Microstory 2313: Earth, January 1, 2025

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Dear Readers,

Let me tell you a story. Roughly ten years ago, the scientific community began to take seriously the hypothesis that a Planet 9 existed somewhere beyond the orbit of Neptune. For centuries prior to that, nonscientific theories popularized the dream of a Planet X, but these were largely based on speculation, and a poor understanding of the data. It was only recently that any evidence legitimately supported the idea of a solar model that proposed such a wild explanation for this missing mass. Ten years from now, advances in astronomical observation technology will prove that a celestial body of significant mass does indeed exist, and that it is currently orbiting the sun about 1200 astronomical units away from us. About 108 years later, fusion rockets will be efficient and powerful enough to deploy a manned mission to the newly discovered celestial body, which they had since named Vacuus. Probes had been sent prior to this, at higher velocities due to lighter equipment, and no concern for life support, but they were all lost. No one could tell why, but their hearts were full of wonder, and the right candidates volunteered for what many called a suicide mission. Eighteen years later, the ship arrived at its destination, and began to unravel the mysteries of this cold, distant world. One of the passengers was a young woman whose mother brought her along when she was a baby. Corinthia Sloane always felt that something was missing in her life, and everything fell into place when she learned what everyone she had ever known had been keeping from her this whole time. She had a twin brother who she had never met. But the real problem was...she might never even have the chance now. The following letters comprise their initial correspondences, each one taking around a week to reach its destination, given the time lag imposed by vast interplanetary distances.

Yours fictionally,

Nick Fisherman III

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 12, 2399

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Aldona is getting a call. It’s Winona. She’s pretty busy right now, but the Honeycutts don’t like to be kept waiting, and both Winona and her father have been excellent advocates for the global defense program that she was working on. “Hi, Win.”

Winona appears as a hologram. “Leona got her powers back, did you know that? She didn’t give me any details, but she called me about something unrelated, and she looked like herself. I wasn’t sure if I should trust her, but she sounded legit.”

“We’ve kept in touch, so I knew that as well. I didn’t do as much due diligence to make sure she wasn’t an impostor, though.”

“Does that mean we’re back online too?”

“What do you mean?”

“The defense satellites. Can you continue working on them? I’m sorry, I’ve not had time to read any of these reports lately.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’ve been online this whole time.”

“But...that omega thing the others are always talking about. I thought that suppressed special abilities, and advanced alien technology.”

“It does, but that doesn’t affect my stuff.”

“Why not?”

“I’m from the future,” Winona. “I knew this was going to happen.”

“You didn’t warn anybody?”

Aldona rests her chin on the palm of her hand, and exhales as she’s gazing through the window to the launch tube. “This is necessary. Trust me, you want that gyroscope up and running for the next few weeks.”

“What does that mean?” Winona questions. “What are you not telling us?”

Aldona can’t help but chuckle. “There are so many things that I’m not telling you, but there’s nothing you don’t know that you ought to.”

“Do the Matics know everything that they ought to?”

“Goodbye, Miss Honeycutt.” Aldona reaches over to sever the link.

“Wait.” She takes a beat. “If we’re online, does that also mean we’re on track?”

“You’ll have your satellites up and running in plenty of time, as long as we don’t run into any unforeseen circumstances. Have a nice day.” She hangs up.

Alyssa steps forward, having stepped away to make sure that Winona didn’t see her in frame. “Unforeseen circumstances, like me?”

“No, Miss McIver, I saw you comin’ a mile away.”

“Is that true, what you told her, that the Omega Gyroscope is necessary?”

“For now, yes. But as soon as we clear the incursion, I’ll make you turn it off.”

“Oh? And how do you suppose you’ll do that?” Alyssa questions.

“If I told you that, it wouldn’t work.”

Alyssa just narrows her eyes at her, probably reconsidering helping her with this.

Aldona detects her apprehension. “We had a deal.”

“And you promise not to use any of these things?”

“I promise,” Aldona replies. “I couldn’t use them, even if I wanted to. They’ll stop working. I just want to get them out of the hands of the people who will use them. ”

Alyssa slides over to the special console by the viewport. “And you’re sure this thing can, like, read your database?”

“I could scribble the shopping list on the back of a receipt, and it will know what to find, where to find it, and how to bring it here. It will work.”

Alyssa nods. “Okay. What do I do, just stick it in this slot?”

“It’s that easy. I’ll activate it from here. You can do it at any time, I have to make sure we’re drawing the power that we need first.”

“The power that you need,” Alyssa contends. “This is your thing. You just asked me for help pulling it off.”

“Do you have a general love for mankind? Do you believe in the value of human and human-originating life?”

“Yes.”

“Then you want this to happen too.”

“Very well then.”

Aldona gets back to preparing for the big event.

“Wait!” Alyssa shouts, even though she hasn’t inserted the Dilara Cane yet anyway. “They’re gonna get mad when they find out what you stole, won’t they?”

Aldona shrugs. “Sure, but what are they gonna do about it?”

“They might attack harder. They won’t have the best weapons anymore, but they won’t be helpless either, will they?”

“They won’t be able to track any of this back here, to either of us, or to that cane. That’s what black holes do; they destroy information.”

Alyssa is still wary of this whole thing, but she believes that Team Matic would want this, if they weren’t preoccupied with other—equally important—issues. She still wants to help them, she just can’t let them get in the way of her other objectives. She sets the cane into the slot on the floor and lets go. “Do your worst.”

