Microstory 2458: Diamond Dome

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Would you believe it, centuries ago, diamonds were considered a precious commodity? They’re still precious, but they’re not nearly as rare and luxurious as they once were. Our ancestors would cut them up into pretty shapes, and fashion them into pretty jewelry. We don’t care about that. We care about function over form. Carbon is one of the most versatile elements in the universe, and as it turns out, its diamond form is actually extremely commonplace. It was hard to find on Earth when people were digging it out of the ground with shovels and pickaxes, but when you have the automation and power to manipulate entire planets, you start to see how abundant things are. We use diamonds because the stuff is durable and reliable. It’s also clear, making it a perfect, semi-natural alternative to glass. There are lab-grown polycarbonates out there that we can use instead, and to be sure, those are here on Castlebourne too, but nothing beats the OG super-material. We could also grow diamonds in a lab, but there’s plenty of it in this world, so why not take what the Lord giveth. Now, what exactly is it used for? Well, it’s the primary material for the domes. Most of the domes here aren’t perfectly smooth. They’re geodesic, which means they’re made up of a skeleton called a space frame. Traditionally, these were metallic, but these days, we use metamaterials; particularly graphene. Between the struts for the space frame, they affix transparent triangular panels, which allow you to see the other side. Why do they do this? Most of the domes use holographic skies anyway, so you’re seeing whatever the image is programmed to be. Well, I don’t really know. The tour didn’t explain that. It wouldn’t really be better if the entire dome were opaque with no hope of seeing the outside for real. Using a framework with clear panels is the most common way to design these things, and I just think they look nicer. You can turn the hologram off, and see the true Castlebournian sky, but if they weren’t made this way, that would not be possible. I guess it just gives us more options. A lot of people are afraid, believing that clear equals unsafe, but obviously that’s ridiculous. They think some meteorite could crash through, and suck out all the air, but that’s not really possible. Like I said, it’s made of diamonds, and even if it weren’t, your concern is unwarranted. Even if one panel does falter, these things are so gigantic that it would take days for all the air to escape, at worst. If it’s only one panel, it would take years. At any rate, there would be plenty of time for a drone team to fly up there and replace the panel, or panels. If there is so much damage that the dome rapidly becomes unbreathable, well, whatever caused that damage probably killed everyone on the surface anyway, so the air would be the least of their worries. Okay, I’ll end this on that happy note. Safe travels!

Extremus: Year 80

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Tinaya and Aristotle are stuck in the past, but they are not in a new timeline. Their other selves are still in their midst, but they’re unable to interact with them. It’s like a parallel dimension, but with some bizarre rules. Fruits and vegetables are available here, as if they straddle the dimensional border. But people and animals are practically invisible. They can still detect them under certain conditions, and they’ve pieced the puzzle together enough to determine that the strongest appearances come during moments of temporal energy use. When Past!Tinaya passes through a wall using her mirror powers, Future!Tinaya and everyone else can see her shadow, as well as that of the wall. When Past!Aristotle trots to another celestial body in the solar system, the people in the parallel can witness his disappearance, as well as the surge of power that emanates from the event.

The two of them are not alone here. Vaska made it through, as did a bunch of survivors of the settlement explosion seven years ago. Future!Tinaya saved them with her weird mirror abilities. How exactly that worked, though, she’ll never know. Her glass skin is gone, having apparently been transferred all the way into the big showdown with the explosion. It still happened, just in the main dimension. Now their only concern is finding a way to get there themselves, but they’ve not had any ideas in the last seven years. None of the people on the settlement is an expert in a pertinent field. Not all of them even feel that they should be worried about it at all.

“This is our home now.” Bartel Ateren was assigned the Verdemus mission in the capacity of a botanist. His job was not originally meant to require that he do any actual work on the ship on a regular basis. The people who first set foot on Extremus were never going to be the ones to land on the destination planet. In fact, most of the people who lived there would never see the future world at all. Or so they have always been led to believe. Tinaya knows better, but she’s not supposed to, and she’s not allowed to talk about it. Most people are not aware of the truth, yet they continue to study fields of research that will only be particularly useful on the new homeworld.

Theoretically, the information that their descendants will need to survive and thrive can just be pulled from the central archives, which exist as many copies on multiple servers. Still, it only seemed right that the knowledge be passed down through teachers instead. Again, the majority of students will never get any opportunity to use what they learned, but they do it anyway. Bartel, on the other hand, was not actually a teacher. He was more like an emergency teacher, there to be available should anything happen to the regular teacher before they could pass the knowledge on to the next generation. He was able to move to Verdemus in secret, because he had no living relatives, nor many friends, and the next generation has successfully grasped the necessary concepts, meaning his original job is done. He has since become a reliable leader for the survivors.

“But we’re not really here,” Tinaya argues. “On the other side of the planet, they built a megablock to house the soldiers that are being deployed in the Ex Wars. We have no way of getting there, and even if we did, we probably couldn’t live there, even though there would be plenty of room. It’s inaccessible from this dimension.”

“I don’t need the megablock,” Bartel reasons. “The huts we’ve built here are more than enough for us to be happy.”

“What about your children, and your children’s children? You don’t want more for them? You want them to live their lives with no hope of even contacting the rest of the galaxy, or the ship? If you’re digging in, then you ought to do it right.”

“That’s exactly why I wouldn’t want us to try to live in the megablock. I want them to make their own way, to build a new society from the ground up...literally. This is what they had in mind for the Extremus mission in the first place. Well, not exactly this, but you know what I mean. The self-reliance, and the journey of development. That’s the point. We’re just doing it here and now, instead of out there, and in the future. And anyway, who cares which version of Verdemus we’re on? We can’t leave the planet either way. Sorry, I know Totle’s your friend, but he’s not had any success with his powers.”

That’s fair, they never expected to be able to leave Verdemus in the first place. So they’re stuck on a different Verdemus, so what? What’s the difference, in the end? Well, family; that’s the difference. So maybe this isn’t that great of an argument. “He deserves to go back to his mother and Niobe, and I want to see Spirit again. And Belahkay, and even Omega. Ilias, I could do without, and Eagan is whatever.”

