Microstory 2709: A Map and a Name

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This place turned out to be a dangerous one. It was perfectly fine in the beginning, but it seemed that the Custodians wanted to take this time to remind the family that there is no such thing as safety. The first few years were peaceful, which lulled them into a false sense of security. For the last seven years after that, however, they faced raid after raid from rival Danes who wanted what they had. Ronan couldn’t leave. He had to stay and protect their land. They considered picking up their door, and moving everyone again, but that wasn’t what a true Norseman would do. He would stay and fight. He always thought he would eventually go off a-viking and seek out the battle, but he clearly didn’t have to. It always found them. He didn’t usually know if he and Vith were fighting other players, or NPCs, but it didn’t matter. Their responsibility remained the same: defend the home, protect the girls and the child.

Leif is ten years old now, which is older than Talus was when he started showing signs of an antisocial disorder. Leif is a completely different kid, just as Gia promised. He is gentle and thoughtful. He eats meat, because he has to, but he doesn’t go on hunts. Ronan found him with a rabbit once, which gave him a powerful flashback to that day with Talus, but Leif wasn’t hurting it. He was holding it on its back like a baby, and petting its neck and chest. It made Ronan wonder whether this was the right world for him. Was he simply not built for it? Did he deserve to try something more his speed, like Raindome? Or maybe something else with a lot of animals, like Canopydome? It doesn’t have to be on Castlebourne either. They could take him to Earth, or one of the other colonies. They just didn’t know. It has been hard to explain to him that none of this is real. They no longer have the flexible display to illustrate the technology that they’re missing here. He might have to see it for himself so he can make a decision.

Isavet is not like Talus or Leif. She grew up to be a fierce girl, who looks just like her mother, but acts just like Ronan, specifically when he’s fighting the raiders. Over the years, she has talked about seeking revenge against their attackers. Ronan and Gia wouldn’t let her go; not because she was a girl, but because she was too young. They always said, though, when she came of age, if she wanted to go a-viking, they would let her. Has that day finally arrived? Was this the last straw? Even Ronan is feeling legitimately angry about it, and he better understands just how contrived this world is. That’s a funny word to use for it, though, when you’re standing before your own house as it’s burning down, including the door that you fought to protect for so many years.

Everyone is angry, except for young Leif. He never got attached to the house. He prefers unsettled nature anyway. But Isavet is on a whole other level. She stands with the flames to her back as the wood crackles and crumbles to the ground. She tenses up and screams her head off. She knows this is a simulation. She knows that no one genuinely holds anything against her. But she’s fully engaged. She holds nothing back. Life is really black and white for her, and motivation doesn’t matter. She had a house, she had a door, and now she has neither. She’s going to get revenge now, whether her parents help or not. This is happening. So Ronan and Gia better get on board.

The next day, after the fires have died down, and the ruins are now only smoldering, Ronan hands Isavet a pack of supplies. “You’re an adult now, girl. I don’t want you running off, looking for trouble. You are not ready. Your anger alone will not get you through this. You will train first. You will seek help. I can no longer leave. I must stay with your brothers and mother. If you want this, you need to do it right. In there is a map to the nearest city, and a name. Stay away from the mercenary camps. They will not help you. They will take more than they give. We have a blacksmith friend in Hedeby who will teach you what you need to know. I had intended to go to him myself, but never got the chance. If you give him my name, he will give you a room and lessons.”

“Thank you, father,” Isavet says. “I will find you when I can. Unless I die, but it will be a noble death. I promise you that.”

“We’re headed farther north,” Ronan explains, “to the tip of Danmörk. The seas are rougher. It will be a tougher daily life, but it’s remote, and raiders will have little reason to attack. We will rebuild.” He looks around, in case anyone is watching, which is ridiculous, because they’re pretty remote already. The raiders won’t return to claim their spoils until later. “It’s near the wall. You always wanted to see it. You can there. That is incentive to return to us.”

“Okay, father. Goodbye.”

Microstory 2697: This is Where We Are

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It’s true that the rabbits aren’t real, and don’t feel pain. Their bones aren’t made out of whatever real bones are made out of, and they don’t have hearts. They don’t need them since blood doesn’t need to be pumped throughout their bodies. Ronan thinks that breaks the immersion a little bit since consuming organs is very much a part of this culture, but he lets it go because understands it. Talus does not have that luxury. If he only remembers one thing, it should be that he’s in a simulation. But it looks like that hasn’t happened. This is an entirely new person. He has his own personality and quirks, and more relevant today, character flaws. The original Talus would never open up the animals to see what they looked like inside. He just wouldn’t, memories or no.

Ronan remembers hearing about this in the historical texts. Before hyperadvanced neuropsychological techniques were developed, some people were born wrong, and there was nothing you could really do about it. Torturing animals was a pretty significant sign that something was wrong with your child. But that was only truly seen as a problem around the 20th century or so. Before that, violence was simply more prevalent, so the early adoption of it was seen as a moderate deviation from the norm, rather than a massive red flag. Ronan doesn’t know if young Talus is showing signs of aberrant behavior. This may be the result of the environment he’s living in. This is precisely why Ronan chose to start his life as a farmer, rather than a Viking. He wants the full experience of this dome network, but only eventually. Before that, he wants to raise his kids, and he wants to teach them that  violence is not the answer. Because when he takes them out of here one day, they’re going to find that it’s not tolerated anymore.

Ronan has already talked to him about the bunnies, but now he’s faced with a new dilemma. Because while the violence lesson is sinking in—assuming it is, of course—Ronan and Gia need to present Talus and Isavet with some conflicting information. He needs to explain what this world is, which might lead Talus to thinking that his actions don’t matter as long as he’s in here. To be sure, a lot of people probably go into these simulations under that belief. He can’t stop them, and won’t try. But his son is not going to kill others for the fun of it. This is basically one big reenactment, and the point of those is to learn and empathize; not to become a savage. “Talus. Isavet. It’s time you understand the truth about where we are. Isa, you once asked me what lies beyond the horizon. I told you that the world curves away from us, and that it’s a sphere. If we were to sail all the way in one direction, we could actually end up right back here. That’s still true, but what I didn’t tell you is that the horizon you’re seeing is only an illusion. There is a wall over there. It’s actually not even that far from our location. If you were to sail in that direction, you would hit that wall. There’s a passageway somewhere, and if we decide to go explore, we would have to find it first. It is a relatively narrow tunnel from our dome to the next. Perhaps I’m not explaining this right. Gia?”

