Microstory 2765: I Came in Like a Wrecking Ball

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Everyone chooses their own ghost to teach them how to drive these cars. Even Jolanda accepts the lesson. She’s not pretentious enough to think that she already knows everything, especially not about her specific car today. For all she knows, there might be a secret button behind the steering wheel that dispenses banana peels. Still, it seems rather pointless for the rest of them to even try, given her experience. Her only meaningful contender is Zelda, but Zelda is a risk-taker. She’s more likely to push it too far, and end up dying in the act, even if she was in the front until it happens. She hasn’t even driven that much in her life, because it places her in too much control, which isn’t thrilling enough.

Elise feels like she’s struggling with it the most, even though she technically has the secondmost amount of time behind the wheel. She’s listening to her ghost—as much as she can listen to a hologram that can only grunt and say a few single-syllable words—but she is not internalizing the lessons. She keeps looking over at the others, particularly when their stationary work is done, and they move on to the practical. She doesn’t want to start. She doesn’t wanna do this. It goes against how she learned it.

The rules were what drew her to learning antiquated skills in the first place. She almost wishes she had never tried driving at all. At least she would start at zero, but now she has much to unlearn. Not that she has any chance of winning anyway. Why risk it? Why place herself in danger when it’s hopeless? Can all seven of them move forward as long as they stay ahead of the other 17? Again, “what are the rules!”

Elise’s ghost frowns. “The rules are that the first six racers move to the sudden death challenge. The rest are killed, or in the case of the automated cars, deleted.”

“Wait, you can talk?” Elise questions. “Why have you not been talking until now?”

“You didn’t need me to talk before. Now you do,” the ghost explains.

“There are seven of us. That number was chosen so at least one person will be killed today. But then the subsequent sudden death challenge will kill everyone else.”

“Sudden death doesn’t mean what you think it means,” the ghost goes on. “I cannot elaborate, but if six players win the race, all six will continue on the hunt.”

Elise shakes her head. “That’s not good enough. We came into this together. Even Miracle is part of the team now. We all deserve to stay together.”

“It was never going to be fair,” he reasons. “That’s what makes it challenging.”

“Such a wise, dead pirate,” Elise muses.

The ghost nods. “I see you at the wheel. You’re more at ease than the others. Even the pro over there looks nervous. I know she has her reasons, but you could actually win this. You have a perspective that none of them does. You lived like the ancients. Don’t underestimate that. They still don’t understand the threat of death, but the skills which you dedicated your life to studying were all developed by fleeting creatures.”

“I’m still not faster than she is, nor braver than any of them,” Elise argues.

The ghost shakes his head. “Again, car racing was conceived by mortals. Anyone can push a button with their foot until it stops and leave it there. You know when to let up. You trained from resources made by people who would die if they didn’t know that.”

Elise sighs. “I don’t know if I wanna win. A part of me wants to gather everyone up and ask them to quit so we leave with our memories intact. I don’t wanna lose them.”

He smiles. “If your bonds are real, you can make new memories later.” Maybe.

Here endeth the lesson.

Elise decides not to do any practice driving before the race. She’s not confident in herself, and is not enthusiastic. Her friends look ready and determined. They may not know the restrictions on the results. She’s not gonna tell them. She’s a liar.

They’re at the starting line now, at the edge of the dome, pointed towards the wall. When those giant metal doors open, they have no idea what they’re gonna find. One thing they have going for them is that all seven of them are sharing the second row. Only two cars are in front of them, which gives them something to fight against without it feeling impossible from the start. It’s a huge track. Since the engineering bots weren’t limited by an audience, they were free to make it as wide as they wanted. They’re probably not even going to be driving in circles, or at least not one single circle.

Elise looks to her right at Minotaur, who doesn’t react. She looks to her left where Colley notices. He frowns at her kindly before refocusing on the road and gripping the wheel tighter. She has to protect these people. She doesn’t want to lose her memories of the ones she has grown to love, but she would rather it be her than any of them. They all committed more to this. They deserve to see it through. She’ll be fine.

The light is red, and has been for the last few minutes, but now it blinks. It blinks faster and faster and faster until it turns yellow. Two cars down, Miracle gives a false start, but she manages to roll back to where she was while it holds at yellow for a few more seconds. The two lead cars take off, and only then does the light turn green, which is either cheating, or one of the rules that Elise failed to hear when she was feeling down.

The six of her friends take off, but Elise throws her car in reverse, and punches it. She slams into the four cars behind her. They fight her, but she doesn’t let up. It would appear that the humans were given superior vehicles to race with. They go down relatively easy. Once the four of them have been sufficiently destroyed, her job is still not over. She still has thirteen more to take care of. So she puts it in drive.

She zips into the dark. It’s only lit enough for her to see where the walls are, and maybe other cars. She’s in the back, though, so she doesn’t have to worry about them anymore. At least she didn’t think so. There’s a small fire up ahead. One of the cars has already crashed without Elise’s help. She has to swerve around it, but immediately has to swerve again because of the second car involved in that crash. They’re both bots, though, so it’s fine. Two more down, eleven to go. She can do this. She can stop them all.

Elise flies out of the tunnel, and onto the road. They’re in a desert. The track is narrower here, so it’s a good thing she was already in the middle. The others aren’t as far ahead as she thought they would be, probably due to this bottleneck. She still can’t let up, though. She maintains her speed, and catches up to the rear car. She saw this maneuver in an educational video once about what not to do, but she thinks she can recreate it. She drives right up and wedges the front of her car into the back of the bot. Now it’s just spinning its wheels. She drives it over and slams it into the barrier. She ends up pointed in the wrong direction, but she doesn’t have time to get turned back around, so Elise just drives backwards for a bit while she catches up with the others.

There we go. Now she’s with a huge group of bots. The problem is, Rage is here too. Three of them have created a line, which she can’t pass. Every time she goes for a gap, they cover it, so she has to try again. She’s being too gentle and patient with them. Elise doesn’t have that issue. She crashes her rear bumper into two of the cars at once. Only one of them skids and hits the barriers, but it’s enough to let Rage pass. As she’s doing that, Elise goes after the other two, stopping them both before the next tunnel.

The track is narrower yet. Only two cars could potentially drive side by side. It’s also no longer always flush with the ground. They’re in a winter wonderland, driving on an elevated track as it snows. The road becomes ice. Fortunately everyone up ahead is smart enough to go slower here so they don’t just fly over the edge. Elise loves this opportunity. She’s literally knocking bots off left and right. Before, there was a chance for them to come back with a vengeance, but not here. Talk about sudden death.

All of the human cars are still going, but none of them is even close to the lead bot. It seems to have no problem with the ice at all. Someone has to put a stop to it. There are only two bots left. If she can stop them, the others don’t even have to drive fast anymore. They can coast to the finish line safely. Frustratingly, the penultimate bot is the smartest one. It knows what she’s trying to do, and out-maneuvers her every time. It’s also stronger than the other bots. She manages to get right next to it, but when she rams the side, it barely moves. Then Elise looks over. Another car has joined them.

