Microstory 2633: Riding the Blinds

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It’s the year 2424, and the trip to Castlebourne will take 108 years, because it is 108 light years away, and the ship will be able to travel at just under light speed. Due to special relativity, however, it will only feel like a couple of months for anyone on the ship. That preposition is more appropriate for Mandica than for anyone or anything else. They will actually be inside of it while she’ll be on the outside, like a parasite.

“That’s not the right term,” her pilot argues. “It makes it sound like you’re hurting the ship. I promise, it won’t even notice you. You’re not a parasite, it’s...” He trails off as he looks it up on his device. “Phoretic. You’re a phoresy. Yeah, that sounds better.”

“You literally called the pod The Barnacle,” Mandica argues.

“It’s a joke,” he defends.

“That hat is a joke,” she snaps back. She knows, she shouldn’t be so mean.

“Uh, it’s a trilby, and it’s what we call retro-stylish,” he boasts.

“All right, Trilby.” She notices that he seems to like that nickname. “Tell me how this works so I don’t vaporize myself in the middle of interstellar space.”

Trilby literally pulls back the curtain to show the little pod that she’ll be in. It looks like the inside of a nutshell, but only half of it. There is no other half. This will evidently be sealed against the hull, so the hull acts as the fourth wall, and if that seal ever breaks, she’ll be exposed to the vacuum of outer space. “Okay. You’ll have to be in your Integrated Multipurpose Suit when we begin, helmet and all. You can hold onto these handles so you don’t slip off. Of course, you’ll be tethered, but if you slip out during the process, the seal will snap that tether, and you’ll start to float away.”

“Got it. Hold on tight.”

“Right,” he agrees. “Once it’s sealed, I wouldn’t unseal it until you reach your destination, or you’ll be screwed. It can be resealed, but you would have to keep your grip on it for that to work, so just don’t do it. There’s no door. You can only get out by detaching from the hull. I assume you’re halfway decent with computers. Everything you need is on this console, and it will interface with your suit. It has its own powersource, but it’s minimal, so I suggest you let it siphon from the arkship. Don’t worry, it’s a small pod, and you’re only one person, so the power draw will be well within the margin of error. As long as you don’t do anything crazy, you won’t be detected.”

“Can I take my helmet off in transit, or even my suit?”

“Helmet off should be fine. This thing has its own climate control. I would leave the suit on most of the time, however. If you do remove it, do it in short bursts to let your body breathe, but don’t fall asleep like that, or anything. It’ll be a tight seal, but I won’t be there to fix any issues. It will all be up to you.” He lifts a flap on the end of the console. “Here’s a copy of the operator’s manual, in paper form. There’s obviously a virtual version of it, but this is just in case. He opens a small cupboard. It also has dayfruit growers, but I could only fit four of them, so you’ll want to supplement with the meal bars below it, and your dayfruit smoothie in your Portable Resource Unit. I don’t remember how long regular humans can go without food, so rationing will be up to you. Just be careful and pay attention to your supplies.”

Mandica sighs and looks over her little lifeboat. “Any exercise equipment? I’ve actually never been to space before today, and I spent most of the time hiding in that shipping container. But I hear that we regular humans have trouble with zero-g over long periods of time. I assume I’m subject to the inertial dampeners, or I simply wouldn’t survive high relativistic speeds at all anyway.”

Trilby nods. “The pod will leech from the inertial dampeners, but it’s weird because of how it attaches.” He points to some of the controls. “You’ll be able to tune it, however. If you just turn this dial, it will lower the effects slightly, allowing you to make the back of the pod down. Don’t be scared of it, you will not be able to turn your private dampeners so far down that you splatter against the wall. And this isn’t even the wall. Think of it as the floor. See? Here’s your bed.” He slides the bed lid away. Because of this little shuttle’s own inertial dampeners, it looks like the bed is up against the wall, but that will change once she’s attached and on the move. “You can still do exercise. Your suit has a number of programs built in, which you can peruse yourself. Just be sure to narrow the results to close-quarters, or it may try to get you to run away.”

Mandica nods repeatedly. She’s growing quite nervous. It was bad enough when he snuck her onto the space elevator, but now she will be completely alone. If this fragile thing pops off, and she manages to survive that, she won’t be able to get into the ship. She won’t be able to ask for help. Even in an emergency—even if she’s willing to get caught—the arkship may be fully automated, and help may be difficult. Some bots don’t respond to black swan events. They won’t know how to respond to her pleas. And she’s not going to ask this guy if there will be any intelligence present, because nothing should go wrong at all. She will be tucked away safely for two months, and be free of Core World rule forever. She doesn’t hate the establishment, but she wants to remove herself from it, and this is the only way. She can’t afford the energy credits for anything else.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Trilby says to her.

“Have you done this before?”

“Not this exact thing, but I’ve tested the barnacle pod. It will work, as long as you treat it right, and don’t push the wrong buttons.”

“No pressure,” she says.

He takes a chance and places a hand upon her shoulder. “You’ll do well.”

