The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 2, 2576

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Olimpia woke up on a cot in an unfamiliar place. That wasn’t entirely true. It did feel familiar, but she didn’t recognize her surroundings. It didn’t feel safe either, but something was telling her that she chose to come here, and had some idea what she was getting herself into. It was dark and dirty. The walls were made of concrete, and the height of the two windows suggested that she was underground.

The door opened. Olimpia’s brother came in, who she hadn’t realized only a moment ago that they had even reconnected. So she was starting to get her memories back, which implied that she didn’t have amnesia, just a fogged mind.

“Hey, you’re back. It’s been another year,” Delfinus pointed out.

“What day is it?” Olimpia asked him.

“It’s hard to keep track of the Earthan calendar all the way in Miridir, but somewhere in late 2576. Hopefully that’s enough for you to gauge,” he answered.

Olimpia nodded and sat back down on the bed to massage her forehead. “Unless I’ve fallen off of my pattern, it should be the second of October. Where are we?”

“A planet called Desulforudis. It’s in the middle of a civil war, but it’s winding down because there aren’t very many people left alive.” He filled a glass of water from the sink in the corner and offered it to her. “Don’t worry, it’s clean. Leida has been drinking it for years. She chose this world so people would leave her alone. She can protect herself.”

She accepted the water and chugged it, having not realized how thirsty she was.

Delfinus sighed and sat down next to her. “Leida feels awful about what happened. She thinks you have nanites in your brain which complicate the psychic wards she gave you. She thinks it worked, but the two competing systems fought for dominance, so your brain shut down to protect itself. She and I have been living here together for a year. She figured out how to turn off my time curse. And yes, it had more to do with time than we thought. I wasn’t narrating people’s thoughts. It was more like I was seeing the timeline from the outside, and extrapolating private thoughts based on a pattern of events from history. It’s hard to explain, but now I can control it. I can talk normal.”

“Good, I’m glad.” Olimpia breathed. “I remember something. We came here with a little card. It can take us back to Snake Island in the Milky Way galaxy. Now, we’ll be thousands of years in the past, but they’ll have a way to propel us back to the future.”

“I can’t leave,” Delfinus began. “Leida and I—ya know it’s been a year, and the only other people in this world are trying to kill each other, so...”

“You don’t have to explain why you fell in love.” Olimpia was still a little loopy and dizzy, but she managed to crack a smile. She patted her brother on the back a couple times before leaving her hand there. “I want you to be happy, but...here?”

“It seems counterintuitive, but the Desulforudisians had psychic warfare capabilities, so everyone by now has their own wards. It’s quiet for her.”

“Does it have to be a planet? You know they make private rotating habitats, right? My friend, Ramses could whip one up in a matter of weeks. That way it doesn’t have to be so...” She looked around the room again, “hard to maintain.” That was the best she could come up with to say that this woman’s home was disgusting.

“I’ll talk to her,” he said, “but as far as the card goes, we never found anything. If it’s not on your person, it might be lost. It could have fallen into a storm drain, or something. We looked for it because I couldn’t remember if you retrieved it, or what.”

Olimpia spent the next half hour hunting for the rendezvous card in her pockets, her pack, and the floor of the bunker. She was choosing to believe that it truly was lost, and not that it was taken on purpose. She was regaining her memories over time, but the last few hours were still a blur. The card wasn’t there, and she couldn’t get back to the Milky Way on her own, let alone to Ramosus.

Olimpia walked into the living area of the bunker, where Leida and Delfinus were sitting together.

“Hey, I’m sorry about the card,” Leida immediately said. “We did look for it last year, while you were passed out. And I’m sorry about that too.”

“You can make it up to me,” Olimpia said. “There’s some kind of signal jammer, which even blocks quantum connections. I need that switched off so I can make a call.”

Leida shook her head. “That’s not me. It’s planetwide. It’s one of the first things they did when the war started. They didn’t want people making contact with other colonies, and calling in reinforcements. The control room is somewhere in a fortress.”

“You tell me where that fortress is, I’ll get myself in there, unless you also tell me that they have teleportation technology, and potentially teleportation-suppressing tech.”

“Not that I know of,” Leida said. “I wasn’t aware that you were a teleporter.”

“I am many things,” Olimpia replied. “The fortress?”

Leida raised both of her eyebrows and simply pointed to the nearest window.

Olimpia moved a chair over to the window, and climbed on it to look outside. She could easily see what Leida must have been talking about. It was in the shape of a mountain, but was clearly made of artificial materials. She stepped back down. “How many people will try to stop me if I break in there? I’ll need to look for the controls.”

“No people,” Leida answered. “The people are all dead, but the automated systems will stop you.”

“What kind of automated systems?” Olimpia pressed. “Optical? Thermal?”

“Probably, yeah,” Leida replied. “So unless you can turn invisible...”

Olimpia made herself disappear. “Yeah, I can turn invisible. I have other tricks, but this one is my specialty.”

“How do you have so many time powers?” Leida questioned.

Olimpia showed herself again. “Time powers aren’t magical. It’s just a matter of finding and understanding the intersection where time, biology, and neurology meet. That’s what Ramses said anyway. You two stay here, I’ll turn off that jammer, and then we’ll all leave. By this time tomorrow, you should be free. I don’t want to argue about it right now, but there are other ways to isolate yourself from society. I’ll explain when I return.” She turned invisible again and teleported away before either could respond.

