Microstory 2498: Conjunction 11

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These are vactrain hubs, and there are twelve of them. They’re evenly spaced all over the planet, according to an icosahedron model. While the world is obviously a sphere, an icosahedron shape can be overlaid on it in order to minimize the number of Conjunctions needed. It would be utterly impractical to have a vacuum tube that went from one dome to every single other. While there’s technically space for that, it would require far too much management and maintenance. So many of such tunnels would not be used very much, or at all. How many people are going from, say, Ancient Egypt to Prairiedome? It certainly wouldn’t be an impossibility, but that tube would likely be sitting vacant most of the time. Layovers have been a staple for our civilization for centuries, but this system is a lot better than its predecessors. First off, while the tubes themselves are limited, the trips are often exquisitely planned. Because each dome does have a direct line to each of the twelve conjunctions. As you would expect, a dome will have twelve stations, and you go to the one that leads to your destination. Currently, most trains leave about an average of every thirty minutes, but that fluctuates, and will continue to change, because it’s based on demand. If literally no one is going from Conjunction 6 to Conjunction 4, then it’s not even going to bother leaving. It will just sit there until someone signs up prior to the next cycle. I probably don’t need to tell you all this, because there is already sufficient literature on how to travel around the world, but I’ve always loved transportation, so while I’m finding lots of enjoyment from the other domes, I tend to focus more on the logistics than most visitors do.

So let’s talk about how it works once you’re in the Conjunction. As I said, each dome has a direct route to every single one. That’s important. I read up on the history, and the original plans called for multiple layovers, where you travel to your nearest hub, then the hub nearest your destination, and finally your final destination. That would be so bad, but I’m sure most people are glad that they ended up building up the infrastructure much more than that. The Conjunctions are so well-designed, and there is so much redundancy. If you are in a train car with visitors who are going through the same Conjunction, but different final destinations, your car will stop, and have you get off. At that point, you will just about immediately step into a private multi-directional elevator pod. It can only fit eleven people, but if you have luggage, obviously fewer. If you’re in a party of one, you can have a pod to yourself, and if you’re in a party of 22, you’re gonna have to split up. That’s just fine, they have enough to accommodate everyone who can fit in any given train car over only a few moments. Your pod will take you to your next station, where a second train will come for you to deliver you to the right dome. You might still be alone, but the builders thought of this. Not all vactrain cars are the same size. That’s why you tell the system where you’re going, so they can prepare the right one for you, to save the larger ones for more popular domes, even if the popularity shifts hour by hour. It’s such a robust system, I’m so impressed. There are so many things going on in the background, but you don’t have to worry about that. You just get on, get off, pod over, get on, and get off again. Despite there being more than three times as many stations worldwide than there have ever been airports on Earth, travel has never been simpler. And your trip will never take longer than three and a half hours from anywhere else. And that’s assuming you stop for coffee.

Microstory 2466: Grand Central Sewage

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According to lore, this was originally called Primary Sewage Treatment Dome. They changed it, because they wanted it to sound a little more fun. Because in reality, it’s not fun at all. It’s the grossest aspect of this planet, in my humble opinion. Let’s start with the water. Every sufficiently completed dome handles its own water treatment for the most part. Using state-of-the-art plants, the sewage is collected, filtered, and recycled as needed. This clean water is then pumped back into their own pipe network, and if there’s any excess, it can be returned to the planet’s water table. There isn’t much of a water table, but it does exist, and it’s growing every day. What’s left over after all of the water has been reclaimed is called sludge, and while it’s absolutely disgusting, it is absolutely not useless. There are all sorts of goodies in your waste. It can be used for biogas, fertilizer, and even feedstock for additive printers. That’s right, the device you’re using to read this review may be made out of poop! It’s a...different circle of life. Certain useful ingredients can also be extracted from the sludge, like phosphorus, nitrogen, and cellulose. These chemicals are all processed here, and redistributed as necessary. But first, it has to get here. As I said, each individual dome reclaims its own recycled water, but since there’s only one Grand Central Sewage, it all has to be pelletized, sealed up, and transported somehow. Enter the vactrain network. That’s right, the same tubes you use to travel from your residential dome to, say, Archidome, are also used to transport waste. Don’t worry, though. They use entirely different trains, and entirely different train stations. It’s probably right under your feet, though. If you were to step through a maintenance door, and walk down the steps, you could end up in a second station where waste is moved into the tubes. Scrap is shipped from here as well. Every time you throw away some packaging, or a part breaks off from some equipment, it goes to one of these hidden stations too, so it can head off to a separate dome, colloquially known as The Scrapyard. I reviewed that dome as well, because I actually like the utility domes. I find the secret, underground means by which we live to be more interesting than what we do on the surface. It’s not pretty, and it’s not glamorous, but it is monumentally important. Yes, it might be a little weird to know that the chair your sitting on could have been in someone’s body at some point, but trust me, this is better. We used to just dump our waste in a hole, and leave it there forever. Talk about disgusting.

