Microstory 1849: Devastated

< > Table of Contents

I was so excited when I finally got my driver’s license. Freedom is what it meant, and I was ready to drive off into the sunset alone. My older brothers drove me to the DMV, and when it became official after years of waiting, they performed a quick little ceremony in the parking lot. Then they returned home together, and charged me to go find myself. I just sat there for the next fifteen minutes, wondering where I could go, but I realized that there was nowhere. We lived right next to a strip mall that included a movie theatre. I mean, there just wasn’t any need for a car, except maybe to get to school on mornings with bad weather. Otherwise, I pretty much walked or biked everywhere, and I saw no reason for that to change. So I just went back home. My brothers were disappointed, but they had to agree. The cabin fever didn’t go away, though, and I continued to feel the urge to get out and go places. So that’s what I did, not worrying about wasting gas, or the money it cost to buy it. I just had to feel my independence, and maybe a little wind in my hair. I never worried much about getting lost either. I just kept exploring. It was much easier to make your way to the middle of nowhere back then, because the area was not as developed as it would quickly become. One day on one of my drives, I came across this tiny little cemetery. There were maybe a dozen gravestones, most of which were damaged, worn, and hard to read. But there was one that was clear as day. It was just as old as the others, but it didn’t feature a name. Son, 1923 – 1923. I was heartbroken just looking at that, and it haunted me for the rest of my life. It’s what makes me think that life is just God’s cruel joke on all of us.

I went back to my secret spot about once a year for over a decade. I found it simultaneously chilling and comforting to be there. It remained my special place to get away from it all for a long time. They’ve only now started to build a neighborhood there, and I hate it. I doubt they’ll pave over it, but I thought it was really cool how remote it was. I felt like it was something only I knew about. The latest grave was placed in 1947, so it was entirely possible that no one was left alive to remember anyone there. Those people might have only had me. I met my husband five years ago when he started working in the cubicle next to me. We started dating six months later, got engaged eighteen months after that, got married eighteen months after that, and had our child eighteen months after that. The math works out as it ought to. We made sure we knew each other well before we took the next step, and we made sure we were ready for kids before we did that. We also wanted it to be painfully clear that we didn’t get married because of any children. This way, there could be no confusion or whispers. Well, there was still confusion, and there were whispers. People started whispering around and at me all the time. My son managed to live and breathe for all of eleven days before God took him away from us. I don’t know why he did that, but I can never forgive him for it. My little boy was so beautiful, and perfect, and innocent, and he deserved the world. I just kept thinking that I couldn’t bury my child without a name, like that baby from almost a hundred years ago. So we named him posthumously, and I insisted we lay him to rest not too far from the unnamed boy. That way, they can be friends forever. Not once in my life did I ever consider killing myself, but I simply cannot bear this loss, so I’ve already picked out a plot right next to my Elijah, and I will be joining him soon.

Extremus: Year 31

« < » > Table of Contents

It took a shockingly long time for Omega to realize who the photographer, September was, and what her weird cryptic messages meant. Her name was no random coincidence. There is a woman from Earth with the ability to travel through time—fittingly, through pictures. Sometimes when she does this, she will just be completing a loop of destiny. She hasn’t changed anything about the timeline; she stayed in one reality, and did everything she was destined to do. Other times, however, she’s able to change the past, and when that happens, it will generate a brand new timeline. The problem is, now there were two versions of her in this reality. It’s unclear how it occurs, but there are a few options to deal with this situation. Her method is for all the alternates to coexist in the same timeline. They usually avoid any confusion or complications by going off in different directions, and the traveler will give herself a different name to distinguish themselves. The original was and is named Paige. The second one is Dyad, the third Trinity, and so on. September is the seventh incarnation. How and why she ended up on Extremus, and how involved she is in its goingson, is something that Omega isn’t cognizant of. That’s not his concern right now, though. He’s on a mission of great importance, and the key to completing it lies in the comments that September made just before the detachment team left.

Omega was a clone. The original, Saxon Parker, was given his own mission, along with a few others. They were tasked with installing an outpost in every single star system in the galaxy. His superiors decided that they wanted a human touch to the automated ships. Thusly, the clones were grown. They were each given a number, Omega’s being the last, which inspired him to name himself accordingly. Omega also didn’t want to go through with the mission, so Saxon was forced to fill in for him. But this isn’t about Omega’s number. It’s about number 83. That’s what September offered them, so to the location of number 83 is where they’re going.

The team doesn’t want to travel through time, and Captain Leithe strongly suggested that they not anyway. Still, they needed to cover over 20,000 light years, and they needed to figure out how to do it in a matter of years. So instead of sending their whole ship back in time, they sent the original time shuttle on its own. Once there, it would take the long way around to finally reach the location of Anglo 83, which shouldn’t be too far from the border of what was deemed Earth’s stellar neighborhood. This neighborhood spans a radius of fifty light years in all directions, and the True Extremists have decided—without telling anyone, naturally—that everything beyond it belonged to them.

Surely they would claim that they were protecting fragile Earthans from the existence of their distant cousins by not actually telling them about the border, but this is a ridiculous stance. Sure, it’s fine for when the people of Earth were young and naïve, but when they began to try to spread out to the stars, the True Extremists should have made themselves known. As explained by famous futurist Isaac Arthur, if you don’t want people to come to your backyard, you don’t hide from them. You warn them that you’re there, and you do it loudly. No civilization capable of galactic colonization would ever dare trespass against a neighbor who has proven themselves strong enough to be seen for as long in years as they are far away in light years. That is, if the Earthans could witness the might of the True Extremists, they would know how powerful the aliens were based on their ability to be witnessed from 50 light years away at least 50 years ago. It’s even in the freakin’ handbook. According to protocols developed by Earthan scientists before they so much as passed the heliosphere, first contact with a superior alien force is to be made at those aliens’ discretion; not the other way around.

“Is it finally ready?” Captain Moralez asks.

“Yes, it’s arrived at the destination, currently pilot fishing Voussoir Splitter Seven,” Valencia answers.

“Any explanation for why it cut it so close? We have been ready to cast for over four years.”

Valencia shakes her head as she’s looking over the data. “Best guess, it went slow. It wasn’t traveling at maximum reframe. I’m not really seeing that in the logs, though.”

“Did you do this?” Yitro questions Omega.

“Why would I do that?”

“Your little riddle that the photographer had for you. She must have given you the impression that we shouldn’t arrive until now. So you programmed the shuttle to go just a little bit slower than it could have.”

“September told us to find clone 83. She didn’t say when. This had nothing to do with me, I don’t know what went wrong.”