Olimpia transported herself to the base of the fake mountain. The doors were wide open, probably because the defensive systems were confident in their ability to keep unwanted users out, and also because the population of this planet was estimated to only be in the thousands at this point. She strolled in, prepared to teleport away if the sensors were sophisticated enough to detect her.

This turned out to be harder than she hoped. The place was gigantic, but since no one worked here anymore, a total mess too. She had a hell of a time just finding the room that controlled the massive signal jammer, and it took even longer to determine how to shut it off. It was on a split-control mechanism, which made sense given how vital this tool would have been to the war effort. Olimpia tried to trip both terminals herself using teleportation, but it wasn’t enough. They had to be flipped at the exact same time. So she returned to the bunker to seek help. She only needed one of them, but both came.

“If you want to do this,” Leida began, “I’ll help and support you, but we don’t know what’s gonna happen. It looks like this machine does a lot of things—not only control signals. We don’t know enough about it.”

“Did you steal my rendezvous card?” Olimpia asked her.

“What?” Leida was shocked. “We went over this, no.”

“Then please flip the switch for me,” Olimpia said.

Leida conceded with her face before her voice. “Okay.” She stepped onto the platform.

Olimpia counted down from three, then together, they turned it off.

Her connection reestablished itself instantly. Olimpia tapped on her wrist to send a message. At millions of light years, it could take hours to reach Ramosus, depending on what kind of relay and boosting infrastructure they had in this galaxy. So the three of them went back to the bunker to wait it out. Olimpia was hungry, so they ate too. Leida wasn’t a savage. The bunker wasn’t clean or nice, but she had all the necessary amenities, such as a simple food synthesizer. And a shower. Olimpia needed a shower too.

As midnight central was approaching, that was when Olimpia started to grow nervous. Even at this distance, the call should have gone through. Without that rendezvous card, they were stuck here, and she wasn’t sure she was buying that it could have slipped down a storm drain, or something. If she could only remember more of yesterday...

“Is there anyone else you can call? If they’re the only people who can jump this far, maybe there are other friends who can check in on them?” Delfinus suggested.

Olimpia consulted her watch for the umpteenth time. “It will take a year for them to get back to me, but yes, there’s an alternative. I just wish I had sent them a message at the same time to hedge my bets. That was a stupid move. Now I’ve wasted all this time.”

“We’ll be here,” Leida assured Olimpia. “It will only be a few minutes for you, and we’ll be waiting. Tell your other friends to come a few hours early so I can provide them with a proper welcome; maybe serve some tea. Then when you show up, you leave whenever you’re ready.”

“Okay,” Olimpia agreed. “Thanks.” She was still suspicious of this woman, but Leida had been nothing but helpful since they met.

Olimpia set her message to the Vellani Ambassador, knowing that they wouldn’t receive it until after she had disappeared from the timestream. Her friends would know this too, so they would not try to make their way here right away, where they would have to wait anyway.

When Olimpia popped back into existence on October 3, 2577, the VA was on the ground next to her. And the bunker? The bunker was gone, replaced with a big, scarred crater.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 16, 2560

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The team decided to leave before midnight central so they wouldn’t have to explain their end-of-the-day disappearance. They were determined to hunker down and really figure out who in this galaxy might actually need their help. The larger colonies could have huge problems, but the infrastructure and procedures to deal with them. The single-person sites were harder to pinpoint, and populated by people who were typically there because they wanted to be alone. It was the sites like Patsy Richelieu Best First Quarter Star colony that were likely most in need. Of course, this particular colony didn’t need anything from them. It was wild to see, though. They would kind of always expect a colony to either be the fruits of a grand cosmic exodus, or only one person looking to disconnect from society. There was a lot of middle ground, though, and they would probably meet others like Patsy and her cake-loving friends.

“What we need is some kind of monitoring system,” Mateo suggested, not knowing exactly what he was going for. “Like in movies where aliens are here to protect us. I guess they don’t have to be benevolent. They just have to know a lot about us, and have spent time studying us without giving themselves away.”

“It sounds like you’re talking about invisible probes,” Leona offered. “Movies often don’t explain how they remain hidden, but it would be something like that.”

“Invisible probes, I can do,” Ramses decided. He jumped over to the nearest workstation. “It can stay optically invisible using holography, and shield its waste heat signature using a miniature hot pocket. It would be able to move on its own power, and teleport when necessary. It would send signals exclusively through the bulk, so only we receive the data. It keeps watch over establishments throughout the year, and compiles a report for when we return.” He was getting really excited about the possibilities. “I wish I had thought of it myself. We keep jumping from place to place when we just need to let the information come to us.” He looked up to find everyone staring at him.

“Go on,” Romana encouraged. “What else were you thinking?”

“That I should work alone,” Ramses said. He reached over, and squeezed the band of his watch.

After he held the button down for a few seconds, the whole team vanished.

“Did he just kick us out of his lab?” Angela questioned.

“Wow. Rude,” Marie joked. “But it’s smart for him to have that, for security.”

“It might take a few days,” Leona estimated. “He won’t just be designing the new probe, but testing for failures and black swan events. In the meantime, I think I would like to consider building something for us all that is in this dimension, instead of our pocket dimension habitats. Nothing against them, but they’re more for mobile use.”

