Microstory 2659: Nightmare Fuel

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Zombiedome is obviously full of zombies, but Malika has been here before, and it was never this bad. It feels like every square meter of the surface has a zombie in it, though it probably tapers off in the distance. A player would not be able to move around, let alone have any hope for survival. There also aren’t any buildings, which Malika says isn’t right either. It would obviously be a ridiculous setup. If there’s nowhere to run to or hide behind, it’s not really a game. There’s something very wrong here. If Jiminy spent a third of his time in this dome, how could he have dismantled all of the infrastructure without the Custodians, or the executive administrative authority, noticing? It really doesn’t matter, though. The undigitized organic humans are in trouble.

“What do the residences look like?” Mandica questions. “All we can do is split up and check every one in order. When you find the right one, holler.”

“No, that’s a poor use of time. When there are this many of them, the zombies aren’t enemies; they’re the weather,” Reagan argues. “We could never kill them all. Many of my people are posthumans. They will protect the others. We have to find a way to close the portals. Look at all of them. Something is keeping them open and stable.”

“Do you have some way of finding the power source, or the controls, or something that can help us put an end to this?” Jaidia asks him.

“Oh yeah, let me just take out my transdimensional window detector. Shit, I think I left it in my pure gold airplane.”

No one responds. They just keep hovering, watching the horror.

“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to think of how to fix this,” Reagan says.

“Can y—ear me?” Elysia asks. She’s speaking through comms, but it’s garbled.

“Yes, but barely,” Jaidia replies. “Are you still in Seagate? We’re in Zombiedome.”

“I see you, I’m on my way,” Elysia says. She starts out as a flying dot over the ground before getting bigger and bigger as she draws nearer. “Report.”

“We’re hoping to find the source of all this,” Mandica says. “It has to be some kind of machine. Maybe it’s integrated into the dome’s own power systems—”

“This isn’t Zombiedome,” Elysia interrupts.

“What? What other dome could have been filled up this much already?”

“Well, it is, but it’s not our Zombiedome. That’s why I could hardly reach you when I was near the portal, and why we can’t talk to the EAA from here. We’re in a...different reality, or something. That’s why Jiminy was able to accomplish all this without anyone noticing. It’s a different world, parallel to our own. Which means our only priority is shutting it down. Once we close the portals, the military will only have to deal with the attackers that are already on the other side. But there’s a problem.”

“That’s not the problem?” Malika questions.

“They’re not just coming from here. There are also portals linking to an alternate Bloodbourne, and even an alternate Botfarm full of crazed androids, as well as a number of simulations which were originally privately held intellectual property. We have to close every one of them. All nightmares have descended upon the real Castlebourne.”

“But bottom line,” Reagan begins, “the military has been deployed.”

“Yes,” Elysia confirms. “They’re prioritizing domes which have the most UDOs in them, like State of the Art, and the residences. Your people are being cared for. We are not alone in this. The villain opened portals in our domes first to keep us busy, but he underestimated how fiercely non-superheroes would protect the innocent. We mostly designed our bodies with the best powers, but transhumanism is perfectly legal anywhere else. So let go of your anxiety, and focus on our task. We’ve been given this assignment because of how fast we can move. Any ideas of where it would be?”

“I don’t think it would be here. It’s too random,” Jaidia decides. “If they’re drawing from multiple domes, and there is a central command center, we have to think like Jiminy, or maybe even Morgana. Would he be in this dimension, or the real one?”

“We have to understand what he wants,” Malika says. “If he just wants to destroy the world, as bad as this is, it’s not a good permanent solution. Most people will survive it. If you truly didn’t want them to, you would go after the backup terminals, and all consciousness maintenance infrastructure. You would do it quietly and meticulously. You wouldn’t just throw monsters at as many people as possible.”

“They’re only a distraction,” Jaidia agrees. “He’s banking on our drive to fight back. That’s why we all entered Underbelly in the first place. He obviously has a thing for Pinocchio. I say we look for him in Collodidome.”

“No, there’s a reason he dressed himself up as Morgana, and did it in two domes. He’s either in Ravensgate or Loegria,” Malika counters.

“He only did that to get under Mandica’s skin,” Jaidia argues.

“Why would he need to get under her skin?” Elysia jumps in. “He hasn’t gotten anything from her. I think he was just playing a part. I think that was a distraction too.”

“Well, he can’t be in Loegria anyway, because that’s where he died,” Jaidia adds.

Malika shakes her head. “That’s exactly why he would be there, because we left.”

“We left to go to Ravensgate, and you thought he could be there instead!”

Reagan flies between Malika and Jaidia. “Guys, he’s not in either of those places, or Collodidome, or if he is, then he’s on this side. It’s the safest place for him. There’s no authority, he controls everything, he can draw an ungodly amount of power. The portals are coming from here, so it stands to reason they’re being controlled from here too.”

“I’m the key,” Mandica utters quietly.

“What?” Elysia asks.

“When you were all dead, it was just me, Vanore, and Jiminy. He said that I was the key. He said it like that, he emphasized the word. He needs me to open something. I don’t know what, or why it has to be me, but he’s been keeping me alive for a reason.”

“He stabbed you with a sword in the jewelry store,” Elysia tries to remind her.

