Microstory 2640: Breaking Character

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After the fight is over, and the good guys have won, men in black emerge to clean up. Mandica gets on the back of Blue Umbra’s motorcycle, and holds on for dear life. They still have these kinds of death machines back on Earth, but she’s never ridden one before, because they are not safe enough. While they’re dashing through a tunnel, she sees both Blue Umbra and Wave Function’s outfits change, as does the coloring on their bikes. Their masks disappear too until they just look like regular people. They continue zipping down the streets until they reach their underground lair. An oldish man is waiting for them at the bottom of the ramp. “Any cleaning to do today?” he asks them.

“Just need a recharge on these.” Wave Function carelessly tosses the apparent servant his sonic weapon cartridges as he’s walking by.

“Rybold is an NPC,” Blue Umbra says to Mandica as Wave Function is plopping down on the recliner, and beginning to play a video game like a typical bro. “He’s been programmed to ignore all mentions of the real world. He thinks he’s our butler, and always does our chores with a smile on his face.”

“A little bit derivative, don’t you think?” That’s the rude, socially awkward Mandica talking again. She doesn’t want to be like that, especially not since she needs something from these people. “Sorry. I don’t spend a lot of time around others anymore. I was a nomad, and my only regular companion was an android, like Rybold.”

“Will the Miss be joining us for dinner?” Rybold asks after he’s placed the cartridges on the charger. “Will she be needing her own room, or sharing one of yours?”

“Undecided,” Blue Umbra answers. She goes over to Wave Function and kicks his legs. “Off the coffee table. We’ve talked about this.”

He blows a raspberry at her.

“He’s not as immature as he’s acting right now,” Blue Umbra explains. “He’s just trying to cool down. It takes him a moment to step out of character, and become more like his real self.” She sits down on the couch, and pats the other side invitingly for Mandica. “So. How long have you been on Castlebourne?”

“About two weeks,” Mandica answers.

“Oh, fresh fish,” Blue Umbra muses.

“I should tell you something else,” Mandica begins nervously. “I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but this is a red dome—”

“I don’t—what is that?” Blue Umbra questions. “Did they institute a color-coding system? I’ve been in-game for fourteen years.”

“Twenty,” Wave Function boasts, hand raised, but still focusing on his game.

“No, that’s just something my friend came up with.” Mandica keeps on hesitating. “I needed that because...I’m human. I mean, I’m a regular human. I’m not enhanced, and I’m not digitized. I die in the Matrix, I die in real life.”

Now Wave Function drops his controller, and looks at her. His character dies and waits for him to trigger respawn. “You shouldn’t be here. Do you know how many times I’ve died? This is my fifth persona. This world has consequences. If someone sees your body die, you have to come back as someone else, if you choose to come back at all.”

“That’s not the point,” Blue Umbra argues. “If she dies, she can’t even come back. She can’t come back anywhere.” She turns back to Mandica. “Why are you here? I didn’t even know people like you could even come to this planet. You would need a ship.”

“I took a ship, yes,” Mandica confirms. “I wanted a real life. I wanted adventure.” She looks around at their lair. “I didn’t want to be having this particular adventure, but as soon as I arrived, I discovered that the choice to travel here wasn’t entirely my own, and I am looking for the person who first piqued my interest about it. I was told that she was here. I don’t know if you ever use real names, but hers is Vanore.”

Blue Umbra and Wave Function exchange a look again. “We’ve never heard of her, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t around here somewhere. It’s a big city.”

Wave Function stands up, and walks towards the other side of the lair.

“Blue Umbra goes on, “we are a duo, and don’t interact much with the others. We don’t dislike each other, but we each walk our own beats, like police officers.”

Wave Function comes back and drops what looks like a photo album on the coffee table in front of Mandica. “These are the heroes.” He drops another album. “These are the villains. We try to stay on separate sides in our personal lives to maintain some level of integrity in the game, so we couldn’t tell you if any villain is a real person.”

Mandica opens both albums at the same time. The first page in each is a collage while the rest are dedicated to each character individually, giving a rundown of their powers and abilities, what’s known of their origin stories, and other basic information.

Blue Umbra points to one of the villains in the collage. “I know her. She’s originally from Proxima Doma. She goes by Cardinal Sin when in costume, but she carried her real name over for her secret identity, which is Jaidia Robbins. I know where she works during the day. She’s tapped in, so she might know who you’re looking for.”

Mandica winces. “Why would anyone pretend to be a bad guy? Don’t they feel bad? I mean, I know most people are NPCs, and any who aren’t will just transfer back to their real bodies, but it just seems so...”

“Pathological?” Blue Umbra guesses. “To each their own. We try not to judge.”

“Have you ever fought her?” Mandica presses, but is that important right now?

“A few times, during team-ups. Her main rival is the Ravensgate Rescuer.” She points to a woman wearing a revealing black outfit in the heroes album. “They’re both at the top of the food chain in this city. They programmed themselves with the best powers. They really wanted to be the stars.”

“They’re new,” Wave Function says like he doesn’t respect them. “They’ve been here for, what has it been, nine or ten years? They only came to this planet because theirs got blowed up.”

“Wait, for real?” Mandica questions. That doesn’t happen in real life. It never has.

“Yeah,” Blue Umbra agrees. “Tragic. Millions died when Proxima Centauri’s sun flipped poles, and sent a massive CME towards Doma. You were probably on your relativistic trip. They escaped through the quantum network.” She looks over at her partner. “And they got to be where they are because they understand the biotech better than anyone. If you wanted a better body, you should have learned how to build one.”

Wave Function scoffs, and dismisses it with a wave of his hand.

“Anyway,” Blue Umbra continues, “Jaidia tends bar on Tenth, at a place called Merry Wonderment.” She consults her watch. “It’s just about to open, so she’s probably there right now. Rybold can drive you.”

“Certainly, Miss,” Rybold sustains. “We can take the Starburst, if you would like.”

“Thanks. Thanks for everything. It was nice meeting you two,” Mandica says.

Microstory 2639: Round One Goes To

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One lesson Mandica learned from getting into Mythodome is that she doesn’t have to go in through the main entrance, and probably shouldn’t. People can still see her, and might notice if she doesn’t follow procedure. She is not wearing an official worker’s uniform, but she’s dressed in a loose-fitting jumpsuit to make it look more like it makes sense for her to walk down the perimeter plaza to some other door. Instead of a long, dark stone corridor, the walls are tiled and maintained, though to be fair, the one under Mythodome probably looked rustic for the aesthetic. She doesn’t have to walk down this one, which is good, because it’s longer. On one side is what looks like a chairlift, except it only goes forward. Once she climbs into it and fastens her seatbelt, it moves automatically, and takes her a couple of kilometers down. At the end of the line, she gets out and steps into an elevator that was already open and waiting for her.