“I can understand that,” Bartel concedes. “But I’m worried that if we succeed in crossing back over to the main dimension, they actually will find a way to return us to Extremus. I was never the kind of person who was angry to be born on a ship that I would never leave, but I didn’t know what I was missing. This place is paradise. The people still on that hunk of metal...they should be so lucky.”

Tinaya smiles at him, and nods. “That’s exactly why we have an obligation to go back; back to the real Verdemus, and then to Extremus. If you feel so strongly about it, you should try to tell others about it who may feel the same. I can’t guarantee that the council will give you the chance. They may decide to shut you up so you don’t ruin their plans. But one thing’s for sure, if we stay here, trapped in this parallel on this planet, there’s no hope at all of spreading the message.”

He tries to take a breath, but a yawn comes over instead, and he finds himself opening and closing his eyes one at a time. “Sorry. Yes. I, uhh...yeah. You’re right. But that doesn’t change the fact that we have no idea how to get back.”

“Vaska has a theory about that.”

“Yes, she mentioned that.” The two of them work closely together, studying the ecosystem to figure out exactly where they are, cosmically speaking, and how they can touch the plants, but not the people or the artificial structures. “It had something to do with a particular plant we discovered, and the other you?”

“She can explain it better,” Tinaya decides. “She’ll be here any minute.” When the bomb went off, besides the people who she saved, only the mess hall remained standing, and only in this parallel dimension. It’s not a very cozy place to live, which is why they’ve built new structures on this side, but they still use this as a communal area. On its own, it’s a temporal anomaly, which is why it’s the only place on the whole planet where other-siders are perfectly visible. When one happens to wander within its walls, which are invisible to them, they can see them. It doesn’t occur often, though.

“I’m here! I’m here,” Vaska says. “Whoops.” She instinctively avoids running into Eagan, who just so happens to be in her path. He’s here a lot. Since they’re in different dimensions, they would simply pass through each other without feeling a thing, but she’s forgotten that for a second. “I can’t remember, how many people are with us?”

“There are thirty-one,” Tinaya reminds her. “Twenty-eight survivors, plus you, me, and Aristotle.”

Vaska nods as she’s inspecting the walls of the mess hall. “I believe that will work.” She peeks through one of the windows. “That corner is slightly closer.”

“You said something about the two Tinayas making contact with each other?” Bartel says. “What does this building have to do with anything?”

Vaska faces Tinaya. “When you told me where you and Aristotle were standing when he tried to trot you off the planet, and you ended up in the Gatewood Collective, were you accurate? I mean, were you precise?”

“Yeah,” Tinaya confirms. It was right over there. Or it will be, rather, later today.” This is the day that they accidentally travel through time. She’s about to close her loop.

Vaska holds up a grassy plant. There’s nothing special about it in appearance. It really just looks like prairie grass, or something else equally mundane. “We can touch the plantlife, but this? This is different. This is special. When we take hold of any other plant, we pull it into our dimension, stealing it from theirs. For some reason, this stuff maintains its connection to the others. I’ve tickled Ilias’ nose with it. He couldn’t see it anymore, and he didn’t know what was going on, but it happened.”

“What does that mean for us?” Bartel asks her.

“This building is a temporal anomaly. The moment Tinaya and Aristotle go back in time is also a temporal anomaly. We need to connect them to each other.” Vaska cups her hands together. “We do that with this plant. I propose we build a chain with our own bodies, linking the corner of the mess hall to Past!Tinaya. She’ll anchor us to the main dimension, and unwittingly pull us through whatever barrier separates us.”

Future!Tinaya and Bartel just stare at her. “That’s...a contrivance.”

“No, it’s not. It’ll work.”

“How do you know? You just made it up.”

“I’ve been studying this plant. It’s a keystone species. Scratch that; it’s the keystone species. The other plants; they can’t communicate with each other without it. It’s like a telephone wire.”

“What’s a telephone wire?” Bartel questions.

“I’m telling you, this will work. We need a chain. But to reach all the way over there, which I’ve calculated to be forty-two meters away, it will require all thirty-one of us. We got a lot of shorties.”

Tinaya looks at her sadly. “Vaska, I know you want this to work, but Bartel’s right. You’re just guessing.”

Vaska huffs a bit, and shakes her head. “The explosion that destroyed the settlement was larger than it should have been. The explosion that destroyed the time mirror, and imbued you with its glass power, was more focused than it should have been. Aristotle’s jumps; Tinaya, your creation of this parallel dimension in the first place—all of these things have been affected by this. It’s all about the grass!” She urgently shakes the sample she has in her hand. “I’m gonna call it timogramen,” she says matter-of-factly, like anyone has any interest in arguing against it. “It explains everything. The way you tell it, dumbasses wasted their time finding suitable trees to make paper, when they really should have been studying this instead. It is unlike anything I have ever heard of before. I don’t know how it evolved, or what else it can do, but I do know that it can send us back to where we need to be. And besides, what’s the worst that can happen if it doesn’t work?”

Both Tinaya and Bartel think it over. It does sound rather random and silly, but she’s right, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. It’s not like they have some other option which this could interfere with. “Okay,” Tinaya finally says. “We’ll bring it to the group. Hopefully they all agree. Like you said, we need everybody.”

“I’ll help too,” Eagan says. “I believe that you are overestimating the arm span of everyone here.”

The three of them are flabbergasted. “Y—you can see and hear us?” Bartel asks.

“Yes,” Eagan replies.

Tinaya throws her hands up. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“You’re from the future; I didn’t want to disrupt the timeline,” Eagan answers. Oh, that’s actually good logic.

“Well, I suppose that makes sense,” Tinaya admits. “Still, you could have communicated with us.”

“I was gathering information. Why did you think that I was always standing over here? The mess hall doesn’t exist on my side. It’s just ash and ruins.”

“You’re just weird, Eagan; you’re weird,” Tinaya reiterates.

“Fair enough,” he says.

“Are we gonna do this thing, or what?” Vaska asks impatiently. “Time is running out. Past!Aristotle and Past!Tinaya are about to disappear.”

“Wait, can’t we just have them get closer to the building?” Bartel suggests. “Or even in the building? We don’t need a human chain if Eagan helps.”