She doesn’t know him, but he’s been helping her, and risking a lot to do it, so she decides to go for it and give him a hug. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He looks over at his screen. “We’re comin’ up on it. Remember what I taught you, and for everything else, rely on your survival instincts. Digitized people don’t have those anymore, but yours will know what to do. Better put on your other two IMS layers, but first, fix your inner layer. You have it on backwards. The autozipper goes in back. Let me know when you’re ready. I have to seal the bulkhead before I open the airlock, but we’ll be able to talk on comms. I’ll stay with you until I get out of range myself, or the arkship launches, and you speed away in a flash.”

“All right.” She puts her suit all the way on, and tethers herself to the barnacle pod. He opens the airlock, and lets the pod drift out for a little bit before seizing it with his grabber claws. He maneuvers the barnacle in front of his shuttle as he makes his approach. She wants to close her eyes, but that would just be unsafe, so she watches. She looks around for any cameras, drones, or lurking spacewalkers. No one. No one will know she’s here. The claws push the pod forward, and automated systems automatically latch on. The vacuum seal engages until she’s fully secure. They spend the next few hours getting to know each other better before the arkship powers up and flies away.

Microstory 2631: The Truth is That Even the Undigitized Are Digitized Because True Death is Dumb

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Datetime format not recognized. Cecelia Massey has been doing this job for less than twenty years. Her boss, Keilix has been doing it for centuries, but Cece doesn’t think even Keilix has seen anything like this before. “Uhh, K.O.? K.O.? K.O.? Keilix!”

The dead don’t need to sleep, but it’s a pleasurable experience, so people still do it all the time. Keilix finally wakes up. “What is it?”

“There—I think there’s something broken.”

Keilix gets out of bed, and walks over to the workstation. Her eyes widen in shock and fear when she sees it. “No, that can’t be right. This is thousands of people.”

“The numbers are still rising,” Cecelia states the obvious.

“Something huge must have happened, like a ship blew up, or something. Where are they coming from?”

Cecelia opens a new screen. “A place called Proxima Doma, Proxima Centauri. It looks like there was a delay in processing, but their local buffer filled up, so it sent a databurst to us. Why would it do that? We can’t handle this kind of volume.”

Keilix looks at a different screen. “The original programming was never altered. These are the same protocols that the original simulation had. It doesn’t know that there are only two of us now. It’s just dropping people off, and assuming that there will be counselors available to facilitate orientation.”

“I’m looking at the COD list. We have falls, asphyxiation, implosion...lava? I’m seeing a lot of lava here.”

Keilix looks over Cece’s shoulder. “This is an apocalyptic event. Let me look at something.” She takes out her handheld device. It’s not any more physical than anything else in this virtual world, but it’s the manifestation of the only thing that grants her access to some current knowledge out of base reality. It allows them to keep up with what’s going on, to a degree. They try not to use it too much. “There’s nothing in the news about it, but the link hasn’t updated in a while. What I can tell you is that the population of Proxima Doma, at last count, was roughly 1.21 billion people.”

“Are they all coming here?” Cece presses.

“If the whole world was destroyed by something almost all at once, then maybe. But...some of them should be digitized. Their consciousnesses should be routed to local simulations and backup substrates. They shouldn’t actually die.” She looks back at her device, reads a little more, and shakes her head. “But apparently, this one planet boasts the greatest undigitized population in the galaxy right now. I get the sense that they’re proud of that. Some of them are entirely unenhanced humans, just like I was when I died at the turn of the 22nd century. I didn’t have as much choice, though.”

“Well, I did, I still ended up here too.” Cece has pulled up the arrival history. “Yeah, I’m just scanning our logs now. Proxima Doma, Proxima Doma, Proxima Doma. I guess I never noticed that when people do die, they tend to come from there above all else. Almost no one from Earth these days.”

“We don’t usually ask them where they’re from, we don’t care.”

“So, what do we do? Can we...make them all go dormant maybe?”

Keilix sighs, and scratches the back of her head to relieve the tension. “I don’t know how to do that. We need help. Either way, we can’t do this ourselves.”

“Who do we call? Gilbert?” Cece suggests.

“No, he’s not great with people. Neither is Nerakali. They’re not bad, but they won’t know what to do either.” She looks over at the small red button on the wall.

“This is an emergency,” Cece seems to agree.

“The problem is, I don’t know who we’re gonna get. Hades...or Persephone.”

“Which one are we hoping for?”

“Hell if I know, I’ve never met either of them. I don’t even know what their real names are. I just know that they’re both bad, and that’s why we don’t push that button.”

“I think we have to,” Cece decides. “Unprecedented is an understatement. We are not equipped for this. Honestly, I wouldn’t have taken this job if I had died back around when you did. It’s too much pressure. I wanted to help people...but only a few at a time.”

“Okay.” Keilix takes a deep breath and walks over to the button.

Cece stands. “We’ll press it together.”

“No, I got it.” She presses it.

Ding-dong, goes the doorbell.

A door materializes on the wall, then after a few seconds pass, it opens. A young woman in her pajamas is on the other side. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, it’s uhh, uhh...Armageddon? There could be as many as over a billion people dying at once. We were told to push this button if we ever needed help.”

The woman looks over at the button. “Oh. No one told me. So, I’m assuming that this is the afterlife simulation?”

“Yeah.”

“What year is it?”

“I forget,” Keilix admits. “The 2520s.”

“Well.” The woman steps into the room. “I don’t know what to do in this situation, but I will help in any way I can.” She offers her hand. “I’m Ellie Underhill.”