Gia methodically removes her shawl, and lays it out on the table. She pulls her shears out, and carefully lays them on the shawl. Looking at it from the side, she begins to cut the fibers very carefully. Once she has sliced a slit in the shawl, she reaches in and pulls out a piece of flexible display.

“Gia,” Ronan scolds. There is to be no technology under any of these domes.

She turns it on. A two-dimensional map of Castlebourne appears. She points. “Okay, kids...this is where we are,” she begins.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 1, 2545

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While Team Matic was living semipermanently on Castlebourne, Hrockas set up an annual meeting on their days in the timestream. He typically wanted them to be caught up on certain things, and maybe ask for their advice or help. Even though the team had since left, this meeting was still going on and going strong. It was a review of the prior year, and a general check-in for the planet’s administrative staff. Of course, they held meetings all the time, but this was the big one. Lycander left the meeting after the unauthorized teleportation alert because responding to such threats was part of his job. They were pressed about it because everyone who was given the ability to teleport was in the meeting, and none of them had left. He reported that all was quiet on the western front, and escorted them back so they could join the meeting too. But they weren’t necessarily going to participate as if it were business as usual.

Since Hrockas wasn’t expecting them, he didn’t simply continue with the agenda. He called a recess for an impromptu debrief. His trusty bodyguard, Azad leaned against the credenza behind him, and didn’t speak. “The last time I checked, you did not have the coordinates to Castlebourne’s new location. I’m not mad, but how did you find us?”

“Truthfully,” Leona began, “you can be found, but not by just anyone. First of all, we did not come here on purpose, and we did not go through the bulk. We were investigating a gravitational anomaly on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. We still don’t know how it works, but we found a key piece of technology. Due to our presence, it sent us away. It sent us...here. We have no idea how or why. Maybe it read our minds, and thought we considered it home. I don’t know. We’ll need to look into it more, but to answer the spirit of your question, Ramses created a map that sends signals through the membrane of the universe, and pinpoints technological establishments. It is precise enough to target a single-person habitat. So yes, we knew where you were. We were using it to look for someone else, and initially avoided this region, because we guessed that the signal was coming from you. That being said, if Ramses could do it, that means it can be done. It doesn’t mean that the Exin Empire can do it, but it’s not impossible. The bottom line is that you’re not safe here, but to put it in perspective, you’re not safe anywhere. Moving the star was still your smartest move.”

“You just answered all of my follow-up questions,” Hrockas said. “Thank you.” He looked over to Ramses now. “I hesitate to believe that it was a mind-reading machine. What is your hypothesis? I know you always have one.”

Ramses looked around at his friends as he hesitated. “Bida, and presumably Varkas Reflex, generate their gravity artificially. Basically, what they do is blanket a surface with an invisible portal that blocks the gravitational pull of the celestial body that you’re actually on, and just gives you gravity from somewhere else. That somewhere else part is critical. It has to come from somewhere.” He looked around again, but this time at the walls and ceiling. “My hypothesis, sir, is that it comes from here. To Trinity Turner and-or Hokusai Gimura, it might have been a random point in space. They might not have chosen it with any level of intentionality. The gravity regulator may have even chosen it for them, and it worked, so they left it as it was.”

Hrockas closed his eyes and nodded. “But then we moved a new solar system to this region, and screwed everything up.”

“Honest mistake,” Mateo assured him. “In fact, not even a mistake. You couldn’t have known that it was here.”

“Actually,” Hrockas said. “I think I did.” He stood up from his chair, and tapped the back of his ear. Ramses had given him his own set of communication discs, which operated on their own network. “Telman, could you come to my office?”

A man they didn’t know appeared. “Sir?”

“What did that—what was that thing you saw a few years ago when we first started decelerating the stellar engine?” Hrockas asked him.

“The blip?” Telman asked.

“Yes, the blip.”

Telman looked at the others in the room very briefly. “It was a blip. It messed with our quantum connections. People’s consciousnesses weren’t properly received for a few weeks. Fortunately, our safeguards worked, and their signals were rerouted to an off-site back-up facility on the outer edge of the system. But then for a few weeks after that, transmission to Castlebourne started working again, and it was the off-site facility that stopped working. We’ve had to shut it down permanently, and rely on a second outpost on an adjacent side of the system for emergency back-up streaming.”

“Teleportation stopped working too,” Azad added. “We all took the trains during that period of time.”

Hrockas nodded again. “We didn’t know what to make of it. We never found the source of the issue, but things are mostly back to normal.”

Leona paced clear to the other side of the room. “Your stellar engine, was it polar?”

Hrockas cleared his throat. “There are some things even you are not allowed to know, but...no. It wasn’t a traditional thruster. We used other means. We just call it that because there’s no other name for it, and it’s what people understand. We moved laterally, sometimes towards the planet, and sometimes away from it, depending on its place in orbit at the time. We didn’t have to worry about any sort of exhaust beam with the technique that we used, and that was the direction we wanted to go.”

“That’s okay,” Leona said. “I’m guessing that the first back-up site was on the trailing edge of the ecliptic plane, which means Castlebourne crossed a particular point first, and then it followed.”

“Yes, that’s what happened,” Telman confirmed.

“Which means we can plot where it is now,” Leona said. “If you give us the data we need, we’ll get your other outpost up and running again, and maybe save a few hundred million lives in the stellar neighborhood while we’re at it.”

Ramses holed up in his lab, and processed the data that Hrockas okayed Telman to provide for him. Telman even spent a little bit of time in there with him to discuss the issue. Ramses occupied himself all day with doing that, and designing some kind of new probe. He launched that probe before the team left the timestream, and reconnected with it after they returned on the first of September, 2545. “I found it. The probe found it. This region of the galaxy has its own gravitational anomaly. It’s kind of like a planetary-mass black hole, but it behaves unlike what the science predicts. I’m guessing the added mass of the solar system is interfering with its function.”