“Plugging the surge protector into itself,” Aldona declares. She hits EXECUTE.

This is the first ship that Aldona started building when she came here. This was before she approached the Global Council about designing a defense system for them. If they had rejected their offer, she still would have done this part. It’s the most important mission she’ll go on, and if she dies after it, at least it will be complete. The semi-public operation is about protecting this Earth from the upcoming war. This is about preventing the war from getting as bloody as it did the first time around. Rather, there was no blood. They destroyed entire planets. The Fifth Division had tossed most of their stars into a black hole, effectively altering the physical properties of the individual particles. They owned the resulting mass, but not the original stars, so the people of the Parallel felt entitled to maintain control over them instead, and they had the armory to back up their claims. This is a heist. Aldona is stealing all of their weapons, at least all of the worst ones. Alyssa’s new Dilara Cane is bringing it all here. This process is being powered by the black hole, Gaia BH1. In turn, the mass that they steal is being dumped into BH1, which is kind of why it’s like plugging a surge protector into itself. Except that that wouldn’t work, and this is working. They’re gonna end the war before it starts.

“Is it doing what it’s supposed to do?” Alyssa asks.

Aldona smiles at the data. “Yeah. We better get to the escape pod.”

“What? What about the cane?”

“Sorry, love. That’s gotta be destroyed too.” Aldona pulls out a gun, and aims it at her. “Either you leave it where it is, or you stay here with it when the ship gets pulled in too. We’re 1500 light years from home. There’s nowhere to teleport.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 182,398

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Mateo did as Tamerlane asked, though it was no small feat. The stasis pods are the lightest ever built in histories, but still more massive than Mateo. They set Bhulan’s to hover mode, which made it easier to move it to the elevator, and then into the airlock, but that’s not really the problem. Even some of the best teleporters have the standard triple mass limitation. They can carry themselves, and two other normal-sized adults, and no more. The number of people who are capable of handling more than that are very rare, and Ramses did not clone Mateo’s body to be one of them. The mass of the pod stood at the upper limit of this standard, which made the jumps difficult. He couldn’t wear a vacuum suit either, or that would have just added mass. He managed to make two dozen rapid jumps away from the planet, placing Bhulan’s pod in the middle of interplanetary space, at around ten million miles away. Tamerlane had placed a tracker on it, so it could be retrieved later, but then he sent the tracking device 50,000 years into the future using the time machine, so even if he wanted to, he would not be able to find her sooner.

It’s been 10,000 years now, and Mateo is getting worried. Using what Tamerlane taught him about his own stasis pod, he set the time difference at one minute per stint, instead of a second, which would have given him time to react if someone decided to reopen early. They haven’t. A full minute has passed, so he’s opening it himself. He steps into the main area to find Danica on that couch, clearly waiting for him. “Oh, hey.”

“Hello, cousin,” she replies.

“You don’t have to call me that, I know it makes you uncomfortable.”

“Oh, I just wanted to remind you that we’re kind of related, in case you ever got the idea to screw me over again.”

He sits down across from her. “There’s no need to be so vulgar.”

“I’m sorry. You want me to be a good girl?” she asks in a baby voice. Gross.

He’s going to ignore that. “Pryce made a compelling argument.”

“This oughta be good.”

“That no one should have the kind of power that that damn thing gets you.”

“Oh, this?” She reaches behind the couch as if going for a sword. When her hand returns, the Omega Gyroscope follows. She’s still not touching it; it’s hovering a few centimeters from her fingers. It seems you don’t have to be the possessor to play around with it. “You ever see the movie Wanted?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“We have a very extensive library here.” She peers at the rotating gyroscope as it hovers over her left hand. She holds her right hand at the ready. “A library, Mateo is a collection—”

“You don’t have to talk down to me. I know I’m not smart, but you don’t know everything either. For instance, you obviously don’t know that mocking dumb people for being dumb actually doesn’t make you smarter. It just makes you an asshole.”

“You teleported my best friend to the middle of empty space somewhere. Some would say you’re the asshole.”

He sighs. “What did you want to show me?”

She keeps staring intently at the gyroscope. “The main character has been recruited into a shadowy organization, but before he can start killing people for them, he has to be trained, and go through tests. One of these tests is being able to snag a fast moving object called a shuttle through the fabric. We don’t have a loom here, but...” She darts her fingers into the gyroscope, taking something from the glowing orb in the center, and pulling it out before the metal bars—or whatever—can snap her fingers off. She drops one end of the object, but keeps hold of the other. It’s the hundemarke.

“What are you doing with that thing?”

“We’re trying to protect the timeline, but you seem to think you know better, and keep interfering with our work. First you show up, then you question our methods, then you try to escape through a time machine, and now you’ve kidnapped Bhulan.”

“Kidnapped is a strong word.”

“A strong word, and the right word.”

“I’m sorry.”

She feigns delight. “Great. Go out and get her back for me!”

“I don’t know where she is,” Mateo explains. “I just jumped randomly. Tamerlane is the one with the tracker.”

Danica nods, because she knows this to be true. “Well, the reason I’m showing you the hundemarke is because this is what’s really in control of the timeline in this reality. The Gyroscope is a power source, and an interface. We tell it what we want to happen, then the Gyroscope tells the hundemarke, and the hundemarke keeps it from being undone with time travel, or similar nonsense. Right now, Bhulan is in control of the Gyroscope, because that is how it works. Only one person can control it at any one time, or contradictions would give rise to paradoxes. The hundemarke does not operate the same way. If someone uses it to undo something else that someone used it for, then a new reality will simply spring up to avoid the paradoxes. You’ve seen that first hand. My point is that the hundemarke is fine. We combined it with the Gyroscope, because that makes it easier to execute decisions on a global scale.” She places the dog tag around her neck. “But I can do without it. Tamerlane’s plan is flawed, and your participation in that plan only served to piss me off, and make me trust you even less than I already did.”