“So, you’re Persephone?” Cece guesses.

The woman winces. “No. I’m Ellie Underhill,” she repeats.

“Persephone is a code name. We don’t know who she would really be,” Keilix explains. “That’s why we’ve never pressed it before.”

“Hmm,” Ellie begins. “Well, you don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m not a weirdo with a Greek god complex. I didn’t actually build the simulation, I just came up with it. A guy stole it from me, but interestingly enough, he was not entirely without honor, so when I finally showed up after thousands of years, he gave it back. I didn’t realize it was still running after I moved all of the dead people to a new universe.”

Keilix’s eyes widened again. “That was you? Should I bow?”

Ellie laughs. “No. Let’s just get to work. Show me what we’re dealing with here.”

And so the trio look through the operator’s manuals, and start learning how to deal with this issue. As it turns out, while this planetwide catastrophe is absolutely unprecedented, the “Hades” founder still considered it a possibility, and still planned for it. They find a way to slow down the ingress, and bring in a little extra help. After a few days, the deaths taper off, ultimately numbering in the low millions. They slowly get them through orientation. Some are disappointed that this isn’t the real heaven, but many are relieved, and regret not doing more to protect themselves intentionally. But they will all be okay. The afterlife simulation is fully operational once more.

Microstory 2606: There But For the Grace of God Go I, Yet I May Be Next

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August 19, 2526. Comms Officer Jeffries is operating the auxiliary station when the call comes in. He presses the tentative emergency button before the message completes, then listens intently to the rest. We’re experiencing a major hyperflare! You need to prepare for what comes next! You need to prepare for— is all he catches before the signal is cut. It doesn’t matter what the guy was trying to say, because there are only a few possibilities, and none of them is good. He doesn’t get the chance to hit the genuine emergency button before someone else hits it for him. He’s only on secondary duty right now. Everyone else is working the problem as the whole of Terminator Sentinel Alpha goes into mauve alert. His daughter is his number one priority now.

Jeffries races out of the room, and down the corridors, sliding against the wall as other people are racing to their own responsibilities. He finds Breanna in their unit, already putting on her integrated multipurpose suit. He smiles at her. “Good girl.”

“What are we doing?” she asks.

“Crew of Sentinel Alpha,” comes the voice of the captain through the intercom, “we are preparing for a hard turn into the nightside of the planet. Brace for inertial dampener disruption. Everyone is at PREPCON ONE. I repeat, all hands to PREPCON ONE! This is not a drill.”

“That,” Officer Jeffries replies to his daughter. “Get your helmet on.”

“What about you?”

“I ran out of the room without it,” he explains.

“You should have an extra one in here,” she argues.

“It’s in maintenance.”

“Goddammit,” she complains.

“I just need to get you to safety,” is all he’s able to say before the inertial dampeners glitch. He’s suddenly thrown against the wall. IMS units have their own onboard dampeners. It doesn’t save Breanna from the lurch entirely, but she survives it. Her father does not. Well, he does survive for a moment. His head is covered in blood. He’s enhanced, but not enough. He should have been wearing his full suit. Why wasn’t he wearing his suit? “Get to the pod,” he instructs. “Get out of here. You need to get underneath the magnet.” And then he dies.

She knows she doesn’t have time to mourn him. He wouldn’t want her dying up here too. Her body is more advanced than his, but she can’t survive everything. She runs out of the room, and down the corridor until she reaches the escape pod bay. She has always thought that each unit should have their own, instead of all in central locations, but this is an old ship, and they didn’t think of that yet. All of the pods are gone save one. She bolts towards it, but another girl shows up at the same time from the other entrance. “Cashmere.”

Cashmere switches her gaze between the pod and Breanna. “They’re technically large enough to fit two people.”

“Not with helmets on,” Breanna argues. There’s another lurch, but their magboots keep them upright.

“You ever heard of sixty-nining?”

“Jesus! Not the time!”

“To save our lives, there absolutely is.” Cashmere doesn’t wait for consensus. She pushes Breanna into the pod. Then she gets on top of her facing the opposite direction, filling in the space between her Breanna’s legs with her helmet. “You gotta operate the controls.”

“I know,” Brenna argues. “This better work, or we’ll both die. Goddamn pods designed like goddamn coffins!” she mutters as she’s engaging the pod. She flips on the boosters, and jettisons the pod out of the bay. It flies from the ship at Mach 20. They can see the planet below them through their HUDs. “Beginning decay.”

“I can see that,” Cashmere says.

“I know, but you’re supposed to announce it. Didn’t you read the manual?”

“I’m waiting for the adaptation!”

“Just let me know if you pass out, okay?”

“Will do, captain.”

“Targeting the northern pole,” Breanna announces. “Twenty minutes until atmospheric drag.”

They lie there together for another few minutes, not saying anything, but just stewing in the awkwardness. Suddenly, alarms start going off. They no longer feel the soft curve of their arc, but the shudder of turbulence. “What happened?” Cashmere questions.

“The atmosphere is too close. This doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s expanded,” Cashmere guesses.

“How?” Breanna cries

“I don’t know!”

They begin to plummet like a stone, at a far steeper angle than they planned on. Their ablative shielding peels off piece by piece. It’s too early to pull the parachute, though. They have to wait until they’re closer to the surface. “Wait for it,” Breanna says. “Wait for it,” she repeats. “Brace for chute.”