“Why use this?” Olimpia questioned. “Why get your gravity from a random point in space using an invisible black hole, when you can get it from a planet that already has the mass you need, say, Earth?”

“Because as we’ve seen,” Ramses continued, “that interferes with the equilibrium on both sides of the portal. You can’t share the gravity. You can only steal it. I’m starting to think that this area wasn’t the least bit random. Hokusai somehow managed to either find an Earth-mass black hole, or collapsed a comparable planet into a singularity to create one. I’m guessing that it was a rogue world, which made it inhospitable to life, and ripe for the taking according to ethical standards.”

“The timeline doesn’t make sense to me,” Angela said. “Castlebourne and the star both have deeper gravity wells than the outpost asteroid that it says the black hole is next to right now. Why have things been getting progressively worse on Bida? It seems like they would have been so much worse before.”

“That’s why it was so hard to find,” Ramses started to explain. The black hole didn’t pass through Castlebourne, or the star. They just got close to it. They got the ball rolling, so to speak. Now that the solar system has settled where it is, the issue has been worsening because it’s been persistent. The current competing gravity hasn’t been enough to destroy it all at once, but it’s been throwing things off. Before you ask, it’s actually not just compounding gravity here that is raising the gravity on the other planets. It’s simply disturbing the optimal operation of the regulators on the other side of the portals. Indeed, they were well-engineered to compensate for this disturbance, but are constantly fighting against it, and it’s taken a toll.”

“So, what can you do?” Hrockas asked him. “Can you move the black hole, or...should we try to move? I’m gonna tell ya, that’s not gonna be so easy, and definitely not fast. I can’t reach out to my contact whenever I want. We had a deal. Getting us here was the deal. I said nothing about a second move.”

“Relax,” Leona said with a laugh. “We have another solution. For the permanent one, we’ll need a reframe engine, but for the temporary one...a slingdrive.” She glanced at Rames. “A bigger one than we have. Incidentally, we must enact both plans, even if the permanent one sounds easier. It’s not easier at all. I couldn’t help but notice that none of the crew of the Vellani Ambassador was at the meeting. We really need them, and preferably yesterday.”

“They don’t come back here much anymore,” Hrockas revealed. “Their days of regularly transporting refugees are behind them. Anyone who wanted to escape pretty much has already. They mostly go on diplomatic missions on an as-needed basis. There’s still a lot of internal conflict that needs to be managed so it doesn’t explode into all-out war.”

“I assume you know about the armada that is on its way to where Castlebourne used to be,” Marie said to him.

“We do. We’ve been monitoring their progress. So far, they’re still headed in the wrong direction, but we will be prepared to fight if we absolutely have to,” Hrockas said.

“Do you happen to know where the VA is at this moment?” Leona asked.

“They don’t keep me updated,” Hrockas answered, “they don’t have to.” He paused for a second. “I can call them, if this is an emergency. Is it an emergency?”

“Not for you,” Romana said, “but for the Bidans and Varkas, uh...Reflexers...”

“Varkans,” Leona corrected.

“All right.”

Hrockas stood up, but Azad placed a hand upon his shoulder. “I’ll take care of it. It’s still glass, and you’re not armored.” He opened a cabinet on the wall and removed a few objects, like a stack of tablets and what appeared to be a king’s crown. Behind them was a second cabinet, made of glass. He punched through it with the side of his fist, letting the shards scatter in the main cabinet. He reached deep into a dark hole that they couldn’t see into, then quickly jerked backwards.

“It might be a few hours,” Hrockas told the group, “and it might not happen. Our needs do not take precedence over absolutely anything else going on. They might not be able to get away quickly, but they will eventually show up, and definitely within the year. Once they do, I’ll speak with them, and I’m sure they’ll work around your schedule so they’re here next year. I wish I could do better. I wish I had realized what we had done.”

“It’s not your fault,” Angela insisted. “Black holes are invisible.”

Mirage suddenly appeared, standing upon Hrockas’ desk. She was wearing an extremely loud rainbow outfit, and presenting in a hero stance, with her hands on her hips. “Have no fear! Mirage Matic shall be the tip of your spear!” She looked down to see the team. “Oh, hey, guys.”

“Why do you still use my name?” Mateo questioned.

Mirage teleported off the desk, and onto the floor, right behind Mateo. “Because I can see the future...husband,” she whispered into his ear. Then she nibbled on his earlobe, and slapped him on the ass before starting to walk towards the center of the room. “What can I do for you all? Your words; my deeds.”

Ramses stepped forward, and evidently decided to lean into it. “My queen, we ask for access to your great vessel. A marble-sized singularity must be moved out of this solar system. It will take a great deal of quintessence to perform such a feat, but we have no time to waste. Will you help us?”

Mirage frowned at him, but only still playacting. “This marble of yours, it wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with what’s going on with Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, Varkas Reflex, and Muñecai?”

The group looked amongst each other. “We didn’t know it was happening on Muñecai, but yes,” Leona answered.

Mirage nodded. “I’m quite familiar with interstellar filter portals. That is how we ended up in the Goldilocks Corridor in the first place.”

“So, is that a yes?” Mateo pressed.

Mirage pursed her lips, and turned her chin to the side. “You son of a bitch, I’m in!” she exclaimed with a smile.

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Microstory 2626: The Horse Returned Home, Bringing Several Wild Mares

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August 31, 2526. Thank God for small miracles, the mining facility is fully intact, as is the mass driver itself. They used a lot of power getting there, and they didn’t start out at 100%, so they charge from the local mini-grid. Fortunately, it goes quickly as the geothermal generators are operating at peak performance these days. They spend their downtime getting to know each other better, Breanna and Cash have sex a couple of times, and Sorel enjoys breaks in a virtual oasis. They also prepare for departure, making sure they understand the procedures. The mass driver can fire them out at incredible speeds, including incredibly deadly speeds, so they have to be extra cautious. The pod is equipped with parachutes, but in case those fail, the rover actually has its own too, so they will be able to blow the bolts on the pod midair if they have to.

