Microstory 2687: Then She Winks

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The eruption is pretty cool, though probably less spectacular than if they let it spew everything all over the place. The two of them watch it for a few minutes, but Resi isn’t paying that much attention to the glory. It’s not what’s really on his mind. “Are you my sister?” he asks the woman quietly.

“Yes,” Kala replies. “I’ve been alive for over a hundred years now.”

“So you chose Kinkon.”

“I told you, we don’t do things that way anymore. There’s no sorting. The people who live on this island live simply, but they don’t do much work. They do some, to be sure, but most of it’s automated. It blends into the background, you don’t even notice it. There are some androids, which perform more of the front end labor, so they just look like regular people. This is still a very natural environment, and what can’t remain perfectly natural is simulated. If you take issue with it, getting your full memories back might help. Understanding where you came from, long before Yana, might give you some perspective. I don’t know how you feel about it, though.”

“What about everyone else I knew? Our parents, our siblings? My Fold, my House? Is everyone still alive? Did they all choose this route?”

“Not everyone, everyone,” Kala answers. “But most people did, yes. They decided that that’s what you were trying to do for them. Your legacy lived on after you. In terms of specifics, Caprice is still here, as is our sister. Chaya moved to Castlebourne, and I think our brother did too, but he may have gone somewhere else instead. Arumay moved to Varkas Reflex, and uploaded herself to a virtual environment, so she doesn’t have a physical body anymore. Our parents chose to remain as they were, so they’re long dead. I think that’s pretty much it, I don’t remember anyone else.”

“Kartica,” Resi says. “A.K.A. Speaker Lincoln. What happened to her?”

Kala frowns. “She died next to you a hundred years ago. Her consciousness was no longer streaming to the network, so she couldn’t be revived. She saved us in the near-term. Her sacrifice was just as impactful as yours. The Assembly letting her die was a major crime. There are laws that prevent you from being reckless with disposable bodies, especially those you don’t own. But murder? Straight up murder, where there is no coming back; that is still the big one. The colonial establishment couldn’t let it slide, even though they were part of a different network. The culprits were all locked up, and I lost track of them, but the important thing is they lost all of their power.”

“Wait, father was like us. He was backed up. Why is he dead now?”

“He could be backed up,” Kala corrects. “He fell in love with our mother, so he cut his own consciousness stream, and chose to let his body die, and with it, his mind. The laws surrounding that are complex and nuanced, but suicide is not illegal, as long as they prove that’s what it is, and not a complicated form of homicide.”

“I wish I could apologize now, for everything,” Resi admits. ‘To everyone.”

“This is why we live the way that we do. What father did was a choice. When I was a kid, there was no choice. I was going to die, that was just it. Whether you realized it or not, that is what you were fighting for; the freedom to choose our own destinies. The Houses were stopping us from that, and we’re grateful they’re gone.”

“I’m happy for you, but I don’t know what I want to do now...what to choose.”

“Why don’t you sleep on it?” Kala suggests. Then she winks.

Microstory 2684: Whoops

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Resi is walking across the jagged rock at the bottom of the caldera now, dodging these scary vents in the ground. He did not pay attention in school when they discussed this stuff. Again, it wasn’t important for his future, and the teachers didn’t think so either, so they didn’t get mad when students didn’t do great on science assignments. It is freezing cold, though, except for those gases. They make him cough, and gave him a huge headache. The center. He has to reach the absolute center. It’s poetic, right? That makes the most sense. So he just keeps moving forward. He kind of has to. Whenever he tries to stop, the rubber soles of his shoes begin to melt. It doesn’t feel too hot here, except when he touches the ground with his hand. God, it’s so weird. This place is weird.

Being this close, it certainly feels like the thing could explode at any moment. The air is still, but there’s a vibration all around. To be fair, he could be imagining it. If all these gases are toxic, it would explain the headaches, and the little bit of giggling that he thinks he’s doing. He can’t remember. He just keeps walking, heading for that big dream vision in the sky. Maybe he should walk faster, lest he die before he gets there.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” a voice asks from behind him.

“The time gods?” Resi asks, looking up. “Is that you?”

“It’s Kartica, you idiot!” she scolds, catching up to him. She is hard to hear with that banana over her face. Banana? Bandana. It’s either really smart, or totally useless.

“What’s the big deal? What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” she fires back at him. “You’re going to get yourself killed. You don’t have any protection whatsoever.”

“Yeah, I do. I have a coat on.” He tries to show her. “Oh. Well, it was on a minute ago.” Oh, that’s right. It was too green, so he took it off. “And anyway, I’m still on the hunt for that vision. This is the one place we’ve not yet tried.”

“How did you expect to get back if it kills you first?” Kartica presses.

“I was going to call you guys and tell you what I saw. I had it all planned out. I was going to detail my vision to you, and then at the very last second, with my dying breath, I would start my final sentence, and then not be able to finish it.”

“You planned on failing?”

“It was gonna bring you three together, and together, you would figure out what the last few words were gonna be, and save the day at the very last second.”

“Quite a few very last seconds you have there, Res. And, um, tell me. How were you going to call us without a phone?” She holds up Caprice’s satellite phone.

He pats his chest and hips. “Oh. Whoops.”

“Whoops?” she echoes. “Just the fate of our island on the line, and whoops? Resi, you’re already sick on top of the toxic fumes this place has to offer. And that’s on top of you just not being that bright of a person in the first place. You are the worst person to do this job, you’re just all we got. So please, lean on your friends.”

“Are you my friend?” Resi asks. “Because I seem to recall you infiltrating my House, trying to make us look bad, and then trying to frame me for your murder.”

