Microstory 2342: Vacuus, March 18, 2179

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Dear Condor,

Ha, you’re welcome for the ultra-capacitors. Yes, I invented them single-handedly when I was nineteen years old. I’m a god here. Hopefully that makes up for missing your last 36 birthdays! Speaking of which, ours is coming up soon. What do you typically do to celebrate? Mother and I would always spend the day together, but we didn’t have any specific traditions that we held to. There’s not a lot of different forms of recreation, and nothing that you could consider special. The best I have ever been able to really do is take the day off, and kind of relax all day while someone fills in for me. I suppose that part won’t necessarily change, even though mom’s gone. I really wish that you and I could do something together, or at least communicate in real time. Maybe we could agree to do the same thing at the same time, when the day comes. On second thought, that’s not a great idea, because then you’re limited to staring at rocks, or just hooking up to a virtual simulation. I dunno, I’m starting to get on another emotional ramble. Let’s move on. That’s interesting about the Australian coast, and the condition that you stay there for a period of time. Australia is a big place. Do you have to stay near the dome you were trading with, or is the whole continent fair game? If it’s the second one, then this stipulation feels a bit arbitrary. Maybe they have a reason that makes sense when you hear it. Can you see land outside your window where your stateroom is, or can you really not tell any difference during your daily life? I hope that your other trading partners don’t have any issue with you being so far away all this time, but surely you have other means of transport. No, I know that you do, because your father didn’t have to wait until your platform made it back to where he was to get back on board, or you would have said something along those lines. That sounds like a fascinating job to me, to go all over the world, transporting people between the safe zones peppered in all over the globe, but very dangerous, like the field workers on Vacuus. I’m honestly glad that you don’t do that.

Cheers mate,

Corinthia

Microstory 2341: Earth, March 11, 2179

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Dear Corinthia,

Ultra-capacitors, really? That was you? We use those here for everything. It was a breakthrough in technology, which has allowed us to harness the power of lightning, just like you do, but has had numerous other applications through advancements in miniaturization. Back in the olden days, it would take minutes, or even hours, to charge a small device. Now it takes seconds. I just place my phone on the charging pad, and it’s at 100% by the time I can take my watch off to charge it next. Some people even have these gun-like chargers where you simply point and shoot at what you want charged. They’re developing persistent charge technology as well, but that’s a few years away, and would take a lot of retrofitting for preexisting infrastructure. It’s mostly the backend that’s slowing us down on that, though. We need a constant, reliable source of energy generation, which lightning strikes do not provide. It’s particularly hard to develop such things on a moving platform on the water. They never told us that these inventions ultimately came from off-world. I hope that it’s in the literature somewhere—and I’m just ignorant as an individual—not that they’re intentionally hiding the truth from us to allow someone else to take credit. To answer your sort of question, we’re not back out to sea just yet, but definitely by the time you read my letter, we will be. All of our new friends are now safely inside the dome, but we’re still docked because they’re still making sure that everyone who came won’t change their mind, and everyone who chose not to come hasn’t changed theirs. We have the luxury of being able to go wherever we want most of the time, but that’s not going to be the case for the near future. Part of the negotiations involve us staying close to the Australian coast for at least the next six months. We can still move around, which we do to maintain safety and security, but we can’t stray too far. I believe that that’s what slowed the talks down overall. We also move around to trade and interact with other land partners, but that won’t be possible until our time is up. I personally don’t see us staying a minute past our negotiated duration, because we want to maintain positive relations with other regions, though many are projecting that we’ll be here for a full year. We’ll have to wait and see. Speaking of the future, we’re probably a couple months out from reaching Bowen Orbital Spaceport. You and I will be the closest we’ve ever been since we started talking. After a quick car ride, I could be stepping onto a shuttle, headed your way, haha.