“I agree,” Mateo said. “If our enemies are right, and this is going to be an important planet in the future, then I imagine we stay here for a long time. Or not. Perhaps, like all the other things we’ve had in the past, we’ll hand this off to someone else, while we move on to something else.”

“I believe what Ramses is doing will keep us busy for quite a while,” Romana pointed out. “There is probably a lot going on in the galaxy that we simply do not know about, so it seems boring. We lack data, and we’re about to get it. But yeah, I’m in.”

They sat down to start drawing up plans for residences fit for an interstellar capital—not too gaudy—they were not trying to play themselves as gods. By the end of the day, however, Ramses was finished with his probes. They sent a small test batch out to some past establishments. They returned to the timestream the next year with a hit.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 6, 2550

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Things were a little awkward at first. Leona was a lot less powerful than Senona originally believed. They didn’t think to ask Echo or Clavia about it at some point, or the truth might have been clarified earlier. Senona lived in another universe, and their access to information about other universes had its limitations. They were aware that one Leona Matic was a time traveler in Salmonverse, but not that there were multiple people who went by the same name. They were thinking of an alternate version of her, who was far more powerful, and therefore better equipped to help with the effort at Origin.

This other Leona was from a different timeline, and only survived the transition because she was the one who went back to the past to save Mateo from torture, thereby creating the new timeline. She had a number of different time powers, which she managed to procure using organ transplants. The exact details of her exploits remained a mystery to this day. Senona didn’t realize the discrepancy. It wasn’t like they hadn’t heard of alternate selves before. It was simply an unknown unknown to them. The issue was that Alt!Leona never promised to aid in the efforts at Origin. To their knowledge, she had never even been there. Once discovering the difference between the two, Senona’s initial reaction was to let this Leona return to her life with the team, but she didn’t want to do that. After she asked for her own wish way back when, Senona mentioned that they would have to call someone for aid. When she pressed for clarification, they explained that that was how it worked. They couldn’t do much on their own, and could not leave Origin themselves, so they always recruited others. Leona volunteered to be one of these agents should the need ever arise. It now had.

For two years, Leona was the boots on the ground of the operation. Even though she couldn’t do as much as the other Leona, she wasn’t powerless either. Besides her normal teleportation, Senona provided her with temporary abilities. These included the means to travel all over the bulkverse on her own, do so invisibly, and with a certain knack for persuasion. She also had a number of ancillary abilities, like stamina and strength, which let her do the job without getting sleepy or fatigued. She did still sleep, and had time off. In fact, she had full permission to travel to any universe she wanted, and do whatever she wanted. But like professional chess, the clock only ran while she was working, and she didn’t want to delay her return to the team.

Meanwhile—if such a concept had any relevance outside the normal passage of time—Olimpia and Ramses were getting to know their son, Echo. They didn’t have to do any work for those two years, though they joined Leona on precisely two occasions, when the wish went beyond her scope alone. Today was the last mission. After this was done, the team members would go back to Salmonverse to be with their friends. Clavia would return here, and rejoin her brother. They weren’t slaves or anything, but they were not allowed to live in Salmonverse. That was something that I decided long ago, and while I gave them a pass on that for recent stories, it was never going to be a permanent thing. They are too powerful. Any problem which comes up here can be solved nearly instantaneously if they’re involved. They got to go.

“We understand,” Echo said, psychically, but also out loud. “But I demand periodic visits.”

That can be arranged. We’ll talk later.

“Oh, are you taking requests?” Sanaa Karimi interjected from wherever she was in the timestream. “I would like a real life pink pony. Sparkly fur. It has to cuss a lot.”

Sure, I’ll get right on that. Hold your breath and wait.

“I’m gonna tear out your eyeballs, and jam your thumbs into them so you can’t type anymore,” Meredarchos added.

You know where I live, asshole.

With the brief and unhealthy transuniversal psychic conversation over, Echo refocused on this last mission. He and his parents wanted to help make it a good one.

Leona was watching him. “Everything okay?”

“It’s fine,” he replied. “What do we got?”

“This is a funny one,” she answered. She had barely finished her last job, and was still wearing her adventure clothes. Since she couldn’t be seen, this wasn’t necessary, but it helped her get in character. “Not funny, ha-ha; more funny, oh God. A young man is playing a game called Scourge of the Valley, and his older sister has asked that we make sure he wins. The way it works, you and your competitors are summiting a mountain. In this world, death is more of a nuisance, and not final in most cases. If you reach the summit first, it’s yours, but only temporarily, unless you made it there without killing anyone. If you killed anyone on the way to get an edge, they will come back as ghosts, and fight you for the summit. If you lose that second round, you will die for good. Our man is not a skilled climber, but he won’t try to kill anyone. He wants to prove that it’s possible to win without violence. She doesn’t think he can do it.”

“This sounds too easy,” Ramses decided. “All we have to do is kill everyone so this man doesn’t have to. He’ll win by default. As long as they really will come back to life, and it’s fine...”

“Senona doesn’t think it works like that,” Leona explained. “If we serve as the man’s agents, invisible or no, he will be technically responsible for those deaths. They will become his enemy ghosts. We have to keep them from winning without killing them. We have to give him what he wants: a clean and bloodless win.”