“No, he’s right,” Tinaya contends. “That would disrupt the timeline, which places all of your lives at risk. If Totle and I never end up on Gatewood, we never find any help getting back here, let alone with Vaska, who we needed to study the—what did you call it?—timogramen? Things have to play out exactly as they did until I finally close my loop. The human chain it is.”

They take Vaska’s proposal to the rest of the group. They have some questions, and they’re just as skeptical about the efficacy of the plan, but they too recognize that the downsides are minimal. One of the biggest issues is just convincing them that they should indeed return to the main dimension. Some of them were brought into this project specifically because their absence from Extremus would not be noticed, like Bartel. Others left families on board, who signed confidentiality agreements. They want to get back to them, which they were promised would be done regularly with the time mirror. So their side of the argument eventually won out.

Vaska takes a team out to harvest more of the timogramen. They crush the grass up, and lather everyone’s arms with it. It’s apparently meant to act as some sort of natural conduit of temporal energy, which will pass from Past!Tinaya and Past!Aristotle, all the way to the mess hall. Eagan was right. After they all line up, Future!Aristotle on one end, and Future!Tinaya on the other, they do find themselves short. Eagan adds himself as an extra link between Aristotle and Chef Webster. They complete the chain just in time for the special event. Tinaya places her hand on the shadow of her younger self just as she and Aristotle make the jump, which will ultimately send them to Gatewood. The power surges through her, and then down the line of survivors until it reaches the mess hall. Then it passes back again. It goes back and forth a few times before bursting out in a blinding light. When it recedes, the chain has been broken as most of them have fallen to the ground, but it is not yet clear whether it worked.

“Tinaya?” Spirit asks. “That was fast. Did it work? Hold on, did you end up going to Extremus after all? Are all these people from there?”

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Extremus: Year 79

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It took a long time for the medical staff in the Gatewood Collective to realize that there must be something quite unusual about the planet that Tinaya and Aristotle were living on, and even longer to realize that Tinaya’s whole glass skin condition was making things worse. As it happens, Verdemus emits an unusual form of radiation, which sticks with everyone who steps foot on it. It doesn’t appear to be harmful, but the Gatewooders—is that what they’re called?—didn’t want to take a chance, so they needed time to remedy the issue. It appears that it will happen on its own given enough time away from the environment, but in the interest of expediency, they found a way to dissipate it quickly, but still safely. The primary physician postulates that it’s the result of a form of communication. The plant and animal life on Verdemus have indeed been noted to enjoy some level of harmony. It’s nothing quite as dramatic as Pandora from that one franchise, but it does seem to be there to support its idea of homeostasis. If true, it’s the Gaia Hypothesis made real, just not for Earth. The doctor is fascinated by this possibility, and is very interested in visiting Verdemus to study it.

Captain Kestral McBride is not okay with that. “Doctor, the deadline to apply for passage on the Extremus was weeks ago. You’re not getting on that ship.” It’s July of 2270, and the TGS Extremus is days from launch.

“What are you talking about?” Dr. Norling questions. “I’m not asking to get on the ship. I want to go to the planet, and I have to do that seventy-eight years from now. I have to go back with Miss Leithe and Mr. Al-Amin.”

“That’s not how I’ve made the new recall device work, Vaska,” Lieutenant Ishida Caldwell tries to explain. “It will send the two of them back to where they were before they traveled through time. They can’t take someone with them.”

“Well, then modify it so it can,” Vaska suggests.

“That would be a supertemporal transporter,” Ishida argues. “That’s so much harder, if not impossible given the parameters. Now, you give me a collapsar, and I’ll send you into the next galaxy, but—” She interrupts herself to stare into the corner as if she’s just given herself a new idea.

“You don’t have to worry about all that,” Maqsud contends. “I tried telling you, I’m just having trouble with accuracy, but the power is in me. All you have to do is devise a device that taps into my temporal energy. I certainly can take people with me.”

“That will not be necessary,” Kestral insists. “Dr. Norling will not be going anywhere.” She faces the doctor. “We need you here.”

“Oh, don’t give me that. I’m not the only doctor here. But I am the foremost expert in Verdemusian radiation.”

“Oh, you are, are you?” Kestral asks sarcastically.

“Name one other.” Expert is a definite exaggeration in this case, but she is indeed the closest thing they have. The problem is that Keshida doesn’t care. They don’t need to know how the planet works, so they’re not properly incentivized to sign off on this mission. Vaska has to come up with a good reason why anyone should go, not just that she should be the one. That’s probably going to be a pretty tall order.

“I’m sorry,” Kestral says simply.

Vaska steps over to gaze out of the nearest viewport. Many stars can be seen from this angle, but they fade away closer to the edge where just a hint of the sunshine from Barnard’s Star peeks out from behind the hull. “Do you remember what your lives were like before we came to this universe as refugees...before every moment—waking or unwaking—was consumed by your responsibility to our health and safety? Do you remember what you were doing, and why? Do you remember your dreams? Why are you such brilliant scientists?” She turns back around. “Did you study because it was easy? Because you were bored? Or did you do it because you wanted to learn, to discover? In the last couple of centuries, humanity has encountered a handful of exoplanets. We’ve gone right to them. Each one is special in its own right. Proxima Doma is the closest. Bida is the most Earth-like, albeit naturally a deathtrap for all Earth-born organisms. Hell, even this system right here, with no fully coalesced planets, is interesting enough. But Verdemus sounds like a paradise. It’s like nothing we’ve seen before. And you just...couldn’t give a shit? What would Past!Kestral and Past!Ishida have to say about your attitudes?”

For Tinaya’s part, that’s a pretty decent argument, but it doesn’t have to resonate with her. It has to change Team Keshida’s mind. The two of them exchange a look, and then they gently press their foreheads together. It looks like more than just a familial bond, but a genuine means of communicating with each other without other people hearing, or having to leave the room. This is all but proven when they separate, and suddenly agree to Vaska’s request. Ishida retires to her lab where she modifies the recall device. It was originally designed to send Tinaya and Maqsud back to a place where they had already been, but since Vaska has never been there, that plan will no longer work.