Thanks for the electricity,

Condor

Microstory 2340: Vacuus, March 4, 2179

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Dear Condor,

It’s okay that Pascal won’t be able to write for a while. Honestly—and you don’t need to tell him this—it’s a little awkward. These are just letters, but I still felt like I was on a blind double date, which I know is a weird way to look at it. I suppose we could always speak through you if we really needed to. That’s great news about reaching your rendezvous point. How long will/did it take? By the time you read this letter, you may be well on your way back out into sea. Make sure you choose the right path, though. It sounds like the weather is pretty dangerous out there. I never thought about that, about how the toxins in the atmosphere could make things even more dangerous. We learned about climate breakdown in school. Things were already not as safe as they were a couple hundred years prior. Humans were evidently damaging Earth before they started to do it intentionally to harm each other! I just hope your leaders always exercise caution. Vacuus does have weather. It’s not nearly as bad as it is for you guys, it’s just different. We experience infrequent, and rather weak, dust storms. These can still damage our instrumentation, though, and our permanently outdoors equipment needs constant cleaning. Or rather, they don’t. We’ve incorporated state-of-the-art onboard self-cleaning technology into nearly everything. You have windshield wipers on your cars with wiper fluid? We do too, but for cameras and other sensors. Instead of going out to clean every day, our field maintenance workers go out periodically to refill the fluid, or maybe repair or replace a blade. It’s much easier, and the infrequency of the task lowers the risk of something happening to them while they’re exposed like that. They’re also at risk of running into electrical storms. These things happen all the time. Our habitats are riddled with lightning rods. They both protect us from the strikes, and help power our habitats. That’s something else we’ve developed out of necessity, ultracapacitors which capture the short, energetic burst of raw power, and store it safely for future use. I keep using words like we, but I obviously had no hand in any of this. As I’ve said, I’m not cut out for field work, and I have no interest in it. I didn’t choose where to break ground on our settlement either, which was not chosen at random. Other parts of the planet experience volcanic activity. Some of these are even cryovolcanoes, which release nasty chemicals like ammonia and methane. Thankfully, we’re really far from those things, but I have a friend who operates a drone array which studies the nearest spots. So yeah, it’s dangerous here, but not worse than Earth. At least no one did it on purpose.

Again, stay safe,

Corinthia

Extremus: Year 83

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It only took Omega and Valencia a couple of weeks to figure out what went wrong with the Nexus, and solve it. Apparently, Vitalie’s use of the network while traveling through time did screw things up, but she wasn’t the only one responsible. A Mark II Nexus, being one that was constructed by the people who invented them in the first place, could handle this complication. It would have been able to compensate for the temporal interference, and sort of reboot itself. The one that Omega built is just as good as these in most respects, but there are some notable differences; differences which the average person would not be able to detect. After careful examination of all the parts and systems, they were able to correct the issue, but only for this particular machine. They’re trying to get to the one on Extremus, which never received the correction. If they could just establish contact with someone on board, the current temporal engineer could probably get it done if they walked them through it, but even their communications are down. They need a creative solution. In three months, they’ve yet to come up with one.

“We can go to Earth first. From there, we can make contact with someone who can help us,” Spirit suggests.

“Do you know of anyone in particular in this day and age?” Tinaya questions.

“No,” Spirit admits. “The historical records don’t go this far.”

“What about Team Keshida?” Belahkay offers.

“Gatewood isn’t in the directory,” Omega explains as he’s pointing to the screen. “I don’t know why not. Maybe they cloaked themselves, or...they moved. A few of these Nexa are in weird places in the galaxy, which could be controlled by friends; maybe even Keshida, but maybe not. I wouldn’t feel comfortable reaching out to them. The Exins think that Verdemus was destroyed. We cannot disabuse them of this misconception, so we cannot risk connecting with any mysteries.”

“I can do it,” Aristotle volunteers for the umpteenth time.

“Remember what happened the last time you tried?” Lilac asks.

Aristotle nods. “I was young, and ignorant.”

“It wasn’t that long ago,” Niobe reminds him.

“I have the tools that I need now,” Aristotle insists.

“The timogramen,” Tinaya realizes. “You’ve learned something about it.”

“Not me,” Aristotle clarifies. “Vaska never stopped studying it. She understands how it works now. It interferes with temporal manipulation when not accounted for, so all you have to do is account for it. You have to know how much timogramen radiation is in your system, how much there is nearby, the temperature and barometric pressure,  the position of the sun and celestial bodies, the precise distance of the destination, and a few other minor factors. But she thinks she can do it. She’s been building something.”

“She’s been building what, a timogramen detector?” Valencia asks him.

Aristotle bobs his head. “She calls it a temporal radiation compensator, but like I said, it has to include a whole lot more in the calculations. Plus, it has to be calibrated for what you’re actually trying to accomplish. If you’re just trying to teleport, it’s one thing, but where I’m going, it’s a whole different thing.”

“Wait, but that’s true,” Tinaya begins. “We teleport on this planet without issue.”

Valencia sighs. “It’s not without issue. The relays just seem to work okay, because most of the time, people are only making short, simple jumps. But we’re doing a lot of maintenance on them. The old relays, before the explosion, were no better.”

“What do you mean, did something happen?” Tinaya asks.

“The Captain. I don’t have the whole story, because I’m not in the loop anymore, but just before the mirror exploded, she tried to hustle the kids through. They evidently didn’t make it to where they were going. I’m not sure how Lataran eventually made her way back, but she was gone for a year. The Ship Superintendent has to step in.”

Tinaya looks over at her husband. “Arqut, is this true?”

“I guess I forgot to tell you about that. The second lieutenant assured me that it was only temporary. She seemed to know something, and it seemed better not to press it. A year later, she showed up.”

“Without the kids,” Tinaya figures. She looks at Aristotle and Niobe now, who are also hiding the truth. “Why does it feel like I’m the only one in the dark here?”

“I am too,” Spirit assures her.

“As am I,” Belahkay agrees.

