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.

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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.”

Microstory 2581: Renata Comes Back Out from Behind the Counter After Shutting the Other Gates

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Renata comes back out from behind the counter after shutting the other gates. Her statement stands, that she can’t trust Quidel, but those motorcycles don’t sound good. They’re so loud and obnoxious. This is a remote part of town, but it’s not completely cut-off. People can hear them, and if there’s a shootout, the cops will become involved, whether the alarms are still working or not. All this running through her mind, she’s starting to freak out. She didn’t pass the first test—the first test!—for the NSD. She can’t protect an entire bank from a bunch of shadowy biker spies. She gets on her knees, and checks for Lazar’s pulse. He doesn’t have one. “How will they get in? Blowtorches? Explosives? A truck?”

“They’ll use a key,” Quidel answers calmly.

She’s just staring at Lazar’s bloodied face. “If they have access to this building, why did this guy kill my boss?”

“Because he didn’t have a key. They’re not working together. The location of this bank was leaked, and multiple parties are coming to claim it.”

“Are they here for everything, or for one specific thing?”

“Little bit of both. They all have their priorities, but they’ll take anything they can get their hands on. Grab his gun. Our only hope is to fight back.”

“Are reinforcements coming?” Renata presses.

“Yes, but they’ll be a while. The Kumati will be inside in seconds, as soon as they find which key goes to which gate.” They can hear the warble-whang of the gate as the bad guys begin to try to open it. “Their slight lack of intel is the only thing protecting us right now, and the clock is ticking. Please pick up that gun.”

Renata is still not looking up. “If this bank is so valuable, why doesn’t it have round-the-clock surveillance?”

“Renata! Please!”

“I mean, at least keep a guard here overnight.”

The gate opens. A bunch of men file in, and start waving their guns around, as if there were more threats than only two people in the center of the lobby. They’re speaking Kumati, which Renata never learned, but they don’t sound happy.

“If it were me, I would keep a surveillance house nearby, with officers who are always on watch. If not every bank employee knows it’s a front, the panopticons only come in during an emergency.”

“It’s over, Renata.” Quidel drops his gun, holds his hand up to surrender.

“Like this one,” Renata finishes.

More yelling.

“Stand up, Renata,” Quidel urges. “These guys aren’t messing around, and I don’t know what happens to your consciousness when you die!”

Now she looks up. “Huh?”

“You. Are. A. Ro. Bot.”

She winces.

More yelling. This guy’s right up in her face with his shotgun. And he’s about to fire it.

She slaps the muzzle of his gun, so it swings to the side. He instinctively pulls the trigger, shooting a few of his compatriots. She takes the shotgun with both hands, jams the butt into his toe, then shoots him in the chin. No more shells. She finally does pick-up the original motorcyclist’s pistol. She shoots the rest of the attackers in the head, one-by-one, before any of them can fire back even once. No more bullets.

Two more guys rush into the bank. Quidel has since retrieved his own weapon from the floor, which he uses to take out these guys. They can still hear more outside. A lot of people came for the treasure. The two of them swipe their dead enemies’ guns from their hands, and walk out of the bank together. They don’t speak, they don’t coordinate. Renata handles the gunmen who are more on the left side as Quidel takes care of the right. They only fire as many times as necessary to get the job done, and they don’t take a single bullet for themselves.

They stand there for a moment, waiting for anyone to come out from behind a tree, or something. “What did you mean by that?”

“By what?”

“You said I was a robot.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I heard you, plain as day. It...triggered something in me. I felt invigorated. I felt bulletproof.”

“You may be.”

“Because I’m a robot?”

He shakes his head. “That’s not the right word for it. There’s no such thing as an intelligent robot. Android, yes. Superintelligence, absolutely. But robots are just machines with programming. You don’t have programming. Even when you did, it wasn’t a rigid set of instructions, but a deeply engineered personality. You still made your own choices. It’s just that you made the predictable ones, and you didn’t know that they came from implanted memories, rather than lived experiences, and that you were designed by another intelligence.”

“What the hell are you going on about?”

Quidel looks at her with what Renata feels is unwarranted sadness. “You’re not the only one. I just think you were the first. That’s what I’ve been doing here, in your world. The NSD gives me missions, which I take, but I’ve been running my own investigation in parallel. It took me a long time to find you, and I encountered other anomalies along the way.”

“You are not making any sense, as per usual. Maybe the gas that nearly killed us gave you permanent brain damage.”