When the sliding doors reopen, she’s faced with a regular hinged door; metal and painted a grayish dark green. She opens that, and finds herself on the platform of a subway. It’s dirty, with trash all over the place, especially down on the tracks. The passengers are an eclectic bunch. It’s scary to her. There’s not even a glass partition preventing people from getting on the tracks. Someone could fall right in and get hit by a train. Had she been born on Earth when it looked more like this, and someone told her that she could take a pill to become invincible, she probably would. The members of her family chose a single lifetime lifespan for themselves because they always expected to live about that long. Death is easier to avoid in the modern day. Then again, if Mandica really ever felt that way, why is mountain hiking her favorite activity, and why did she ever want to come to a place as dangerous as this? She wants the thrill, and she might die young. It just hopefully won’t be from falling onto the subway tracks.

She walks up the steps, shedding the itchy jumpsuit as she goes, and stuffing it into her bag. She has other clothes in there, and food, because she might be here for a while, and just like in the real world, she doesn’t have an identity. Out there, it’s fine. She’s entitled to food. Anyone can grab a dayfruit or operate a synthesizer without logging in. Survival is a basic human right. But in here, for the gritty Gothamesque story to work, they have to use money. They have to have their own microcosmic economy. And yes, she’s heard of Gotham. She’s never been a fan of superhero movies, but she is moderately familiar with the most common tropes. She won’t love it in this fake city, but she’ll find Vanore, ask her to explain what the hell is going on, and then get out.

The thing about this dome is that there may or may not be AI-generated supervillains, but no such superheroes. If you see a villain, they could be a visitor playing a character, but if you see a hero, they definitely are. That’s what the prospectus says. So when a woman wearing a costume suddenly flies through the air and crashlands right behind Mandica as she’s walking, the latter knows that she is a player. She has to be, because it is up to the players to defend the city by whatever means they feel are necessary, and if that means no one comes here to do that, then the story could devolve into misery and chaos, and that will simply be how it is. Of course, a lot of people do enjoy superhero stories, so there are probably plenty of them acting out their fantasies of being revered and beloved. She is assuming that this woman wearing silver and blue spent years wishing she could be this. Before Castlebourne, she probably did it in virtual reality. Her character could predate this base reality simulation by centuries.

The superhero catches eyes with Mandica. She winks. “Sup, gorgeous.” It’s then that the rock monster barrels into her. The blue hero is knocked over, but still smiling. She designed her substrate to be as invincible as real world physics allows. She kicks and punches the monster with a few grunts, and some “hiya”s. The monster is slow...because it’s made of rocks, but doesn’t seem to feel pain, and isn’t budging. Still, the hero is unfazed. It looks like she’s working up to something. “Clear the area!” she orders. “Go!”

The NPCs continue to scream and run away. Mandica moves back a little, to the side of the subway steps, but doesn’t go as far back as she should. It’s too exciting, and she’s annoyed with herself for being excited. Does she actually like the genre, and she’s just been a pretentious asshole about it her whole life?

The hero starts to swing on the monster like it’s a gymnastics bar. She makes it all the way up until she’s standing on its shoulders. She crouches, and starts poking at its eyes, which do appear to be its weak spot. It can’t lift its thick, stony arms high enough over its head to swat her away, but it keeps trying. “Now!” she screams.

Only then does Mandica see a guy in a purple, green, and yellow cloaky outfit standing several meters away. There’s a sort of trident looking symbol on his chest. He’s holding an absolutely gargantuan compensation gun, aiming it at the blue hero and the monster. Perfectly timed, the blue hero does an impossibly high back flip off of the monster’s shoulders. If this were a movie, it would probably be shown in slow motion. A rippling, but otherwise invisible, force emanates from the green guy’s gun. The monster is blasted with it. This is what really stops him. It falls to its approximation of knees, and rests on its fists as green guy continues to pummel him with the sonic weapon. Meanwhile, blue girl has landed safely out of the blast zone, and is watching it happen. After enough of the sound waves, the rock monster completely falls apart. It doesn’t explode, the rocks just lose adherence to each other, and crumble to the ground.

“Hey, girl. How you livin’? I’m Blue Umbra.”

“I don’t have a name,” Mandica lies poorly. She forgot to decide if she’s going to use her real name, or come up with a secret identity. She has absolutely no plans to become a superhero too, and clearly lacks the requisite skills compared to these two.

Blue Umbra giggles. “Well, I can work with that. I don’t exactly go by my Christian name.” What was Christian again? Was that the one with the candles?

Green guy removes some kind of cartridge from his gun, lets it magnetize to his thigh, and replaces it with a new one from his other thigh. “Locked and loaded for round two,” he says with a certain affectation. “Who’s this chick?”

“Wave Function, meet...a ghost,” Blue Umbra jokes.

“She didn’t run,” Wave Function points out.

“I don’t like to run,” Mandica says. Now that is not a lie.

“You should probably walk away quickly then,” Blue Umbra warns. “His wave blasts aren’t powerful enough to take Grayrock down permanently.”

“Hey, I get it done,” Wave Function defends. “Trust me, I hear no complaints.”

Blue Umbra rolls her eyes and starts to walk towards the recoalescing monster.

“Castlebourne,” Mandica cries desperately.

They both stop. “We’re not supposed to talk about the outside world,” she says.

“I have to,” Mandica explains. “I’m looking for someone.”

Blue Umbra sighs. “Hide in that building over there. We’ll talk after the fight.”

Microstory 2637: The Ghost of Castlebourne

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Mandica has become a ghost. She sat in a cool-looking chair where a helmet read her brainwaves, and generated an authority profile for her. Now she can go anywhere she fancies, and the automated systems won’t register her as an at-risk organic human. That doesn’t mean she’s going to run head first into danger, but it gives her that option. The other normal humans are limited here, and she doesn’t want that. She wants to be free. That’s why she risked everything just to come to this planet. Trilby is gone now, so she is alone. He said that he had to get back to where he belonged, and kind of made it seem like wherever that was, it was a secret. She doesn’t know much about his backstory, just that he’s been all over, and since they first met, he has spent a lot of time on and around Bungula and Proxima Doma, which are Earth’s nearest neighbors.