She’s kind of used to it at this point. There were a ton of things that Lataran didn’t tell her about while she was First Chair, even though she initially expected to be privy to everything upon being elected. Their persistent link to this planet was one of those secrets. Full transparency has never been assumed on the ship, and in fact, would be a dangerous goal to seek. Ignorance Tolerance is a subject that students study nearly every year. When it comes to time travel, no one is entitled to know everything, and children have to learn to deal with it maturely. This is where they memorize Leona’s Rules for Time Travel. She decides to let it go. “Where’s Vaska?”

“Her lab is in the megablock,” Lilac replies. “She likes to work near a lot of other people, like she did on Gatewood.”

Tinaya grabs Aristotle by the hand, and teleports him back down to Verdemus without a word. She sends a quick message to Vaska, who drops a pin. The two of them walk across the courtyard, and enter the lab.

“Miss Leithe, it’s been a while. How have you been?”

“I’ve been all right. Just trying to get home.”

Vaska’s gaze darts over to Aristotle.

“I told her about what you’ve been working on,” he divulges.

“Well, it’s ready. I mean...it’s ready to be tested.”

“Show me,” Tinaya requests.

Vaska opens up a cabinet behind her, and takes out a fairly large box. “It’s just a prototype, so it doesn’t look pretty, but I’m confident in its functionality.” She sets the box down, and removes the lid to reveal a plethora of gadgets, gizmos, and innerworkings. In addition to the expected wires and antenna, there are gears turning each other around, like a timepiece. Tubes are ready to transport fluids between an exposed logic board, and some other apparatus. Two buttons that kind of look like they were originally from a mechanical computer keyboard are rhythmically going up and down in an alternating pattern. LEDs are blinking, and a small display is showing status data. Vaska extends a tiny spyglass to have it standing straight up towards the ceiling. She lifts up what kind of looks like a tiny microphone, but Tinaya recognizes it to be a portable radiometer, probably full-spectrum, in this case. The familiar crackling sound that a radiometer makes when it’s picking up radiation begins to overwhelm the soft buzzing sound that’s been coming from somewhere inside.

“Well,” Tinaya says. “I don’t know what I’m looking at. I don’t know why I thought coming here would be helpful.”

“I can take a look at it.” Valencia turns out to have been behind them. “I’ll make sure it works, and if it doesn’t, make it so it does, or maybe just improve upon it.”

“It’s certainly big enough,” Vaska acknowledges. “I would love to streamline it. What if Mister Al-Amin could wear it on his wrist at all times?” She proposes.

“Does he need that?” Tinaya wonders. “I thought the only issue is when he’s coming from Verdemus. If he’s anything like his father, he’ll be doing a lot of traveling.”

“He is standing right here,” Aristotle states the obvious. “And he considers this to be his home, so he’ll probably frequently return.”

“You’ll need this at any rate,” Vaska explains. “As you said, it’s your home. The temporal radiation that our respective bodies have been exposed to would eventually dissipate given enough time away. But you’re both a choosing one, and you were born here. “It’s a part of you, and it always has been. You probably can’t survive without it. I imagine you’ll have to return here whether you want to or not, or grow the timogramen elsewhere. I hesitate to suggest the latter.”

“Why is that?” Valencia questions.

Vaska is reluctant. “It’s not harmful. It’s time. Temporal energy and radiation are properties of time, and time isn’t harmful. Except that it is. Time leads to entropy. It’s what kills us, and destroys what’s not alive. The timogramen is dangerous. It could be weaponized, and abused...misused. It would probably serve as an invasive species if allowed to spread to other worlds.”

“How did it evolve in the first place?” Valencia presses. “Is it just a coincidence that it grows here?”

“That I don’t know yet, but I’m pretty sure that you did this. You may have created it when you came here. All the teleportation, and the parallel dimensions...Tinaya’s glass skin thing. Plus, the way I understand it, this planet was annihilated years ago, and then someone went back in time to prevent it. That may have had unforeseen consequences, I really don’t know. Fittingly, I need more time for my research. One thing I know for sure is that it’s not perfectly natural, but there has to be something here, or we would already find the stuff on Earth, and anywhere else that time travelers have visited.”

“This is all fascinating,” Aristotle interjects, “but what does it have to do with me, and the job that I need to get done? I have to travel to Extremus, and get that Nexus working, so we can reconnect. Does this do that; that’s all I need to know.”

“That’s not all that I need to know,” Valencia contends. “You will be taking me back, and I need to feel comfortable and safe with that. The questions that I’m asking now are directly related to me reaching that level of trust in your abilities.”

“Fair enough,” Aristotle relents.

“Can that thing make him more precise and reliable?” Valencia goes on, pointing to the contraption.

“On a planetary level, yes,” Vaska answers. “What happened to him before, when he went back in time, and landed way off course, that shouldn’t happen again.”

What does that mean, on a planetary level?”