“Right next to the Philosopher’s Stone,” Mandica reminds her right back. “He knew it was real. He probably put it there. And that sword? That was a special sword too. He used it once, and then never again. None of this makes any sense unless you frame me as being the ultimate target. But why? What’s so special about me?”

“You were a UDO,” Reagan answers. “That’s pretty special these days.”

“You said it yourself,” Mandica responds. “There are others like me in the residences; your people who chose not to back themselves up. They were closer.”

“We’re not vonearthans,” Reagan explains solemnly. “We are descended from a generation of ancestors created in a lab under vastly different conditions. We all received special shots when we came to this region of space. Our biology is different. They’re not even sure if we can procreate together. They consider it unethical to test it.”

Mandica stares at him for a moment. Without saying a word, she leans backwards and dives towards the ground. She pushes herself to supersonic speeds, which is incredibly dangerous inside of a dome, but she needs to break away quickly. Her friends can’t know where he’s going. She doesn’t know where he’s going. It just needs to be away from here; away from this whole mess. Before she’s reached the ground, she collapses her wings into her body. She shuts her mouth and plugs her nose, then slams herself into a bunch of zombies as hard as she can, absolutely pulverizing their bodies, and leaving her covered in their undead viscera. Now that she smells like the other zombies, they begin to leave her alone. She blends in with them, making her way through the crowd to a more distant portal. It can’t be the one she landed near, because that is where they’re going to look for her. It takes hours to meander through, like a neutrino in a star.

After she walks through the portal, she doesn’t know where she is right away, but it’s a good thing she didn’t wait even one second longer, because it closes right behind her. In her absence, her friends managed to figure out how to shut them down. They may have found the controls for the interdimensional technology, but they didn’t likely find Jiminy, nor what he’s truly after. He’s not going to make it easy on them. She’s going to take a page out of his book, and do the same. She’s going to rob him of the one she does know he wants. She’s depriving him of her.

She discovers she’s in Party Central, which is a great target to send a bunch of zombies and monsters. It was on Trilby’s green dome list so she was free to come here back when she was just a boring and delicate human. She still needed to be careful of falling disco balls and spiked punch, but she has had to be worried about freak accidents her whole life. She finds a fur coat on the ground. It’s covered in blood and guts, but that’s okay, because she fits right in with all the party-goers who were just attacked. People with guns and other weapons are here, cleaning up the last of the monsters. They’re not dressed in military garb, but some of them match. Her guess is that they’re from Mêléedome or Shmupdome. Those were on the red list because their only point is violence. She ignores them, doesn’t talk to anyone, and goes on her way.

She finds a public water closet where she takes the opportunity to clean up, throwing all of her clothes into the trashbot, which she pats on the head in remembrance of the one who got her here. After the shower, she grabs one of the robes, and walks back out. No one is paying any attention to her. They’re all still reeling from the assault. She continues to walk until she finds a remote building that is currently under construction. There’s an incinerator here to dispose of unrecyclable materials, so she switches it on, sets a timer, then dives in. It’s agonizing, but she needs answers.

Unlike the other times she’s died, she comes back to life this time with some memory of what happened to her. She doesn’t have many details, but she knows enough to get by. Jiminy was the lieutenant for a dangerous man named Pinocchio, who was once in charge of wherever Mandica goes when she dies. After being stripped of power, he eventually downloaded himself into base reality, where he continued to carry out his nefarious plans, predominately in the Spydome Network, until he was caught and locked away. Mandica is sure that Jiminy wants to break his boss free, and this stone and Mandica are collectively the way he does that. She can’t let that happen. She has to stop fighting, and start hiding. So she crawls out of the furnace, gets cleaned up again, and then simply attends the nearest party. This is where she lives for the next five years.

Microstory 2657: Revealed

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Her team jogs up behind her as Mandica is frozen. Jaidia covers her mouth with her hand. “Oh my God.” They were told that Guinevere would be locked up in this tower, but they assumed that they would find her in a less-than-comfortable bed, and maybe—maybe—chained up. She’s chained up all right, but not in the usual way. One leg is shackled to a wall while the other is free. The same goes for her wrists on opposing sides. She’s lying on her side in an awkward position, next to a bucket with an obvious purpose. There’s a sink above her, but it doesn’t look like she can get to it. Water is dripping from a pipe underneath, forming a puddle in the chipped stone below. Her eyes are open, and she’s barely blinking, but she is, so she’s still alive.

Mandica knows right away what has happened. She has no proof, it could all be a lie, but this is what she is choosing to believe. Vanore never betrayed her. She never plucked out her eyes, or stabbed her in the chest. She has not been tormenting locals in Camelot and Greater Loegria. She hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s been locked up here this whole time. The asshole running around as Morgana is a shapeshifter, using Vanore’s face as a default in order to sell a lie. It’s clever, she’ll give her that. They never knew if there was anyone in the world they could trust, but if they ever saw Vanore, they knew they couldn’t trust her. But that was foolish. Of course there was another layer. Mandica gets down on her knees and pulls one link in the chain apart while Jaidia gets down and does the same to free her leg. “What did she do to you?” Mandica asks, tearing up. She gently lifts Vanore’s head, and slides her crossed legs underneath it.

“She needs water,” Reagan notes. He finds a cup, and fills it with clean water.

“I’ve been drinking,” Vanore assures them but her voice is hoarse, so she’s not drinking enough, or it’s full of bacteria. Or both.