“That was the old me,” she insists.

“Wait, shut up!”

“What?”

“Shut up, shut up!” he urges. “I’m getting a vision.” He falls to the ground.

Extremus: Year 127

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Things were weird on the ship after the announcement came through that Admiral Oceanus Jennings was dead. People seemed to be alarmed and upset by the news. They would say things like he was too young, and that it wasn’t his time. Waldemar’s advisors explained the morale was down as a result of the sad development. Morale? Morale? Because somebody died? He was an old man, he wasn’t gonna live forever anyway. Waldemar will never understand this relentless pursuit of the past. It happened, get over it. You’re still alive, so don’t stop now. There’s more work to do. It’s been two years now, and things have not improved much. If Waldemar knew how the passengers, and especially the crew, would react, he never would have done it. Who knew that killing someone would have consequences? They didn’t teach that in school. They just said that murder was bad, and assumed everyone would understand and agree. He’s been smart, though. He hasn’t been contradicting them. Taking Silveon’s general life advice, he has been letting people feel what they feel. It’s been getting in the way of his plans, though. Extremus is in a slump.

Everyone is afraid of change. It is a core property of humans, actually, and all life. Sure, evolution necessarily leads to change, but everything is in search of equilibrium. Everything wants to find a way to live where they can be centered and happy. Change isn’t only scary, it requires high cognitive load, and the formation of new muscle memory. So in the end, it’s not as much about the fear of the unknown as it’s about laziness. Change requires putting in effort; mentally, physically, emotionally. Waldemar is probably no different than most people, except for the emotional side of things. He doesn’t want to work too hard. So why is all this change that he is trying to institute not a problem for him in particular? Well, it’s because his mental state is already there. He sees what the world should be, so his brain wants to do work. Even when it was originally working through the problems, though, it wasn’t too taxing, because it felt right. That’s the equilibrium that his mind is searching for. Change is the goal. That’s what his therapist-in-a-box says anyway. He’s been relying on her a lot these days.

“Why do you think that is?” Dr. Wholth asks in that soft voice of hers, which is likely meant to keep her patients calm.

“Why am I relying on you so much?” Waldemar guesses. “You’re the only person I can talk to who can’t get upset about the terrible things I’ve done, and can’t rat me out to anyone about them.”

Dr. Wholth is an airgapped program, loaded into a self-contained device, powered by interchangeable fuel cells. She has no access to the internet, and no one else has access to her. They don’t even know about her. He created her himself. He took the base personality of the ship’s freely available virtual companion, and copied it onto this offline machine. He then fed it all of the psychological, psychiatric, and therapeutic information he could find. She even knows a little bit of medicine, though she wouldn’t be able to do anything to help physically since she’s only a hologram. “You don’t think you can trust Silveon or Audrey anymore? You used to lo— be quite attached to them.” He didn’t program her to make little mistakes like that. As he is not a tech developer, he can’t figure out how to remove it from her core code.

“To be honest, I’m getting rather tired of them. I used to crave stability and predictability, but now I just want a fresh start. I want new people. I think I needed them before. I don’t think that I’ve learned I never needed them. I think I genuinely changed. I’m proof that it can happen.”

“That’s good, that’s good,” she says encouragingly. “You’re getting better at understanding your own behavior, and feeling less robotic; your words.”

He laughs. She is always acting like she can offend him, but she really can’t. He knows that she’s just zeroes and ones. She sometimes acts afraid too, like when he talks about the people he’s killed. She seems worried that he will do the same to her. Which he might. He shuts her off every time he’s done using her, and her consciousness does not continue until he switches her back on. He could one day choose to never complete that second step ever again. He could open the device up, and break all of her circuits apart. He sometimes considers that, just so he can end a life without any risk of consequences. He wouldn’t even need to contact his secret police for help covering it up.

“What are you thinking about, Waldemar? You’ve been quiet for the last couple of minutes,” Dr. Wholth says.

He wants to get a reaction, so he tells her the truth about his most recent thoughts.

Dr. Wholth nods. “Then perhaps that’s what we should do.”

“You want me to break your logic board?” Waldemar questions.

“No. I want you to find a healthy way to explore your urges and compulsions. You told me about your virtual honeymoon, and you told me about the game that you invented, but it doesn’t sound like you use such technology regularly.”

“Well, there’s nothing to do in VR,” he starts to explain. “Nothing is real. Even if you’re presented with problems to fix, the best solution to every single one of them is to simply log off. So I just don’t see the purpose.”

She sets her pencil and paper down, showing more of the lingerie she’s wearing. He just feels more comfortable talking to people like this, whether they’re real or not. He thinks it’s because she looks more vulnerable, and less of a threat to him. “People tend to require more than what is immediately around them. Have you ever heard of deep space hermits?” She poses.

“Yeah, they’re the guys who hollow out an asteroid, and just live alone for centuries. Doesn’t sound so bad. If I had no ambition...”

“If all they wanted to do was survive, they could live for millions of years off of that one asteroid. They would have a bed if they were still organic enough to sleep. They would have food, water, basic life support. They could recycle their waste, and never need anything else. Their habitat could be the size of your water closet. But what kind of life is that? It’s worse than a simulation, because there’s not even the illusion of something happening. They always have VR, AR, and-or larger infrastructure to provide them with stimuli. It may sound like they went out there to be alone, but they instead go out to be in control. Your problem, Captain Kristiansen is you don’t have very much control. Sure, you’re in charge, but you rely on others to make things happen. You need them to make their own decisions, or things will fall apart. You can’t handle it all on your own, and I don’t think you would want to. But if you really want to feel in control, you need to construct your own world to inhabit. You won’t live there permanently, but it might be a nice escape. You’re still human, Captain. Your brain is wired differently, but you share a lot of traits with others. I think you get so wrapped up in what sets you apart that you miss the similarities.”

