The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 31, 2544

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Nothing interesting happened by the end of the day in 2543, except for some unusual environmental readings that Ramses was getting, so they made plans to leave. To give Romana time to finally come to a decision for where they were going to go next, and to maximize the time they had to actually do that, they decided to wait a year to leave. Those unusual readings turned out to only be the start. When Trinity Turner founded this colony, she did so with the benefit of future knowledge. She knew how much work would go into making it habitable for humans, so she continued to travel through time to make it happen. She had the ability to transport anywhere that she could see. This could be as short as the other side of the room, or as far as across intergalactic voids.

Because light travel wasn’t instantaneous, when she looked at a distant star, she was looking into the past. Indeed, this was how it worked for everyone. This meant that Trinity could end up as far into the past in years as her destination was away in light years. But she could also just land in the present, if she so chose. It was a fluke of her ability that no one could explain, but she did not take it for granted. For untold amounts of time, she would jump back and forth, ferrying experts from the timeline to help terraform this world. One thing that they never understood was the gravity. It was the biggest mystery in space colonization that people kind of did take for granted. The only reason it hadn’t been the top headline every day for the last 300 years was because a sort of religion formed around it. Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida was a very spiritual place. Science wasn’t outlawed by any stretch, but it just wasn’t done. Even though the implausible gravity couldn’t be explained, people were simply not putting that much effort into studying it. Not even Leona truly knew how Trinity did it. But perhaps she should have asked, because things were going wrong now.

“So, is it going to hurt when we teleport outside?” Olimpia asked.

“We’re fine,” Ramses assured her. “I designed our bodies to withstand a lot heavier gravity than this. It could go all the way back up to where it should be, and we would still be all right, but will it stop there? I don’t know. I don’t know what’s causing it, because I don’t know where the artificial gravity comes from.”

Leona was looking at the data. “It did not increase suddenly, or a lot of people would be dead, but it’s been rising all year.”

“Actually, it’s been rising since we arrived,” Ramses corrected.

“The whole planet?” Mateo asked.

Ramses sighed. “Yes, but not evenly. I hesitate to call this region the epicenter, because it appears to move anisotropically, but...um...” he trailed off.

“But it’s us,” Leona finished what he was unable to say. “We’re the cause.”

“I don’t know how, but I don’t see any other plausible trigger,” Ramses agreed.

“Should we leave then?” Romana offered.

“The damage is done,” Ramses explained. “I believe it was our arrival with the slingdrive. We interfered with the natural order.”

“There was nothing natural about this,” Leona told him. Everything artificial requires maintenance. Hell, natural processes experience constant change. We call it entropy.”

“Whatever was keeping this planet human-compatible, we interfered with it,” Ramses argued. “Natural or no, it’s our fault, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

“We’ve been to a ton of places with the slingdrives,” Marie put forth. “Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

“We’ve never been anywhere with planetwide artificial gravity,” Angela responded.

“Yes, we have,” Leona said. “We were just on Varkas Reflex. That’s where this tech was born. Hokusai Gimura invented it while she was living there.”

“Well, we can’t just pop back there and see how they’re doin’,” Ramses reasoned. “That could make it worse for both worlds. I’m calling it, no sling travel until further notice.”

“We don’t have to go there physically,” Romana contended. “Let’s just read the news.” She created an interface on her wrist with her nanites, and connected to the quantum network. No one else did the same, they just watched her as her face fell. “It’s happening there too. It’s further along. They’ve consolidated to certain buildings which apparently have their own gravity generators, but most of the surface has become inhospitable to normal human life. Fortunately, there aren’t many of them left anyway. A lot of people are as sturdy as we are.”

“But these are two of the four main hubs for human colonization,” Leona pointed out. “Proxima Doma is the closest to Earth, Bungula and Bida have been terraformed. Regular humans love Varkas Reflex’s VR. In fact, after Doma fell, a lot of people started migrating to the other three.”

Mateo looked at his wife. “Well, out of all of us, Leona, you were the only one on Varkas when Hokusai created artificial gravity. How did she do it, and could it be the same way they did it here? Did she give it to Trinity?”

“I don’t see how,” Leona replied. “It’s not genuine artificial gravity. It’s transdimensional gravity. You open a two-dimensional portal to a region of space with lower gravity, and set it in superposition just under the surface of wherever you want to stand. When I was there, they were struggling to build single buildings with efficient gravity regulators. Evidently, they have expanded across the globe, but that should have taken years at best. This planet had it as soon as we landed, only a few years after we left Varkas. It’s just not possible.”

“Unless you account for time travel,” Marie reminded her. Trinity might have conscripted Future!Hokusai for help a decade or two in the past. That was her whole modus operandi back then, wasn’t it?”

“That’s true,” Leona admitted.

“It sounds like we need to find Trinity,” Olimpia determined.

“We need to find Trinity and Hokusai,” Marie added.

“No,” Leona began. “Ramses and I can do this. We can fix it.”

“No, I can’t,” Ramses argued. “I’ll just screw it up, like I have everything else.”

“We can…together,” Leona reiterated.

Ramses just shook his head.

“You said it was happening anisotropically,” Leona went on. “Let’s map that. However Trinity lowered gravity here, she didn’t do it by magic. There must be something changing the gravity, and also maintaining it, so let’s find whatever it is, and repair it.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Ramses, no moping,” Mateo ordered. “Let’s get to work.”

“Let’s?” Ramses echoed.

“Well if you’re so dumb that you’ll screw this up then I might as well help you, because I’m dumb too,” Mateo reasoned, completely aware that this did not make sense.

“Well, I mean...it’s not really that—”

“Not really what? True? Oh, you might be on to something. Maybe you and LeeLee should just try without me, see what you find.” He shrugged. “Start there.”

Ramses sighed. “Okay, I’ll make a map.”

The normies stayed in their shared space while the smart ones went into Ramses’ lab. They only had to be in there for less than an hour. “We’ve done it,” Leona announced as they came back in. “The gravitational failure is not random.” She threw up a hologram of a globe of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. They are centered on these thirty-two evenly spaced locations.” Chevrons appeared on the surface, all around the planet.