“Guys, I know this is important, but we gotta go,” Malika urges. “I have to tell you what I learned. I don’t know what Morgana is planning, but it’s bigger than we knew.”

Mandica is still crying softly as she’s running her fingers through Vanore’s hair. “I’m sorry I doubted you. We should have seen it. I should have seen the truth.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Vanore replies. No, she wouldn’t.

“She’s talking about me.” It’s Morgana, standing in the doorway, still wearing Vanore’s face. She’s not upset at all, like all of this is going according to plan.

Scared to death, the real Vanore presses the back of her head against Mandica’s chest, trying to get as far from the witch as possible. “Who is that? Who the hell is that?”

“Oh, sorry. You’re used to seeing me like this.” Smoke billows out of Morgana’s cloak. Behind it, nanites begin to rearrange themselves. When the cloud fades, they see a man in her place. He removes the cloak, as well as the low-cut outfit underneath. He then peels a shirt from the cloak’s back lining, and puts it on for a more masculine look.

Mandica thought she may recognize his real face—if this is even finally that—but she doesn’t. It’s a guy. It’s just some random guy. “Let me guess. Just Morgan.”

My real name is Jiminy actually.

Mandica blinks deliberately. “What?! Like...the bug?”

“It started out as a nickname, but I’ve been using it for centuries; much longer than I had my original name, which I almost don’t remember.” He notices the team in defensive positions. “This didn’t go well for you last time. Nothing has changed. Except that face.” He waves his hand towards Jaidia.

Her facial hologram disappears, leaving her scar fully visible. She only covered it up when she came here so it didn’t draw attention from the locals. She’s not fazed.

Jiminy tilts his head. “Those aren’t as deep as they should be. Let me try again. He forms another cloud from his hands, but the particles are more sharply defined. They look vaguely like a sword. He drops it down, and slices through Jadia’s head, right were one of the slashes once was. Her body drops. “You next,” he says, looking at Malika.

Blue Wave extends her wings, just as Ravensgate Rescuer did earlier, except they are still less feathery, and more metallic. “I’m actually stronger this time.” She attacks.

Jiminy takes hold of the wings, and twists so they’re wrapped around Blue Wave’s body. He jams the sharp edges into her torso.

Malika falls to her back in front of Mandica, and begins to cough up blood. She turns her chin towards her friend. “He’s...” she struggles to say. “He’s in Underbelly a third of the time.” More blood, flying out like a geyser. “Loegria the other third. And—” She dies before she finishes her thought, but the math equation is easy enough to solve.

“Whoops,” Jiminy says. “You found out about that a little too early. Whatever.”

Reagan his holding his decoherence gun towards the enemy, but not shooting.

“Ahh. Not charged quite yet, is it? Yeah, that’s a big downside, but a small price to pay for full-on murder.” Jiminy takes a gun out from behind his back, which doesn’t look unlike Reagan’s. “Mine’s freshly juiced up. And bonus...” He trains it on Reagan. “I figured out how to propagate the backup signals. Dead is dead is dead is dead.”

Reagan’s eyes roll to the back of his head, and he collapses.

“A neural suicide inducer?” Jiminy complains. “What a coward. Welp, I guess I’ll test it on your girlfriend.” She points the gun at Vanore now. “Move out of the way so I can get a clean shot. I’m not done with you yet. You’re the key to everything.”

Mandica lifts Vanore’s head up more, and gently pushes it behind her back so he has an even worse shot. “I don’t know why you think I would do such a thing.”

He sighs. “To make it easier on all of us.” He reaches over his shoulder, and quickly swings his arm forwards, sending a chained hook towards Mandica. It digs itself into her shoulder. He yanks it, pulling Mandica out of the way. Then he fires his weapon at Vanore, sending a blast of energy into her stomach. Satisfied, he points the gun towards the ceiling in a comfortable resting position. “The results will take time.”

Azad Petit literally appears out of nowhere. One second he’s not there, and the next, he is. It’s impossible. It breaks the laws of physics, it just does. But it’s a good thing he can do it. Without hesitating, he goes right for Reagan’s decoherence gun, and shoots Jiminy with it. Jiminy’s nanite bonds break, and he falls apart like a sand statue.

Mandica tears the hook from her flesh. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” She whimpers. She cups Vanore’s cheeks, trying to get some kind of reaction, but Vanore doesn’t move. Her heart is still. Her lungs are flat. The light in her eyes is gone. All of Mandica’s friends will come back to life, but if Jiminy wasn’t lying, Vanore cannot. Every copy of her has just been killed forever. Mandica lifts her head and screams as loud as she can. While still screaming, her back begins to burn. It’s hotter and more painful than ever before. Malika sits up quickly, and catches her breath. Reagan does too. And Jaidia? Well, she’s too far gone. But Mandica doesn’t care about that. She’ll be fine. She needs Vanore back. She stops screaming, and looks down at her love. “Please.”

Vanore breathes in.

Microstory 2656: The Traitor Knight

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Jaidia snuck away from the crowd, and called Azad, who reported that Vanore had not woken up in her regular substrate yet, following her death in the simulation, but that’s to be expected. It takes time for a consciousness to fully return and compile safely. Safeguards are in place to protect them from losing memories, or any defining personality traits. Of course, Reagan’s gun makes that more complicated, but he’s sure that he didn’t just straight up murder the woman permanently. Figuring out how to transmit the decoherence signal across backup consciousness streams has been the most difficult part of his special gun’s development process. The technology is still based on the earliest of research into the field of mind transference, which was pioneered by scientists who were trying to protect people from a weapon such as this. It’s baked into the design, and for good reason.