It’s Jolanda. She has positioned her car on the other side of the bot. There’s so little space, they have it pinned. As difficult and counterintuitive as it is, and without being able to talk, the humans slow down to a complete stop. Still without talking, Elise lets go and drives on ahead several meters. Jolanda turns the wheel, and knocks the bot over the edge.

Elise backs up again. “Get back up to the front! Only six people can win!”

“I know!” Jolanda shouts back. “My ghost told me about that!”

“I’m sacrificing myself!” Elise shouts.

“I’m sacrificing myself!” Jolanda volleys.

“You’re the only one who can stop the final boss! Go do it!”

“I don’t think we have to worry about that!” Jolanda jerks her head forward.

Its the final bot. It’s pointed towards them at the top of the hill, where there’s another tunnel. It’s revving its engines menacingly, so they instinctively rev back.

“I’m gonna kill him!” Jolanda volunteers.

“No, I will!” Elise insists.

They both take off. The bot takes off too for a game of chicken. This is ridiculous. Only one of them has to die in order to make the math work. It just makes sense that it’s Elise. Jolanda can not go on with the knowledge of having lost this race. When they reunite on the other side of this hunt, someone will tell her, and she will be devastated. Elise will not care. She has to be the one to do this. She takes a deep breath. There hasn’t been much ice for a few hundred meters, but she knows something Jolanda probably doesn’t. Her teachers taught her about something called black ice, and how to spot it.

To Jolanda’s likely confusion, Elise slows down just enough to get behind Jolanda, then bullies her way back on the other side. At the right moment, she gently nudges Jolanda towards the barrier, not hard enough to hurt her, but it does stop her in her tracks. Elise’s car, meanwhile, hits the ice, and goes crazy. She starts spinning counterclockwise, utterly uncontrollably. She can’t even tell where anything is anymore, but she feels the powerful slam of the crash, and for a split second, the sharp twinge of the blade as her helmet cuts off her head.

Microstory 2760: Heave Ho

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The way Laise described the traditional means of lifting a sunken ship sounded exhausting and time-consuming. Their ancestors would have sunken barrels and tied them to the bottom. To make them buoyant, they would push buckets down and transfer air pockets little by little until the last barrel was enough to lift the boat. They didn’t have time for that. They had no freshwater, and as it turns out, no food. The barrels weren’t airtight. Each had a hole on the side, presumably to let air through, but when the boat sank, they all flooded with seawater. Most of the fruit had spoiled before they even showed up. The coconuts were okay. They floated on their own, so once that barrel was opened, they were easy pickings. That was what they ate during their break periods.

The first thing they did was rip all of the heavy metal and other unnecessary pieces off of the vessel. They pushed them over the side, and let them drop down to the shelf that the boat was on. This made it as light as it could possibly be.

After clearing the spoiled fruit mush, they tied ropes around the barrels one at a time, and created a makeshift pulley system around the bulwark and other parts. Then they stood on the crow’s nest and pulled the barrel up. Once it was on the surface and full of air, they closed it back up and plugged the bunghole securely. Now they had to reverse the process, which was even harder. The air-filled barrel wanted to float, so five of them had to stand on—or even hang off of—the crow’s nest. That was as many as they could fit before they ran out of leverage. The sixth person freedove down with the barrel, and held it in place so it didn’t wobble around like a watermelon.

While the pullers tied off the rope to hold it in place, the freediver came back up to recapture air for themselves. Then they would go back down with the seventh person to tie the barrel to the bulwark, and untie the original rope. Each barrel took about an hour, factoring in break times and errors. They were so tired, blistered, achey, hungry even with the coconuts, and absolutely thirsty. Rain would make their job harder, but it would at least give them something to drink to survive another day. They were able to learn from their mistakes and get into a good rhythm, but they were also losing energy with each one, so they never ultimately sped up the process. It took them two days to get through the lifting phase, but man was it worth it. As soon as that sixteenth barrel was in place, before the pulley rope could even be removed, the boat let go of the shelf, and rose. The people who were on the crow’s nest all jumped off to make it that much lighter, and watched the mast fly up above them. It was  glorious to behold.

Now the boat is close enough to the surface to stand without drowning. It’s still totally filled with water, but bailing it out will be the easy part. At least they think it will. They obviously start with the wet deck, which is the most appropriate term for it today. They think it’s going pretty well. Some water is splashing back in since the surface is so close to the railing, but it seems to be working. Then they realize their mistake. The boat didn’t simply sink on its own. There must be damage. Sure enough, when they swim down to a small storage room, they find the hole. It’s not particularly big, but it has to be patched first. That isn’t even their biggest problem, though. They’re about to tip.

“Three people on starboard side and three people to port side!” Rage orders.

Five of them run to one while Elise is alone on the other. Rage stays in the center.

Rage points. “That’s starboard, and that’s port. Minotaur, Zelda, join Elise. Okay. The water is out but the boat is unstable. Does anyone have any idea why?”

Jolanda raises her hand. “I don’t have any sailing experience, but I’ve been on more than one boat. One thing they all have in common is this thing called a ballast. You don’t actually want it to be super light, unless it’s a speedboat or jetski. You want some weight to keep it in the water so you don’t tip over. Modern boats use water itself. Don’t quote me on this, but I believe in the olden times, they used metal.”

Rage looks over at the water. “We just sank our metal to make it lighter.”

“I did not want to do a seventeenth barrel,” Minotaur contends. “Dumping our heaviest stuff was the right call. We just need to bring some of it back up. I wouldn’t mind having some chains anyway. Chains come in handy in mazes all the time.”

“Well, I’m glad we dumped everything onto the shelf, instead of the depths.” Rage sighs and centers herself. “Okay. We did this once, we can do it again. Zelda, Colley, please stay on the boat on opposite sides to maintain balance. Hopefully that will be enough. The rest of us need to get in the water so we don’t literally rock the boat.”

“Our pulley rope has been through quite a bit by now,” Laise says. “I don’t think it’s gonna make it. It might snap. We need to use a different rope.”

“We don’t have more rope,” Rage points out. “We’ve already snapped two.”

Elise looks up. “Take it from the sail. It’s long enough that we can double up and distribute the stress. Then we’ll put it back up where it belongs.”

“So many concessions and compromises,” Rage laments. “Very well. Do it.”

So they add another phase to the work even though they thought they were done. They pull up the bars and grates, but they leave the cannons. Their combined strength isn’t enough to make that happen, and the rope probably isn’t strong enough either. They’re into their third day before they feel like they’re ready to learn the ropes, so to speak. Laise knows some history of sailing, as does Colley, but none of them knows how to sail. They spend the rest of the day trying to figure it out methodically. They still don’t have any regular water, but they’ve been drinking coconut water, and it won’t matter how long it takes to find land if they sink or crash before they even get there. It’s smarter to take their time, and do this right. Everyone is drained, but they’re not stopping.