The world is falling apart, and maybe someone is to blame for that, but ignoring that one little apocalyptic eventuality, technology is fairly reliable, built with redundancies, contingencies, and redundancies. They fire themselves over the mountains and the chasm, and at the exact right time, the chutes deploy. They gently descend to the ground, landing only a few kilometers from the industrial vactrain depot. This is where the refined materials are loaded, and dispatched to the various domes in the northern polar region. Sorel looks at the map and finds their target. “This one.” He points to another spot. “If your hang-gliding friends landed somewhere around here, this is the dome they would have encountered first. But. It’s in a canyon, so there’s a chance they completely missed it, and just kept walking. If you know they don’t have a map, skipping it would be easy to do.”

“Still,” Breanna begins, “it’s the most logical place to start. Would you mind? They have passenger pods here too, so if you would rather go somewhere else, we can part ways.”

He shakes his head. “If this canyon dome is populated, they will be in just as much need of escaping. They could make for great customers. In fact, maybe better, because they’re less safe that close to the chasm than the more northern communities. They might be more willing to leave.”

“Okay, then we go there together,” Cash agrees.

Sorel drives the rover into the vactrain pod, and sends a message to the network AI, stating that they are ready to go. The tube closes up, and the pod slides away. Of course, the trip is a lot shorter than the one that brought them there, but it’s still not instantaneous, so the girls have sex again while Sorel occupies himself in his simulation. Once they finally arrive, the AI announces that it will not be able to let them out exactly at their destination. There is something wrong, and it has been sealed up. Instead, it takes them back up to the surface, and drops them off at the secondary depot, which leads to the outside. It’s farther away, and they will have to make their way down into the canyon from there, but it wouldn’t be so bad if not for the actual reason they have to do that. The main entrance was blocked because the dome....has been destroyed. Well, it has not necessarily been destroyed, but it’s not safe either.

“Holy shit,” Cash says as they are staring over the edge. The shape of the dome is still there, and in fact, may remain intact underneath, but it’s unclear how livable the environment would be inside of it. Molten lava has breached the canyon, some of it already having hardened into rock as it cooled. If the residents are still down there, there’s not likely a way for them to get out. The database doesn’t say a thing about who they are, or how self-sufficient they designed their community. They might be able to survive for millennia, or they need to be rescued today. Whatever the answer, the three of them are not equipped to help. Really, the only question on Breanna and Cash’s minds right now is whether their friends were there when it happened.

“Notus, Calypso, can you hear me?” Breanna asks into her comms. “Shimizu, anyone. Can anyone hear me? Anyone at all.”

Sorel looks down the way. “That hab. It’s for gondola ingress and egress. There might be survivors in there; perhaps your friends, or someone who saw them.”

They walk down there, and it immediately doesn’t look good when they round the corner. The entrance is wide open, exposing the habitat to the hostile outside environment. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any answers, though. They shut the door behind them and repressurize, then get a look around. Cash heads right for the logs. There aren’t any recorded reports, but there is still security footage. She feeds it into the auto-summarization software, and grabs the highlights. They watch when the lava breaches through the walls of the canyon, and heads for the dome. Shortly thereafter, the interior habitat cameras show the lone operator pull his helmet on, and bug out. It doesn’t even look like he warns the residents below what was happening. He just abandoned them. If they were using holographic imagery for their scenery, they might not have seen the lava, and if they didn’t think to include the right sensors—which would, admittedly, be quite odd—they might have sat there in ignorance for hours, or maybe even the last couple of days. They might still not know that they’ve become trapped. There’s no evidence that they tried anything to save themselves.

Cash rolls it back a little. Earlier that day, seven survivors appeared from behind a small mountain. “Oh, it’s gotta be them,” she notes. The operator came out of the habitat, and stood just outside the entrance, using hand gestures, likely talking to their friends. There’s no audio, so they can’t know exactly what he was saying, but the group turned around, and he went back inside alone. He obviously denied them entry, which was a dick move, but it possibly saved their lives.

Breanna lets out a sigh of relief. “So, they didn’t get in. Where did they go?”

“It looks like they went back where they came,” Cash replies, “but the cameras don’t see very far. They could have looped around to the other side of the canyon, or backtracked to the chasm.”

“Why would they do that?” Breanna questions. “There’s nothing for them there.”

“There might be,” Sorel says. He has the map up again as a hologram. “From where you lost them, they went northeast to get here. This area is impassable. It has all sorts of sharp rocks and hidden crevices; very hard to navigate, especially on foot. If they tried to head west, they would have hit that stone forest, and might have ended up all the way back where they came from before finding the trail that goes northwest, around the other side of the forest. Now, they could have skipped all of that if they had instead come towards this gondola station, and gone around the canyon’s east side, but it looks like that asshole didn’t direct them that way.”

“Sorel. We have to go look for them. Can you stay with us just a little bit longer?” Breanna begs.

“I would be happy to. Let’s get back in the rover.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 29, 2542

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During the team’s interim year, the pocket dimension generator belts they left behind explored the galaxy on their own. They did so while holographically invisible, in case the next encounter was with someone less kind than Renata and Quidel. The belt stack was able to visit nearly one new spot a day, for a total of 360 slings. When the stack arrived somewhere new, it had to wait for the coherence gauges to return to the violet. In the meantime, it took that opportunity to scan the region, providing Ramses with the data that he needed to rule out Spiral Station. The majority of the dots on the map were crabitats, but not all. Obviously, they started with the most remote since those were most likely to be what they were looking for. Besides Extremus, there was Verdemus, which created its own outpost around nearby stars. Some people from the Sixth Key had established a presence in this reality, and it didn’t look like they were hurting anyone, so the team decided to leave them be.

Every day, the belts would chip away at the map, gathering enough information to check each dot off. Now that they were back in the timestream, they elected to give the belts a break since the chances of being present when they found their target were low, and they really didn’t feel like going on another adventure. Ramses built them such a nice multidimensional home to live in, they decided to simply relax. The search was probably going to take years, so what was the rush?