Three of them are in the castle now, where King Arthur has been ruling only as a figurehead for the last few years. Malika stayed behind, both to make sure that Morgana is indeed dead, and also to ask the townsfolk some questions about this whole situation. Why was Vanore splitting between two immersion domes, and why was she playing the same character? The locals wouldn’t be able to answer those questions specifically, even the ones who are visitors and not NPCs, but their answers to other questions might hold clues to understanding her motivations. Even though it appears that she has been defeated, they may need to prepare for future complications that she has set in motion.

Arthur is sitting on his throne, resting his temple against his fingers, his heavy crown askew upon his head. He doesn’t even react to them. He is guarded by no one.

The three of them kneel before him out of respect for the game. “King Arthur, Chief Dragon, Lord of Camelot, High King of the Britons,” Mandica begins. “We come in humble service, hoping to free your love from the high tower. Do you protest?”

Arthur scoffs, almost menacingly. “Many have tried, all have died.”

“Forgive us, sire. We would not dare to disrespect your loyal subjects, but we come with experience that others have not possessed. We will defeat the Bane of Loegria. He will not be the first monster that we have vanquished. He will not even be the first to die at our hands today.”

He chuckles now. “I have been apprised of your exploits at the tiltyard. Morgana has died before, and returned. She shall return again.”

“Not this time, sire,” Mandica goes on. “Please, we wish to continue our quest for Fair Guinevere. Is there anything you can tell us of what we are up against?”

“The monster is but a whisper,” Arthur explains. “He has only been heard, his mighty sword clanging against the steel of my knights. He hides behind a magical wall of green. Those who pass through suffer terrible pain. Any who survive, never return.”

“Sounds like a plasmic hologram,” Reagan says to the ladies. Arthur hears it as well, but has no frame of reference for it. “I can turn it off once we get closer.”

Mandica lowers her head deeper. “We will not fail you, Your Highness. We thank you for the honor.” She stands. “For Camelot and Loegria!”

The other two stand as well, following her lead. “For Camelot and Loegria!”

They walk up the many steps to the top of the high tower. Dust and cobwebs multiply along the way. No one wants to come near this area, even though, according to a few castle staff, the Bane never crossed through the barrier. You have to go looking for trouble in order to find it. Unless you have already pissed off the Empress, Morgana. She occasionally sends her enemies through the wall for apparent execution.

They reach the wall. Reagan takes out his scanner, and waves it around for only a second. “Yeah, definitely a plasmic barrier, coupled with a holographic illusion. And...here it goes.” The green wall flickers off. Behind it is the real obstacle. The plasma is transparent, but still visible, like glass. At a full meter, it’s incredibly thick. Most plasma passageways are measured in centimeters, because you just don’t need much to prevent unauthorized entry, or atmosphere leakage. “This really shouldn’t be here. The powersource would have to be enormous. Plasma has to be replenished regularly for maintenance. I thought I could bring it down, but the projectors are on the other side, and the command signals from my equipment will not be able to penetrate the field.”

“Well, obviously, it can be crossed. If there’s fighting happening on the other side, then pain is the first trial, not the endgame.” Mandica removes her medieval garb until she’s down to her Ravensgate Rescuer costume so she has more freedom of movement.

“You’ll fare better than the knights,” Reagan explains. “They were almost certainly wearing armor, which microwaved them. The only reason any of them survived is because they’re androids.” He points. “Just destroy one of those projectors.”

He’s not entirely right about that. It’s profoundly painful. She screams in agony as she’s slogging her way through. It takes her several minutes to make it, and it might have even killed her, because she wakes up on the floor, and doesn’t know how much time has passed. She can feel her stone pulsing with energy as it continues to heal her burn wounds. A dark masked knight is standing in front of her now, between her and the jail cell, and also the projectors. Nice of him to wait for her to resurrect first.

“We can’t get through!” Jaidia cries. “It’s solid now! I guess it’s one at a time!”

“I got this,” Mandica responds, not turning back around. She and the Bane begin to fight. She’s wiry, but he’s a brute, and he’s not going down easy. Punching him is doing her no good. He doesn’t even falter when she kicks him in the strawberry basket. She keeps trying, though, only breaking away for a second at a time to reach for one of the projectors. He always holds her back. That’s enough. No more playing by their rules. Who cares what this NPC sees? She releases the nanites from her back, and forms her new wings. They didn’t even have time to test this model, but they’re glorious. She swings one forward and knocks the mask off of his face. She is surprised to see who it is. It’s Mordred. It’s not just some other Mordred. It’s the same face as her companion from Earth. This has always been about Mandica. “Vanore, you devious bitch!”

This was a mistake. In anger, he hulks out, except he’s not green. He pounds his chest and roars at her. He must be composed of nanites too, just like Morgana. That makes some sense. If she couldn’t defeat him before, she’s certainly not going to now, though. So she takes a gamble. She pulls out her watch, finds the right image, and shows it to him. It’s a picture of her with her Mordred. He recognizes his own face. He sees the love in their eyes, and begins to weep. He doesn’t understand, but he can fight her no longer. She punches the projector with her other wing. The plasma disappears.