Microstory 2442: Recursiverse Immersive Experience

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That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? If you don’t know, Recursiverse is one of the most popular franchises in history, spanning several books, dozens of TV series, and hundreds of movies (depending on your definition). It follows thousands of characters living fantastical lives in two parallel universes. In the modern age, the fantastical elements that they explore in the stories can be recreated using real technologies, but back when they were first being written and distributed, they were exciting to a huge audience. There’s still some soft scifi in there that we can’t do for real in this dome network. That’s right, it’s not just one dome. You couldn’t fit all this in the area covered by a single dome, so it has to spread out. I don’t even know how many domes there are, because you don’t always know when you’ve moved. You can travel to other planets with vastly different geographies, and you do this using faster-than-light technology that doesn’t allow you to see exactly how you’re moving in realspace. I think you’re sometimes moving along the z-axis, onto upper levels hidden behind the holographic sky on the ceiling of the layer below, which isn’t as high as it looks. I’m not going to go into any specifics, because it won’t mean anything to you if you’re unfamiliar with the canon. But there are alien races, and they’re perfectly recreated by the androids. You can also choose your own substrate, and it doesn’t have to look like you, or even human at all. Other domes do that, but this was once protected intellectual property. The creator gradually began to release his rights to the public, so others could explore the stories and themes that he conceived. The law didn’t require that he do that. He’s still alive today. By current laws, he could still retain the rights. That’s assuming he continued to make new contributions, or he would have lost them eventually. Some of them would be under the public domain regardless, though, as he shared his rights to them with a corporation, such as a movie studio. They never retain their power for long, especially not since all those financial-based companies are now dead. I know it sounds like I’m getting off topic, but it explains why this is such a big franchise on this planet. By the time the creator published a single word of his work, Recursiverse was a well defined universe—or biverse, as it were—full of a solid foundation of rules, conventions, and histories, and even contingencies. The creator could have made every decision, but he chose to let them be free, first by collaborating directly with others, then by deliberately relinquishing his control. If you want to enjoy this dome network in full, you’re gonna wanna catch up with what has come before, but I promise that it’s worth it. I don’t ever want to leave.

Microstory 2420: Nordome Network

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Unlike most other themed domes, this is actually a series of domes. I believe the creator wanted to truly make it feel large in scope. While the distance between the “continents” isn’t anywhere near as large as they are on Earth, it still takes some time in those antiquated boats to travel between them. I even think you pass by other, unrelated domes on your way, though you would never know it if you stick to the right heading, because the holographic sky is sensational. It just looks like you’re outside. If you get lost, and sail in the wrong direction, you’re gonna hit the sides. They even have a sprinkler system to simulate rain during your journey, and the sea below you is saltwater, so you get that real oceanic experience. This isn’t the only dome network that works like this. It’s just the one that’s set during the Viking Age. You don’t have to be a Viking yourself—you can choose a simpler life, as a farmer, or a merchant—but you’re at risk of being attacked. You have to protect your settlement as they would have during the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries. If you do choose to go on a journey, you have to build or commission your own ship. They aren’t just provided to you. Keep in mind that this is a lifestyle dome experience. You’re meant to stay here for years, and really live the way that these people historically lived. There are no rules, and no planned activities. There’s no anachronistic technology, and you can’t keep leaving and come back. If you have a serious need, they’ll let you go through an emergency exit, and once the issue is resolved, you can go back. So it’s not like a one and done sort of thing, but it’s also not a free-for-all. You can’t spend your days on the boat, then sleep in a nice comfy bed at night. There are no day trips, and they will enforce these rules. I never saw any sort of argument or disagreement, but they were clear. If you really want to get the full experience, it’s probably gonna take you about thirty years. But, I mean, come on, who doesn’t have that kind of time to spare these days? What are you worried about, that you’re gonna die soon? So take a break and learn something. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, if you haven’t heard.

