Microstory 2683: Desperate Remedies

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It’s been seven days. The hike was grueling, especially for Resi, who is not doing very well. He’s run out of medicine. It was supposed to last him a few weeks, but he took a little more than the recommended dose each time, and now he can’t even synthesize more. But this is it. This is his moment. If we can predict exactly when this volcano erupts, it will be worth it. He can die if he has to. Chaya, Caprice, and even Kartica will walk back down, warn the Bungulan scientist when it’s going to happen, and then they can craft their magical technology into a solution. The problem is, so far, he’s not seen anything. They stopped a few more times than they absolutely had to so he could take a nap. He needed the rest and recovery period, but he was also always hoping to trigger a new vision. Nothing came to him. Not even a hint. Every once in a while, Chaya would do something totally unexpected, like throw a fruit at him. One time, she tore off all of her clothes. Or rather, she was going to. He stopped her. Because he saw that she was planning on it. Which was great. Not only could he save her the trouble, but it also proves that changing the future is possible. They have to stop that volcano.

They’re on the rim of the caldera now, in the process of walking around the entire circumference. They’re moving even slower now; again, because Resi can’t keep pace, and because he’s trying to see something meaningful. Nothing is doing anything. He’s starting to think he made the whole thing up. Yes, he has visions of the future, but maybe this one is just a dream. Maybe that’s just what the Kidjum elixir does to his brain. Both things can be true at the same time without it being this complex web of connections. “Well, ladies, I don’t think this is doing us any good. I hope you at least see it as a good way to make your daily steps, because nothing else has come of it.”

They’re all breathing heavily, and nodding. They don’t want to agree with that assessment, but there’s no reasonable alternative. It hasn’t helped anything. Kartica drops her pack, and starts looking for something in it. “There’s one more thing we can try.” She takes her hand back out, coming back with a black box. She opens it, and as she does, dry ice vapor seeps out of the gap. Inside is one vial of Kidjum elixir.

“You told me not to take that stuff again,” Resi reminds her. “You said it was too dangerous.” He can’t admit that she was right to bring it. It only makes sense.

“It is,” she confirms. “But you look desperate, and honestly, so am I. You also look like you might not survive the night, so if you’re willing to take the risk, I am too.”

“Don’t do this,” Caprice urges. “She’s wrong. You will survive the night, and when we wake up in the morning, we’ll take the fast trail back down. If we think you won’t be able to handle it, we can call for a helicopter ride.”

“How would we do that?” Chaya questions.

“With this satellite phone.” She takes it out of her pack. The thing is giant, probably to accommodate a huge power source, so it never requires charging, and to make it harder to break. “I have a direct line to the Bungulans. I had to, it isn’t safe.”

Caprice and Kartica start arguing with each other, but Resi interrupts them. “I’ll decide.” He takes the sat phone, and then the box. “Let’s all have some dinner, then go to bed. “Okay?” He doesn’t get a response. “Okay?” He adds, “okay,” when they nod.

That night, he sneaks out of the tent he’s been sharing with Chaya, puts his shoes back on, and then begins the descent into the caldera. That’s where his visions are waiting for him. He knows it.

Microstory 2682: Seeing The Whole Thing

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Resi can see the future, there is no longer any doubt in his heart about that. The problem is that, no matter how hard he tries, he has been unable to return to the vision he twice had of the eruption of Central Mountain. Brooke has her special techy spaceship, which she used to study the volcano, which said that nothing about it suggests it’s going to become active anytime soon. That is more worrisome than anything, because if Brooke is right, and Resi is also right, then something insane and unpredictable is going to happen that changes the equation. The trick is determining what that might be, and Resi thinks he may know why the answer isn’t coming to him. As of now, all of his predictions are sourced from past and present data. They’re still supernatural, for lack of a better term, but he’s not just randomly pulling information that doesn’t exist yet. He has to anchor it to something that is real. He doesn’t have to be physically touching an object to know what’s going to become of it, but it sure helps.

The fact is, Resi has nothing been very close to the mountain before. It just hasn’t been a meaningful aspect of his life. The higher you go, the less arable the land is. He’s not one for backpacking. Some class projects have involved hiking it, or even climbing all the way to the summit, but he never ended up doing that. That seems to be something that has to happen now. Brooke offered him a ride to the top, but that might not be enough. What if the problem happens lower down, and just causes the eruption up top? What if there are clues along the way? She pointed out that there is too much acreage to cover, and he agreed, but he has to start somewhere, and it can’t be at the end. That’s what’s blocking his understanding of this terrible future. He keeps trying to skip to the end. Of course, that’s what it sounds like fortune-telling is, but again, he doesn’t think he can just tap a future date, and jump to it. He thinks he has to fast-forward. He doesn’t have to sit through it all in real time, but he does have to see it all. So he’s going on a trek. He’s finally going to see what all the fuss is about.

Brooke is gone now. She has other things to do with her life outside of Yana, and outside of Bungula. She charges him to keep quiet about what he learned about her, which will not be hard, because she hardly told him anything. He’s not going to be alone, though. Caprice and Chaya are both coming. They don’t think that they’re going to have any apocalyptic visions, too, but they want to help, and it’s safer for him to not be alone. If something bad happens, someone may need to call for rescue. They’re only a few kilometers into the journey. They’ve not even reached the switchbacks yet when Chaya informs them that someone has been following them the whole time.

“Okay!” Resi says quite loudly. “Spread out! Shoot anyone but each other!”

“No! Don’t do that!” Kartica comes out with her arms up.

“I was never going to. Don’t you know me yet?” Resi questions.

“I dunno, you may have changed, man,” Kartica points out.

“Why are you here?” Resi presses. “You weren’t invited.

“I know, but you need me. You’re going the wrong way.”

Caprice looks up. “I think we can see where the mountain is.”

“Yes, you’re going towards the mountain, and you’ll even be on a trail, but it won’t be the right trail,” Kartica insists. “The mountain...is basically a cone. If you’re trying to see the whole thing, the switchbacks will only keep you to one side of it.”