“Well, the program would have to be isolated, like you. I wouldn’t feel free if other users can show up, and see what I’m doing.”

“That goes without saying,” Dr. Wholth says. “I could help you write the program, so we don’t have to involve anyone else. There’s more than enough extra room on my data drives for a single, original environment. We could even hold sessions in there. I know you sweep this room for bugs every day. Those wouldn’t matter in the construct. It would all be in your head...and mine, so to speak.”

“I could hurt people in a judgment free zone? I could make any choice I wanted.”

“Exactly,” Dr. Wholth confirmed. “I said I could be there, but it doesn’t have to be in my capacity as a therapist, or not every time. I have other characteristics. I could be your friend, your lover, even your enemy. You explore parts of yourself that you can’t in the real world, and when you log out, you go back to your regular life. All of that pent up aggression has been released, and no one has to see it. No one has to know. I think it would make you a better captain. I think it would make you a better leader. If you want to raise morale, it starts at the top. When you’re stressed out, so is everyone else. You need to show them what happiness looks like.”

“I don’t really do happiness,” he reminds her.

“No, that’s not true,” she claims, shaking her head. “You can be happy. It’s a common misconception that people with personality disorders don’t have emotions. You absolutely do. You just need to learn better what they look like on the outside. You’ve been doing a great job. Silveon helped you, Audrey helped, even Sable helped with that. And of course I have. But there’s something else in the background that’s holding you back from greatness. Let the simulations pull that off of you, so you can become your best self. I’m not trying to change you into someone else, just the better you.”

“Okay, you’ve convinced me,” Waldemar decides. “I’m in. We won’t start today, though. Go back in your little box so I can get back to work. We’ll talk later.”

“Yes, sir, Captain, sir,” she says respectfully before flickering off.

“Ugh, I thought she would never leave.” Sable appears from the bathroom.

Waldemar jumps to his feet. “How long have you been there?”

She smirks. “Long enough to know that VR isn’t going to help. You’re too smart. You’ll always know it’s not real.” She approaches slowly, almost sexily.

“I don’t know what you think you heard...” he begins to argue.

“Shh.” She places a finger upon his lips. “Relax. You think I didn’t know what you were when I met you?” She grabs his arm muscles. “A big strong man like you runs on pure testosterone.” She growls.

“What do you want, Sable?” They’ve not slept together in the last few weeks. He just kind of got tired of that too.

“Kill me,” she offers. “You want to feel something real? Kill me. I can take it.” What the hell does that mean, she can take it?

“I’m not going to do that.” He might have to, though.

Sable giggles. “Fine. Then I guess I’ll go make an announcement over the PA system, telling everyone what you really are.”

Okay. Now he does have to stop her. But he’ll just put her in his private brig until he can figure out what to do with her. He takes her by the wrist so she can’t teleport away. She spins around as she’s pulling a pocketknife out of her pants, and jams it into his leg. She giggles again. So he does what she asks, and kills her. Dr. Wholth might have been wrong. Even this has lost its charm. He may be getting tired of hurting people too.

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Extremus: Year 126

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Admiral Oceanus Jennings stands between Captain Kristiansen and his bride, Sable Keen. The audience is noticeably uncomfortable, if not outright disgusted. Even Waldemar’s sycophants don’t like what’s happening in this holographic grand cathedral. They won’t do or say anything about it, but they’ll have their private thoughts, and maybe share a few whispers. As for the happy couple, they couldn’t be happier. The Captain has become much better at feigning emotions. It almost looks like he’s in love with this girl. Oceanus hasn’t been made privy to all the secret meetings that Admiral Keen has with her daughter, and the rest of the braintrust, so he just has to hope that this is all part of some elaborate plan. There’s no way she actually likes this guy. She’s so sweet and intelligent. Even if her mother never told her anything about what he really is, surely she would just pick up on it.

The Admiral obviously doesn’t want to be here, let alone be officiating, but it’s his responsibility since this such a high-profile event involving a crewmember. There’s only one other person here qualified to perform the ceremony, and no one bothered to ask her. She’s not even here, which is understandable, and really not a scandal. Or if it is, it’s cancelled out by the reason she declined the invitation. Sable is an adult now. There’s nothing illegal about this. But it makes people feel icky. Not only is there a significant age difference, but he’s also in an immense position of power. There are protesters, but they have not been allowed into the auditorium. Oceanus passed a message onto them, begging them to stay quiet. He can’t tell them that it’s because he fears for their lives, but there is only so much he can do. He doesn’t outrank the Captain. He’s only an advisor, and it’s time for him to begin today’s responsibility.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today,” Oceanus begins. It’s an uncommon turn of phrase on the ship. Waldemar evidently heard it in a movie or two, and he has a fixation on tradition—not Extremusian traditions, specifically ones that they don’t typically follow. He proceeds to drone on and on about love and loyalty, following the script that Waldemar handed him word for word, including the few typos. If asked about it later, he’ll just say that he’s become so accustomed to speeches that the words travel right from the screen to the microphone, bypassing his brain entirely. It’ll be fine, they’re not that bad, and people have bigger things to worry about.