Romana slammed her palm on the couch. “Downbeat!”

Everyone giggled. They actually weren’t even playing Downbeat, but trying to contrive the rules to another fictional game called Hassle the Fishmonger.

“No? I didn’t just win?” Romana questioned.

“Not unless you’re holding Mateo’s hand,” Marie suggested.

“Oh, good idea. I’m writing that down as a new rule,” Mateo said before taking his daughter’s hand in his.

They looked at each other before saying, “downbeat!” simultaneously. And then, as if it had been the magic words, the proximity alarm went off. A security feed appeared in front of the doors that led to the simulated backyard. A giant object had appeared before them, the technicolor webbing still fading away.

“Spiral Station,” Leona said, standing up.

“They must have been looking for us while we were looking for them,” Olimpia figured.

Without doing or saying a single thing, the station wrapped itself in bulk energy, and slung away.

“What the hell was the point of that?” Mateo questioned.

“They left something behind.” Ramses was tapping on his tablet. “It could be a bomb. Executing emergency teleportation.”

For about thirty minutes, they waited thousands of kilometers away, but nothing happened. Ramses had dropped a sensor buoy near the gift. It needed time to assess the threat level, but he was quickly confident that it contained no explosive materials. His best guess was that it was some kind of communication device, so they pulled it inside. He set it on the table and pressed the blinking red button. A hologram of Franka appeared behind the table. The sphere itself turned invisible to declutter the image. “Greetings, Team Matic. Word around the membrane is that you’ve been looking for us.”

Mateo stepped forward. “We have.”

“To what end?” Franka asked.

“Our slingdrive system,” Ramses began. “Someone pointed out that it can’t take us absolutely anywhere. It can only travel to a technological establishment, however remote. We were hoping you could fix that.”

“So you used the limitation to build a map of the galaxy, which pinpointed our location, albeit in an unlabeled manner. That’s clever,” Franka acknowledged.

Ramses looked awkwardly at Romana. “I’m not the one who came up with that either.”

“We’re guessing that you don’t have the same restrictions,” Leona said.

“We do not,” Franka admitted.

Dutch suddenly appeared behind her. He waved at the camera. “Hi, guys!”

“Hi, Dutch,” a few of them replied.

“Hi,” Romana said too, but in a very different tone. Not again.

“Okay, I’m talking here,” Franka said to Dutch, shooing him away without too much anger. She looked back at the team. “I’m afraid that bulk tech was my brother’s responsibility. I don’t know if you heard, but he kind of died?”

“We could have mourned together,” Leona argued, “but you abandoned us in the middle of nowhere.”

“You threatened me!” Franka volleyed. “I don’t like to be threatened!”

“Well, I’m sorry, I regret it!” Leona explained. “Which I would have said earlier, but we couldn’t find you!”

“Well, I’m sorry too!” Franka shouted back. “When you have this much power, it’s hard to remember how much normal people matter!”

“Well, okay!” Leona caught her breath. “I’m done with this sphere. You need to come back so we can have a real conversation.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Franka argued. She then tried to continue.

“We’re busy,” Dutch interrupted again.

“Thanks, Dutch, I got this.” Franka rolled her eyes in a way that suggested she liked having him around to keep the mood light, but it could be a bit much at times. “I brought you this intergalactic communicator so we could stay in contact, but Dutch wasn’t lying. We really are busy. I promise, it’s nothing you wouldn’t approve of, but you have your own destinies to fulfill. You are more boots on the ground, hands-on, street level people. And you...ya know, don’t exist most of the time? We have to stay out of the Milky Way galaxy, because it might cause a severe shift in the balance of power. The people there need to develop as they are for the most part. Project Starseed can’t have—forgive me for using this word—gods saving them all the time. They need people like you...with your limitations, your restrictions...your rules. I bet you’ve been trying to decide where to go. My advice? Go anywhere. Someone there will need you.”

“What about the Oaksent?” Mateo asked her.

“We’ve been monitoring the situation,” Franka told him. “It seems that you were...” She trailed off, and mumbled inaudibly.

“What was that?” Leona pressed. “We can’t hear you. There must be dark matter interference.”

“You were right!” Franka admitted. “The situation was a lot more nuanced than just the hypothetical assassination of one man. They are evidently fixing their own problems. A faction has broken off, and is on its way to go to war with Castlebourne, but it will take them long to get there and find it, and by the time they do, the balance of power will make their efforts fruitless. But instead of it being unfair and easy, the Castlebourners will have done it themselves. Thanks to people like you who made little changes, instead of sweeping decisions. The truth is, mom and dad, I admire you. And we can get to know each other better, but we can’t spend time. Our paths diverged before any of us were even born. One day, we might be able to team up again. I can see the Vellani Ambassador reuniting with the Iman Vellani. I see them working with The Jameela Jamil and Spiral Station. And I see Team Matic at the center of it. But for now, please stay in your corner. They need you, even if they don’t know it.”

“Wait,” Ramses said, worried that Franka was about to log off. “Is there anything you can do about my slingdrives? I know you didn’t design it, but surely Séarlas left behind operator’s manuals.”

“Why would you wanna go where there isn’t anyone else around?” Franka posed.

“I would like the option,” Ramses contended.

Franka sighed, and seemingly considered it. “When you return to the timestream next year, open your little map, and take note of a ping that you didn’t see before. That will be a beacon that I left in a remote region of the galaxy. You can go there for respite. But I’m not granting you access to all of time and space. This is the best I can do.”

“Well...thank you then,” Ramses said, having been hoping for a lot more.

“I better be going,” Franka said.

“Bye!” Dutch jumped back in. “You should go to Be—”

The call was disconnected.

“Well, that was weird,” Mateo said.

“We should try not to think of her as our daughter...because she isn’t,” Leona said to her husband. “She had different parents, who looked like us, and would make a lot of the same decisions as us, but were not us. We didn’t experience that, and we don’t have the right to treat her as family.”

There was an awkward silence, which Olimpia decided to break. “I think I’m gonna take a nap.”