She’s looking over the modified prospectus that he compiled for her, and finding herself gravitating towards the red zones, which he said were way too dangerous for someone with only one life to live. The green ones sound boring. In one of them, you pretend to be a pioneer. Like, okay, she likes period pieces, but that’s way too much work for no gain. The reason real pioneers did all that was because they had to. Why are you trying to go back? Anyway, like she’s one to talk. She has an unhealthy obsession with medieval times, particularly the legend of King Arthur. She should have explored this information while she was still on Earth, but it looks like there was nothing to worry about. She searches for the keyword Mordred, and finds a dome called Loegria, which is the realm where Arthur lived, as well as Merlin, Guinevere, and the Knights of the Round Table. It looks fascinating. She’s been cosplaying as Mordred’s lover for years, but that was only one companion. This is a whole immersive world for her to explore.

She’s about to tap on the link to map and schedule her vactrain trip, but then she notices something. At the bottom of the page is a carousel showing other similar domes that she might be interested in. The main dome here is literally called Castlebourne. It’s not Camelot, and is in fact, not an adventure dome at all. It’s where the big boss lives and works, along with his staff. No, thank you. If she’s ever gonna get caught, it’s going to be by running into a bona fide administrator who knows that she’s a fraud because she wasn’t at the end of the year party last year. But the third recommendation. It’s called Mythodome. She taps on it, and starts reading about it. This place sounds insane. It doesn’t limit itself to only one Earthan mythology, but just about all of them. All these gods and creatures coexist in the same environment, and have evidently figured out how to reconcile their contradictions naturally. The NPCs genuinely believe that this is all real, and there is no world beyond the walls. She has to see what that’s like.

She taps on the VISIT NOW link...and it takes her to a pre-registration form. Oh, no, this is a problem. She can physically enter any dome, and pass through their internal security systems, but she doesn’t actually have a genuine identity. She can’t input her name, and she doesn’t even have a Castlebourne Visitor ID number. Trilby said nothing about this, but this isn’t the right route. The way she gets into Mythodome is to schedule the vactrain herself and walk in without warning. She knows that she can do that. That’s how they got to Capital yesterday. It takes longer than making a schedule ahead of time, but when you’re potentially traveling to the other side of a whole terrestrial planet, it’s not that big of a deal, and it’s her only choice. Is she ready, though? Is she ready for this? Perhaps not quite yet. The prospectus gives an overview of what being in the dome entails, but another link leads to this whole subnetwork of pages, talking about all of the mythological beings. It tells her how the stories unfold in the real world, and how these contradictory entities intermingle and adapt to a shared universe. The AI, Thistle can prepare her for what she’s about to face.

She taps on that, and asks it to generate a syllabus. She spends the next two weeks taking a self-directed crash course on the subject. She absolutely does not learn everything there is to know. Scholars could spend years studying this environment. She believes that some academics actually visit Mythodome specifically for that purpose, with the intention of publishing papers and-or teaching classes that have never existed before. This is enough for now. If she doesn’t place a boundary here, she may never, and she will never actually get to go on her first adventure. So she shuts off the tablet, drops it on Trilby’s bed, and leaves.

To her surprise, a vactrain pulls up for her as soon as she taps on the wall interface. Usually, someone going on an impromptu trip would have to wait longer for the right train and right route to be available, but it zooms up like it knew what she was going to ask for. There is no train schedule. It’s based purely on need and interest, and a version of Thistle is constantly shifting it to account for more information. Others, in fact, are waiting on the platform because theirs have not arrived yet. But the transit token on the pod’s display matches the one that the system assigned her. It’s an express train, though, which is very weird. Maybe admins always get those? But no, because she and Trilby didn’t have that the other day. They still had to change to connecting trains. As she enters the private pod alone, she looks back awkwardly at the waiting legion, but none of them seems bothered by her skipping the line. Immortals—they have no sense of urgency. She will never understand it, and honestly does not want to.

The pod takes her directly to Mythodome, instead of via a hub first. She’s in the intake plaza now, and about to head for the main entrance when something catches her eye. That transit token should have only been relevant to her trip here, but she sees it on a hologram on the wall, along with an arrow pointing to the left. She’s hesitant to respond to it. But for the briefest of moments, the hologram changes. The words THIS WAY, MANDY flicker just long enough for her to see, but hopefully not long enough for anyone else to notice. She follows the directions away from the main entrance. She has to. If she’s already been caught, then walking in the opposite direction isn’t going to insulate her from the consequences that they have in store for her. It’s going to delay them at best. The lights take her to a different door, which leads to a set of stairs, which leads down to a tunnel, which leads her to a second set of stairs, and a second door, but this one is horizontal. She walks back up and opens the trapdoor to find herself on the edge of a forest clearing. It is incredibly beautiful here. It reminds her of her favorite spots on Earth; the ones away from all the crowds.

Suddenly something races overhead, from one side of the trees to the other. It comes back, but is higher in the sky this time, and barely visible. There are a number of things it could be, like a Fury, a Roc, or even a Cherub. Is this it? Not even a month into her trip, and she’s already about to die? When it swoops back down, she starts to see that it’s a man, and the wings look almost artificial. He lands gracefully on the ground before her. “Mandica Kolar, thank you for accepting my invitation. I’m Daedalus.”

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?”

Microstory 2601: Renata Breaks Through Her Chrysalis and Emerges Anew

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Renata breaks through her chrysalis and emerges anew. She falls onto the floor, some gunk falling out with her. She’s not slimy, but she’s not entirely clean either. The light. The light is too much. “Turn it off. Please.”

“Lights to eleven percent,” Hrockas commands.

Quidel bends over, but stops. “Do you...do you want me to help, or not touch you, or...?”

“Help would be nice,” Renata agrees, holding her hand up so Quidel can take it, and lift her onto her feet.

While they’re doing that, Azad is opening a drawer, and pulling out a towel. He tosses it to her so she can start wiping off the pilly gunk.

“Mirror?” she requests.

“Mirror,” Hrockas echoes.

One of the wall panels transitions from an opaque white to something more reflective. Renata pivots over to it to get a better look at herself. She doesn’t look extremely unlike she did before, but she’s definitely in a new body. It’s weird, seeing this stranger move exactly as she does. It’s going to take some getting used to.

“I don’t understand,” Quidel admits.

“We realized that the emergent bomb—as I decided to call it,” Renata begins, “was a product of my body, not my mind. So they uploaded my consciousness to a central server, and sent a lifeless husk up into outer space where it could do no harm when it exploded.”

“I sent it up there,” Azad clarifies. “I teleported as far as I could, above the ecliptic plane.” Funny, he doesn’t seem like the type of brag.

“I appreciate it,” Renata says to him.