Six days later, they reconvene to explain the new situation, and give them a chance to back out. Ishida holds up the device. Unlike the first one she created, which was only a relatively small sphere, this is three hoops connected to each other by a larger sphere. “Interstellar teleportation is very difficult to accomplish. It’s hard to do it at large scales, and it’s hard to do it at smaller scales. Recall technology, like homestones, get around this using a branch of mathematics that even I don’t understand. But basically if your quantum signature has already been to a place, it’s easier for it to get back there. Going somewhere new that’s so far away is a whole different ball game. I think I’ve figured it out for a one time trip, but I cannot guarantee the results. It’s still based on your recall point,” she explains to the Verdemusians. “And Vaska is still a hanger-on. Most of the time, when something goes wrong, navigation is what gets thrown off, rather than, say, coherence. This is actually a good thing, because while you may end up in the wrong place, at least you end up in one piece. Or three, as it were.”

“What’s the margin of error?” Tinaya asks.

“A few years, plus or minus. Though, from where I’m standing, due to the added mass of Vaska’s presence, my guess is that you’ll be late instead of early. It’s up to you to decide which is preferable.”

Tinaya looks over for Vaska’s guidance.

“No, no, no,” Kestral says. “She doesn’t get to decide this for you. Since this affects all three of you, it must be a unanimous decision. She’s not the only one taking a risk here. If even one of you doesn’t want to take that risk, we go back to the original plan, and Dr. Norling will have no choice but to return to her pathetic job as the Primary Physician for billions of people.”

“I’m in,” Tinaya agrees with no hesitation.

“For what it’s worth, so am I,” Vaska confirms sheepishly.

They all turn their eyes to Maqsud, who waits a moment. “I still think I can do this myself.” He doesn’t look as confident as he wishes. Verdemus is 16,000 light years away, and they’re trying to get there eight decades in the future. Those numbers do not match up with each other. A Trotter can travel through time given the right conditions, and these aren’t them. It’s clearly possible for him, since he’s the one who got them here in the first place, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to transport them in that way intentionally, and accurately. “But this sounds like a safer bet. Let’s do it.”

Ishida holds the sphere and hoops in front of her. She presses four buttons on the sphere, which release a single leg that extends to the floor, holding it up. “It’ll be here when you’re ready. Its range is unpredictable, so I’ll activate it remotely. Take the suits on your back, and one carry-on. That’s all it can handle. Any questions?”

“We’re ready now,” Tinaya decides, seeing Vaska with her carry-on. She’s the only one with any belongings.

“All right. Give us a minute to get out of here,” Kestral says. “Goodspeed.”

As Team Keshida are leaving, the three passengers get in place. The hoops open, and allow them to step inside to wrap around their torsos. Since they’re not perfect circles, the only way to fit into them is to either face the center, or the outside. The former seems more awkward, so they all end up looking away from each other. A couple of minutes later, they feel the power vibrating through the metal. They instinctively grab onto their respective hoops as the leg retracts itself. A translucent bubble forms, and expands around them, then a few meters beyond. But its borders are undefined. The Captain and Lieutenant were right to bug out.

Once the power reaches critical mass, the bubble suddenly collapses again, and zaps them with a painful—but not overly painful—electrical shock. The room they were standing in disappears, transplanting them to a different one. Tinaya recognizes it immediately, even though she only saw it for a second years ago. This is the mess hall on Verdemus, which exploded when Tinaya unwittingly triggered it by teleporting Ilias away from the hostages that he had taken. Ishida was wrong. They didn’t show up a little too late, but way too early. They’re at risk of changing the timeline. Then again, maybe they should. Then again, how could they have any hope of doing that? This isn’t a few days prior to the tragedy. This is that very moment. Ilias is here, as are his hostages. He’s holding onto one of them tightly. That’s as much as Future!Tinaya is able to garner before Past!Tinaya appears out of nowhere, and takes hold of him. She teleports him out of here, and into the woods.

In one more second, the deadman’s switch is going to obliterate this entire settlement. Dozens of people are going to die, leaving only one survivor who was graced with phoenix resurrection powers. There is not even enough time for Future!Tinaya to remove her suit’s gauntlet to reach her watch, which is the only way she can teleport out of here herself. Even if she did, at best, she can save the other two travelers. Everyone else is still going to die. They’re going to die all over again, and she’s going to have to relive that pain, that loss.

Something is happening. An energy is surging through her again. A bright light is breaking through her suit, melting it along the way. Time appears to slow around her. Only Maqsud and Vaska are moving at a normal rate. The hostages are standing up to run away, but have barely made it to standing positions. The suit slips all the way off of her, leaving only her shining naked glass body. The light expands faster than the bomb explodes, and they begin to battle each other. The glass light wins out, and fades away. Everyone is alive. She has just successfully changed the past. Or has she?

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Microstory 2218: Each Glass That it Fills

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I made sure that Nick got a lot of sleep last night, because I knew that he was going to need his energy today. A bunch of his former team members wanted to see him, including one who he had never actually gotten a chance to work with before he fell ill. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that Nick doesn’t love crowds, and he doesn’t like being the center of attention. Like the candle that does not lose its fire when it lights a second candle, extroverts feed off of each other. But like the pitcher that loses its water with each glass that it fills, an introvert can only be drained of energy. They give without taking. Even still, Nick did want to see the people who he had hired, so I coordinated times for them to be there for short visits. He needed breaks in between the batches, but we also couldn’t have the ordeal last all day long, so it was a very fine line. I’m not going to relate to you what they all discussed while they were in the apartment. Not only was I not there for all of it, but it’s no one else’s business. I can tell you that they did not talk about what’s going on with the jail. Nick’s position at the company, and as a contractor to the county, has been officially terminated. He received three separate final bursts of income. First, they paid out all of the sick leave that he had accrued, even though he wasn’t technically using it all while he was still technically employed. Secondly, he earned a bonus just for being a swell worker. Lastly, he was entitled to severance pay since it was decided that none of this was his fault. His bosses pretty much knew all of this was going to happen, but he had to wait for all the legal questions to be answered. He’s set for now, but this money won’t last forever. We’ll deal with that later, though.

