The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 5, 2518

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Only Mateo was able to try the Daedalus wings during the reception, and that was only because he flew off before Ramses could stop him. They should have been inspected first to make sure that they were safe. Humans with wings were not impossible these days. There was, in fact, a relatively small community of wingèd people on the Core Worlds. The main reason they were impossible prior to genetic engineering and bioengineering was the weight. Wings with enough lift to carry a person would have to be so large that no one was physically capable of flapping them. If they were mechanical, well, that just added to the weight, especially with a powersource, and this all made it totally impractical. Only when humans could build new substrates for themselves did it become a reasonable prospect. Ramses designed the team’s bodies to be lighter than a natural human being’s, but they still weren’t specifically tailored for flight. Daedalus was an android of some kind, and since the mythology stated that the character had fabricated wings, he was almost certainly designed to be perfectly suited for flight. Mateo was not, and that was dangerous.

Fortunately, once Ramses did manage to get his hands on the things, he discovered that they weren’t just well-ordered feathers. Carefully hidden along the underside were tiny little fusion thrusters, which provided the lift, and the forward movement. They were controlled by the adjustment of the wearer’s head. It was essentially a cleverly disguised jetpack. It was unclear whether Daedalus’ own wings operated on the same principles, or if he was just somehow smart enough to build them after being instantiated in this physical simulation. He should have been placed under this dome with the knowledge typical of the time period he supposedly lived in, but who knew what was going on in Hrockas’ head when he conceived of Mythodome? It was one of the few domes that he conceptualized with hardly any help from his AI. He was an expert in Earthan mythology prior to his travels to the Charter Cloud, so this one was near and dear to his heart. He refused to explain it, expecting the art and adventure to speak for themselves.

Now that Ramses was satisfied with the results of his assessment, everyone was trying them. Well, he wasn’t so much as satisfied as he wasn’t allowed to block them anymore. He was hesitant to trust a gift from such a mysterious legendary individual, but he was overruled. Daedalus probably really did have a hidden agenda, but that doubtfully involved killing anybody on Team Matic, or anyone else. He did put his foot down at Romana, though. Her temporary reyoungification had not yet worn off, and she was still walking around in her original substrate. He might consider it later, but he wouldn’t allow anyone else on Castlebourne to use them unless they agreed to let him perform a thorough physical exam, which they didn’t. Leona was the last to give them a go before Ramses took them back, and secured them in his lab. That was okay, because it was about time to get to work.

“Wait, you’re not having a honeymoon?” Angela questioned.

“The average honeymoon these days,” Mateo began to reply, “is one month. That’s thirty years for us. We don’t have time for that.”

“Okay, well, you don’t have to do a full month,” Marie reasoned. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t choose a dome or two, and relax for a bit.”

Mateo and Leona exchanged a knowing look.

“What? What was that?” Marie asked.

“You should have noticed by now,” Leona said, to her, and the group, “that there is no such thing as a vacation for us. As soon as we try to relax,” she explained with airquotes, “something will come up, and we won’t be as prepared for it as we should be.”

“What are you talking about?” Angela pressed. “We relaxed for, like, three years on Flindekeldan before The Warrior finally found us.”

“The exception that proves the rule,” Mateo contended.

“You’re not using that right,” Leona told him reluctantly.

Mateo was about to ask for clarification when they heard whooping and hollering in the distance. An indistinct dot appeared just under the lowest clouds a few kilometers away. They focused their telescopic eyes, and were able to zoom in enough to make out that it was Young!Romana. She was wearing the wings, having presumably stolen them from Ramses’ lab. She flew towards them, and almost kissed the ground, but arced upwards at the last second, and headed back for the sky. “Hell yeah!” she exclaimed in her little high-pitched voice.

Ramses was noticeably upset. “I give you people too much access to my operations. I will be changing that.”

“She’s just a kid,” Marie reasoned.

“No, she’s not,” Ramses volleyed.

“Shouldn’t she have re-aged by now?” Olimpia asked. “I thought she said it wouldn’t last more than a day.”

“Yeah, that’s why she went down for a nap,” Leona said. “She said she thought it would trigger her transformation back. I’m not sure if she lied about that, or the nap, but she obviously teleported to Treasure Hunting Dome at some point to sneak into Ramses’ lab.”

Ramses was fiddling with his armband. “I’m working on new security protocols now.”

“She just wanted to be part of the group,” Mateo defended his daughter. “She’s been through a lot over the last few years. She needs this.”

“Daedalus didn’t design those things for a child’s body,” Ramses argued.

“They’re adjustable,” Marie reminded them. “That’s why I was able to wear them after Olimpia managed to fit the straps around her ample bosom.”

“Please,” Olimpia said, feigning disgust while holding up the back of her hand. “I’m a married woman.” She lowered all of her fingers but her ring finger, simultaneously showcasing her wedding ring while making it look like she was flipping Marie off.

“For now...” Marie joked.

“I can teleport up and grab her if you want,” Angela volunteered.

“No, that’s too dangerous,” Ramses replied. “She has to come down eventually.”

“Will the fusion thrusters run out of fuel at some point?” Mateo asked.

Ramses shook his head. “The feathers are lined with microscopic ramscoop nodes, which can draw in hydrogen for processing, so...no. She’ll get tired, though. She’s just a baby. Speaking of which, we need to fix that. Who are these twins who did this to her?”

“The Ashvins,” Angela reminded him. “Twin gods, part of the Hindu pantheon. We found them in the Dawnlands. This dome has many sectors, and they can’t all be accessed just by walking through a door. If you don’t have access to the right portal, you can’t go. Of course as teleporters, we can skip over those rules.”

Ramses tapped on his comms. “Romy, you’ve had your fun. I’m worried about your condition. I’ll let you use the wings later, but first, you need to go from Allen to Garner.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Romana responded.

“Just get back down here, please. I’m not mad, but you could be in medical distress, and not know it until it’s too late.”

Romana suddenly appeared a few meters above them. She slowly glided down towards the ground, and landed with grace and poise. The wings collapsed into their little box, which slipped off of her chest.