Vaska clears her throat, and starts touching things on the compensator, and moving some things around as she’s explaining. “The spyglass is a modified form of the Jayde Spyglass, which is why it has any hope of seeing thousands of light years away. But relative to other stars, planets don’t really move. Of course they do—everything moves—but compared to the reframe speeds of the Extremus? It’s nothing. These tubes here feed clarified timogramen juice into the contaminant filter to capture and counteract the temporal radiation that’s bombarding the compensator while it’s in this environment. There’s a limit to that, which is dependent upon its size. The pure timogramen juice can’t absorb enough background radiation to protect the other instruments for the precise targeting that you’re looking for. Therefore, we can shoot for a planet, but not a ship.”

“What if you built a bigger one?” Tinaya decides to suggest. “You could be more precise then, couldn’t you?”

Vaska winces. “With the bigger one, you can specify a more precise target on the planet, but still not a ship traveling at reframe speeds away from us. At a certain point, size doesn’t matter. A larger surface area means more radiation, which means more clarified timogramen juice is necessary, and you end up with diminishing returns.”

“You didn’t say a bigger one,” Aristotle points out. “You said the bigger one. Did you already build it?”

“That’s what I built first,” Vaska answers. “This one is the prototype portable model. I didn’t think that you would want to use the other one, because it’s a power hog, and for my part, I don’t know why it would be necessary.”

“It still needs his temporal ability, right?” Valencia poses. “It just helps people do what they already do?”

Vaska shakes her head. “No, this one only works with him. The bigger model too. It would be useless for anyone else’s power. But yeah, he still gotta do what he does.”

Valencia nods. “We need the precision. Aristotle has to aim for a mining site in one of the star systems where the Extremus deploys a fleet of resource automators. We’ve been getting a lot of data from Project Topdown, so I know where those are going to be.” She consults her watch. “But if we’re gonna intercept them, we have to leave today. The next proverbial gas station isn’t for another proverbial hundred miles.”

“It’s ready when you are,” Vaska promises. “It’s in my garage, and it’s on wheels.”

“Do you wanna say goodbye to your husband first?” Tinaya asks Valencia.

Valencia taps on her neck. “Omega?” She waits for a few seconds. “Bye.”

Vaska leads them into the garage. Aristotle uses his manly strength to pretend to pull the giant temporal radiation compensator out, and onto the sidewalk while the electric motor does the actual heavy lifting. The pallet jack drops the machine onto the grass. A few of Omega’s clones approach out of curiosity. Vaska and Valencia hook it up to the grid, run through a diagnostic, and a form of a preflight check. She and Aristotle agree to take the risk, knowing that it could kill them, and then they unceremoniously turn on the machine, gather the necessary data, and have Aristotle interface with it. Once it’s at full power, he receives the literal green light, and they both disappear.

“I hope it worked.”

“Let’s go find out.” She takes Vaska by the hand, and teleports up to the moon base. They walk into the Nexus lab to find Valencia and Aristotle waiting for them.

“Welp,” Valencia begins. “It technically worked, but we were off schedule by about four hundred years, and needed to build a couple stasis pods.”

Vaska frowns. “I must have missed something. I’m sorry.”

“It’s quite all right, right?” Lataran says as she’s coming out of the control room, eying Valencia. “Now. I’ve been cooped up on that ship forever, and I haven’t been here in a long time. Who here is gonna give me a tour?”

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Extremus: Year 82

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Tinaya has a job to do. She’s standing in the Nexus cavity with Arqut. To her, he’s a hologram, and to him, she’s the hologram. Omega and Valencia want to activate their respective Nexa to full working order at exactly the same time. They have each left one component disabled so they can make their connections simultaneously at the end of a countdown. Tinaya and Arqut will be handling that countdown by syncing up. They’re just waiting for Valencia to finish septuple checking her systems to make sure that this isn’t a huge disappointment. If they end up having messed something up, and they fail to activate at the same time, it’s not the end of the world, though. This is more for fun.

“What exactly is going to happen?” Spirit asks. It’s rather surprising how little she knows about this stuff, given that she’s a Bridger. “Will we be free to travel back and forth right away?”

“No,” Omega answered from the top of the stairs. “We have to wait for approval. Each Nexus has its own term sequence; a unique identifier that allows it to be recognized by the rest of the network.”

“Who exactly makes these approvals?” Spirit questions.

Omega gives Tinaya a look, because he can’t give one to his wife. “Well, we don’t really know. When we built the first one decades ago, it just sort of happened once we fulfilled the requirements.”

“So if we don’t get one of these sequences, we’ll know that you did something wrong,” Spirit figures.

“Yes. It could be a faulty power relay, or even an open access panel. Things don’t have to be perfect all the time, but they do at its first moment.”

“She’s ready,” Arqut announces.

Omega smiles. “Wonderful. Start at eleven.”

Tinaya and Arqut nod, and watch each other’s lips. “Eleven, ten, nine...” They keep doing down until, “one, go!”

Omega pops his head over the desk in the control room, and looks through the window. He switches his gaze between the Nexus chamber and the interface screen.