“Oh, I don’t think we can brace any more than this.”

Breanna can’t rely on the computer to make the calculations as its estimation of the distance to the planet was about 500 kilometers off. She hovers her hand over the button, forcing her mind to stay alert so she doesn’t succumb to the g-forces. Finally, it’s time. “Now!”

The chute opens. The pod flips up so she’s fully upright, and Cashmere is upside down as they wait to complete the descent. “Do you know where you’re going?”

“There’s a dome not far from here. The thrusters will be able to push us close enough to it so we don’t have to walk far,” Breanna answers.

They fall and fall and fall, slowly, but certainly not gently. Her mental calculations are slightly off when it turns out they were actually a lot closer to the dome than she thought. They end up crashing into the side of it. The only reason they don’t slide down from there is because the chute gets caught on something. Now they’re hanging, and they don’t know what to do.

“Rescuers are gonna find us six months from now, and will think that we died having sex,” Cashmere mused.

“No, they won’t,” Breanna contends. “I’m gonna figure this out. Just...shut up.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 11, 2493

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A web of technicolors appeared out of nowhere, and spat Team Matic out onto the floor. They rolled away from each other like marbles from a jar. It was not only the six of them, though. Romana was with them, as was some guy. “Who are you?” Leona demanded to know, prepared to fight, while Mateo was making sure that his daughter was okay.

The stranger stood up and cracked his neck. He held his arms out in front of him with his elbows bent a little. As he was clearing his throat, he adjusted his nanites, looking down at himself, making sure they were all in working order. It was only then that he acknowledged their presence, though not out of surprise. “My name is Amal,” he answered stoically.

“What are you doing here, Amal?” Leona questioned, almost as if she didn’t believe him.

“What year is it?” he posed.

She kept one eye on him while she consulted her watch. She tapped on it a few times with her fingernail. “No idea, this is broken.”

“Use your other one,” Amal suggested cryptically.

“My other what?” Leona asked, confused, and even more defensive now.

“Uh,” Ramses began, massaging his forehead. “I replicated that watch’s powers. We all have one now.” He receded the wrist of his emergent suit to show his bare skin. The time and date appeared on it, glowing a bright green. “Nanobotic tattoos, tied directly into the timestream.”

Leona looked at her own. Then removed her broken watch. “July 11, 2493. We jumped early from last year.”

“No, you went on a detour,” Amal contended. “You’ve been gone longer than you realize.”

“Where were we?” Marie asked, stepping forward. “When were we?”

“I cannot answer that,” Amal replied. “I honestly do not know.” Agent Smith. That was who he sounded like; Agent Smith from the Matrix franchise. “Our minds have been erased to protect the future. I could not even tell you why I’m here. We have not yet met.”

“It seems that we have,” Angela reasoned.

“Quite,” Amal agreed. “Something must have gone wrong after you were summoned to the future. I should not have come through with you.”

“Summoned by who?” Olimpia pressed.

“That I could answer, but I won’t. But I can promise that you trust them.” He laughed through his nose.

“It was us,” Leona figured. “We summoned ourselves.”

“I never said that.” Amal was worried, which probably meant that she was right.

“How do we proceed?” Mateo asked him. “What are we gonna do with you?”

“What you’re going to do is be patient,” Amal answered. “Until we meet again.” There was no stopping him. He slammed his fists together, crouched down, and stuck his knees between his elbows. Technicolors overwhelmed him, and he was gone.

“Hmm,” Ramses said. He looked around at his lab. “The sensors picked that up. Now I bet they know how to make a miniature slingdrive.”

“Careful, Rambo,” Leona said to him. “That’s what we call bootstrapping.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

“Roma,” Mateo said to his little girl. “How did you end up with us?”

“We were going on a mission,” Romana answered. “I stepped into my Dubra pod, just as we always do, so our temporal signatures don’t interfere with the operation of the slingdrive on the Vellani Ambassador. Then I woke up here.”

“You must have been summoned too. It could take years before we find out where we went, and even then, it may only be from an outsider’s perspective. Then again, I once closed my own loop, and my otherwise paradoxical memories of it finally came flooding back into my brain, like they were just waiting for me.”

Romana shook her head. “I’ve been gone for almost a year. I have to go report in.”

“I understand.” He gave her a hug, and then let her go.

A swarm of dark particles spun her around, and into oblivion.

Olimpia was playing with her new suit. She opened some sort of flap on the top of her wrists, which she pointed around the room with a menacing look on her face. “I have guns. I’m gonna shoot sum’im.”

“Those are not guns,” Ramses said with a laugh. “There are no onboard weapons.” He lifted his own flaps, then switched on the flashlight on his right arm.

“Oh,” Olimpia said, figuring out how to turn her own flashlight on, and looking down the barrel of it. She then did the same with her left arm. “What’s this other one?”

“Sensor suite,” Ramses explained as he was walking towards her, “for more detailed information about your environment. It has a medical array too. You should read up on it. He tapped the center of her chest, just under her neck, with three of his fingers. A holographic computer interface was projected from two emitters on her shoulders. “You should peruse the manual.”

“Why is it called the EmergentSuit?” she asked.