“That’s impossible,” Olimpia thought. “If this guy’s sister doesn’t think he’s a fast enough climber, he’s probably not. The competition is probably fierce, and they will be killing each other for that top spot. As soon as even one of them makes it, he’ll have no chance. It will be over. We can protect him from attacks, but we can’t help him climb.”

“Wait, what are the physical laws of this universe?” Echo questioned. “Do they have temporal manipulation? Can we just teleport him there without raising eyebrows?”

“They don’t have anything like that. However, according to the sister, they will probably accept something weird. If he’s at the summit, and didn’t kill anyone, he’ll win. The culture is really weird like that. But that’s just the bloodthirsty audience. Apparently, a lot is riding on this. It could potentially change the world, because no one has ever done it nonviolently. But that won’t work if we use tricks. It has to look like he did it the way he claims he will. That’s what the sister is really asking for, not only a simple win.”

They went quiet, and started thinking through the dilemma individually. Every once in a while, one of them would think they had an idea, or even articulate it, but it wouldn’t work. Too many ideas relied on people noticing that it didn’t seem genuine. Finally, however, Olimpia thought that she had it. “Help me understand how this multiverse thing works. Every dream anyone has ever had, and every story that has ever been told, exists somewhere as a real, tangible, universe?”

“Yeah, essentially,” Echo agreed. “Some are more stable than others, though. Dreams don’t last very long. If their laws of physics are weird, they won’t survive past the duration of that dream. Even if they’re mundane, they’ll probably collapse anyway, because of how fleeting they’re being observed and utilized. Branes based on stories are generally more stable, but the less popular ones still don’t last long.”

“I think the one I’m thinking of is pretty popular, so likely stable, but it still might look weird,” Olimpia began. “If all of the other competitors suddenly act confused, and even fall asleep, it will look suspicious, won’t it? It’s not exactly violence, but they’ll assume he poisoned them, and the revolution part of his win might not succeed.”

“Ah, you’re thinking of the Honan Enchantment,” Ramses realized. “You’re probably right about the optics, but it’s still not a bad idea. We just can’t do it to all of the competitors. Fortunately, that would not be the only universe we have access to, and we have all the time in the worlds, right? We need to find out how many competitors there are. A ranking would be great for us, so we’ll know how to prioritize. Then we can come up with a list of ways of slowing people down. One or two of them fall under the Enchantment, another one goes temporarily white blind—we’ll make sure they don’t slip off the edge—and a third—I dunno—gets the runs, or something.”

“That’s pretty gross, father.”

“I’m just trying to get this done without hurting anyone,” Ramses defended. “Diarrhea is only temporary, and everyone gets it. We’ll pick the guy who ate a big breakfast.”

Leona thought about it for a moment. “This is going to take more time than I hoped, but as long as we get back home in 2550, I’m willing to at least produce these two lists, and see if we can come up with enough ideas to avoid violence. The rankings are a good idea. If the brother isn’t the absolute slowest contender, we could leave some of them alone, and let them lose naturally.”

And so, the agents got to work. They really rushed through it, zipping in and out of various branes, taking whatever they needed, even if it was only an ultra-strong laxative. Some of the ingredients were harder than others. For instance, for some reason, they were fully visible to the locals where they were trying to retrieve Honan Enchantment. It took a little time to convince them to give some of it up, but since they only needed a very tiny bit, it was okay, because it wasn’t enough to condemn a large population.

All told, they needed 24 ways to interfere with the brother’s competitors in Flipverse. Six of them were probably not going to win either way, so they were left alone. The competition was still pretty heated. The woman unfortunate enough to be saddled with diarrhea just powered through it, and didn’t let it stop her. It did slow her down, though, which was enough to get her killed by the guy whose ropes they lathered with glue. He accused her of sabotaging him, and freehanded his way up to her, cutting her rope in retaliation, and plummeting to his own death with her.

They severely underestimated one of the untouched competitors, but the interesting part was that he too felt no need to kill anyone. Though, to be fair, that was probably thanks to the agents, and not his convictions. They reached the top at about the same time, and the rule in that case was that they would have to fight to the death. In a twist, despite barely knowing each other, they pulled a Hunger Games, and tried to jump off the cliff at the same time. Normally, the judges wouldn’t care. Suicide wasn’t a big deal for them. But there were no other contenders at that point. Everyone else had failed or been killed. A ghost couldn’t win unless they had someone to best at the summit. They simply could not allow there to be no winner at all, so they were spared, and declared joint winners. A little derivative, but it was ultimately better than one of them winning alone. The world they were living in wasn’t ruthless, and the judges weren’t evil. But society had kind of turned to shit. Even though it was technically okay to die, it was unhealthy to be so casual about murder. Not even Castlebourne was so careless. They were more focused on pushing life to its limits, rather than making death itself feel the goalposts.

“It sounds like it went well,” Senona said once they were back on the platform on the waterworld where they lived.

“I would say so,” Leona agreed. “Our task was to help him win this one game, not the whole revolution. That’s up to the natives now, so I think we objectively succeeded, even if it was a tie.”

“Makes sense,” Senona said. They turned to Olimpia, Ramses, and Echo. “Have you three said your goodbyes? I was unable to procure a daypass for you, Echo. You will be staying right here, while they switch places with Clavia.”