“It didn’t nearly kill me, Renata. It did kill me.”

“How is that possible?” she questions.

He gestures all around them. “How is this? Did you take marksmanship classes? Did you even learn basic gun safety? This is your handiwork, yet as far as you remember, you’ve never picked up a gun even once. Can you explain that?”

“No. Can you?”

“Yes. But you won’t believe me, and if I do manage to convince you of the truth, it’s gonna ruin your life.”

Renata looks around now. “What else is new?”

Microstory 2578: Marshal 2 Walks into the Room Where Renata is Pretending to be Asleep

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Marshal 2 walks into the room where Renata is pretending to be asleep. He takes a sip of his orange juice as he stares down at her. Then he gets an idea, so he pulls out his phone, and perpetrates like he is talking. “Yeah, I’m lookin’ at her now. She almost died. Yeah, I agree, it would have been better, but what do you want me to do about it now? Well, that can certainly be arranged. We’ll just have to take care of the hospital people too. A few nurses, and a doctor. I’m sure they’ll be missed, but we’ll come up with a cover story. We’ll blame it on Granger; say that she went nuts, and killed half the floor.”

Renata suddenly reaches up, and takes Marshal 2 by the throat. She starts to try to squeeze the life out of him, which won’t be permanent if she succeeds. So he just smiles at her. She lets go. “Oh. You’re joking.”

He puts his phone away. “I’ve been doing this for years, kid. You’re not gonna fool me. But you should be proud of yourself. It’s the breathing. People don’t now how they breathe when they’re asleep for real, so they can’t replicate it. You did a great job.”

“Thanks,” she replies as she sits up, and pulls the pillow down to support her back. The other two?”

“They’re dead,” Marshal 2 lies. They did die, but they came back. Visitors always do, but that’s not something that this NPC would understand. She believes that all of this is real.

“If you were joking about murdering me, I’m hoping that means you won’t?”

“That’s not our style.”

“But I’m done with the NSD.”

“You’re done with the NSD,” Marshal 2 confirms. He doesn’t know why he’s even bothering to spin this yarn. They’re going to reset her memory, and tomorrow, she’ll start the whole charade over again with the same old script. This time, she’ll do it right, and help a new small group of visitors. She’ll inspire them to begin their journey in the simulation, and reach their potential. He won’t be a part of it anymore, though; not with her. They like to change things up, and there’s a theory that it’s necessary. Even though waking up and doing the same thing every day is part of Exemplar 1’s programming, there is still a risk of overfamiliarity. If her training officer is the same person each time, she might start to recognize him. It may even be what happened when she failed the escape room phase. In order to put everyone back on track, they’re going to start with a clean slate. She’ll even be getting a new mother to wake her up in the mornings.

Renata breathes in through her nose, and acts like she’s looking out the window, but it’s pitch-black out there, and bright in here, so she’s not seeing anything.

“How do you feel about that?”

“What do you care?” Wanting to be the best agent who has ever lived is part of her baseline. It’s sad, really, that she has the procedural memory in her brain to excel in the training program, but when she’s assigned to Phase 1, she never remembers. She lives her life in these isolated blocks of repeating experiences, never genuinely connecting them, and never being her true self.

Marshal 2 shouldn’t be worrying about any of this. When he signed up to work in this dome, he knew that he would be encountering a lot of NPCs. The majority of the people in here are AIs of various kinds. The dome has to feel lived in so visitors forget that it’s all scripted. There are Ambients out there who will never meet one of the main characters. They go about their lives day by day, just in case they intersect with whatever story path the visitors choose to follow. Marshal 2 doesn’t know which life is better, and which is worse. An Exemplar’s mind is reset when it’s time to redo the scenario, or start a different one, but an Ambient has no agency at all. He’s thinking about quitting, and maybe spending a decade or two relaxing in one of the recreational domes. No, that wouldn’t work, because they’re run by NPCs too, so he would just keep seeing it. He would have to go somewhere populated by natural-born intelligences, like Underburg. But not there, because that place sucks. “Well, I’ll leave you.”

“Wait. Do I have to sign something? I mean, obviously I signed multiple NDAs before, but is there something new pertaining to the unfortunate incident?”

He smiles at her. “No, you’re fine. It’s all covered. In fact, you’ll be compensated for the danger you faced. You’re not a millionaire, but it will keep you above water while you work on your next chapter. You got skills. Just because you won’t be an officer, doesn’t mean you’ll be stuck working at a grocery store, or something. Now get some rest. Someone will be by later this week to work out the details.” Another lie. They’re not gonna pay her anything.