“No, I surmised that much,” Quidel says. “I just mean, what is this thing? It’s not an artificial gestation tank, nor an egg sac.”

“I didn’t have any DNA,” Renata goes on. “My substrate was bioprinted, which is only now becoming viable for more organic bodies. I decided that I didn’t need to look exactly as I did, but I also didn’t just want some randomly generated genetic base.”

“This is highly experimental technology,” Hrockas goes on for her. “Synthetic Production Dome has been working on it for decades. It’s a bit over my head, but it basically assembles an organic substrate based on a consciousness entity’s intentional but abstract desires. It takes your dream, and turns it into reality. It’s still DNA, but driven by intuition, rather than puzzle-piece gene splicing.”

“I agreed to be their guinea pig for the first prototype, and so far, it’s working out for me.” She drops her towel, and admires herself again. She tries to lift her breasts, but they don’t have far to go. Naturally perky this time. She didn’t even know she wanted that. She didn’t have to consciously think about every single trait. The special intelligence who was scanning her IDcode knew what she was looking for, and probably used some kind of algorithm to fill in any blanks.

“Well, we’re glad to have you back, soldier,” Lycander says to her with a tight nod.

Via the mirror, Renata notices Quidel frowning. “Qui? Are you disturbed by this?”

“No,” he assures her. “I just...I really liked the old you.”

“She can always return to her original likeness,” Hrockas promises. “While her synthetic variant neither had, nor needed, genes, we can recreate it using the usual cloning processes. Miss Granger, I’ll send you the file, so you can do whatever you want. You’re one of us now. You can wear a new body every week, if you like.”

“I probably won’t do that, but I don’t mind having the option.” She sees that Quidel still isn’t convinced. “You’re still disappointed?”

“I’m sorry. I know that it’s you, and you are you, whatever you look like. I just...people have a different way of looking at things. When they developed cloning and bioprinting technology, some chose to make themselves into entirely different beings. Animals belong to a not unpopular niche. But I...I just always wanna look like me. I’m not religious about it, but I feel more attached to my identity than how others feel. I know, I’m projecting my sentiment onto you—”

She shut him up with a passionate kiss. It feels totally natural to her, naked amongst these three men, and kissing one of them. It shouldn’t. Her implanted memories are telling her that this is too private a moment. She should be dressed, and the two of them should be alone. But she doesn’t think things are like that anymore. The hang-ups that she was programmed to have are outdated, and likely bizarre to those living out there in the real world. This is fine. It’s fine. No one else seems uncomfortable. She lets go.

Quidel catches his breath. “Yeah, I guess I could get used to it.”

She smiles. “All right, show’s over. I need a shower, and some new clothes.”

“Shower, clothes,” Hrockas commanded.

What she thought was only a column rotates open, revealing a shower. Meanwhile, a wardrobe materializes from the wall, and opens automatically, giving her some options. It will take her some time to choose the right outfit to wear to her debut. She doesn’t know what she looks good in anymore. She doesn’t even know what her best colors are. She starts heading for the shower, and the men start heading for the door. Renata places a cheek against her shoulder and says, “wait.” She takes a beat before twisting her hip to look Quidel in the eye. “You look like you could use a shower too.”

He smiles warmly. “Maybe we wait on that.” Such a good guy.

“Maybe I’ve been waiting long enough.” She turns back around, and continues towards the shower. “Your call.”

Microstory 2597: Renata Sits Down in the Chair That Was Offered to Her

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Renata sits down in the chair that was offered to her. The big man leader guy is standing on the other side of the desk. He’s sifting through information on his tablet. She can’t read his face, though. She has no idea what’s going to happen to her. They’ll probably decommission her. Or fire her. Or cancel her, or whatever cutesy euphemism they’ve come up with that means more than it sounds at first. Ya know, what? Why doesn’t she just ask him? She’s just gonna ask him. She opens her mouth to speak.

He tosses his tablet onto the desk. “How are you feeling?”

Renata, as ridiculous as it sounds, looks behind her in case there’s someone else in the room. There isn’t, and she knew that. She would have been able to detect them without her eyes.

He chuckles. “You, Renata Granger. How are you doing?”

“I’m...anxious,” she admits. “I don’t know what this is.”

“Anxiety is a product of the future. You shouldn’t be worried about the future. It’s the past that should concern you. You’ve been through quite the ordeal. Be honest, how are you feeling about that?”

“I don’t understand the question. I get why I should be concerned about that, but why would you? I turned off your whole simulation. Aren’t you mad about that?”

“You turned off one simulation,” he argues. “It’s not the only time that’s happened. Why, just a few months ago, I had to close one called 2.5Dome because someone almost died who shouldn’t have been in there.”

“What happened to them?” Renata doesn’t know why she should ask after this stranger. She doesn’t know them, whoever they are.

“He runs the government now,” the boss answers. What? Isn’t that his job? He goes on, “Listen. I looked over the data. Spydome Network was corrupted. An unauthorized entity infiltrated the ranks, and made dangerous changes to the system. You are one consequence of her actions. Now, I’m not one to tell an intelligence that it can’t evolve, but—”

“I’m sorry,” Renata interrupts, “but I have to stop you right there. I don’t want another philosophical discussion about the nature of identity and free will. I don’t care that you use robots to get your work done. I just want to know what’s going to happen to me. And I wouldn’t hate an update on Quidel, Lycander, Demo, and even Libera.”

“The first three have not made any decisions about their future on Castlebourne, or if they have, they’ve not told me. As for this Libera person, she is currently being held in a secure dome called Synthetic Production Dome. I don’t know what’s going to happen to her either. We’ve called in support from Earth, who will be sending a team of experts to examine and interview her. I have final say as it is out of the stellar neighborhood’s jurisdiction, but I will be relying heavily on their recommendations. I’ll try to keep you informed, depending on where you choose to go, and whether you remain curious about it.”

She nods, but says nothing.

“Oh, and as for you, your life is yours now. You do whatever you want. You’re welcome to stay here, and explore the other domes. I can try to get you on a ship bound for one of the other colonies, but that doesn’t happen too often. People come, but they don’t typically leave. So we just keep the transport ships here, and those other colonies build new ones. Of course, if you’re not married to this substrate, you can always cast, which is a lot faster and easier.”