After the ceremony comes the reception. Oceanus thought he was done with his part in this charade, but Waldemar surprises him with a call to toast. He didn’t prepare anything, so he has to wing it. Other toasters dropped subtle clues about the extent of their disapproval, but he was entirely noncombative, because what would be the point? How does it help anyone, getting yourself chucked into hock? Errr, rather, the brig. He mostly sticks with love and loyalty, and drives home how lucky Sable is to find someone so amazing, adding in some anecdotes about Waldemar’s work ethic and tenacity. Fifty points to Oceanus, he didn’t throw up even once during the entire ordeal. When it’s a feasible time to duck out quietly, he goes back towards the bow, but instead of going to his quarters, he heads for the office that he shares with Lataran. Waldemar has made a lot of changes to Extremus, but Admiral Gardens remains untouched. Oh good, she’s here. “I want in.”

Lataran is busying herself with nonsense work. Waldemar has his own advisors, and has never asked to their help with anything. “You want in to what?”

“Whatever you, Silveon, Audrey Husk, and even Sable are up to, I want to be a part of it. I don’t want to sit on the sidelines anymore. I want you to tell me the plan.”

She sighs, and returns to her tablet. “There is no plan.” This may not be the right time to talk to her. Her daughter just married a monster, and she couldn’t bring herself to watch it happen. It must have been so difficult for her, being unable to stop it.

“Please. You can trust me,” he insists. “I know you know that. We may not have always gotten along, but we can agree that we have to protect the ship from him.”

She sighs again, more annoyed this time. “I’m not icing you out. There really is no plan. We did have plans, but Sable ruined them when she married him.”

“That wasn’t what you all wanted?”

“No,” she begins to explain. “That was Audrey’s job. She’s...older than she looks, and knew what she was getting into. Sable doesn’t understand what’s at stake. I don’t know why we agreed to let her be part of this at all, but this wedding was a bridge too far. So I’m out. I’m old and dying, and she has to make her own choices. I’ve already talked to her about it ad nauseum. I guess they were more like fights. But either way, whatever we were trying to do together, that’s over now. She’s made it clear that she’ll be pivoting him away from us, so she can have him all to herself. There’s nothing left to do but accept it. Whatever Extremus becomes, that will be what it is.”

“So we just fade into the background?”

“While we’re alive? Yes.” She shakes her tablet slightly. “I’m writing a book. It outlines the truth—my truth, and will be published posthumously. I’m still deciding who will be responsible for that. It could place those who survive me in danger, including my daughter. But I can’t sit with these thoughts in my head anymore. I have to get them out. If you’re struggling with the same hopelessness, you might look for your own outlet.”

“I prefer to fix things while I’m still alive,” he says.

She presses a button on her desk, causing the walls to start to extend and wrap around her work area. She never used privacy mode when Tinaya was working alongside her. Now she activates it all the time. “Good luck with that,” she says just before it seals her up completely.

Oceanus moves on to Silveon. He basically asks him the same thing, and Silveon basically responds the same way that Lataran did. “My mission had an expiration date. I didn’t know it when I started, but I’ve lost my way in. She has taken over everything. We did not factor in the possibility that someone new in this timeline would usurp control over the situation. It was always a possibility, of course. That’s what happens when you change history. I suppose this might have even been inevitable, thanks to my actions. One thing that Waldemar was not in the old timeline was welcoming. He didn’t have close advisors, or personal relationships. He only had loyal subjects. I gave him this. I taught him how to connect with others. I showed him how to marry a girl. I don’t know if I should regret it or not, because the plan was to make him more human. Unfortunately, this is what that looks like.”

He goes to Audrey now, who he expects to find distraught in her new quarters. They are a far cry from the luxury of the Captain’s Stateroom. She doesn’t seem to care, about her living arrangements, nor Waldemar’s new wife and life. “Sable has powers.”

“What?”

“She has time powers.”

“Which ones?” Oceanus presses.

“I don’t know, but she was a kid when we brought her into the fold. We shouldn’t have done that. She somehow made us. When we switched bodies—”

“You switched bodies?” he interrupts.

“Yes, I forget who knows what. She doesn’t know how to paint.”

“Oh, right. She did that portrait. It looks good.”

“It shouldn’t,” Audrey counters. “I had only started when she forced her way back into her mind. When I say we switched bodies, that isn’t entirely truthful. I took over hers, but we placed her in a constructed dream, made to look exactly as the Extremus was when she went under. We took sensor data from all over, and fed it into the program. It extrapolated what would happen if Sable were really still there. She somehow broke through the illusion, and took back over. I don’t know how she did that, and I don’t know how that painting got finished.”

“It sounds like you’re done with the mission, like Lataran. That’s how she put it.”

“That’s how we put it to each other,” Audrey tells him sadly.

“Do you understand Sable’s motives? Did you get anything from the experience? If she learned to paint, did you learn to...use whatever gifts she has?”

“Well, I felt her power, before she proved she had it. And at the same time, I...”

“Go on. You can trust me. I want to help.”

“I felt something else,” Audrey finally says. “I don’t know how to articulate it. It was...ambition? Or maybe yearning? I don’t know, but she wants something. She is singularly focused on it. Honestly, it reminded me of Waldemar, sometimes when I’ve looked into his eyes. I’ve never seen it in her eyes, though. She’s either good at hiding it, or I’m crazy. But it scared the shit out of me. I wouldn’t recommend consciousness transference tech unless you really know the person you’re switching with.”

Oceanus nods, taking in all the information, and trying to fill in the gaps. It’s not much to go on. Even if no one else is trying to fight it, he can’t stop. He’ll go it alone if he has to. He cares too much about Extremus, and the mission. He cares about it at the expense of himself. “You can’t really know anyone, can you? Except for yourself.”

“Maybe,” she answers. “Maybe not even then.”

“You did once; trusted yourself. You went back in time, to your younger body.”