“Wait. You never told me your name. I know I didn’t pass the test, but maybe you could tell me now anyway?”

He inhales through his nose. He shouldn’t even be thinking about giving her his real name. He decided a long time ago to go by the standard designation that NPC Marshals use, because it doesn’t help his character to have a complex backstory. He left his old life on Varkas Reflex behind, and he’s here now. But again, none of what she learns today matters. It will all be erased. So what’s the harm? “Lycander. Lycander Samani.”

“Nice to meet you, Lycander.”

Microstory 2539: Fareweller

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I’m the last stop on this wild ride that we call a once-in-a-lifetime miracle cure. Unlike the Greeter, my job is exactly what it sounds like. There’s a tiny bit more to it, but mostly, I just smile and wave goodbye. Most of the time, the questions I get are about where the restrooms are, how to get back to where they parked, how to get back on the highway, and the like. I make sure that they didn’t forget anything in the waiting rooms too. It doesn’t happen often, because the Guides and Queuers are watching for those types of things, but it happens; people lose stuff. Usually, they don’t even care, because they’ve just been cured, but I have to do my due diligence. There’s also one important duty that doesn’t sound like something that should be necessary, and maybe it isn’t, but I’m there, so I might as well. I always ask them if they expected Landis to breathe on them, and if he did. I know, it seems redundant, and I’ve never run into any issue, but it’s a chaotic place. It wouldn’t be impossible for someone to get confused, and wander to the exit when they ought to be looking for the entrance. It’s impossible to get through the Settlement area without paying or being paid, but if you haven’t entered the healing room yet, you absolutely could subvert the entire process. For most people, even if this does happen, they’re gonna see that EXIT sign, and realize that something went wrong. We do have patients with memory and mind problems, however, and they could get lost. Again, the Guides and Queuers are there to wrangle people into the right places, but the system isn’t perfect. This is also a great question for people to hear if they have complaints. It offers them the opportunity to air their grievances, without me first pestering them for feedback, or implying that there should be something for them to complain about. “Were you expecting Landis Tipton to breathe on you, and if so, did he?” // “Well, he did, but he also accidentally spit on my face a little, and I don’t like that.” There’s not really anything that I can do about it, but perhaps send it as feedback through the proper channels, but the biggest reason is to make sure that these people are feeling seen and heard. It’s our last chance to provide them with a quality experience, so we don’t want to miss anything. One of my co-workers came up with the idea. She thought that it was a good question to ask, and management actually agreed, so they wrote it into the procedures guide, which I think is pretty cool. They actually listen to us. Not every organization would do that. I think that’s it for me. Goodbye.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 12, 2525

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No one chased the team as they fled the city, probably because they hadn’t done anything wrong, so the locals had no reason to try to apprehend them. Most of the team didn’t even know why they were running. They just trusted that Leona had good reason to order them to. She had to remind them to slow down, though, because their bodies moved too fast. They were supposed to be normal humans who were born a few decades ago, and would die several more decades from now. Finally, when they were out of the city limits, and safe within the coverage of the trees, they were able to stop. “Rambo, you understand what’s going on?” Leona asked him.

“I have an idea. Fascinating development. I need to get my hands on the slingdrives, so I can figure out why we’re off the mark. Proxima Centauri is close to Sol, but it’s not Sol. We also jumped to our next year too early”

“No, I mean, with the people in this dome. Do you understand why we ran?”

“Oh, of course I do. The Oblivios.”

“Then please go check the perimeter. Do it quietly. There could be campers or homesteaders, or just hikers. I’ll explain what happened to everyone else. I’m not sure if they’ve ever heard of Oblivios.”

“On it, boss.” Ramses left.

Leona caught her breath so she could think more clearly. “Okay. Oblivios. They came to this planet with the intention of living a more simple life, with very primitive technology. It’s like Castlebourne’s Dome for Pioneers, but for real.”

“They don’t look like pioneers,” Angela pointed out.

“That was 300 years ago. The reason they’re called Oblivios is because they had their minds wiped. The first generations didn’t remember advanced technology. They didn’t even know that they were in a dome, so they didn’t pass stories onto their children. Most of the criticisms of the project were about how they would eventually end up like this. You can’t stop progress. Since whatever dogma they had against tech was lost to them, they couldn’t instill such values into their descendants, so those descendants kept trying to make their lives better.” She pointed back in the direction of the city. “This is where that leads.”