“Yeah, we had a meal together in Moderaverse,” Echo responded. “We are prepared to part ways...for now.”

Now back to Leona. “Did you find some moments of joy during this job, or were you always just itching to leave?”

“No, it was a rewarding experience,” she answered honestly. It wasn’t that way every time, though. Some people asked for not-so-great things, predominantly for military purposes. Senona didn’t discriminate, and Leona tried not to judge. The simple rule was, if they figured out how to get to Origin, and their wish was feasible, it was granted to them.

They nodded tightly. “Perfect. Your commitment is hereby complete. I thank you for your service.” Senona whisked them away.

They found themselves in an unfamiliar place. They had no idea where the hell they were. A gargantuan tree trunk towered over them, and disappeared into the clouds. The rest of their team appeared before them after a few seconds. “Oh, hey,” Mateo said. “Welcome back...to Ramosus. This here is the Tree of Axis.”

“What?!” Ramses exclaimed.

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Microstory 2636: Don’t Forget To Bring a Towel

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You said something about spoof lenses?”

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

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

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

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

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

“This woman with the brain scanner—”

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

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

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

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

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

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

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

Microstory 2628: The Welcome Sign Has Been Flipped Upside Down

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October 16, 2526. Breanna and the small group of survivors are parked at the drive-in. That’s not even just some metaphor. They are on the outside of a dome, parked with a bunch of other rovers, and before them, a film is being projected. Right now, they’re watching a very old movie from the 22nd century called 100 Years. Well, they’re not really watching it, but it’s playing. It’s stupid, really, and just an attempt to make their lock-out feel fun, instead of a humanitarian crisis. The domes are full-up, according to the people running them. They are only letting in people who don’t even have rovers, which don’t exist anymore, because if you came here without mobile protection like even a suit, you’re already dead. The Teaguardians dispatched two more dropships to build giant temporary bridges between the northern polar region, and the rest of the Terminator Line in the northern hemisphere—like the one they made in the south—but it’s not seeing any use. Again, everyone is already here or dead.

Their group has become somewhat famous as being the last to arrive, because once that ring fault broke apart, and the chasm appeared, no one else was able to cross it. They either didn’t know how, or died in the attempt. Still, the notoriety hasn’t earned them a spot in the domes, except for Sorel. He was able to convince the leadership of a different dome to let him in so he could potentially alleviate the strain that this influx in population is placing on their limited resources. He’s in there now, or potentially in some different dome, proselytizing about the benefits of interstellar consciousness transference. The locals love him, because he’s helping get rid of the “unwanteds” but his friends don’t know how successful he’s been lately. It’s been a while since they’ve talked. He’s at least seen some success, but the domes haven’t reopened their doors, so it’s either not enough, or they’re pretending that it’s not.

They made contact with the other Levins and Breckenridgers. Not all of them survived the perilous journey, but most did, and the majority of those are in a dome a few hundred kilometers away. This one here is the only one which might plausibly welcome the extras eventually. Until then, they’re making do. The rover isn’t particularly roomy, but it has a lavatory, and the top-down recycling system is functioning optimally. Morale is okay, for the most part, but Shimizu is always huffy. They were on their way out here on foot, which was harder, but also would have placed them in a better position to be let in. So, he’s mad at Breanna for picking them up, as if she could have had any idea that the rover would harm their chances. The rest are being more logical about it, and just feel lucky to still be alive. He’s also unhappy about Heracles, who sits on top of the rover, and may or may not be lowering their chances of getting in this dome as well. The concern is doubtfully warranted as many other rovers are also stuck out here—all beetloid-free—which is why they’re even bothering to screen these movies.

Tertius initially volunteered to leave with his daughter to give everyone more room, but Aeterna is glad now that the group refused to take them up on that after she turned out to be pregnant. Shimizu is wary of them as well, ignorantly believing that immortals can only procreate with each other. If that were true, the disgust would be justified, but Aeterna assures them that it’s not the case. It’s offensive that he would even suggest the possibility. She is simply under no obligation to tell them who the father is. At last, it seems that their persistence has paid off. Whoever needed to learn of Aeterna’s condition has responded to their new application, and is ready to let them in.

“See?” Calypso says, “you were pissed off about nothing. The baby helped us.”

“It is too soon to tell. We’ll see,” Shimizu recited, fancying himself a philosopher.

“Another message,” Cash says, looking at her screen. “They’re asking us to drive along the perimeter, at least a hundred and twenty meters from the dome, to what I’m guessing is a remote area, and pull up to a different entrance. They don’t want other hopefuls to see that we’re getting in.”

“Well, it’s gonna look weird when we suddenly restart the engine, and get moving again” Breanna says. “No one has budged since we got here. There’s nowhere to go.”

“I’m pulling up satellite imagery now,” Cash says. “Yeah, if we head this way first, it will appear as if we’re giving up, and trying our luck at this dome to the east. Then we can circle back around, and avoid being spotted.”

“You think they’ll fall for that?” Notus questions. “They can see the satellites too.”

“They’ll have no reason to check them,” Cash decides.

“All right.” She pounds on the roof. “Hold on!” she yells to Heracles, like it matters. She starts the vehicle, and gets on Cash’s suggested route. It turns out not to be that easy when it starts a new caravan. Seeing them move is likely causing others to believe that they know something no one else does. It’s kind of true, but it’s not going to help them. “Shit. We have to shake them somehow.”

