Showing posts with label impersonation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label impersonation. Show all posts

Sunday, March 31, 2024

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 20, 2441

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, poweredby Imagen 2
While Mateo was taking a trip away from the station, the rest of the remaining team was trying not to get caught. When they first entered this station in 2440, they didn’t want to rely solely on Marie’s excellent impersonation skills. At some point, someone may realize that she couldn’t be who she said she was. Not everyone who worked here was in the hangar bay. As word spread, the chances of somebody catching on increased. The first guard who realized it could have just been the tip of the iceberg. Besides, they didn’t know anything about what objects were being stored here, or how vast the collection was. They needed time to download the manifest, analyze it, and make a plan. Still invisible, Olimpia walked straight to the primary security room too upload a computer worm that would take control of all management systems, but lay in wait during the interim year, so that no one would know that it was even here. Leona, Ramses, and Marie snuck into the main office to find the information that they were looking for. There they uploaded their own worm to gather all data on the warehouse, which they would redownload once they came back.
All of the personnel were so busy trying to find the fake missing item that no one came to bother them, and as midnight was approaching, they held their breaths, hoping that they would jump to the future without anyone realizing it. The staff would be very confused about what happened to their messiah, the godking Oaksent, but they would have no reason to believe that it was really Team Matic in disguise, right? They opened the door to a storage closet so they wouldn’t suddenly appear next year in front of other people when someone actually did show up. “I think I found it.”
“What?” Leona questioned. That should be impossible. They told these people that they deliberately misplaced a warehouse item at an earlier date, and that whoever discovered it would be rewarded. But nothing was actually misplaced. It was just to keep everyone busy while they executed the heist. They didn’t consider the possibility that an artifact was genuinely misplaced without their intervention, probably accidentally. A flaw in their plan.
The young man, whose job in the station was not immediately clear, held his palms out before them. On top of them was a lighter, and it was one that they recognized. This was the Muster Lighter, which could be used to summon people from distant places as a mass teleportation object. It was lost centuries ago, but it wasn’t entirely out of left field that it should end up here. This region of the galaxy was seeded with life by someone who once lived on the generational ship, Extremus, which launched from the Gatewood Collective, where the lighter was last used and seen. They didn’t think that Bronach was alive at the time, but perhaps a relative stole it, and he ended up with it. Or it was someone else on Extremus, and he procured it later. “This wasn’t in the Time Vault, where it belongs. It was hidden behind a box of scissors by the door to an auxiliary maintenance airlock that doesn’t get use.” When Ramses reached towards it, the young man pulled away. “No. I shall hand it directly to the Emperor.”
Marie nodded appreciatively, and accepted the lighter as ceremoniously as she could while so pressed for time. “Thank you, my child.”
“It’s legit,” Leona said to Marie before turning towards the young man, “but, uhh...this isn’t it. We hid a different item. Someone else must have left this where you found it. They probably just use it to smoke in the airlock, because then they can easily vent it all into space when they’re done.”
He frowned, and hung his head low.
Leona’s watch beeped, as did the other two. “Shit, we gotta go.”
The three of them slipped into the closet, and hoped that the boy would give up, and leave. He didn’t. He opened the door behind them. “Wait, can I still be sent to—”
They didn’t hear the end of his sentence before midnight central hit, and sent them into the future. But they heard it once they came back, “...the resort planet.”
Leona looked at her watch to confirm that they had indeed jumped forward. It was May 20, 2441. She looked over at Marie and Ramses, who now appeared as themselves. They were unable to hold illusions across the time jump. Good to know. “You’ve been waiting for us this whole time?”
“Yes,” the young man answered. “People underestimate me, but I am smart. I had a whole year to work out who you really were, Leona Reaver.” Odd choice for a surname that she technically remembered having, but never actually used in this timeline.
“Who did you tell?” Ramses questioned.
“No one. Something that you probably don’t know about the Corridor is that most don’t give much thought to who the Emperor is, or how the Empire is run. We just deal with our own lives. I have no strong feelings about him. I just wanna get out of here.”
“You want us to take you with us so you don’t have to work anymore?” Leona guessed.
“I think I deserve it. I kept your secret, and lured everyone away for a party that I’ve been planning for months. I don’t know why you’re here, but I know that you won’t stay here forever. You don’t have to keep me, or even take me to Ex-613. You can just drop me off on an uninhabited world where I can live the rest of my life in peace.”
“What do you think?” Leona asked the other two.
“I’m fine with it,” Marie replied. “We’re here to help people, right?”
“Rambo?” Leona pressed.
He was busy studying his tablet. “Oh, I don’t care. The worm has delivered the data. The algorithm found what we were looking for. We were kind of misled. This warehouse is predominantly for banned and restricted tech. As he said, there’s a Time Vault, and that is the only place that stores temporal objects.”
“All right, let’s go there. You’re coming with us,” she said to the refugee.
They made their way along the corridors, up the elevator, and down the people movers. The Time Vault was heavily guarded, as they expected it would be, though their new friend whispered that it was usually worse. The party was a banger. Marie took the initiative to speed up, and approach first. “I see that you are all dedicated to your work, and I would like to thank you for your loyalty and devotion. The winner of last year’s contest has finally found the missing object. That is why we have returned. She would like to attend the party now. Please proceed to the mess hall to offer your joint protection. You will be rewarded for your efforts as well.”
“Sir!” one of them said with intense respect. And then they all left.
“I could get used to this,” Marie mused.