“We don’t even know where we’re meant to go,” Minotaur reasons. “I’m not used to that. I mean, of course I’m used to being lost, but I always have something to orient myself. This dome has a diameter of 3,300 kilometers, and we could be in the very center of it. Sure, if we sail in one direction, we’ll eventually hit the wall, but that’s assuming we don’t die of thirst, starvation, or exposure before then. Everything else is ocean or an island, and those are notoriously hard to target, even with a map.”

“I have a map.” Jolanda is climbing up from below deck holding a piece of paper.

Colley doesn’t have to ask, she hands it to him. He examines it a little before looking up at the sky. “We’re gonna need to orient ourselves again. For that, we need the stars back.” He returns to the map. “Narratively, I know where this thing set sail, and I know where it’s going, but it may have gotten knocked off course. Even if it didn’t, I have no idea how far the original crew supposedly made it before they sank.”

“Rest up,” Rage instructs. “We set sail tonight. Once again, I hope it rains.”

It doesn’t rain, but that night, they are given an opportunity to find out what happened to the original crew when their ghosts appear. Or they’re zombies, or something else like that, because they can make physical contact with the living. That’s exactly what they do by attacking too, because as one might expect, they were pirates.

Extremus: Year 140

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Waldemar has gathered his most trusted advisors and loyalists in a sector of the ship just for them. He knows what these people think, and how they react to news. Still, he’s not just going to stand here and blurt out the plan. He’s divided everyone into circles. A lot of people in history seem to have had inner circles, and then everyone else, but he’s chosen to have nine of them. The outermost is simply the entire population of the ship, though, so it doesn’t really count. And they are certainly not all here today.

This isn’t just for the ninth circle either, though. Those are the ultra-loyalists. He could literally extinguish the entire population of Extremus, and they would still be on his side, as long as they personally survived, of course. That’s obviously not on the table, but it’s important for him to know who those people are, and to keep them happy. Right now, he’s standing before the seventh circle, which includes the niners, and everyone in the eighth as well. Only the people in this room are even aware that the circles exist. The people in the sixth circle outwards can be trusted to varying degrees, but never enough to let them in on all this. Even so, he has to play this smart. He has to play it cool.

Waldemar is the one who came up with the vice captain program. It was great for him—it got him the job—but now it’s a threat. Most people expect him to step down to let the next one step up. He has no intention of doing that. He only allowed the program to continue to find his last true loyalists. Unfortunately, none of the candidates passed the secret tests he ran on them while they were undergoing the overt tests. So they’re not here. It’s time. It’s time to start planting the seeds. Will some intelligent people figure it out before the time comes? Yes. Will they voice their concerns? Absolutely. Will it matter? It won’t if he rewards his current army of loyalists...and curates more.

That is why there aren’t too many people here today. It will be their jobs to go out and start spreading the good word, so to speak. He first has to teach them subtlety, though. Well, he won’t be the one to teach them subtlety. He is not particularly good at it, because he still doesn’t understand human emotions. But he has someone right by his side for that. “And now—you all know him, you all love him—it’s my new steward...”

His late wife has been haunting him. He still doesn’t know how it’s possible, but Silveon claimed to have seen her too. That’s one reason he had to fire him. They’re not enemies, but he’s only in the fifth circle now. He just doesn’t get it. Ghost!Audrey doesn’t either. She keeps trying to get him to change his ways, but if anything, it’s made him more determined. She almost invariably shows up when he’s alone. That’s why it was so hard to prove to himself that she was a ghost, and not simply alive and teleporting around at will. But she’s here now. She has just suddenly appeared on stage right in front of his steward. Waldemar is too confused to stop himself. “Audrey Husk!”

The crowd was ramping up into another cheer, but they fall deathly silent. They know that name. They know it’s not the name of his steward. They don’t know what to think. It is certainly an odd mistake to make with no explanation. She has been gone for many years now. Why would he call his friend that, accidentally or otherwise?

Waldemar freezes. He has never been so embarrassed. No, he has never been embarrassed at all. He doesn’t feel shame, because he doesn’t care about other people’s opinions. How can he save himself now? What explanation could he give? “That’s right!” he decides to say. “It doesn’t matter what your name was, or what you prefer to be called! If I want to call you something else, that is exactly what I’ll do! You are now the new Audrey Husk! That’s the only name I’ll ever let you use! Accept it...or die!”

The new Audrey accepts it.

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Extremus: Year 139

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Sable has been playing a one-sided game here, which is to be expected, because for the longest time, Silveon was too. A few months ago, Waldemar revealed to her that he had been seeing and interacting with his late wife. Either he is sparse on the details, or Sable didn’t relay everything to Silveon when she told Silveon about it yesterday. He doesn’t know why she waited this long, but he can’t argue with her about it. They have a very fragile partnership, and it’s the only one he has, so he doesn’t want to lose it.

He asked Sable for more information, but she didn’t give it. He doesn’t know how this is changing Waldemar. Their relationship has grown more strained over time as the latter focuses on maintaining his power, and his relationship with Sable. They are probably more or less in a holding pattern, though. He is coming up on a crossroads in his career. In the original timeline, Waldemar threw the rule book out the airlock, and declared himself the One True Captain of Extremus, Eighth of Eight. His acolytes came up with the chant, “eight! Eight! Eight!” When spoken out loud, it sounded like they were saying hate, hate, hate, which in a way, they were very much saying exactly that.

Out of all of their goals, this is the big one. In five years, his and Audrey’s hard work will either pay off, or fail. Will Waldemar do what he did before, or will he follow procedure, and step to the side for a new captain? They were never trying to make him into a saint, but if they can end the tyranny, all of their sacrifices might prove worth it. The question for Silveon right now, though, is who or what is Audrey? He has a decent idea, but he doesn’t want to go digging around to confirm it, because it could mess with what’s happening. He needs to better understand what this Audrey ghost is telling Waldemar, so they know if she’s a threat to the plan, or a boon. It’s gonna be tricky.

“Hey, W,” Silveon says when the door opens for him. “What’s up?”

“What did you want, Sil?” Waldemar questions. He doesn’t sound happy, but he doesn’t sound mad either. He’s concentrating on whatever is on his table at the moment.

This is where Silveon has to be careful. If the Audrey who Waldemar is seeing isn’t the least bit real—like a temporal echo from the past, or a mental projection—and if Waldemar knows that it’s only in his head, Silveon’s next words will be an obvious lie. He might be able to save face, but it depends on the wording he chooses. “I wanted to talk to someone, and I think you’re the only one who may understand. You cared about her as much as I; or more, rather. I can’t trust anyone else.”