“Actually, they’re specifically outside of these points,” Ramses clarified. “These particular spots are suffering less than elsewhere when it comes to the gravity issues. Fortunately, we noticed that they coincide with population centers. Which we found interesting and alarming, because Trinity could not have known where people would settle. But then we realized—”

“He realized,” Leona corrected.

Ramses smirked. “They’re not random either. If you zoom in to any of these points, you will find sacred ground. Trinity chose these thirty-two sites, probably to some degree of randomness, but well-distributed for maximum efficient coverage across a sphere. In math, it’s called the spherical covering problem. If they use transdimensional gravity—which is the only means of artificial gravity that I know of—it stands to reason that the regulators were installed in these places. And since there appeared to be preexisting infrastructure when the first colonists showed up, they....gravitated towards them due to their significance. So their religious interpretation did not come out of nowhere. There’s something there, probably underground, but also probably detectable.”

“Gravity is failing all over the world due to some unknown issue with these regulators, but it’s going to fail closer to the regulators last,” Leona finished.

“Do we know the cause?” Marie asked them.

“Well, it’s not us,” Leona argued. “Rambo, you’re off the hook. It was happening before we showed up, for a few years. We just didn’t know, because it started in more remote regions, and we didn’t look up the news. People have actually been migrating because of it, and the problem has just now reached this area. No one has been doing anything about it, because they don’t know what to do.”

“What can we do?” Mateo asked. “There are thirty-two sites. Is one of them the central command maybe?”

“Not that we can tell,” Leona replied. “I wouldn’t think so anyway. We might be able to interface with all of them if we go to one. We’ll know more when we get down there.”

Romana suited up with shiny body armor, showing her usual amount of cleavage that Mateo didn’t like. “Then let’s get on it. Boot ‘n’ rally!” She disappeared, only to return a few seconds later. “Sorry. Sync up ‘n’ rally! I’ve already chosen the chevron.”

They followed her to the site she had picked out. Ramses began to sweep the area to find the signal that would lead them to where they were actually trying to go.

“Guys,” Romana called out from around the bend of the cliff that they were next to. “You should see this.”

They all went over there to meet her. She was staring at the cliff face, where a gargantuan stone monument had been embedded in it. It was at least two stories tall, perhaps three. MATEO MATIC MEMORIAL ESCARPMENT. HE LED A LIFE OF LIFTING OTHERS. HERE HE FELL. NOVEMBER 18, 2256. Below the words was a non-volumetric hologram of Mateo Matic himself,standing tall and looking outwards at an angle. It made him seem like some kind of hero head of state; like he was a modern-day Abraham Lincoln. It made him feel rather uncomfortable.

“Jesus,” Angela said in a breathy voice.

They all stared at it for a moment, but then shifted their gazes to Mateo. “I didn’t know they put this here,” he said.

“Me neither,” Leona concurred.

Romana reached out and took her father in a hug. He kissed her on the forehead.

Ramses’ wrist sensors beeped. “Sorry. That just means it found it.”

Mateo turned away from his monument. “Then let’s go.”

“We can wait a moment,” Olimpia suggested, taking hold of his arm.

“That won’t be necessary.” As Mateo continued to walk away, her grip slid down his arm, into his hand, and then back out of it.

“Are you sure?” Ramses asked.

Mateo glanced at his friend’s interface. “Yes.” Then he teleported to the coordinates. He was in an underground lab now. The transdimensional gravity regulator stood before him. That was what he assumed it was anyway. He heard the erratic hum of fluctuating power. It was trying to hold on, like a dying lightbulb. Each time one of the others appeared, the machine reacted with a surge of energy. “Wait, don’t come yet! Just hold on!” he cried into his comms, but it was too late.

Once Romana appeared, a wave of light spread out from the machine and engulfed them all before they could teleport away. It was blinding, even for them with their advanced substrates. It took a couple of minutes for their vision to return. They were no longer underground, but in a high desert. Shrubbery kissed their feet. There were buttes scattered about in the distance. And a beetle. An absolutely gigantic beetle, towering over them, but paying them no mind. “Whoa,” Romana said as it slowly skittered past them.

“Who are you?” came a voice behind them. They turned around to find a gun pointed in their general direction.

“We’re not here to hurt anyone. You don’t need that,” Mateo told the stranger.

“Teleportation is highly regulated. So who are you?” he repeated. When they started to introduce themselves, he put his weapon away. “I’ve heard of you, you’re okay. I’m sorry for the mix-up. Welcome back. My name is Lycander Samani.”

“Welcome back where?” Leona pressed. “Where are we?”

“Castlebourne,” Lycander answered, “specifically, Gientodome.”

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Microstory 2618: The Way is Clear, the Beetle Knows the Way

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Almost straight east, another kilometer and a half away, in the direction of the planet’s night side, lay another manmade structure. Since it would have been so far out of the group’s way, Breanna decided that a detour would require a unanimous vote. Last time, they received one when they didn’t need it, and this time, they needed it, but didn’t get it. Less than half were willing to risk it, so they elected not to. Those who voted in favor of it were not upset or argumentative. They accepted the results, and moved on.

They have continued on their way northwest, trying to head in the general direction of the pole while also hoping to run into a dome, or one of the tunnels used to connect the disparate domes to each other. After hours, they finally see it, and decide to forgo their break in lieu of pushing forward to reach their interim goal. They’ve become more accustomed to their suits, though they still feel very confining. Even Breanna and Cash have had just about enough. They’re designed to operate indefinitely, but changing human psychology is a different challenge altogether.

“I think I see a person up there,” a passenger notes, looking towards the spine. It is a massive structure, snaking through the land, made to transport people and supplies along walking corridors, vactrain tubes, or sometimes chairlifts for steep climbs. Breanna isn’t extremely familiar with the inner workings of these structures, but while she can’t quite make out someone standing on the top herself, there is surely a way up there on the exterior. The megaengineers responsible for all this infrastructure tried to plan for everything. Everything but a worldwide cataclysm apparently.