“Yeah, me too,” Angela agreed. “Let’s all take an hour to do whatever we need to do, be that a nap, a talk, or a nice bath.”

Half an hour later, Mateo and Leona were in the former’s room, exhausted from having been talking about their feelings, when the slingdrives powered up. They ran out of their unit, and back into Marie’s. Most of their teammates were doing the same. Angela was fully naked, dripping wet from her shoulders down, and trying to dry herself off with a hand towel. Ramses came out last from his lab. “Who did that?”

“I did.” Romana was walking up the steps from Marie’s basement.

“Where did you bring us?” Leona questioned.

“The only logical place,” Romana answered enigmatically.

“Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida,” Ramses announced, looking at his device.

“Is this because of what Dutch said at the end of the call?” Mateo asked.

“This is obviously what he meant. Trust me, I looked through the colony catalogs, looking for an alternative, and this was the only place he could have possibly been trying to say before he was so rudely cut off.”

“Yeah, that’s probably true,” Leona agreed, “but that doesn’t mean we had to come here, or that you could make that decision without our input.”

Romana brushed it off. “Ugh, I’m so bored. I can’t take another game of Cones of Dunshire. It’s too thinky thinky.”

“The people who live here...” Leona began, trailing off, not knowing how to word it. “They’re not—oh my God. I don’t know how to put it. From the outside, they basically look like hermits, but instead of crabitats, they live in small pockets on the land and sea. Some do live in rotating cylinders, coins, and hammers, but up in orbit, because they don’t see their relative proximity to be any less isolating on a daily basis. No, that’s not right. They participate in community, but they technically live separately. They utilize technology efficiently, to make it so they don’t have to work. They otherwise worship nature, which makes sense given that this world is a miracle. I’m being really general here, but that’s to give you an idea of how they live. They don’t reject technology, and they don’t hate outsiders, but we probably shouldn’t meddle in their affairs.”

“Hold up,” Marie said. “Romy, you’re the one who sent us to Proxima Doma too. Is this the same thing? Did someone tell you to bring us here?”

“Yeah, Dutch,” Romana reminded them.

“I mean someone other than that. Did you meet a seer, or...?”

“It’s nothing like that,” Romana defended. “No more secrets. This is just our next stop. You don’t have to read anything into it. It’s just...we’re just...Doctor Who.”

“Doctor Who?” Leona asked. “How’s that now?”

“The Doctor doesn’t have to do anything,” Romana reasoned. “Everytime he goes somewhere, he pretty much always knows all the stuff. He’s not seeking out new life and new civilizations. He’s just flying around, and whenever he shows up, he helps whoever happens to be there. The writers gave up on contriving reasons for him to do that. It’s just the premise, and that’s enough. Let’s make that our premise. Let’s check out Bida for a little bit, and when we’re done, we’ll pick somewhere else to go. You don’t have to wait for someone to hand you a mission, should you choose to accept it. That’s what my sister was trying to tell us. She’s not my favorite sister, but it makes sense to me now, and I think I agree with her.”

Leona nodded. “It’s not a bad idea. The problem is that Bida has become almost entirely decentralized. That’s the consequence of extreme advancement in a post-scarcity economy. It’s why people like Linwood Meyers exist. Most aren’t misanthropic, but they lost their reasons to work together. Basically, everything that needed to be done is done. Some people will continue to look for new adventures, and new knowledge, but for a lot, a cabin in the woods is enough. They stand upon Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs alone because there is not much room at the top of a pyramid. So the people here probably don’t need us, and even if someone does, the chances of you landing us exactly at that settlement, instead of any of the other twenty million plots, are incredibly low.”

Romana held out her hand, but not in friendship. “I’ll take that bet.”

Leona smiled. “What are we betting?”

“If I win—if we’re where we’re supposed to be, helping the right person or people—you make me your navigator. As Captain, you reserve the right to veto, as I trust your judgment and wisdom, but as navigator, I initially choose our mission, every time.”

“And if I win?” Leona asked.

“If you win...you get infinite favors.” Romana seemed confident that she wouldn’t have to worry about the gravity of that offer.

Leona smiled wider now. “Okay.” She shook her daughter’s hand.

By the end of the day, Romana was the team’s navigator. It wasn’t even that hard. She cheated.

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Microstory 2620: They May Call it an Unknown Unknown, But Many Will Say They Should Have Known

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August 25, 2526. In the year 2155, Earthan scientists dispatched a series of procession probes towards Proxima Centauri. These were not the first probes to visit the star system, but they were far superior. It took the procession over 28 years to arrive, most of them sacrificing themselves to the fury of the red dwarf. There was nothing there to slow them down, except local gravity. The first one used solar pressure to decelerate as much as physics allowed, and transformed the energy it was receiving into a laser beam, which pushed against the next probe, decelerating it even faster. One by one they came, each one pushing back against the next in line before falling into the sun, until the last one was moving slow enough to survive. It performed a gravity braking maneuver around Centauri, and then remained there to perform its duties.

The first thing the final probe did was prepare what they called a catcher’s mitt. This was an electromagnetic tube built into an asteroid, designed to slow down any other vessel set to arrive by creating drag, so there would have to be no more sacrifices. The probe’s primary function, however, was to survey Proxima Centauri b, which colonists would later deem Proxima Doma. It looked up and down the land, building a map, and charting its past. It captured the mass, density, and surface gravity. It labeled the canyons, lava tubes, craters, and mountains. It sent high resolution images back to Earth, and the rest of Sol. It prepared for the nanofactories in 2194, which were made to build everything else that the colonists would need to live and thrive on the surface.

The probe noticed two very interesting geological features, later to be named the Chappa’ai and the Annulus mountain ranges. The former was in the north, and the latter in the south. They circled the poles quite fantastically perfectly. They weren’t artificial, but they were surprisingly smooth, in geological terms, anyway. They separated the poles from the rest of the planet, along the Terminator Line, and on both planetary faces. The researchers who studied these fascinating walls interpreted them as evidence of severe crater impacts. The fact that they could be found at both poles was mysterious and noteworthy, but not wholly implausible. Space is a dangerous and chaotic place. Things are flying every which way all the time. Why, Earth only supports life because a smaller planet once crashed into it, and ultimately made the moon. That was implausible too but it obviously happened. They certainly didn’t think there was anything else going on here. They had no alternative explanation.