“What makes you think we’re trying to see the whole thing?” Resi asks her.

“Please.” Kartica is offended. “I’ve not taken my eye off of you since we met. I can show you where to go. It will give you a clearer picture. I want this more than anyone. I want it more than you. You were hesitant before, when I begged you to tell me what was going to happen. Don’t leave me out of it. Please.”

Resi stands there thinking about it. He takes a swig of his special medicine. It still isn’t curing him, but it’s treating his symptoms. It’s keeping him vertical. Unfortunately, he believes he may be experiencing diminishing returns, and it will stop doing anything at all, probably sooner than later. “Fine, you can help. But try not to commit suicide on the way, okay?”

“I couldn’t if I wanted to,” Kartica claimed. “They locked me out of the respawn system. If I die, that’s it for me.”

Foreshadowing.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 6, 2550

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Things were a little awkward at first. Leona was a lot less powerful than Senona originally believed. They didn’t think to ask Echo or Clavia about it at some point, or the truth might have been clarified earlier. Senona lived in another universe, and their access to information about other universes had its limitations. They were aware that one Leona Matic was a time traveler in Salmonverse, but not that there were multiple people who went by the same name. They were thinking of an alternate version of her, who was far more powerful, and therefore better equipped to help with the effort at Origin.

This other Leona was from a different timeline, and only survived the transition because she was the one who went back to the past to save Mateo from torture, thereby creating the new timeline. She had a number of different time powers, which she managed to procure using organ transplants. The exact details of her exploits remained a mystery to this day. Senona didn’t realize the discrepancy. It wasn’t like they hadn’t heard of alternate selves before. It was simply an unknown unknown to them. The issue was that Alt!Leona never promised to aid in the efforts at Origin. To their knowledge, she had never even been there. Once discovering the difference between the two, Senona’s initial reaction was to let this Leona return to her life with the team, but she didn’t want to do that. After she asked for her own wish way back when, Senona mentioned that they would have to call someone for aid. When she pressed for clarification, they explained that that was how it worked. They couldn’t do much on their own, and could not leave Origin themselves, so they always recruited others. Leona volunteered to be one of these agents should the need ever arise. It now had.

For two years, Leona was the boots on the ground of the operation. Even though she couldn’t do as much as the other Leona, she wasn’t powerless either. Besides her normal teleportation, Senona provided her with temporary abilities. These included the means to travel all over the bulkverse on her own, do so invisibly, and with a certain knack for persuasion. She also had a number of ancillary abilities, like stamina and strength, which let her do the job without getting sleepy or fatigued. She did still sleep, and had time off. In fact, she had full permission to travel to any universe she wanted, and do whatever she wanted. But like professional chess, the clock only ran while she was working, and she didn’t want to delay her return to the team.

Meanwhile—if such a concept had any relevance outside the normal passage of time—Olimpia and Ramses were getting to know their son, Echo. They didn’t have to do any work for those two years, though they joined Leona on precisely two occasions, when the wish went beyond her scope alone. Today was the last mission. After this was done, the team members would go back to Salmonverse to be with their friends. Clavia would return here, and rejoin her brother. They weren’t slaves or anything, but they were not allowed to live in Salmonverse. That was something that I decided long ago, and while I gave them a pass on that for recent stories, it was never going to be a permanent thing. They are too powerful. Any problem which comes up here can be solved nearly instantaneously if they’re involved. They got to go.

“We understand,” Echo said, psychically, but also out loud. “But I demand periodic visits.”

That can be arranged. We’ll talk later.

“Oh, are you taking requests?” Sanaa Karimi interjected from wherever she was in the timestream. “I would like a real life pink pony. Sparkly fur. It has to cuss a lot.”

Sure, I’ll get right on that. Hold your breath and wait.

“I’m gonna tear out your eyeballs, and jam your thumbs into them so you can’t type anymore,” Meredarchos added.

You know where I live, asshole.

With the brief and unhealthy transuniversal psychic conversation over, Echo refocused on this last mission. He and his parents wanted to help make it a good one.

Leona was watching him. “Everything okay?”

“It’s fine,” he replied. “What do we got?”

“This is a funny one,” she answered. She had barely finished her last job, and was still wearing her adventure clothes. Since she couldn’t be seen, this wasn’t necessary, but it helped her get in character. “Not funny, ha-ha; more funny, oh God. A young man is playing a game called Scourge of the Valley, and his older sister has asked that we make sure he wins. The way it works, you and your competitors are summiting a mountain. In this world, death is more of a nuisance, and not final in most cases. If you reach the summit first, it’s yours, but only temporarily, unless you made it there without killing anyone. If you killed anyone on the way to get an edge, they will come back as ghosts, and fight you for the summit. If you lose that second round, you will die for good. Our man is not a skilled climber, but he won’t try to kill anyone. He wants to prove that it’s possible to win without violence. She doesn’t think he can do it.”

“This sounds too easy,” Ramses decided. “All we have to do is kill everyone so this man doesn’t have to. He’ll win by default. As long as they really will come back to life, and it’s fine...”

“Senona doesn’t think it works like that,” Leona explained. “If we serve as the man’s agents, invisible or no, he will be technically responsible for those deaths. They will become his enemy ghosts. We have to keep them from winning without killing them. We have to give him what he wants: a clean and bloodless win.”

“That’s impossible,” Olimpia thought. “If this guy’s sister doesn’t think he’s a fast enough climber, he’s probably not. The competition is probably fierce, and they will be killing each other for that top spot. As soon as even one of them makes it, he’ll have no chance. It will be over. We can protect him from attacks, but we can’t help him climb.”

“Wait, what are the physical laws of this universe?” Echo questioned. “Do they have temporal manipulation? Can we just teleport him there without raising eyebrows?”