They entered the vault, and started to look around, each of them being drawn to something different. Most of the objects were generic, like teleporter guns, spatial tethers, and wall breachers. These were all lining the walls. Unique and rarer objects were on pedestals in the center of the room, a few of which they didn’t recognize. The Muster Lighter pedestal was empty, which made sense, but so was one labeled for HG Goggles. It was never clear how many pairs of those existed, but like the lighter, these were probably being unlawfully used by some rando who worked here.
“Hey kid, what are ya doing?” Ramses asked as he was inspecting a teleporter rifle.
The refugee was standing before a pedestal near the back, blocking the others from seeing what was sitting upon it. He turned around, holding what resembled a Fabergé egg, though not so intricate and pretty. “They never would have let me in here, but I know that when the Oaksent learns of my heroism, he’ll reward my family with riches beyond imagining. I killed Team Matic.” He turned two sections of the egg away from each other, then another two sections, and then he pressed the plunger that popped up on the top. The egg began to disintegrate, followed quickly by the boy.
“It’s a Lucius bomb!” Leona shouted. “Get out!” As she ran for the hatch, she grabbed a tube of concentrated antintropic nanosealant while Ramses was swiping a clear box. “Olimpia, where are you!” She screamed into her comms.
Olimpia came into view next to her as they were running. “Right here, buddy!”
“Mateo, we’re gonna have to teleport!” Leona cried. “Stop darklurking, and spark a flare! Don’t dock with the station! Just stay within range!”
“We can’t just leave!” Marie yelled, still running. “These people are innocent enough! We have to save them!”
“We can’t!” Leona argued. “There’s too many, and the bomb is too fast!”
“Yeah, we can!” Ramses and Olimpia replied in unison. “I took something!”
“Okay, we’ll try, but I make no guarantees. Ram, where’s the party?”
“A few life signs are scattered throughout the station, but most are right here!” He showed her the dots on the floor plan.
“Tap into the public address system!”
“Go ahead.” Ramses handed her his tablet.
Marie ripped the tablet out of her hands. “This is your emperor, Bronach Oaksent! The station is suffering from a cataclysm! If you are not already at the party, go there now! That is the only safe location! Go! Go!”
“Whatever you two stole,” Leona began, taking the tablet back to keep an eye on the dots, “get ready to use them!” The live sensors were actually pretty smart, and well-distributed. She could watch the dots running for the party, and unfortunately, she could also see dots disappear from the screen, along with the wall boundaries that they were between, indicating that the bomb had already reached that section of the station. All sensors that had yet to be destroyed remained in operation throughout.
They made it to the mess hall, and started funneling people inside until they could do so no longer. The blast was approaching them quickly, and they had to get inside. Leona still didn’t understand how they were going to stop it, though. A Lucius bomb didn’t start working until it reached sufficiently dense matter, and once it did, it didn’t stop until all reachable matter was consumed. It didn’t really matter how thick the walls were. Olimpia had that covered, though. She was the last inside. She immediately turned around, and opened and umbrella, tensely holding it up against the wave of energy trying to kill them. The wall continued to disintegrate, but slower now, and then slower still. They watched as the last remnants of the station disappeared, ripped apart molecule by molecule, until everything but this room was gone, and the tumult ceased. They were now floating alone in outer space. This weird umbrella that none of them had ever heard of before was keeping the atmosphere from escaping into the vacuum.
Olimpia held fast, and smirked at the team. “Topological modulator umbrella. I can’t hold this forever.”
“You won’t have to.” Ramses spun around, and stepped onto the nearest table to address the crowd. “Workers of Ex-467, I know that you’re all scared and confused right now, but we are here to help you! The four of us have the ability to teleport out of here!” He pointed to the Vellani Ambassador, which was hovering over them now. “We could save ourselves alone, or we could save all of you as well! If you would like to die today, stand over by that far wall! If you wanna live, stand on this side, and wait to get into this tiny little box!”
Everyone stood still for a moment before all moving over to the rescue side.
“What the hell is that?” Leona asked him.
“Subdimensional Crucible. It should be able to shrink people.”
Should?” Leona echoed.
“Hey, I’m just goin’ by the name.” Ramses removed the teleporter rifle from his pants, and began to program it.  “I can get everyone in. All you have to do is wait patiently, and maybe give Olimpia a break.”
“I’ll give her a break,” Marie volunteered. She now looked like herself as well. She took hold of the umbrella, and they shared the burden for a minute before Olimpia felt comfortable letting it go.
Ramses used his tablet to interface with the box, and also the rifle. There was enough charge in it to pocket all of these people away. The problem was figuring out how the box worked. If he didn’t understand the mechanism well enough, all he would do was send the first person as a mangled mess of blood and viscera into the box. Everyone else would die when the umbrella stopped working. The survivors eventually started to sit down to wait, trying not too look up at the rippling force field above them, which threatened to fail every few minutes when the current holder of the umbrella got a little tired. It shifted hands periodically amongst the three ladies. A few members of the personnel volunteered to help, but it wasn’t safe. Even if Leona chose to trust them, they did not necessarily metabolize temporal energy. This thing might not work without it. Ramses needed time to investigate it, which of course, he couldn’t do right now.
After half an hour, Ramses was finished with his work. One of the section leads agreed to go first, and report back if anything went wrong. Ramses shot him in the chest, and then Leona used the box’s built-in microscope to check on him. He was standing in a miniature furnished living room in the middle of the box, and waving up at them in all directions. He was so small that he couldn’t even discern the shadows, shapes, and colors above him as people. “All right, he’s fine,” she announced. Who’s next?”
Ramses continued to shoot people with the rifle. It took longer than they would have liked, because the remainders always wanted to be sure that that last person also survived. They were apparently worried that each time was a fluke, and the next one after that may have resulted in disaster. The girls had to keep holding onto the umbrella the entire time, but eventually, everyone was shot and safe in the box, and they could drop it. The atmosphere vented around them as they teleported up to the ship together.
“Long day?” Mateo asked them, perhaps with a little too little sensitivity.
“Let’s just go. I don’t know what the hell we’re gonna do with these people.”
“Did you bring me a present?” Mateo asked.
Leona showed him the nanosealant. “Yes. I think I can fix the reframe engine.”