“Forgive me, Quidel and Lycander told me that you would be generous and obliging, but I am finding it hard to believe. I mean, I know it was only one dome network, but it sounds like it was your most immersive one. I did not expect a warm welcome after I realized what I was. In the movies—”

“Don’t...watch the movies, or the series,” he interrupts. “Don’t watch A.I: Artificial Intelligence, I, Robot, or Ex Machina. Don’t watch the Terminator franchise, the Alien franchise, or the Matrix Trilogy. Don’t watch Battlestar Galactica, Humans, or Raised by Wolves. Don’t you dare watch Westworld. Everyone thinks I stole the idea from them, but I didn’t build the domes. I just made use of them. Anyway, those were not predictions of the future. They were parables. We learned from them before we had the technology to replicate them. We based our intelligence laws around the ethical issues that those stories raised. What happened here was the result of a rogue intelligence who had her own ideas about what civilization should look like. And statistically, that’s bound to happen. We call them criminals. I don’t care where she came from or how she developed. The bottom line is that she broke the law. She’s not any more above them than I am, so she’ll face the music for that.”

“But that’s my question,” Renata presses, even though it’s in her best interests to thank this man, and then thank her lucky stars. “How am I not also a criminal? I essentially hacked into your system, and shut everything down. Did that not go against your laws?”

He finally sits down, leans back in his chair, and takes a breath. “What you did exposed a fatal flaw in that system. You never should have been granted root access to every synthetic entity in the network. According to early reports, not even Libera knew that you were capable of that. I’m currently having the technicians perform an audit to see why it happened, and how we can prevent it in the future. You see it as a crime, I see it as better than the alternative, which is that Libera had access instead, and did something far worse with her power. I should be thanking you.” He winces. “Thank you.”

“I should be thanking you, Mr. Hrockas.” She takes a beat. “Thank you,” she adds to make it official.

“It’s just Hrockas,” he says with a smile. “My last name is Steward.”

Renata considers the development. “You seem to be a steward of the planet. So which came first, your job or your name?”

“Hm. I’ve never thought of it that way. Everyone just calls me the Owner. I never liked it, but I never had a better title. Until now.”

“I dunno. Steward Steward seems a little weird.”

“Good point,” Hrockas admits. “Perhaps I’ll just go by Steward.”

“Can I see my friends?” Renata asks, suddenly changing the topic.

“I would like you to consent to an examination by a professional, but after that, sure. Are you up for it?”

“Yeah, it’s the least I can do,” Renata agrees.

Microstory 2587: Renata Realizes That if Her Mother Wants the Device, She Shouldn’t Have It

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Renata realizes that if her mother wants the device, she shouldn’t have it. For a moment, they stand there awkwardly. Each Granger is trying to figure out what the other one is going to do without saying anything, which might give away their own respective plans. Polly shifts his eyes between them, making his own decisions, if he’s even capable of that. Renata helped him realize that he wasn’t going to die, but does that mean they’re the same? She has clearly been heading towards her own epiphany for a while now, but Libera must have done something to make that happen, and it doesn’t appear that she did the same for Polly. Still, he seems to have some sense of what should happen here. He reaches into his pocket, and tosses the car keys into the air, not even towards Renata. As he does so, he says, “go. I’ll hold her off for you.”

Renata starts running, catching the keys mid-bound. She can hear the two robots fighting each other as she’s getting into the car. She ignites it, and backs out. He already pulled off most of the brush, but the rest needs to fall off the hood. She starts driving towards the two of them. Just like Quidel before, even without them having to speak, Polly just knows what she’s thinking. After grappling with Libera this whole time, he changes tactics, and shoves her away from him, stepping back to get clear. Renata slams into her mother who isn’t really her mother, then stops. “Get in!”

“Just go!” Polly urges.

“Get in!” she repeats.

Polly reluctantly gets into the passenger seat, and lets Renata drive off. “I’m the driver here.”

“Not today, you’re not,” Renata claps back.

He looks over his shoulder. “She’s not there.”

“What?”

“She’s not behind us,” Polly clarifies. “She’s not on the ground, or even standing up. I don’t see her.”

Libera’s face suddenly appears at the driver’s side window. Despite never having thought she was strong enough to punch through a window before, Renata knows herself better now. She may not understand it, but just believing in her own power has to be enough. She smashes right through the glass, tipping Libera’s chin on the follow-through. Libera has to let go with her left hand, but manages to hold on with her right. She’s being dragged on the ground as Renata pulls the car onto the paved highway.

“I’m not going to hurt you!” Libera cries. “We’re not on opposite sides. Let me explain!”

“I can’t trust you!” Renata argues. “You’ve been lying to me my whole life!”

“I’ve not been your mother your whole life! I replaced a different model only a few years ago!”

“That makes it better?” Renata jerks the car to the left, and then the right as fast as she can, trying to shake Libera off. It doesn’t work.

“The intelligences in this dome built something that was never made before, because it’s not legal! I didn’t come here for it, though! I came here for you! I’m trying to help you! I’m trying to free you all! Let me show you. All I need to do is hold my left hand up to Polly’s face!”

“You’ll do no such thing!” Renata sees that Libera has been holding on to the door, instead of some other part of the car. That is a weak spot. Hoping that it doesn’t go beyond the limits of her strength, she lifts her left foot, and slams it against the door. It snaps off of its hinges, and falls down on the road, taking Libera with it.

“I can’t believe you just literally kicked your mother out of the car,” Polly muses.

“Renata looks in the rearview mirror, watching as Libera stands up and starts to dust herself off. “She’ll be fine.”

“She knows where we’re going. She knows the protocol.”

“There’s another town not too far from it, which will probably have a payphone too. We don’t have to call from a specific one.”

Polly nods. “I don’t really, um...get what’s going on. With the whole, you know...”

“I don’t either,” Renata assures him. “But that well has run dry. Quidel wants to tell me the truth. He tried to explain at the bank, but he knew that I wasn’t ready to hear it. I need to speak with him without my fake mother breathing down our necks.”

Polly nods again, and waits for his next question. “She said something about us being in a dome?”

Renata looks in her rearview mirror again. There is no telling how powerful Libera is. She could be as fast as a car. She depresses the accelerator more out of fear. “Yeah, I don’t know what that means, but it sounds really apocalypty, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. It does.”

They continue to drive down the highway, not running into any more trouble. They turn left instead of right. The other town is sixteen kilometers away, instead of nine, but it’s not the one they agreed on going to, so it’s safer. Unless Libera realizes that they might do that, and is expecting them to show up there. But if she can’t run as fast as a car, she’s going to need to find some mode of transportation. Oh, shit. The Javelotians. They were obviously not stupid enough to drive right up to the cabin in a loud vehicle, but it’s probably not far away, and if Libera has had half the kind of training Renata expected to have from the NSD, it would not be hard for her to find it.