“They don’t have anything like that. However, according to the sister, they will probably accept something weird. If he’s at the summit, and didn’t kill anyone, he’ll win. The culture is really weird like that. But that’s just the bloodthirsty audience. Apparently, a lot is riding on this. It could potentially change the world, because no one has ever done it nonviolently. But that won’t work if we use tricks. It has to look like he did it the way he claims he will. That’s what the sister is really asking for, not only a simple win.”

They went quiet, and started thinking through the dilemma individually. Every once in a while, one of them would think they had an idea, or even articulate it, but it wouldn’t work. Too many ideas relied on people noticing that it didn’t seem genuine. Finally, however, Olimpia thought that she had it. “Help me understand how this multiverse thing works. Every dream anyone has ever had, and every story that has ever been told, exists somewhere as a real, tangible, universe?”

“Yeah, essentially,” Echo agreed. “Some are more stable than others, though. Dreams don’t last very long. If their laws of physics are weird, they won’t survive past the duration of that dream. Even if they’re mundane, they’ll probably collapse anyway, because of how fleeting they’re being observed and utilized. Branes based on stories are generally more stable, but the less popular ones still don’t last long.”

“I think the one I’m thinking of is pretty popular, so likely stable, but it still might look weird,” Olimpia began. “If all of the other competitors suddenly act confused, and even fall asleep, it will look suspicious, won’t it? It’s not exactly violence, but they’ll assume he poisoned them, and the revolution part of his win might not succeed.”

“Ah, you’re thinking of the Honan Enchantment,” Ramses realized. “You’re probably right about the optics, but it’s still not a bad idea. We just can’t do it to all of the competitors. Fortunately, that would not be the only universe we have access to, and we have all the time in the worlds, right? We need to find out how many competitors there are. A ranking would be great for us, so we’ll know how to prioritize. Then we can come up with a list of ways of slowing people down. One or two of them fall under the Enchantment, another one goes temporarily white blind—we’ll make sure they don’t slip off the edge—and a third—I dunno—gets the runs, or something.”

“That’s pretty gross, father.”

“I’m just trying to get this done without hurting anyone,” Ramses defended. “Diarrhea is only temporary, and everyone gets it. We’ll pick the guy who ate a big breakfast.”

Leona thought about it for a moment. “This is going to take more time than I hoped, but as long as we get back home in 2550, I’m willing to at least produce these two lists, and see if we can come up with enough ideas to avoid violence. The rankings are a good idea. If the brother isn’t the absolute slowest contender, we could leave some of them alone, and let them lose naturally.”

And so, the agents got to work. They really rushed through it, zipping in and out of various branes, taking whatever they needed, even if it was only an ultra-strong laxative. Some of the ingredients were harder than others. For instance, for some reason, they were fully visible to the locals where they were trying to retrieve Honan Enchantment. It took a little time to convince them to give some of it up, but since they only needed a very tiny bit, it was okay, because it wasn’t enough to condemn a large population.

All told, they needed 24 ways to interfere with the brother’s competitors in Flipverse. Six of them were probably not going to win either way, so they were left alone. The competition was still pretty heated. The woman unfortunate enough to be saddled with diarrhea just powered through it, and didn’t let it stop her. It did slow her down, though, which was enough to get her killed by the guy whose ropes they lathered with glue. He accused her of sabotaging him, and freehanded his way up to her, cutting her rope in retaliation, and plummeting to his own death with her.

They severely underestimated one of the untouched competitors, but the interesting part was that he too felt no need to kill anyone. Though, to be fair, that was probably thanks to the agents, and not his convictions. They reached the top at about the same time, and the rule in that case was that they would have to fight to the death. In a twist, despite barely knowing each other, they pulled a Hunger Games, and tried to jump off the cliff at the same time. Normally, the judges wouldn’t care. Suicide wasn’t a big deal for them. But there were no other contenders at that point. Everyone else had failed or been killed. A ghost couldn’t win unless they had someone to best at the summit. They simply could not allow there to be no winner at all, so they were spared, and declared joint winners. A little derivative, but it was ultimately better than one of them winning alone. The world they were living in wasn’t ruthless, and the judges weren’t evil. But society had kind of turned to shit. Even though it was technically okay to die, it was unhealthy to be so casual about murder. Not even Castlebourne was so careless. They were more focused on pushing life to its limits, rather than making death itself feel the goalposts.

“It sounds like it went well,” Senona said once they were back on the platform on the waterworld where they lived.

“I would say so,” Leona agreed. “Our task was to help him win this one game, not the whole revolution. That’s up to the natives now, so I think we objectively succeeded, even if it was a tie.”

“Makes sense,” Senona said. They turned to Olimpia, Ramses, and Echo. “Have you three said your goodbyes? I was unable to procure a daypass for you, Echo. You will be staying right here, while they switch places with Clavia.”

“Yeah, we had a meal together in Moderaverse,” Echo responded. “We are prepared to part ways...for now.”

Now back to Leona. “Did you find some moments of joy during this job, or were you always just itching to leave?”

“No, it was a rewarding experience,” she answered honestly. It wasn’t that way every time, though. Some people asked for not-so-great things, predominantly for military purposes. Senona didn’t discriminate, and Leona tried not to judge. The simple rule was, if they figured out how to get to Origin, and their wish was feasible, it was granted to them.

They nodded tightly. “Perfect. Your commitment is hereby complete. I thank you for your service.” Senona whisked them away.

They found themselves in an unfamiliar place. They had no idea where the hell they were. A gargantuan tree trunk towered over them, and disappeared into the clouds. The rest of their team appeared before them after a few seconds. “Oh, hey,” Mateo said. “Welcome back...to Ramosus. This here is the Tree of Axis.”

“What?!” Ramses exclaimed.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 3, 2547

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Ramses was unable to track the location of the missing slingbelts, and there was no recourse for this. He designed the bulk map so that, while most of the dots were showing non-specific points, the belts were distinct, and stood out. If they were anywhere out there, he would be able to spot them. Their two top hypotheses were that they were either destroyed, or taken through time. Whoever did it knew exactly what they were after. They weren’t just a couple of random kids swimming in the ocean, who happened to feel something invisible in the water. Their prime suspects were the Spiral Station crew, but they didn’t want to assume. They had plenty of genuine enemies, and since time travel was inherently involved, it could have been someone they hadn’t even crossed paths with yet. Instead of wasting pointless effort on figuring it out, Ramses just programmed his forge core to build three replacement belts during the interim year. Mateo, Leona, and Olimpia had lost all of their belongings, but that wasn’t a big deal.