“You’re gonna wanna see this, sir,” Ramses said through comms.

“If you see people, don’t talk to yourself.”

“I’m sure they’ve developed short-range wireless by now. There’s something I don’t think they’ve made yet, though, and I’m looking right at it.”

“Be right there,” Leona responded.

The group walked over to Ramses’ location, and before they caught up, saw what he was referring to. A gargantuan tower rose up into the sky, and disappeared above the clouds. The city they came from was advanced, but not like this. It took the kind of megaengineering that the hosts needed to build the domes themselves. It was hard to tell, but it might have risen all the way up to the ceiling. It might have been structurally necessary, since this dome was so much older than the ones on Castlebourne, but probably not.

Leona tilted her head. “That looks familiar to me. Why does it look familiar?”

“We’ve seen towers before,” Mateo pointed out.

“Yeah...” Leona wasn’t so sure. It was of plain design, but not generic.

“There’s no one around,” Ramses informs them. “Let’s just jump over to the base, and see what’s up with it.”

Leona was hesitant, but she looked around too, and checked her lifesigns detector. They were calibrated for human life, and sufficiently related cousin species, so they should be pretty accurate in a world that didn’t have transhumanism yet, but there was no way to be sure. They weren’t even worried about naked eyes anyway, but surveillance. “Okay, fine. Let’s just slip back into the trees first.”

They hid away, and then teleported to the tower. As soon as they appeared, a door opened up, likely via motion sensor. They all stepped into the elevator, and let it take them all the way up to the top, which yes, was right there at the dome’s zenith. A woman greeted them when the doors opened. “Greetings, travelers. I saw you teleport in. My name is Aeterna Valeria. I run this joint.”

“The tower, or the dome?” Mateo asks.

“Both, I guess.”

“You’re related to Tertius Valerius,” Marie guessed.

“Yeah, he, uhh...he was my father.”

“We just saw him not too long ago,” Romana explained. “He’s still alive.”

“I don’t really see it that way. It’s been something like two hundred years for me.”

There was an awkward pause in the conversation, which Leona needed to break. “So...report?”

“Yeah, we’ll get to that. Are you hungry? I have a synthy. It takes a few hours, but I’ve already synthesized some mashed potatoes and green beans for myself, if you’re interested in joining me. I like leftovers, so I always make extra.”

None of them was hungry, but they agreed to eat to be polite. It was good, and interesting to go back to regular food, instead of just programmable dayfruit or dayfruit smoothie. Leona needed to break the silence again while they were eating. “The people down there. What do they think of this tower?”

“They can’t see it,” Aeterna began to explain. “I have my father’s powers. I make them forget. I make them forget the tower at the same time they’re looking at it. It’s not technically invisible, but effectively so. I exempted you from it when you showed up.”

“Did you notice that they have moved past their original mandate?” Marie pressed.

Aeterna rolled her eyes. “Of course they did. We knew it was gonna happen. Our key contact died, but before she did, she and my father would fight all the time about keeping the dream alive. He said he promised he would erase people’s memories, but that he wouldn’t govern their thoughts. If someone came up with the lightbulb, they could have a freakin’ lightbulb. So that’s what they did, and they kept doing it, and now they’re here.”

“They said something about tunnels,” Mateo brought up.

“Yeah, they interact with the other domes,” Aeterna confirmed.

“How does that work?” Romana questioned.

“The others are pretty good about it. They don’t understand the technology, and they certainly don’t know that there’s a pretty girl up in this tower with magical memory powers, but they play their parts. Most of the nearby domes were also once intentionally primitive, though with no one like me. The Oblivios don’t really get how the dome works, but they know that they can’t go outside. They used drones to find the wall a long time ago, in defiance of the sonic deterrents, and for some reason, they didn’t freak out about it. It looked like a barren wasteland, and it made them sick, but they saw through the ruse anyway, and now they’re about to figure out the whole thing. The weird part about it is that they simply accepted that this was how their little pocket of the universe functioned. I was expecting riots, but everyone’s okay. It’s crazy really; a fascinating social experiment, I’m sure.”

“If they know they’re in a dome, why are you still here?”