Extremus: Year 74

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A year later, and Tinaya is still made of glass, but she’s doing okay, and adjusting to her new life. Solid walls no longer faze her. She’s gotten used to walking right through them whenever she needs to. She’s not technically phasing through them though, as one would conventionally picture a superhero’s atoms curving around the object’s atoms without interacting. It’s more like she makes the atoms disappear, even while they appear to still be present. There is a time when the house that Belahkay built for him and Spirit is standing there by the river. And there is a time when that house isn’t there at all; it doesn’t exist yet. What Tinaya does when she’s passing through the wall is steal little bits of spacetime from the past, specifically the mostly empty air that was once occupying the area that is now occupied by the wall. While it may look like Tinaya and the wall exist in the same point simultaneously, a clever bit of time travel allows her to become the only solid object in that moment. There has only ever been one recorded case of someone with this temporal ability. It was reported in the early 23rd century, on a ship called the Sharice Davids, but this was never confirmed.

While Tinaya was learning to accept her new physiological situation, she also needed to accept her new life in general. She is on a planet in the middle of nowhere with almost no hope of reconnecting with her friends and family back on Extremus. They considered manufacturing a long-range communications device of some kind, but ultimately decided against it. The True Extremists who now live somewhere kind of close to this area are under the impression that Verdemus was destroyed. There could be spies from this civilization amongst the people of the ship. They were there before; there could be more who have as of yet not been found. Even if they’re all eventually rooted out, the nature of time travel places all intel at risk at any other point in time. It simply isn’t safe to return, if the people on the ship could even find a way to backtrack. This is their home now, and they are better off acknowledging that. Tinaya has finally managed to do that today. She’s in a good place, and ready to move forward. Today is also the first day that she’s going to speak with the prisoner.

Everyone had a job to do on this planet in the beginning, but thanks to Belahkay’s extensive understanding of automated engineering, they don’t have to do a single thing at all anymore. Agricultural robots tend the fields. Kitchen robots make the food. Construction robots build the structures. This is like a permanent vacation. Of course, automation is the name of the game back in the stellar neighborhood too, but people still pursue goals. There’s no way to advance the human race here, though, so the simple life is the only rational pursuit. There is still plenty that they’re missing. The boy’s mother, Lilac was assigned to be Hock Watcher for their one prisoner, who was not fit to serve his time on Extremus, where he might be discovered by someone who was not aware of the persistent human presence on this world. Since her job was mostly incredibly boring, she was allowed to bring the majority of central archives, including the grand repository and the core compendium, with her. She was not, however, given copies of any of the virtual stacks. She wouldn’t be very good at watching if she were spending time in a simulation. Niobe was living too simple of a life in Exin territory where she was a slave-in-training, so she’s been eager to learn computers now, hoping to one day build the Verdemusians virtual worlds to explore. Tinaya isn’t worried about that right now, not only because there’s still plenty they don’t know about this world, but also because all she can think about is Ilias Tamm.

“First Chair Leithe, you’ve finally come.”

“I’m not First Chair anymore,” Tinaya volleys.

“I don’t see it that way.”

“You better. My chances of going back to that ship aren’t much higher than yours.” She looks around at his four walls.

“I’m holding out hope,” Ilias says cryptically.

She sighs. “Why did you ask to see me?”

“That explosion killed most of the people who were living here.”

“The explosion that you caused,” she reminds him.

He shuts his eyelids. “I’m not arguing that. I’m stating a fact to lead to a point.”

“Well, get on with it.”

“The Hock Watcher is the only survivor, besides the children, who know nothing. Many secrets died with the rest of the victims. Why do you think I was here?”

“You wanted a pardon for your father.”

He smirks. “It was more than that. I wanted you on these lands, so you could uncover those secrets. Yes, I wanted to restore my father’s name, but it will do him no good, since he’s already dead.”

“What are you saying, there’s a conspiracy of some kind?”

“Well, we’re talking about Extremus; of course there’s a conspiracy. You’re part of at least two of them. How’s Thistle doing, last you spoke with him? Still one hundred percent sentient?”

“No comment.” He isn’t supposed to know about that.

He doesn’t mind her stonewalling him. “Tell me, what is the purpose of the Extremus mission? What are we trying to do?”

“We’re trying to find a home in the farthest reaches of the galaxy.”

Ilias flinches as if that’s a bad answer. “Why? What’s the point of that?”

“It has its intrinsic value. The mission is the mission.”

This makes him laugh. “That’s a nice tautology, but it’s bullshit. Everyone who started this is dead now, and they mostly did not pass their motivations onto the latter generations. My bloodline is an exception. And I’ll explain it to you, if you want.”

“Only if you’re not lying...”

He nods slightly. “Operation Starseed is a secret subprogram under Project Stargate, designed to seed human-based life all over the galaxy, starting from the stellar neighborhood, and propagating outwards. The galaxy is a couple hundred thousand light years wide, which means it will take about that long to reach the whole thing. The point of Extremus is quite simply...to beat ‘em to the punch. It’s a race, and Extremus is trying to win it.”

“Okay. Well, that’s a pretty cynical way to put it. What does that have to do with Verdemus anyway?”

“It has everything to do with Verdemus, as well as the Goldilocks Corridor and the True Extremists-slash Exins. The goal of the farthest reaches of the galaxy has always been vaguely defined. Who wins this race has therefore always been determined by your definition of that goal. Bronach Oaksent decided that the goal was in the past. He won the race thousands of years before any of us were born. He didn’t just beat Extremus, he beat modern Earth. Verdemus is just another off-shoot of that idea. The people who were meant to live here would have been just as much Extremusians as our descendants will be, who will exit the ship together on a hypothetical world out there.”

“No, that’s not true. The goal was a factor of the time that we were going to spend on the journey. That’s why there were nine captains planned, because it was going to last 216 years. This is not Planet Extremus, and not only because we didn’t literally call it that. We’re not even halfway across the galaxy yet.”

Ilias nods again, but more substantially. He removes a piece of paper from under his pillow, and sticks his arm through the bars. “Go to these coordinates. You’ll see what I mean. I’m right about this.”

Tinaya reluctantly accepts the sheet. “What the hell is this? What are coordinates? Is this based on the Earthan system? We’re not on Earth.”

“Turn it over,” he urges. “I stashed a satnav there that’s coded to Verdemus’ coordinate system,” he goes on when she flips it to the back where there’s a map to a second location using the settlement as the origin, and various large landmarks as points of reference.