It was interesting that the married trio were the ones whose belts were stolen. Ram calculated a 2.85% chance that this was entirely unintentional, but the more practical odds said that it was vastly more improbable. Just the fact that the other four belts were left behind made it unlikely to have been random. They were magnetically linked to one another. It was actually more difficult for them to take only some of the belts, than to have swiped them all in one go.

The next day, the missing belts appeared on the bulk map. They had been transported halfway across the Milky Way, for reasons yet unknown. “Have we been there before?” Olimpia asked. “Do we know anyone there?”

“That is part of the nuclear star cluster, which is relatively close to Sagittarius A*, our galaxy’s central black hole” Leona explained. “It’s not the farthest we’ve ever been, but as you can see, no one else is there. It’s only our belts.”

“No one has ever been there,” Ramses added. “They’re on Southside. Extremus crossed over the black hole on the north side of the galactic plane. When the Matrioshka Body was studying time, it too was on Northside. The whole stellar neighborhood is on Northside, so we just don’t know too much about this region.”

Romana giggled. “They’re a gift.”

“Huh?” Mateo asked.

“We were just talking about Operation Starframe,” Romana said. “If we want to reach every corner of the galaxy, it’s best to start in the center. Now we can do that. Now we have something to lock onto. This will be our staging ground.”

“We don’t know that the thief did this as a favor,” Marie pointed out. “It could be a trap instead. I’m guessing this region is naturally fairly hostile, if it’s so close to the chaos of the supermassive black hole.”

Ramses made a facial shrug. “It’s not as dangerous as, say, the s-star cluster, which is much closer to the singularity, but it’s not particularly safe, like it is for Sol. I’m inclined to agree with Romy. It’s too coincidental. If I were the thief, I would put a trap around Sirius, or some other close but barely settled region. It took them too much work to get to where they are. Yes, I’m sure they are trying to lure us there. It’s irrational to believe that they hid the belts from detection last year, but forgot to shield them today when they would know we’ve returned to the timestream. But based on our track record, does anyone here really think that we’re not gonna go?”

They all laughed a little. “Yeah, we’re gonna go,” Mateo decided. He commanded his nanites to wrap him up in armor, leaving his face unprotected for now. “What did you say before, Romana? Boot ‘n’ rally.”

They all armored up too. “Yalla,” Leona ordered.

“Give me a minute,” Ramses defended. “I need to make the calculations.” He turned away and paced a little as he was tapping on his wrist device. “Okay, do it again.”

“Yalla.”

They slung to the nucleus, and landed on a rocky planet. It wasn’t heavily vegetated, but not barren either. The plantlife was clearly alien, but decidedly alive. The sky was a beautiful sunset orange. Snowcapped mountains towered in the distance, and it looked a little greener on the foothills. They turned to find three dress form mannequins on a display curve. A slingbelt was fitted to each one.

“Yeah. Definitely brought here for us,” Romana agreed with herself.

“That’s not all,” Ramses said, looking at his interface again. “It’s breathable. For us, anyway. I’m seeing 83% nitro, 11% oxy, 5 for CO2, and a half percent each for hydrogen and trace gases.”

They decided to open their visors but keep the rest of their armor on, except for Romana, who chose to end up in a gray sports bra and yoga shorts. It still could be a trap. The atmosphere was indeed breathable, but it took a few minutes for their bodies to acclimate to the suboptimal environment. During this time, they were mildly suffocating before their carbon scrubber organs caught up to compensate for the extra toxin.

“Carbon load back down to manageable levels for everyone,” Angela announced. She had expressed an interest in serving as the closest thing to a medical professional the team had.

Romana instinctively walked around to the other side of the mannequins. She reached up to one of them, and pulled something off of it. “Sorry for taking these, but now you have extra, in case you need them. You won’t have to worry about us again. Don’t screw it up this time,” she read.

“They didn’t sign their name?” Mateo asked her.

“Not exactly,” she answered.

“They...initialized it?” Mateo couldn’t think of anything else that was close to a signature.

“They hand-wrote it, or I should say, you hand-wrote it.” She showed him the note, and she was right; it was in Mateo’s handwriting.

“Well, I suppose I can trust myself, can’t I?”

“No,” Leona replied bluntly.

“Fair enough.”

“Any other anomalies besides these belts?” Leona asked Ramses.

“No artificial signals,” Ramses began to answer from his interface. “No satellites, no power generators, no signs of life in the immediate vicinity...” He looked back up and regarded the horizon. “There is no way to know if we’re alone, but we seem to be.” He took out his forge core, and appeared to be in thought as he separated himself from the group, and also looked at the mountains.

“Are you considering building something here?” Mateo asked.

“Something?” Ramses returned. “Maybe everything.”

“Like a new lab? You just built a new one in your pocket,” Mateo reminded him.

“Yeah, I know, and I would still want to keep it with me as a mobile office.” Ramses turned back around. “But a real home base might be nice too. I once thought that that was Castlebourne, but there are too many people there. I think we should be more like Linwood Meyers, and take full ownership over a remote territory. No one else is here, it would just be ours. It will take tens of thousands of years before Project Stargate reaches this region. That’s more than a hundred and fifty years for us. This could be a safe place. We would really only have to worry about Spiral Station.”

“It’s not the farthest man has ever gone,” Olimpia said. “You just mentioned Linwood, who is even more remote on the far end of the galaxy. The Extremus isn’t too far from there. The Exin Empire has reframe engines, and several decades to kill.”

“They would have to find us,” Ramses continued to list. “This is a central location. It’s a great place to stage Operation Starframe. It’s uninhabitable by even some other posthuman models.”