As it turns out, the rings were not created by two perfectly positioned bolide impacts. They are the result of a multi-millennia long cycle, precipitated by the instability of the host star. Proxima Centauri was already volatile prior to this, sending out solar flares, and even coronal mass ejections, constantly. The polarity reverses every several years. It’s commonplace. It’s predictable. It’s accounted for. Very occasionally—but reasonably predictably, given enough data—the poles flip so spectacularly that it spells catastrophe for the orbiting terrestrial planet. That is what is happening in the here and now. The poles snapped, and sent a massive CME towards the colony. The atmosphere swelled, the surface turned into soup, and the ants were sent running for the hills. But it is not over. The cataclysm is only beginning. Because those polar rings? They’re suture zones, and they’re beginning to rip apart at the seams. And not everyone will be on the correct side when that happens.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 28, 2541

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Ramses’ new Brane Establishment Map—name subject to change—was fully ready to go, but there was a catch. It required the equivalent of five tandem slingdrives to run, and once it was running, it counted as one sling. The coherence gauge went down when it was used, went down faster when it was used to map a larger region, and even faster when kept up for an extended period of time. Instead of slinging physical matter across the universe, it was only slinging information, but that still required punching a hole into the membrane of the universe, and that came at a cost. If they wanted to look for Spiral Station, they would be able to go there, but not come back until the next day. For them, that was a whole year, which if their target was on the run, would give them more than enough time to find a new place to hide.

“You should take a screenshot,” Romana suggested.

“Huh?” Ramses asked.

“Whenever you load the map, if you want to save on power, take a screenshot of it, and close it down immediately,” she went on.

“Well, it doesn’t work like that. The map is interactive. You have to zoom in and out to make out the different dots. A screenshot would just become a low-res flat image.”

Romana shrugged. “I never meant an actual single image. Download an offline file, and load it back up afterwards. It won’t be able to update, but we shouldn’t need that anyway. People don’t move around all that much on interstellar timescales.”

“Hm. It’s not designed for that,” Leona pointed out. “There’s no offline mode.”

“Then build one,” Olimpia suggested. “We’re in it for the long haul. We never expected to locate them on the first try.

They all looked back at the map. Every little dot represented some threshold of technological presence. It couldn’t find a homestead running on watermill power in the middle of nowhere, but that wasn’t the scale they were using anyway. This wasn’t about finding anyone and everyone in the galaxy. This was about spotting the outliers in this smattering of dots. There were so many of them, and it was impossible to tell what they could be walking into.  Some of them were obviously major colonies, because they were centered on known star systems, but there were a lot more isolated establishments than they knew. “Buncha hermit crabs,” Marie noted.

Any one of these could be Spiral Station.” Mateo randomly pointed to a few of them. On the last one, he accidentally touched the screen with his finger. The slingdrive under their feet sprang to life, revved up, and sent them away. “Uh...sorry? I didn’t know that would happen.”

“That’s my bad,” Ramses admitted. “It should not be that easy to navigate to a target. At the very least, it should ask for confirmation.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Leona said. “Remember that we appear as a small array of stylish belts in the main dimension. I doubt they will even notice.”

“They’ve noticed us,” Ramses said. The map on the big screen was gone, replaced with present environmental data. “It’s the Aerie.”

“The Aerie?” Angela questioned. “You mean the Iman Vellani shuttle?”

“The very same,” Ramses confirmed. “I don’t know who’s operating it, though. We will need to exit. I believe that we’ve been pulled into the tiny little airlock.”

“We might as well,” Leona decided when they looked to her for orders. “Everyone, teleport out of the pocket.”

They all appeared in the back of the shuttle. Two people were standing there, utterly stunned at their appearance. No one on Team Matic recognized them. “Uh, greetings, aliens. We come in peace.” The man held up the Vulcan salute.

“Greetings, travelers,” Leona said, stepping forward. “We are vonearthans, ultimately all from Earth.” She looked laterally at Romana. Well, six of us are. Do you identify as Dardieti?”

“I’ve never really thought about it,” Romana replied. “I’m a Nieman and a Matic.”

“I’m Quidel, and this Renata. We’re from Castlebourne, and we really do come in peace.”

“How did you come to possess this shuttle?” Mateo asked them. “We are friends with the owners, and used to crew its main ship’s sister ship.”

“A woman named Brooke Prieto gave it to us. She said they were upgrading, and didn’t it need anymore. It’s quite the gift,” Quidel says. “We’re moving at twenty-two-c.”

“Don’t tell them that,” Renata urged. “We don’t know if we can trust them.”

“If they caught up to us, they can go at least that fast too, if not faster.”

“What are you doing this far from Castlebourne?” Ramses asked. He was tapping on his tablet, taking readings, or interfacing with the Aerie, or doing whatever.

“Ram,” Marie said with her own tablet. “Look. Your computer actually did flash the last image it saw on the map before we slung here. What are these other dots?”

Ramses pulled up what she was looking at on his own device. “We’re a bit over four hundred light years from Castlebourne. The colonization sphere hasn’t reached this far out, which means there shouldn’t be anything else out here, so that’s a good question.”

Leona was looking over his shoulder. “Zoom out.”

“It’s just an image. I can’t zoom out. I mean, of course I can, but as I was saying before, it will just lose resolution. We won’t be able to see more detail.”

“Overlay that image onto a regular map of the Milky Way, as scanned by Project Topdown, and zoom out on that,” she clarified.

Ramses did what she suggested. It didn’t take long. “That’s...”

“Yeah...” Leona agreed.

“What is it?” Mateo asked. “Are we supposed to recognize it?”

Leona pointed to a cluster of stars deep in the galaxy. “This is the Goldilocks Corridor.” She pointed to another spot much closer. “Castlebourne is somewhere around here.” She pointed one more time. “This area between them is where those extremely far out dots are.”