“Why didn’t you just draw a map to the coordinates?” she asks.

“That’s about a quarter way around the world,” he explains. “I wouldn’t recommend trying to walk there.”

“The satellite up there is new,” she begins to argue. “It doesn’t have a coordinate system, because it’s just a warning station. The original ones, which would have been programmed with such a system, were destroyed by the crew of the Iman Vellani, because they might be detected by the Exin invaders.”

He shakes his head dismissively. “The data is in my satnav. It will send the program to the new satellite once you establish the link. It will take some doing, but the way I hear it, you know your way around a microchip.”

Tinaya reluctantly follows the map, and digs up the lockbox. She punches his code in, and retrieves the device that he was talking about. It does indeed take a little work to find a way to interface it with the orbiting satellite. Once she manages to do it, her window to actually use it closes up. In order for it to be able to warn them of external threats, it can’t remain in geostationary orbit, which would place it above them at all times. It’s constantly moving around the world, so she enjoys a limited amount of time before it disappears over the horizon, forcing her to wait. The good thing about this is that it can effectively map the coordinate system that it has just learned to the actual geography. A geostationary satellite would not be good enough to help her get to where she needs to be. About an hour and a half later, the coordinates are locked in, and the device receives an accurate set of directions. The easy part is over.

Tinaya walks over to Belahkay’s workshop where he’s building them something, or rather working on something that a robot will build when the plans are ready. “Hey, Tiny,” he says. That’s what he calls her.

“I need the jet.”

“The jet?” he questions, surprised. “Wadya need that for?”

“Fishing,” she lies.

“I hear the..bass is good on the..third continent.”

He slowly smiles, and twists his chin. “All right, I’ll let you have the jet, but I’m going with you.”

“No, I would like to be alone. That’s part of what I enjoy about fishing.”

“Tiny, I’ve never synthesized any fishing gear for you, and you’ve never mentioned it before. You’re obviously lying, which is fine, but I’m not letting you go off alone; you’re literally made of glass.”

“Ugh, everyone’s always saying that. It’s magic glass, I can’t break.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe you just haven’t got hitten hard enough.”

“Hitten?”

“It’s a word, don’t look it up. So how’s about it? I’m goin’, or no one’s goin’...? Or I’m goin’...?”

“Okay, fine. But don’t ask questions, I don’t have the answers. And you have to promise to not tell anyone what we find unless I tell you it’s okay.”

“Very well. Just let me run a preflight check, and we’ll go.”

They came up with a quick lie about the two of them wanting to feel like free birds, far, far away. The rest of the group bought it because they had no reason to believe that they were being deceived. The six of them spent time together, and they spent time apart. Aristotle went on a hike alone for a week a couple of months ago, and no one tried to stop him. He stayed in contact the whole time, and agreed to let an aerial sentinel drone fly over his head at all times. As mentioned before, this is basically all one big, long vacation.

The jet that Belahkay engineered is sleek and modern, but it’s not hypersonic. It will be some time before they mine the necessary raw materials to build anything like that, and it might not be necessary anyway. The point of getting halfway around the world in a few hours would be to connect people to each other. There’s no one else where they’re going. At least there shouldn’t be anyway. Perhaps that’s where Ilias is leading her. It could be a trap too, but it’s unlikely that he ever had enough power here to set anything like that up so far from the settlement. They didn’t find any preexisting jets over the course of the last two years, nor any place that they would have been manufactured. What could possibly be all the way out here?

A building, that’s what. A series of nested buildings, in fact. Belahkay lands the jet in an open field, and then they get out to walk back there. They’ve already seen it from the air, but they want to get a more detailed picture. Tinaya remembers learning about these in class. In the late 21st century, most people lived in arcological megastructures that towered over the landscape kilometers high, and could accommodate hundreds of thousands of people. But they didn’t go straight from modest highrises to this hypercondensed style of living. They gradually worked up to them. They built superblocks first, which housed hundreds of people, and later thousands. Then they upgraded to megablocks, which housed tens of thousands. What they’re seeing here is a megablock. A giant complex several stories high surrounds a courtyard, and on the inside of this courtyard is another building, shorter than the first. They just keep going like that, each layer being smaller in two dimensions than the one outside of it. In the very center is a 10,000 square meter park.

The fact that they’ve found this thing is shocking enough. It shows that the people who first came to this world weren’t just curious about the flora and fauna. They were planning to settle it with a significant human population who would never see the Extremus again, and would start a new civilization. Ilias was right, different people were making up their own definitions for the end state of the Extremus project. But that isn’t the only thing they find here. In the park is what looks like a downed jet. It seems to have crashed here many years ago. There was one apparent survivor, or maybe he had nothing to do with it. He comes out of a handcrafted structure next to the pond, and approaches to shake their hands. “Hi. Welcome to Sycamore Highfields.”

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Extremus: Year 73

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Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2, and by Pixlr AI image editor

Tinaya Leithe blinks slowly. Something hard and sharp is on top of her, but she can’t see what it is. She’s in a glass chamber of some kind. It’s taking a moment for her mind to stop being so jumbled. She can’t remember what happened, but she knows that she was severely injured, and on the brink of death. Her vision focuses, and she’s able to get a better view of her surroundings. She’s inside in what appears to be an infirmary, but she can’t see much, and she doesn’t recognize it. She doesn’t get the sense that anyone is around, and if they’re nearby, she doesn’t want to alert them, because she couldn’t know if she can trust whoever has placed her in this. She struggles to sit up, and looks down upon herself in horror. First of all, she has somehow phase-shifted through the closed medical bed cover. Or maybe that isn’t the right word for it, because the glass is still all around her, embedded in her skin. Or no, it’s more like her skin is made out of a layer of glass now. How is this possible?

She lifts her hands out of the chamber, and moves them around before her eyes. They’re stiff, but still mobile. So it’s a flexible glass at least, but not pleasant either way. She reaches over to the side of the medical chamber, and feels around for some kind of switch. The cover slides away from her chest towards her legs and feet. They too are made of glass, though they’ve not yet passed through the cover. Maybe she was wrong about it. Maybe her glass skin is unrelated to the transparent cover. It sure feels like a different material, at least when she manages to concentrate, and touch it with her fingers. If she’s not careful, they will pass right through it, as her torso did before. She is now a glass-based entity that can phase through solid objects. Because that makes sense.