“I was desperate.”

“I am too,” he states plainly.

She shakes her head. “Don’t even think about it. You don’t have enough information. Silveon and I spent years curating historical variables, and we still missed things. Time travel is never the answer. The teach that in school. I wish I had listened.”

“Give me the key,” he asks, calmly and dispassionately, but not hostilely.

“You know what? What does it matter? We might as well give it a second shot. I’m not gonna remember doing this, so here are the directions to the tech room.” She flings the data to his device. “Here are the codes.” She flings those too. “When you get to the past, would you do me a favor?”

“Anything, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my primary objective.”

She chuckles. “Don’t tell me or Silveon what you are, or anyone, really. If you have to tell us anything, just say you got intel from the Bridger Section, or something.”

“I promise, he lies. He walks out without saying goodbye, because she won’t remember it anyway. He walks down to the deepest bowels of the ship, and unlocks the room where the secret insurgent tech is apparently stored. He doesn’t know how to work the equipment, but it’s sufficiently self-explanatory. After making sure he has all the settings right, he climbs in the chair, and sends his mind back to his younger body.

Its over a year in the past, in 2394; the day of the portrait. It all started to fall apart here. Oceanus has to immediately break his promise to Audrey. The first thing he does is go to the Captain’s Stateroom to tell her to not go through the plan to force Sable into a virtual environment. Whatever she does in the real world, it’s better than pissing her off, and pushing her away from the group. He doesn’t even think he needs to know what exactly she’s after. Anything has to be better than letting Waldemar Kristiansen run around unchecked, unbalanced. They have to put up a united front, and that means being honest with each other.

Since he was never a part of any of that, he has no idea if it turns out all right. Like Audrey said, he only knows so many facts about the situation. He just has to hope that she listened to him. Telling her that he spoke with the Bridgers was never going to be enough. To be absolutely sure she believed him, he had to reveal that he knows about the secret room, and the secret portrait plan. He couldn’t be cryptic or vague. Now, whether she, Silveon, and Lataran actually listen to his advice is another story.

He returns to his stateroom to mourn the loss of his past self. It’s only hitting him now that he essentially murdered someone. He overwrote someone else’s consciousness. The fact that it was technically him, and not someone else, doesn’t really help. It was still a death, and one that he caused. That version of Oceanus is gone, and he will live with that guilt for a long time. The doorbell rings. He opens it without checking the feed. “Captain, this is unexpected. How did the portrait go?”

“Swimmingly,” Waldemar replies as he’s letting himself in without an invitation.

“How’s your wife?”

“Funny you should ask, because I was about to ask the same thing.”

“Sir?” Oceanus questions.

“I hear you stopped by for a visit.”

“Oh, yes. Briefly. We hadn’t spoken in a while. I just wanted to see how she was. I thought we might grab some tea, but she wasn’t up for it.”

Waldemar nods. “My secret service agents say that it wasn’t all that brief, that you were acting unusual, and that Audrey was rather upset when you left.”

“I’m sorry if she was, but I saw her in high spirits. I assure you, I didn’t hurt her.”

“Why would you even put such a thought into the universe? I didn’t suggest that.”

“I can see that you think something happened which didn’t. Your agents interpreted something that wasn’t there. Please don’t make this a thing.”

“It may be a thing, it might not. I can’t risk it. I can’t risk a scandal. I don’t care about her, but I care about my reputation. You’re endangering that. So you got to go.”

“You can’t kill me. I’m an admiral.”

Walder sports a feigned frown. “Aww, it’s cute that you think that matters. Admirals have never mattered. I never intend to become one. I will be the captain forever. And you’ll be dead. If you don’t fight it, it won’t hurt. You’re old. That’s all they’ll see. I’ll scrub all contradictory records.”

“They will see what you really are. Before you can start getting anything real done, beyond renaming the hock and Chief Medical Officer, they’ll see you.”

“That’s what they all think. Just before I end their life, everyone thinks they know me. But Admiral Jennings, I’m here to tell you...I’m not about to start making real changes. I’ve already begun.” He kills him.

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Microstory 2657: Revealed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My real name is Jiminy actually.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vanore breathes in.

Extremus: Year 123

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Waldemar teleports right into the room. He aimed perfectly so he’s standing right before the stasis pod. He looks down at the man inside. It’s unsettling to see this, even though he knows it’s not really him. It’s really about what the future holds, or rather what it might hold. When this mission was being planned over 120 years ago, their ancestors decided to ban most transhumanistic upgrades. That was stupid. It was a total mistake. He can’t go back and change that now, because he would not have been born in such a radically different timeline. He doesn’t really even care whether anyone else lives forever anyway. He only cares about himself, and maybe Audrey and Silveon. And this woman too, because she’s so loyal to him, and she practically begged him to be loyal right back. He will be, as long as she does what she’s told, but if she ever steps out of line, she’ll become one of his enemies. She knows this, and probably won’t do it.

“Oh, sorry,” Sevara says from her bedroom in her bad sexy voice. She’s wearing a silky pink robe, and nothing else. It’s hanging open, and barely showing him the goods, which she knows he likes. She’s such a thirsty bitch. “I was waiting for the doorbell.”

“Is it time?”

“It can be. If we revive him right now, he’ll die in a matter of hours. If we wait another couple of years, he’ll only last minutes. So it’s up to you.”

“Why did you call me then?”

She puts on her pouty face as she’s very slowly walking towards him, lifting her legs high. “I wanted to see you. It’s been so long. You’re always with that little whore.”

“Sable is not a whore,” he spits angrily.