“Still,” Olimpia pushed back. “Shouldn’t we go as far as we can? I agree, it’s perfect for Starframe, but not the best place for a home if we truly want to be hidden and remote.”

“The slingdrives have power constraints. Being ultra-distant has its disadvantages too. We’ll still defend our home. We’re not just gonna live like pioneers.”

“The note, it’s warning us about something,” Romana jumped back in. “We don’t know what. Did we come here in another timeline, or is that what changed? What exactly are we hoping to not screw up this time?”

“It’s doubtful that we were here before,” Leona determined. “We came here for the belts. That and the note probably mark the point of divergence. I think this planet is meant to change whatever issues Future!Mateo faced that he’s trying to fix now.”

“You just said we couldn’t trust him,” Marie contended. “Handwriting means nothing. Anyone could have forged it.”

“True,” Leona admitted.

“I’ll do my surveys,” Ramses reasoned. “I’ll build satellites and probes. We’ll map this whole star system, and beyond. Infrastructure will not be a problem. If we change our minds later, we can always leave. That is entirely what Starframe is even about. It gives us options, and this world gives us those options faster.”

“Anyone opposed?” Leona posed to the group. When no one said anything, she looked at Romana. “You’re our navigator, but you didn’t bring us here. Do you object to staying?”

“No,” Romana answered. “Like he said, we can always leave later.”

Leona nodded. “Okay. Let’s do some quick surveys before the infrastructure can be built, just to get some idea of what we’re dealing with. No one has to participate who doesn’t want to. What I’ll be doing is teleporting high up into the atmosphere, taking readings and images on my way down, and then popping back up over a different swath of land to image that area next. Anyone is welcome to spread out and do the same. But if you just want to stay here, that’s fine. If three of you would rather go back to the stellar neighborhood, that would be acceptable too.”

“No, we’re not gonna do that,” Olimpia promised. “We’ll stick together, as we always try to do. I had to argue against the plan to make sure it was a good plan. I’ve seen this movie before. This planet has monsters on it, and that’s the whole plot.”

“It would not be crazy if we did find complex life here,” Leona concurred. “With carbon dioxide levels this high, I’m more surprised that there’s even a desert. I suspect the majority of the surface will be fairly lush.”

Leona was correct. While Ramses camped out at their landing site to synthesize the data, the other six jumped around the atmosphere to serve as living survey probes. Their onboard sensors weren’t advanced enough to take highly detailed readings, but it was enough to generate a crude globe. They saw some more yellow and red, but they also saw green and blue. It looked not unlike Earth, though the night sky was a lot prettier. There wasn’t any light pollution, and this region of space had a denser cluster of stars to admire.

They found almost no manmade structures besides the display mannequins, but they didn’t find none at all. “Everyone jump to my position,” Marie requested.

“Even me?” Ramses questioned.

“Especially you,” she replied.

They all converged at Marie’s location. They found her standing on a grassy hill, elevated above a surrounding forest. They weren’t quite sure what other thing they were seeing here, though. It was a sphere of warped space, rotating so fast that they couldn’t even tell which direction it was moving. It reminded Leona of a black hole, but not exactly. “It’s not black,” Olimpia sort of joked, sort of really didn’t understand it at all.

“Back up anyway,” Leona suggested.

They all took several steps back because their guess was that it was a portal, and of course, they had no idea where it might take them. But like the gravity regulator machine back on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, it wasn’t going to give them any choice. It suddenly expanded, and engulfed them all.

It didn’t appear to have done anything to them. They were still standing on the same hill. The same forest was still surrounding them. “Is everyone okay?” Mateo asked. “Roll call.”

They took their turns declaring their respective statuses. They had settled on an order ahead of time, so it was predictable, except in any hypothetical situation where something actually was wrong with one of them. Everyone was fine this time; no currently detected health or temporal issues. The swirling portal was still there, so they elected to turn around and walk back down the hill to avoid any further issues.

“Mother,” came a voice from behind them. They turned to see a man standing near the top of the hill, right in front of the portal. No one recognized him.

“Who do you believe is your mother?” Leona asked in a way that implied she hoped it wasn’t her yet again.

The man slowly pointed at Olimpia.

“Me?” Olimpia questioned, shocked. “If I look like your mom, then she must be from a different timeline, because I don’t have any kids.”

“No, it’s definitely you. I was hoping we would meet sometime, but I didn’t want to push it. It had to be your choice. I left this reality portal here in case you ever came looking.”

Olimpia shook her head. “I don’t know how it would be possible.”

“You’re sometimes called The Echo, right?” the man pressed.

“Not so much anymore,” Olimpia countered.

“Well, I’m always called Echo. I’m your echo.” He took a deep breath. “Welcome back to The Sixth Key.”

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Microstory 2624: You Have Been Going Up This Whole Time, Don’t Go Back Down Now

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August 29, 2526. Notus Konn and the small group of survivors that he fell in with are in the northern polar region, but not quite safe yet. They have been walking somberly for about a day now, but have not gotten very far since the terrain is so treacherous, and they have no idea how far they have to go. They stop to rest, but no longer have a vacuum tent to stretch out in, so they just lie down in their suits. They’ve grown rather used to the confinement, even Notus, who is only with this particular group because he got claustrophobic and freaked out while with his original group. The air is cleaner here, but still not breathable. It never was outside of the domes.

Calypso notices Notus away from the group during one of their breaks, tapping on his interface, and sometimes pointing it towards the beetloid, which they have named Heracles. “I couldn’t help but notice that you’re pretty handy with that thing. Most of the Breckenridgers have to ask for help just turning the screen back on.”

“I’m from Leviss,” Notus explains.

“Wait, that’s not what you said before,” Calypso contends. “You said you weren’t used to confined space because Breckenridge is so open. That’s why you, uhh...”

“Had a mental breakdown in the rover? That’s because Leviss doesn’t have any cars, and I already am claustrophobic. I was born there, and then my family moved to Breckenridge when I was eleven. I’m not familiar with this tech, but it’s not so different from what I originally grew up with.”