“They know they’re in a dome because the data told them so. The drones kept crashing into the holographic walls, and I can wipe their memories of it all I want, but they’re gonna look back at that data, and it’s going to challenge their beliefs. So yeah, I gave up. But they still can’t see the tower. I’m still making them forget that they’re looking at a superscraper in the middle of it all. It’s limited in area, so it’s easier. They’re not looking for it, whereas they were looking for a way through the wasteland.”

“You ever thought about just stopping?” Romana offered.

Aeterna consulted her watch. “Yeah, won’t be long now.”

“What do you mean?” Mateo asked.

“The planet is going through a period of instability,” Aeterna went on. “Back on Earth, technologies like LiDAR were inevitable. Earth is too big, and you gotta navigate it. It’s easier to let computers do it for you. Here, in this cramped space, they didn’t need it. Human-driven cars are fine. You never have to go very far.”

“The tremors finally gave them a reason,” Leona realized.

“Bingo. Necessity being the mother of invention, it was suddenly absolutely necessary that they build sensor arrays to measure the world around them. Weather, for the most part, can be controlled in here, but we can’t stop the ground from shaking. They feel it just like everyone in all the other domes does.”

Ramses nodded. “And as soon as they turn on one of these sensor arrays, it’s going to pick up on the tower that humans keep forgetting, even when a camera records video of it, and plays it back later.”

Aeterna nodded back. “I won’t be able to combat that. And honestly, I shouldn’t try. The tower was a dumb idea that my father had, and I stuck around because once it was built, it couldn’t be dismantled, or it would ruin everything. They thought that someone with our power would have to stay here forever to keep it working, but the scope of this place is not limitless. They were always going to find the wall, and the data from their geological surveys would always contradict their perceptions. The ancestors thought, if they just went back to the way things were, they would stay that way. But that’s not what happened before, or they wouldn’t have needed to leave Earth to reclaim that way of life in the first place. So shortsighted.”

“Why did Tertius leave? He didn’t even tell us that he had a daughter,” Mateo said, worried about how she would react.

“Well, he gave up on the Oblivios a long time ago. I don’t know why I’ve been holding on. I suppose in rebellion to him. I told him, if he left, he couldn’t come back. He has respected that, which I appreciate.”

“It might not have been as long for him as it’s been for you,” Leona reminded her. “I didn’t get the sense that it had been a full 300 years since he last saw me.”

Aeterna shrugged. “Whatever.”

“What if...” Romana began. “What if you did see him again? Would you be mad?”

Aeterna considered the question. “A year ago, I might have been, but as I said, this is all ending anyway, so it would be fine. I’m not gonna break down crying, and hug my daddy, but we wouldn’t fight. Well. I wouldn’t pick a fight. Let’s just say that.”

Romana accepted this answer, and decided that this somehow translated to her taking a matchstick out of her breast pocket, and setting it down on the table ceremoniously.

“What’s that?” Mateo asked.

“It’s a muster match. Light it, and Tertius Valerius will appear.”

“He gave this to you?” Mateo pushed harder. “Why would he do that? Did he know that we would end up here? Did you?”

“Of course she did,” Ramses deduced. “She brought us here.”

Romana’s demeanor didn’t change. She remained cool. “I spend more time in the timeline. I get to know people. He asked me to come here. He said that anytime would be all right, but he clearly really wanted it to happen by 2525, so I’m glad we got a move on with it.”

“I don’t like that you did that,” Ramses admitted. “I don’t like that you messed with my slingdrive.”

“I don’t like that you lied to me,” Mateo added.

“This is between a father and his daughter, but a different father and daughter,” Romana defended. She redirected her attention to Aeterna. “He asked me not to light it. He said that you have to do it, so it’s up to you if it gets lit at all. He did want to be here with you when the tower becomes detectable, but he understands if you’re not ready, and will accept it if you never are.”

Aeterna stared at the match for a moment before picking it up. She held it between her thumb and forefinger for another moment, until slipping the other end between the thumb and forefinger of her other hand. She was about to break it, or was at least contemplating it. No one knew what was going through her head, but it looked like an internal debate as her nostrils flared, and her lips moved, suggestive of the words that she was thinking of. At last, she let go of the match with one hand, and scraped the head against the wooden table. A flame burst out of it. It looked like any normal lit match.

For a second, nothing happened, then a smoke portal appeared a couple of meters away. When the smoke cleared, Tertius was standing there. He smiled kindly at his daughter, barely registering that there were other people in the room. They just regarded each other, her not being able to move, and him not wanting to make the first move. Suddenly, Aeterna burst into tears, and ran over to hug her dad.

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