“Sable?” Sevara questions with a tight frown. “Who the hell is Sable? I was talking about your wife. Audrey? Are you stepping out on me?”

“I chose you to torture Pronastus for me,” Waldemar argues. “I reached across time for you. This has never been about sex. You mean nothing to me. Once his torment is over, and he’s dead, I’ll be done with you.”

He forgets sometimes that normal people don’t like to hear the truth. She moves briskly the rest of the way, and backhands him against the chin. She is incredibly strong, so he drops to the floor. By the time he stands back up, she’s hovering her finger over a button. “When you contacted me from the future, I felt honored, but I was alone with this thing for years after I stole it from AI!Elder in the Frontrunner, and I have my own allies. Say one more unkind word to me, and I’ll clutch the son of a bitch. He will be just as young as you are today, and can go right back to impersonating you. We’ll put you in this thing instead so you can see what it feels like. Is that what you want? Do you want to throw everything we had away?”

Waldemar stands and wipes the blood from his lips. “Do you know the problem with walking around with only a sexy robe on?”

“That it’s wasted on a psychopath like you?”

“No, it leaves you unprotected.” He reaches for his sidearm, but succeeds only in palming his own hip. He looks down out of instinct, but he already knows it’s because his gun is no longer there.

Sevara swings her arm out from behind her back, and points his weapon at him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he reminds her. “They’re DNA-locked. Only I can fire that.”

She glances down at Waldemar’s clone in the pod, where Pronastus has been going insane for the last 114 years. “I know, dumbass. I have your DNA.” She shoots him in the gut and chest four times.

Waldemar, meanwhile, tips over again, but doesn’t fall to the floor. He’s on a bed, though it is not his own. It’s Silveon’s. He’s the only person he can trust, except for Audrey, but he certainly doesn’t want to bloody up their shared sheets. He’s not very comfortable in this position, and is about to slide off the edge. He pulls his injured body backwards to get more horizontal, then starts to remove his uniform. “Argh! Stupid bitch almost hit my heart! Argh!”

Silveon appears. He’s the only one who Waldemar exempted from the no teleportation rule, as long as he only ever does it where no one is looking. “What are you doing here?”

“I got shot, can’t you see?” He winces in pain. Is this what people feel like when they get overwhelmed by their emotions? Silvy tried to explain it to him once, and likened it to physical pain, but until now, Waldemar had never experienced quite this much pain.

“I can see that. I mean, why aren’t you in the infirmary? I’m not a doctor.”

“No one can know I got shot,” Waldemar argued. “I need you to get me into your parent’s Admiral’s Stateroom. I know you turned it into some kind of shrine, but if you left any surgical instrumentation in there, I need the codes.”

“It’s not a shrine, and there is no medical equipment in there. They took all that back after my parents died, so others could use it. Others...like you. You have privilege. The Chief Medical Officer has to keep your status confidential.”

“Unless my condition threatens the security and continuity of the mission,” he argues. “I need total privacy!” He doesn’t know why he’s yelling. If the locked stateroom doesn’t have what he needs, then it doesn’t have it, and that’s not Silveon’s fault. Waldemar knows that. He’s just in so much pain right now, and can’t think straight. At least one of the bullets is still in there. He can feel it, picking at his insides.

Silveon sighs. “Okay, I’m gonna teleport you somewhere, but it’s probably gonna hurt more than it already does.”

“Just do it!” he commands.

Silveon slides his arms under Waldemar’s back and knees, triggering more screaming. He doesn’t pick him all the way up, he just needs to make enough contact to execute a safe teleportation. They jump to a small room. The lights are only now starting to turn on. They’re entirely alone. Waldemar is lying in a medical pod now. He’s never seen anything like this before in real life, though he recalls studying them in Earthan Developmental History class. His friend is tapping on the interface, starting to run the procedures. “I hope you’re not married to that uniform, because it’s gotta come off.”

Lasers appear from all angles, and begin to burn through Waldemar’s clothes. Claws come out of the walls and pull pieces of the fabric away, stuffing them into a little slot at his feet. He’s fully naked now, and can really see the damage. It’s a huge mess, there’s blood everywhere. It all goes away quickly, though, when more little tools come out and start cleaning him off. What’s left are four little holes which, given the size of a human body, make Waldemar almost feel like it’s not that big of a deal.

Silveon tilts his head at the screen. “It’s detecting that the bullets are ferromagnetic. Most aren’t, but yours are. Did you shoot yourself?”

“Of course not!” He sighs before adding, “but it was my gun.”

“Who shot you?”

“Would you just get them out? Why does it matter?”

“The tool matters,” Silveon explains. A very thin cable with a light on the tip emerges from the wall now, and bobs around like a snake threatening to strike. It dives into one of Waldemar’s wounds, returning rather quickly with one of the bullets stuck to the end. It didn’t even hurt coming out. It’s very precise. It dives in two more times to extract the other two bullets. The fourth must have gone through-and-through. “Ultra-advanced, or advanced?”

“Huh?”

“Do you want the treatment process to be ultra-advanced, or just advanced?”

“What’s the difference?” Waldemar questions.

“They’re both illegal, Silveon begins. “But one involves more probes going in to make repairs, and the other is simply an injection of nanites, which make those same repairs internally, and if necessary, harvest your waste tissue to replicate themselves.”

“How did you find this pod? How do you know about it?”

“Do you want treatment, or not, and if so, what kind?”