“Truthfully, I didn’t know that anyone did that.”

“It’s rare,” Notus admits. “Most Levins are too used to technology to give it up, and most Breckenridgers are afraid of it. But my family lived in a more rural area of our dome, so while we had computers, we had a lot more experience with manual labor, and a more physical lifestyle. Breckenridge wasn’t a hard sell.”

“I’m not afraid of technology,” Calypso argues.

“Fear is a strong word,” Notus decides. “How about unaccustomed and wary?”

“I’ll take it,” Calypso determines. She waits a moment. “So, what exactly are you doing with that thing?”

He smiles at her. “This.” After one more tap, Heracles jumps into the air, and flies way above their heads. The others sitting on the rocks watch it go.

“What’s it doing up there?” Shimizu asks.

Notus switches his comms to address the whole group. “It’s getting us to where we’re going.” He monitors the progress on his screen until it beeps. He pivots on the ground and points. “On the other side of that mountain is a canyon. The first stable dome we’ve seen in days is at the bottom of that canyon. I believe there is some means of getting down there quickly too. Heracles is picking up a much closer signal too.”

“Are there people there?” Calypso asks him.

“It seems to be picking up chatter, but it doesn’t have authorization to listen in. So yeah, I think so, but we won’t be able to talk to them until we get closer.”

Shimizu stands back up, and slaps his knees. “Then let’s get on with it. For Breanna and Cash.” He takes lead down the natural trail, towards the mountain.

Notus holds back for a moment, looking up at Heracles who is coming back down to the ground. He pats it on the head, echoing Cash from the other day. “Good boy.”

Mountain might be a strong word, and probably canyon too. It’s not long before they reach the edge. Inside the canyon is a much smaller dome than the kind that they’re used to. It can still probably fit thousands of people, but it had to be made compact to fit within the walls. Not too far from where they come out, they see the manmade structure that Heracles was detecting. “Does anybody know what this is?” Shimizu asks.

“It’s called a gondola,” Notus answers, looking at his HUD. “Also known as a cable car, it was invented in 1616 by Fausto Veranzio—”

“Yeah, no one cares about that,” Shimizu interrupts. “If it can get us down to the dome where I can finally take this blasted thing off forever, that’s all I need to know.”

“Let’s ask this person,” Calypso suggests.

A suited individual is coming out of a small habitat at the top of the gondola. They’re still really far away, but they send out a communication request, which everyone in the group accepts. “There is nothing for you here. Please keep moving along.”

“Please—” Notus begins, only to be interrupted by Shimizu again.

“We demand sanctuary. The world is dying, and we all need to do our part to save the human race from extinction.”

“The human race is not going to go extinct because less than ten people can’t get into our dome, which is at full capacity.” The gatekeeper points. “If you just keep walking that way, you will reach the next dome over. I’m sure it has plenty of room. Well, I don’t know that, but I know that we definitely don’t, so keep walkin’.”

Shimizu shakes his head. “We’re not leaving her until you let us in, you—”

Now Notus is the one to interrupt. “We thank you for your graciousness sir, and only ask that you allow us to take rest in your habitat. We have been wearing these suits for so long, and had to leave our vacuum tent behind. Please, if you could grant us this one favor, as well as facilitate contact with one of your leaders on the ground, we would much appreciate it. I’m sure we can work something out.”

The stranger says nothing for a moment, and as they are nowhere near him, the survivors can’t read his face to see which way he might be leaning. “What is that thing you have with you? The robot thing.”

“Heracles, our beetloid,” Notus answers.

“He saved my life,” Calypso interjects.

“I’ll tell you what, you let me have Heracles—which is a dumb name, by the way, so I’ll be changing it—and I’ll think about letting you take a break in here.”

When Shimizu lunges, Notus holds him back, even though the gap between the two parties remains significant. “We’re not going to do that. You have just made us a bad faith offer, which tells us that there is nothing we can do to convince you to help. But you should know that I am the grandson of the Leviss Magistrate, and she has heavy pull in the greater Proxima Domanian government. I will be reporting your actions to the administration. I’ll also be recommending that they evacuate your dome immediately.”

“Ooo, I’m so scared,” the gatekeeper says sarcastically, holding his hands. “Not the Magistrate of some dumb community that I’ve never even heard of. Keep it movin’, pal. If you ain’t got a robot bug for me, I ain’t got a pressurized habitat for you.”

Shimizu switches comms back to the group-only channel. “Way to go, asshole.”

“Trust me,” Notus says as he’s poring through the data that he siphoned from the local network. “We don’t want nothing to do with that dome. It’s below sea level.”

Microstory 2622: Sometimes You’re the Windshield, Sometimes You’re the Bug

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August 27, 2526. The ragtag group of survivors have almost made it. They can see the Chappa’ai Mountains up ahead. They will still want to get as far north as they possibly can, but according to the science, crossing that threshold will allow them to breathe a sigh of relief. The ground is more stable and solid. After all this, salvation is within their grasp. So of course something else has to get in the way. And it’s huge.

“Brake!” Breanna orders. “Brake, brake, brake!” she repeats.

“I see it!” Cash responds, matching her energy. She can’t brake any harder than this, though. It’s just a button, and it does what it does as fast as physics allows.

“Hold on!” Breanna shouts. Even though she’s magnetized to the floor, she reaches up and takes hold of the overhead oscilight for balance. They certainly don’t need it to see, and if anyone is on the tracks, the oncoming railcart is the least of their concerns. Before them, the ground is opening up. The mountains are sliding apart from each other. They can see the red glimmer of the vengeful lava below, even as the day side begins to overtake the shrinking breadth of the Terminator Line. “Be prepared to jump if I say so! It may be our only hope! Once we do, you’ll wanna start running in the opposite direction! But not yet! We’re still moving too fast!”

“Can we just parachute off!” someone asks.