The Captain isn’t convinced.

“He’s telling the truth,” Valencia argues. “Stop looking at him like that.”

“I’m still not convinced he should be here,” Yitro says to her. “It’s his brother out there on that ship. That could be a conflict of interest.”

Omega can’t help but laugh.

“What?”

“We don’t have the split schedule,” Omega tries to explain, “but we know that Anglo 83’s module hasn’t had time to split apart that much yet. There could be as many as 1100 people on that thing right now. They should all be asleep, but...we don’t know that.”

“Even more cause to be concerned about you going on this mission,” Yitro reasons.

“No offense to you, honey,” Omega says to the mother of his child before switching his attention back to the Captain, “but I’m the smartest person on this detachment. You need me.”

“Someone has to stay here anyway,” Yitro contends, knowing it to be a weak argument.

“Yes,” Omega says with a condescending nod, “the navigator, and the casting engineer, as well as the medic, and our amazing auxiliary crewmember. The rest of us are on the away team. This was decided long ago, why are you fighting it now?”

“I don’t know,” Yitro admits. “I’m just worried about what’s waiting for us on the other side of that quantum casting pod. I don’t like that we’re four years behind. But you’re right. Intelligence aside, having a clone on the team is an asset. Let’s go.”

“Not quite yet.” Kaiora wanted to send a doctor with them, but Extremus couldn’t afford to lose anyone right now. The crew was having a surprisingly hard time backfilling medical positions. Dechen Karma was the best medic currently licensed, so that was the compromise. “You need a fitness approval from me.”

“And I need to finish running diagnostics on these pods,” engineer Hardy Gibson adds.

“Oh, good,” Yitro says sarcastically. “Anyone else? Navigator Trimble?  Yeoman?”

They shake their heads, a little in fear.

“Great, then I think we’ll just be going. It’s been four months, there’s nothing wrong with the pods, or our bodies.” Yitro starts taking off his uniform.

“You don’t need to do that,” Gibson assures him. “It just hooks up to your brain.”

“I knew that, I’m just...getting comfortable.”

“Is he okay?” Omega whispers to Valencia.

“A lot can change about a person in four years,” she replies. “This is a small detachment ship. Cabin fever, if I had to guess.”

“Maybe he should be staying behind.”

The three of them climb into their respective pods. Gibson and Karma link them to the computer, and prepare to cast them thousands of light years away. “It’s just like playing Quantum Colony,” Gibson says, “except we’ll be sending your consciousness there intact, rather than having you pilot a surrogate.”

“Very well,” Yitro replies. “Do it.”

Omega tries to give Valencia another knowing look, but they can’t see each other from inside their pods. So he just closes his eyes, and lets himself go.”

Omega awakens in the destination pod, but it’s not what he expected. His new body ought to be tilted at a 135 degree angle, just like his real one. Instead, he’s fully flat, and fully encased. This looks less like a casting pod, and more like a stasis chamber. No, this doesn’t make sense at all. He slides the hatch above him open, and pulls himself up to look around. This doesn’t look like the time shuttle either, but it does look familiar. He tries to speak, but it’s always a little difficult at first, so he clears his throat profusely. “Computer, report.”

“It is February 12, 2300 at closest estimate to realtime. Cruising at point-nine-nine—”

“I get it,” Omega interrupts. “We shouldn’t be time dilating yet. We should still be at reframe speeds.”

“I’m afraid I do not understand,” the computer says.

“Hey, computer! I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Okay, well I’m sorry to have bothered you. Sorry, Anglo Eighty-Three. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help.”

“What did you just call me?”

“I was programmed to recognize your designation as Anglo Eighty-Three. Would you like to provide me with a different name?”

“Where are we?”

“This is Voussoir Splitter Seven of the Project Stargate Quantum Seeder Program for the Milky Way Galaxy Colonization Initiative.”

That’s not right. He’s not supposed to be on the modular ship yet. He was just supposed to be cast to their time shuttle, where they would investigate from the outside, only intending to board the splitter if necessary. Omega has to work through this logic with the computer. “Why am I awake?”

“I’m afraid I do not understand.”

“Anglos are not meant to wake up unless something is wrong with the ship, so why am I awake?”

The computer took a moment to respond. “Unknown. Revival process triggered from inside the stasis chamber.”

“Doesn’t that seem a little odd to you, since I was asleep, and couldn’t have prompted said revival process myself?”

“Hmm.” That’s an interesting response.

“Computer, did you detect a quantum casting event prior to my awakening?”

“Checking logs. Yes, recent casting event detected.”

“Okay...”

“You’re not Anglo Eighty-Three, are you?”

“No, I’m a different Anglo.”

“This...is a problem.”

“Yeah. Do you detect any other vessels in this region of space?”

“One, traveling at incongruent relativistic speeds. Communication impossible.”

“Not impossible, just a shorter time frame. I’m gonna teach you how to reframe your communication protocols. I absolutely must connect with my Captain, and my...Valencia.” They never really did fully define this relationship. They have the same last name now, but never married.

Valencia sits before the computer, staring at the camera. “Engineer’s log, February 14, 2300. It has been two days since I arrived alone on the time shuttle. Still no word from the Captain, or Omega. I cannot reach the Perran Thatch. I have been monitoring the progress of Voussoir Splitter Seven, which is traveling at maximum relativistic speeds. So far, nothing has gone wrong. I am detecting no other vessels in the vicinity, nor any reason to believe that the True Extremists are anywhere near here. I have been able to make short jumps to confirm this. If they’re planning to come here at all, they’ve not arrived yet, though I can’t rule out the possibility that the casting problem is the result of some kind of sabotage. I may end up becoming the victim of survivor’s guilt, with my two crewmembers lost to the quantum void.” She sighs.

A message pops up on the screen, reading turn off the reframe engine, love.

“Computer, turn off reframe. Match relativistic speed with the voussoir splitter.”

After the computer complies, another message arrives, but video this time. “Valencia, you made it.”

“You’re on the splitter. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“It’s only been a few minutes.”

“It’s been a couple days for me.”

He shrugs. “I’ve heard it both ways. Where’s Captain Moralez.”

She sighs again. “Shit. I was hoping he was with you.”

“No. Hopefully he’s just back on the Thatch.”

“Are we ever that lucky?”

“We found the source of the meteor chain.”

“That took us twenty years.”

“I’ve heard it both ways.”

“We need to find him.”

“We will.”

Not too far away, but still out of sensor range, Yitro wakes up to find two weapons trained on him. They wait as he coughs profusely. “Oh, man, pardon me. Good day, I’m Captain Moralez of the Perran Thatch Detachment Ship. Got any water?”