“You’ll navigate us to the Dawnlands,” Leona said as she was picking up the box.

“No,” Ramses decided. “The Walton twins are right. You need some kind of honeymoon. Get on the catalog, and choose a dome for your vacation. I don’t want to see you at least until 2521. That’s not that long of a honeymoon. Doesn’t it sound fair?”

“Yes, sir,” Mateo said, standing up straight, and saluting. He bent over real low and gave his daughter a kiss on the forehead. “I love you, sweetie. Be good for Uncle Ram-Ram.”

“Okay, I think we do need to go see the Ashvins again.” Them playfully treating her like an actual little girl got old a long time ago.

After a few more goodbyes, the newlyweds ran off for their honeymoon adventures. They weren’t going to confine themselves to only one dome, but a series of them, starting with Mud World: World of Mud. Ramses and Angela then split off to take Romana back to the Dawnlands sector. Marie said that she would be staying behind to do her own thing elsewhere without telling anyone what or where.

The name was absolutely appropriate. It was dawn here. It was bright enough for them to walk around without running into anything, but not clear enough to see the details of the landscape. It was a beautiful and calming place. Even the air seemed ultraclean, like something you would breathe out of an oxygen tank. As they were standing there,  two horses trotted up to them, pulling a golden chariot. Two strong young men stepped out, and approached. One had lighter skin, and the other darker. They moved with grace, symmetry, and synchronization. They were perfectly attuned to each other, perhaps by some kind of centralized hivemind shared between them. When they spoke, they did so in a seamless concerted effort, finishing each other’s sentences in some cases, and saying words simultaneously in others. “Hello, and welcome to the Dawnlands, foothills to Svarga, the celestial plane of light. How may we help you?”

“Could you undo what you did to her?” Ramses requested, gesturing to Romana. “She was told that the de-aging process would be temporary.”

The Ashvins smiled, again in sync. “Youth is temporary for all before they enter the Svarga or Naraka Loka. Aging is a part of life. It may be undone, but as the lotus reliably blooms each year, so too will man grow and change.”

Ramses gently closes his eyes, exasperated. “Are you telling me that she will only return to her normal age because she’s aging normally from here, and will eventually reach it anyway?”

“She will one day be as old as she was, and following, she will be even older. So too will you.”

“That’s not how my species works.”

The Ashvins were confused by this as it was leaning on the fourth wall, and they did not have a response.

“Look, we need this to happen faster than the full twenty years,” Ramses went on. “She clearly misunderstood the rules when she requested this from you.” She looked down at Romana. “Right?”

“Right. I didn’t want this to be permanent, or...so slow,” Romana confirmed.

“Apologies for the confusion,” the Ashvins claimed, “we meant no harm to your body or mind. We may reverse the ravages of changing seasons, but not hasten them. We cannot return you to the state you were in before your bath in the Sindhu River.”

Ramses shook his head again, which he felt like he was doing a lot of today. “Do you know of anyone—in any realm—who might be able to do what we ask?” No one on the team had ever heard of a retroverter who wasn’t also a proverter, but to be fair, they weren’t all too familiar with the concept. They really should have been questioning how such temporal powers ended up on this planet in the first place. They hadn’t recruited anyone with such abilities. Perhaps someone they did bring here, however, had connected Hrockas with other time travelers. These others could have donated their gifts to building Mythodome, or maybe even other domes, in such ways that broke the publicly known laws of physics.

“That is not something that we would know,” the Ashvins answered, a little bit sadly, but still believing that this wasn’t their fault. They did not know that they should clarify how Romana’s situation would work.

“All right. Let’s go do some research,” Ramses said, turning around. “There are a lot of mythological beings here. Maybe one of the other gods has real powers too.”

“Wait,” Romana said, stopping him with a hand on his arm. “I know someone who can do it.”

“Who?”

“You.”

Ramses’ eyes darted over to Angela’s from a brief feeling of panic, because he didn’t know what Romana was talking about. “I can’t do what you ask. I’m not a proverter either.”

“I don’t need a proverter,” Romana clarified. “I need a cloner.”

Ramses sighed. “That is a big decision, and it’s also irreversible. Once your consciousness is digitized, it can’t be undone. You will never be what you once were. A scar you got when you skinned your knee skateboarding in first grade. A missing appendix from surgery. You will lose all of that. The body that you’re in now, at whatever age you happen to be, will be destroyed as biomedical waste. Your consciousness will remain intact, but not everyone appreciates that. There are those who have expressed regret at being uploaded.”

“I know the process, and the rules. It’s about time I become more like you all, particularly Mateo. If I’m gonna be on this team, I wanna feel like a part of it.”

“Ro-ro,” Angela began, placing a hand on her shoulder. “If we’ve ever made you feel excluded, that was not our intention. You are on the team. That’s undeniable.”

“It’s nothing that you’ve done. In the past, I’ve hesitated to digitize, but it’s the practical choice, and it’s inevitable. I don’t wanna die any more than you do. I’m more vulnerable than all of you, and I don’t like it. People have to be more worried about me than they should. This isn’t out of nowhere. I’ve been considering it. I think...maybe, reaching out to the Ashvins was my way of testing the waters, to see how I would feel about my body changing so drastically. I am ready now.”

“Well, it’s complicated,” Ramses started to try to explain. “You were born with your time-skipping power. The rest of us were either made that way from Tamerlane Pryce’s design, or we stole it from those who were. I don’t know if I know how to replicate what you are. You have to remember that we’re not technically on the same pattern. They just technically match up. If you had a hiccup, and got off by one day, we may never sync back up.”

“All the more reason to do this,” Romana contended, like it was obvious. “Don’t worry about understanding my pattern. Just put me on yours.”

“We’ll need to talk to your father first,” Ramses insisted.

“This isn’t his decision,” Romana retorted.

“Absolutely, but he’ll never forgive me if we just do this without even so much as a heads-up. He would feel the same if you got a secret tattoo, or...” He cleared his throat, and chose not to finish that thought.

“Okay. We’ll take our time with this,” Romana agreed, “but it’s happening, one way or another. If not you, then I’ll find some other cloner to do it. You’re not the only member of The Shortlist.”