“This sounds like an internal matter that I shouldn’t have anything to do with.”

“You placed yourself in the middle of it when you took sides, and agreed to help Tamerlane betray us.”

“At least he can take ten minutes out of the billions of years he has in front of him to hold a simple conversation! What did you expect? Haven’t you heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

“I’m gonna stick you in that pod, and not let you out.”

“Great, that’s what I’ve been asking you to do, so I can get back to my family!”

“When I said not, I meant never.”

“Don’t do this, sweet Danica. Don’t make me give you the speech about how people who go up against us never win. Don’t become my enemy.”

“That speech is about how well you win with a team.” She looks around. “I don’t see any of them here.”

Mateo leans forward. “I wasn’t born with a team. I built it, and I can build it again. Because I may not be a genius from the future, or a genius from the present, or a well-educated dead person with centuries of experience. Gathering armies is my forte.”

She leans forward to match. “Bring it on.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 2, 2240

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The Christmas Colonists, as they would come to be called, arrived on Varkas Reflex on December 25. This was just under the wire for the 2239 projection date. They were meant to land months earlier, but had some technical difficulties on the trip across interstellar space. This turned out to be a bit of a good thing, as Eight Point Seven and Hokusai hadn’t quite finished their habitats. The special oxygen-rich liquid they were suspended in wasn’t the easiest or fastest substance to manufacture. They weren’t extremely happy with the name, but would eventually surrender to its humor. Christians became an endangered species many decades ago, and by now, they were largely considered extinct. Those religions which hadn’t already fallen out of favor were on their way out as well, giving way to a civilization based on equality and rationality.

Before Leona disappeared from the timestream last year, Hokusai managed to figure out how to alter her personal gravity using her legs. Back on planet Legolas a century and a half ago, Leona was forced to cut both of her legs off to save herself from an infection. She was rescued by humans of the day, who were able to basically regrow her limbs. They could have made them a hundred percent organic, but she chose to incorporate a little bit of technology into them, so she would have greater strength. She went through hell living alone on that planet, so she considered them to sort of be cosmic reparations for that. These upgrades were evidently not enough to remove her from Mateo’s salmon pattern, so she had mixed feelings about them now. Still, they were making it a lot easier for her to walk on this heavy world. Time-delayed gravity regulator drugs were installed in her legs as well, which provided support for the rest of her organs.

“You can’t do that for me?” Sanaa asked after this was all explained to her.

Hokusai stepped closer to the glass.

“It’s not glass,” Sanaa argued. “It’s a polycarbonate.”

“What?” Hokusai questioned. “I know that.”

Sanaa sneered. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

Hokusai looked behind her. Only Leona was there.

“I know that too.”

Sanaa rolled her eyes. “I was talking to The Superintendent.”

I know that as well. I was using the word more generically. The glass of your tank is what separates you from dry land, but allows you to see through it...like glass.

“Okay, but that doesn’t make it glass. There are lots of clear things that aren’t glass.”

Leona stepped forward as well. “Sanaa, are you really communicating with him? He’s in another universe.”
“So?”

“So, you’re communicating to other universes. No one can do that.”

“The Emissary can,” Sanaa contended.

Leona tilted her head. She hadn’t spent much time thinking about how the Emissary was able to be the intermediary between salmon and the powers that be. She now knew they lived in the Superintendent’s universe, so he would have to be quite powerful. “Still, it must be rare.”

Sanaa shrugged. “You were saying...about getting me out of this water?”

“Okay, we will circle back to this,” Hokusai said, drawing a couple circles in the air. “Do you like having powers?”

Sanaa shrugged again. “People are always talking to me, and I don’t love that. I would much rather be a teleporter, so I can leave when people start pissing me off. Can you turn me into a teleporter?”

“Uh, no. I can’t give you powers, but I can take them away. I would probably have to if you wanted to walk on land. You’re so tall and thin.”

“Body shame much?”

Now Hokusai rolled her eyes. “It’s not conducive to high gravity.”

“Oh, so you’re calling her fat.” She pointed at Leona.

Leona wasn’t offended, because that wasn’t what Hokusai was saying.

“Christ, you just can’t listen to what people are saying to you. You just have to be an unmannerly contrarian. The time gods screwed up when they gave you the ability to communicate with others.”

“They sure did,” Sanaa agreed.

Leona looked away. She met those people. None of the characters the so-called time gods came up with were well thought out, because those characters’ lives didn’t matter to them.

“I’ve spoken at great length about this, with lots of people. Paige Turner, Brooke Prieto, Mallory Hammer. It would seem that the more powerful you are, the less likely you are to keep those powers when you receive transhumanistic upgrades.”

“Leona’s been upgraded,” Sanaa argued.

“Leona is spawn, linked with a salmon. She’s unique, and it’s unclear what it would take for her to fall off her pattern, if anything. Besides, what we did for her is a temporary solution, but it will only need to last a few days. You, on the other hand, are an extremely powerful choosing one. One of her days is a year for you. If it’s true that you can reach other universes, then you’re even more powerful than we knew. It’s a miracle you can even receive a flu shot.”