Sunday, March 24, 2024

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 19, 2440

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2
The team was split, but since there were only five of them now, it was not even. Mateo, Leona, and Olimpia all wanted to reroute the ship, and return to Ex-666, where they might be able to find some allies, specifically Mirage and Niobe. They had to get back to Angela, and since they had no idea where or when she was, seeking out help seemed like the only logical response to this situation. Ramses and Marie, on the other hand, wanted to continue on to Ex-467, where a time tech warehouse was waiting for them to break and enter. The rationale for this was that there had to be something there that could help them instead. Leona didn’t agree. Mirage and Niobe were known variables, while the warehouse could turn out to be completely empty for all they knew, or even just pretty much impregnable. One might think that the result would be obvious, but Marie’s vote held more power, as it was her sister who they were trying to locate. In the end, they kept on course, especially since Angela herself seemed rather excited for this mission, and even though she would like to be here with them, she would be more upset if they skipped it altogether on her account. Marie knew how her mind worked.
When they returned to the timestream in 2440, they immediately learned something about their destination that they could not have guessed before. So far, every Ex- designation referred to either a planet, or a person, with the planetary designations being significantly shorter, and the personal designations including the number of their planet of origin. Ex-467 was either a space station, or a ship. Its design included main thrusters that suggested it could be navigated away from the host star that it was orbiting, but the shape itself implied that it was meant to remain a stationary hub at all times. There were tons of ports on it, but none of them was in use at the moment, at least not the exterior ones. There could be large bays somewhere they couldn’t see. It was difficult for their scans to penetrate the extremely thick hull.
Ramses was able to detect teleportation suppressor field generators, however, they were turned off. Mateo and Olimpia were relieved by this until Leona pointed out that they were probably not there to keep people out, but to trap any thieves inside in the event of a breach. If they were going to break in, teleporting was likely the worst way to do it. “Why wouldn’t we break in?” Marie questioned. “Why did we just travel all this way if not to go in and shake some shit up?”
“Poor choice of words,” Leona said apologetically. “All I’m saying is that no one teleports, okay? Not even internally. It’s too dangerous. We are going in...as long as everyone still wants that.”
Marie stepped forward authoritatively. “Yes, everyone wants that.” She glared at Mateo, who was incidentally the most vocal against this route, since they still had no idea what they would be up against.
Mateo regretted being so adamant in his position, but this development only proved his point. Everything they knew about this world came from people who Vitalie!613 had spoken to on the resort world. But they conveniently left out that it wasn’t a planet at all, which placed all intelligence they had regarding the Goldilocks Corridor in question, especially when it came to this place. “Yes, we do,” Mateo said, hoping to earn back some points with Marie.
Ramses nodded. “All right, the computer calculated the safest, most distant point of ingress that’s still large enough for the Vellani Ambassador to dock. We don’t want it to be too big, or our arrival might be noticed. It still might be. We don’t know a whole lot about their security measures.”
“Right,” Leona jumped in. “That’s why we stick together, no matter what. People say that in movies all the time, and it never works out. We can’t afford to get separated, though. If teleportation is our only escape, we absolutely must do it at the same time. That’s the contingency, and we only get one shot.”
“What are we waiting for?” Marie asked impatiently. “Let’s get on with it. It may take us a while to find an alternate self locator, or whatever might help.”
“Hold on,” Mateo urged. “Maybe we shouldn’t get on with it. I think I have a plan that necessitates us waiting. We’ve done something like it before, Leona and I.”
He explained his idea to them, and then they reformulated it together. It immediately called for a reversal of Leona’s order for them to stay together. It was all about misdirection. The Ambassador’s holographic generators were making them look like one of the ships they saw in guardian orbit over Ex-908, which was the planet that was constantly being attacked to test the Empire’s defensive technology. If they ran into other people, Marie was making herself up to look like someone who could not be denied. She was quickly becoming the best at impersonations. Olimpia would remain quiet and invisible the whole time unless they ran into trouble. Ramses and Leona made themselves look like random people that they knew from their pasts, who were not likely to be in any Exin historical records. Mateo was still particularly bad at all the powers, so he was just wearing a physical disguise of a beard and glasses. He was also going to keep his head down, and look like he was the lowest man on the totem pole here. He essentially was, so it wasn’t that great of a stretch. Then again, he was the one who was noticing everyone else’s strengths, and came up with this division of labor in the first place, so he wasn’t totally useless.
A group of guards filed into the room, pointing weapons at them as Leona, stepped out of the ship, alone at first. “State your business, strangers,” the leader demanded of them.
Leona stood tall, and inspected the guards with a cold look on her face. It was the face of a girl she knew in elementary school, aged up to her twenties. “Lower your weapons for the Oaksent,” she commanded.
Ramses appeared from the darkness first, followed closely by Marie to his left, but she no longer looked like herself. She was Bronach Oaksent now, Jacobson-Cline Father of the Goldilocks Corridor, Despot of the Exin Empire, Douchebag of the Milky Way Galaxy. She was their enemy. Mateo followed at her flank in rags as Oaksent’s own personal slave. They didn’t know whether he actually had slaves, but it was a decent educated guess. Plus, they figured that they didn’t have to specify Mateo’s role.
“Oh my God,” the leader uttered. He and the rest of the guards knelt down, but in the worst way they had ever seen. They placed the butt of their respective guns against the floor, and rested their foreheads against the muzzle. They weren’t about to pull the triggers, but it was a horrific sign of deference to an evil leader. Was this what everyone did in the presence of their god-king?
The rest of the team could feel Marie’s reluctance to let them treat her this way, but that wasn’t what the real Oaksent would do. They sent her feelings of support and encouragement, so she composed herself, and pretended like this was all perfectly normal, and not profoundly disturbing at all. She cleared her throat. “Not long ago, I sent a team here to extract an object for me as a test. You failed that test when you failed to report the item missing. Do not feel bad, these were the elites, trained personally by me. And lucky for you, I am now giving you the chance to redeem yourselves. My team did not remove the object from the station. They hid it somewhere else. Search the warehouse now, and bring it to me. The first person to come to me with the correct answer will be rewarded with a permanent life on Ex-613.”
“Sir, if I may,” one of the guards near the back asked, carefully letting his head up. “Many of us have families. Will they be allowed to join the winner on Ex-613?”
Marie waited to respond, trying to decide what Oaksent would say. The most obvious answer was yes. That would only incentivize them even more in this snipe hunt. But that didn’t sound like something the real man would agree to. Remember, he was a ruthless dick. She came up with a compromise. “They will be given their own opportunities to join you. Their place on that world is not guaranteed, but I won’t deny it outright either..”
“Thank you, sir. You are most magnanimous,” the inquisitive one replied.
“Go. Go now. Spread the word to everyone else here!” she ordered as they were running out of the room. “Find me that missing object!” They waited until everyone was gone. “Oh my God, I can’t believe that worked.”
“Ya did good, kid,” Mateo said, throwing an arm around her shoulder.
Just then, a guard came back into the room with a smirk on her face. “I was just transferred here from Ex-42,” she said. “I met you while I was there, sir. Do you remember that?”
“Of course not,” Marie responded. “Why would I recall someone like you?”
She smirked. “Well, you were on your way back to Ex-420. There’s no way you could be here now. You were heading in the wrong direction.”
Marie did her best to look like an offended ruler. “I ordered a change in course. I don’t have to explain it to the likes of you.”
“It’s true, the real Bronach Oaksent would owe me nothing, but you’re not him. There are other issues with your ruse here. For one, Oaksent likes the ladies. He doesn’t own male servants, because he can’t impregnate them with the next generation of servants. So I don’t know who that guy’s supposed to be.” She nodded towards Mateo. “And who’s that crouched on the hull of your ship?” They all fell for it. They spun around to see who the hell she was talking about, only to find that no one was there. When they looked back, the smart guard had her weapon trained on them. “Put your guns down.” They heard a short pounding sound as she lurched, and widened her eyelids. Then her eyeballs rolled out of view, and she fell to the floor, unconscious, but very much alive.
Olimpia briefly made herself visible to the team as she was still holding the gun over her victim, which she had used as a blunt instrument. “Good plan, Matty.”
“Except it’s hard to see how beautiful you are when we can’t see you at all,” Mateo acknowledged. He placed a hand softly upon her cheek as she disappeared again. “Y’all go look for the central database,” he told the other three. “Olimpia, you think you can find the security room on your own? I need to secure this one in a closet, or something.”
“Yes, sir,” her voice replied out of the aether.
They broke into their groups, and went off on their separate missions. What Mateo didn’t tell them was that he wasn’t hiding the guard somewhere on the station. He stuck her in hock on the Vellani Ambassador. A half hour later, midnight central hit, giving the station an entire year to cool down, and relax their defenses.