Malika runs up to them from the steps, rather out of breath. “Morgana’s already back! She must have had another body waiting for her in the simulation.”

“Then we better hurry,” Mandica decides. She turns around, and kicks the cell door in. On the other side is not some random NPC Guinevere. It’s Vanore.

Tangent Point: Farther Than I Can Throw (Part VII)

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Reed Ellis and his people were better prepared for this mutiny than the last one, when they only had about a week to plan. This time, it was months, but the mission was four times harder. Actually, it was probably harder than that because the Teaguardians were infinitely more competent than the security guards on the Tangent. The platform could be moved with four fusion torches. It was designed for balance and power. But those torches could be removed, and that was how it was meant to be most of the time for a stable geostationary orbit. The only reason the torches had stayed on for this long was because they were evacuating from the poles, and stationkeeping in these positions was a whole hell of a lot more difficult. They were, at last, about to be removed, but outsiders were not expecting it. They assumed the Tangent would be returned to Bungula while the mutineers boarded a Teaguardian, and faced judgment. Well, they were boarding all right, though not for judgment, but self-preservation.

Matar Galo was expecting Reed to surrender, but they had other plans, and everything had to be perfectly timed, because once someone noticed something out of place, like the sudden detachment of the torches, or the near complete abandonment of two of the Teaguardians, they would react. The last of the evacuees were now gone, having been transported to other vessels, but before the mutiny could begin, the stragglers had to be dealt with too. For various reasons, these were the ones who chose to stay here for an extended period of time. Tertius, Aeterna, and baby Dilara were here, along with their associates, Breanna, and her people. Most of the others felt some debt of gratitude to the Tangent, and an obligation to stick around and help out. This was great, but it posed a problem now. He pointed to the shuttle. “This is large enough to fit all of you. A course has been plotted for the asteroid known as PC-1124E. It has become a staging ground for interstellar journeys headed for the Varkas Reflex. VR is a popular destination for evacuees looking to start new lives with the special energy credit dispensations that you have all received since your exodus is not your fault.

“Now, the reason this is being offered to you is because my people and I are about to stage another mutiny. And the reason I set this shuttle aside is because it has been stripped of its communications system. You will cruise towards the asteroid at a fairly slow, fuel-saving speed, but not so slow that it looks like there’s something wrong with you. You will not be able to course correct, and not be able to reach out to anyone else. I have to do this, because I can’t have any of you revealing the truth about what we’re planning to do. I decided, instead of simply shipping you off, and wiping my hands clean of you, that I would give you each a choice. You can stay, and you can help, or you can stay, and stay out of the way. You just can’t betray us.” He looked down and swept his foot across the floor a few times. “Let’s call this seam the boundary. If you stay on that side, you get on that shuttle, and leave the Tangent for good. If you come over here, you’re with us, and you face the same consequences that we do. If we end up getting caught anyway, you might argue that you were under duress, but I will argue that you made the choice. Because that’s the truth. This is your choice. I’m not here to sway you one way or the other.”

“Why are you doing this?” Breanna asked. “Exactly why, that is? Just so you won’t get caught?”

“Yep, that’s it,” Reed explained. “There’s no convoluted secret agenda here. We just don’t want to get in trouble, so we’re gonna keep fighting. We like all of you, which is why we kept you around, but this isn’t your fight, and we don’t expect you to stay. If you choose not to, I thank you for your service.”

Without saying a word to Reed, or even to each other, Tertius and Aeterna spun around, and began to walk into the shuttle. Reed let out a quiet sigh of relief. He liked them as much as everyone else here—that was not a white lie—but he couldn’t guarantee that baby’s safety. That was the thing about a posthuman society. As advanced as they had become, infants and children were still mortal. They were still developing, and thor brains were still plastic. Digitizing them that young was a hurdle that researchers still had not cleared. Around half of the helpers elected to join them in the shuttle while the other half crossed that line. Breanna, Cashmere, Calypso, and Notus expressed interest in taking a hands-on role in the mutiny, while the majority of the rest didn’t want to fight, but still wanted to stay. It was unclear what their motivations were, but they would be guarded in case it was only a ruse so they would retain the ability to warn Teagarden of their plans.

“Wait,” Reed said. “I forgot one thing, and it hopefully doesn’t change your mind.” He snapped his fingers. One of his guards opened a door to let in two more guards, who were escorting a chained up and gagged Vasily. “This man did betray us, and I finally have my opportunity to be rid of him. Now that we’ve finished the evacuation, I no longer need to worry about his influence. These two fine guards have volunteered to hold onto him en route to the asteroid. You will not be in danger from him. We rigged up a little hock in there for him, but he will be present, and I understand if you feel uncomfortable with that. Since I think you deserve to know, his crime...was murder. The permanent kind.”

“And I would do it again!” one of Vasily’s guards shouted. He took out his sidearm and shot his partner. Then he grabbed one of the men who was about to get on the shuttle, to use as a human shield. “Now that I have your attention, I want you to unlock my brother, get in that shuttle yourself...Captain,” he spat, “and fly yourself out of here. As a great man once said, I’m the captain now!”

“Packard. You’re brothers? Since when?” Reed questioned. It may have sounded like an irrelevant question, but he needed to understand what he was dealing with here.