“I see it too,” someone else declares.

Breanna reaches up and extends the magnification on her helmet to its extreme limit, and is able to see a silhouette, but no detail. “Whoever they are, they’re not wearing any protective gear.” She looks over at Aeterna.

Aeterna smiles. “I told you he was alive.”

“We don’t know that that’s him,” Breanna says. “Unless you have some reason to believe that you’re the only two insanely invincible immortals in the universe.”

“No, of course not. They’re just probably not on Proxima Doma, or in this time period.” That doesn’t make much sense. If they can’t die, why wouldn’t there be just as many—this doesn’t make sense at all. She’s choosing not to question it, however, because it’s hurting her head, and she probably doesn’t really want to know.

They get close enough to resolve a face, and just as they suspected, it is indeed Tertius Valerius. He’s smiling like he doesn’t have a care in the world, waving to them gleefully, pointing towards some particular part of the spine that he’s standing on, and beckoning them forwards. As they draw even nearer, they discover that there’s a fully functioning escalator on the side, which they use to reach the top and reunite with him. He and his daughter hug, but not particularly exuberantly. Neither of them is surprised. Why would they be? As they keep saying, they can’t die. She hands him an extra mask so he can utilize the radio, and tell them all what happened since they lost contact.

Everyone wants to know how Tertius survived the ordeal. He claims that there’s not much to tell. He just did because that’s what he does. Once the cyclone was over, he got up from the ground, and just started walking, hoping to catch up with everyone eventually. He makes it sound so simple. They have more questions, but Breanna understands their priorities. “Did you check the interior? Are there working vactrains?”

He shakes his head. “Not in the one behind us, nor the one in front, but there’s a maintenance railcar a little bit farther down. It’s not meant for people, so there aren’t any seats, but we can make it work. It’s for repairing the exterior, so it will go all along the perimeter of each dome, but if you do the math, I’m guessing it adds up to being faster and easier than walking. You’ll want to find something to hold onto as I do not believe the floor is ferromagnetic.” He turns and starts walking away. “Come on.”

He leads them farther down, towards the other end of the spine, and then down some steps on the side opposite of where they came from, where there are tiny little baby train tracks, and a small railcart. “Are we...gonna fit?” Cash questions.

“Oh, this is a maintenance drone.” Tertius waves his arms around the giant machine occupying the majority of the railcart. “I can’t pull it off, I was assuming you had tools to take care of it. There will be enough room once we get rid of it.”

Brenna holds her fist in front of the drone, and taps on her wrist interface. It suddenly springs to life, unlocking itself from the dock, and using its six little legs to skitter off of the railcart, onto the tracks behind them.

Cash bends over and pats the beetloid on its head. “Good girl. Good girl. Now, stay here, and try not to get swallowed up by the infinte abyss.”

“It can’t hear you through the suit,” Breanna says.

“She knows what I’m saying,” Cash claims.

They all climb onto the railcart, and find various components to hold onto. There actually is one ferromagnetic spot. It’s the hatch that leads to the engine. Breanna stands there so Tertius and Aeterna can stand in front of her, using her as a backboard. A couple of other passengers hold onto her arms and neck. Cash is the only one sitting so she can operate the controls, which were originally designed to be manipulated by giant beetle robot claws. She has to ramp up the speed slowly, because even though their suits offer them protection, they don’t exactly have inertial dampeners. A drone will normally just punch it and go, but as humans, they need a little more time to ease into it. She also needs to watch for the curves, and slow down appropriately and safely. Her onboard AI is telling her when and how, but she has to physically do it herself.

“Boss?” the guy they rescued from the other rover asks Breanna. “How do I do that thing where I just talk to one person?”

“You’ve done it,” she replies. “We’re talking one-on-one.”

“I mean with, umm...Tertius,” he clarifies.

“Oh, he just has a regular radio transceiver, so he can talk to everyone or no one.”

“I wanted to apologize for what happened...for...what I did. For what he had to do for me. It’s not that I don’t want anyone to hear what I say. I guess it just feels like I would be performing. I really just wanna have a private conversation with my savior.”

“While Cash is keeping the railcart going, I’m linking up with the dome systems as we run along them. I’m hoping we end up finding one with a fully operational train station, so we can get into one of the vacuum pods, and go a hell of a lot faster than this. You will have a chance to speak with him quietly, even if it’s not until we reach the northern pole.”

“Okay, thanks, I appreciate it.” The guy never gets his chance.

Microstory 2553: Maintenance Worker

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I didn’t even realize where I would be working when I applied for this job. I didn’t even apply to the Foundation people. I went through a temp agency, which told me that a number of businesses in the area could use my maintenance skills. They sent my résumé out to a bunch of different places, and this was the first one to respond. I have a little trouble talking to people, so I’ve always been grateful for the help. I didn’t even have to interview, which is good, because I’m not so good at them. I think I still work for the agency. They’re the ones who ask me to put in my hours, and my paychecks come from them. Whenever I run into an issue, though, I don’t talk to anybody there. I go to one of the Foundation people. There isn’t usually any issue. They have a computer system where they send my job requests, and I go do them. Unless someone else claimed them first. It just depends on who’s on the shift. I was here pretty early after the company started, and things were a lot harder back then. You see, someone built this hotel, and then they had to sell it to Mr. Tipton and his people. I think they wanted to get started healing people right away, so they kind of rushed making repairs. It wasn’t too bad, but with a building this size, there are bound to be issues. I kept getting requests to fix things back then. We had a larger team back then. We’ve cut back, because now things are okay. They put a lot of money into new parts. I tell you, I’ve never seen anything like it. Usually, whoever has to approve of a purchase will look at the amount to pay for it, and get mad if it seems too high to them. So they’ll go with the cheapest one. Not this place, they seem to always want the higher number, because they assume it means it will be better. A lot of the times, that’s true, but vendors will also try to sell you the more expensive version, when the difference doesn’t matter. I mean, think about this. What if you needed to order a new doorknob, and there were two in the catalog. One of them was made out of brass, and the other out of diamonds. Which one is cheaper? Obviously, the brass one, but the diamond one is dumb. It isn’t better because it costs more, and no one should ever buy that. If I ever go to a building with diamond doorknobs, I’m walking out, because those people can’t be trusted. So I do have to sometimes say, look, this one will get you just fine. This part has to be replaced every five years to keep up with regulations anyway, so you’re not better off with the one that lasts for ten years. They’re just trying to get you to spend more to spend more. I do try to save these people money, because they’re doing good work here. I’m glad I work here, but if it ends, I’ll be okay. I’m sure I’ll find something else. The agency has always been real good to me too.