Saturday, May 21, 2022

Extremus: Year 45

The Kaiora Leithe that is still around and running Extremus is technically eighteen months old. She was cloned into existence back in December of 2312. But of course, that’s not how it works; not in this case. As she has all of the original’s memories, she’s actually 41 years old. This is where the problem lies. Cloning is a delicate process. The safest and healthiest way to do it would be to let the body grow at its normal rate. It’s generally accepted that a biological human specimen is at their peak physical condition in their twenties. At least that used to be the standard. With life extension technologies, and other biomedical advances, that number is essentially meaningless, but all things being equal, this is when it happens. Present-day culture tends to favor age 24, so that’s become the sort of default target for most of these such endeavors. Life expectancy runs to about 108 these days, which means if an individual wants to survive by transferring their consciousness to a clone, they should begin the process by the time they’re 83, to account for prenatal development. And some people do do this. In lieu of transhumanistic implants, they choose to stay young by body-hopping, which is perfectly okay if that’s their thing. But again, the best way to do it is by waiting patiently. Kaiora did not have this luxury.
They needed a way to draw at least one of the impostors out, and their means of accomplishing this was to turn Kaiora into one of them. Or a pair, rather, because both of them were legitimately real. Their plan did not work. No one revealed themselves as impostors, either because they knew this was all a trick, or because they didn’t realize there were two Kaioras. Or maybe they just needed more time, which the original Kaiora wasn’t able to give them. Kaiora!Clone wasn’t able to get any decent information out of Elodie or Greenley, but her original disappeared, with the implication being that she was never going to return. So the clone took over all duties, and basically went back to the way things were. Except it hasn’t been that easy. Kaiora!Clone is sick, and it’s because she was produced too quickly, and possibly also because the people who did it do not stand at the top of their fields.
Dr. Ima Holmes stares at the results, baffled and horrified. This is the woman she loves. They’ve been together for the last six years. How could she not know? How could she not have realized? She doesn’t have a normal weapon, because this is an infirmary, but she does have binding gel. It’s a special solution that seals up wounds, and fosters a rapid healing process in patients. It’s perfectly safe to use anywhere on the body...except for the eyes. She picks it up, and trains it on Kaiora!Clone’s face. She has to stand real close, because the delivery instrument wasn’t designed with distance in mind. She’s also not a fighter, so her hands are shaking, and she probably doesn’t have the nerve to do it. After all, this faker looks exactly like her girlfriend. “Who are you?”
“Ima, relax.”
“If you were my Kaiora, you would know that I hate when people tell me that!”
“Please quiet down, someone will hear you,” Kaiora begs.
“And what would be so bad about that?”
“They wouldn’t understand. I’m hoping you will.”
“Who...are you?” Ima repeats.
“I’m a duplicate.”
“No doy.” That’s a funny thing for a doctor to say.
“I mean...I’m a copied consciousness,” she clarifies. “I am Kaiora Leithe.”
Ima loosens her elbows, but doesn’t drop the impromptu weapon. “How do I know that? How can you prove it? Say something only she would know.”
“That test doesn’t actually work,” Kaiora explains. “If you have the ability to map and copy a person’s mind, you necessarily have the technology to read it, and capture any data you need to impersonate the victim. You taught me that.”
Ima loosens up a little more. She did say that to her at one point. “Okay, then why. Why do this?”
“Because there are impostors on this ship, and we’re trying to root them out.”
“You and the other you are doing this?”
“Us, and a secret team of quarantined experts. Though, expert is a strong word.”
“Obviously! Look at you, you’re dying!”
“Shh.”
“Don’t shush me. You’re not Kaiora.”
“I am.”
“Identity means one.”
“I think we both know it’s more complicated than that. Are you the same person you were fifty years ago? Five years? Five seconds? Everyone is always changing—”
“...down the river of uninterrupted experience and atomic transposition. Yes, I taught you that too. I just...feel violated.”
Kaiora takes Ima’s hand in both of hers, but makes no move to take the binding gun. “I remember when we met. I remember when I professed my love to you. I don’t mean I recall the story. It happened to me, and I still feel it. I’m just in a new body, that’s the only difference.”
Ima gently pulls away, and carefully sets the gun down. “Where’s the other one? Where’s the one who’s in the body I’m familiar with?”
Kaiora hesitates to answer.
“Tell me!”
“I don’t know! She disappeared. She went off on some secret mission.”
Ima begins to pace, and itch herself out of stress. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She didn’t tell me where she was going, or even that she was leaving at all. I only found out because I went back to the secret quarantine section for a periodic check-in, and realized that something was up. She had been gone for a week by then.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Fourteen months.”
“Jesus Christ. My girlfriend’s been dead for over a year, and I didn’t know.”
“We don’t know that she’s dead. And I’m your girlfriend. I’m just as much her.”
“Oh, yeah? You’ve been sleeping next to me for fourteen months, right?”
“I have.”
“And what about before that? Did you two share me?”
Kaiora hesitates to answer again.
“This isn’t gonna work if you’re gonna hold things back. Spit it out.”