Tinaya spins to the side on her smooth glass ass, and plants her feet on the floor. It’s slick, and hard to balance on. No, the floor is probably fine. Her soles are made of glass. Is this her life now, doomed to skate around the world like Sasha Cohen? She feels like a newborn foal, teetering and tottering, arms out wide, ready to try to grab onto something if she succumbs to the fierce gravity of this planet. If she really is made out of glass, then it could kill her, but if that’s true, nothing she does for the foreseeable future will save her life. It may just stave off the inevitable. She’ll eventually drop a handheld device into her crotch, or accidentally bump her head on a cabinet. It might be better to shatter to a million pieces now than try, suffer, and ultimately fail anyway. She does fall, but does not shatter. It doesn’t even really hurt. She must look like an idiot, though, sprawled out on her stomach. How could Arqut still love her now? Her memories are beginning to come back; what brought her to this moment. An explosion of the extraction mirror threw her across a field, and nearly killed her. Someone has apparently managed to revive her since then, but she doesn’t know how long ago that was, or who this person might be. Lataran hopefully made it back to the Extremus.

The door opens while she’s still face down on the floor. Spirit runs in, and starts to help her up. “Oh my God, are you okay? The medchamber alarm should have alerted us to your awakening.”

“What happened to me?” She struggles into an armchair.

“We don’t know yet.”

“I’m made of glass!” Tinaya shouts.

“I know. It’s from the time mirror. That’s also why you’re not dead.”

“Yeah, that explains it,” Tinaya spit sarcastically.

“Well, it’s made of magic, so it doesn’t really explain it, but if it were a regular explosion with a regular mirror, the regular glass would have given you regular cuts, and made you regular dead.”

“Right.” Tinaya focuses on lowering her heart rate with slow, deliberate breaths. She accepts the cup of water that Spirit gives her. “Report. How are you alive?”

“It’s tough to kill a Bridger,” she begins to explain. “I was given certain temporal properties to protect me. The explosion that killed me was massive, but even that wasn’t enough to keep my molecular structure apart forever. They reconverged at an exponential rate, and eventually made me whole again. Your body experienced something similar. It even took about the same amount of time for it to reacclimate to its own new structure. It’s 2342 now.”

“We’re stuck on Verdemus, I assume. The mirror was the only way back to the ship.” She was still only thinking of Arqut.

“Affirmative.”

Tinaya takes a look around. “You’ve rebuilt the infrastructure quite nicely.”

“We had help.”

That’s a weird thing to say. “From who?”

“A ship arrived. The Iman Vellani. You remember it from your studies?”

“I remember her from my studies.”

Spirit nods. “Her namesake was built by an android who was involved in the world of time travelers named Mirage.”

“Oh yeah, I remember her from history class. I’m better with people.”

“Yes, Oaksent’s evil army sent her and her crew to kill us. They destroyed the planet, so they could record the whole thing. Then we sent our consciousness back in time to stop ourselves from doing it, but kept the recording. They took it off to sell the lie that we were all dead. Hopefully the bad guys won’t be coming back here ever again.”

“That’s quite the story. I’ll require the full mission brief.”

“Of course, when you’re up to it.”

“Will I ever be up to anything again? I’ll repeat in case you forgot, I’m made out of glass! How does one get over something like that?”

“I did,” Spirit answers.

“What are you talking about?”

Spirit lifts her shirt all the way up to reveal her bare stomach and chest. “Go ahead and touch it.” The skin is reflective from its own layer of magical glasses. Her entire left breast is hardened and unmoving, while the other is only partially restricted. The rest of her body appears to be okay. “While I was still reconstituting, I fell upon you, and some of the shards stuck in me as well. As you can see, it’s not as severe, which is why I woke up faster. I’m also part phoenix, so that helped.”

“I’m sorry, Spirit.”

She winces, and pulls her shirt back down. “How could this be your fault? The mirror exploded, and struck you. What could you have done, steered away from me while your were flying through the air uncontrollably? You’re just as much of a victim as I am; more even. Besides, Belahkay kind of likes it.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“He was one of the crewmembers who showed up, but he decided to stay. We’ve been together for about two non-realtime years.”

“Must. Be. Nice.” It’s made her think of Arqut, who is now hundreds of light years away from her, and counting. But that was rude. “I’m sorry, I’m just still trying to get used to all this.”

“It’s fine. You’ll like him, he’s cool. We’re a small group, we have to stick together.”

“The kids. The kids! I saw them just before I passed out. They didn’t make it through the mirror? But they were gone by the time I started running up there?”

“They made it through,” Spirit replies, trying to calm her down with hand gestures. “They’ve led their own lives for several years, and returned to us with homestones. They’re older in mind than they appear, so speak to them as if they’re young adults...because they are.”

“How did they get here in the first place? Why would a homestone bring them to the planet?”

“They were born on Verdemus. The young man’s mother is Hock Watcher for Ilias Tamm. The girl’s parents are dead. Died in the explosion.”

“Is that everyone?”

“Yeah. Like I said, small group.”

“Hm. Only need 141 more people, and we could populate this world with a self-sustaining faction of humans,” Tinaya muses. “The Glassmen.”

“Right.” Spirit laughs.

“I need a light,” Tinaya determines.

“Hey, Thistle, turn the lights up to 100%.”

“No, not that kind of light. Where are my clothes? We can communicate with Extremus through my own little time mirror, but I have to open the spectral lock.”

Spirit stands up, and walks over to a cabinet. She grabs the tactical clothes that Tinaya was wearing when she first came here, and sets them on the little table next to the visitor chairs. She then takes a handheld device from her back pocket, and hands it over. “This is all yours. You can apply your profile to it.”

Tinaya unravels her jacket to find the hidden pocket, and spreads it out on the table. Then she fiddles with the device’s flashlight settings, searching for a specific shade of green. She can’t remember exactly which it was, but she has a general idea, so she only has to try a few hex codes before the right one illuminates the zipper. She opens it, but the mirror is gone. She’s able to stick her hand all the way through, and back out to realspace on the other side. “Shit. The pocket dimension I had it in must have collapsed in the explosion, or something.”