Ramses nodded. “All right. Now let’s get back to THD. I’m mythed out.”

“Uth too.”

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Microstory 2476: Substrate Development Dome

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It’s the opposite of Bot Farm! While that dome is all about mechs, perhaps with some skinning, this one is all about organic substrates, perhaps with some cybernetic components. This is one of the most important aspects of living on Castlebourne, and really, anywhere in the modern galaxy. Life is dangerous, and we’ve only made it more dangerous, because that’s how we like it. Back in the day, when you died, that was it. As far as we knew, there was nothing after that. Now that we’ve let go of our religious superstitions for the most part, we’re pretty certain that there’s no afterlife. So why let yourself die when there’s a better way? We’ve mastered consciousness transference and uploading, and it has given us so many options. You can backup your mind to a body that looks exactly like your own, but you don’t have to. Or it can look the same, but sport different characteristics. It can be stronger, faster, more resilient. You can fall asleep in seconds whenever you’re ready, and wake up feeling perfectly rested after only an hour. The possibilities truly are endless. You don’t even have to look human. You can become a unicorn, or an alien from your favorite media franchise. You can copy yourself, spread your mind into a hive of codependent insects. Be whatever you want, do whatever you want. Just remember, that whatever substrate you choose to move into next, it was built here. This place is really cool, but that’s probably because I was born in the 1960s. That’s right, it’s not a typo. I was barely young enough to reach the longevity escape velocity. Had I been born a few years earlier, I may have eventually died. So I know how vital it is to be able to get a second chance. A third. An umpteenth. And I think it’s so amazing that we have so many options. I know a guy who’s married to a sort of squid. She was human at one point, but now she identifies as a squid who can walk on land. That was designed and implemented here. You can even design your own, if you’re interested. You can make your new design private, unlisted, or fully open to the public. Bear in mind that every single design change has to be approved by the system, so don’t publish it until your ready. The laws are different here than they are in the stellar neighborhood, but they do have them. You can’t make a body that shoots deadly acid out of its hands, even though, theoretically, a victim could just switch themselves to a new body of their own. Come here, have fun with it. It’s available for all. Just don’t take it for granted. My brother died when he was an old man, and I never saw him again. You kids these days, you don’t know how good you have it.

Microstory 2450: Stairway to Heaven

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Not to be confused with Heavendome. I’m callin’ it, this is the largest staircase in the entire universe. Some aliens eighteen billion light years away may have a large one of their own, but I doubt it beats this. The stairs go all along the perimeter of the dome, spiraling up from the surface until you reach the zenith, which I’ll talk about when we hit that point in the story. Let’s start with some stats. Each dome has an 83 kilometer diameter. Ignore topographical variations. A line from one end to the opposite end crossing through the exact center is 83 kilometers long. Since these domes are hemispheric, that means the distance from the surface to the top is 41.5 kilometers. Again, ignore varied topography, like mountains and valleys. If you were to climb a ladder from the bottom to the top, you would be climbing 41.5 kilometers. They’re considering including that as well for an even more extreme test of your mettle, but I can’t review eventualities. It’s important to note, though, because the spiral staircase is necessarily longer than the total vertical distance, due to the tread length of each staircase, and the length of the landings. There are 207,500 steps. Every 19th step is a landing, which gives you a little room to stand when you need a break. Some of these lead to pitstops, while others lead to full-on campgrounds for daily rest periods. If you can’t make it to the next campground, they’re not going to let you stay the night at a pitstop, so you best recognize your own physical abilities before you even take the first step. You will go on practice hikes before your trek—that’s what the surface is dedicated to—and this training program takes about as long as the climb, so expect to dedicate two months of your life to this adventure. There are no transhumanistic enhancements or cybernetic upgrades here. You’re given a traditional human body between 1.5 and 2.1 meters tall with average muscles. You do get to choose your height, and it can look like your residual self image, but don’t expect the superkidneys, or the unidirectional respiratory systems that you’re used to. I heard some complaints from people who didn’t understand the spirit of the hike. If you don’t want to work, take an elevator. But not here, the periodic exit elevators are only for people who had to quit in the middle. There’s no judgment from me, by the way. You make it more than 50 flights, and I’ll say you’ve accomplished something impressive. If you do make it the whole way, it probably took about a month, covering a few kilometers each day. That may not sound like much, but gravity hates you, and your fight with it will never end until you beat it...or it beats you. Some will do it faster, others slower. How you lived your life prior to this will impact your performance. When you get uploaded into the new substrate, you don’t just end up on equal footing with everyone else. If you were a mech before, you’re not gonna be used to the energy expenditure. If you were mostly biological, it should be easier to adapt to the new body. I met one climber who was born 24 years ago, and never received any meaningful upgrades. Guy did it in two weeks. He works out to stay fit, and pretty much always has. His experience was a major advantage. 10,922 flights for a total of 84.44 kilometers is a huge achievement whether it takes you that month, or double that, and it comes with a reward. It’s a party. Unlike other domes, there’s a nipple on the top, which is reached by your last flight. You stay as long as you want, talking to other climbers, comparing stories. Eat, drink, be merry. You’ve done something that few before you have, and few will probably try in the future. I think I’m gonna keep this body, keep working out, and see if I can do it faster next time. Good luck.

The Seventh Stage: Rocking the Boat (Part IV)

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Clavia is taking a break to meditate. It’s not just for her mental health in the abstract sense. In her case, it’s non-negotiable. She has to do it or parts of her will overwhelm the others; usually the not-so-great part. One of her constituent personalities was told a story once. It’s not so much a story as a brief metaphorical anecdote. Well, it can be boiled down to that anyway. The gist of it is that everyone supposedly has two wolves inside of them. One of them is good, and the other is evil. The one who wins is the one you feed. It’s not so simple with Clavia, though. She actually has six wolves inside of her. Debra, a.k.a. The First Explorer is definitely the alpha. She’s the strongest, and the one who had initial total control over this body. When Echo Cloudberry regressed her back to youth, and tried to erase her memories, the balance of power shifted. Clavia became more of an amalgamation of all six identities. Yet those six original people are still technically in here, and in order to maintain the balance, she has to sort of commune with them every once in a while. She has to assure them that the choices she’s making are righteous, and that she won’t let Debra take over again. It brings a whole new meaning to being greater than the sum of one’s parts. Because if “Clavia” can talk to the seven people that she’s composed of, who even is Clavia at all? Is she a seventh person, or what?