“No. I...I didn’t touch you. Our cabin door is a portal. If I punch in a special code, instead of unlocking it, it will open that portal, and transport me to a dark and unused area of the ship. Even someone in the hallway watching me step over the threshold would think I just went inside. But I slept elsewhere, alone.”
“So for however long after you were created, we weren’t together. And then you assumed the responsibility of being the love of my life, only because you happened to be the only one left.”
“Well, yeah, if you wanna twist it up like that, you can make it sound horrific.”
“It is horrific! My girlfriend is dead, and I barely know you.”
“That’s not true. I explained, I’m a copy.”
“But when we had conversations that stemmed from moments we shared months prior, you didn’t know what I was talking about, so you had to guess.”
Kaiora sighs. “Yes, there were times I was a bit lost, and I had to use context clues to fill in the blanks.”
“The first time we met, our relationship started with a lie, because you told me the reason I hadn’t seen you in a week was because you were so busy with confidential stuff in the Bridger section.”
“Again, that’s not when we first met.”
Ima starts to shake her head. “I knew this wouldn’t work out. You’re too much younger than me. You’re too young. And now it’s even truer, because you’re, like...” She looks back at the results real quick. “Eighteen months old. My God, I’m a pedophile.”
“Don’t say that, goddamn. That’s not how it works, I’m not a baby!”
“That’s something a baby would say.”
“No, she wouldn’t!”
Ima takes off her reading glasses, and rubs the bridge of her nose. “I know. This is just...a lot.”
“I know,” Kaiora echoes.
“I feel like I just lost someone. The fact that you’re...it doesn’t mean I didn’t lose her.”
“I know,” she repeats.
“Will we ever see her again?”
“Looking at the future is illegal.”
“So is this.”
“It’s not,” Kaiora assures her. “We covered our asses.”
“No, you didn’t,” Ima counters. “Kaiora Leithe was selected as Captain of this ship, based on that river of uninterrupted experience we were talking about earlier. When she was cloned, her river continued as it normally would, but you’re not on this same river. That moment was a conflux, which branched out into something new. You are not the captain.”
“I would hardly think of it this way.”
“The crew might disagree.”
“Well, then it’s a good thing you’re going to tell anybody about it.”
Ima shakes her head at the tablet. “I have to report this. You’re not fit for duty until we figure out how to repair the cellular damage. Normally, doctor-patient confidentiality would allow me to get by without explaining thoroughly, but what little information I’m obligated to disclose is probably enough for them to figure it out. This level and type of degradation really only has one cause.”
“What exactly is that cause?”
“Kaiora, your body is aging rapidly. Outside, you’re still fine. For some reason, the epidermis is hardier than other organs. But inside, you’re about my age.”
“Perfect, that’s what we always wanted.”
“Don’t joke about this.”
“What’s the prognosis?”
“Kaiora, you need—”
“What’s the prognosis?” Kaiora interrupts. “Clone or no, I’m entitled to bodily self-determination, and I deserve all pertinent data to make informed decisions.”
“With proper treatment, ten years, but you would have to step down in order to undergo such treatment. It’s pretty intense and involved.”
“What kind of treatment can you give me if I don’t step down?”
“Kaiora—” she tries to answer incorrectly again.
“What kind of treatment!”
“With regular injections, you could keep going for half that. You’ll be dead in five years.”
Kaiora slides off the table, and strips off her gown. “I only need three years and seven months.”
Ima tilts her head to consider this number. “No, you’re not going to just stay alive until you can finish your shift. We’re fighting this. I might be able to get more than ten years out of you, especially if we can find your original. She can help. I mean a kidney transplant alone could give you another extra year.”
She stops putting her clothes back on, and wraps Ima in an embrace. “I don’t need eleven years. I need four. That’s all that matters.”
“Kai-kai, I can’t...outlive you?”
“In a couple, someone always outlives the other.”
Ima begins to cry. “But it’s not supposed to be me. I’m more than three decades older, that’s preposterous.”
“You have more than eleven years out of you anyway,” Kaiora reasons.
“I really don’t. Especially not now. You know how many people decline and die of a broken heart? It’s a lot more common than you think. The loss of a significant other reduces life expectancy by an average of five years.”
“Five plus five is barely less than eleven. And let’s face it, we’re not finding my original. So it’s back down to ten, so we would go out at the same time.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ima argues, “and these are just numbers. You don’t have exactly ten years. I need to run more tests, and you have to not give up. That will kill you faster than anything.”
“I love you too,” Kaiora says.
“I’m not there yet. This is still hard.”
“I understand.”
Kaiora puts her clothes back on and leaves the executive infirmary. That went better than she thought, but it’s not over. No one else can find out. She’ll be fine if she can’t be an admiral, but she can’t lose her seat before her time. She can’t let what happened to Halan happen to her. It would be a political tragedy. She realizes as she’s walking down the hallways that there’s something very important she needs to start thinking about now. Even if she weren’t dying, it’s about time for her to consider who will succeed her. There are surely any number of amazing candidates at the academy, or recently graduated, who would be great for the role. She’s not been paying much attention to them, though, which is just another way she’s not lived up to Halan’s example. It’s okay, she still has time; very little of it after the diagnosis, but enough.