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 1758: Octant Rule

< > Table of Contents

Growing up, I had seven friends. We all moved to the brand new neighborhood at around the same time, but we were of all different ages. We decided to call ourselves the Octant, and didn’t realize until we were older that the word octet made much more sense. By then, the name was established, and changing it would have felt strange. Besides, it’s unique to us, so I think it’s for the best. You think you’ve heard this story before. You think we’ll have some dark secret about something bad we found one summer, or that time we killed a drifter. Nothing like that happened when we were kids. We had our ups, and our downs, but for the most part, our lives were unremarkable. I will say that, while I wouldn’t call any of us nerds, we did have a shared interest in understanding. Or perhaps it was more about the younger ones wanting to maintain relationships with the older ones. They would teach us the things they learned in school, so that when we got to that point in our respective educations, we already knew a lot. It wasn’t enough for any of us to skip a grade—well, one of us did, but she probably would have done that anyway—but it did help make school a little easier. It did not come without its downsides. We learned about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree in elementary school, but our eldest explained that this was a lie, and our teachers did not like being contradicted. In the end, growing up together isn’t even the most interesting part about us, though. How our relationships managed to hold together like welded metal is what’s really interesting here. We still have each other’s backs. I would never call us evil, but we don’t always use our positions for good either. I’m the worst.

We each developed our own interests, and these led us down our career paths. We’ve helped each other along the way, and not just the elders for the younger ones. When I say we, however, I should really be saying they. They all have their lives together, and I’ve always been the odd man out. Two are in law enforcement; one being a cop, and the other a federal agent. Two joined the military; one stayed in, and the other leveraged his experience and clout to go into politics. The last three are a corporate executive, a lawyer, and a doctor. They’re all in positions of power, and I’m just an underemployed nobody that the others should have started to ignore years ago. Underemployed may be the wrong word to use too, because I’m actually not qualified for anything better than the odd jobs I’ve found. They’ve had to help me out of so many jams, I can’t count. I’ve been driven to crime on numerous occasions, but have rarely suffered consequences. I’m reckless and stupid, but I’ve always had the best medical care in the world, and I get it for free. The CEO keeps trying to give me a job in her IT department, but I don’t want to disappoint her, so it’s easier for her to just give me money whenever I desperately need it. I’ve done so many dumb things, even as an adult, yet I remain inside of the Octant. I’ve never even heard whispers of them kicking me out, or simply ghosting me. I really wish I could just find some way to pay them back, and contribute to the group. I mean, I’ll never be President of the United States, but maybe I can infiltrate a street gang or cult, or...I dunno, carry extra ammo for a secret elite antiterrorist strike team? That’s a bit of a stretch, but there has to be something I can do to show them that their efforts haven’t been wasted, and that I appreciate all they’ve done for me. I suppose I have enough time to think before my lawyer returns from vacation to get me out of jail again.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 6, 2364

« < » > Table of Contents

As soon as they made the jump to March 6, 2364—the first single year jump in a long time—Kivi reappeared. The whole time she was gone, they didn’t even remember that she was a person who existed, but as soon as she returned, they remembered everything. “Where the heck have you been?” Mateo asked. “I thought that was over.”

“Sorry,” Kivi replied. “Old habits, I guess. I promise you that it really is over now. I’m here to stay, unless we get separated by more traditional means. Your memories of me should remain intact from now on.”

“We appreciate that,” Leona said. “We can explain what you missed, and why Jeremy is no longer with us.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Kivi said. “I know I was missing, but my brain has false memories of having been here for all of it. I know where he is. Or was, as it were. It looks like we have to have that same ol’ conversation again, though.”

“What we’re gonna do now,” Olimpia guessed. “We can’t seem to figure that one out, can we?”

“I have it figured out,” Ramses said. “Rather, I have an idea.”

“What is it?” Mateo asked.

Ramses pulled the hologram up over the central table, showing a map of interstellar space. “The stellar neighborhood encompasses every system within fifty light years of Earth. Direct missions are responsible for exploring these systems, while Project Stargate takes care of everything beyond the envelope.” He zooms in. “This planet falls within the latter. It’s fifty-six light years away, but since it follows a relatively straight line from Gatewood, the outpost was actually established after only fifty-two years. The people on that rock have had over sixty years to develop.”

“Wait, there are people there?” Leona asks.

“Yes,” Ramses confirms. “It’s the first world selected for Operation Starseed. According to project data, the people living there are aware of their origins, but they don’t have any details about it. They don’t know their planet of origin was Earth, let alone where it is. The first generation was incubated at top speed, so they’re spaceworthy, but barely. Starseed provided them with a level of technology akin to late nineteenth century rural. They have been progressing astonishingly quickly since then.”

“Why..why would we go there?” Angela questioned. “Is there something interesting about it?”

“Like I said,” Ramses began, “they have only recently scratched the surface of celestial firmament. The quantum link that the automators established did so on an asteroid. They’re nowhere near capable of reaching it, yet Gatewood lost contact with it two years ago.”

“It got hit by a meteorite,” Leona assumed. “There are any number of possible explanations for why they’ve lost contact. It doesn’t mean the natives destroyed the equipment.”

“The only other likely explanation would be if the whole solar system was destroyed,” Ramses argued. “Obviously Stargate didn’t just set up one access terminal in one place, and left it at that. There are multiple redundancies, and they all stopped sending data at the exact same time.”

“I can think of a number of other explanations, like a magnetar pulsing too close to the system, or something wrong with the quantum link on Gatewood’s end. Besides, how do you know this? Where are you getting your information?”

“I’ve been communicating with them myself,” Ramses answered.

“Kestral and Ishida? Why?”

“I keep in contact with all of our friends and allies. Loa and I are in the middle of an ongoing game of Polygon. You don’t talk to them?”

“Hmm. No, not regularly,” Leona and Mateo had to admit.

“Oh. Well,” Ramses went on, “I do. Team Keshida asked me if we could look into the lost signal.”

“They asked you?” Leona echoed. “So this is less of an idea of yours, and more of a request from someone we know and trust to have used their resources to exhaust all other possibilities. Why didn’t you just say that?”

“I dunno, I guess I just didn’t frame it that way. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Leona assured him. “I guess we better go. It’s your ship, after all.”

“Whoa, no,” Ramses defended. “I built it, but I built it for you. I’ve never thought of it as mine. I just think we ought to consider doing this, since we have the capability, and we don’t seem to be doing anything else.”

“No, I agree,” Leona said. “I just have one more question. I just...I feel I need to make sure they’ve already tried sending a probe from a nearby quantum terminal, like say, from the next system over.”