“I’ve never had the flu shot.”

“I can give you nanites,” Hokusai promised, “so you can walk around here, but is that what you really want?”

“Yes,” Sanaa said excitedly. It looked weird, because Leona didn’t think she was capable of experiencing enthusiasm. “I hate it in these tanks.”

“You will quite likely lose your powers permanently, even if we try to remove the upgrades later. But what would be the point? Are you planning on staying here? I was to understand you were trying to get back to Earth.”

“That doesn’t seem possible,” Sanaa lamented. “Truthfully, I’m a little afraid to step foot in another ship. Where might it take me next?” She spoke with a degree of sincerity that Leona, again, didn’t think she possessed.

Hokusai placed her hand on the...polycarbonate.

“Thank you,” Sanaa said to the Superintendent.

Hokusai went on, “I’ve been working hard on my reframe engine.” She glanced over at Leona. “Yeah, that name has grown on me.” She turned to face Sanaa. “I’m quite confident that it will work. Now, it will take me some time to gather the right materials, build a prototype, test it, and incorporate it into Leona’s ship, but you could go with her.”

“But she’s not—” Sanaa started to say.

“She might not be going straight to Earth, that’s true. The beauty of this thing is that takes days to get anywhere within twenty-seven light years. Beyond that, we’re still only talking weeks. You would have to be sixty light years away for the trip to last longer than a month. You understanding my point here? Leona Delaney doesn’t always get to choose where she goes, but the powers want her alive, so she’s virtually invincible. She’s the safest person for you to be around.”

“We call that plot armor.” Sanaa appeared to be rather genre savvy. As a film scholar, this was something Leona liked about her.

Hokusai didn’t care about it. “Yeah, fine.”

“Leona’s ship is only designed for one person,” Sanaa complained.

“You are only one person,” Leona reminded her. “You would only have to suffer my presence one day a year. Not that it matters, because like she said, you’ll arrive in days. I’ll return just under a year later, so you’ll be long gone by then. It will be like I was never there.”

Sanaa looked between them, and thought this over. “If I’m long gone, then the plot armor argument doesn’t hold much...” She stopped herself, and cringed.

“It doesn’t what?” Leona asked. “Hold water?”

“Too soon,” Sanaa said sadly.

The conversation paused. Honest hour, Leona was feeling the urge to be submerged. Sanaa seemed to detest living in the tanks, but the human Christmas Colonists seemed to be genuinely happy in them. Were they that bad, or was Sanaa just a joyless person?

Sanaa continued after the reverent silence. “How long will it take for you to invent this new engine? To be done with it entirely?”

Hokusai didn’t want to answer. “Honest hour? Years. Up to a decade. These things take time. Believe me, you don’t want me rushing something that can explode if it’s not engineered properly.”

“I understand,” Sanaa said. She didn’t want to get exploded, of course. Her own life was important to her, if nothing else.

“You think you can stomach this place that long?”

Sanaa looked at the hatch behind her. Each habitat was designed about the same way. Individual, couple, or family tanks lined the perimeter, while communal tanks sat in the middle. Landwalkers, which were mostly inorganic, could visit water-dwellers in the dry area of their private residence, like the indoor section of a zoo aquarium. They could also socialize on the beaches and piers above the public tanks. Water-dwellers were still capable of surviving outside the water for hours at a time with little problem. In the eleven months that other people were living on this planet, besides Hokusai, Loa, and Eight Point Seven, Sanaa had reportedly never ventured beyond her own personal tank. “I guess I’ll have to find some level of happiness here until then.”

Leona removed all her clothes, and started up the stairs that would allow her to access the surface of Sanaa’s tank. “I’ll join you. I know you and I aren’t friends, but at least you know me. You don’t know any of those weirdos at all.

If Leona didn’t know any better, she would think Sanaa cracked a slight smile.

“Okay, Mateo, the smile is a bit creepy,” Cassidy pointed out.

“I’m just trying to be more positive,” Mateo explained.

“Why are we, uhh...sitting around like this?” It’s not mealtime, and this is kind of freaking me out.”

“I think he just called a reverse intervention.”

“That’s good, Weaver. That’s a good term for it. That’s kind of what’s happening.” He surely still had the uncomfortable smile painted on his face, and he was probably nodding too much. “I gathered you here to apologize. I understand that my behavior as of late has been..less than pleasant.”

“You were a [sic] asshole,” Thor remarked.

“Thompson,” Goswin scolded.

“No, no,” Mateo assured them. “That’s okay. This is a safe space. I was a asshole. I hear you. I recognize that. I appreciate your candor. I was under a lot of pressure when I was Patronus of Dardius, and I missed Leona deeply, but honest hour? I legit miss that too. I was in charge, of like, billions of people. Gos, you know what I’m talking about.”

Not really, Goswin said with his facial expression, like he didn’t want people thinking he and Mateo were anything alike.

I admit that things have been rough since I got back. I’m just a few light years away from my wife, but I still can’t reach her. The ship is going off to God knows where, and I’m kind of freaking out here. That is not your problem, and I am sorry for any stress that I added to your lives.”

“It’s okay, Mateo” Weaver consoled. “That was weeks ago.”

“Speak for yourself,” Thor said to her. “I ain’t over jack. People have been talking to me like him my whole goddamn life. They did it on Earth. They did it on Mars. And they did it everywhere else I went. I’ve been underestimated and dismissed so much that I put it on my résumé. But I keep my shit together, because people are counting on me. Do they count on you?”