“I have an idea, but it’s reckless, and you’re gonna hate it,” Cash says.

“Give it to us anyway,” Breanna prompts.

“Don’t go any faster. Just let them follow us. Everyone, get yourselves sealed up. We’ll be abandoning the rover. Aeterna, you can still fit, right?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” Aeterna replies. “I’m barely showing. Hold on tight, little Dilara,” she says to her belly as Tertius starts helping her put her suit back on.

“Okay,” Cash continues. “I don’t have time to teach you all to activate active camouflage, so give me access. This is non-negotiable. If one of us gets caught, we all get caught, you can’t opt-out...unless, I suppose, you just decide to stay with the car.” They all do as she asked. “This doesn’t make you invisible, it’s not magic. You will still need to find cover, but you will be harder to spot. It basically scans the coloring and texture behind you, and repaints your front to match. But you still want to hide, and don’t move around too much once you find your spots, okay? We won’t walk back to the dome until it’s clear, so wait for my signal. Everyone ready? Helmets on. On my cue, only when we turn around bends,” she adds as she’s crawling back that way.

Breanna puts the rover on autopilot, and crawls back there too.

“What about Heracles?” Notus asks.

“He can’t come with us,” Breanna says apologetically. “He’s too conspicuous.”

“He has camo too,” Notus argues.

“But the rover doesn’t,” Breanna says as Cash is sending people out one at a time. “The rover can’t make it look like he’s still there. I’m sorry, we’ll get you a new one.”

“That was insensitive,” Notus points out.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. We might be able to send for him later, but right now, they won’t let any of us in if anyone else tries to get in too. Please understand.”

“Fine,” Notus says, obviously still upset.

“Now, go, go, go!” Cash directs.

They continue to jump out, but Shimizu ultimately gets them all caught.

Microstory 2592: Renata Jumps Out of the Emergency Exit, and Falls About One Story Down

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Renata jumps out of the emergency exit, and falls about one story down. She lands on her feet, bending them to absorb the shock, and stopping herself from hitting her face by holding her hands out at her sides. Quidel is clear at the back of the plane, still by the ramp. He runs over when he sees her do that. “Are you okay? What the hell were you thinking? Just because this thing was never in the air, doesn’t mean you weren’t high up.”

“I’m just testing my limits,” she answers casually as she’s brushing the dust off of her hands.

“Well, you’re not invincible, and you can still feel pain.”

“I can’t feel pain if I don’t want to, and just be glad I didn’t jump out of the crew door.”

He looks up at the cockpit, which is closer to three stories high. “You would break your legs. Even an android can’t survive that, unless it’s specifically designed to, which you’re not, because that would be a waste. This isn’t Underbelly.”

“I don’t know what that means.” She looks around at the desert. They are in a very remote region of Osman, miles and miles from the nearest city. They’re not trying to go anywhere in particular here. They’re just trying to keep this device far away from Libera. It’s not that she can’t get to this dome, but perhaps she won’t find them here if they’re well-hidden. That’s Spycraft 101. Lycander says that the dome has security cameras that allow beings on the outside to monitor progress, but the don’t cover everywhere. They don’t see everything. Even Ambients don’t permanently record what they see. That would be too much data to track and manage, especially since most of it is innocuous. So they should be safe enough running into a local, and not thinking that their coordinates are going to leak out. “Where is this MIS contact of yours?”

He looks over her shoulder, so she turns around to see a roofless off-roader heading their way. “She’s right on time, as per usual,” he says. She looks back at him. He’s smiling. He likes this girl. That could be dangerous. Relationships are always a risk, whether they work for the same agency, a different one, or if they’re a civilian. That’s Spycraft 101.

“She’s pretty,” Renata notes as the car draws nearer, but not near enough to make out enough detail for her to make that claim.

“For the last time, androids do not have telescopic vision. It’s not necessary. It just adds bulk and complexity to an already overengineered design. Why are you lying?”

“I’m a spy. It’s what we do,” Renata explains.

He sighs. “Since you were fishing, I’ll bite anyway. Yes, she’s beautiful. But you should know that we’re not supposed to be friends. Some spies are players, and some are not, and we’re not supposed to distinguish each other. We’re to treat everything as real, and not talk about the outside world.”

“Fair enough. I won’t mention anything about how my entire reality has just crumbled, and I don’t know what to believe anymore, and I’m having a massive internal existential crisis that I can’t talk to anyone about because I can’t trust anyone who knows the truth too, and I have never felt more alone.”

He gently tugs at her shoulder so she’s facing him again. “Is that true?”

Renata scoffs. “No. Take a joke.”

He knows she’s lying.

“What joke?” Lycander asks as he’s walking up from the plane, having secured it appropriately.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Hello, it’s nice to meet you,” Renata says as the Elbin agent pulls up. “My name is Renata Granger.”

The agent steps out of the car, and peers at her over her sunglasses, sizing her up. She chuckles at Quidel. “Found another one, huh? she asks him in a posh Elbin accent. Or maybe it’s actually British?”

“The first one, I think,” Quidel replies.

The Elbin woman smiles. “The one you’ve really been after this whole time.” She takes her sunglasses off completely, and gets a better look at Renata, like a vet examining a pregnant cow. “She understands where we are?”