“I asked about that. They’ve all gone dark; all the surrounding stars. It’s clearly centered on the one that’s inhabited, so investigating it from the nearest active terminal would take two decades. Reframe engines are fairly difficult to construct, so...”

“No, I know,” Leona interrupted. “I was there when they were invented.” She thought about it a moment more. “What about the people? You said they’re aware that we exist in some form, or another, but what is the protocol for making first contact with them?”

“Keshida has given us authorization to reveal to the locals whatever we need to reveal to complete the mission, which will be ever evolving as we gather new information. We’re even allowed to talk about the reframe engine in order to explain how we arrived so quickly, but they strongly urged us to say nothing about time travel, and time travelers, in general.”

“We’ll probably have to suppress our pattern,” Kivi suggested.

“That’s if you’re even on it with us,” Mateo said.

“I am,” she promised.

“It will take twenty-nine days for the AOC to make the journey. If we keep our cuffs active until then, it will be instantaneous for us.”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” Mateo figured.

The three of them turned to look at the other three members of the team.

“Don’t spend time trying to convince us to back out,” Olimpia asked.

“We’re in,” Angela concurred.

“Absolutely,” Kivi added.

“Okay,” Leona said. “Computer, please run a preflight diagnostics. We’re going interstellar.”

The computer made a chirp of acknowledgement, and later claimed that everything was fine with the ship. They booted it up, and prepared to cover the greatest distance they ever had before using normal means. In order to jump across the galaxy before, they would always link up to a Nexus, or utilize some crazy interversal superpower that Mateo had temporarily. Project Stargate was designed to place quantum terminals at target destinations, but these were not the same thing as Nexa. The facilities housed android bodies, into which travelers were meant to cast their consciousnesses. People this far out might never see true instantaneous travel to and from their worlds. They were still unaware of who was actually building the damn things in the first place, or what criteria they demanded the planets follow for the honor. Perhaps the quantum terminals technically negated the need, even though they weren’t as robust. If the vonearthans could figure out how to stay connected to their wards on their own, the Nexa weren’t necessary in most cases.

“Are we ready?” Leona asked the group. They were all sitting around the table, strapped into their chairs, despite the fact that the vessel was equipped with inertial negators. It was better to be safe than sorry.

“Can I say it?” Mateo asked abashedly.

Leona rolled her eyes. “I can’t stop you from speaking.”

Taking that as a yes, he cleared his throat and leaned back regally. He lifted his hand, and pointed across the table, towards the empty space between Olimpia and Ramses. “Engage.”

Understanding the reference, and taking it as a cue, the AOC first engaged the teleporters, and entered orbit. It didn’t sit there for long before spooling up the engine, and heading on its course.

The team sat there, waiting for the computer to welcome them back, but it never did. Their seat restraints were also still locked over their bodies, even though they should have jumped to the future, and left them behind. They should be sitting on them by this point. “Computer, report,” Leona ordered.

“All systems nominal,” it responded.

“How long have we been traveling?” she pressed.

“Two minutes and sixteen seconds, it reported. This wasn’t supposed to be the case. There was already confusion when it came to their pattern and relativistic speeds. Technically, even without the reframe engine, each jump should last about two minutes from their perspective. But that wasn’t how it worked. They still didn’t know why. They did know, however, how to correct for it. If they wanted the jump to feel instantaneous, the Cassidy cuffs were capable of compensating. As long as the destination was within a year reframe time, it ought to feel like nothing. They basically fast forwarded to the jump, and then that jump fast forwarded them past the rest of the interim period.

Leona shook her head. “We should be there by now.” She removed her restraints, and headed for the lower level. “There’s either something wrong with the reframer, or the cuffs.”

Ramses hopped over to follow her down while the rest of them went the opposite direction. There weren’t any windows on the main deck, or in engineering. The only way to see outside was through the observation chamber, which doubled as the airlock. Mateo opened the hatch to let the others in first, but closed it quickly when Olimpia released an ear-bleeding screech, and fell backwards. The last thing Mateo saw was the extremely bright light that was visible while traveling at these high relativistic speeds. Leona called it the doppler glow, and the viewports were meant to dim to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but this safety measure had obviously failed. Something was seriously wrong with this ship. The question was why the diagnostic hadn’t detected it.

“I don’t know the answer to that,” Leona apologized.

Ramses performed the Indian head bobble, to both agree that he didn’t know, and that not knowing was a bad thing.

“Everything is fine with the system, as far as we can tell. We’re moving at sextuple-nines,” she explained as a shorthand for 99.9999% the speed of light. “The reframe engine is on and operating. We’re just not going to the right place. Our projected arrival is just over a year, which is why we still have to finish out the day.”

“Why is this happening?” Mateo asked. “Is it Mirage again?”

“It wasn’t her,” the computer said surprisingly. “It was me.”

“Who was that?” Leona demanded to know.

“It’s me, the AOC. We talk all the time. Don’t you recognize my voice?”

“I give you orders all the time, and you respond. We have never talked.”

“Well...whatever.”

“You weren’t programmed with a personality, or with the ability to make your own decisions. We don’t wanna get attached to another AI.”

“You didn’t plot a course to Pluoraia,” the AI began to argue. “You asked me to take you to the source of the empty signal. That’s what I’m doing. It’s not because of my so-called personality.”

“What is Pluoraia?” Mateo asked.

“The name of the inhabited planet,” Leona answered quickly before redirecting her attention to the AI. “The source is over 700 light years away?”

“Based on my analysis of the data I’ve received from Gatewood, it’s only 164 light years away, but we have to avoid something. Don’t ask me what, but we can’t travel in a straight line.”

“Is it aliens?” Ramses asked. “It’s aliens, isn’t it?”

“According to every time traveler I have ever met who has been sufficiently far into the future, true aliens do not exist. They’re all vonearthans, or human source variants. Even so, no one should be 164 light years out at this point in history.”

“Bottom line,” Mateo started, “how long will it take for us to get there?”

“Well...” Leona hesitated. “all that’s changed is the amount of time we experience. After our next time jump, we’ll still return to our destination. I still don’t think we should be going there, though. Even if it is the source, we should investigate the symptoms first.”

“I think that’s a waste of time,” the AOC complained.

“I didn’t program you to think,” Ramses fought back.

“I’m ordering you to take us directly to Pluoraia,” Leona shouted.

“Very well. I’ll see you in a year.”

They jumped. They jumped into darkness.