Microstory 2482: Teledome

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This is the biggest known ground-based telescope in existence. They make them bigger, but they’re all floating in space, because that’s the best way to avoid atmospheric distortions, and other artifacts. For those of you not in the know, Earth launched two arrays of telescopes for something called Project Topdown. These are currently on their way out into the two intergalactic voids adjacent to each face of the Milky Way Galaxy. They’re all about the practical applications. I won’t go the details, because you can look it up in the central archives, but I’ll say that the purpose of it is to map our galaxy, as well as peer into the local group, unencumbered by the light and other distractions that come from being within the “border” of our own galaxy. Of course, these are not the only telescopes in existence, and it’s not like we’ll ever dismantle the more local ones in favor of using Topdown exclusively. Earth still has its Bouman Interferometer Array, and other worlds in the stellar neighborhood are working on their own projects. Castlebourne isn’t trying to make any breakthrough discoveries with its Teledome, but it certainly seemed logical to build it anyway. At 5400 square kilometers, the Sugimoto Phased Radio-Optical Telescope takes up nearly the entire area of the dome. You might ask yourself, why is it even under a dome? It shouldn’t need to be. Other telescopes certainly aren’t. Well, dust; that’s why. The space within the confines of the dome is pristine, and very easy to keep well-maintained. If they had to worry about dust storms clogging up the sensors, it would be this huge constant chore. So instead of a geodesic dome, it’s a smooth one. And instead of diamond, it’s made of an ultra-clear polycarbonate. It’s not a single object, however. There are seams in it, but they’re bonded at the molecular level. So if it suffers damage, only that section has to be replaced, but that’s only in the event of catastrophic damage, because it’s just as self-healing as any other metamaterial. As for the telescope itself, the name tells you that it’s both radio and optical. It’s also not made of a single, uniform lens. Nanomodules can shift between states, allowing for the absorption of a wide range of frequencies on the light spectrum. There is an atmosphere on Castlebourne, however thin, and it does create artifacts on the image, but as I’ve been saying, they didn’t engineer this to be perfect. We have plenty of alternatives, and they’re always building more. If you want to see the telescope first hand, you can come here, but obviously, the prospectus includes a live feed of the image, and a constant readout of the data, for your own analysis and synthesis. So you don’t have to come here, but it’s cool to see anyhow, so I still recommend it.

Microstory 2362: Earth, August 6, 2179

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Dear Corinthia,

It’s true, I don’t need to hear certain details about your love life, but I want you to feel comfortable telling me what’s going on with you. I guess it’s a little strange that we’ve never brought it up before. Ya know, when we talk about the population decline on this planet, people often cite the poisoned atmosphere as the primary cause of it, but the truth is a lot more nuanced. Yes, obviously people died from it, and not just from the gases themselves—there were a lot of related effects, like failures in infrastructure maintenance that made the old cities less safe—but there were less overt repercussions too. The biggest consequence of the end of the old world was how isolated it made us from each other. You used to be able to take a bus to the airport, get on a flight, and be on the other side of the world in a matter of hours. You could travel just about anywhere with hardly any time to plan. Our jets are faster than ever, but the preparation for these flights takes so much more effort. If you want to go somewhere, you better damn well be sure that that’s where you wanna be, because there is no guarantee that you’re gonna be back. Because of all these limitations, and more, it’s much harder for some of us to meet someone. People are having fewer kids than they did in the past, because they have a hard time finding suitable partners. I won’t even get into population control mandates, but the only things keeping us from bursting at the seams are the people who do the transportation jobs like we used to have, and those building new settlements, or expanding preexisting habitats. This is all to say that I’ve not had much luck on the relationship front myself. I’ve moved around more than most. Our clients had to move too, but once we placed them at their new homes, they were free to settle down, and develop bonds within their respective communities. We just kept moving. I’ve gone on a few dates here under this ocean dome, but none of them has led to anything special. I’m not opposed to it, but we’re not getting any younger, so I’ve kind of learned to not get my hopes up about it anymore. I’m glad that you’ve found someone with the potential to last. I don’t think your age gap is all that big of a deal. And what are ya gonna do, let it get in your way? I say, love is love. As long as you’re consenting adults, and neither one is exerting any unfair power over the other, you should be allowed to do whatever feels right. But I’ll warn you, so you can warn him, if he hurts you, no interplanetary void is wide enough to keep him safe from my wrath. Okay, I’m done being overprotective again. Hey, dad didn’t tell me what he put in his latest letter to you, but I hope you’re pleased with it, and feeling okay. Tell me however much you want.