“I would like to call this Meeting of the Seven Stages to order,” Clavia says from her perch on the topmost stage. She could have created a mind palace that looked like anything, but this seemed fitting. The stage area is in the shape of a hexagon, with the six lower stages surrounding the central stage. Curtains divide the six audiences from each other, and can be pulled further up so that each audience can only witness what’s happening on their particular stage. As it is situated much higher, however, the seventh stage is always visible to all audiences. Of course, there is no audience; it’s only a metaphor, but it works for their needs. Right now, the curtains are all pulled back, so everyone can see each other, including the one underneath the seventh stage, allowing the others to see each other. Clavia herself stands in the middle. Around, in clockwise order, we have Ingrid Alvarado, whose body Clavia is occupying; Ingrid’s love interest, Onyx Wembley of The Garden Dimension; Ingrid’s rival before the Reconvergence, when they lived in the Fifth Division parallel reality, Killjlir Pike; Ayata Seegers of the Third Rail; the dangerous one, Debra Lovelace; and finally, Andrei Orlov of The Fourth Quadrant.

The play that they would be performing this year—if any of this were real—is about a prisoner transport ship on the high seas of a planet called Earth. Clavia is obviously the captain, with Debra as their one prisoner. Andrei and Ayata are her guards. Ingrid, Onyx, and Killjlir serve as helmsman, navigator and quartermaster, and boatswain respectively. Again, the acting troupe is just the premise of the scenario, but Clavia felt that it was necessary to come up with some sort of fictional background to stimulate their minds. Their old lives are over, and there is no going back. They don’t even have bodies anymore, so it’s best to have something new to look forward to every day. They didn’t have to pretend to be stage actors—it could have been anything—but the name of their pocket universe made the concept essentially inevitable. They rehearse a new play every year. This one is called Rocking the Boat. These meetings allow Clavia to regain the memories that Echo took away from her, but before that happened, she had the mind of a child, so you can’t expect anything too complex or cerebral, even now that she’s older. Though, this one is indeed a little bit more mature. It still has that classic Clavia tinge of humor as Debra is playing the notorious evil pirate, Karen the Unappeasable.

“Can I get out of these chains?” Debra requests.

“I didn’t put you in those today,” Clavia answers.

“We did a dress rehearsal without you,” Ayata explains. She steps onto Debra’s stage, and unlocks her manacles.

Clavia tears up. “Without me?”

“Wait, look over here,” Ingrid requests. She goes on when her double turns to face her, “you did it. You cried on command.”

“I’ve been practicing in the real world,” Clavia explains proudly.

“I hope that doesn’t mean you’re using it to manipulate people,” Onyx warns.

“No people, just stars,” Clavia responds. “They are unmoved by my tears.”

“So the project is going well?” Killjlir assumes.

“Quite,” Clavia confirms. “We’re ahead of schedule. We’re more powerful than even we realized.”

“I knew your parents were keeping you restrained,” Debra says with disgust. “You had to get away from them to reach your potential.”

“We don’t know that they were doing anything,” Onyx reasons. “She’s older now—it’s natural for her to come into her own. Maybe it’s like a stage of puberty.”

“I chose them as my surrogate parents as a reason,” Clavia speaks up for herself. “I love them both. Echo and I are doing this in honor of them, not in spite of them.”

“Whatever,” Debra says.

“Aww, is someone a sad panda because I took away her solo?” Clavia asks.

Don’t get her started. “The story is about how we’re all feeling about our place on the boat, and how we’re dealing with those emotions without telling anyone about it. I have to sing, or my story’s not getting told.”

“No, the story is about how prisoners are silenced, and how the general public doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. That’s the whole point. The way your character keeps being interrupted and dismissed should be shocking and annoying to the audience. Karen lives in the subtext, and the negative space.”

“That’s another thing, I don’t like her name,” Debra says. “It’s what people actually used to call me.”

“Well, I admit, that one came from a place of pettiness,” Clavia tells her. “I kind of like it now, though. I can’t imagine calling her anything else.”

“I won’t say another word about it if I can play the hero in the next one.” Debra pitches this every year, and she has been denied every time except for the third year. In it, she did portray the protagonist, and she absolutely sucked at it. She’s the main character in her own story. Everyone feels that way, but she really feels it, and that came out in her performance. The rest of the cast may as well have not even been there the way she was chewing up scenery. If an audience really had seen it, they would have closed down on opening night.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Clavia says. She’s switching between smiling and frowning, because she doesn’t know whether she should even bring this up. They contemplated doing it a long time ago, but the technology is too unreliable and messy. Consciousness transference is very good about moving a digital mind from one substrate to another. It works by scanning an entire brain all at once. It doesn’t understand the concept of an amalgamated mind. Why would it? That doesn’t exist in nature. If two people are occupying the same body, they’ve probably been allocated entire independent partitions in the brain. The Seven Stagers are too entangled with each other. When they’re on these platforms, it’s very easy to distinguish them, but the mind uploader can’t enter this memory palace. It has no way of recognizing them as multiple units, which should be uploaded separately. The other concern is Clavia herself. They still don’t know how much she relies on the six of them to even be her own person. Perhaps she only thinks that she’s her own entity. Perhaps if they were to leave, she would cease to exist.

“Did you decide what the next play is going to be about?” Ayata asks.

“It’s not about the play at all,” Clavia begins to clarify. “There may not be one. There may not need to be one.”

The others look at each other across their stages. “Did you figure out how to transfer us out of your avatar?” Killjlir guesses.

“I think I did.”

“Technology doesn’t advance that fast,” Onyx decides. “Not even the Parallelers can do it.”