“Because the nanites emerge from the implants in your body,” Ramses said.

Olimpia read a little more of the text, which was probably pretty dry and uninteresting. “Boring, I’ll wait for the movie.”

He put an arm around her shoulders, and used his other hand to control her interface. A video popped up. “Hi. I’m a virtual avatar, presenting in the form of my creator, Ramses Abdulrashid. Let me show you how your new EmergentSuit works!” He muted it. “What a fox,” Real!Ramses mused.

Mateo huffed. “You did not tell me that was there. I had to read pages and pages of that thing.”

“If that’s true, you would have seen the part where it tells you that there’s an interactive alternative.”

Mateo mocked Ramses playfully with his pursed lips as he bobbled his head. He pulled up his own interface, and searched the manual for the exact terms. “Interactive alternative; no results.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot to put that blurb in your version of the manual, and you never received the updated edition. You do have the video, though.”

“Thanks, that’s great,” Mateo said sarcastically.

“This all sounds fun,” Leona said, “but we need to go check in with Hrockas.”

“Wait,” Angela interrupted. “Is that it? We were sent to the future, and brought back to our pattern, and we’re just gonna move on as if that’s normal and fine? We’re not gonna try to get our memories back, or investigate how this could have possibly happened, or anything? Someone summoned us, Ramses, using technology that you have apparently not invented yet. Doesn’t that worry you?”

Ramses was about to answer, but Leona stepped in, starting with, “I—” She took one moment to gather her thoughts. “Before you died, did you believe in God?”

“Excuse me?”

“It was very common at the time, to believe in a higher power.”

“Well, yeah, I did. I was raised to be a Christian,” Angela admitted.

“Did you ever question God?”

“All the time,” Angela replied, like she was winning the argument. My dad was a slaveowner.

“And did you ever get anything out of that? Did God ever...come down, and apologize?  Did he give you answers?”

Angela was not happy, but Marie was even more upset. “The people who took us are not gods.”

“By our standards,” Leona reasoned, “they may as well be. We know nothing. We don’t know for sure that it was Future!Us, though that is the assumption. We can’t go preoccupying ourselves with every little thing that happens to us. We’ll go crazy. The truth will reveal itself in time. Until then, Hrockas needs to know that we’re back. Because we returned later than expected, and we made a commitment to build him a relay network.”

“The relay network is done.” They had left Ramses’ lab, and were now in Hrockas’ office. “Well, it’s not done, but it’s on its way, and will be ready in time for the grand opening in seven years.”

“Team Kadiar agreed to help you with it?”

He shook his head. “No need. Some friends stepped up. They didn’t want us clogging up their own quantum terminals, but they agreed to build us dedicated machines. Most of them will be stored in the corner somewhere on their Lagrange-one stations.”

“I thought you couldn’t do that,” Leona reminded him. “I thought they were unwilling to help.”

“No, the core government was unwilling to help. But the neighborhood representatives finally secured a win for key legislation that gave them more latitude. They’re free to build whatever technology they want—as long as it follows certain criteria, like not being a weapon—and they don’t have to share it with any other world. This places each machine squarely in the local leadership’s control, and I’ve managed to negotiate with all of them, even some core worlds. So we’re good. Thanks for the offer.”

“This sounds risky,” Leona pointed out. “They could revoke the charter whenever they want, right?”

“Absolutely,” Hrockas admitted. “Maintaining strong diplomatic relations will be of the utmost importance to the continuity of my operation. That’s why I’ve hired a Minister of Foreign Affairs to be in charge of all the little ambassadors that I’ll need to liaise with our relay partners.”

“Could we meet this person?”

“She’s not here yet,” Hrockas explained. “I believe that she’s leaving in a few weeks, then it will take her a couple of months to arrive.”

“A couple months?” Ramses questioned. “The only way you can get out here in a couple months is if you use a reframe engine. I mean, that’s if you’re not just quantum casting which is within an hour.”

“Yeah, she has a reframe engine,” Hrockas said. “I guess Earth has done enough work to develop them on their own.”

“I guess,” Leona agreed. “I hope we did the right thing, letting them have that technology.” It had actually been a pretty long time since the Edge Meeting where they granted certain knowledge to certain parties in the main sequence regarding the manipulation of time. It was Hokusai Gimura’s responsibility to actually coordinate with Teagarden and Earth, and Leona didn’t exist most of the time, so she lost track of how that process was faring. It didn’t sound like it was going to be as easy as beaming them the specifications, and walking away. Still, it felt rushed, probably because to the team, this whole thing only started a few months ago. “Well, I’m glad you’re doing okay.”

“Yep,” Hrockas agreed. “So, if you wanted to move on to your next project, maybe fight the bad guy in that Goldilocks Corridor, I think that would be fine.”

“Yeah, we might do that,” Leona said with a nod.

The rest of the team was there, but besides Mateo and Ramses, they were all kind of busy reading up on their new suits. It was awkward, so Leona just disappeared. Mateo broke the others out of their trances, and pulled them out of the office too. “Hey. How are you feeling?” he asked his wife. They were in the replica of Kansas City now, standing in the parking lot where all time travelers were funneled to when they showed up in the Third Rail.