Waldemar freezes but stays on his tablet. “Cared about who?”

“Audrey,” Silveon answers. “I’ve been...seeing her. Kind of in the corner of my eye? She doesn’t talk. I thought it was only in my head, but it’s just too real. She’s older, ya know? She’s aged like us even though she’s been gone for so long already. I dunno, I mean, my brain could certainly conceive of that, but stranger things have happened too. Maybe...maybe it’s real. Do you think she could be real?”

Waldemar stares at the man who he once called a friend, and is now becoming a stranger by the day. He stares for a long time. “Of course not, Silveon. Audrey’s dead. Time travel is illegal. It’s the only set of laws I never touched. Go see a psychologist.”

Shit. Their trust is gone completely. Well, at least he’s not angry, or becoming violent. Still, he’s playing this close to the vest, which means that Sable remains the only hope they have of getting through to him, and averting his dark fate.

Silveon shakes his head, bids his farewell, then respectfully bows out of the room.

He returns to his own quarters, defeated. Life should have an undo button.

“Hey,” a voice says from behind him. It’s Audrey. “We need to talk.”

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Extremus: Year 138

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Waldemar and Sable are back together. It has been long enough since Audrey died that the people of Extremus accept the new relationship, so they can be public about it. Yes, she’s young. The crew and passengers do notice that, but they wouldn’t dare say anything to his face. He doesn’t want people to talk about them behind their backs either, but he can’t stop that. Well, he probably could. He could have the AI that runs the systems track everyone’s conversations, and make sure they’re only saying nice things, but he won’t do that. The old version of him might have, but he’s different now. He still doesn’t have real emotions, but he knows if he takes away all of their freedoms, then his popularity rating will drop down to zero, and he won’t keep his job. Maybe in a few years once the second phase of the master plan begins.

Other than his personal life, nothing noteworthy is happening, at least not that he can be honest about. The ghost of his late wife still haunts him, and not in a metaphorical way. She shows up when he’s alone, and talks to him. It’s torture. He knows it could be worse. She’s not screaming in his ears while he’s trying to sleep, or singing the same song over and over again. What she does is basically give him advice. She acts just Audrey did when she was physically here, except now he can’t even get on top of her like he used to.

No, the problem with it is that he doesn’t have a choice. He can’t leave the room unless he wants to surround himself with others. She won’t leave. A part of him doesn’t want her to, but a part of him does. He obviously can’t tell anyone about it, because it will make him look unfit for the chair. He can’t trust Silveon, and his rekindling with Sable isn’t where it should be yet. When the—

“Stop. No one cares about this.” It’s Audrey again. She just appears out of nowhere sometimes. It can be really annoying.

“What are you goin’ on about now?” Waldemar questions.

“You’re dwelling on your situation,” Audrey explains. “Your thoughts are not interesting, which makes sense, because the story is not interesting right now. The beginning of this volume had a lot of action and intrigue, and the end of it will too, but right now, The Superintendent is in the middle of focusing on other projects, so he doesn’t have time to write this whole thing about your fake fee-fees and hallucinations.”

Waldemar stands there midstride, holding a plate of cookies and a glass of milk. A single drop of the milk sprang out of it when Audrey first showed up, and is currently running down the back of his hand as another form of irritation. He wants to stop and lick it up, but he’s worried he’ll look stupid in front of the ghost. Can you believe it? Feeling self-conscious before someone who you don’t even respect. If only—

“I said stop!” Audrey argues. “Stop trying to create a story where there is none. He’s gonna cut this short, and move on. Maybe he’ll have more time next week.”

“I’ve had enough of this.” Waldemar carelessly drops both the plate and the glass on the floor to let the cleaning bots deal with it. He taps on his wrist band until he finds what he’s looking for. Or rather, who he’s looking for.

Sable appears on the floor. She’s half-naked, crouched in an awkward position.

“What were you doing?” Waldemar asks. “Having sex?”

“Uh, no. Yoga?” Sable claims, probably lying. She stands up. “I don’t appreciate being summoned like this. You may be the captain, and I may be your girlfriend, but—”

“I’ve been seeing the ghost of my dead wife. For years. And I need your help.”

She stares but he can’t say what she’s thinking. “Fascinating. Tell me everything.”

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Extremus: Year 134

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The fairytale dream is over. Waldemar no longer feels emotions, but he is not back to his old self either. That experience has changed him, and he’s having mixed feelings about it. No, that’s obviously the wrong way to word it. He’s having contradicting thoughts. On the one hand, it’s familiar, so he’s much more comfortable again. This is how he grew up, and it seems right. It was working before. People weren’t happy, but he didn’t need them to be. Still, it’s not like the end of the year of empathy means that he can revert. He’s now living in a paradox. The logic in how he behaved, and the kinds of decisions he made, are still in his head. They still make a lot of sense. The darkness is fueling his rage, but it’s also...intoxicating, and he doesn’t want to give it up again. Because, now that he has spent time without it, he realizes that that’s what it is. It’s fuel. It makes him feel strong and powerful. There’s that word again, though.

He’s standing in his bathroom now, staring at the mirror. He’s looking at himself in disgust, not because that’s what he’s feeling, but because he knows others would if they knew the truth. He slaps himself in the cheek. “Feel something,” he urges.

He feels nothing.

He slaps himself harder. “Feel something!” he cries.

Nothing.

“Feel something!” he screams at the top of his lungs.

“Stop that,” comes a voice from behind him. “Stop hitting yourself.”

He turns to see his late wife, Audrey Kristiansen. “Where have you been?” He declared her dead, but he never knew what happened. When he didn’t feel anything, he didn’t care, and when he did, he wanted to leave her alone if she wasn’t really dead.

“I like the new place. I would have felt more at home here when I was alive.” During the empathy year, he downgraded himself to smaller quarters to look more like the common man, and he didn’t regret it. It didn’t really matter.

“You know I don’t like to repeat myself,” he told her.

“And you know I don’t like to be ordered around. I’m not one of your crewmembers. I was your wife, and you treated me like shit.”

“You knew who I was when you married me,” he pointed out.

“Yes, I did. That’s why I did it. I took that bullet so no one else would have to. And I died for it. Now you are at a crossroads. You are starting to believe that the only way you can get respect from both sides of the imaginary political line is if you align yourself with a new belle. I’m here to tell you that you don’t. You don’t have to be the ruthless dictator, and you don’t have to be a squirming bleeding heart. You just have to follow logic. And logically, hurting people has never made any sense. Yes, you have a darkness. You can’t ignore it, so I’m not going to try to tell you to. But it doesn’t have to define you. The year that you felt something taught you what others experience all the time. Don’t try to get it back, but don’t let it go either. Learn from it. Be better.” She paused for a moment. “And stop with the self-harm. It makes you look weak.”