“To be fair,” she didn’t talk to any of them,” Ayata says to him. “She couldn’t, or it would give us away. Maybe she found someone to trust who has a new idea.”

“I already have someone to trust,” Clavia explains before anyone can come up with their own theories on what’s going on. She takes a breath before continuing, though. “I think that Echo can do it.”

Everyone has their own way of reacting to this, but some common threads are groans, throwing up their hands, and shaking their heads. It’s not that they don’t like Echo. They love him. They just don’t think that he can do this. He’s conjured little critters out of nothing before, but that was back when he wasn’t consciously aware that he was doing anything, or had any power. He’s proven himself to be too in his head since he wiped his own mind, full of self doubt and fear. As far as they know, unlike Clavia, he never got his old memories back, and he may never have been strong enough to create human bodies.

“Now, why do you think he can’t do it? We’re starscaping out there. We’re building an entire universe out of dark matter and elementary particles. You think he can’t build a few puny human bodies for you? With his help, I could guide each of you out of my brain, and into your new ones. That’s what the conventional technology is missing. It was designed to dump everything in all at once, but Echo will have the context and intuition that it lacks.”

“You’re missing something too,” Onyx begins to use his experience and expertise from the Garden Dimension. “Stars are somewhat uniform balls of plasma, composed of hydrogen, helium, and metals. You can just toss in all the ingredients, and the laws of physics will take over, particularly gravity. I’m not saying what you and Echo are doing isn’t incredibly impressive, but the complexity will come out of the imagination you have for how your new universe is arranged, not by the inherent nature of the individual celestial bodies. Human bodies, on the other hand, are extremely precise entities, with complexities on a smaller scale. But just because it’s smaller, doesn’t mean it’s easier. Sure, it requires vastly fewer resources, but one tiny mistake could lead to catastrophe. You’re talking about creating something that took billions of years to evolve naturally, and unlike stars, it only happened once.”

“Wait,” Killjlir interrupts. “He doesn’t need to conjure the bodies. Those can be bioengineered using the normal techniques. We would just need a way to transfer us into them from Clavia’s head.”

“He wouldn’t be transferring them,” Clavia contends. “He doesn’t have the power to upload digitized minds. These would be true organic bodies, imbued with your respective consciousnesses through interdimensional pathways.”

“I don’t understand,” Ayata confesses.

“When you bioengineer a human body,” Onyx begins again, “there are only two ways to do it. Either it’s an empty substrate waiting for a mind to be uploaded into it, or it’s a regular person. An empty substrate is inherently digital in regards to consciousness transference. Even if it’s organic, it’s encoded with neural formatting compatibility. It can read a mind from another digitized brain, or a computer server. A normal body can’t do that. Back in the old days in the main sequence and the Parallel, they had to first figure out how to convert people’s brains into the right format since they didn’t evolve that ability.”

“So let’s do it like that,” Killjlir offers.

“We can’t,” Ingrid counters. “Like he was saying, that would be a regular person. It would have its own mind already, right?”

“Right,” Clavia agrees. “However smart or dumb that person is, or how competent they are to learn new things, the body would be ocupado, just like someone born from a mommy and a daddy. You would be stealing their body. Only Echo can make something both undigitized and empty.”

“Then why can’t we just use the digitized kind?” Ayata questions.

“Because you’re not digitized,” Clavia answers. “Our minds came together through completely different means, using a rare if not unique metaphysical process, catalyzed by the magnolia tree fruit that Ingrid ate just as you were all about to die. And digitizing us can’t be done as an aftermarket retrofit, because like we’ve been struggling with, the computer can’t differentiate between our seven discrete consciousnesses.”

Ayata nods, getting it, then looks over at her love. “Andrei, you’ve been quiet this whole time. Thoughts?”

Andrei takes a long time to respond, but by his body language, it’s clear that he’s going to, so no one else speaks instead. “I don’t wanna leave. It’s too risky. We would likely only get one shot at trying something like that, and if it fails, our minds could become totally decorporealized, or we might just die. I think we should revisit the idea of rotating control of the Clavia body.” He looks up at her. “I wanna stand on the seventh stage.”

“Same,” Debra concurs.

She obviously just wants all her power back, but does Andrei have the same aspirations?

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Microstory 2417: Racetrack Dome

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I’m gonna say this real slow. This is a racetrack dome, which means there are...racetracks. That’s all it is. It’s hundreds of racetracks just all over tarnation. A racetrack here, a racetrack there. There’s even a track that runs the entire circumference of the dome, which is something like 260 kilometers. That sounds boring to me, but hey, you do you, right? I would much rather stay close to the inner tracks. They’re so much more interesting. The vehicles are electric, obviously, but they’re also electromagnetic. This allows them to do all sorts of crazy stuff, like drive up the wall, or even do loop-de-loops. There are jumps and shortcuts, and drops into rivers of lava. Yeah, this particular dome was chosen for its proximity to a volcano. The volcano isn’t inside the dome, and if there were ever an eruption, there are safeguards in place to seal off the lava flow, and protect the dome. But as long as everything’s copacetic, it’s there. Plus, they have clear emergency procedures in place. I mean, this hasn’t actually happened since I’ve been here, so there’s no way to know how effective their plans are, but they claim to be ready. Of course, the lava they do have is dangerous, as are all of the other tracks. Well, almost all of them. They have bumper cars, and some go-kart tracks too, for the kids, or people who want something a little lighter. If you do get hurt, and don’t want to just jump your consciousness to a new body, they have excellent medical teams on standby. I was never injured, but I did walk in once to find someone having just crashed on one of the traditional intermediate tri-ovals. I heard the collision from the corridor, and by the time I rounded the corner, they were already loading the driver into an ambulance. I asked after him later, and he’s fine; didn’t even have to switch to a new body. I can’t even begin to describe what other kinds of tracks they have here, but if you’ve ever played a racing video game, they’re pretty much all recreated here. They don’t have boats, planes, or spaceships, though. Man, people kept asking about that. I’ll say again, it’s a racetrack dome, not races in general. Look for that in another dome. I’m sure they’re somewhere. I see all these negative reviews from morons who are disappointed when the name alone tells you everything you need to know. Just think it through, and you’ll be pleased with what you find.