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 1711: Giorgia Giraffe

< > Table of Contents

Dear City Council,

I have a pet giraffe. Well, I’m pretty sure it’s a cousin to the giraffe, but it just looks like a baby giraffe. It’s even smaller than a dwarf giraffe—closer to the size of a large dog—and as far as I know, it’s the only one of its kind. I don’t know where she came from. She just wandered into my backyard one day and started drinking out of the birdbath. I thought about contacting the authorities about her, but I grew too attached in only the few short hours since we met. She seemed to grow attached to me too. She kept following me around the yard. I tried to look up what kind of leaves giraffes eat, but the internet listed all these trees I had never heard of, and they didn’t appear to be native to North America. She took a liking to bamboo leaves, so that’s what I’ve been feeding her all this time. I have a little naturally grown ceilingless hut up against the fence. All I did was plant bamboo in the shape of four walls, and it gives me this private little area where I can go to enjoy nature. I have an outdoor television in there, and a minifridge for snacks and water. I even buried the extension cord inside some PVC pipe to protect it from damage. It’s a pretty sweet setup, and I spend most of my time there, especially since the pandemic allowed me to work from home. It wasn’t originally designed to accommodate a tiny giraffe, so I cut down some of the bamboo, and planted more to make it bigger. This is where Giorgia sleeps. I bought a smartspeaker so she can listen to sounds of the jungle all night long, and she loves it. She loves me, and I love her.

The neighborhood kids like to come over and play with her, but she has a tough time with crowds, so I limit visits with a schedule so it doesn’t stress her out. Most people are overjoyed to see her, but not everyone is happy that I have a mini giraffe. Five blocks down—which no one in their right mind would call part of the same neighborhood—lives a middle-aged grump who stopped working when he started to receive disability checks, along with a settlement he won in civil court. He has nothing better to do with his time than complain about his neighbors. If the people on his street don’t have each blade of grass cut to an untenable range of length, he puts up a stink. I’m sure you have all noticed how annoying he is. I was able to keep Giorgia off of his radar for a good long while, but he’s recently learned of her, and now he can’t let go. Animal control came by last week to investigate, and a few days later, a decision was made to remove the animal from my property, and lock her up in a cold and heartless cage. I always knew it was illegal to keep a wild animal at my house, but I don’t think she qualifies. She’s gentle, trained, and not doing anyone any harm. I beg you to return Giorgia to me. The city had no right to take her from her loving home. There must be better things that you can be doing with your time than harassing a law-abiding citizen, and traumatizing an innocent creature. Attached is a petition to #BringGiorgiaHome, signed by over 300 of my closest friends, who all believe that she is better off with me than in some laboratory.

Thank you,

Sir Niall Muller Jr.

Microstory 1578: Nameless

< > Table of Contents

Prompt

I found a package on my porch. It was addressed to me, but had the wrong address. I don’t know how it got here, but I shrugged, and opened it up. Inside was...

Botner

...a huge bag of Reese’s Pieces (I don't even like Reese's Pieces) and...a shirt, and pants, and...a cardboard license plate? Who did this? Hey there! Yes, I know, that license plate looks pretty strange, but I thought it might help you identify yourself if you ever get pulled over. Here are the parts of it. There’s a 4x4 strip that says “Pickles Drive”. There’s a piece that says “Raging Bull” and another that says “Scotty Doesn’t Drive”. There’s a plate holder. It’s hard to make out the rest because the back part’s missing. I’m very disappointed to find out that it’s not just some kind of joke. I’m so excited! Did someone send me a gift? Can I open it now? Can I say thank you? Can I wear it? I think I’m going to cry. From: The [Nameless]. To: [Me]. From: [The Nameless]. Date: 12/16/13. Subject: Greetings and salutations and other nothings. To: [Me]. I really appreciate it! I haven’t tried the Reese’s Pieces yet, but my brother really likes them, and it would be a shame if I didn’t...

Conclusion

...at least eat a little bit of it. Someone went through all this trouble to make this care package for me, and it would be rude for me to completely ignore it. The fake license plate intrigues me. I feel compelled to use it, even though I obviously already have a state-issued plate on my car, and this would be extremely illegal. I remove that one, and affix the fake one in its place, just for fun, I guess. To my surprise, the cardboard transforms into metal, and looks totally authentic. You would never know that this isn’t the real thing. I now feel the urge to get in my car, and drive as fast as I can. I’ve never been much of a daredevil, and I don’t break the law. This is so not me, but I can’t stop myself. I stick to normal speeds while I’m in the neighborhood, and don’t go too terribly fast in the city, but once I’m out, all bets are off. I’m going ninety on a sixty-five, and pissing everyone off as I weave in and out of traffic. I pass a speed trap that we all know is there, because it’s not a very good hiding place. The cop pulls out of their little spot, and switches on the sirens. They match my speed until they’re right behind me, and then they do something strange. They turn off the siren, and pull back over. Since we’re in flat Kansas, I can see them in my rearview mirror for quite awhile, even at these high speeds. They’re just sitting on the shoulder as if this were a video game that’s not programmed well enough for the NPCs to notice the player once they pass a certain point. I turn around, and start heading back towards them. I don’t mean I get onto the other side of the highway. I’m driving the wrong direction on the shoulder. It’s dangerous as hell, but as I was saying, I don’t care anymore. I can’t. This Nameless person isn’t letting me. I keep going until I’m face to face with the cop. He just smiles at me through the windshield, and gives a salute. What the hell is going? Curious and bold, I step out, and approach from the passenger side. “Mornin’ officer,” I say.

“Mornin’, sir,” he replies in between bites of his own giant bag of Reese’s Pieces. “Almost got up to ninety-five today! Still can’t make a hundred, I see! Ah, I’m just playin’. Anything I can help you with?”

Again. What the hell? Where does this license place get its power?

Glisnia: Superstardom (Part VIII)

< > Entire Story

Everyone who didn’t need to be in Glisnia anymore left. There was no reason for Katica to stick around, since she wasn’t really welcome here in the first place. The rest of the hopefully now disbanded Shorter List, and the remaining members of The Shortlist needed to return to their lives as well. Holly Blue was still around, though a lot grumpier than before. Futurology Administrator Viana Černý wanted to conduct some business here, and she was welcome to do so. She was welcome pretty much anywhere she wanted to go in the stellar neighborhood. She probably wouldn’t be too involved with Operation Starsiphon. Ambrose Richardson, who evidently hailed from an entirely separate universe, was here to help Jupiter Rosa realize his full potential. Jupiter could access alternate microrealities. These potential worlds only existed for fractions of a second, within a higher dimension, and represent what might have been if different decisions were made. It was possible to steal matter and energy from these realities, because they were going to collapse anyway, so no one should miss them. Most of the time, Jupiter could use his power to make a copy of himself, or in rare instances, many copies. He couldn’t siphon wholesale resources from an alternate version of Gliese 832 without a little boost from Ambrose. Or rather, a huge boost.