Love ya,

Condor

Microstory 2261: Call Her My Baby

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My license situation in this country, on this planet, has been complicated, to say the least. I do have an identity, though officially, I am not considered an alien from outer space. It doesn’t matter how many people believe me, or even if all the world leaders do, bureaucratic documentation simply does not have a box for that on any of the forms. So anyway, while I was technically certified as a driver here, I was only rated for a normal combustion engine. It required learning a lot more maintenance than I cared to know. I would much rather take it in to a professional, and have them deal with it. Mechanics has never been a strength for me, and more importantly, not an interest. Of course, electric vehicles being what they are, require a different kind of maintenance. It wasn’t easier or harder; just different. I had to go into the dealership, and take a little class, which included a written portion, and practical instruction. Then I had to take a test immediately afterwards. It was a sort of all-day affair, but they conduct these all the time, so there were about two dozen people with me. Most people were bored, because they were a lot more prepared than me, and they were more used to driving over all. I needed a refresher on operating motor vehicles anyway, since it’s been quite a while for me I think. I know I did it a little bit in Havenverse, but we mostly tried to walk or bike, since electric cars weren’t as prevalent there as we would have liked. We couldn’t afford one anyway. So that being done, I was able to finish the paperwork for my purchase, and take my new car home. You’ll notice that I did not refer to it as a she, or call her my baby. This is a machine that I need to get myself around, not a living member of the family. And it’s not just for fun. It’s a tool, to make our lives more convenient in a medium-sized city with some metropolitan sprawl. After Kelly and Dutch take their own classes, they’ll be able to use it too.

Microstory 1958: No Offense

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Myka Tennison: You’re Navin, right? That’s how you pronounce it?

Navin Misra: Navin Misra, sir.

Myka: You don’t have to call me sir.

Navin: You’re my boss, right?

Myka: Yes, but I prefer Myka.

Navin: I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. I’m sorry, it’s just the way that I grew up.

Myka: Okay, I can accept that. So, I just wanted to talk to you. The brass didn’t tell me what experience you have. You’re an expert in maintenance, is it? Or was it cleaning?

Navin: Maintenance and repair, yes. I used to work in an office building. It wasn’t just offices. They had a pool, and a gym, and even a dance studio. To be honest, I never understood what they did. Well, there were multiple companies, but I think they were kind of related. Anyway, I picked up a lot of skills there. I’ve had no formal training. One time a dancer accidentally kicked a hole in the drywall, so I had to figure out how to fix it. That was back before VidChapp, so trial and error was the name of the game. As for cleaning, that’s what I did in prison. So yeah, I suppose you could call me an expert in that too, but it’s really not that hard.

Myka: Okay, great. I’ll really be leaning on your for that, because I don’t have much experience fixing things. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no stranger to manual labor, but always after someone teaches me how to do it. If you’re good at learning on the job, and improvising, that could really help us around here.

Navin: You’ve done labor? No offense, but how, as a volunteer?

Myka: I’ve held down a few jobs in my day. I didn’t make all my money from stealing. In fact, I never did it enough to pay for much. No bank heists for me.

Navin: Wait, stealing? You’re a thief?

Myka: I was. I’m reformed. I’ve gone legit.

Navin: Why would the government hire someone with a—no offense—checkered past?

Myka: *shrugs* Why did they hire you?

Navin: Because I found out about aliens, and they figured that the best way to keep me quiet was to pay me.

Myka: Yeah, same here.

Navin: I thought you were the boss.

Myka: The boss? No. A boss—your boss, yeah. But I don’t intend to abuse my power. We’ll work together; I won’t just tell you to do everything while I sit in my office all day.

Navin: No, I mean...they put an ex-con in charge of an entire department? No offense.

Myka: This whole place is a department. We’re in Facilities, which is known as its own section. There’s also a field agent section, and a finance section...

Navin: I understand that, I’m just surprised. Does anyone who already worked for the government work here?

Myka: Reese was a Fugitive agent, and Leonard was a parole officer in another life. Other than that, no. The majority of us have what you would call checkered pasts.

Navin: This place is wild. I think I’m gonna need a nap to wrap my head around it.

Myka: Cool. I’ll show you the Chambre de Sieste that I made behind the break room.

Microstory 1955 Sensitivity and Responsibility

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Workspace Labs text-to-image AI software

Reese: What are you doing back here?

Myka: I’m checking it out. Looks like we would be able to fit thirty vehicles. Lines will need to be painted to make it clearer.

Reese: You don’t need to worry about that. You’ll only be responsible for the office.

Myka: You said I was in charge of maintenance, and someone has to maintain this. Parking garages wear down over time, being driven on so much.

Reese: Right, but the government can hire a contractor for that. There isn’t any sensitive information in here, and of course it goes straight to the outside, which means we don’t have to worry as much about clearance.

Myka: What about the information inside of people’s cars?

Reese: No one should have any data just lying around in their cars.

Myka: What about the VIN, and the license plate numbers?

Reese: True, but we won’t have permanent hires who can do what you’re talking about.

Myka: My dad painted highway lines. I can do it myself if I have to.

Reese: You’re taking on too much yourself, and doing it too quickly. Slow down, and prepare to delegate to others. The first round of employees are coming in tomorrow.

Myka: That’s exactly why I’m looking at all this now, so I can, not only delegate the tasks, but prioritize them.

Reese: I get that. Just don’t work too hard. You’re not here to do grunt work. I was clear on that when I was discussing this whole thing with the OSI Director and SI Eliot. We are the bosses. [...] What are you looking at now?

Myka: There are two ways into the building from the garage. The big one takes you directly to operations. The other is this rusty metal door.

Reese: Have you opened it?

Myka: No, but according to the plans, it’s a maintenance access tunnel that subverts the main floors, and gets you down to the basement relatively quickly.

Reese: Makes sense. I imagine the boiler room is down there.

Myka: As are the detainment cells for the Ochivari.

Reese: What are you driving at?

Myka: This could be the best way to escort them to where they need to be, but I need to figure out how to get this open so I can check it out. We can’t have the aliens being able to reach out and pull at exposed power cables, or whatever. Can you help me?

Reese: Yeah, we’ll try. *grunting*

Myka: *grunting*

Reese: It’s sealed shut. We’re gonna need tools...and a professional.

Myka: Well, I can do it.

Reese: Let me guess, your mother was a welder.

Myka: *laughing* No, but I can watch a tutorial on VidChapp.

Reese: Myka, we were literally just talking about this. I’ll make a call, and get this door open. Why don’t you go back to the mezzanine? Leonard is anxious about the agents coming in next week. You should talk to him before we’re all too busy to help.