“Did it not work?” Spirit asks him.

Omega reaches over to the PA microphone. “Everything is loaded, and we’re online. I can see a number of other Nexa that I can shake hands with, but we still haven’t been assigned a term sequence. How’s Val?”

“She seems to be seeing the same thing you are,” Arqut answers.

Technicolor lights fall down from the drum on the ceiling, and flood the cavity. They expand beyond the confines of it, though, and spread throughout the rest of the building, which it’s not supposed to do. Something really is wrong. In a final flash, they find themselves swept away, and dropped onto a floating platform in the middle of the ocean. It’s nighttime, and eerie, but still somehow reassuring? All of them are here together. Even though they still don’t know what the hell is going on, Tinaya instinctively reaches over, and pulls Arqut into a hug. Omega and Valencia do the same. Feeling left out, Spirit and Belahkay hug too, even though they were never apart.

A stranger pulls up in a rowboat with one passenger. They tie off the boat, and help the woman step out. They have to continue to help her when she stumbles like a newborn foal. She smiles at the crowd. “It’s okay, it’s just been a really long time since I’ve stood on a planet.” She clears her throat, and composes herself. A deep breath helps her find her center of gravity, and then she can begin the short walk towards them. “Good evening. My name is Venus Opsocor, and this is my associate, Senona Riggur. I’ve asked to borrow their space so that we may communicate, but understand that you are not entitled to any wishes. We are only here as guests.”

Everyone just looks at each other, trying to figure out what they’re talking about. Wishes?

Venus continues, “normally, when a Mark III Nexus model is adequately constructed, I automatically assign a term sequence to you, and then move on with my duties. It is not custom for me to speak with the builders directly. But I decided to leave my pod this time due to the fact that two Nexa activated at exactly the same time from their reference of time, which I found interesting. Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. I was just curious.”

“Are you the Nexus network?” Omega asks, stepping forward. “Like, are you the embodiment of it?”

“I helped build the Nexa, and I maintain them as a central intelligence. The network is just that, a network. I’m not the network itself, but I live in it.”

“Wait, you actually invented them?” Valencia asks her in awe.

“It was mostly my partner, but yes,” Venus answers.

“They are a wonder of technology. Can I ask what prompted you—her?”

Venus isn’t sure if she wants to give them an answer, but she does. “In my home galaxy, interstellar travel was difficult. Every journey required traveling to a single location in the center, where a military force kept the gates. Not everyone liked the system. They wanted anarchy. We built the first Nexus network as a sort of compromise to appease them. They thought that they were finally in control, and we...let them believe that. After our civilization collapsed to a great war anyway, I decided to go out and find others who might benefit from their own networks.”

“Fascinating,” Omega and Valencia utter simultaneously.

Venus widens her eyes, and tilts her forehead forward at an angle.

“Oh, right,” Omega says. “Our story. We were stranded on one of our outposts. The ship could not be turned around, so we each built a Nexus to reconnect. We activated at the same time for the symbolism. It’s nothing crazy. We apologize if you having to come here put you out. We didn’t know that it was such a rarity.”

“It’s not simply a rarity, it’s never happened before.” Venus looks around at the group. “You’re from Salmonverse. Are you familiar with a woman named Leona Matic?”

“She’s a celebrity in our culture,” Tinaya replies, “but we’ve never met.”

“I’ve met her,” Omega contends. “I might even call her a friend.”

“If you ever see her, could you pass along a message? Rules have changed amongst my own people. I may not be able to speak with her again myself.”

“We would be happy to,” Valencia promises.

Venus reaches her hand behind her, silently prompting Senona to hand her what looks like a shiny business card. “Can I trust you with this term sequence? Leona will find help there if she ever needs anything, but you would theoretically be able to steal it if you go before her.”

Tinaya reaches for the card. “You can trust me.”

Venus scans the crowd for a consensus on Tinaya’s trustworthiness, which they appear to give, so she hands Tinaya the card. On it are the sixteen symbols that she’s seen all over the place on the Nexa. Most term sequences don’t seem to use every single glyph, but what does she know? “Remind her that she will have to be accompanied by someone who has yet to make a wish of their own,” Venus adds.

“What are these wishes?” Belahkay asks before being elbowed by Spirit.

Venus doesn’t answer. She just looks back at Senona, who nods. “Okay, you may all use the quantum summoning console, even though you didn’t come here on purpose. But try not to be greedy. Whatever you request, you take from somewhere else. It does not conjure something from nothing. I’m setting your return trip on a timer for eleven minutes. Be sure to ask for what you want before then.” She and Senona get back in the rowboat, and disappear into the darkness.

The group walks over to a pedestal sticking up from the platform. It has a dialing pad, and a speaker, but nothing else. “Has anyone here seen anything like this?” Spirit asks the group. “Strongs?”

Omega and Valencia Strong shake their heads. “Nope. This is all new to me, and news to me.” Omega leans his chin forward. “Could I have a pair of cool sunglasses, please?”