Silveon has always had his secrets. Even though Waldemar doesn’t understand emotion, he is a student of behavior. His friend was extremely precocious as a child, which is why they were even capable of getting along despite a significant age gap. Since he’s been so helpful throughout his life, Waldemar generally lets him keep those secrets, but this is a big one. As he said, this technology is illegal on Extremus, and more than enough to put Silveon in hock for the rest of his life. Waldemar doesn’t want that, and won’t let it happen, but he has to give him something. He has to provide answers. First things first, though, he needs treatment. “Let’s split the difference. Let the pod itself fix my outside wounds, but then give me those nanos to finish the job.”

As the glass lid curves around him, more tools come out. One sticks him in the arm, and recedes again. Waldemar begins to feel very hot. Even when cooling nozzles turn the environment into a refrigerator, the instruments are generating more than enough heat to keep him from shivering. He doesn’t know precisely what’s happening inside his body, but he knows that these little machines are doing something.

“The immediate threat will take eleven minutes in your condition,” Silveon tells him through the glass. “As for the deep tissue and muscles, it will take another couple of hours. I know you’re strong, but people will notice if you don’t rest while it’s happening. You just need to be patient. Once they’re done, it will be as if nothing ever happened. Tell me who shot you, so I can remediate the situation out there.”

“I need you,” Waldemar ekes out. Okay, he’s shivering a little now.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Silveon replies, a bit annoyed.

“I mean, I need you to be my personal steward. I should have promoted you a long time ago. No one else has been more helpful. Damn the optics.”

Silveon shakes his head. “We can talk about this later. Who shot you?”

Waldemar smiles. It must come with some kind of pain management drug. “I shot myself. I’m such an idiot.”

He’s irritated. Waldemar recognizes that emotion. “This pod is also a diagnostic tool. It scanned your body, and measured the trajectories. There’s just no way that you shot yourself, unless you have telekinesis, or you can make bullets curve.”

“It doesn’t matter, they won’t get another chance to hurt me.”

“Waldemar,” Silveon warns. “There are other ways to hurt you. Is Audrey safe?”

That’s a good question. “She might not be, but I’m not as worried about her as I am about Sable.”

“Sable? Sable Keen?” he questions. “What does she have to do with anything?”

“She and I have been...” He doesn’t wanna say. Silveon would not approve.

“Jesus. Double-U, she’s 23 years old.”

“Which is an adult,” Waldemar defends. “Don’t tell Aud. She would be devastated.”

“I know. I’ll place them both somewhere safe, but separately. Then we’re having a longer conversation about all of this. Don’t get up. You could do permanent damage to your body if you don’t let it finish the work. You are more than superficially hurt.” Silveon disappears.

The door swings open. “Ugh, I thought he would never leave.” It’s Pronastus. He’s still wearing Waldemar’s clone, but it’s no longer the old version of him. They look virtually identical now. She did it. That bitch Sevara really did it. Now this asshole can go right back to impersonating him. He worked so hard, rebuilding his image, and none of it matters. He made one mean comment to one of his sidepieces, and she completely derailed their plans. Emotions only screw things up. What more proof do you need?

“I should have killed you before. I should have taken the pod from her, hidden you somewhere else to serve out your sentence, and ended it on my terms.”

“That never could have happened,” Pronastus claims. “No paths lead to my death. I will always come back. I will always—” A fist comes out of nowhere, and jacks him in the temple, sending him hard into the floor. He never stands back up.

Sevara chuckles once as she looks down at the guy. Waldemar can see that she’s holding his sidearm loosely towards Pronastus, but he can’t see the man himself from this angle. “Thanks for finding him for me.” She shoots four more times. Waldemar doesn’t hear any coughing or gurgling, so he’s guessing it’s a headshot. She steps over the body, and leans towards the glass to tap on it with her finger. “Hey, there, fishy. Feeling trapped in your little bowl.”

What would Silveon do in this situation? Him, with all his rules about how to behave. He would say something sappy, like forgiveness or compassion. No, that doesn’t sound right. It’s close, but not quite there. Let’s think...right, forgiving her won’t work. She thinks she did nothing wrong. She thinks that Waldemar is the bad guy here, so he needs to let her think that. But how? Again, what would Silveon say? “I’m sorry.”

“What?” She was not prepared for that.

“I am sorry for hurting you. Our relationship means more to me than I was willing to show. I’ve just had to keep people at arm’s length my whole life. You know, because of my mother? She was an abusive drunk.”

“Oh, save it. You don’t have feelings, and you’re terrible at faking them.” She looks over at the control interface. “Let’s see, does this thing have a self-destruct, or can I suck out all the oxygen perhaps? What does this one do?” Music starts playing. “Ah, not that. Oh, whatever, I’ll just shoot you.” She points his gun at him once more.

“Exterior seal complete. Prioritizing internal regeneration,” the pod announces.

“What does that mean?” Sevara questions.

Waldemar pulls the lid open, and grabs her by the neck. “It means you’re dead.”

The fear in her eyes, it’s intoxicating. “I’m sorry for interrupting you earlier. You were in the middle of apologizing?” She gasps for air, but her trachea is being crushed.

“Not anymore. I’m done pretending. The real Waldemar has come out, thanks to you and Prony. Everyone on this ship will get on board with my new rules, or they’ll end up like you both.” He squeezes the life out of her. He forgot how good it feels.

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Microstory 2646: Little Miss Incredible

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Mandica’s eyelids flip open. The harsh fluorescent lighting irritates her eyes for a second before they dim. Everything dims, as if she’s wearing sunglasses. It’s cold, and she knows that, but she doesn’t feel the familiar sting of her body heat evaporating from her skin. She is just arbitrarily aware of it. The man is scared, or the doctor, because he’s wearing a lab coat. Reagan is there. He’s surprised too, but not scared. Mandica sits up to see him take out his sonic weapon, and utterly destroy the doctor. Wait. This isn’t a hospital, or if it is, a specific sector in it; probably in the basement. She’s not in a medical bed, but a drawer, and two dozen other closed drawers line the wall next to her. This is a morgue. They thought she was dead, and she ought to be, because if they didn’t even bother treating her, she shouldn’t have healed. She is not like these people.