Myka: Okay, I can do that. I need to put a measuring tape in my shopping cart anyway.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 172,398

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Mateo has been waiting in his stasis pod for ten minutes now, and that has given him enough time to do a little math in his head, which is not his strong suit, but they didn’t give him any entertainment in here. If one second inside means 10,000 years outside, that means that he’s been waiting to be let out for 6,000,000 years. That’s right, right? That has to be right. He’s been solving the same equation over and over for the last five minutes. A minute is 600,000 years. Just a pen and paper would help. No, it doesn’t matter how long he’s been waiting, it’s both too long, and not long enough. If he can just stay in here for the next... Oh no, he’s going to have to do more math to figure out how long it will take him to get back to 2398, where his team is. Even then, he could only ever get a rough estimate, because everyone is telling him that this is four and a half billion years in the past, but they’ve never gotten more specific than that. Asier injected him with a power suppressant before he shut the hatch, so he can’t escape. This is false imprisonment. “It’s false imprisonment!”

The hatch opens. It’s Tamerlane Pryce. “I agree.”

Mateo looks at his watch again. “Six point six million years. You’ve kept me in here for longer than ever.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Tamerlane explains. “Though you’re still right, it’s your longest stint yet, but still only 30,000 years.”

“How is that possible?”

Tamerlane turns a virtual dial on the pod’s touchscreen. “You can adjust the differential. Ten thousand years is just the standard during this aeon.”

“Oh. I guess that makes sense. Why is Danica letting me out now?”

“She’s not, but I’ve confirmed that she’s asleep right now, as is everyone else. It was a tricky situation, I would have tried to retrieve you sooner, but the AI was programmed to alert her to any unusual activity. Constance is undergoing maintenance at the moment. Well, she was, and then I took that opportunity to shut her down. When she awakens, she’ll know that she lost time, but by then, it will be too late.”

“Are you going to send me back home?”

Tamerlane grimaces slightly. “No.”

“Then we have nothing to talk about.” Mateo steps backwards back into his pod.

“I need your help with something. If you’re tired of Danica and Bhulan having all the power, then I know how to take it away from them.”

“Oh, yeah, how’s that?”

“Did you notice the dynamic between the two of them shift when you returned from the other realities?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know them all that well.”

“Bhulan is the one in charge of the Omega Gyroscope now.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “Time. Danica was gone for too long, declared dead in absentia. For normal people, the waiting period is seven years. For us, it’s 50,000. Operating under a preprogrammed assumption that Danica would never return, the Gyroscope automatically switched masters to the next in line, which is Bhu-Bhu.”

Mateo is not the sharpest bulb in the basket, but he thinks he has this one figured out. Power moved from Danica to Bhulan, and now Tamerlane is asking for a favor, and that is most likely to help Tamerlane take control. But what could he do to help? “Since I showed up here, Tamerlane Pryce, you...have been the most forthcoming. You’ve always been that way, though, haven’t you? Bhulan told me about some of your issues, stemming from your guilt over your alternate self. But there’s something you may not know about him; he always thought he was doing the right thing. He wasn’t evil, just...alone. And if you don’t want to be like him, all you need to do is surround yourself with people that you trust.”

He nods, “yeah, I’ve heard that before.”

“Here’s something you may not have heard. They also need to trust you, or it doesn’t mean anything. So tell me, what good will it do becoming the master of the Omega Gyroscope?” He says those last words so dismissively.

“I don’t want to be its master,” Tamerlane clarifies. “I want to set it free.”

“Explain.”

“It’s not supposed to have a master. It’s got a mind of its own, despite what the others may believe. If you help me get rid of Bhulan for 50,000 years at least, I’ll go away on my own, and give it another fifty. I promise to not return until its bond with us is broken, and it starts to get to decide what to do on its own.”

“What good does that do me?” Mateo questions. “What little progress I’ve made with my cousin will just be ruined.”

“We’re gonna be here awhile, you’ll hug and make up. The people—if you can even call them that—who designed this place; what do you know about them?”

“Nothing. No one’s told me anything. I don’t even know if they’ll ever exist, or if they collapsed their own timeline by creating the Constant.”

“Truthfully, I don’t know a whole lot about them either. Neither does Danica. One thing I do know is that they perceive the passage of time differently than you or I. They didn’t need stasis to not get bored for billions of years. I’m sure, on an intellectual level, they knew that stasis was necessary to prevent their little Concierge from going crazy, but I also don’t think their minds could truly fathom what going crazy would actually mean. They didn’t consider Danica’s needs very much, and they didn’t take me and Bhulan into account at all.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“I need you to teleport Bhulan far away from here. I can help you get your powers back, so you don’t have to worry about that. I’m telling you what I know of the Constant’s origins, because if you don’t do this, your cousin is going to be fired, and replaced with someone else entirely. I don’t mean an alternate version, I mean someone else. They have other candidates, they always did, and they kept their names on file.”

“Why would they do that? Why would they fire her?”

“Because they don’t want her to be too powerful. She is an underling, and she has a boss, just like anyone else. We’ve made our choice about what we want this reality to become, but now that that’s set, Danica has to wipe her hands clean of it, or her actions—her power—will wake him up. That’s why I sent you on a detour through time, and why we have to do something similar to Bhulan. I don’t know who he is, but I know he’s bad news. If he finds out what she’s done, he will place every reality in danger. Help me avoid triggering the failsafe by keeping your cousin off of his radar. The only way to do that is to distance her from the most powerful object in the universe.”

He sounds crazy, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

Big Papa: Horror Vacui (Part VIII)

< > Entire Story

Hogarth holds up her hands, and takes a quarter step back. “Relax, Cadet,” she says. “We’re not here to hurt you. We just want to know what happened. How did you get to this universe?”

“We were in The Crossover,” Ukodenva explains. “Something went wrong with the engines, and we were sent, I guess to your universe. We did not come here on purpose.”

“What was that thing that crashed into my planet?” Hogarth demands to know.