“I dunno,” Spirit says. “The spectral lock is still there, which means it’s still detecting the pocket dimension. It’s just...been moved.”

“Moved where?”

Spirit thinks about it for a moment, darting her eyes in saccades. “Into you? Maybe that’s how you survived the explosion.”

Tinaya sighs, and leans back in her chair to rest again. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Let me put you back in the medchamber. Just because you woke up, doesn’t mean you’ve finished recovering.”

“Very well. Thank you.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 18, 2398

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Curtis shrugs, and claims that he didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to be able to teleport. He was born with the ability, so why wouldn’t he still have it? He evidently knows that he’s in a different reality, but has no idea how he got here, and he certainly doesn’t know how to leave. That’s when Cheyenne climbs back down from the lavatory in the upper level. She stops cold when she sees their visitor. “Curty Birdy.”

“Chey-Chey?” Curtis steps away from the group.

“Are you...are we...?”

“We must be, right?”

“How would we ever know?”

“What’s going on here?” Arcadia interrupts this cryptic conversation.

Cheyenne is still in shock. “Mmm...Arcadia, Vearden, I would like you to meet my husband, Curtis Duvall. I think.”

“I know,” Curtis contends. “We are the same versions of each other.”

“There’s one way to find out.” Arcadia looks over at Ramses. “Do you have a simpatico detector in your bag of tricks?”

“No!” Cheyenne insists, more worried than she maybe should be. “We don’t need to test for simpatico. He believes that we’re from the same timeline, and I believe it too.”

“I don’t have one of those anyway,” Ramses says. “It hasn’t come up.”

“We’re learning more about you everyday,” Vearden points out.

Curtis approaches Vearden and Arcadia, sizing them up. He looks down at her belly. “You be sure to take care of your little girl, Papa Bear and Mama Bear.”

“Am I already showing?” Arcadia starts pawing at her belly.

“You’re glowing,” Curtis clarifies, but not really. He looks back at Cheyenne. “How much do they know about you, and where you’re from?”

“Almost nothing,” she answers. “I would like to keep it that way.”

Curtis nods as he’s turning back to the happy couple. “Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?”

“Jury’s still out,” Arcadia replies. “These people are helping me.”

Curtis sighs. “Is it still 2398?”

“November 17,” Marie says.

Curtis points at her. “Are you Angela?”

“Close enough.”

“That must make you Ramses Abdulrashid, and this the infamous AOC.”

“Yes.”

Curtis starts to look around like a fraud at an art gallery. “She wasn’t a politician in my timeline, though I did know her. We volunteered for Michelle Obama together, along with Leona Delaney. I told her that should run for office herself, I heard that she took my advice, though only in the next timeline.”

“I really would like to study you,” Ramses says, seeing no better opportunity to bring that up again.

Curtis looks to his wife for guidance, who nods. “Fine. Wadya need? Semen?”

“Blood will be enough for now,” Ramses assures him.

Curtis agrees to help with whatever is required for the rest of the day, and into the next. There is only so much that can be done up in orbit, though. Ramses has asked to take Curtis down to his lab for more tests. Cheyenne wants to come too, which would leave Vearden and Arcadia up on the ship alone. It’s highly automated, so that would be fine, except that she’s pregnant, and that doesn’t seem wise. Marie can’t take care of them, because she returned to her team in Paris. If they could only reach Leona, one scientist could be up above, and the other down below, but she’s still missing. So the AOC is empty right now, programmed to orbit the Earth on its own, keeping the place warm for them for whenever they decide to go back. For now, this is where they belong.

“I still can’t believe you finished it.” The last time Ramses was here, this facility was set up for epidemiology research. He asked Winona for certain equipment to be added to the retrofit, and laid out his plans for a few machines, but he didn’t expect anyone to build them in his absence. They went above and beyond. In particular, he’s eying the glass chamber that they constructed in record time according to his very specific specifications. Again, he didn’t ask anyone to do that, he just let them know that he would be building it himself, so they could account for building codes and fire safety.

“I didn’t do anything,” Winona responds. “He did.”

A man wearing a white lab coat underneath a reflective construction vest walks up to them, and shakes Ramses’ hand. “Hi, I’m Niven Murdoch.”

“Murdoch, as in, Baudin?”

“He’s my father,” Niven confirms, “not by blood. I don’t have any time powers myself, but I grew up around them, so I know how to build a simple temporal containment chamber. She’s a beaut, though, ain’t she?” He admires his own work.

“Bridgette’s father, Senator Morton found him.” Winona explains to Ramses. “This was long before your fancy brain scanner. He was trying to get found; put a cryptic classified ad about choosing salmon in the paper every single day for years.”

“Finally got a bite, so to speak,” Niven muses.

Curtis and Cheyenne walk back in. He’s wearing the special underwear that Ramses asked him to put on, and nothing else. “Are you trying to humiliate me, errr...?”

“I promise that it’s all in the name of science,” Ramses tells him. “No one’s going to watch the footage, except for me and Leona, and maybe a few other team members.”

Curtis shrugs. “Eh, whatever. It’s nothing she hasn’t seen already. Oh, didn’t you know?” he asks when Ramses looks at him funny. “We were together for a few years in the 2020s, after she graduated from college. This was before you, Cheyenne.”

“I know,” Cheyenne says.

“We’ll, uh, leave you to your work,” Winona says as she’s stepping away. “Niven?”

“Yes, coming.” His gaze lingers on Curtis a little too long.

“Thanks for the chamber, and everything else you did,” Ramses calls up to him.

“No prob, Bob!” Niven and Winona supposedly leave the lab.

Ramses opens the door to the chamber, and motions for Curtis to step inside. “Full disclosure, this locks from the outside, and if it works properly—”

“It does!” Niven shouts, having apparently not really left.

Ramses kind of ignores him, and moves on. “If it works, you won’t be able to escape, even by teleporting. I didn’t design it for you, but if you’ll trust me, I would like you to help us test it. At the same time, I’ll be taking readings on your abilities.”

“I’m down with that,” Curtis says. “Just tell me what to do.”

Ramses shuts the door, and goes over the computer. “Let’s start with a simple jump from one side of the chamber to the other.”