“Since I’m not Packard at all, but figured out how to hijack his download,” the guy who looked like Packard volleyed. “Ever since that Sorel guy took over the consciousness backup department, your system has been for shite. It wasn’t even hard.”

“We had to upgrade it, it created vulnerabilities. That won’t work a second time. Now put down the gun, you dupe, and release the nice man. Last year, you killed what many would consider an enemy combatant. Today, you have someone innocent, which is a whole different ballgame. If you pull that trigger, you’ll start losing sleep over it.”

“I’ll live,” the duplicate version of Vasily contended.

“But you won’t remember anything,” Tertius said as he was casually walking down the ramp.

Dupe!Vasily’s eyes glazed over as he loosened his grip on the hostage, who managed to pull himself away from his captor, and rush into the shuttle. Dupe!Vasily, meanwhile, looked incredibly confused, and scared. When he realized that he was holding a weapon, he dropped it to the floor. “I don’t...I don’t know anything.”

“What do you mean by anything?” Reed questioned.

“Anything,” Tertius echoed. “He won’t be a problem anymore. His memories are gone.” He picked up the gun, and held it up in offering to Reed. “If you have the consciousness of the true owner of this body stored away somewhere, you should be able to overwrite the parasite. If you don’t, I can try to restore him myself.”

“Restore him how?” Reed asked while another guard secured Packard’s weapon. He looked down at the now husk of Vasily’s host, who was now on his knees, seemingly trying to figure out what his hands were all about. “You didn’t even touch him. You didn’t do anything.”

Tertius shook his head. “I didn’t need to touch him. It’s just something I can do.”

Reed stared at him for a moment, occasionally looking down at the victim again, and also the other people in the room. “How much can you scale that up?”

“Oh, God,” Tertius said before sighing. “That’s not what it’s for.”

“Let’s do it,” Aeterna said as she was coming up from behind him without her baby. “We all know what the Captain is thinking. This mutiny is happening, whether we help or not. We have the chance to make it bloodless.”

“We could stop it altogether,” Tertius argued, “by erasing everyone’s memories.”

Aeterna placed a hand upon her father’s forearm. She looked over at Reed. “This man, and his people, came for us. They came for all of us, and they did it as efficiently and as humanely as possible. Now they need to get away safely. These mortal affairs; we inserted ourselves into them. We are partially to blame for what happened on Doma. It cost lives, it might have cost more if not for people like Reed Ellis. Let us do one last thing for the humans before we take ourselves off the board and focus on my daughter.”

“This is why we lost touch for two centuries, my sweet girl,” Tertius said to her. “You wanted to help, I wanted to walk away. But now you have to think about the baby.”

“I am,” Aeterna insisted. “I want to teach her to do the right thing, and I want to be able to teach it by example.”

Tertius thought about it. “Fine, but we’re putting their memories on a timer.” He approached Reed, and pointed at him fairly aggressively. “You will have one day to bug out, which I believe gives you a head start of around two light years. I suggest you don’t leave a trail. These people may be your enemies, but they deserve to move on with their lives in whatever way they choose, so I won’t be taking their agencies away forever.”

“That is more than I could ask,” Reed told him. “I don’t know how you do what you’re evidently about to do, but I want you to know how grateful I am.”

Aeterna took a half step forward. “We’ll need a list, of everyone whose memories you don’t want suppressed. Preferably with faces.”

“We’re also gonna wipe your memories of this conversation,” Tertius added. “You’ll know what happened, but not who, or how it was possible.”

“That’s fine,” Reed promised.

Reed was aware that people’s memories were going to be erased. He believed that. He trusted that. Seeing it was a whole different animal. This was no longer a mutiny, but a humanitarian mission. He had Thistle compile a list of everyone they wanted to be immune to the temporary memory suppression. The rest were wiped. After it was done, a mass silent confusion fell upon the Proxima Centauri system. The targets, which were mostly Teaguardians, though some Bungulans too, didn’t freak out. They had no idea who or where they were, but they were calm and trusting. Instead of fighting them, Reed and the mutineers spent most of the energy on helping them.

They rounded up anyone with memory loss and consolidated them to three Teaguardian ships that they were not intending to commandeer. They told them to sit tight and wait for medical assistance to arrive. The targets accepted their instructions without question, without a single voice of dissent. There was only one hiccup. Well, two if you counted the infighting. All of the key participants were in their first and only face-to-face meeting. “Why the hell were my people targeted?”  President Abrams questioned with surprising anger.

“We don’t need them anymore. We don’t need them to hand over your two ships willingly. We are facing no opposition.”

“That wasn’t the agreement,” Abrams argued. “I don’t like seeing my soldiers like this. They’re like...children. They’re dumb children. It’s sad. They’re all sad.”

“It’s better this way,” Reed contended. “Now they never betrayed Teagarden. When they wake up from this—and they will wake up from this—they will be able to claim plausible deniability. Not even that, they will have done nothing. They won’t have to defend their actions at all. Honestly, I probably should have kept you off the immunity list too, to keep your hands clean. If I had had more time, I might have, but the window was closing. We had to act, either with the original plan, or the new one. There was no third option to delay entirely.”

“Oh, actually, there was,” Abrams said. “You could have turned yourself in, which was the noble thing to do. It still is.” It took more than the one conversation to convince him to get on board with this, and he still fought the plan every step of the way. Reed regretted making him immune. He should have put him on one of those Teaguardians as just another oblivious docile.