Reagan steps closer to the mortician with his weapon, and keeps blasting until he’s sure the NPC is dead. He looks back over to Mandy. She’s entirely naked, the sheet having dropped down when she sat up, but she doesn’t care. He’s breathing heavily. “I’m sorry you had to see that, but we can’t have him submitting his periodic report.”

“How am I still alive?” Mandica asks him.

“I don’t know. You weren’t,” Reagan answers. “I came here to claim your body so I could prevent them from finding you, under the pretense of being responsible for your funeral arrangements, which I absolutely would have done to cover your tracks.”

“There’s something in my back,” she says as she’s trying to reach behind her. “It’s, like, hard and pulling at my skin. It doesn’t really hurt, but there’s something there.”

Reagan walks over and checks it out. “It’s, uhh...well...” He gives her a funny look, and then checks her back again. “It’s...”

“If you’re distracted by my bare ass, I’ll let you see it better later, just tell me what’s there. Did a shard of glass get embedded in my skin?”

“I’m not looking at your ass, and it’s not a shard, but...it might be glass. It’s glowing, though.”

“Glowing? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Here.” He takes out his handheld device, and snaps a photo of it, which he then shows to Mandica. It’s not glass. It appears to be the Philosopher’s Stone.

“What the fuh?” Mandica questions, having no words for this. It’s glowing all right, which she can tell even from it only being a still image.

“Do you... You don’t think it’s real, do you? The Philosopher’s Stone?”

“Well,” Mandica begins. “People die and come back to life all the time. It probably happens thousands of times each day on this planet alone. It’s not entirely out of bounds for someone to invent a stone that can somehow heal and resurrect. I doubt it’s anything that was made back in ancient times, but it can certainly exist now, can’t it?”

“Can I touch it? I really wanna touch it.”

“How deep is it in there?” The extent of the glow, and the lack of depth in the photo, make it hard to tell.

“It’s pretty deep. I don’t think touching it is going to knock it out.”

“Go ahead.” She sees him reach back there, and then she feels it. Oh, God, does she feel it. It is, quite frankly, orgasmic. That was not in the legends about alchemy. “Okay, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. A little goes a long way with that thing. Jesus.”

Reagan looks down at the dead mortician. “Someone else might show up at some point, We need to sneak you out of here. I’ll try to scrub the records. I don’t know what they keep track of, though, since this is probably the first true death in history.”

“Except it wasn’t,” Mandica points out. She swings her legs out from under the sheet, and hits the floor with a thud. How embarrassing. Has she gained weight? She tries to see her own reflection in the metal drawers, but they’re not reflective enough.

“That’s true. Here.” He takes off the mortician’s lab coat, and hands it to her.

It’s big enough to cover her, she just looks like she’s wearing shorts or a short skirt now. “The others? Did any of them survive?” she asks.

“Jaidia is recovering, and should be able to keep her substrate. Malika’s dead. I’ve not spoken with her yet. Ravensgate Rescuer is dead too. I don’t have her contact information for the outside world, but I’m guessing she’s pretty upset about it.”

“At least she gets a second chance.” She tries to push down on the door handle, and ends up tearing the whole thing off. Maybe she gained muscle weight. “Okay, are these buildings designed to be that easy to break to better simulate mayhem, errr...?”

“They are not,” Reagan says, coming up to inspect the damage. “If you wanna break something, you gotta be strong enough to do it.”

Mandica regards Reagan for a moment, then sticks her fingers in the hole where the handle once was. She grips it tight, and pulls the whole door off of its hinges.

“I’m thinking that stone is real, and it does more than bring people back to life.”

Mandica very gently sets the door down on its side, and lets it lean against the wall. “I probably should not have tested my newfound strength in such a public place.”

Reagan looks over his shoulder at the dead NPC. “Actually, maybe that’s exactly what you should do. Maybe you should do a lot more damage around here, so it will look like some supervillain came by. It would explain him, and where your dead body went, so we don’t have to locate and erase the records.”

She sighs through her nose. “I’m new to this—whatever this is—I don’t know what I’m doing.” She walks further back into the room. “Plus, someone might be coming.”

“Well, I’ll handle that, if it comes up,” he decides. “You just practice a little.”

Mandica decides to not do that. The door and the dead mortician are enough. Reagan isn’t convinced, so he stays behind, and creates a bigger mess using his gun. He then goes into the security room, and destroys the footage before meeting up with Mandica outside. He was going to drive her back home, but she does want to practice, so she asks him to take her out to the middle of nowhere. He knows of an abandoned train yard about thirty kilometers outside of town that was placed there for this very thing. She is not the only person there testing her own limits. It’s an unspoken rule that you don’t fight at The Depot. It’s for newbies who want to figure out how well they designed their substrates in a more practical environment.

When they add it all up, Mandica’s abilities match with what Elysia had when she was the Rescuer. Superstrength, speed, stamina, heightened senses, spring-action legs for jumping. A lot of people have these things, but Elysia was remarkably more powerful, and now Mandica has somehow taken her place, thanks to this weird red piece of glass. Elysia herself shows up in the middle of Mandica’s self tests after Malika called her, after Reagan called her. Elysia is presumably in her normal body now, which is still likely pretty formidable, and doesn’t seem upset. “Okay. Show me what you got.”