“I am not..weak!” he cries, lunging towards her with the anger of a magnetar.

She doesn’t blink. “Prove it. Get out there, and do your job. Lead the people. Don’t tell them what to do. Tell them what needs to be done, so they can decide. If you don’t know what needs to be done, then lean on advisors. That is what they’re there for.”

“You’re not really here. What are you?” Waldemar questions.

“That’s not the question you need to ask yourself, Captain,” she begins. “The question is...who are you?”

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Microstory 2685: We Have More Time Than We Thought

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Resi flies through the tunnel in his mind, searching for the vision that he’s meant to see. He spends more time in here than usual. So much passes him by, but it’s too quick for him to have any time to tell what other events he’s missing. He just keeps going and going and going until he sees it. Central Mountain. Framed in a circle like a painting on the wall. It’s terrifying. Smoke is billowing up into the air. Lava is rolling down the sides. People are dying. He can’t see that much detail yet, but he’s getting the feeling. It’s at the end of the line. This is the last thing that will ever happen to anyone on Yana. The painting grows larger as he draws near, and then he passes through the portal. Now he’s flying through the air. Unlike his other vision of this tragic fate, he’s not composed of the elements. He’s just a regular guy. A regular guy who can fly.

The still image begins to move in slow-motion, making it even more horrifying than it already was. Now he really can see the people dying on the ground as the ash overwhelms them. Bungulan aircraft are frantically flying in, trying to save as many as they can, but they won’t get anywhere near everyone. Catastrophe has struck, and the question is, is this what happens if Resi doesn’t report the truth to the island, or is it inevitable? Will people simply not believe him, or will he not even get the message out in time? He remembers Kartica in the caldera with him. She has that satellite phone. He has to make that call, or tell her so she can make it. That is, if he can trust her.

Resi doesn’t have enough information, but he can feel himself waking up. His body is stirring where it lies on the ground. He’s melting into the rock. He really will die, so he has to get this done before he takes that last breath. What he really needs is the date. He needs specific information when he makes that call. There’s a boat on the coast, taking evacuees in. Surely there’s a date there somewhere. He dives down towards the surface, and lands on the deck. No one can see him, because he’s not really here. They’re frantically scattered about, some using devices, but no one keeps still long enough for him to see a date. Don’t they know that he needs this? Don’t they know he can stop it?

He has to get to the bridge. It will have computers there. He dashes up and passes right through the wall like a ghost. As the vision is beginning to collapse, he gets only one decent look in the upper right corner of the nearest screen, but it doesn’t make much sense. The day and month are both fine. It’s the year that doesn’t make the least bit of sense. The number is weird and wrong; it can’t be right. He has to look around for something else. Maybe there was an EMP, and it screwed up all of the electronics?

He wakes with a start, not having had the chance to find any more clues to understand what it means. Still, it’s all he has to go on. He feels like he’s moments from death. “Pho—phone,” he ekes out, reaching his hand up aimlessly. He turns his head to find Kartica lying on her stomach next to him, probably as close to death as he is.

She fights to open her eyes. She reaches behind her back and pulls the phone off of the clip. She lifts it into the air, and starts swinging it around, delirious and confused, maybe seeing double vision. Their hands dance around each other for several seconds before they finally make contact.

Resi selects Caprice’s contact card, and tells the system to call her in whatever way will work. If point-to-point communication is best, do that. She answers, demanding to know where he and Kartica are, but there’s no time. “August 7, 0045.” She’s flummoxed. “That’s the date of the eruption. August 7, 0045.” He dies.

Microstory 2675: A God Am I

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Resi doesn’t answer the girl’s question. He lies back on the cot and tends to his pain. He’s starving and exhausted too. As if they read his mind, someone wearing black walks up to him with a cart of food. Resi reaches up, and grabs the first thing his fingers touch. It’s two slices of cheese. He stuffs them in his mouth like a toddler, and carelessly chews. Some of it falls off of his face. He just reaches for more. Plain bread this time.

The girl appears over him, her dark hair hanging down from her head, making her look like a Japanese ghost. “It’s not too terribly urgent, but we don’t have forever either. I need to know what happened in your vision.”

Resi keeps chewing, not looking her in the eye. “Can’t you people watch people’s Kidjums on the dream recorder, or whatever the hell tech you have.”

“I don’t have access to that tech,” she explains. “I’ve gone rogue.”

“You and your grandfather?” He asks. He accidentally pulls one of the platters off of the cart. A granola bar lands on his chest, so he begins to eat that. “Or just you?”

“Just me,” she answers. “He’s not actually my grandfather.”

“I don’t really care.” Resi tucks his legs in as he turns to the side, away from her. His hand finds a churro on the cart, so he munches on that. What an odd sort of spread.

“Please. I know you have no reason to trust me, but I believe that it’s a matter of life and death. We weren’t honest with you regarding your original Kidjum. There’s more to it. We’ve been trying to help you reach your destiny, but it’s not working. You keep making decisions that we did not anticipate. If it looks like we’re flip-flopping, it’s because we disagree with each other on how to move forward. The Speaker is a figurehead for the Assembly. They are not always the one in power. It shifts frequently.”

“I don’t care about that either.” He finishes the churro. “If there’s a drink up there, I don’t want to spill it.”

The girl moves over to the other side of him, and starts making sounds. She pushes the cart out of the way with her hips and kneels down with a mug of milk. She guides the straw between his lips, and holds it there while he has his fill. “Better?”

“What you did...” he trails off for a moment. “...was wrong. You hurt me. You tied me up. You drugged me. You forced me to hallucinate.”

“They’re not hallucinations, Resi. They’re visions.”

“What are you even going on about and is there cake?”

She picks up a saucer of chocolate cake, and sets it on the cot in front of his face.

There’s a fork there too, but he flicks it onto the floor, and eats with his hand. “Don’t judge me,” he says as he scoops more into his facehole.

“I’m not,” she tells him. “I’ve never gone through Kidjum before. I have a lot of respect for what you people do. Your dedication, your hard work; admirable traits.”

“You’re acting like you’re older than me.” He rolls over to his other side.

She follows him over there, and gets on her knees. “I am. I’m a lot older.” She sighs, preparing herself. “Look at my face, Resi. It is a face you have seen before. We normally switch forms as necessary, but my transfer was unplanned, so my only option was my own clone. You saw me before that. You saw me when I was older.”

Resi stares at her. He’s sleepy, but he can’t pull his lids down. There’s a tingling fatigue amidst the headache that he still has, screaming at him to turn off the lights and go to sleep for real, but his eyes won’t cooperate. Tired but wired. She looked familiar when he first saw her, but he had no context then. Now he knows what he’s looking for. There’s only one person she could be, even if she looked different. This is Speaker Lincoln. Well, she’s no longer the Assembly Speaker, but she probably will be again one day. “Lincoln,” he says quietly. He tries to shut his eyes again, but they pop back open.