“We never...finish anything,” she mused. “We don’t accomplish our goals. We’re always pulled in some other direction, and all we can do is hope that we’ve done enough for whoever we had to leave behind. I got used to that. I got used to knowing that I did my best, but this new crowd needed me now, and it was time to refocus.” She finally looked up at him. “But do we even need to go back to the Corridor? Niobe’s army is taking the offensive. I even think fighters from Verdemus finally showed up in the Anatol Klugman. Team Kadiar is rescuing defectors left and right. I don’t know what’s going on with the Sixth Key, but the delegates were doing fine the last we saw them.”

Mateo nodded. “We’re aimless again, aren’t we? And we don’t do well when we’re aimless. Ramses needs to invent, you need to lead, the Waltons need to counsel.”

“And the two of us need to be dum-dums,” Olimpia added.

Mateo nodded again. “And the two of us need to be dum-dums,” he echoed.

“Dum-dums with cool flashlights,” Olimpia corrected. She shined it on the asphalt, thought it was daytime under this dome, so the light may as well have been off.

“We may be aimless,” Marie said in a soft voice, “but we’re not useless. We’ll find our place to be. Ramses just needs to get us there.”

“I can finish the mini-slingdrives,” Ramses confirmed, “but someone will need to decide where we go.”

“Are you sure?” Angela smiled. “We’ve used it before without plotting a destination. You could even say that we were aimless.”

Leona smiled too.

“Orders sir,” Ramses requested from the Captain.

Leona took a breath to center herself. “Engineer, build me my new engine. Counselors, find out what you can about this Minister of Foreign Affairs. I don’t want to leave our friends hanging if there’s only one last thing to do. Mister Matic, go see if you can spend some time with your daughters before we leave. And Miss Sangster?”

“Yeah...?”

“I believe we owe each other date.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 28, 2399

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It’s true that Leona has stolen control over Mangrove Zero, but that doesn’t mean they’re not at risk. Going up to orbit didn’t automatically protect them. Aldona could always launch a second rocket, or even a missile, at them. As soon as they arrived, she and Ramses went to work. He had already been studying the bridge systems whenever he took a break from rebuilding his satellite. It wasn’t long before they figured out how to break orbit, and head for the moon. They weren’t necessarily safe there either, but maybe safer. Theoretically, Aldona wouldn’t try to harm them while there were children on board, but she died centuries ago, and lived the rest of the time in the afterlife simulation. It’s unclear whether Tamerlane ever conducted any case studies to determine how that impacts an individual or group’s outlook on life and death.

Orbiting the Earth is no small feat, but orbiting the moon is even harder. It’s lumpy, and gravitationally unstable. Mangrove Zero was apparently designed just to show the primitives down on the planet how easy it was for Aldona to build and launch it. She didn’t equip it with an AI, or any other significant means of maintaining stability. Someone has to be at the controls the whole time to keep it from crashing on the surface, and of course, Leona and Ramses are the only ones with the skills to do that. They taught Mateo the basics, so he would be able to take over in an emergency, but even that is probably not enough to actually save their lives. They would land if they could, but they’re going to have to spend a little more time reading the manual.

Good news is they’re now sufficiently far from Earth to give Leona and Ramses their powers back. Bad news is Carlin and Moray have no powers to speak of, so the mission is still in just as much danger of cataclysmic failure. That’s the constant threat looming over them. The more general issue is that they can’t launch Ramses’ satellite from here, and even if they could, any world superpower would have the technology capable of blowing it out of the sky. As it stands there’s no way to make it invisible. None of them has the power to do that, and there is no traditional technological path towards it. Not even the Parallel can do it. It’s a fundamental rule of physics. If an object does work, it produces heat, and if it produces heat, it can be detected. Fortunately, there may be a workaround. Leona holds the bottle in the palm of her hand.

“Starter nanites?” Ramses asks. Nanobots are usually designed to serve a single purpose. Some repair a specific organ in the body. Others will maintain an inorganic system, like a quantum computer. Starter nanites have not yet specialized. Think of them as the stem cells of industry. There aren’t very many in the bottle, but that’s the beauty of it. If you even have one of these microscopic things, and the right raw material, you can build anything. It may take a long time, but it is possible. Any good emergency kit will have one of these, or something similar. “What are we building?”

Leona swings her other arm around, In her hand is a mostly black object about the size of a phablet or large phone, but much more narrow. It has little protrusions, and maybe a button or two. “I call it...leechcraft.”

“Isn’t that what ancient physicians used to use to heal,” he asks with airquotes.

“This is not that,” Leona begins. “This will find a preexisting satellite, and leech its power. In turn, the other satellite will mask its power signature. It can even latch onto space junk. Why have one satellite when you could have tens of thousands?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 9, 2398

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Arcadia has her own life, so she hasn’t had time to learn how to use the equipment in the lab. She and Ramses came up with a code phrase in case he ever suspected himself of being psychically compromised again, but that’s about as far as they got with the protocols. She and Vearden drove there from their house yesterday, and they’ve been here ever since, reading the manual that Ramses prepared in case he was ever indisposed. He didn’t write all of himself. He got a lot of help from their new AI, Constance. Actually, it was more like him helping her. The text is well organized, and easy to understand for the less educated, like Arcadia, but it’s still a lot, so she didn’t want to rush this. “Okay, I’ve found Alyssa’s most recent scan.”