Microstory 2414: Adrenadome

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TRIGGER WARNING. I want to talk about laws here, but I’m not going to say which laws specifically right away, because if my review ends up in a blurb, then it could get banned—or shadowbanned—for perpetuating harmful ideas. I think I need a few extra words to be safe sooooooo, there we go. Suicide laws. That’s what I mean. Back in the old days, when death meant the end of everything, and there was no going back, it was illegal in many places to attempt or commit suicide. Over time, these laws were changed to account for people’s unique desires and needs. Suicide and assisted suicide became necessary evils in certain situations, especially when a slow, painful death was the only other option on the table. The funny thing is, over time after that, these laws had to adapt again. Once they started sufficiently treating, or even curing, certain previously life-threatening medical conditions, the reasons for wanting to unalive yourself began to disappear at about the same rate. People stopped having very good excuses for not wanting to be alive anymore. Progress in mental health research, the proliferation of advanced medical solutions, and the drive towards a post-scarcity economy, among other factors, contributed to a healthier society overall. The development of more extreme technologies, like maximal longevity treatments, transhumanistic or cybernetic enhancements, and consciousness uploading and transference made it practically impossible to justify ending your own life, or anyone else’s, for that matter. Even the language of the relevant laws shifted to phrases like “reckless self-destruction” or “consciousness back-up endangerment”. Self-harm became illegal once again. Whereas before, dying meant taking maybe only a hundred years from someone’s potential future, now you’re potentially robbing you or someone else of the rest of eternity until the heat death of the universe. That should be profoundly immoral and unethical in anyone’s book. They’re even talking about making normal biological humans illegal, with some arguing that letting yourself die after a pitiful century is tantamount to suicide when framed as a negligible blip in the full timeline of reality. I don’t know about that. What we’re talking about is your body, your choice. Anything short of total freedom in that regard is hypocritical when you really think about it. Castlebourne is a Charter planet, which means that it doesn’t have to follow Core World Law. They still do, for the most part, having modeled their legal system on what came before, but they’re also free to make some changes, such as the definitions of those phrases above, like reckless self-destruction. What does reckless even mean? Does it mean jumping out of an airplane without a parachute—a new extreme sport, which they call skydying? Adrenadome is attempting to test the boundaries of what you’re allowed to do with your own body. I’m not gonna just list the extreme sports that can be found here. You can look them up. They’re all available, along with variants that forgo safety measures entirely, and just let you die, knowing that your mind will wake up in a back-up body moments later. Not everyone is gonna like it. I personally don’t. I came here to study the concept, because I’m a scholar of law. But it’s certainly interesting that these philosophical questions about the meaning of life and death get to play out in the real world, and no longer only on the lips, or the page.

Microstory 2407: Zombie Dome

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Zombies! Get your zombies here! We got fast zombies, slow zombies, zombies who are still a little bit intelligent, zombies who mindlessly continue on with the jobs that they supposedly had when they were still alive. You choose your environment, and you choose your level of difficulty, and then you just try to survive. They have some pretty crazy scenarios. I love zombies, so I’m biased, but I think you could have an entire planet just designated for this, and it would be great. Here’s what’s interesting about it, and the kind of unique thing about Castlebourne over all. They really lean into the fact that human bodies are completely expendable these days. They put a lot of work into building them for us. They have some fancy new technology that can grow a clone of you in a matter of minutes, I don’t understand it. Or you can choose your own creative avatar—like a bunny, or an iron giant—though that’s not really allowed in Zombie Dome. You’re supposed to be a human running from humanoid zombies. That’s the thing. But here’s a choice I never thought I would get to make. You can turn into a zombie in certain variations. When they bite you, if you don’t die, you continue as one of the undead. They’ll pump you full of drugs, and impair your brain processing. You’ll start walking around trying to bite other people. It’s a trip. I wanted to see what it was like, so I intentionally got bitten. Don’t worry, there are fail-safes in place. No matter how stunted your mind is, there’s always this part of you that is aware that none of this is real, and that you can break out of it if you need to. You can force your real consciousness back to the surface, and start being a normal person again. You’re dead, so you can’t keep playing like that, but you can make your way to an emergency exit, and quit playing. At that point, you can request a respawn into a normal body again, and start all over. I never felt unsafe in there even though that’s the point. It’s true, as I said, I love this stuff, so I kind of went into it really prepared. You might have a different level of preparation, but they’ll take care of you. They won’t let things go too far. Even when you’re still alive, you can put a stop to a zombie attack by uttering your safeword, which you will choose ahead of time. It can’t be too obvious, like, help, or no, stop! but I’ve seen it work. I had a bunch of buddies who were there specifically to test these systems. They chose different safewords at different times, and they always worked. We were there to test the boundaries, and make sure that the safeguards were sufficient, and never faltered. Highly recommended, but bear in mind this is not for everyone. It takes a certain kind of constitution, and most people should know whether it will be good for them or not, and again, if it’s not, you can just leave.

Microstory 2238: Stress Will Kill

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I made a decision this morning to be a more positive person. It doesn’t make much sense that I’ve had to be such a downer lately. I beat death! That’s a good thing, even though it doesn’t change the fact that everyone else is going to die eventually. So will I, even if some other Westfaller opens a new door, because they can’t keep it open forever. Believe me, if I knew how to help you, I would. In my stories, I had trouble being able to kill characters off, because I built a world where there were so many ways around it. Even when I did come up with a way, I rather quickly undid it, and placed all the dead people in an afterlife simulation that was essentially heaven—even for the not-so-great people (because at least they still existed)—but digital. There was even a way to get out of the simulation, and return to true life. I hate death more than the average person, which I know is saying a lot, because most people don’t like it a-tall [sic]. I could tell you about all of the technology that those people used, and which others did in other universes, but I would never be able to develop them for you. It’s a lot easier to conjure a genius character than to be as smart as them. It’s nothing that you guys have not already contemplated, I’m sure, like longevity treatments, telomere restoration therapy, cybernetics, mind-uploading, etc. Anyway, I don’t wanna get hung up on this, because that’s negative, man, and I don’t wanna be negative anymore, man. Let’s all just be chill, and only move around when we need to relax. Sound good? In the end, stress will kill you faster than anything. So, what does this all mean for the future? I’m not sure yet, but I’m going to try to remain calm, and not worry about things too much. I’m sure everything will be all right, one way or another. I’ve never had that kind of attitude before, so I’m not sure if it will work, but I may as well try.