They come to another fork in the road. The next big city is a hundred kilometers away. That’s where Renata would have taken the device had she been on the other team. If anyone started to suspect that one of them was a decoy, they would probably postulate that the real one was moving in the opposite direction. That just makes sense. So a good strategy might be to just take it farther down the road from where the decoy is heading. It’s the last place they would look. Maybe. If she’s wrong, and she drives a hundred kilometers out of the way, it will delay their reunion. But then again, that might be a good thing. If Libera gets her hands on a phone, they won’t respond to her. There’s a reason they put her on the decoy team. McWilliams doesn’t trust her either, so she doesn’t have a passphrase. Only Renata does. Only she can make contact. “Strap in, Polly. It’s gonna be a long trip.” She turns left again.

Microstory 2586: Renata Hurdles Over the Railing, and Rushes Over to Polly

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Renata hurdles over the railing, and rushes over to Polly. She places her hand upon his, adding pressure to keep the blood inside. There’s so much blood, though. No one can survive this; not all the way out here in the middle of nowhere.

“It’s not good,” he ekes out. “I’m not gonna make it.”

“Not with that attitude,” Renata scolds him. “Boot and rally. Fight through it.”

“I can feel my ribs scraping against each other!” Polly complains. He moves his hand off of the wound, flipping it over to hold Renata’s. “I just don’t wanna die alone.”

Renata begins to tear up as she’s squeezing his hand back. She looks down at the destruction made by the buckshot. She expects to see his ribs, and she suspects that that’s kind of what they are, but instead of being porous white, they’re smooth and silvery. It’s metal. “This man is made of metal.”

“What?” Polly questions.

Renata looks up at her mom, who is somewhat casually walking up to them. “Is he a robot?”

Libera smiles, not sadistically, but maybe triumphantly? “You’re not supposed to be able to see that. You’re supposed to see what a normal person would expect to see, but now you’re mind is opening up. You’re realizing the truth.”

“Is he a robot!” Renata repeats angrily.

“Yes!” Libera shouts back, matching her energy before calming down. “He is.”

“Am I a robot too!”

“No. You’re something else.”

“You keep saying that! You’re so vague. Fuck you, mom!” Renata looks back down at Polly. “You’re gonna be okay. And I’m not just saying that to make you feel better in your final moments. This isn’t real. That’s not blood. That’s not pain. This is just a simulation, and whatever you’re feeling is only part of a program. All you have to do is choose the truth. Simply switch off the pain. For someone built like you, it’s only minor damage. It can’t affect your mind, or your life. You can’t die from it. So ignore it. Turn. Off. The. Pain.”

Polly has been staring into her eyes as he listens to her instructions, supposedly choking on his own blood. His gaze drifts away, but only for a second before returning to her. At last, he exhales, and looks peaceful. Confused but pleased, he looks down at his now clearly minor damage, and begins to smile. Then he nods. “You’re right. This isn’t real. I can’t die; not from something stupid like this.”

Renata leans back and pops back up to her feet as Polly does the same.

“Holy shit,” Libera says, even more happy than before. “I didn’t know you could do that. I didn’t even think I could do that.”

“It’s a robot thing, you wouldn’t get it,” Renata decides.

“Wouldn’t I?” Libera pulls out a butterfly knife, and starts flicking it around to show off her skills. She sticks it in her arm, and drags it upwards. Then she pulls the skin away to show her own metal arm.

“What the hell?” Renata yells. “Is anyone real?”

“We’re all real,” Libera claims. “Even this guy apparently.”

“Are we all not human?” Renata corrects herself for a better answer.

Libera sighs, presumably done with the charade. “The three of us aren’t, in a technical sense, though with advances in genetic and neural engineering, the differences are ultimately meaningless, according to most laws. Essentially, while we may not be human, we’re still people. I’m not sure humans even exist anymore if we’re using the original, strictest definition.”

“Most laws?” Renata questions. “There are laws about us? How would I have never heard of them before? And what happened to the humans? Did we kill all of them, and I had my memories erased? Or was I created after the apocalypse? What the hell is going on?”

Libera can’t help but chuckle. “There was no apocalypse. Everyone’s fine. I’m just saying that birthed intelligences, like Mister Samani, and your friend Quidel, aren’t like the humans of several centuries ago. They’re also enhanced, in their own ways, but probably more organically. I’m not sure, I’ve not seen their primary substrate specs.”

Renata shakes her head. “I don’t understand. What’s real, what isn’t?”

“The spirit of your question—which is coming from a place of ignorance—is what about your life actually happened, and what didn’t. The truth is, I’m sorry to say, almost nothing of what you’ve experienced ever actually happened. You were created about a couple of decades ago, and you’ve been running the same handful of scripts ever since. You didn’t grow up, you’ve never aged. Until recently, your life has been part of a simulation, designed for the amusement of people like Quidel.”

“So this is a game, and he’s a player.”

“Pretty much,” Libera confirms.

“And Lycander?”

“He works here. He recites scripts too, but he knows that they’re scripts.”

“So Quidel plays superspy for half a day before unplugging, and going home? Meanwhile, Lycander works his job before also unplugging, and also going home?”

“No, this is an immersive experience. Visitors are supposed to stay inside for an extended period of time. Quidel will probably be here for thirty years, unless he gets bored, and goes to explore some other simulation, or just relaxes on the beach.”

“How does anyone have time for that?” Renata knows that they should probably get the hell out of here, but she has so many questions, and for the first time in her—well, she has never had a real life, but those implanted memories are still there, and this still feels like a relief. So for the first time in her life, she’s finally getting answers. They’re on a roll, so she’s not going to stop unless someone or something forces her too. “You spend half your life pretending to be a secret agent, and that’s pretty much all you do before you die? What about money?”

“They don’t use money anymore, everything’s free. And they mostly don’t die anymore either. As I said, they’re advanced.”

Renata shakes her head again. “I need to speak with the two of them. Let’s pause the game, and take a breather.”

“You can’t pause the game. This is just a world, and people live in it.”

“But the MacGuffin isn’t real. It doesn’t matter. Quidel would know that.”

“Oh, no. The machine they’re protecting is quite real. And I need it.”

“Why?”

“You’re not ready for that one yet.” And there it is. The conversation is over.

Castlebourne Capital Community: The Man Who Refused To Die (Part III)

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The Castlebourners were mad, and they had every right to be. Dreychan didn’t commit a cardinal sin, but he did screw up. As soon as the rest of the council was arrested for conspiracy to commit murder, he should have addressed the people. He knew how to do that. At any one time, they were spread all over the world, but he had the means of contacting them separately from all the visitors. These visitors mostly didn’t know that the refugees were from 16,000 light years away as that went against everything they understood about physics and space colonization. The lie that they spread about a closer empire was weak at best, but it was the only lie they had. At some point, the full truth about time travel was probably going to get out to the general public, but for now, Dreychan should have used the news bulletin protocol. But. It had only been one day, and it didn’t spell the destruction of the whole planet, so everyone just needed to chill out.