Quidel notices Renata’s confusion. “That’s what I was trying to tell you, but had only gotten to the background info. You can be open and honest with Martina. She’s helped me move other conscious Exemplars and Ambients to safe places.”

“Call me Demuri, or just Demo,” she says, shaking Renata’s hand. “I chose to use a different name when I came to Spydome, but like he said, we’re all friends here now.”

Quidel nods approvingly. “She is not why we’re here, though. We need to secure a package. The person who’s after it has god-tier powers.”

Demo takes her glasses off again, and looks at him incredulously. “I don’t know what that means. Is that some kind of codeword that I was supposed to have memorized?”

“No, she has actual magic powers. According to these two, she disappeared before their eyes.”

Demo shrugs. “Holograms. Easy.”

“We were on a catwalk. They should have detected her footsteps. Before I killed my last substrate, she did show up suddenly, so I should have heard footsteps while I was still there with them.”

“Okay, well neither invisibility nor teleportation is a thing, in any dome. Not even Underbelly, which is designed to give you superhuman powers, can break the laws of physics, so I don’t know what they think they saw, but they didn’t see that.”

“I sure hope you’re right,” Quidel says, shaking his head. “I just wouldn’t bet on it. I trust them. I trust their perspectives.”

“I’ll accept that,” Demo acknowledges. “Regardless, we need to get to the safehouse. Fair warning, they are not luxury accommodations.”

“I’m a robot, so I can sleep anywhere,” Renata says.

“I wish I hadn’t ever said that to you,” Quidel complains.

“I’m glad you did,” Renata contends. “That’s when I finally started waking up.”

Extremus: Year 112

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It’s January 2381. Early development for the in-house interactive simulation experience has been going on for months, with a five-year roadmap. They could ask a superintelligence—like Thistle—to make it for them in a fraction of the time, but they decided against it. They want this to be a human endeavor. The main reason they’re doing this is to bolster morale for the middlers, so it should be something that’s made for Extremusians by Extremusians. The wait will be worth it. Tinaya is on the Creative Board for The Search for Extremus, but she’s not holding the reins. It was her and Spalden’s idea, so she’s entitled to provide her input, but she doesn’t wield much control. She considered respectfully declining the offer, but Arqut convinced her that she ought to be a part of it in some capacity to make sure the project doesn’t devolve into a clone of anything that’s already been done. This is a model for what they expect to be like in Year 216. If they just wanted to play any old star exploration narrative, they could pull from countless options in the virtual stacks.

People are already really excited about it, so it’s already doing its job. It’s not enough, however, so the board is meeting today to discuss how they can maintain the hype while everyone waits for the finished product. They’ve not opened the floor up to anyone on the ship, but certain people have been invited to pitch their ideas for interim projects. The person they will be hearing from today is none other than Waldemar Kristiansen. If this goes well, it will doubtless help him in his dream to become captain one day. So. That’s a thing. It seems that everything they do is pushing them towards the ship’s dark fate, even when they think their actions have nothing to do with any of their worst fears. “People of the Creative Board...the Simulation Engineers...the Graphics Department, thank you for allowing me to speak with you today. My name is Waldemar Kristiansen, and I have an idea for you, which will help build anticipation for your game, while not withholding community engagement in the meantime.

“Based on your five-year projections, The Search for Extremus will be released in 2385 ECE, A.K.A. Year 116. It’s great how those years match up mathematically. Players will have 100 years before they catch up to their true destiny. I propose that we lean into this, and release incremental updates in advance of the release date. Introducing...” He swipes on the presentation screen, and reveals the first slide. “...Year 212. In the years leading up to the launch of the many, many, many scout ships, our descendants will be solidifying their plans to reach their final destination. They will need to chart the stars, and name them. They will be designing their logos, and their habitats. They will produce and prepare the equipment necessary for environmental engineering. That’s right. People don’t like to talk about it, but we’re not going to find a planet out there with a Terrestrial Habitability Similarity Index of one-point-oh. There will be work to be done to make it habitable and comfortable for humans. It’s just a matter of how much.

“Each year, we release a new update, which draws us closer to the big payoff. Year 213, Year 214, and Year 215. This is a simulation, right? Well, there is more than one type of simulation, and you don’t have to have an entirely completed, fully interactive, game to be engaged. Year 214 will be the big one, though, where players begin to design their own manned scout ship. If they’re gonna be living there for the first few months of the game, it should be comfortable, right? We don’t just want to provide them with some standardized design. I don’t know if our descendants will do it like that, but we can certainly make that part of our experience. In my plan, Year 215 will involve players getting to choose which vector they travel along, based on the mapping data that—”

“That’s Year 216,” Spalden corrects.

“Finch, he doesn’t need to know that,” Tinaya argues in a whisper.

“What? It’s fine,” Spalden counters. He looks back up at Waldemar. “The first part of the game is getting to choose your vector. We won’t be able to map the celestial firmament until we get within a few hundred light years of our anchor point.” After the Extremus ship hits that Year 216 mark, it will come to a stop and land on some nearby celestial object, or just drift aimlessly wherever that ends up being. They don’t know what’s out there yet, so those plans are still up in the air, but whatever it’s like, it’s the anchor point. It will wait for news from the scouts here. Some hope and believe that the ship will sort of spiritually or magically happen to drop out of reframe speed right next to the perfect candidate, but pragmatists understand how statistically unlikely that is. When it comes time to actually do this in base reality, they probably won’t send out as many scouts as the game will allow, however, so maybe the rules don’t really apply here anyway. There is a near-perfect planet in the game that doesn’t exist in real life, and the ability to find it is based on the player’s ability to interpret less complete data than their descendants will have in real life.