“I hope so,” Mateo said, losing a bit of his smile.

“Then keep it together, bro.”

Mateo breathed in. “I can do that. Thank you for your truth.”

“And stop sayin’ stuff like that. It’s like a white person saying namaste. You don’t know what that means.”

“Thor, you are not the most pleasant person to live with either,” Cassidy asserted.

Thor stood up quickly. “I know. Why you think Saxon wanted to get rid of me?” He started to walk away. “I’m going back to bed. When I wake up, we better—” Then he continued with his mocking tone, but his words devolved into unintelligibility, like an adult on Peanuts.

“Well,” Goswin said. “Progress takes time.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 1, 2239

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The first face that Leona saw when she returned to the timestream was Eight Point Seven’s. She had been given a new android body, which looked just like her original substrate. Last year, Leona had had only enough time to manufacture a basic robot model, so she must have given herself skin later on. The second face she saw belonged to Hokusai Gimura, and the third to Loa Nielsen. “You’re here?” she half asked, half stated. “Last I heard, you built a lightspeed engine.”

“That’s a bit of a misnomer,” Hokusai said. “It’s still sublight, but you can going ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine-nine percent the speed of light. It’s nothing compared to my next invention.”

“What’s that?”

Hokusai and Loa just looked at each other.

“Here,” Eight Point Seven said. “Let me help you get out of this ship. The base you helped design is almost finished. It will be ready for primetime when the colonists arrive next month.”

As Leona was crawling out of the baby ship, Loa injected her with a gravity-regulating serum. It was true that her artificial legs helped her walk on the surface with such high gravity, but that wasn’t enough to protect the rest of her body. Her heart couldn’t pump blood throughout her body very well on its own. Well, it technically could, but it was needlessly taxing, so these drugs helped maintain healthy blood flow. A normal individual would be able to use permanent nanites, but the powers that be didn’t allow that level of transhumanistic upgrades. Hokuloa must have been using them, though, even though that likely meant the latter in the pair would lose her powers. They would not otherwise be able to thrive here for an extended period of time. Again, it was possible, but quite uncomfortable. The colonists would not be living like this on a regular basis. They were being set up with an entirely different type of environment.

“Have you been here long?”

“Couple months,” Loa answered.

“How are you guys doing in the long-term? Are you spending most of your time in the water?”

Hokusai laughed. “We don’t need that stuff.” With a charming smile, she hopped into the air, and tapped her shoes together dramatically. She went up and fell down a lot slower than she should have. “Antigravity shoes, from the future. I would have invented something myself, but why bother when someone else is going to do it for you?”

“Right now, we’re walking on point-nine-g,” Loa detailed.

“That...is impressive,” Leona said. Though it wasn’t surprising, because impressive was Hokusai’s resting state.

“She can do that for you too,” Loa said excitedly.

“Allegedly,” Hokusai clarified. “I might be able to integrate the technology into your prosthetic, but I would need to at least take a look at them, which I’ve never had the honor before.”

Leona was just as excited. “That would be amazing. I’m interested in this other invention you hinted at, though. You gonna leave me in the dark forever?”

Hokuloa gave each other another look, so Leona glanced at Eight Point Seven, whose facial expression implied she didn’t know what they were talking about either.

“Okay,” Hokusai relented. “I call it...the reference frame engine.”

“I prefer reframe engine,” Loa added. This prompted a hushed, but still audible, conversation between the two of them.

“Honey, we talked about this.”

“I just think it’s more succinct.”

“It sounds like we’re changing people’s perspectives.”

“That’s exactly what you’re doing.”

“No, the frame of reference for the passengers remains constant. I’m not changing that. The engine just changes the temporal outcome.”

“You mean for, like, the people observing from outside the ship? Their reference is being reframed?”

“They’re not actually observing anything; the ship is going too fast.”

“Oh, that’s semantics.”

“Wait,” Leona was pretty smart, but she was having trouble figuring out what they were talking about. “What is this? Who’s reframing what?”

“Okay,” Hokusai prepared to explain. “You know how, as you approach the speed of light, the relative time that has passed from the perspective of the traveler shortens?”

“I follow,” Leona said. This was all basic stuff.

“So, it took us almost eight years to get here from Earth, but since we were going so fast, for us, it only felt like four days.”

“Of course,” Leona agreed. She couldn’t do those kinds of calculations in her head, but the math sounded sound.

“Well,” Hokusai went on, “if I get this new drive working, it will coordinate—”

“Or reframe,” Loa interrupted.

Hokusai continued as if never interrupted, “the inside frame of reference with the outside. Basically, the ship is still going the same sublight speed, but it’s also technically traveling backwards in time, which allows it to arrive before light would.”

Leona understood. “It feels like four days to you in the ship, and it takes four days, even though it should take eight years.”

“That’s right,” Loa confirmed with a nod.

“That’s brilliant, Miss Gimura.”

“Don’t get too excited. It’s an idea; one that obviously requires a cylicone. I haven’t even so much as drawn up designs for it beyond that, though.”

“Still, it’s...I mean, if I were just some normal girl, I might not believe it, but we know that faster-than-light travel is possible. This wouldn’t even be the fastest we’ve seen, so surely it’s possible.”

Loa giggled. “Well, we can’t all be The Trotter. This will allow more reasonable jumps in space for anybody with the power to sit their butt in a seat.”

“Oh, that’s right; The Trotter. He said he was going to be here. He could reunite me with Mateo.”