She nods. “My given name is Kartica.”

“You’re Kinkon,” he guesses. “That’s why you have mind transfer tech. The Bungulans gave it to you. Why? Why would they do it? Why are you hoarding it?”

Kartica shifts her position to sit cross-legged. “When Mount Tambora erupted seven hundred and thirty years ago, I was a little girl. I listened to my parents. I did what I was told. I believed that we had died and gone to heaven. But then things started to happen that didn’t make any sense. People injured themselves, we got sick, old people died. If this was the afterlife, where did they go? Some other level of heaven? Or no, we were just on another planet. Aliens, or whatever, had saved us, for whatever reason. It was decades before we ran into the Bungulans and confirmed the truth, but I saw it for a long time before then. I was skeptical. I rejected my family’s beliefs. I rejected our traditions. I accepted the Bungulan way of life. A few of us did. We were pushed out of our new home, exiled to what we now call Anchor Island. Then a plague spread throughout Yana, and suddenly, they wanted our help again. So we gave it, for a price.”

“Undying loyalty and devotion,” Resi assumes.

“We didn’t frame it that way, but we were more knowledgeable than them at that point. We had the tech. We had the medicine. If they wanted our help, they needed to listen to us. It was only fair. Over time, people kept turning over to death, and my people kept jumping to new bodies whenever necessary. I can’t even remember what I used to look like anymore. What we truly were was lost to time. We didn’t try to hide it from the subsequent generations. We just stopped talking about it, and people back then had trouble grasping the concept anyway. We looked different, so we were different.”

“But you keep doing it. You keep jumping to new bodies, growing up, and getting the power back. You know how to run a campaign, because you’ve already run thousands.” Resi gets up to drag the cot out of the spotlight that’s still on him.

“Well, four times for me, going on the fifth. Others have done it more. They don’t like to get old, so they switch more often. It has only been a couple of centuries. ”

“Oh, only a couple? Pshaw, that’s nothing.”

“For everyone else, that is nothing. Someone on Castlebourne just celebrated their 600th birthday. I think they’re literally the oldest person ever, but still...”

“What do you want from me?” Resi questions. “Why am I here, Kartica?”

“I need to know what you saw,” she reiterates.

“What does it matter? It’s not real!”

“Yes, it is. That’s why you were selected to be First Tongue of Aether. That wasn’t just a Kidjum for you. It unlocked the power of your mind. There’s a name for people like you, who don’t experience time linearly, or can choose not to.”

“Oh yeah, and what’s the name?”

“They call them choosing ones, and they’re the reason we’re on Bungula in the first place. They’re the ones who brought us to the future from Earth.”

He studies her face. She’s not lying. She may be wrong, but she believes what she’s saying. So maybe he should say what he believes too. “Death. All I saw was death.”

Microstory 2636: Don’t Forget To Bring a Towel

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Trilby throws a silky towel at her. “I hope you understand that I removed your clothes to provide you with medical treatment. I would have been waiting for you on the landing pad, but you showed up way too early. Why didn’t you go down on a slower trip, with the animals? That would have been a lot safer for your fragile human body.”

“They would have caught me,” Mandica explains briefly. “What is this?”

“Temporary,” he says. “I call it the cloak of invisibility. You will be perfectly visible to the naked eye while we’re out there, but the identity sensors won’t spot you. You will appear as an infrared aberration, caused normally by too many people beaming data to each other’s devices at the same time. We will take a particular route to where we’re going so that sort of thing doesn’t stand out.”

She frowns at the towel. Yeah, it isn’t a cloak, it is a towel. No hood, no draw string. It is see-through, but still just a big cloth square. “Will I not look a little odd, walking around with this thing over my head?”

Trilby laughs heartily. “Odd? Sweetheart, you’re on Castlebourne now. My next door neighbor is a giant beetle, and is probably smarter than me. They might as well call this world Substrate City. You’re not going to stand out. There is no way to stand out on this planet. Everyone is here to formulate their unique identity, and they change by their whims all the time. Now. Functionally, you’re rare. There are a few communities here who are just as unenhanced—less unenhanced, in fact—and they are not insignificant, but most people change bodies like you might change your hairstyle. But don’t worry, you can’t tell, and people are careful around each other, because there’s no way to know. No one’s gonna shoot you with a gun under the assumption that you’ll survive.” He taps his middle finger on a screen. “I took the liberty of building you your own modified prospectus. The green domes are fine. You’ll be safe in any of those. I’m talkin’ your residential areas, your museums, your educational historical recreations.

“Yellow, a little more dangerous. They have ways of protecting visitors. If they’re a normal human, the Custodians will make accommodations. They might even separate the unenhanced from the enhanced so there’s never any question. Red are no-go zones. Most of them are specifically designed for people who have disposable substrates. A visitor might even end up getting a whole fleet of bodies to switch to one by one. If someone like you without the spoof lenses were to try to sneak in, the sensors would flag them so fast, their head would spin off. Apparently, there was one guy years ago who got stuck in a dangerous game and nearly died because the people who were trying to murder him hacked the system. They won’t let that happen again. They installed new sensors all around the world, and are constantly checking. You will be walking around basically as an admin. They’ll let you in anywhere, but that’s why I made this list for you, so you can decide what you’re willing to risk. You need to understand your options.”

“You said something about spoof lenses?”

“Yes, it’s not just those. They have multiple ways of tracking identities, the most common of which is an eye scan. They also—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Mandica interrupts. “If people are changing bodies, and your neighbor is an insect, how would a retinal scan even be possible in a place like this?”

“It’s not only a retinal scan. The retinal scan is a second stage identifier that the system will only perform if the first stage scan turns up blank. Everyone capable of transferring their consciousness is given a unique watermark, placed upon their optic nerves. I don’t know if you know this, but humans have a natural blindspot in their eyes due to where the optic nerves connect to the eyes. Your brain fills in the blanks, but you can’t see light that hits that spot. Fortunately for optic void scanners, though, light does still hit that spot. They shoot an invisible laser into it to read someone’s watermark, to know who they are. They don’t even have to keep their eyes open. It can pass through eyelids, and many other materials. For a normal person, if it doesn’t detect that watermark, it will default to the retinal scan, and register your preferences and restrictions.” He points at the invisibility towel. “The scanner can’t pass through that, so it will see infrared interference, and not see your unregistered eyes.”

“Why do I need the towel if I have these spoof lenses?”

“You don’t have the spoof lenses yet. The woman who’s getting them for me is on the other side of the planet. We have to travel to her first. Before you ask, she can’t come to us, because she’s also protecting you from brainwave scanners. That’s another thing you need in order to be a ghost. They’re becoming more common. They’ll never do away with the optic void scanning system, but spoofing an authorized watermark is easier than fooling a brain scan. Don’t tell anyone, but about zero-point-zero-zero-one percent of the time, a cloned or bioprinted body doesn’t produce the watermark correctly, and it has to be fixed, either with a new replacement, or a visit to the optomeger.”