“He’s right,” Ajax agreed. He survived the runaway shuttle last year by jumping to a new body on the surface of Bungula after his death. He maintained his captaincy, and had since become an ad hoc liaison between the Teagarden forces and the Bungulan military. No one ever seemed to suspect his true loyalties, and he had restrained himself from demanding control of the Tangent. Which was actually kind of weird, because the baseline command structure for a captain included overseeing 256 troops, and you only needed a certain sized ship to accommodate that number. An elevator platform like the Tangent didn’t need a higher crew count, but it was orders of magnitude larger, and probably the best assignment this side of Earth. “I would have gotten my platform back.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to you about this before, but I didn’t know that mind-wiping was an option until it was time to act,” Reed defended. “But this is objectively better, so I don’t understand why we’re still arguing. There’s work to be done. Those Teaguardians aren’t going to attach themselves to the Tangent.”

“They kind of are,” Delegator Chariot reasoned. “I believe in our crew. This meeting is important. You have still not told us how you suppressed all of these people’s memories. You didn’t give them anything to eat or drink, you didn’t disperse any sort of bioweapon, or we would all be affected. Unless it was a DNA-targeting pathogen, in which case, you would have needed to plan this for days at the shortest. So are you lying? Did you cook something up in secret, or was it really just earlier today, and you genuinely accomplished the impossible?”

Reed blinked. “I don’t know.”

Abrams rolled his eyes. “What?”

“I don’t...I don’t remember.”

“Oh my God, you’re claiming you were bit by your own creation? You expect us to believe that?” Abrams scoffed.

“He’s telling the truth,” Shasta said. “I don’t remember either. I remember knowing that this was going to happen, and that we asked for it, but I don’t remember who or how, or any details. We may have asked for our own memories to be altered, possibly permanently, or they did it without our consent. But I know that the targets will recover. I know that we will get through this if we stick together, and stop arguing.”

Abrams crossed his arms and shook his head. “It smells fishy. Someone with the technology to do this doesn’t just let us use it for nothing.”

Ajax looked to his left. “You’ve been quiet. I have never seen you without a bag of opinions over your shoulders. Can we trust Reed?”

Vasily nodded, also with his arms crossed, but in a more authoritative than closed-off way. “I trust Captain Reed Ellis more than anyone in this galaxy. If he says that this will work, then this will work. I say we keep moving those empty Teaguardians into position, fire up their fancy reframe engines, and bolt.”

“I’m not bolting,” Ajax reminded the group.

“Neither am I,” Abrams said.

“As long as you don’t interfere,” Reed began, “that’s fine. No one has to go anywhere. In fact, I will afford the same opportunity to all of my people. They can pretend to have also lost their memories, and maybe the authorities will go easy on them.” He paused for a moment. “I want to thank you all for all of your help. I know it wasn’t easy, but I believe the history books will shine a bright light upon us...eventually. If that is all, this meeting can come to a close, and those staying behind can leave the Tangent.”

They all went their separate ways. Reed returned to his office, and found someone sitting in his seat who he did not recognize. Her legs were propped up on the desk, and she wasn’t scared of him at all. “Security!” he shouted over his shoulder.

“They can’t hear you,” the mysterious woman explained.

“Security!” Reed shouted again. He turned to walk out of the room, but was completely unable to. The door that was meant to lead to the bridge had become a mirror. He reached out to it, but instead of hitting glass, his hand slipped right through. Meanwhile, that hand reached out towards him, superpositioning with itself going the opposite direction. He stepped forwards, all the way through, and ended up back in his office, his back now turned to the impossible mirror.

“Tripy, right?” the woman said. “You can thank my liver for that little trick.”

“Who are you, and what do you want?”

“The chrysalis bioprinting room you have. I made that for you. I gave you that tech. I knew you needed it.”

“I’ve been wondering who our mysterious benefactor was.”

“Now you know.”

“I don’t, actually.”

She stood up. “I don’t really use my name anymore. I try to interact with others as little as possible. I used to go by Leona Delaney, but if you ever meet someone who looks like me, it won’t be me, and she won’t remember this.”

“You’re, like, a future version of her, or something? You’re a time traveler? Time travel is real?”

She laughed. “Of course time travel is real. Teleportation is real, ain’t it? That’s just a form of time travel.”

“And the second question?”

“You can’t daisy chain reframe engines,” she began. “It would be like duct-taping four pairs of scissors together. You end up with no scissors. This won’t work.”

“Trilby assures me that he’s synced them up properly.”

“Compared to the woman who invented them, Trilby is a drooling buffoon. I’m telling you, don’t do this. The results are unpredictable. Whatever course you laid in will become meaningless.”

He approached her menacingly, but he had no plans to harm her. “I don’t know you. I don’t trust you. I trust my people.” He looked at his watch. “Last I checked, we were on schedule, which means we’ll be leaving in less than thirty minutes. I’ve already given the greenlight. You can kill me right here, and they’ll still launch.”

“I’m not your boss,” Leona clarified. “I’m just warning you.”

“Either way, you should leave. These people are my responsibility, and whatever comes to pass, I’ll get them through it.”

She shook her head in disapproval. “No one thinks they’re Dr. Smith. Everyone thinks they’re Captain Janeway.”