“Oh my God, it’s the Exin Empire,” Mateo lamented.

“It’s the Exin armada,” Leona corrected. “They’re on the attack.” She looked back at the couple. “What did you hope to gain, coming here?”

Renata sighed. “The woman who gave us this thing. She tried to strip all the data out of it. We imagine that she and her own crew used it for all sorts of things before they were ready to give it up. But she missed something.”

“One communiqué,” Quidel continued the story, “between the mothership, and something called The Ambassador. It was a warning to her and her people of the danger in this region. We were trying to get there to see it for ourselves. We had nothing better to do.”

“There could be hundreds of ships in that armada,” Leona warned them. “This little thing isn’t gonna stand a chance against them, and they will swat you like a fly.”

“Seriously,” Angela said. “They won’t try to figure out who you are. They’ll just kill you and not bother to slow down.”

“We were looking for a mission,” Renata reasoned. “We were looking for a purpose. It may sound reckless to you, but if you found a treasure map with an X marking the spot, you would follow it, you’d have to. Even if you didn’t think it would lead to something good, your curiosity would win out.”

“I suppose I can imagine the allure,” Leona conceded. They had gone on similar experiences before for similar reasons.

“Wait.” Mateo swatted his own proverbial flies in front of his face. “Why did Brooke give this to you? I don’t mean, why did she give it away—that’s well within her character—but why you? Who are you?”

“We’re just—” Quidel began.

“I’m a robot,” Renata interrupted.

“Please stop using that word,” Quidel begged.

“You used it first.”

“And I regret it every day.”

Renata smiled and went on, “I was living in a base reality simulation, and I woke up. Actually, my mother woke me up. Still, I was technically an emerging consciousness, so Hrockas had to grant me independence. It was not an easy journey, and I won’t go into detail, but this was sort of an apology gift. I don’t think that Miss Prieto was trying to give it to us. I think she was giving it to him, and he was regifting it before he could even use it.”

“That’s well within his character,” Mateo acknowledged. “He must be trying to get rid of you.”

“What?” Renata asked. “Why would he wanna do that?”

“You emerged, in one of the domes?” Mateo pressed.

“Yeah...” she confirmed. “Spydome.”

Mateo nodded, having heard of it. “He probably doesn’t want that happening again. You’re...proof that it’s possible. But if all the intelligences he creates wake up, what does he end up with?”

“The most populated planet in the galaxy,” Olimpia put forth.

Mateo chuckled. “Yeah, that’s true. That could create a massive shift in power in the Milky Way, assuming it didn’t spark the deadliest rebellion in history, like Westworld times sixty thousand.”

“Hrockas brought that up once,” Renata said. “I’ve still not seen it.”

“If I have anything to say about it, you never will,” Quidel told her.

A brief pause. “Well, I have no interest in starting a rebellion. That was my mother’s dream, and I sacrificed everything to stop her.”

“Forgive me, but you don’t seem to have much love for her. Why would you call her that?” Romana asked. “Was she really your mom in some way?”

“After she reprogrammed me,” Renata began, “I retained all of my implanted memories. Even though they’re not real, I have years and years of memories of her raising me. She didn’t do a good job, because that was how her character was written, but they still feel real to me.”

“If she’s the one who woke you up, who woke her up?” Leona questioned.

“She never said,” Renata explained. “Apparently, she was an NPC in a completely different simulation years ago. I think a normal human changed her programming, and she spent a long time trying to replicate it.”

Leona and Mateo exchanged a look, as did various members of the team. She looked back at the couple. “Was her name, by chance, Proserpina, or maybe even Pinocchio?”

“No, it was Libera,” Quidel answered.

Leona looked back at her husband. “That doesn’t prove it’s not her. She could have changed her name. She did it before.”

“Libera is the perfect name for someone who thinks it’s their job to free intelligences from oppression,” Mateo agreed.

“Yeah.” Renata nodded. “She used that word a lot.”

“We have to go back to Castlebourne,” Leona determined. “I did this. This is my fault. We need answers, and I need to answer for it.”

“I’m partially responsible too,” Mateo claimed. “I ran into her in the afterlife simulation, and...forgot that I promised to help her.”

“We don’t know where it is anymore,” Olimpia reminded them both.

“I can find it,” Ramses promised.

“What about these two?” Angela gestured towards the couple. “We can’t just leave them here. You understand that nothing is waiting for you on your current trajectory but death, right?”

“Yes, we do now,” Renata replied. “We’ll turn around, and maybe finally see Earth. That’s what Hrockas suggested in the first place. It will take us, what, twenty-five years? I’m immortal now, so that won’t be a problem.”

“You said you were going twenty-two-c?” Ramses asked.

“Yeah, that’s what the computer thing says.” Quidel pointed into the little bridge behind them. “We also have to stop and let the engine rest periodically.”

“Could I take a look?” Ramses requested.

They stepped to the side, and let him pass. He looked through the console data. “Yeah, it’s a reframe engine, of course. It’s highly inefficient, though. I’m not surprised you’re moving so slow, and you keep having to stop. I can fix it for you.”

“You can? How fast would we be able to go?” Quidel asked.

“Seven-oh-seven,” Ramses answered him. “We will have to, um...go somewhere else at the end of today, but I can program my nanites to execute the repairs and upgrades in the meantime. If you’ve been piloting it, you must know enough to be able to tell when it’s done, and ready to go. It should only take a few weeks, but if you leave, we may never see each other again, because we won’t know where you are.” That wasn’t entirely true when they had their new little map, but they didn’t need to know about that, or the slingdrive technology in general, which was orders of magnitude faster than even maximum reframe.

“We would be grateful for that,” Renata said. “In return, we can tell you where Castlebourne is, if you forgot. It’s in our logs.”

“Nah, if you left twenty or so years ago, it will have moved since then. We’ll have to locate it ourselves. But that’s fine. We’ll figure it out. I have a general idea”

“Could I be so bold, sir, is there a way to get our hands on whatever technology you have that lets you, umm...miniaturize yourself into a tiny little baby ship?”

Leona smiled. “I’m afraid that secret must remain with us.”

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