Saturday, May 14, 2022

Extremus: Year 44

Cloning and self-duplication are not illegal in the stellar neighborhood, which serves Earth at its center. It’s not even technically illegal on Extremus, but it’s effectively so, because some of the technology required to make either of such things happen have indeed been outlawed. Kaiora jumped through a lot of legal loopholes to institute the Clone and Consciousness Transference team within the secret quarantined section of the ship that she’s been working with. It’s all above board, though of course, not public knowledge. She originally authorized it in order to study the impostors that are running around unchecked, but she made sure to have the ability to use it herself should the need arise. Hindsight being what it is, she’s convinced herself that this was probably her plan all along. She always knew she was going to pretend to have an impostor. It’s an incredibly risky plan, as the whole idea behind the secret quarantine in the first place is to keep it...well, secret. She doesn’t want to cause a panic, but this may be the only way. Elodie’s duplicate detection program using the security cameras will only supposedly find two copies of the same person. It won’t help them understand where the impostors are coming from, or who’s responsible. It won’t even work at all if the impostor killed or stashed the original.
The scientists have been hard at work, ensuring that the technology they’re using is sound and safe. Just like everyone else on the secret team, these are not the best that Extremus has to offer. All of those people are busy being rock stars who would look quite appetizing to a group of impostors looking to disrupt the status quo. Still, they’re good enough, and it only took them the rest of the year to be confident enough to let Kaiora create a copy of herself. This copy is not an automaton that’s just going to stand there and take orders. She is the real Kaiora, as the original is also real. They both carry the same memories, the same personality, and the same claim to the captain’s chair. Again, duplicating itself isn’t against the law, but in this case, it might as well be. Even suggesting that they’re both in charge of the ship and crew is basically blasphemy. Can you imagine how dangerous it would be if this got out of hand? Kaiora could copy herself dozens of times, outman the rest of the crew alone, and use their position to take over completely. No, no one will be able to let this stand. She’s about to lose her job, but it will have been worth it if it works. She doesn’t know if Halan would be proud, or disappointed that she followed in his footsteps towards a treasonous act.
It’s March of 2313 now, and the two Kaioras have been successfully running the show in tandem with each other for the last four months. No one has noticed. Elodie’s detection program has caught them perfectly every day, but the public hasn’t spoken up about any discrepancies. They’re not even working that hard to make sure they avoid running into each other. They do, to be sure, because a real impostor would do just that, but she was worried over nothing about how difficult that would turn out to be. She probably could have entrusted the mission to any idiot. The hope is that only another impostor—or someone else involved in the impostor insurrection—will take notice before anyone else, and pull them aside quietly. This is why they can’t force an encounter with each other. They have resigned themselves to the possibility that someone else will realize instead, and make a big stink about it. That might still give an impostor the opportunity to step in, but Kaiora’s career will have been ruined regardless.
The impostor hunting team has no normal way to reach out to Kaiora if they need to speak with her. The entire purpose of the quarantine is to keep them isolated from society. If they can communicate with people on the outside, the integrity of the mission is lost. Still, Kaiora needs to know if there’s an emergency, so she’s decided to trust one person. Mediocre hacker, Elodie Seabrooke has control over all of the ship’s cameras, which she uses to look for duplicates. These cameras do not have speakers, or blinking lights, but they do have apertures.
When this aperture is adjusted, it makes a very faint noise, just as you would expect. Any given camera has no reason to adjust the aperture, because it operates best at a wide angle to close blindspots. They were only designed this way because it was a cheap and easy feature that they would rather have and not need, than need at some point, and not have. By opening and closing the aperture of the nearest cameras to Kaiora, Elodie can signal a return to base. This happening once means nothing, as it could simply be a normal security officer who is bored sitting at the monitors. But if the aperture noise makes a distinct pattern, and keeps happening with other cameras as Kaiora moves, then it means something.
Kaiora cancels her next meeting, which is fortunately not too important, and since it’s with her girlfriend, Ima will understand. Dr. Holmes doesn’t know anything about this. She knows she can’t know everything that the Captain deals with. Kaiora heads for the secret section, and opens the interior door.
Dr. Malone is there, just like he so often is. “Captain, I need to speak with you.”
“Did you summon me here?”
“No. How would I do that?”
“So you’ve just been hanging out by the door, like I’ve asked you a million times not to do.”
“It’s really urgent.”
“What’s really urgent is protocol. You’re making me think that you’re trying to look for a way to escape. There’s a reason I have to unlock two doors to get in here, and there’s a reason there’s nothing of note at the entrance which might excuse one of you ever being too close, and there is a reason we built a special hock in this section. Are you understanding me?”
“Sir.”
“Bye,” she says coarsely.
“Bye,” he echoes bitterly.
Kaiora enters Elodie’s room, and shuts the door behind her this time. It’s cleaner now than it was a year ago; organized and well lit. There’s a pleasant smell. “Please tell me you reached out.”
“I did, thanks for coming so quick,” Elodie replies.
“Did you find a duplicate?”
“More like a single-cate,” she says, knowing it’s a dumb joke. She navigates to the right screen, and turns the monitor so that Kaiora can see better.
Kaiora leans in close to get a good look. It’s an empty hallway at first, in what she knows to be a vacant section. It hasn’t been populated yet, because they don’t need the space yet. Then the door opens, and a figure steps out. His back is turned to the camera at first, but then he spins around. It’s Yitro Moralez. He has been on a mission off-ship for the last thirteen years. “Is this the first time you’re seeing him?”
“It’s the first time that I’m seeing him. I don’t know if the cameras spotted him before. I didn’t program them to flag other unusual activity; just duplicates. Once a week, I run a diagnostic on every single camera the ship has, even the dormant ones. It turns them on for several seconds if they aren’t already on. He happened to step outside, and got flagged by the regular security system which checks for dark section movement.”
“Are those cameras back on now?”
“Yes,” Elodie answers, “the feed is flowing directly through me; not security.”
“But they saw him during the diagnostic. They saw those few seconds.”
Elodie waits a moment. “The system saw him, I don’t know if a human did. People use those sections all the time; teenagers wanting to fool around in private, people on long walks. Especially since you shut off all teleportation, people do have to cross out of an in-use area to get to one of these places, which means each subsequent camera can flip on to follow them. Lieutenant Moralez has to have been there for a very long time if this is the only camera that ever clocked him.”
“He’s a captain now,” Kaiora says. “Or he was, or he will be. We don’t know who that is. He could be a duplicate, or he could be here as a time traveler. We don’t know anything. All we know is that an entity who resembles him was at that very door in that very moment, for a few seconds. He could have his own form of teleportation that I don’t know about. That’s always been a possibility.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Your system is ready to flag him again if he ever shows up, correct?”
“Correct,” Elodie confirms.
“I’m going to investigate personally.”
“Are you going to tell the other you?”
“No, let her run the ship for now.” Kaiora leaves, and heads back for the exit.
Dr. Malone is waiting in the hallway yet again. “Captain, it’ll only take a second.”
“Guard!” Kaiora calls.
The one security officer she’s quarantined, runs up, wiping crumbs off of his lips.
“Place him in hock.”
“For how long?”
“Until I come back and change my mind.”
“Please, Captain! No!” Dr. Malone struggles, but is no physical match for the largest guard Kaiora could find. He never even trained for the job. His size and strength are the only reasons he’s here. The other subjects are finding this isolated life to be difficult, but he has thrived. It’s pretty easy to keep him happy.
Kaiora leaves the secret section, and heads for the other secret section. It’s been unused for the whole year, since the only purpose of it is to house the time machine, which they never intended to use again. Greenley is already there, like she’s been waiting. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to talk you out of it,” the head temporal engineer replies.
The Captain points an accusing finger at her. “You’re colluding with a seer.”
“I wouldn’t use that word,” Greenley defends. “It’s not nefarious. We’re trying to protect you. This machine is extremely dangerous. We’ve never seen anyone come back out of it. I wish we had never built it in the first place. Don’t..do this.”
Kaiora fumes. She has to go back to earlier today to intercept the supposed Yitro. It’s a necessary sacrifice. “I’m doing it. So turn it on, and do your job. That is an order.”