“This woman with the brain scanner—”

“The baseline imager. A brain scanner verifies your brainwaves. The baseline imager is the thing that inputs in the data. It’s highly regulated. There are only a few of them in the world. People would notice if she borrowed it and took it on a vactrain.”

“I see. The baseline imager woman; can she be trusted?”

“She’s already done for me what she’s about to do for you,” Trilby explains. “She holds a special office in a special government for a special community. They were refugees fleeing oppression, and live here permanently, not simply as visitors. Apparently, her now-husband initially refused to be enhanced, so she’s sympathetic to that sentiment, even though he’s now just like her, and I am too. The only reason she’s keeping him out of it is so that he can have plausible deniability, but I told her about you, and she thinks you and the Superintendent would get along.”

“Okay, I think I have all the information I need. I should say, I trust you. Let’s go out there and walk around like ghosts, me moreso than you.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

And so the two of them leave the apartment. Trilby already has his spoof lenses on, but Mandica has to stay under the towel the whole time. He seems to have been right. People don’t even just ignore her. They smile and greet her as if she is just another regular person on this bizarrely accepting planet. She doesn’t see any giant beetle people, but a few who look decidedly unhuman. A lot of animals, but also alien-like beings that don’t match to something that ever existed on Earth. She’s starting to feel more comfortable here, like she can actually breathe and live a life. 

After only a few hours, they have made it to a dome that’s just called Capital. They enter a gorgeous woman’s office, who holds her hand out, sporting a very kind smile. “Hi. I’m Deputy Superintendent Yunil Tereth. I hear you would like to stay unregistered. Why don’t you have a seat?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 23, 2505

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Mateo’s nanites were just about done healing him. They prioritized the most life-threatening injuries first before moving on to the less serious damage. So a few cuts and bruises remained, and they hadn’t done anything for the pain yet. Even so, he could now stand up, and get a look around. Octavia still didn’t look concerned, so maybe this was some kind of refuge.

“We need to get moving,” she warned. “I let you recover, but it’s not safe here.”

“Is it safe anywhere?” he asked as he was following her along the stream.

“No,” she conceded. “The horde that was chasing after us can’t follow. Free from oversight, they’ve formed alliances, and divided the land into territories. We’re kind of on a border, so that offers us a little protection, but someone will eventually grow brave enough to cross the line—or hungry enough.”

What did you mean, no oversight?”

“This isn’t the real Castlebourne,” Octavia began to explain. “I don’t know exactly what it is, like an alternate reality, or something, but none of the staff is here. I don’t know who runs it—if it’s Pacey on his own, or if he’s working with someone else—but they don’t keep watch over the safeguards. These monsters are more vicious than they’re supposed to be.”

“How long have you been here?”

“The Vellani Ambassador rescued me and a bunch of others from Ex-486 in 2498. I wasn’t there long before I started hearing how worried the crew was about your whereabouts. I don’t know what they thought was wrong, but they were afraid that something had happened to you. So I agreed to investigate while they continued on with their missions.”

“Well, you found it. You found us.”

“Now, I have,” she agreed. “I found Pacey first, though, and he stuffed me in here so I wouldn’t interfere with his business. I’ve been running for my life ever since.”

“What happens if you die here?” he pressed.

“Nothing good,” she answered simply. “My body isn’t like yours, so I’ve been avoiding everyone. There are some buildings; particularly houses. They’re mostly haunted, but the ghosts have rules, and if you learn them, you can stay safe for a while.” She sighed. “But I think you can help end the madness forever.”

“How’s that?”

She looked around with a face full of paranoia and fatigue. “We’re pretty close to one side of this dome, and I can navigate us there. Unfortunately, once we get there, we’re going to have to walk halfway around the perimeter to reach the exit.”

“There should be more exits than that.”

“Like I said, it’s not the real Castlebourne. Pacey made modifications. There is a way out, but I can’t get through it with you.”

“It takes two to open the door, or something?”

“No, it takes an elite.”

“I’m an elite?”

“Yeah, of course you are. You were in Hrockas’ inner circle, and he hardwired contingencies into the software that should grant you access to any area at any time. The way he sees it, the planet is as much yours as it is his because of how much you contributed to its development. I don’t think that Pacey could have erased all those privileges without breaking the systems entirely. He would have had to reprogram everything from scratch. I’m sure he’s technically capable of doing that, but he’s kind of old school, so doesn’t like AI all that much. He likes to be hands-on, so he deliberately limits the tools in his toolbox.”

“So I can unlock the door, and we can both walk through?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Does he not know that?”

“I don’t know how much he knows about what I know.”

“It could be a trial,” Mateo put forth. “He may want us to escape. Some antagonists want us to stay out of their way, but others want us to stop them, like Thanos is with the Avengers.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“And you can’t teleport, right? Because I can’t. I tried while I was running once I remembered that I should be able to.”

Octavia shook her head. “I don’t have any powers at all. I lost that when I went back in time as September, and created a new timeline. I don’t like to talk about it, but it sets me apart from the other Paiges.”

“You don’t have to,” he assured her. “How dangerous is the border?”

She bobbled her head. “It has its advantages, and disadvantages. The monsters don’t know that they’re in a dome. If you showed one of them the wall, and they were the kind who could talk, they would probably just say, it doesn’t look like anything to me. They’re programmed to stop several meters before it, but they patrol that border, because they can still feel that there’s something weird about it. You’re safe beyond their reach, but there aren’t any resources there. No freshwater, no edible plants. You can take breaks, but you can’t stay.”

“Then let’s grab some supplies along the way. Now you can carry twice as much as before, and I don’t eat much.”

“Some of your powers and abilities are available to you, as you discovered when you jumped off the cliff and survived, but not all of them. If you aren’t hungry already, you will be soon. We need to get to that exit.”

“You seem to know a lot about it; about me.”

“You were part of my investigation,” she clarified. “I had to know who I was looking for. A lot has changed since I last saw you, many iterations of Paige ago.”

“Yeah.”

After nightfall, they finally managed to reach the border. She was right, there was a narrow open space that seemed to circle around the border. The problem was that this meant walking an additional 130 kilometers. Mateo didn’t know how his pattern worked in here. Even if he woke up right at midnight central, there would not be enough time for them to cross that distance before the end of the day. Paige would have to wait a whole year for him to come back, and then they still wouldn’t be able to make it in under 24 hours. Perhaps this plan wasn’t so perfect. There had to be a closer exit, perhaps hidden behind a false wall, or a hologram. As they were sliding their hands along what felt like glass or metal, they started hearing a commotion behind them. They turned around to find a new horde of monsters, about the same size as the one from before. But then more began to appear on the ends, and it eventually felt more like ten times that size. They were just standing there, staring at the two of them menacingly.