Extremus: Year 76

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Jaunemus, as Lilac told everyone it was called, is more oblong than Earth’s moon, Luna. It is made up of different elements in different ratios, and is believed to have formed via co-accretion, which is to say that it coalesced at roughly the same time as Verdemus, using a shared accretion disk at the dawn of this star system’s creation. This is relatively rare in the galaxy as most co-accretion events will happen for icy or gas giants, but not as easily for terrestrials. Luna, for instance, was formed due to an impact event instead. Due to its less spheroidal shape, its high centrifugal forces from rapid spin, and its significantly shorter distance to its host planet, the surface gravity of Jaunemus is extremely varied. All in all, however, an object will never be greater than seventy-five percent as heavy as it would be on Luna, which is already 16.6% its weight on Earth. Once the Kamala Khan scanned the entire surface of the planet, the Verdemusians agreed that the logical next step was to scan the Jaunemus too. It quickly found an anomaly. The sensors could detect no energy readings, but it picked up on a spot that was sitting at exactly the same gravity of Earth. That would be impossible naturally. The camera didn’t see any visible signs of human intervention, but there has to be something here, likely hidden below the regolith.

Eagan is maintaining his duties in the hock building, watching Ilias Tamm, having taken over for Lilac, who has better things to do with her life now. She and everyone else are landing the Kamala Khan now for a new mission, to investigate the Jaunemusian gravity anomaly. Belahkay will remain on the shuttle in case something happens. The rest have each put on the armor modules and helmets of their Integrated Multipurpose Suits to begin the search. “You good?” Lilac asks him.

He holds up the a-okay sign. “Yes, but I should be asking you that.”

Lilac returns the sign, and swings it around to get the group’s response. One might assume that Spirit would have become Tinaya’s second in command, but she didn’t want the job. “Okay. We go out two at a time, since that’s the maximum number of people who can fit in the airlock. I’ll go first with Niobe. Spirit and Totle will be next.”

“I’ll go first,” Tinaya insists. Without bothering to wait for a response, she phase-shifts right through the hull of the shuttle, and gently drifts down to the ground. She holds the a-okay sign back up so others can see her through the window. Then she begins to walk around on her own.

Following their airlock procedures, the rest of them follow suit, though on their own vectors. It’s not particularly organized, but this is a search party, on the hunt for something unnatural, like a trapdoor, or even just a small sensor array.

“Naya, where are you? Where did you go?” Spirit questions.

Tinaya turns around. “I’m right here!” She starts to wave her arm.

“Can’t see you.”

“I’m waving!”

“No. You’re not.” Spirit starts to point. “One, two, three...four, including myself.”

Tinaya points to her own self. “Five.”

“Tinaya! What are you talking about? Are you invisible?”

“I don’t think so.” She was looking down as she was walking, but now she looks up as she’s turning around again, away from the group. Before her is a large structure, obviously built from the same stuff that the moon is made of. It’s several stories high. There is no way they would have missed this. She is invisible, as is whatever this place is. Niobe is even further along than her. She’s closer to the structure. “Niobe, you don’t see the building in front of you? You’re about to run into it.”

Niobe stops. “I am? I don’t see a thing.”

“Walk forward slowly,” Tinaya suggests. “Hold out your hand, and feel for it.”

Niobe does this. Her hand ends up passing right through the building, and then the rest of her.

“Are you inside of a building?” Tinaya asks.

“No. I’m...it’s...there’s nothing here.”

“It’s your glass,” Lilac guesses. “You walked through a dimensional barrier, and didn’t even realize it. Anyone else who tries is just going to miss it entirely.”

“Okay. I’ll investigate, and report back.”

“No, you won’t,” Lilac argues.

“Yes. I will. I’m in charge.”

“You may as well be on another planet,” Lilac goes on. “We can’t help you. Come back out, and we’ll have Belahkay build a magic door for us.”

“On it,” Belahkay agrees.

“I can’t get hurt, I’m made of glass,” Tinaya jokes ironically.

“Don’t do it,” Spirit says.

“Come stop me. I’m already through the wall.” She’s standing in a dimly lit hallway now. There appears to be a dead end to her right, so she shrugs, and heads for the left. As she walks, she reports to the group what she’s seeing, as boring and nondescript as it is. Walls standing on the floor, holding up the ceiling. There’s nothing interesting here, until there is. She finds herself in what looks like a giant’s library, except inside of storing books on the shelves, it’s artificial gestation pods. Thousands and thousands of gestation pods. It looks like that one scene in The Matrix.

“Are they occupied?” Belahkay asks.

“Hold on, let me get closer.” Tinaya approaches the nearest stack, and looks through the view window. “It’s...it’s Omega Strong.”

“Really.” Spirit says, not sounding much like a question.

“This one is Omega too. And also this one. They’re all Omega.”

“Maybe they’re not really Omega,” Niobe offers. “Maybe they’re Anglos, from Project Stargate.”

“Does it matter which?” Aristotle questions.

“Yes, it does,” Niobe contends.

“I found a terminal. I’ll research what’s going on here.” Tinaya steps over to it, and starts browsing. None of these systems is secure. As secretive as these operations are obviously meant to be, you would think that someone would at least password protect it, even if it’s not quantum encrypted. “I found the main systems,” she says. “Life support...now on. Dimensional veil...off.” As she’s looking through more of the data, which mostly includes health and quality tracking information for each of the Omega clones, her friends walk through the front door, and meet up with her. By the time they arrive, the atmospheric generators have finished making this chamber breathable.

They remove their helmets. “Find anything else?” Spirit asks.