“We’ve not seen him,” Loa apologized. “We’ve only seen the three of you.”

“Eh, I guess that makes sense,” Leona realized. “He’s not meant to show up for another five years.”

“Five days,” Loa corrected.

“That’s true,” Leona admitted. It was one of the few benefits of this life. On the other hand, how long was he going to stick around? Would he wait until Leona returned to the timeline, or would she miss him by that much? They never nailed down specifics. He knew what her pattern was, but did he keep track of the exact days? Not likely. Damn. She shook the thought out of her head, because it wasn’t worth worrying about right now. Besides, there was something else. “Hold on. You said you’ve seen three of us.” She pointed to Eight Point Seven, then to herself, then back to Eight Point Seven, all the while pretending to struggle with counting to two.

“Yeah, there’s someone else here. I guess she’s been here awhile. She refuses to tell us how she survived this long, but we put her in the water. She is not happy about it.”

So, life on a heavy world is difficult at best. Drugs and nanites are only capable of doing so much. At some point, walking around on a super-Earth becomes so tiring for the average human being that it’s not even worth it anymore. The alternative technology would be more important on an even heavier world, but not useless here on Varkas Reflex. Instead of injecting one’s system with drugs, chemicals would remain outside the body, which is suspended within it. Submersion in water simulates weightlessness, by distributing pressure evenly. Obviously this is not a good solution, unless there is some way for the person to breathe, which is why they’re not being suspended in just regular water. This oxygen-rich liquid can be absorbed through the skin, effectively turning a human into an aquatic animal. The tech was first used centuries ago, for certain medical treatments. It was also incorporated into a special suit to counteract the effects of acceleration—until internal inertial negators were invented—but this method doesn’t work well on a relatively static orbital surface. Enter habitat tanks, stage left.

Leona had to fight extremely hard against the urge to laugh at the person she was seeing inside the tank, like a penguin in a zoo.

Sanaa Karimi, who was not too pleasant of a person, was floating around in what was evidently her new home, staring back with dead eyes. She removed a device from her belt, and pressed it over her mouth. “What the f— are you looking at?” Like before, she self-censored. But why?

“What the hell are you doing here, Sanaa?”

“You tell me!” Sanaa shouted back.

“I have no clue. You’re the one who escaped Bungula without a word.”

“I have a few words for ya,” Sanaa spit back. “First one is bitch!”

“Settle down there, Spongebob,” Hokusai scolded.

“Why does she get to walk around?” Sanaa complained.

“I’ll tell you what,” Leona began, “you come out of that water, I’ll cut off your legs, and give you new ones. Then you can go wherever the f— you want. That’s more than I got. I had to cut them off myself!”

Sanaa appeared to not have known that about her.

“All right,” Eight Point Seven said in her mediator voice. “Nobody’s cutting off anybody’s legs here.”

“Tell me your story,” Leona asked calmly.

“The ship’s systems were pretty easy to operate. Everything seemed fine. I just told it I wanted to go to Earth, and it went on its way. Then something went wrong, and it changed directions. Next thing I know, I’m here. Her ship is broken.” Sanaa pointed to Hokusai.

Hokusai frowned. “I legit have no idea what happened. I’ve run diagnostics three times, and everything checks out. According to the logs, she never requested it take her to Earth. It thinks Varkas Reflex was always her destination.”

“I told you—!” Sanaa tried to say.

“I don’t think you did anything wrong,” Hokusai assured her. “Someone messed with the computer. I have no idea how, and I have no idea who.”

“Who would do that?” Mateo asked.

“I think you know who,” Weaver replied.

“Mirage? Mirage wants us to go to Thay...thay”

“Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida,” Goswin spoke for him.

“Yeah, there. Why would she not want us to go to Varkas Reflex?”

“We’re not even certain Leona is there,” Weaver reminded him.

“Is it possible she’s at, umm...you know what I’m talking about. We gotta come up with an English word for this planet; goddamn.”

“Some people call it Bida,” Thor jumped in.

“We can’t change vector,” Weaver said apologetically. “AOC is heading to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, or at least in that general direction. It’s the most likely candidate. We won’t arrive for another sixteen years.”

“Wow, déjà vu all over again,” Mateo lamented. “But you said Cassidy and I have only been gone for five months.”

Weaver nodded. “It’s been about twenty-one weeks for us, but a year has passed for the rest of the universe. You see, when you approach the speed of light—”

Mateo waved his hands erratically in front of his face, like a swarm of mosquitos were on the offensive. “I don’t need to hear the sciencey relativistic bullshit again.”

Weaver cleared her throat, on the defensive.

“I’m going back to bed,” Mateo declared. “When I wake up, we better be on our way to Leona, wherever the hell she happens to be.”

“You know I can’t promise that,” Weaver shouted after him.

Mateo just threw up his hand, because he knew he was being unreasonable, but didn’t have the constitution to apologize for how rudely he was treating everybody right now.

“Is he always like that?” he could hear Thor say to the group.

He didn’t hear a response.

This was going to be a long flight.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 31, 2238

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It was time to leave. Mateo first went to Dardius to retrieve the Muster Beacon, so he could save Serif’s people. He then went to Gatewood to make sure they really were saved. Then Cassidy showed up, and he felt very protective of her, but he was otherwise pretty useless here. He wasn’t a scientist or engineer. He wasn’t a civil servant or pilot. He was just some guy; some guy light years away from his wife. He needed to reunite with Leona, and it wasn’t like the people here were begging him to stick around. It was kind of surreal going straight from a world where he was the leader of billions of people, to one where he could do little to help. He hadn’t realized until last year how unnerving he felt. It was best to get out of here, even without the other reasons.