Saturday, May 7, 2022

Extremus: Year 43

Finally finished with her regular duties for the day, Kaiora leaves the bridge, and heads for a secret section of the ship that almost no one has access to. It’s not technically part of the Bridger Section, but it’s close, and just as hidden. Temporal engineers, Kumara and Greenley are already there, along with Kumara’s husband, and the current Head of Security, Errol. This is the braintrust at the moment. No one else knows what they’re doing, and no one else has been in here for the last six months. They rebuilt their time machine from scratch, believing that to be the better choice than to try to figure out how the first one was sabotaged. The secondary mission is to investigate the origins of Fake!Rita Suárez, but the primary is to rescue the people who were sent to the reverse time dimension without their consent or foreknowledge. They will starve to death unless someone enters the dimension now, and goes back with supplies. Everyone has their fingers crossed, hoping that nothing goes wrong this time, because if it does, all will probably be lost, and whoever was responsible for the sabotage in the first place will likely destroy everything.
Speaking of which, Kaiora’s been quite busy with other things. The executive civilian government package had to be replaced, but as Captain, she had to decide not to tell anyone exactly what happened. This proved to be a very unpopular decision, but there was nothing she could do. The saboteurs placed her in such an awkward position. Either she was honest, and caused a shipwide panic, or she kept quiet, and risked losing their confidence. There was every chance that her shift would end prematurely because of this, just like Halan before her. Maybe no captain would be destined to serve as long as they were supposed to. Maybe this whole experiment was a failure, and it was only a matter of time before the consequences reached critical mass. It seemed like such an easy concept. Take a generation ship to the other side of the galaxy. Everyone here volunteered to come, even the children. Why have there been so many obstacles? Why have they accumulated so many enemies?
“We’re ready, sir,” Greenley says.
Kaiora sighs, and stares at the new machine. She looks around, in the direction the observation room would be if they were doing this in the same lab as before. There’s nothing there. That doesn’t mean that nothing can go wrong, though, and she’s been fending off her paranoia since August; perhaps even longer. “Are you two ready?”
“Operation Tenet is a go,” Kumara confirms. It wasn’t until after the first attempt at this that someone pointed out that the reverse time dimension is very similar to a plot point in an ancient movie from Earth Apparently, the idea of moving backwards in time isn’t the main point of the story, but rather what would happen if you were shot with a bullet going in the wrong direction. Obviously the real answer is, just like a regular bullet if you happened to be facing the other direction yourself, but whatever.
“Don’t call it that,” Kaiora orders.
“Sir.”
“Proceed when ready,” Kaiora says. “Take your time.”
“We know you have other places to be,” Errol says as he’s checking his inventory one last time, and stepping into the chamber.
“I appreciate that.”
Kumara shuts the door behind them, and returns the a-okay gesture when Greenley queries him with it. Greenley then looks over at the Captain.
“I’m fine,” Kaiora assures her. “If it’s sabotaged a second time, then nothing matters. Just do it.”
Greenley casually salutes her boss, then presses the button. The two rescuers disappear. And they don’t come back.
“Shouldn’t they have returned by now?” Kaiora questions. “I mean, it’s time travel. Nothing should be able to hold them up, except for death.
“That is the most likely explanation,” Greenley agrees.
“So, they are dead?”
“Probably.”
“Corinna, and the rest of them; they’re dead too?”
“Probably,” Greenley repeats.
The Captain sighs again, and pinches her nose. “Congratulations, Greenley Atkinson. You are now Head Temporal Engineer for the failed interstellar mission known as Project Extremus.”
“Thank you, sir,” she answers just as unenthusiastically. “I’ll try to hold it all together for as long as I can before the walls come crumbling down around us.”
Kaiora starts to walk out. “Yeah, unless you find something better to do, in which case, I say go follow your bliss. I have to see if we can detect impostor clones...for all that that’s worth at this point.” She exits, and heads for another secret room.
Dr. Malone has clearly been waiting at the interior entrance impatiently. “Captain, please, I need to talk to you.”
“You’re not why I’m here today,” Kaiora warns him. “Don’t linger by the door either. It’s not protocol.” She keeps walking down the hallway.
“I’m sorry, and I understand that, but it’s really important.”
“Has one of the subjects come to you with some specific issue?”
“Well, no, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing okay.”
“Of course not, but it’s not your job to break them out of here. It’s your job to make them comfortable during their stay on a psycho-emotional level. I have given you more than enough resources to help them. What could you possibly need beyond that?”
“I think if they just got a few minutes on the outside, it—”
Kaiora stops shortly. “No. The point is to keep you inside, and isolated. You take one step out that door, and you’re compromised. I can’t be sure that the person who walks back through is the same one that left. Now. Is this about the other guests, or is this about you?”
“We’re all in this together.”
“No, Dr. Malone. I’m in this alone. You’re all here to help me get through it. Where’s Miss Seabrooke?”
“Where she always is,” Dr. Malone answers. “I still wanna talk,” he adds as she’s leaving him behind.
She ignores him, and enters the Seabrooke Lab. It’s an absolute mess. Meal bar wrappers all over the place, cans of civilian grade soft drinks at varying degrees of crushedness piled in the corner. There’s a smell. “How’s it coming?”
“Slow,” Elodie Seabrooke replies. She doesn’t turn away from her screen.
“That’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I’m doing my best, it’s just not good enough.”