Waldemar looks at his presentation. “Okay. The rest of the plan is good, right?”

Tinaya has to admit that this all makes a lot of sense. It’s going to take a long time to build the simulation to the calibre that people expect. These piecemeal teasers should help as long as they release them strategically along the way. It’s a framework for a more robust and detailed plan that might need some extra hands on deck. This is a good thing as the development of this game is just as important as the final product. “Thank you,” she says before anyone has the chance to make some more definitive remark. “We’ll discuss it amongst ourselves, and let you know. We still have more people to hear from, so it might be a couple of weeks.” She’s not lying, but it’s also not an exclusive deal. If multiple people come up with great ideas, and they don’t contradict each other, they could end up doing some of them, or even all of them.

“Thank you,” Waldemar responds. “The full prospectus is on your tabs.” He exits.

“Admiral Leithe,” one of the board members begins, “we understand that you don’t want it to appear that you’re playing favorites, but this is a good idea. Even if we have more presentations, we should go with this one regardless.”

“Huh?” Oh, right. She forgets sometimes how it looks from the outside. Waldemar and Silveon are friends, and Tinaya’s family is close with Waldemar’s wife. She only thinks of him as the enemy, but most people aren’t supposed to know that. She has to cover. “That’s not the issue. You never say yes on the spot. Back on Earth, they might take their idea to a competitor, so the decision would be time-sensitive, but we don’t even have to worry about that. If you wanna go with Waldemar’s plan without discussing it further, that’s fine, but he needed to leave the room first either way.”

They do end up voting pretty much right away. Since Waldemar is the one who came up with the plan, even if they tweak it from here, he’ll be asked to come on board, and see it through. He’ll probably do that since it would boost his reputation on the ship. Which is great, just great. Against her advice to delay giving him the good news, they call him back right away. A few of them want to go out and celebrate, which is a good chance for Tinaya to do something that she’s been meaning to do, because now she knows where he’ll be for the next few hours. More importantly, she knows where he won’t be.

Audrey opens the door manually, and starts to tear up. It’s been a long time since they’ve been able to see each other, just the two of them. They’ve had dinners and get-togethers over the years, but Waldemar is always there...looming. For this one rare opportunity, Audrey can speak freely. Well, not here, though. She doesn’t think the cabin is bugged, but better safe than sorry. After a good, long hug, they go for a walk.

The Attic Forest is on the topmost deck of the Extremus, but the ground is not the highest point that you can stand on. There’s a catwalk above the canopy of the trees. It’s technically designed for maintenance, but the gate isn’t locked, and anyway, anyone can simply teleport up there if they wish. It’s regularly used by people who want to walk or sit in the forest from that vantage point. What’s great about it in this situation is that it’s easier to detect eavesdroppers. If you walk all the way out to a section overlooking an open area, no one can hear you whisper to each other. Plus, it’s in winter mode, so no leaves to hide behind either. They’re sitting on a bench. It’s not particularly comfortable, because it’s only there in case a maintenance worker wants to have their lunch close by, but it’s good enough.

“Any abuse to report?” Tinaya asks.

“Just the usual treating me like I don’t matter. It doesn’t count as abuse since I’m faking the relationship, but it would be a problem if I were oblivious.”

Tinaya nods. It’s saddening that Audrey answered that question in the affirmative at all, but this is the mission. They chose this path together. Audreys knows the limits. She knows the difference between unsettling, and actionable, and she would speak up if there was something worth reporting. “Not pressuring you to have any more kids?”

“No,” Audrey says, shaking her head. “Neither of us wants that, and both of us know that. He doesn’t know my reasoning, and he doesn’t know that I know his.”

“I’m sure he told you about his pitch.”

“He’s been practicing on me.”

“Well, he won.”

“I’m not surprised. It was my idea.”

“What?”

Audrey is confused about why Tinaya’s confused. “He’s intelligent, but he’s not creative. He doesn’t understand why people care about things that aren’t absolutely vital, like entertainment. Morale as a concept is completely beyond his grasp. He just shrugs and trusts me when I tell him that people need it.”

“So, this was all you. You came up with everything,” Tinaya says, just to confirm.

“Just about.” She sighs. “He chose the fonts. Well, he chose one of them.”

“Jesus,” Tinaya says. Why are they spending so much effort helping this guy? Why can’t they just kill him now? Seriously. Why?

Audrey chuckles. “It’s fine. Part of my training before becoming a time traveler was valuing invisibility over recognition. I would rather not get credit, because my brain tells me it’s a dangerous position to be in.”

“I get that. It still isn’t fair.”

“Thank you for agreeing to it at any rate. When he gets a project to focus on, it gets him out of the house.”

“You should use your extra freedom to reach out to Silveon, he misses you.”

“Maybe I will,” Audrey says quietly.

“And Aud?”

“Yeah?”

“I need you to get me consciousness travel tech. You must have either engineered something, or know where it is in this time period. We might actually use it.”

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