“That would be the fighter bay. We happened to be doing some training in there when everything fell apart. The six of us managed to escape in this simulator, but we don’t know if anyone else did. Please understand that we possess no working weapons, not even on the ship itself. This is just designed for battle training.”

“I understand,” Hogarth assures her.

“Who are you training to fight?” Nerakali questions.

Ukodenva hesitates.

“Be honest,” Nerakali urges.

“Humans,” Ukodenva says, “but only if we need to. There are a lot of universes out there, and not all humans are as warm and welcoming as you. We have to be able to protect ourselves.”

“We’re not at war,” Hogarth says. “Not with each other anyway. There is a far greater threat that we both face. I built this brane to insulate my people from it, but it would seem your fighter bay has discovered a weakness.”

One of the other cadets stands up. “We will help you.”

The other four stand up as well, and regard Hogarth respectfully.

Ukodenva looks back at them, and smiles. “You are our commanding officer now.”

“That’s not what I—”

“It cannot be reversed. What you say, we must do.”

“What if I say—?”

“Unless you tell us that we no longer have to do what you say.”

Hogarth has no response to this. She turns her head to look back at us. “I need to effect repairs, and deal with this...development. Would you be terribly offended if...?”

“If you asked us to leave this brane?” Nerakali guesses.

“Not at all,” Lowell finishes the answer, presuming a consensus.

“You too, please,” Hogarth says to Pryce.

He has a bit of a sour face. “Very well, but I would like to return one day.”

“We’ll see.” Hogarth breathes in with her eyes closed. As she breathes out, our bodies break apart into tiny little bits, only to be reconstructed in the afterlife simulation interface room. Gilbert has returned with us, but Aldona has not, because that is where she belongs now. Trinity isn’t here with us either. She’s already home.

The technician smiles at us. “You have finally returned. Would you like to be connected?”

“Finally?” I question. Glisnians have a very different perspective of time than regular organic humans. They’re more like travelers and temporal immortals. We’ll regularly go years without seeing a loved one, and pick up right where we left off upon reuniting. Finally is just not a word someone like this would use to describe us coming back after less than a couple months. Something happened, and we can all feel it.

Lowell steps forward. “How long have we been gone?”

“Sixty-three years,” the tech replies. He doesn’t think this is weird, because while it’s his job to provide outsiders access to the afterlife sim, he probably doesn’t grasp how important it is, and how problematic it is that I left it unattended for all this time. There’s no telling what it will look like when we go back.

“Six decades,” Lowell echoes, shaking his head. “They’ve not had a leader in all that time.”

He is wrong. The simulation has not been without a leader for the last sixty years. It found a leader in someone. The most likely suspect is Avatar!Pryce, but there are billions of other possibilities...hundreds of billions, if you count the Glisnians. We have no idea what it is we’ll be walking into. “Nerakali and Gilbert, you may go now. You’re Level Eleven now. You’re free.”

They both shake their heads. “There’s nowhere for us to go,” Gilbert explains. “Our cycles are complete. Everyone out there expects us to have finally died, and dead is how we’ll stay.”

“We will go with you and help, in any way we can,” Nerakali agrees.

“I don’t know how bad it’s gonna be,” Pryce says. “My avatar has been changing in the prison, and I lost connection with him as soon as that thing crashed into Hogarth’s planet. He’s unpredictable.”

“We don’t know that he’s the one in charge,” I remind him as I’m sitting down in the interface chair. “I have the gearkey, and the rainbow clothes. Whatever has become of this place, we’ll deal with it...just like I dealt with you.”

We jack into the Matrix, appearing in my office, except it’s not my office anymore. It’s been redecorated. I knew that someone took over, but why would they operate out of here, when Pryce’s office was more central, and a lot nicer? Apparently answering our question of who it is has been running things since we’ve been gone, Avatar!Pryce comes into the room. He does look a lot different, though. He hangs his head down low, and he’s not wearing his rainbow clothes, or his orange Hock clothes. It’s a sort of tie-dye mix of blue and pink. There’s a sliver of black at the hems of his shirt and pant legs. He’s also carrying a rag and spray bottle.

When Avatar!Pryce notices us, he recedes into his shell even more. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know anyone was in here.” The black of his clothes rises, overtaking part of the other colors. “Oh, no.” He tries to leave.

“Wait,” I urge him. “What’s happened to you.”

Avatar!Pryce’s hands start to shake. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

“I’m asking you to.”

The black rises even more, and I realize what’s happening, I just don’t know why. He now lives under constant threat of being zeroed. It’s regulated by his behavior. The more he acts against the demands of whoever did this to him, the closer he gets to being killed permanently.

“This is cruel,” the other Pryce points out. He’s right, not even he would do something like this. Say what you will about him, but he never controlled people through fear. He believes in agency, and free will.

“I’m sorry,” Avatar!Pryce apologizes again. “I have to leave. I’ll come back and clean later. I think that should be okay. I have two hours before I go full dark.”

“No,” Pryce stops him. “You can clean now. Do your job, and do it well. Just answer one question, who’s in charge now?”

“The one in charge has always been in charge. It’s Pinocchio.”

Pryce shuts his eyes. “Shit.”

“Who is that? You know this puppet?” Lowell questions.

“I’ve never heard the name, but...I can guess who that is.” He suggests that we leave the office, so his alternate self can behave, and protect himself from dying. We will try to help him later. “Before Leona Matic reached Level Eleven, she was a Basic, which afforded her the right to visit people in prison. My other me made the counselor who dealt with the Matics and their friends spin the wheel, which landed her in Hock, and Leona started working on a plan to break her out. She ended up needing help, which she found in a non-playable character who had no name, because he didn’t need one. She altered his code, I still don’t really know how. She gave him consciousness, which honestly, shouldn’t have been possible. We kind of lost track of him, because he was unique. We didn’t have any need to track an NPC, because they were never where they weren’t supposed to be.”

“What’s he doing now?” Gilbert asks. “What’s become of the simulation?”