He wasn’t setting about on the journey alone. As awkward as things were still with Cassidy, he hoped she was coming. That was a conversation they needed to have. Goswin was finished setting up the system of governance on these worlds. Many people wanted him to run for elected office, but he evidently didn’t think that was a good idea. He was, and always would be, an outsider. The Ansutahan refugees had this shared history he could never understand, so they were better served with a leader of their own. Weaver too was coming, but that was more about her curiosity. She was kind of steampunk, and spent a lot of time enjoying advanced technology in the nineteenth century in her reality of origin. She had never been to other planets before, and now she was anxious to see more. There was one last passenger, and it was a good thing he was the only one. Though the ship was built with six grave chambers, for a maximum complement of twelve people, chamber four was heavily damaged from having been used as a link to the Ansutahan universe bridge. It could be repaired, but no one had bothered to do it yet.

“Why do you wanna come?” Mateo asked.

“There’s nothing for me here,” Thor replied.

“What about your partner, Saxon, and Operation Starseed?”

“That was more his thing. I’m kind of all about the neighbors. If not for him and the project, I would have probably chosen to travel to Varkas Reflex. This my opportunity.”

“Well, we have room for ya, but I don’t know if I can trust you. I know Juliu—Saxon. Sure, it was in an alternate reality, but that’s something, and I don’t know you at all.”

“I just need a ride, man. I’m not here to steal your girlfriend, or whatever.”

“Cassidy is not my girlfriend. I’m just in charge of her safety.”

“Whatever, dude.”

There was only one person Mateo could talk to about this. He didn’t exactly trust her either, but that was only because everyone is capable of betrayal. It wasn’t safe to let just anyone board the AOC, but if Mirage said he was cool, Mateo would accept it. He made his way to the VR room in the command center building, and was surprised to find Cassidy already there, removing the needle from her skull. “You were talking to her?”

“I was, yes.”

“Can I ask why?”

“I was asking her whether we can trust Saxon and Thor.”

Mateo smiled. Great minds. “And...?”

“She says they can be trusted indubitably.”

“Very well. I guess it’s a good thing you sat in the chair, because I can’t be sure she would even talk to me a second time.”

“Yeah, she said you would be coming, and confirmed your suspicions.”

“I’m leaving today. I’m going to go find my wife. I would like you to accompany us. That is, unless Mirage told you not to.”

“She frustratingly made a point of leaving that decision up to me.”

“You frustratingly made a point of not answering what that decision is.”

She didn’t want to, but couldn’t keep herself from cracking a smile. “I’ll go with you. It’s the right move. Just so you understand, it’s not that I need a big strong man to keep me safe.”

“Good, because Goswin is more of an intellectual, so I don’t know that you’ll find someone like that on our ship. Then again, apparently Thor is coming...”

“Mateo. You and I are not a thing. We had a moment; a three minute moment, and it’s gone. We can fly in the same spaceship together without it getting weird.”

“I agree.”

“So, we’re not going to talk about it anymore.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Captain McBride to Mateo Matic,” they heard on the radio.

“This is Mateo, go ahead.”

“Please report to the throne room.”

“Very good, sir.” Mateo called the area where Kestral and Ishida’s worked the throne room offhand one time, and since there was no better term for it, it sort of stuck. The two of them were responsible for the scientific projects going on here, and of the cylinders themselves, but had little control over what the people living on them did. So they were decidedly not rulers. The throne room was used as an office, a laboratory, even sleeping quarters, and probably at the moment, a discussion room. Mateo speedwalked as fast as he could over there, not wanting to make them wait for him.

“Are you all ready to go?” Kestral asked him once he arrived.

He presented his bag. “Everything I have in thirty litres or less.”

“Mister Thompson will be joining you?”

“Looks like it; is that okay?”

“It is.” she nodded. “Mister Parker, on the other hand, will be joining us, just to keep you updated.”

“So, you’re moving forward with Operation Starseed?”

“Is that a problem?” she questioned.

“Not at all. Just...staying updated.”

“It’s why I called you here. The Ansutahan humans are aware that we are manufacturing exploratory ships in this system. What they don’t know is the magnitude of our mission, nor any of the details, including anything about the Starseed aspect.”

“I appreciate the need for secrecy and security.”

“Good. I need you to keep exercising that belief. Starseed is a sensitive subject. It’s not...strictly speaking, legal. The general vonearthan population did not vote to allow it. This is one of the reasons we’re building and departing from Gatewood, and why Saxon’s cargoship originated from Titan, rather than Earth. It’s our responsibility to insulate the Earthan leadership from any blowback. They’re hoping that, by the time anyone finds out about it, public opinion will have swayed in our favor. People may have reached the longevity escape velocity, which endangers progress from taking shape due to mortal turnover, but that doesn’t mean new generations don’t influence social politics. Still, Stargate is quite deliberately avoiding all systems within fifty light years of Earth. They’ll be sending independent missions to those systems, on an as needed basis, like we’ve already been doing with the closest stellar neighbors.”

“You don’t want me telling anyone what I know about these projects,” Mateo presumed. “I get it.”

“I know that you and Leona are close, and I assume you tell each other everything.”

Mateo opened his mouth to promise not to say anything, even to her, but she interrupted him before he could get one sound out.