Paige’s watch beeped. “Oh, no.”

“What does that mean? Don’t tell me the worst monster comes out at a certain time.”

“No. It’s an hour until midnight central. You’re about to disappear for a year. This was stupid, we should have run straight through the center to the door. Now we’re screwed.”

“Don’t be so sure. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Mateo asked her. “In that clearing over there.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“If I recall correctly, it’s pretty maneuverable.”

“It’s pretty deadly.”

In the 1980s, a horror movie came out that would become a cult classic decades later. It was simply called Seatbelt Killer. Mateo couldn’t remember the exact backstory, but the villain’s origins involved his seatbelt getting stuck while his wife was being violated outside in front of him. He ended up turning the car on, and running over one of the rapists, but when the husband turned to get the other one, the second rapist threw his wife in front of the car, leading him to hitting her instead. The rapist then ran off, eventually getting trapped between the car and a cliff. With nothing left to live for, the husband drove right into him, and over the edge, where they both died. Then he and the car came back to life as a ghost, and started killing the protagonists over the course of the movie. The premise was that he literally couldn’t get out of his car anymore, but you couldn’t escape by going inside, because as a ghost car, it could fit through doorways, down hallways, and even up the stairs. You would think that he would kill rapists, but because he accidentally killed his own wife, the ghost could now only kill rape survivors. There was an implication that he didn’t want to do this, but was...driven to, so to speak. Due to the sensitive nature of the film, they never gave the car a name, but it was entirely fictional. The propmasters apparently manufactured the models from scratch so they wouldn’t have any sort of legal or reputational issues to contend with. But whatever it was, it was here, and Mateo wanted to steal it.

“Mateo...” Octavia began uncomfortably. “I can’t go near that thing.”

He knew what she meant right away, and if she was willing to talk to him about it, this wasn’t the time. “Have you seen the movie?”

“No, but I know the premise, which means I know that I qualify as a target.”

“The Final Girl survives by getting in through the passenger side window, and taking the steering wheel. She didn’t just take control of it, she literally removed it.”

“I’m guessing it wasn’t easy.”

“It’ll be easier for us. She was alone. You have me.”

“But if we take off the steering wheel, we won’t be able to drive either.”

“His weapon is the car itself, his hands are only his means of controlling that. If we get inside, I can control where the car goes, and he can’t hurt you while you’re in the back. We’re not gonna remove the wheel, because unlike the girl in the movie, we need to use it.”

“It sounds risky.”

“It always is. It’s your decision, though. I understand that I don’t understand. But I can tell you that I will protect you, and I’m a damn good driver.”

“Okay. We better come up with a plan fast, because we’re running out of time. Even if you drive as fast as possible, it will take nearly the full hour to get there.”

Mateo nodded, then started to shake his head. “We’re not going around the perimeter. We’re going straight through.”

They hatched their plan, though it wasn’t all that complicated. Octavia came up with the idea to use herself as bait for the Seatbelt Killer, but Mateo wasn’t getting off easy. He was bait as well. While most of the monsters in this dome wanted to kill both or either of them, only a few of them were exclusively attracted to Octavia, based on her profile. They would use this to their advantage. Mateo would lure all of the others away, so Octavia was only contending with one of them. Once it was just her and the car, she would hop over the boundary, back to the safety of the perimeter. This would give her a respite that the characters in the original movie never had. From there, with the driver essentially frozen in place, she could simply climb onto the hood, and slip through the open window. Mateo never saw her accomplish this, but it evidently worked. She drove up next to him while the horde was chasing him through the woods. He dove in the back, and she sped up so fast that no one else was able to keep up.

“We need to get you up front so you can do the steering!” she shouted. She was navigating the terrain pretty well, but still struggling against the driver. He was bound to his seat, but not entirely helpless there. He was still trying to peel her arms away, just as he had the girl in the film. With a bit of ingenuity, this heroine had managed to pry the wheel off of its place, which stole his power from him, and allowed her to escape back through the window. A mid-credits scene suggested that he was about to be successful in finding a workaround by rigging a tire pressure gauge as an ad hoc steering wheel, which may have played out in a sequel, but it was never made. Mateo was a driver, so he watched movies about drivers, even bad ones, and sometimes he read about them too. There was a theory that made the rounds on the message boards that this sequel would have ended with the Final Girl also managing to get in the car, but solving the problem by finally freeing the killer from his eternal seatbelt. Could it be true? The creator never responded to these rumors, but an unverified snippet of the sequel’s script appeared to support the lore. Whether that was how it would have worked in the movies was not the question, though. The question was...was the android who was programmed to believe he was the Seatbelt Killer coded with this solution, or would it only make things worse?

“Do you have a knife?” Mateo asked her. Now that he was inside, he could hold the killer’s arms back, but the guy was really strong. They might not be able to keep him at bay for the duration of the drive.

“What?”

“A pocket knife. Scissors. Anything!”

“No, I don’t have anything like that!” Octavia yelled back. “I didn’t know I was gonna be trapped in the woods for seven years!”

“I need something sharp,” he muttered. Just then, a glow started to form in his right hand. He let go of the killer’s arm to look at it in wonder. The glow consolidated, and began to take shape. Before too long, it was in the form of a knife. And he could feel it in his palm. Somehow, despite Pacey’s restrictions, Mateo’s weird telekinetic hologram powers were back, at least in this one instance. Not taking any chances that it wouldn’t last, Mateo slipped the blade underneath the belt, and with one slice, ripped it right open.

The killer stopped struggling. For a moment, he just sat there in awe. Then he pulled the strap through the loop, opened the door, and tumbled out. Octavia sat there in shock, not even paying attention to where they were going, which was all right, because they were in an open area now, and slowing down quickly.

“Okay. I’ll take it from here.” Mateo climbed over the headrest, and situated himself in the driver’s seat. Then he took off again, free from resistance or distractions.

Now that they were clear of the monsters, their primary struggle was against the clock. In the movie, the car could phase through objects, or even squeeze itself through like a bus out of Harry Potter. That wasn’t possible in the real world, so Mateo just had to negotiate the trees and other obstacles. He kept going though, relying on his great skills, which had only been enhanced during his stint in the Underburg dome. The clock was ticking as they were approaching the part of the wall where Octavia said there was a door. He barreled through the treeline, and onto the perimeter again, almost all the way on the other side of the dome. New monsters were upon them now, but were still bound by that imaginary line.

“How do I open this?” Mateo asked. Before Octavia could answer, he placed a hand on the handle, and heard a buzzing sound. “Hm. Was that it?” He opened it.

Octavia breathed a sigh of relief as her watch was counting down. “Finally.” Four, three, two, one.

Mateo blinked, and it was 2506.

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