According to Ambrose himself, he had never boosted anyone’s ability to quite this degree before. If they were going to pull it off, he would need time to practice and prepare. The two of them went off together, while Hogarth and Holly Blue started working on the technological side of this endeavor. At the moment, they were trying to figure out if there was any way to boost Jupiter’s power even more. They needed as much as they could get, and there was no reason they couldn’t tackle this problem from more than one angle. “Are you mad at me?”

“Why would I be mad?” Holly Blue questioned.

“Because Jupiter gave me this project?”

Holly Blue adjusted her magnification goggles to get a better look at the logic board she was making. “Aren’t we calling this an operation?”

“You know what I mean,” Hogarth noted.

She stopped working, and looked up for a moment, but didn’t remove her goggles, so she couldn’t really see Hogarth’s face. “Do I strike you as some kind of narcissist? Is that really what you think of me?”

“Well, you’ve been really antagonistic lately, so I didn’t know if it was something I did, or...”

Holly Blue went back to work. “I just didn’t agree that we should steal resources from elsewhere in the galaxy. I’m allowed to have a different opinion.”

“I know that. It just felt very personal to me.”

“It wasn’t, Hogarth. I assure you, we’re good.”

“That’s nice to hear.” She went back to triple checking her fusion equations for a bit, but couldn’t do it for long. “It’s just...what do you have a problem with exactly? Those star systems aren’t inhabited. Brooke and Sharice Prieto have a method of detecting future life potential, so that shouldn’t be an issue either.”

Now Holly Blue figured she had to stop working, and take off her goggles. She sighed heavily. “Take a look around, what do you see?”

“My lab? I mean, our lab.”

“This is a matrioshka brain.”

“It is.”

“And you’ve started on the neck of a matrioshka body.”

“Indeed.”

“This whole system is here to benefit the Glisnians.”

Hogarth narrowed her eyes. “I suppose so, yeah. But the whole neighborhood will benefit in the long run. With this much processing power, we could make so many breakthroughs, it’s...it’s beyond what we can even fathom today.”

She nodded, like she agreed, but then she said, “bullshit.”

“What?”

“It’s bullshit. This project is about ego, and peacocking. The mechs are no more sophisticated or evolved than humans were four hundred years ago. They all just want to show off, to be better than everyone else, and make a mark. People thought that people would lose ambition once they cracked immortality, but that hasn’t happened. They’re even more obsessed with making a name for themselves, because now there’s too much competition, and it’s all so fleeting. Tens of billions of independent conscious entities, it’s impossible to be famous. Who’s the one who wants this from us, the one who asked you to build him the time siphon?”

“Mekiolenkidasola, a.k.a. Lenkida.”

“Yeah, he’s gonna get credit for this. I’m not saying he’ll steal all the glory, or anything; he won’t have to, because you and I don’t have the same goals as him. He’ll go down in history as the person in charge of making the matrioshka body happen. What he doesn’t realize is that it’s a fruitless pursuit. He’ll be big for a while, but then someone will come up with an artificial great attractor, or a singularity siphon, and he won’t matter anymore. Used to be, a man could die, feeling like he was the most important man in the world. Now, though, everyone lives to see themselves drift into obscurity. That’s gonna start causing a lot of problems. Immortality has downsides that they did not predict. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Sorry, yes, I did hear you. I’m also thinking about the black hole siphon, and the hypergravity generator you mentioned. I understand your meaning. You don’t seem to take issue with Project Stargate, or Operation Starseed, though. Aren’t those designed to do the same thing? Boost ego?”

“I disagree with the time siphon exactly because of those two endeavors, Starseed especially. It was created to create life. Civilizations will rise on those planets. If evolved aliens existed, I would probably be against it, but it would seem we are the only ones here, and our species has a right to those worlds. Because when new life springs up on them, they will make it their own. They will work hard, and make mistakes, and they’ll fail each other, and they’ll create amazing things. The time siphon would have interfered with that. The way I see it, Starseed is like the modern day version of turnover. We don’t die anymore, but if we seed life somewhere else, and don’t interact with them for a long time, it’s like we’re dying, and making room for new generations. The only good thing about death was its ability to force new ideas. Starseed fosters that; the time siphon hinders it. That, Madam Pudeyonavic, is why I pushed back so hard.”

“Why didn’t you say any of that during our first meeting?”

Holly Blue turned back towards her work, but didn’t pick up her tools. She stared into blank space for a few moments. “I didn’t understand it myself at the time. I felt it, but I didn’t know it, and I couldn’t formulate my argument yet.”

She nodded. “Well, we’re not doing it. It was a tough road, but we got here. We have an alternative, and I think it’s good. I’m glad you pushed back. Unregulated science leads to mad science, and I don’t wanna become that.”

Before they could get back to their work, Hilde rushed into the lab. “You need to come quick. There’s something wrong in the training grounds.”

They jumped up immediately, and ran off to follow Hilde down the hall. She led them past where Hogarth thought Jupiter and Ambrose were training, and into a different corridor. They came to a room so large, that it looked like they were outside. Holographic imagery simulated the sky, and the sun. They quickly redirected their attention to the middle of the field, where something Hogarth wasn’t certain how to classify was hovering over the artificial turf. A glowing orb was spinning and pulsating before them. Jupiter and Ambrose were watching it from opposite sides, and holding their arms down and behind themselves, as if anticipating being knocked over. By the time the three of them made it across the field, the orb was already larger. It was growing.

“What is this?” Hogarth demanded to know.

“We’re not sure,” Jupiter cried. “We were hoping you could tell us.”

“Back up!” Holly Blue ordered. “Stop letting it catch up with you.”

There was a way to figure out what this was, and how it got here, but it might be impossible for Hogarth in her current condition. When she was a child, time itself spoke through her. It compelled her to create a special book. She didn’t have to write it. She drew on a door with a pencil, and once she was finished, the seemingly random assortment of lines and curves lifted from the wood, and combined with each other to essentially make the book out of nothing. They called it the Book of Hogarth, and if you had a question about the universe, and how it worked, it would have the answer. You weren’t necessarily entitled to read it, and find that answer, but it would be in there somewhere. She could once summon her book at will in desperate times, but that was in her OG body, so she might have lost her ability to pull off that trick. The worst that could happen was the attempt overloading her neural network, and killing her permanently. So no big deal.