“Too much turbulence!” Breanna cries back. “Just wait for my instructions!” 

They all scream into the comms. Even Tertius and Aeterna look worried, though that may be more from empathy than fear. The chasm is pulling the tracks ahead of them down now, along with the spine that led others up to the safety of the pole. Hopefully, no one is in them right now. The train stations have all become non-operational, but that doesn’t mean no one is trying to walk it. Breanna isn’t so sure about her instructions anymore. There may be nothing they can do. Even if they manage to stop, the ground is falling away, and they don’t know when that’s gonna stop. The fact is, they started this evacuation late, and got held up too many times. Survival was never guaranteed. They did their best.

“Okay, bad news!” Cash says seconds later. “The brake broke! I’ve lost control!”

Suddenly, as if in response to Cash’s problem, a large object flies in from the side, and slams into the front of the railcart. There is no time to figure out what it is. Two people are catapulted forward, one of them being Aeterna, and the other unknown with their IMS fully on. They arch over the object, and down into the bowels of the planet. Having finished saving the cart, the beetloid drone reopens its elytra, and reengages its rotowings. It dives down into the abyss. They hold their breaths and wait, too afraid to move on this precarious cart. It could tip over too at any second, and they want the beetloid free to rescue them again, so they’re gonna let it finish its latest mission. After a minute or two, it darts back into view, and lands safely on the tracks behind them.

Only one person is sitting on its head. They slide off, and appear to be hyperventilating, but otherwise alive. Tertius looks over at Breanna. “I missed out on 200 years with my daughter. I just got her back. I can’t abandon her again.” He leans back and lets himself fall into the chasm. Okay, he may have survived the pyrotornado somehow, but they’re not surviving that!

“We need to go,” Cash says.

Breanna doesn’t move. She’s looking out at the impassable new obstacle, thinking about the Valerians, and in general how deep of shit they’re in.

“Bre! We have to go!” Cash urges.

Breanna nods, then follows the group off the cart. They all stop and look back when they hear the sound of metal scraping against metal. The cart has finally slipped over the edge itself. “Go into a light jog, but slow down if the tracks start to feel unstable. We wanna get as far from that thing as possible, but not if that means falling over the edge anyway. Even away from that chasm, we’re pretty high up.

They go a little under a kilometer back southwards before finding a ladder to climb down to the surface, where they start walking westwards, trying to see where the new chasm ends. A young woman named Calypso rushes up to Breanna. She’s the one who fell over with Aeterna. “Why did it save me? Why did it save me and not her?”

Breanna looks over at the beetloid, which is walking alongside them like a loyal dog. It’s a specialized service drone. She’s not exactly an expert on them, but she wouldn’t have thought they programmed it with any sense of duty to rescue humans. But maybe they did, or maybe someone modified it aftermarket, or maybe it’s learning. “I can’t say for sure, but my guess is it calculated the likelihood of survival. Had it not caught you, and brought you back up, you would have fried in the toxic gases before your body could have hit the bottom. Aeterna was practically naked. It probably figured that she was already dead. There was no point in trying to rescue both of you, and losing the one person who might still stand a chance.”

“Is she? Is she dead?”

“If she’s not, I don’t know how she would get out of that. You don’t really sink in lava, but that’s because your body would be incinerated on the surface. But if she’s a god, and can survive that, she might not be able to get out anyway. I can’t imagine we’ll be seeing either of those two ever again.” That’s what they assumed last time, however.

“There,” Cash says, pointing. “That hill takes us high enough.”

“High enough for what?” Breanna asks.

“To parachute. We’ll glide across the ravine, and land on the other side. The plumes of gas actually help us. It won’t be easy, but it’ll get us there.”

“Well, you remember that the two of us don’t—” Breanna tries to begin.

“It will get us there,” Cash interrupts.

Brenna shakes her head, and looks at her wrist interface. “It’s already quite hot. The day side is drawing closer. We shouldn’t go that far west.”

“We won’t be there long,” Cash justifies. “We’re just gonna jump off and go, and then we’ll scramble back to the Terminator Line, and continue northwards.”

“Fine. Let’s take a vote,” Breanna says. “Fair warning, your parachutes might not make it. Those fumes are dangerous. We’ll have to teach you how to control them, you might need to change directions midflight, and you still might come up short. I will say,  there’s nothing for you on this side. The northern pole is the only option.”

And so the group heads for the hill in the middle distance. Breanna and Cash choose not to tell the others that there’s a problem.

“Wait, what about that thing?” Cash suggests.

“That?” Breanna looks at the Beetloid again. “That can only hold one person.”

“We could play Rock, Paper, Scissors for it?”

Microstory 2621: We’ll Build That Bridge When We Come to It, and We’ll Do it in Style

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August 26, 2526. The cataclysm has escalated. The ring fault surrounding the southern pole has torn open. Rivers of lava flow through the chasms, threatening to incinerate any who would fall to their deaths below. People are cut off from each other. Some successfully made it across before the mountains pulled away from each other, or already lived in the safe zone. Others could not make it in time. Soon, the land beneath their feet will turn to soup, or some other hazard will end their lives. Something must be done to bring these people back together. A bridge must be built. No one has ever constructed anything like this before, and certainly not at scale, but they are not wholly unprepared. The southern polar region is more mountainous than the north. That is the primary reason why it has fewer domes at this point, and why it is less populated. It is more difficult to travel between domes, and traditional forms of engineering are both tedious and slow. That is why they have been experimenting with new forms of construction, including the fast-woven graphene lattice.

Instead of laying blocks of material on one end, and slowly adding farther and farther towards the other side, drones fly clear across the gap. Fewer refugees are seeking shelter in the southern pole. An entire quarter of the Terminator Line is even more mountainous than the cap. And one advantage they have compared to the north is a newly built dome that is recently sealed, presently uninhabited, and fully available for temporary housing. So instead of dealing with an untenable onslaught of people, the leadership was able to dedicate resources to researching the threats. They realized that the ground was about to break, and began to plan for that as an eventuality. They still have to hurry, but this will work, as long as they’re careful.