“I’m not going to ask you to lie to her. Way I understand it, she already suspects the program exists, so denying it would put undue strain on your relationship. I’m fine with you being completely honest with her, because I know she can keep a secret. No one else needs to know, though.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you. Now, Lieutenant Caldwell is currently running diagnostics on your ship’s new engines. Then you’ll be good to go.”

“New engines, sir?” He didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Yes, we’ve upgraded them to more recent speed standards. You’ll be able to reach a maximum of point-nine-three-c, though the average might be closer to point-nine-two.”

“That’s amazing. Thank you.”

“You should be able to reach Varkas Reflex inside of twelve years. It’s more like eleven, but the AOC is not likely to arrive on your day.”

“That’s perfect. Thank you again.”

“It’s been a delight, Mister Matic. You and the rest of your crew are always welcome back on Gatewood.”

“I appreciate your support. What could I ever do to repay you?”

“I haven’t thought of anything yet.”

“Anything yet?” Leona asked.

“Leona,” Eight Point Seven said, “there’s nothing down there.”

“You’re telling me they built nothing on the surface?”

“They built nothing on the surface, or just below it.”

“Does that mean the humans aren’t coming?”

“You know I don’t know. Nothing in the reports I received while I was administrator on Bungula led me to believe that they had abandoned missions to colonize this world.”

“This is a super-Earth, Eight Point Seven, with nearly six times its mass. Humans can’t survive on it without technological intervention.”

“I understand that. Either the nanofactories they sent ahead of time never arrived, or they arrived, but malfunctioned. I’m not picking up any signals, and the surface appears clear.”

“This must be why we’re here. But surely the Earthans know. I mean, the factory was meant to give them the thumbs up. Even without quantum communication, they would have had seventeen years to get the message that something went wrong.”

“I agree, it doesn’t make much sense.”

“Okay, let’s go down and fix this. You know the landing points?”

“I do, but you can’t go down there.”

“Why not?”

“For the same reason the other humans can’t! Surface gravity is way too high for a standard biological.”

“Well, you have to go down there, and if you don’t come back up and get me in a year, I could reappear in the timestream in the vacuum.”

“Wouldn’t you reappear in the ship, just like you always do, even though it’s moved?”

“You might have to cannibalize the ship to fix the factory, so...maybe not. I might be able to walk on the surface. My legs are artificial, remember?”

“It has more to do with your lungs and heart, and your legs aren’t the only parts of you with bones and muscles.”

“Eight Point Seven, you don’t have hands. I might be able to build you a new body here, but I gotta get down there first.”

“This could kill you.”

“Anything could kill me. My life is hella dangerous. The powers that be have it in their hands. There’s a certain freedom in that. Get. Me. Down there.”

“As you wish. You better make like a jock, and strap in! It’s about to get real!”

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Microstory 931: Gravity

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There are few things in the universe as important as gravity. One of them is spacetime, and the other—if it exists at all—is any underlying component of reality that allows for the creation, and persistence, of life in general. We have only studied organic life on Earth, as well as quasi-living entities we call viruses. There may be other forms of life beyond our single orbital we have yet to encounter, or which we have encountered, but do not recognize. One thing is for sure, however, in whatever form this other life takes, it would not be able to exist without gravity, because nothing can. Gravity is what holds celestial bodies together. People like to say that it “keeps us down to the ground” but that’s not a very reasonable way to put it. There is no up and down in space—and we are in space, just not outer space. So it’s more like gravity pulling us inward, and keeping us from going outward. The distinction matters, because it’s important to understand that a body gravitationally bound to another will always be pulled towards the center of  that more massive object. Why exactly it does this is something we’ve been struggling with for years. Contrary to the tale of the apple that has been misinterpreted into your brains, Isaac Newton did not discover gravity. At no point did someone have to realize that things fall down, or even that they don’t spontaneously float upwards. There are things like wind, lift, and pressure, which allow certain objects to move away from its gravitational pull, but that doesn’t mean gravity isn’t operating upon it. The reason those objects, like birds, are capable of resisting the effects of gravity to some degree is because gravity is a weak force. It’s the weakest force, because it takes a lot more to make it happen than it does to make the other forces happen.

If gravity were stronger, the computer you’re reading this on may be experiencing a gravitational pull towards the center of your body right now. There’s an episode of Family Guy that demonstrates this by having several household objects float around Peter, suggesting that he’s so fat, he’s massive enough to hold his own orbit. And while we know that such a thing is impossible in the real world, and Isaac codified a great deal of the basic properties of gravity, there is still so much more to learn. The scientists who know the most about it still don’t understand what gravity is, how it works, or why it’s so much weaker than the other three (or four) forces. They’ve proposed this particle called the graviton, but there’s no proof it even exists. What we do know is that it’s vital to the universe. I’ve read some sources that say if we didn’t have gravity, everything would just fall apart, but that’s only a helpful image when you’re trying to explain what would happen if gravity suddenly disappeared. The truth is that, without it, nothing meaningful would exist at all. Particles would just be floating around in empty space, never having come together to form something larger in the first place. Gravity has done a lot to work against us. Rocket ships expend the majority of their fuel just getting off the ground, and away from the atmosphere, in the first place. And we don’t even have it that bad. It’s conceivable that a species living on a heavy world would never develop technology capable of reaching space, because it would just not be practical to try. Still, gravity is one of my favorite things, because we will one day conquer it, and once we do that, nothing will be able to stop us from reaching greatness.