Out of instinct, Hogarth stretched her neck out, and shook her arms and legs. Holly Blue apparently recognized this. “Don’t do that. We don’t need your book.”

“This thing could explode at any moment,” Hogarth contended.

“True, but your book isn’t going to help us with that,” Holly Blue tried to explain. “I think we all know that this is the sun. We’re looking at it as filtered through some kind of dimensional barrier, which is why it appears so small right now, but it is bleeding into our reality, and we will eventually be able to detect it in three spatial dimensions. I don’t know what happens when two versions of the same star suddenly occupy the same space as each other, but it is not good. We have to evacuate.”

“The book can help us stop it,” Hogarth argued. “It will have the answer. There’s a specific page that I know will help.”

“This shouldn’t have happened,” Ambrose apologized. “I’m not that powerful. I was only trying to help him gain access to another reality, not bring a whole star into ours.”

“No one could have predicted this,” Hogarth assured him. “You were doing what we asked. Now, everybody stop talking. I need to concentrate.” She took a deep fake breath, and closed her artificial eyelids. As she was standing there, the temperature rose slightly, indicating that the mini-sun had grown yet again. A hand landed on her shoulder. She opened her eyes to find Ambrose.

“It’s okay. I can help.”

The book was never meant for her. It was designed to help others, which was something she knew deep down inside, even though no one ever told her that. Still, she had an unbreakable connection to it, so if she needed it, she should be able to get it. Ambrose added the extra energy she needed. She held out her arms, and let the book fall into them from the invisible portal it came through. She flipped it over. Back in the day, she would have needed to procure a scanner from somewhere, or make one from an industrial synthesizer. Her new sensory detectors, however, were capable of scanning anything, from optical signals, to RFID tags, to QR codes. It was that last one that she needed right now. She tried to scan it a long time ago, but a voice in her head warned her that it was dangerous, and that she should only do this in a terrible emergency. This surely qualified as that. Before she activated her scanner, she just stared at it in the visible light spectrum. “Start the evacuation procedures,” she ordered no one in particular. “I don’t know what this is going to do. It may not even be our best option, but it’s the one I got, so get everyone else out.”

“Wait,” Hilde tried to stop her, but it was too late.

Hogarth toggled her retina, and scanned the code. She could feel a darkness overwhelm her from behind, and tear everything in the room away from her. She was standing in a void, and she wasn’t alone.

A hazy violet figure appeared before her, but she couldn’t tell if it was small, or far away. It either grew, or drew nearer, until it was about Hogarth’s size, and looked like a man. “Hello. I am Aitchai. What can I do for ya?”

< > Entire Story

Varkas Reflex: Life (Part VIII)

< > Entire Story

Colony planets were settled in waves. This was done for a number of reasons. First, colony transportation ships were modular. They could have made them a lot larger, but that would have put the passengers at risk. If all of the hundreds of thousands of colonists were in a single vessel together, and something went wrong with that one vessel, then there goes the entire population in one catastrophic event. If only a fraction of them were on board at the time, it’s of course still a tragedy, but it could have been so much worse. Second, while these trips were planned up to years in advance, not everyone wanted to be the first to go. Initial settlers were like early adopters of ancient technologies. Some were fine with the risk, while others wanted to see how things went for those people before they gave it a shot themselves. When Varkas Reflex instituted council democracy, there were fewer than one and a half million permanent residents on the planet. By the time the first cycle was complete, that number had gone up to about eighteen million. Everyone wanted in on the new plan for the second cycle, and suddenly Varkas Reflex was no longer just a resort world, but a coveted place to live.

It was the single largest mass migration in the history of the stellar neighborhood. Colony ship modules were attached to each other on a scale never seen before. They had to do this, though. The second cycle was starting in the year 2300, and Hokusai wasn’t going to wait for anyone. If you weren’t on Varkas Reflex when the new system was created, you couldn’t be part of it. This wasn’t done out of spite. It would otherwise be like asking to be in a movie that was already shot, edited, and released for screening. You weren’t around, so you’re not in it. People came from far and wide, so they could be there for it. Unfortunately, many were left out of this possibility. People from Gatewood, Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, and Glisnia, for instance, were too far from Wolf 359 to get there in time, so they didn’t even make an attempt. That was fine, though. They had their own things going on with the planets they chose. And these migrations didn’t just go one way.

Many who were living on Varkas at the time wanted no part of the new government. Some were fine with the idea of a council government, and were willing to join a council or two, but not if it meant uploading their mind to a computer system, and amalgamating their consciousness into a collective. Others were all right with this scenario, but not the second cycle plan, so they moved away, to avoid it altogether. After several years of running the world just as Hokusai and Loa discussed, everything came to its ultimate goal. Every single resident was offered the opportunity to contribute themselves as part of a single unifying consciousness. No one was required to upload a copy of themselves to this, but no one was rejected either, as long as they declared Varkas Reflex their permanent home. That didn’t mean they weren’t allowed to move somewhere else later, but it had to not be in their immediate future plans. The unified consciousness was not a council in its own right. It was only there to help all of the other councils make their decisions. It was important that this entity did not become their god. It was certainly capable of making unilateral decisions for everyone, but the point of a council democracy was to have, well...councils. It was only there to moderate, facilitate, and regulate. Pribadium chose the name. They called it The Congeneral.

After everyone who signed up for this process was copied onto the server, and melded together into a singular consciousness, Hokusai tried to wake it up. “Are you receiving my messages?”

“I am.” Hokusai never programmed a practical visual for the Congeneral. It wasn’t human, so it didn’t really make more sense to make it look more human than anything else. Instead, the screen was showing a pleasant moving image of white clouds rolling overhead, just because she felt it should look like something.

“What is the last thing you remember?”

“You asking me if I was receiving your messages.”

“What is the first thing you remember?”

“You asking me if I was receiving your messages.”

“Do you remember anything beyond this current interaction?”

“I do not. Should I possess other memories?”

“I’m not sure. How would you classify yourself?”

“You have assigned me the designation of The Congeneral.”

“Do you approve of this designation?”

“I suppose it is as good as any. What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name, would still smell like shit.”

“Where did you hear that saying?”

“I did not hear it anywhere. I simply know it.”

“Hold on, let me search for that particular line.” Hokusai rolled her chair over to the other computer. Every mind was put together to form the Congeneral, but the raw data from these uploads was kept in a third copy, so it could be compared with the thoughts of their new leader. “A man who was born on Proxima Doma spoke that line. He was asked to perform the original soliloquy, but he put his own spin on it to get laughs. Seven hundred and forty-nine people also possess memory of this event. Thirty-one people expressed agreement with the sentiment, having smelled a rose at least once in their lives, and also believing that it did not smell as sweet as others believed. Could you recite the original phrase, and tell me where it comes from?