“Thank you. You can go now.”

Leona literally disappeared. When he turned around, the magic mirror was gone. A half hour later, they spooled up the antimatter engines of the Teaguardians, now affixed to the Tangent where the fusion torches once were. They activated the reframe engines, and flew away from Proxima Doma. The traveler turned out to be right. They got lost immediately. But at least they weren’t in prison.

« < » > Entire Story

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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Microstory 2582: Lycander Pulls Into the Lot, and Orders the Fake Police to Surround the Carnage

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Lycander pulls into the lot, and orders the fake police to surround the carnage. He steps out of his car, and approaches Renata and Quidel. They’ve just laid down their weapons, and are holding their hands up just a little, even though they know that they’re all friends here. “Miss Granger. Couldn’t stay away, huh?”

“I didn’t know this bank was a front. I tried to get out.”

Lycander adjusts his pants by his belt, and looks around as his team begins the clean-up procedures. “Yeah, well, that decision was above my paygrade.”

“The question is,” Renata begins, “did they keep me close so they can make sure I don’t do anything stupid, or did they hope something like this would happen, to eliminate me without getting any blood on their hands?”

He chortles, and looks back at all the death and destruction. “Neither. They only assign people they trust to a place this important. You failed your initiation mission, but you showed leadership and ingenuity. There’s no way you could have known whether it was a powder or a gas. The water would have worked if it had been the former.”

She points at Quidel. “He survived. Did the other one?”

“She survived,” Lycander admits with a nod. “She did quit, though. Obviously, we had to protect both of them, but especially Q here, who asked to stay in the program.”

“I don’t blame you for lying to me. Not too long ago, I wanted to be one of the liars.” She takes a breath. “What happens now? I already know too much.”

Lycander nods again. “That’s also above my paygrade.” He looks back yet again, but this time to his car, where his boss is still waiting. “Listen, uh, a very important man is about to come talk to you. Not that you have an attitude problem, but you both need to be on your best behavior. He doesn’t like informality. He sent me over to assess the threat level, so I’m using this as an opportunity to warn you that he can end your career...or your life.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Sir,” Renata says.

He waves at his chauffeur with two fingers. The chauffeur opens the passenger door, and lets Director McWilliams out. He stays there while McWilliams buttons his blazer, and walks over with purpose. “Samani.”

“Director,” Lycander responds.

“So, these are the two that saved our asses this morning?” That’s a pretty colloquial thing for him to say.

“Yes, sir,” Lycander replies.

“Renata Granger, sir.” She holds up her hand, bloodied from the battle. “I would shake your hand, but I better not.”

“I prefer a tight nod anyway.”

She obliges. Quidel does too.

“Miss Granger,” the Director goes on, “I understand that you had some trouble with your initiation. We saw something in you that day, which made us not want to lose your talent. We didn’t know if you were right for field work, but it appears that you have proven us wrong, while proving me right to keep you on the payroll at all.”

“Thank you for saying that, sir.”

Director McWilliams opens his mouth to say something else when a classic burgundy roadster barrels down the road, and pulls into the lot. A couple of fake police try to stop the driver before noticing her placard, and letting her through. “Oh, here we go,” McWilliams mumbles. “Look, Granger, I want you to know that it wasn’t my decision to leave you in the dark. Even I answer to the council.” He could go on, but there isn’t time.

This isn’t how this twist is meant to be revealed. Yes, Renata will usually reappear around this time during the new recruits’ training, assuming they make it a year in, but that whole plotline was scrapped when Renata suddenly failed out. She switched to what should have been more of an Ambient role. The drama surrounding her discovering the truth should have a particular impact on the trainee, which doesn’t matter now that Quidel is a full officer already anyway.

Renata doesn’t let her chin drag on the ground for long before she pulls it back up, and begins to foam at the mouth. She’s speechless at the sight of her mother. Libera has been a part of this the whole time. It explains a lot about how she raised her child and why. These little secondary realizations are all presumably swimming around in her head right now as she watches her mom walk up to them in anger.

“Director McWilliams,” Libera begins accusatorily. “Why was my daughter placed in such great danger?”

“Chief Granger. Didn’t know you’d be here.” He was not happy, but despite technically being Libera’s superior, he was also quite scared of her. He came up in analysis, while she started out in the field. At least, that’s what the implanted memories say. In reality, none of that actually happened.

“Answer my question,” she demands. “This bank was meant to be a low-level asset. Easy breezy. Keep Renata employed and fulfilled, without risking her life. That was our deal.”

“Your deal?” Renata questions. She immediately seems to regret speaking up. She’s not ready. She’s not ready for this. It’s not supposed to be like this at all. A shock, yes, but after months of training; not a traumatic experience like this attack.

Libera doesn’t seem ready to explain herself anyway. “Go on,” she urges McWilliams.

“It was a low-level asset,” the Director agrees, “but over the years, departments have added to it, and its importance as a strategic stronghold have increased. It’s nobody’s fault, it wasn’t planned; it just happened.”

“It didn’t just happen over the course of the last year,” Libera argues. “I was given outdated information.”

“True,” Director McWilliams admits, “but things were recently pushed over the edge with one particular deposit, and the unfortunately timed leak of its existence.”

“Show me,” Libera demands. She faces her daughter. “And then, Renata, I’ll explain everything. I promise.”