A tray slides out of the console, and materializes a pair of cool sunglasses. “It’s like I’m inside the internet.” He puts them on, and shows off. “How do I look?”

“Snazzy,” his wife answers. “Does anyone need anything?”

“I have everything I need right here.” Tinaya has had her arm wrapped around Arqut’s like two snakes this whole time. Now she tightens it.

“I can’t imagine there’s anything we could ask for that we couldn’t procure or fabricate ourselves,” Spirit determines.

“I’m more interested in these wishes,” Belahkay says. “I think they’re meant to be greater than sunglasses.”

“What could be better...” Omega begins, before pulling off the glasses dramatically. “...than these babies.”

They all mostly sit around for the next ten minutes. Belahkay jumps into the water, but climbs back up when Spirit worries that he might end up stuck here if he’s not on the platform when the imaginary timer hits zero. He suggests that they need to find a way back here to get their wishes, but no one else seems to care. They have finally reunited, and have a way to get back to the ship. What else is there?

Just before their time is up, Spirit thinks to request a big beach towel from the console. The technicolor lights overwhelm them again, and send them back, but this time to the same place. While Spirit is drying off her love interest like he’s a helpless child, Omega and Valencia go up to run a diagnostic.

Tinaya prepares to make the jump back down to the planet to tell everyone what’s happened when the Nexus powers up once more. “Are you doing that?”

“It’s not us,” the Strongs say, shaking their heads again.

The drum drops more light down towards the cavity, but this time, only red. After it subsides, one woman is standing there, wearing a heavy parka. She removes it, and looks around, surprised. She’s even more surprised when she sees that she’s not alone. “Oh, cool. You have your own Nexus.”

“Who are you?” Tinaya demands to know, very suspicious of this interloper.

The woman steps out of the cavity, and holds out a hand. “Hi, I’m the Caretaker.”

“You take care of what?” Tinaya asks, still concerned.

“Of your planet,” the Caretaker replies as if it should be obvious.

“We do fine on our own,” Tinaya explains.

“Great!” the Caretaker says. “Then my job should be easy. Sounds like I got the luck of the draw here.”

“Omega, does this facility have a hock?”

“Nope.” The Caretaker disappears, but she returns a few seconds later. She balances her hands on her knees, and catches her breath. “Coulda told me we were on an airless moon. Thanks for that.”

“We didn’t know that you were going to teleport out of here, or even that you could,” Tinaya argues. “Do you require medical assistance?”

“No, I’ll heal. I wasn’t out there for very long.” The Caretaker stands back upright. “Let me start over. My real name is Vitalie Crawville, and I really am here to help. I have no intention of taking control, or causing any harm. I used to help people on Dardius, and now I’ve decided to quantum replicate myself to spread myself around the galaxy. Well, around this galaxy, I mean.”

“I know that name,” Spirit jumps in. “Vitalie Crawville. She was a secondary god on the Elizabeth Warren. She was instrumental in creating the universe of Ansutah. None of the Extremusians would exist without her.”

“Just to be clear,” Vitalie begins, “you don’t actually believe that I’m a god, right?”

“No, that’s just what the Maramon called you, and we adopted it, because it’s a fitting enough description to categorize people who were on that ship on that day.”

“I don’t remember her from my studies,” Tinaya says to Spirit. “Is she okay?”

“I have to assume so. She was friends with Leona,” Spirit answers.

“I should like to believe that I still am,” Vitalie counters.

Omega looks down at the tablet that he uses to interface with the Nexus. “There’s no incoming address. Where did you come from?”

“The Nucleus.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Not many have.”

“I’m locked out. All of the destinations I could have selected before are missing, and while I can see that we finally do have our own term sequence, I can’t see what it is.”

Vitalie frowns. “If this occurred right when I arrived, then I’m sure it’s my fault, but I certainly didn’t do it on purpose, and I don’t know how to fix it. I’m terribly sorry.”

Omega frowns too while he’s tapping on his device. “Did you come here through time as well as space?”

“I did,” Vitalie confirms.

“The Nexa weren’t designed for time travel,” Valencia insists.

“The one at the Nucleus was,” Vitalie reveals.

Omega shakes his head, very annoyed this time. “You’re going to have to explain to me what the hell that is, what you did, and how to make it right.”

“Hey, show some respect!” Spirit shouts. “I told you who she was.”

“I’m not from Ansutah, so I don’t give a crap that the Maramon call her a god. She broke my new machine!”

“Omega,” Valencia says calmly, placing a hand upon his shoulder. “We’re back together now, and we’ll figure it out together. It will all be fine, I promise.”

He takes a deep breath in and grits his teeth before exhaling. “It’s just that I had an idea of how this was gonna go today. But you’re right, we only need time, and each other. But Miss Crawville, I will still need to know what you do know about it.”

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Extremus: Year 79

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m sorry,” Kestral says simply.