“Okay,” Ramses replies, still inside the containment chamber with Alyssa. It was awkward after their conversation, but they took turns on the cot, and made it work. He might install multiple cots after all this, but on the other hand, he doesn’t want to plan for another crisis.

“And I see her history. It’s definitely changed.”

“Good, can you look at my history?”

“Yeah, I see it right here.”

“Okay, run a scan on both of us, it’s fine, just make sure you tell the scanner that it should be expecting two consciousnesses, instead of one.”

“No, I think I know how to scan you and you alone.”

“All right.” Ramses grimaces. That’s not a very high level function, but it’s not completely obvious either.

“Just please go to your separate corners,” Arcadia requests.

Ramses stays near the front while Alyssa goes behind him, thinking she’s getting out of the way.

“No, um, different corners.” The chamber is more circular than it is round, but Alyssa figures it out, and ends up catty-corner to him. Now that the two subjects aren’t too close to each other, the machine scans Ramses’ brain. Arcadia watches the data come in. She’s seen enough already by comparing the new scan with his scan history. “Constance, sequestration wall.”

A wall comes down from the ceiling, physically separating Ramses from Alyssa. “What? Why did you do that?” Alyssa questions.

Ramses sighs. “I’m not infected. She’s trying to protect me from you.”

“I still need to keep you contained,” Arcadia says. “I’ve only run one test, so you can’t leave, but I don’t want to risk further cross-contamination.”

“It’s gonna be okay,” Ramses says to Alyssa.

“Get it out. Get it out of my brain,” she begs.

“It’s not that bad,” Ramses assures her. “Erlendr can’t control your actions. It’s more like he extracted a piece of his consciousness, and implanted it in you, so everything you’ve experienced since then can be his. But don’t worry, you only uploaded yourself into the Insulator once to see if he would respond better to you asking for help with Leona’s bounty. You haven’t been back, which means he can’t have downloaded anything from you yet.”

“How do you know he didn’t download anything from me from my life before?”

“We would have seen that,” Ramses tells her. “We would have seen him doing that as it was happening. He hasn’t gotten anything from you, and we’re gonna figure out how to get the infection out before it can do any harm, right?” He turns to face Arcadia at the last few words.

“Yeah, I can do this,” Arcadia replies confidently. “With my new knowledge of this tech, combined with my naturally psychic abilities, this will be easy. I just need to know more about what we’re dealing with. I have to analyze Alyssa’s scan history.”

“Synthesize,” Ramses corrects. “You need to synthesize it. It’s far more complicated than just pointing to an area of the brain, and saying, that’s been taken over by Erlendr.”

“I know, I just...don’t know all the lingo yet,” Arcadia says. Yikes, she thinks. Is she going to be able to do this?

After Arcadia completes one more scan for good measure on Alyssa’s brain, Alyssa sighs, and plops herself down on the cot to wait. Arcadia works on the problem for the next few hours. She scans her own brain with an external unit to figure out why it is that her mental defenses weren’t able to protect Alyssa from this intrusion. She asks Ramses for a little guidance throughout, but doesn’t want to involve him too much as she’s not one hundred percent sure that he’s not also secretly infected. Vearden, unable to do anything, becomes the errand boy for all three of them. He goes out to get them food, and other amenities. He also dotes on Arcadia, and tries to make sure she has everything she needs to be comfortable, like a lumbar pillow, and ice chips. She’s fourteen weeks pregnant, not in hospice, but if he can’t stop her from working, he’s at least going to make sure she doesn’t overexert herself. She accepts the support, because arguing would make it worse, and it is helping her focus on Alyssa.

Finally, Arcadia is certain that there is nothing wrong with Ramses, which is probably what she should have been most worried about the entire time. With him back in commission, she doesn’t need to be responsible for Alyssa’s psychic restoration. She lets him out of the containment chamber, and steps aside so he can take over. She doesn’t want to leave while he’s working, though, because now she’s invested.

“Hold on,” Ramses says. He pulls up Alyssa’s scan history again, and puts them all in a row. “Constance, loop these images in rapid succession, chronologically.”

The AI performs the request.

“What is it?” Alyssa asks.

“It can’t be.” Ramses peers at the screen, and watches the loop a few more times while Arcadia watches it over his shoulder, not sure what she’s seeing. He stops, and looks inquisitively up at Alyssa. “This is going to be an odd question, but I need you to really think hard about it. Before you met this team, did you have any other interaction with someone who may have been a time traveler, or a psychic, or something? Thinking back, was there someone who you now realize may have been a little...different?”

“Not that I can think of,” she answers. “Why? Have my scans always been weird?”

“Well, I first scanned your mind a long time ago, when we were figuring out how to do your illusion powers, and I always took the data as what we in the business call baseline, but maybe they never were. I don’t think this is Erlendr. I think someone else put something in your head, and it could have been a long time ago.”

“What do we do about that?” Arcadia questions.

Ramses takes a breath. “More tests.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 1, 2398

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Leona and Zacarias exchange a look. This is not what they expected to happen, but they didn’t really have any expectations in the first place. They didn’t have time, because neither of them knew that the first possible address on the dialer would work. Come to think of it, though, it makes a little bit of sense. If this person is in charge of the Nexus network, then it’s only natural that reaching them means pressing zero. After all, in Leona’s universe, that’s how you contact the switchboard operator.