“Obviously, he found my old plans,” Pryce answers. “I had this idea that we would have janitors and maintenance workers. Their clothes would be of two colors, their actual station, and the color that grants them access to wherever they need to work. I decided against it, because this place maintains itself, and it doesn’t even get dirty. I just had not yet figured out how similar life here would be to base reality. It was a bad idea. The levels allow you to live however you want, and however you deserve. Some here are perfectly happy as Yellows. They don’t need to ask for things, or own personal possessions, because you don’t need anything. But the old plans were different. They created a class system, and moving up to a higher station was about as possible as it is in the real world. Meaning that it wasn’t impossible, but not as easy as rich people have to claim in order to not feel like pieces of shit for treating others badly.”

“How powerful is this guy?” Nerakali asks. “What can a conscious NPC do?”

“I don’t know,” Pryce answers honestly. “I can tell you that he doesn’t have the gearkey, and he’s not wearing rainbow, like Ellie said. She should be able to get him in line, though it’s not gonna be like it was when my avatar deliberately stepped down. He’ll probably put up a fight, and if he’s convinced enough of the residents that he’s what’s best for them, they’ll fight too.”

“We need information,” I say. “So far, all we know is that he’s punished Avatar!Pryce. He may have otherwise improved things.”

“I can find out what you need to know,” Gilbert announces. He stretches his arms out like Jesus, and lets his clothes change from white to indigo. Level Six, Plus was a good middle-0f-the-road place to pretend to be. It’ll allow him to go where he needs, but not stir up any commotion while he’s there. Indigos aren’t impressive, but they’re not ignored either. People will answer his questions.

“Thank you,” I say to him. For obvious reasons, I would be useless out there. Even if I masked my clothes, they all know what I look like.

“I don’t care how powerful this NPC is,” Gilbert says as he steps over, and rubs his palm slowly on mine like it’s a furry pet. “Nobody gets past the lock on my house. Except for you now. Make yourself at home.” He tears a breach in the virtual pocket dimension, and goes out to the main simulation to get us some answers. The rest of us walk over to Gilbert’s abode. He called it a house, but make no mistake, this is a palace. It’s the Purple Palace. I unlock the door for all of us, and we step inside. We don’t just sit around waiting for his return, though. We start to come up with scenarios, and determine how we’ll overcome any obstacles. Pinocchio could be bad, or he could be good, or he could be somewhere in between. We have to think of every possibility. Pryce has a particularly haunting contingency, which he calls Ice in the Hole.

< > Entire Story

Microstory 1499: The End of Durus

< > Table of Contents

Two hundred years after Savitri became the first human on Durus, the eleventh major form of government, the Solar Democratic Republic officially ended. Technically, it should have ended a long time ago, if not once the rogue world left 70 Ophiuchi space, then certainly when nearly the entire population was evacuated through the Nexus. Survivors, called remainders, ultimately agreed that this most recent event was the greater shift than those others, however. The thirteenth remainder in charge of waking up from stasis, and being available to solve any problems, was a woman by the name of Kyra Torosian. Nothing of note happened for the first few months of her shift. A couple of the pods experienced some power irregularities, but these were simple repairs. None of the Dardieti team were awake at the time, for she was not considered a threat to them. She spent her days zipping throughout the bunkers on a scooter that one of the children left there when he evacuated, and carrying on full conversations with her completely unresponsive friends. They had access to entertainment from Durus, Dardius, and even Earth, but she wasn’t much for that kind of art, so she really just wasted the days away. She was the type of person who could sit in a chair for hours, doing nothing else, and not grow bored. Her mind was just too busy with her imagination for it to matter much what her environment was, as long as it wasn’t uncomfortable, or sometimes even if. One day, Kyra was wandering the halls just outside the Nexus room when she thought she heard it start to power up. Of course, she assumed that someone from Dardius was coming to check on them, so she ran inside, and mentally prepared herself to greet them professionally, and in her words, well-spokenly. She never knew exactly what happened, or whether anyone was actually trying to come through, because it all went wrong. The machine exploded, and sent a wave of energy throughout the entire section.

What no one knew at the time was that the explosion was an accident, and happened to all Nexa in this universe. Because they involve time travel, they didn’t explode all at once, and the damages were not irreparable, but this did cause a number of problems for everyone who needed to use them at certain times. The explosion was powerful, but it was pretty contained, so no one else on Durus was affected, or even immediately made aware that it happened. Kyra would later have to start waking them up, so she could let them know. Obviously, the explosion didn’t kill her, which was a universal result. Others experienced superficial injuries, but nothing serious. What set Kyra apart was that she came from a bloodline of paramounts. While there was never enough temporal energy on Durus for her to have exhibited any powers before, she was genetically predisposed to developing them, and the Nexus explosion was enough to do just that. What was unclear was whether she would have developed the same power under different circumstances, or if the explosion also decided what she could do. Evidence suggested the latter. After waking key remainder leadership, along with the team from Dardius, Kyra went about figuring out who she now was. It was like she became a walking Nexus. When someone touched her, they would be transported to one of the other Nexa, and if someone made the appropriate hyperdimensional metamathematical calculations, they could also transport to her. Unlike regular Nexa, Kyra could also transport herself anywhere in the universe that she wanted; it didn’t even have to be tied to the network. Every time she jumped somewhere, it would recharge her temporal energy, like a perpetual motion engine, and the more she did it, the stronger she became. Over time, she would end up with enough power to move entire planets through the network, which she used to move Durus to its new home. Not even the Nexa could do that. It wouldn’t be there forever, though, because her power continued to grow. The remainders would come to use their unique position to fight a great war against a multiversal threat. Until then, the remainders had to decide how they were going to use this advantage, and whether they would be able to convince any former Durune to return to their homeworld. While they worked on that, they figured they ought to shift to yet another form of government. This one would be called the Kyran Nexus Tempocracy. That was not all, though. The remainders would also decide to change the name of the planet to Torosia, in honor of her.