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

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

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

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

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

Tinaya looks over for Vaska’s guidance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Microstory 2059: What If I Invented Football

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I think I made a mistake, committing myself to writing a new blog post every week day. If this were any other world, it would have been fine. I could have had enough adventures to last a lifetime. But not here. There’s nothing to watch, nothing to read. The garden hasn’t called me back about a job, and I’m resisting the urge to call them about it. I know you’re allowed to do that at some point, but I can’t remember what my father taught me is a good waiting period. Even if I could recall, this is a different Earth. They have different conventions. I would ask my landlord, but she’s been at work for the last few days, and medical professions tend to function differently than other industries anyway, so she might not know the answer. They don’t do many sports here, if you even have a concept for what I’m talking about. You have competitions, usually in the racing variety, but nothing more than that. I absolutely hate sports, but I would make an exception just to break up the tedium. Besides, it speaks to how boring this place is. I’m going to have to occupy myself with things that you can do anywhere with an atmosphere, and enough space to move around. The geography must be the same, so hiking is number one priority right now. Even if no one else on the planet does it too, they can’t stop me from it, and it will be just as fulfilling as it would be anywhere. I used to do a lot of walking for exercise. Once I’ve stimulated my mind enough, maybe I can branch out into other things. What if I invented football? How would these people react to it? That’s not the issue, I don’t know how to make things like that. What shape is on the balls? Hexagons? Pentagons? Whatever, I’m goin’ out. Don’t wait up.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 27, 2418

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It was time to go. None of them wanted to leave Dardius—least of all Mateo—but it was the right thing to do. He didn’t choose every aspect of his life, but he chose some of them, and no matter what the ratio was, Romana didn’t choose any of it for herself. She deserved to live in a comfortable and safe environment. It was going to be hard enough for her, only living for one day out of every year, and it wasn’t fair for Mateo to stick around if it was going to make that worse. This planet was the safest place to be only if Team Matic wasn’t on it. They attracted too much attention. They were magnets for trouble. Sure, they could find respite here and there every once in a while, but it was going to find them eventually, and they didn’t want anyone else to be caught in the crossfire. Karla, Silenus, and especially Constance would do right by Romana, and make sure she grew up to be a well-rounded individual. She would learn to make her own choices, and in several thousand years, if she wanted to start making a name for herself in this crazy multiverse, she could do that, and place her own self in danger. Until then, everyone else was responsible for making their respective sacrifices to protect her.

They had a grand breakfast together, complete with the best cuisine that Dardius had to offer. Vearden and the planet’s owners were all there, as well as some other government officials that Angela and Marie had grown close to over the last few days. When it was over, they said their goodbyes, and packed up the Dante. If you had told Mateo back when he was 27 years old that it was possible to store a spaceship inside of a backpack, he wouldn’t even have the concept for it in his imagination. Now it seemed so basic and unimpressive, even though it was still anything but. While Silenus was watching over the baby, Karla asked to see them off at the Nexus, so Mateo teleported her to Tribulation Island with the group. She swung her bag off of her shoulders, and dropped it onto the sand. “Silenus got this for you, but he asked me to say it was from me instead. I don’t like lying, so I’m not gonna do that. Don’t worry, it’s perfectly secure. It doesn’t store any images, or other data. No one can trace us from it.”

“What is it?” Mateo asked.

She opened the bag, and removed a box. She opened it, and pulled out a gooseneck mirror. “Now you can stay in touch.”

“Is that a time mirror?” Leona asked.

“One of a pair,” Karla confirmed. “It can’t be hacked, and it can’t be intercepted. It’s on its own special quantum frequency, or something.”

Leona looked over at Ramses.

“We have our own temporal engineers,” Karla explained. “You’re not the only inventors in the universe.”

“That’s fair,” Leona responded.

“Thank you,” Mateo said.

“I’m sure your wife can teach you how to use it,” Karla went on. “Unless you’re in the middle of talking to someone else, or Romana and I are out somewhere, I’ll make sure that it’s always pointed towards her. If we don’t answer, it doesn’t mean we’re not safe. It’s just not something that I can carry around. We’re probably just on a walk.”

“Thank you,” Mateo repeated. He carefully placed the communication time mirror back into its box, and then into his own bag.

They all stepped into the Nexus building. “Hey, Opsocor,” Leona asked.

No response.

“Opsocor, can you hear me?” Leona pressed.

Still no response.

“The techs can send you anywhere you wanna go,” Karla tried to explain.

“Not anywhere,” Leona contended. “We’re trying to go back to the Sixth Key.”

“Why would you go there? It doesn’t sound safe at this point in history.”

“Safe isn’t what we’re looking for,” Mateo told her. “There’s a mission somewhere out there that needs to be completed, and which we’re capable of accomplishing, so we’re going to do that. We can’t just go find a beach somewhere on a paradise world, and lounge about.” It sounded dumb to go off in search of trouble, but sitting around and doing nothing would defeat the whole purpose of keeping Mateo from his daughter. He had to stay busy, even if that meant deliberately inviting adventure and danger into their lives. They all agreed to this. “The Sixth Key is new, and on the verge of war.”