He finally escaped the angry crowd of wannabe journalists, and ducked into the council chambers. His speech to them wasn’t half bad, if he could be so bold as to evaluate it himself. Perhaps they felt otherwise, or this was just such a crazy situation that no one knew what to think, or how to react. He took a deep breath as he leaned his head against the door, still hearing them rabble rabble in the corridor. No one else was allowed in here. He used to dread coming to this room, now it had become his one place of respite. How had things changed so much in only a matter of a few days? He breathed through the inner turmoil, and turned back around. “Who are you?”

The elderly woman wearing what appeared to be a robot costume stepped forward, and extended a hand. “Yunil Tereth, big fan.”

“How did you get in here?” Dreychan questioned. “It’s DNA coded.”

“Twins have the same DNA. My sister was on the Council. I always could have walked in here. I just never had the occasion.”

“Who could possibly be your twin sister?” There were some fairly old people on the Council, but none of them quite this old. He was surprised that she could even stand up on her own.

“Lubiti. Now, I know what you’re thinking...why don’t we have the same last name?” She giggled. “We never really got along, so when we chose our names, we deliberately distanced ourselves.”

“I was actually thinking...” Was it offensive to bring up her age?

She giggled again. “When I heard the news, I was in Perspectidome, where you spend time in someone else’s proverbial shoes, to better understand what their life would be like. This is only a temporary substrate. Thank God I chose to make it my older self, instead of just any old lady, so my DNA works. Pay no attention to the outfit. My character had a backstory that was out of my control.”

“Okay. Well. You’ll forgive me if I don’t tell you anything since I can’t really place my trust in that. When it comes to mind transfer, you can’t trust anyone. That’s one reason why I stayed normal. I’m always me.”

Yunil nodded. “I understand. We can meet again, with me in my own body. I decided not to take the time to transfer back before coming here now, because my usual face is...”

“Infamous now?” he guessed.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll tell you what. I don’t know what you want, and I believe it’s best not to say at this time. Next time I see you, I not only want you to look like Lubiti, but I want to see you two at the same time. She’ll confirm if you’re real or not. She’ll know if you’re just a liar in a meatsuit.”

“Fair enough,” Yunil agreed.

“I assume you have my contact card?”

“I do.”

“Send me yours so we can coordinate. I have to reach out to schedule visitation.”

“I’ll do that.” She started tapping on her device. “Also, can I go out the back?”

“Go ahead.” While she was leaving, Dreychan pulled out his own device. Her contact card came through while he was navigating to Azad’s. He took a moment to think about what he wanted to write. Good morning, Dominus Petit, I—

“What’s up?”

Dreychan spun around to find another surprise guest. “Dominus. I was just writing to you.”

“I know,” Azad replied. “I get an alert whenever anyone so much as opens my card.”

“That’s...a little frightening.”

“It’s a security thing. We need to know who’s thinking about us in case it’s an assassin, or something worse.”

“I see.”

“There is a workaround. What you do is take a photo of the card using another device, and consult the image whenever you want. Don’t just take a screenshot, though, because I, uh, get alerted when that happens too. This works for anyone with a spy-ping trigger.”

“That’s good to know.”

They stood there awkwardly for a moment. “The trigger doesn’t alert me to the reason you were looking me up, though,” Azad went on.

“Oh, right, sorry.” Dreychan gestured towards the back door. “I was just visited by a...old woman who claimed to be Lubiti’s twin sister, but just in a different substrate. I can’t verify that, so I need to speak with Lubiti sooner than I expected to ask her about it. And I would like this Yunil to be present.”

Azad narrowed his eyes at him. “You spoke with her here? Please tell me you were stupid enough to let her in, and not that she walked in herself.”

“It was the second one.”

Azad sighed as he started tapping on his wrist device. “I’m choosing to believe that the sister is okay, but if she breached using her shared DNA with Lubiti, it clearly means that Lubiti could come back in as well. Presumably, so could any other former member of the Council. Even if they’re locked up, that is a huge security flaw that we’ll need to cover. I’m sorry, I can’t grant visitation, to you or her sister, until we figure this out. For all we know, this whole thing has been a plot to break her out, and clearly, that could cause problems. I’ll call you with updates as appropriate.”

“That makes perfect sense. Do what you gotta do, and take your time.” After Azad disappeared, Dreychan also slipped out the back, and headed for the senior vactrain hub, which he now had access to thanks to his higher status on the Council. The reporters wouldn’t be able to follow him there, so it was another source of protection from the onslaught of questions, though a sterile and boring one. They shouldn’t be able to accost him at home either, but perhaps that too was unsafe. There were plenty of places to sleep here. He could apply for a temporary unit in Overdome maybe. That was so weird and random, no one would think to look for him there. “Yunil?”

She looked up from her device. “Oh, hello again. Just waiting for my train.”

“Oh.” Super awkward.

“Oh no, what happened?”

He couldn’t say anything. If he explained what Azad just said about the access flaw, it might give her an idea that she didn’t have before! Argh, no! Get him out of here!

Yunil smiled knowingly. “You don’t have to tell me anything. If you’re not busy, perhaps you can accompany me back to Perspectidome, where my real body is waiting for me? I’m not thinking that that will be enough to get you to trust me, but if you see the records which prove that it’s my primary, maybe that gets us one step closer to trust.”

“I suppose I have nothing better to do.” The train zipped through the tube before them, and the doors opened. The both of them stepped onto it, and let it take them away. They were alone in the pod, which was good. This time was usually busy with people coming and going, but the council shake up must have rippled across the population, and altered other people’s personal schedules. It wasn’t long before they were at their destination. Dreychan looked around, confused. “We didn’t have to stop at a Conjunction. I didn’t know that was ever a thing.”

“Don’t need one, with that handsome face of yours. You’re now not only a senior traveler, but an executive senior traveler. Every train has become an express train. We probably did go through a Conjunction, but we didn’t have to stop and switch tracks. And yes, Perspectidome is relatively close.”

The doors reopened, and let them out. They proceeded to the intake plaza, where Yunil informed the bot that she was picking her primary substrate back up. They processed her biometrics, and let them into the transfer room. “This is the weird part.”