“I can see that you’re confused,” Senona says. “That’s okay. If you have never experienced space travel, it can be a bit of a trip.”

“Wait,” Leona stops, “space travel? Are we still in salmonverse?”

Senona tilts their head, the confused one now. “No, I was just trying to simplify things. You’re cognizant of other universes?”

“I’ve been to several,” Leona answers like it ain’t no thang.

They’re moderately impressed. Zacarias, on the other hand, is quite impressed, and still confused. “You can grant any wish?”

“Yes, two of them. But don’t worry, you don’t have to agree upon them. You can choose two for the both of you, or one each. It’s up to you.”

“Anything?” Zacarias presses.

“Anything within my power,” Senona clarifies.

“How do we know what is in your power?” Leona asks.

They laugh. “Why don’t you ask me what you want, and I’ll tell you whether I can do it. Don’t worry, it can take as long as it takes. I’m not a genie, I’m not going to try to trick you into wording it the wrong way. We’ll work together to figure it out.”

Leona looks to Zacarias to start. “We don’t know each other well, so we’ll ask for separate things. You can go first.”

“I would like to end all war and wanting in the world,” he decides confidently.

Senona smiles. “As would I. Unfortunately, that is not within my power. This is more of a single act thing. I could probably lift your civilization up, but it would require too much time, and though I am immortal, I have other interests.”

Zacarias looks away to think about it. He feels like the steward of his whole planet. “Hold on, if I tell others—”

“One wish per traveler per Nexus,” Senona interrupts. “If you want another one, you will have to come to me from elsewhere.”

Zacarias nods. He was asking for clarity, not to be greedy with a loophole. He clearly wants to help people, and has no plans to ask for a zillion dollars in space cash.

“We can come back to it if you want a few days to consider your options.” Senona steps over to the dialing terminal. “In the meantime, if you’re hungry or thirsty, we can summon literally anything. I love a certain sandwich from Adamsverse.

“I’m ready,” Leona announces. She’s been thinking about her own options the entire time. There are so many things she could ask for. She could transport her and her friends to the main sequence. She could undo any mistake from the future, or the past. She could remove the powers that be and Superintendent from the equation. She doesn’t know if Senona could wield any control over such things, but all of them potentially leave her husband with his midan curse. Had they come here before the timonite, or in a timeline where it simply never happened, it wouldn’t be a problem. Then again, the only reason she went to Antarctica was to help him, and the butterfly wings that carried her led to this moment with Coronel Zacarias. Had they shown up under different circumstances, would he have come to the conclusion that they could try to contact this operator? This is a boon for them. Now that they know this place exists, when they get to another Nexus, they could ask for more things. Or perhaps that’s unethical. Is that really what this place is for? Or does Senona want to teach the a lesson of some kind? What does their title, Intentioner even really mean?

Senona smirks. “I can see that you’re struggling. It’s okay if you changed your mind about what you were gonna ask. This really is not a trick. My associates have their own lives and responsibilities, leaving me with nothing to do, so I decided to stay on Origin, and help people. The address you dialed is too poetic to not go somewhere special. Any rando planet would be anticlimactic. Still, not many think to try.”

“Do all possible addresses go somewhere?”

Senona narrows their eyes. “That’s a hard question to answer. As you know now, if you didn’t know before, they are technically capable of interversal travel, but they’re not really designed that way. They’re meant for local brane travel. If you have already experienced interversal travel yourself, then you probably already know that each universe has its own spacetime. So is every single possible permutation used up? Yes, at some point in time, because the bulk is the true definition of eternity. We will one day run out of numbers, but I haven’t even seen that happen in my personal timeline, so I couldn’t tell you what that day looks like. The fact is that most universes will never even hear of the Nexus network.”

“I’ve been to a reality where they built their own Nexa. How does one get on the network if one didn’t create it oneself? How do they have an address of their own?”

Senona nods. “If you build your own to satisfactory specifications, a new address will automatically be assigned to it. Most of the time, when your Nexus doesn’t work, it’s because one or more of these specifications have been corrupted, be it self-made, or one of ours. We did it that way so that people can’t modify them into weapons, or something else that we did not intend. To be the fairest, it’s an all or nothing deal, so even if the corruption was accidental or unintentional, it needs to be fixed before it’ll work again.”

“I wish for a detailed manual of these specifications, written in my native language,” Coronel Zacarias declares, jumping back in. “Yeah, that makes sense, right? If we can always fix it ourselves, we can use it as it should be used.”

“Is that your final answer?” Senona asks.

Zacarias thinks on it a little more. “Yes.”

Senona presses a button on the terminal, and releases a small device. “The manual is now accessible on your primary Nexus computer, but you will need this to copy it.” They prepare to hand it off, but wait. “You must recognize that this does not entitle you to travel to any particular place. You are still limited to your local network.”

“Understood.” Zacarias smiles proudly.

“And you?” they ask Leona. “Are you ready? No pressure, I literally don’t age.”

She takes in a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. “My husband, Mateo Matic, is cursed to banish any object he touches with his hands to an unknown location. I wish for him to be able to control when he does that, and when he doesn’t, and also to control where he sends things.”

Senona looks like they’re debating the request in their head. “Let me make a call.”