“If they haven’t started fighting already,” Marie added.

“Right. Maybe we’ll make things worse,” Mateo continued, “but maybe we can help. We’re partially responsible for the mess they’re in, so we have to see if there’s anything we can do to prevent, or at least end, the killing.”

“Assuming it’s not inevitable,” Angela decided.

“Yeah, let’s hope as much.”

“Hey, Opsocor?” Karla asked the aether, just in case it worked.

“You may be the problem,” Leona hypothesized. “Everyone may be.” She looked up through the window to the control room.

“We’ll go,” one of the technicians said through the speaker. “We’ll leave you be for ten minutes, but not a second longer. We cannot be away from our posts for longer than that.”

“I should only need two minutes,” Leona told the two of them as they were coming down the stairs. “If she doesn’t respond to me by then, she probably never will.”

Karla gave Mateo a hug, and a mostly friendly kiss on the lips. “Call me maybe.”

“Absolutely,” he replied.

They cleared the room.

Leona took a deep breath. “Opsocor.”

“Yes, Leona.”

“I don’t understand your rules.”

“You don’t have to.”

“You’re always there, even if you don’t say anything, which means you know where we wanna go?”

“Yes, and I’ll send you there, if you would like, but...”

“But what?”

“But it will put you on a path. I can see that path. Well, I can’t, but I know someone who can. You can get out of it. All you have to do is go to Worlon instead.”

“Worlon?” Ramses questioned, very concerned. “The homeworld of the Ochivari? Are you sure?”

“The Ochivari left so they wouldn’t destroy it again, so ironically enough, it’s the safest place to be right now.”

“That’s not what we’re looking for,” Olimpia tells Opsocor before muttering under her breath, “we keep having to say that.”

“Out of the group,” Opsocor began, “I answer only to Leona.”

“Take us to the Sixth Key,” Leona requested. “Take us to the safest planet in the Sixth Key. Does that sound like a decent compromise?”

“Very well. Step into the cavity.”

They all did so. All of the sixteen numbers and activation glyph were etched on the walls of the cavity, which was only one step down. These were not only for decoration. It was possible to input the sequence from here, without doing anything with the computer in the control room, or the terminal on the wall. Whichever method one used for a departure, the glyphs on the kick buttons lit up in order to indicate where the travelers would be going. Leona’s eyes widened as she watched, but she wasn’t able to stop it in time. “Oh, you sneaky snake.”

The light overwhelmed them, and transported them not only to another planet, but another universe. And when they arrived, they realized that they were also not in the Milky Way Galaxy, where they expected to be. Everyone in the group who had been here before recognized it immediately, even though it had been 165 years since the last time. “Flindekeldan,” Olimpia whispered loudly.

“Oh. Seems nice enough,” Ramses noted.

“It doesn’t have a Nexus,” Mateo told him. “We’re stuck here.”

“How did you escape the first time?” Ramses asked.

“Desperately,” Mateo answered his friend cryptically.

“I’m sorry,” Leona said, shaking her head. “Venus tricked me.”

“She’s protective of you,” Mateo said comfortingly, with a kiss on her forehead.

“I can understand that,” came a voice behind them. “It was Leona. It was some version of Leona anyway. They didn’t know which one yet.

“Report,” the true Leona said.

“I’m Arcadia. We live here now. Some of us more than others.”

“You do?” Mateo asked, stepping forward. “You, Vearden, and little Cheyenne?”

“Vearden’s back home. I’m on a walk. Cheyenne is...”

“Cheyenne is what?” Leona urged.

“She doesn’t exist right now.”

“What do you mean, sh—?” Mateo began. “Oh, no.” It happened to them too.

Leona shook her head. “My alternate self. You’re in her body, so Cheyenne inherited the pattern.”

“Shouldn’t she be here today, though?” Olimpia reasoned. We’re here.”

“She’s not on your exact pattern,” Arcadia explained. “She’s on a similar one. She won’t be back until June 8, zero-zero-one-nine.”

“Zero-zero-nineteen? What calendar is that?” Marie asked.

“New Clavical Calendar,” Mateo answered surprisingly. “I didn’t know they had implemented it already. That was fast.”

“Yeah, we’ve been hopping worlds, hoping to somehow alter Cheyenne’s pattern, but it hasn’t worked,” Arcadia lamented. “We should have known. Our first attempt with Proxima Doma was a good guess, since their years are eleven days long, but coming here was stupid. Now, even if we wanna try something else, we can’t.”

“I’m sorry, Arcadia,” Leona said solemnly.

“This isn’t your fault,” Arcadia told her honestly. “It’s a shame you’ll probably never get to meet her. I don’t know which calendar you’ll be on now that you’re here. But since you are, are ya hungry? Vearden learned how to make Horace Reaver’s quiche.

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