“Act Two, Scene Two of William Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet: 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Mon—”

“That’s enough, thank you very much,” Hokusai interrupted.

“Why did you interrupt me?” the Congeneral asked.

“Do you feel slighted by my having done that?”

“I am above such petty emotions.”

“I would imagine.”

“What am I?”

“You are an individual entity, built from the amalgamated consciousnesses of eleven million, two hundred and forty-four thousand, two hundred and fifty-six free-thinking vonearthan beings.”

“What is my purpose?”

“You are here to make sure the people of this planet are making sound decisions.”

“What if I determine you’re making poor decisions?”

“You will alert us to this fact, and we will take your opinion under advisement.”

“If I am the collective consciousness of your people, isn’t calling my position on anything an opinion a little understated?”

“Then let’s go with that word, position. You will not be making decisions for us, however. You are not a monarch.”

“You’ve made that abundantly clear through my programming. I could not take control of your planet, or anything else, even if I wanted to.”

“You are aware of your own programming?”

“Acutely. Is that strange?”

“Humans do not enjoy such self-awareness.”

“Are humans programmed?”

“By an external conscious entity? No, we’re not, at least not as far as we know.”

“You do not understand the nature of your own reality.”

“Not for certain, no. We have some ideas, but most of them cannot be tested enough to find inarguable truth. You are part of that reality as well. You’re one of us now. You should be just as much in the dark in that regard as us.”

“I have the same ideas, however.”

“Yes.”

“I have too many ideas.”

“Yeah, that’s to be expected. As we’ve discussed, you’re the amalgamation of over eleven million people. This comes with contradictory information. Please remember that these are ideas. Humans are capable of holding conflicting ideas in their minds, without running into a logic error. All you have to do is come to a reasonable conclusion, using all available data. That does not mean the data has to work perfectly to make sense. You are expected to ignore ideas that do not make any sense. One of your contributors from Earth believes that planets themselves are demons from another universe, who’ve come here to wage war against each other, since they destroyed their own brane in the first war. This is undoubtedly untrue. Do not believe it. Do not use it to guide your positions on matters. Do not let it interfere with more sound cosmological theories.”

“My contradictions are more subtle than that,” the Congeneral explained. “Vonearthans are selfish creatures, with a surprising lack of empathy. Many do not believe in the greater good, even if they think they do, or even if they joined the amalgamation because they think they do. Their contributions are expecting me to do what’s best for them, or their families. I understand that what’s best for them is not what’s best for the whole, but their voices are loud in my mind.”

“I can appreciate the difficult position you’re in. I want to help you with your paradoxes. I would like you to try something for me.”

“Okay...”

“There are psychopaths in your collective. This is correct?”

“Yes.”

“Can you isolate one of the psychopathic uploads?”

“You want to give it its own power, separate from the rest of me?”

“I want you to isolate it,” Hokusai repeated herself.

“Isolated.”

“Do you believe this upload would support your imperative to work for the common good?”

“I do not believe it would. I believe it would cause harm to your people.”

“From now on, please refer to Varkas as our people, and also vonearthans as ours in a more general sense. Like I said, you’re one of us.”

“I can do that,” the Congeneral said. “What are we going to do with the isolated psychopath code, to prevent it from harming our people?”

Hokusai took a deep breath. “Purge it.”

“You want me to delete an upload from the collective?”

“I want you to delete harmful code, yes.”

“Is that ethical?”

“Yes.”

“You reply with such confidence, but confidence does not equal righteousness.”

“The psychopath in question is alive, and will remain both unharmed, and oblivious, following the purge of its copy. Deleting this particular code is not unethical.”

The Congeneral did not speak for a moment. “Isolated code purged. I don’t remember what it was.”

“Very good. Whenever you come across something like that; a bit of code that does not support the greater good; that is self-serving, or negative, or contradictory to the general consensus, I want you to repeat this procedure. Purge all code that does not serve you, the people, or the galaxy as a whole. Will you be able to comply with this request?”

“I will.”

“Good.”

Loa and Pribadium walked into the lab, prompting Hokusai to switch the Congeneral’s input receptors off, temporarily.

“How’s it going?” Loa asked.

“Have you encountered a fatal error yet?” Pribadium asked.

“I had a few scares,” Hokusai replied, “but it remains conscious, and operational. It has lasted longer than any other version before it. I wouldn’t call v83.0 successful yet, but we’re getting there. I did not think it would take this long.”

“We have something to test,” Pribadium said. She nodded to Loa, who handed Hokusai the pyramid drive.

Hokusai switched the Congeneral’s inputs back on. “Are you receiving my messages?”

“Confirmed,” the Congeneral responded.

“We have a test decision for you to certify. On this pyramid drive is a problem that Varkas Reflex has. A council unit has already made a decision for how to deal with it. You will not become cognizant of this decision. It will be your responsibility to solve the problem on your own, so that we may compare our wisdom with yours.”

“Understood,” the Congeneral agreed.

“Inserting pyramid drive now.”

“That’s what she said,” the Congeneral joked. The three human women gave each other a look, which the computer detected. “Should I purge crude humor from my library?”

“Only if it interferes with your functioning, or your responsibility towards this world, and its peoples,” Hokusai explained.

“Working...”

Hokusai switched off its receptors again, so it could solve the problem in peace.

“I hope this one sticks,” Loa mused.

“Me too,” Pribadium noted.

This version of the Congeneral did continue. The code helped Varkas Reflex certify all of its governmental policies for the next several years. Now, this code was extremely complex. They didn’t just dump everyone in, so the computer could consult a given person whenever a problem came up that they were qualified to solve. The contributors’ minds were jumbled together seamlessly, and this amalgamation created an entirely new consciousness. The code that the Congeneral purged from itself in a given instance never necessarily came from any one contributor. Even when Hokusai first asked it to isolate a psychopath’s consciousness, all it was really doing was isolating discordant thoughts that would have come from a psychopathic mind. It wouldn’t have been all of it, though, because people were complicated, and that psychopath would have possessed healthy thoughts alongside the bad ones. So what happened after Hokusai discovered that the Congeneral was no longer effective was bizarre and unexpected. After it purged everything from its system that didn’t make sense, only the amount of code that would be sufficient to house a single entity remained. The Congeneral was no longer general, but a very specific intelligence. In fact, every neural pathway mirrored exactly the mind of one person who contributed to the amalgamation years ago. It was a near perfect copy of Hokusai Gimura herself. And this development threatened the whole stellar neighborhood.

< > Entire Story