thing in the first place, it could cause a
paradox. It could cause one even if he has already invented it.”
“So we’ll modify it,” Valencia promises. “It shouldn’t be too hard to make
it look like something completely different, and alter its specifications. I
already have some ideas on how I can improve power efficiency, and safety
protocols. Old Man obviously didn’t give that sort of thing much thought.
It’s a time machine, so it doesn’t matter how long it takes us.”
“I will...remember that when I’m making my decision. For now, we should all
return to our duties. Now that you’re in the braintrust, Miss Raddle, I
trust you understand not to tell anyone about any of this?”
Valencia zips her mouth shut, locks it up, and throws away the key. Then she
leaves with Omega to begin making the modifications. But first, they have to
find a way to get the thing out of the cargo bay, and into a secure area.