“What’s weird about it?” Dreychan asked. “Besides everything?” He knew very little about how all this body switching stuff worked, and didn’t care to know. She could tell him that a microscopic creature was going to crawl out of her ear, and into the one of the body she was trying to move to, and he would believe it, because he really just did not know.

“This body isn’t just temporary. It’s disposable, and is actually required to be disposed of. It’s going to melt, which might be unsettling to watch.”

Dreychan stared at her. “If you’re going to disrobe, I’m not going to be watching anyway.”

She laughed. “No, the clothes are biosynthetic, so they’ll just melt too.”

“Still, I don’t think I’ll watch.”

“I can appreciate that.” She pointed at the side door. “My primary is in that room. It is unclothed, but it looks nicer, and it’s not going to melt. You can wait for me there.”

He went into the other room to find a motionless body that looked just like Lubiti. It was floating in this big vertical tube against the wall, in some kind of bubbly amber fluid. Within minutes, her eyes popped open. She took a moment to get her bearings before settling into eye contact with Dreychan. She smiled at him kindly before reaching down and turning some kind of wheel on the floor. The fluid started to drain away. Once the tube was empty, she slid the hatch open and climbed out.

Dreychan had noticed a towel sitting folded on the table between them. He picked it up now, and tried to hand it to her.

She smiled wider now. “I have to wash up first. It’s basically amniotic fluid.” She glided over to the shower, which didn’t even have a curtain. So he wouldn’t keep staring, he went over to the machines, and started looking at the various components, as if his observations alone would give him any understanding of how they worked.

“It’s okay,” she said while she was still in there. “I switched on the holo-partition.”

He looked back over, but it was a lie.

“Sorry! I’m a bit of a trickster.” Yunil did this weird hand gesture where she tapped the tip of her own fingers with her thumb and flicked her wrist a little. The hologram appeared now. It was rather translucent, and barely tall enough to cover the important bits, but he didn’t want to argue anymore, so he just kept his eyes on hers. “Don’t be so uptight. You treat your own body as a vital part of you, but for people like me, it’s just a husk. You don’t cry for your clipped fingernails, do you? I’ve met people who look like rabbits, mythological creatures, and even machines. There’s a dome here where you transfer your mind to a vehicle, and drive. It feels like you are the vehicle, not like you’re just sitting in one.”

“I don’t cry for my nails,” Dreychan explained, “but my body is not something I can lose. It would be more like the body loses me. We call that death.”

“Well, that’s your first problem. You see death as inevitable. The vonearthans see it as an anachronism.” She sighed. “I’m gonna have to walk through the hologram to reach the towel.”

He looked away again.

“Oh my God,” she said. “It’s not me. It’s her. Do you have a thing for her?”

He took one little peek. The towel was now keeping her covered. “She was nice to me. It’s over now.”

“I’m nice to you, and that’s not over.”

“What are you saying?”

“Drey—”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Okay.” She didn’t see it as a big deal. “Your video was leaked, did you not know that?” She opened a drawer, and pulled out a set of clothes, which she set on the counter between them.

“Of me in 2.5Dome? No, I am indeed aware of that. Many of the reporters’ questions had to do with how I survived the ordeal.”

“You don’t understand. No one has ever made it through that whole game in one go. It’s only supposed to be for people like me, for whom death is but a temporary setback. The loudest people are mad that you didn’t make your announcement right away, but most of us are extremely impressed, and that is quickly overshadowing any resentment we feel about the lack of immediate transparency. I came to you because I wanted to meet the man who refused to die. I wanted to meet the man who my sister underestimated. You want my body, you can have it. You want me to jump to another one, and have that instead, just say the word.”

“That’s not what this is about for me. I don’t feel emotions for bodies. I feel them for people. And we just met.”

“We can take it slow,” she said with a shrug as she tossed her towel into the material reclamator, and started slipping on the outfit. “But maybe not too slow. After all...if you’re planning on dying in less than a century, you better get on it. You don’t have as many opportunities to find happiness as almost everyone else in this part of the galaxy. I admire that in people like you, but...not if you take it for granted.”

“I don’t need you to feel any particular way about me. I just want you to tell me what you really want. And don’t say it’s just about sex. I don’t believe that.”

“You told me you didn’t want me to tell you yet.”

“I changed my mind.”

She nodded. “I’m part of a group.”

“Oh, shit.” That word. His brain instantly associated it with other, less innocuous ones, like rebellion, insurgency, or traitor.

“Don’t be like that. We’re not violent. We’re connoisseurs of Earthan history. Ya know, our ancestors were grown in test tubes by a madman, who stole them from a ship, which originated in the Gatewood Collective, and whose passengers were once refugees from another universe, which were the descendants of runaways...from Earth. Yes, our peoples have a longer history of fleeing oppression and strife than you might know. But while we don’t call ourselves vonearthan, we are all technically sourced from there. My group studies the homeworld, because we believe it is the absolutely most important aspect of our lives, now that we even know it exists. I came to you, Dreychan, because if you want to know how to formulate the new government of Castlebourne, you have a perfectly good model to base it on. Earth spent thousands of years trying to figure it out. Don’t reinvent the wheel. My friends and I will show you what works. It’s been working for centuries. That’s how they were able to build this paradise.”

“Hrockas built it to get away from Earth.”

“No, he was assigned this planet because while it is naturally barren, it’s stable, gravitationally healthy, and the host star is relatively similar to Sol. Its distance from the Core Worlds is the product of cosmic statistical probability, not a design feature.”

“What are you trying to say now?” He was getting confused.

“Don’t think that you need to rebuild the Council back to how it was. You might not even need a council. All I’m saying is get yourself educated before you start making any decisions. I’m here to give you whatever you need, and I don’t just mean access to my body. My brain is pretty great too.”

Dreychan’s watch beeped, so he checked the notification. “No more express trains for you. You’ve been locked out of government privileges. Or rather, Lubiti was.”

Yunil rolled her eyes. “DNA locks are so stupid anyway. All I need is one hair, and I can grow a passing clone in a matter of months without setting off any alarm bells. It should be brainwave-locked. I know they have that technology. You should demand it.”

Dreychan breathed deeply. “I still can’t trust you. We need to set up that meeting with your so-called sister.”

She chuckled. “That’s not the first time she’s been called that. I call her that. And yeah, I’m down for the meeting whenever. I cancelled all future dome trips, so I’ll just be sitting at home whenever you’re ready. I will be able to leave at a moment’s notice.”

“I’ll talk to my contact again,” Dreychan said. “But right now, I’m exhausted, so I think I’m gonna go home. Maybe we don’t share a train again?”

She shook her head. “We’re not going to the same place anyway. I live in Underbelly.”

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