“Yeah, I was just about to talk to the little virtual assistant.” She presses the button, and says, “bloop,” at the same time.

An Omega hologram appears next to her. He sizes her up, as well as the group. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Neither are you,” Tinaya points out.

“Yes, I am,” Hol!Omega volleys.

Tinaya breathes deeply. “Report.”

“I don’t know your security clearance,” Hol!Omega replies.

“Clearance Level Crystal,” she replies, phasing her hand through the nearest pod, then pulling it back out again.

“Interesting. I still can’t tell you anything,” Hol!Omega says apologetically.

“Okay.” Tinaya claps her hands. “Belahkay, prepare the warhead. We’re blowing this place to smithereens.”

“No, don’t do that,” Hol!Omega begs. “Fine, I’ll tell you. Just stop threatening violence. Jesus.” He throws up a second hologram, this one showing the Anatol Klugman, which is waiting in its hangar under the surface of Verdemus. “After years of debate, the council of Extremus finally decided to build a warship to deal with the threat of the True Extremists, who have been discovered to be the descendants of a time travel event that seeded life in a region of the galaxy known as the Goldilocks Corridor. Here, they have built what is now known to be the oldest self-sustaining civilization in this reality of the universe. At first, we believed them to be isolationists, who were only on-board Extremus to divert the ship to a new vector, away from their dozens of worlds. We have since learned that an ever-growing faction of purists are building an army with the intention of destroying Earth, and the rest of the stellar neighborhood. To our knowledge, they currently intend to leave Extremus alone, but that’s obviously not good enough for us. We can’t just sit by and watch our brethren die in a holocaust.

“My original self, Saxon Parker attempted to broker a peace treaty, but he was ultimately killed for his efforts, along with a number of my Anglo brothers, who were originally put in place to operate the Project Stargate colonization ships. Since the Anglos are not equipped to fight a war, they have returned to their responsibilities. It is up to us to put a stop to the Ex Wars.”

“I thought that it was called The Bears War,” Tinaya points out.

Hol!Omega frowns. “If someone called it that, they’re either an Exin themselves, or heard it from an Exin spy. It is their term for it.”

Tinaya looks over at Spirit, who begins to seethe. “Thank you for telling me that. Now I know who in the Bridger section cannot be trusted.”

Tinaya is choosing to trust that Spirit is being honest about that, and isn’t the Exin spy that they should be worried about. She nods. “Go on, Omega.”

“The Anatol Klugman was designed for an army of clones.” Hol!Omega looks down at a line of pods. “My clones. As you know, I was created as any other Anglo, but I renounced my calling, and struck out on my own. Saxon took my place, and his reward for this was a horrific and painful death at the hands of an enemy who knows no honor. I vowed to donate myself to the cause in the most literal and profound sense. I will pilot the AK to the Goldilocks Corridor, and wage war with them to keep them away from Earth. The way I see it, it’s the least I could do.”

“The Klugman,” Belahkay begins, using Tinaya’s helmet’s speaker to stay in the conversation, “it doesn’t have a reframe engine. Why waste the time moving at only relativistic speeds?”

“A number of reasons,” Hol!Omega responds. I wanted to maximize the real estate in the ship so that more Omega soldiers could fit. Secondly, a reframe engine poses a safety risk. It’s honestly a wonder the one on Extremus wasn’t damaged by the micrometeorite strike that took out our engineering section decades ago. It’s a very delicate piece of machinery, which requires constant maintenance at scale. This need would be disadvantageous during a battle when every fighter counts. Lastly, a reframe engine is unnecessary to accomplish our goals. Using data from the future, we know when the Exin army will launch their assault on the stellar neighborhood. Before they do this, their soldiers will be scattered on various worlds populated by innocents. We wish to contain the theatre of war to their staging planet, and they will only be at that location during a relatively short window.”

“You speak as if you are Omega Proper. Are you not but a copied version of him, while the original remains on the Extremus?” Spirit asks him.

“I am the uploaded consciousness of the original Omega...not a copy. There is no other on the ship at the moment. As I’ve said, I have dedicated myself to this. No mission matters if this one is not seen through.”

Spirit closes her eyes respectfully, and nods once.

“Your plan,” Aristotle begins to say. “It will fail.”

“I’m sorry?” Hol!Omega questions.

“I know the campaign of which you speak,” Aristotle goes on. “The Exin army overwhelms your ship in days, and moves on to their goal with barely a second thought.”

“How is that possible?” Tinaya asks him. You’re only from about eighty years in the future. It will take much longer for the Klugman to arrive, and begin this campaign.”

Aristotle stands fast, and says nothing for a moment. Everyone waits for his answer. “I was not always in the time period where Team Matic found me. I do not speak of it for the dangers of intervening in the timeline, but I believe that I can stand by no longer. Omega, your warship will fall, and your clones will be annihilated. I urge you to reconsider your strategy.”

“What would you have us do?” Hol!Omega asks him.

Aristotle breathes deeply. “Your choice to protect innocent lives by localizing the battlegrounds is a noble one, but by allowing your enemy to concentrate its forces, you also allow them to maintain their home field advantage while limiting your own access to resources. They will be exhausted in the midst of a bombardment of fighters that you cannot hope to stave off. You may be underestimating their ground weapons.”

“I didn’t think that they would have any ground weapons,” Hol!Omega admits. “They never planned on fighting so close to home.”

“They are more prepared than you realize. They have been planning a defensive for millennia, fearing the wrath that the stellar neighborhood may descend upon them one day. That’s why they’re so pissy and violent,” Aristotle explains. “A more effective approach would be to pick them off where they live, while they are off-guard and not expecting hostilities. But I understand that you would never do this—I would not either—so I instead suggest taking your resources with you. I can aid in this effort, and will agree to do so.”

“What do you mean?” Hol!Omega asks.

Tinaya is very worried, especially since Aristotle just rather casually suggested putting civilians at risk. They still don’t know how old he is, and they have clearly not heard everything he has been up to. “Yeah, what do you mean?”

Aristotle hesitates to answer again. But he does. Boy, does he? “They have a staging planet…so take one of your own with you.”

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