They chose a spot where the two edges of the chasm are particularly close together. It’s not quite in the center of the Terminator Line, but they have sent volunteers in both directions in parallel to the chasm, on the dangerous side, to direct refugees to the right spot to cross. They have been gathering in an emergency pressurized inflatable habitat, but it’s quickly reaching capacity, so it’s time to make this happen. Timing is everything.

The southern pole is a little different than the rest of the planet. It’s run by an advisory-administrative government. There are two delegator boards, which come to decisions independently, and compare notes before making a joint decision, which they then delegate to the administrators. Each delegation includes a skeptic. It’s unfair to call them uneducated, but they are definitely meant to be out-of-the-box thinkers who are meant to question everything that they’re told. If you say left, they say right. If you say right, they say wrong. If you say wrong, they say wrung. Their job is to fight you, even when you start agreeing with them. It’s the devil’s advocate for the secular world. That’s what Thadeus Hogan’s role is, and he was here to make sure that what they were doing made sense. He’s done that, so now he’s mostly just here to watch.

Thadeus stands on the edge of the cliff. His consciousness is backed-up, both on the ground, and in orbit, but he’s tethered to a safety anchor in case he slips over the edge, and doesn’t want to waste time in a respawn pod.

“Ready!” the ordnance foreman cries from the perch. “Ready!” he repeats. “Fire!”

The artillery engineers activate the railguns. The cryogenic warheads soar through the air, arch over the chasm, and then plummet into the depths.

“Can I get closer?” Thadeus asks. When his guide nods, he leans over. The bombs crash into the toxic lava below. He can’t actually see it, but he sees the change. The thermal updrafts change from a sickly reddish color to gray. It just looks like steam.

“Why did we do that again?”

“We just froze the topmost layer of that lava,” his guide explains again. She knows he’s like this. Asking the same question multiple times is his duty, because if your answer changes, how can you be confident in it? “The fumes were chaotic and unpredictable, and just too much for the drones to handle. They were designed to fly in the Proxima Doma’s thin atmosphere, but to make that work, they’re slow. By switching from fumes to vapor, they fly through much more manageable paths. They surf the air, and safely find purchase on the other side.”

As the ordnance foreman sits back down, the head drone operator stands to take his place. “Prepare the drones!” she orders. “You have two minutes!” This is just in case something has gone wrong. They are a well-oiled machine, and the drones have been ready for hours. They had to wait to begin constructing the bridge to make sure the ground was stable enough. There is no point in building a bridge if the gap is going to widen another kilometer by the time everyone manages to cross it. He’s keeping one eye on his launchers, and the other on the barometric technician.

The technician is tracking the shifting composition of the air, and waiting for that perfect moment. He lifts his hand in the air. The head drone operator takes one last look at the launchers, but then focuses right on the tech. “Hold! Hold!” No reason he can’t have a little fun with it. This is a momentous occasion. Finally, he slams his hand down.

“Launch!” the head drone operator orders.

The drones fire into the unprecedentedly thick atmosphere. Thadeus loses direct eyesight of them too, but watches their progress through augmented reality. And he can still see the graphene scaffolding that the drones are pulling, spindling out like a silkworm’s silk. The drones are flying in pretty close tandem, but the pressure gradient isn’t perfectly smooth, so some lose attitude, and have to regain formation. Once they’re on the other side, they drop anchor, slamming hard into the ground, and digging in. Volunteers on the other side drive over in their rovers, and lower their suspension into hunker mode to provide extra support. It’s not sophisticated, but every kilogram helps.

“Launch the weavers!” the head drone operator orders now. The smaller drones fly along the skeleton lines. They distribute themselves along them, and begin wrapping the webbing around, over the gaps between them, and around each other’s lines. Over and under, over and under. They build tensile strength in perfect synchrony, and what results looks like a fully stable, strong, and lifesaving bridge.

The convoy master is on the perch now, having ordered the test rovers to the end of the bridge. The drones have finished their jobs, and it’s time to make sure the bridge will hold, and not kill anyone who tries to drive on it. The foreman nods her head, all the drones are back. The convoy master simply points to the rovers, and doesn’t say a word. The operators let them go, at high speed for the ultimate stress test. They make it to the other side. They go a hundred kilometers an hour, and make it there in two minutes.

“Send the first wave!”

Microstory 2486: Estuaridome

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There is a mountain under this dome, which is nearly all natural, and a river flowing from it. It’s not a particularly long river, but it’s necessary to support the star of the show, which is of course, the estuary. Like Nordome Network, this is not only one dome. It’s connected to the one next to it, but it’s unique in that it connects to a non-standard-sized dome. An estuary doesn’t just mark the end of a river. It serves as the transition between a river and the ocean, so in order for this to work, they needed an ocean. Sure, they could have dug a mini-ocean inside this dome just to get the point across, but why do that when you can simply choose a spot that’s next to a full-sized ocean, which they were doing anyway? Estuaridome butts right up against Aquilonian Deep. They share an atmosphere, and you can travel between them freely, either by boat, or along the bank / shore. There’s nothing to do here, really. You can’t camp overnight. You can’t have parties, or participate in water sports. You can have a nice picnic, and obviously, you can go on a hike. You can climb the mountain, or just sit and enjoy the peace. But you can’t do anything disruptive, destructive, or annoying. There is a tour you can take, if you don’t want to be self-guided. I took that one day, then came back to just be alone the next. The tour guide was very knowledgeable, and you could tell that he was a human who studied all this stuff on purpose, rather than a superintelligence who simply downloaded the data. He will tell you all about this estuary, and what kind of life lives there, but he can also answer questions about other estuaries on Earth. But just Earth. He has not studied other habitable planets in the galaxy, nor even other water-based domes on Castlebourne. That’s not a complaint, just a warning to direct your questions appropriately. That’s all I’ll say about this. It’s nice and enjoyable, but it isn’t revolutionary, and it’s not any better than a natural geographic fixture.