Kaiora sits down in the other chair, and turns Elodie by the shoulders. She has to wave her gaze forwards to make eye contact too. “I didn’t want to say this before, because I didn’t want to make any of you feel bad, but judging by the looks of this place, it may be time for the last resort.”
“What last resort?” Elodie tries to look back at her computer, but accepts it when her Captain pulls her back into the conversation by the chin.
“Do you know why I selected this team? The researchers, the second level research subjects?”
“No, I’ve been wondering why. None of us isssssssssss...particular good.”
Kaiora lets out an unfortunate sigh, like she always does. She once caught a crew member calling her Captain Sighmaster. “That’s why I chose you. The imposters are taking on the forms of people at high levels. They want to be captain, and first chair, famous scientists, engineers with high clearance. You’re not unimportant, Elodie, but you’re not the best computer engineer this ship has, and that’s what makes you perfect for the job. I don’t know how long it’s going to take you to figure this out, but I’m patient, because if I chose a colleague of yours who graduated top of their class, they may already be compromised. Again, I didn’t want to say this, but look at it this way; there are advantages to living under the radar. If this team solves this problem, your mediocrity will drain away, and no one will ever forget the name Elodie Seabrooke.”
Elodie holds her breath, then spits it all out at once. “Oh, that is such a relief. Oh my God, it’s like the anxiety squeezing me has finally let go. I thought you had just made a terrible, terrible mistake, and I was desperately trying not to disappoint you.”
“I don’t want you to worry.”
Elodie leans the back of her leg against her chair, and stares up at the ceiling. “Now it all makes sense. Have you met Malone? Man, he’s terrible. He never makes us feel at ease. He’s the most maladjusted, neurotic, disquieting therapist I’ve ever met.”
“You’re gonna have to cut him some slack. He has a job to do here too.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
They sit in silence for some time.
“What do you have for me so far?”
“Well, the facial recognition software is fine,” Elodie begins. “I mean, it’s as good as I can get without access to the real cameras. It successfully flags our two sets of twins, even when we dress them up differently. I’m still struggling with matching across time. If it captures one twin at 19:00, and then another at 19:05 on the other side of the section, it thinks that’s all right, because it’s entirely plausible that the same person simply walked over there. I haven’t even begun to think about how we might incorporate teleportation.”
“Don’t factor that in,” Kaiora says. “I’m going to ban teleportation for the next several years.”
Elodie is surprised. “Really?”
“Yeah, for this very reason. It’s just...there’s just too much data.”
“It shouldn’t be the hardest thing in the world. The impostor would probably be wearing the same clothes as the person they’re impersonating.”
“But they might, because they might have that data. We still don’t know who they are, or where they came from. Hell, they could be some kind of pure energy-based alien race who are just trying to study us.”
“Still haven’t captured one yet?” Elodie asks.
“Not a live one, no. The genetics team can’t move forward without them, so our control group has nothing to do. I need to find a way to draw them out.”
“I may have your solution to that problem.” They turn to find Daley McKee in the doorway. He’s a nurse in charge of caring for the genetic subjects in that capacity. Or rather, he would be doing that if they had any impostor subjects to compare to the control group. “I volunteer as tribute.”
“You what?”
“We’re looking for impostors, right? We’re looking for people who are so convincing that the alien contaminant detectors on this ship can’t...detect them. We think they’re clones, using DNA stolen from their victims in various ways. So why don’t we play their game.”
Kaiora finds herself looking back over to Elodie, who says, “don’t let him make you think he came up with this plan on his own. We talk about this over lunch all the time. If we were to create our own impostor, and then fabricate a situation where that impostor is outed, it might draw out one of the evil impostors.”
“Yeah,” Daley continues, “the evil impostor may try to help our plant—a.k.a. me—or they may be like, why the hell are you pretending to be the Captain? We never assigned you that role. Who are you really?”
“You want to impersonate me?” Kaiora questions.
“Or whatever.” Daley shrugs. “Probably not, actually, because then we risk the mob deciding that you might be the impostor instead. We should choose someone important, who you don’t like all that much, so if both the impostor, and the real person, are killed, no big deal.”
“In this scenario, are you still the good impostor?”
“Yes, but don’t you worry none about me. It’s like you were telling her, we’re not important.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Okay...but we’re not.” Daley crosses his arms. “Look, Cap...”
“Don’t call me that.”
Daley goes on without missing a beat, “...I would be honored to die for my ship...for the mission. Then I really would be important. We have to figure out who these people are, and if I don’t survive, at least I’ll know I did everything I could. It’s a good plan.”
“It’s not a plan,” Kaiora contends. “It’s an idea.”
“I’ve heard it both ways.”
Kaiora looks at Elodie again, who widens into a very fake and unconvincing smile.
“All right, I’ll authorize preliminary discussions into this potential plan. I make no further promises, though.”
“Great!” Daley says, legitimately excited. “I’ll go talk to the Clone and Consciousness Transference teams.”
Preliminary!” Kaiora shouts to him as he’s running away.
“Are you really gonna do this?” Elodie asks.
“I think we both know that it’s gonna happen, and that it’s gonna end up being me, because I can’t risk anyone else’s life.”
“You would still be risking Daley’s,” Elodie points out.
Kaiora shakes her head. “No, I won’t. Nobody’s going to be transferring their mind into a clone of me. I’m going to be duplicating myself.”