Microstory 2389: Vacuus, December 12, 2179

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Dear Condor,

I can be pretty intense too, which is why I think we’re perfect together. Of course, we have to define together a little differently than most people, but we’re not the only ones in this situation. A number of other couples around the solar system are basically going through the same thing. There’s this whole subculture of spacefarers who have met their significant others on the network without ever meeting each other. To be fair, we’re still clearly unique, because no pair is as separated as we are—Titan and Europa only get about 9 AU apart—but I think they still have some advice that we could follow. Funnily enough, you’ve already implemented some of these with your sister (though hopefully not all of them). For one, they suggest sending sexy pictures. Check that one off the list for us. Corinthia and I got in a fight about it, but we worked it out. If you would like some more, I would be willing to do that, but I don’t want our entire relationship to only be about sex. I don’t think that would be fulfilling in any meaningful way for either of us. Videos are better, but a little tough for us. My quota is different than Corinthia’s, and the image ends up very compressed, so it’s probably more annoying than anything. I will try it, though. The first photo I sent you was actually a still from a video I did where I introduced myself, and my role on the base. As far as the nonsexual tips, the stories I read about suggested something that they called asynchronous shared experiences. That’s like how you had a shared birthday party, and pretended to be in the same room together by wearing the same clothes, and looking at the same stars. Reading the same books, and watching the same show, are also good examples of this. I don’t want to do The Winfield Files, since that’s something special just between the two of you, but maybe there’s something else? Since we’re so worried about the Valkyries returning, it should probably be something on the shorter side, especially since I know you have a ton of other responsibilities, it’s not all about me. So maybe just a movie? I like to read, like you, but they take so long, and I get particularly invested in epic novels. One thing that has helped some couples is building a fictional environment to occupy together. They imagine what their lives would be like if they could live them in realtime. Fair warning, this doesn’t work for everyone. The lie can be...maddening. I’ll tell you what, since I have more free time than you do, I’ll attach a list of movies that I’ve been meaning to see. I’ll watch them all. They’re all different genres, so you watch whichever one you want, and send me your thoughts. That will be our first shared experience.

Patiently yours,

Velia

Microstory 2262: Rather Be Blissfully Ignorant

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All of you apparently expected to hear me give you an answer for whether I was going to do an interview for one of my local news television programs. In short, yes. In a tiny bit longer, it’s complicated. I will be doing something in some way at some point, but the network is making certain accommodations for it that I’m not privy to. I’ll give you all more information, not when I know it, but when I’m allowed to tell you. Don’t stress out about it, though, because it may be a long time before the gears start turning. In the meantime, my publicist is setting me up with one of the firm’s interview specialists to help me learn how to speak in public. I’ve done it before—in various ways, and to varying degrees of success—but I’ve never actually been interviewed, per se. I think we’ll be practicing a lot, which I’m sure I’ll have a lot of fun with...he said sarcastically. I don’t really care to talk about myself in person, and I don’t like trying to figure out how to censor my responses. The only thing worse than getting a question that I wasn’t ready for would be being prepared for all questions, and feeling anxious for them the whole time until it’s finally over. You would think that the worry that comes from not knowing what’s going to happen is what kills me, and that’s true in most situations, but when it comes to interacting with other people, I think I would rather be blissfully ignorant so I don’t spend too much time thinking about it. I’m just weird like that I guess. So to protect myself, that’s all I’ll say for now.

Extremus: Year 85

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This is it. Tinaya and Lataran are going to tell the general public of Extremus that they have maintained a permanent connection to Verdemus. Having a Nexus on the ship was always an option, but the people who first developed the idea of the mission ultimately decided against it for obvious reasons. There was never any law that said they couldn’t build one, probably because doing so takes the intelligence of a lesser god, and the patience of a saint. It was sort of against the spirit of what they’re trying to do here, but since the two they have access to were built for a rescue operation, it’s okay. Things might change in the future, but for now the council says that it’s fine. They have already been briefed on the subject. The braintrust lied to them too, though. They ended up making the claim that, since the two Nexa weren’t constructed by the original designers, they couldn’t be on the network. They could only connect to each other. So people will be able to travel from one to the other, but nowhere else.

With the council’s input, it has been decided that travel will not be a free-for-all. For a period of exactly one year, anyone who wants to visit Verdemus will have to apply to do so. The application that they submit will either be for a temporary stay, or permanent residency. They will have the chance to upgrade or downgrade later, should they change their minds. Some will be excited for the chance to live out their lives on a real planet, only to realize that they don’t really like it there, with all the bugs and everything. Others will go just to see what it’s like, and ultimately fall in love with it. Nothing has to be decided today, but it does have to be decided in 396 days. At that point, the connection will be completely severed. The Verdemusians, both new and old, will have to fend for themselves from then on, and the Extremusians the same. They’re dropping people off, like a bus, and this proverbial bus will not be turning around again. But buses do turn around. They do it all the time, it’s a specific route. So this is not really a good analogy, which is what Tinaya struggled the most with when she was writing her speech. The final draft has her just explaining the situation in no uncertain terms.

They’re going to tell the general population that the Nexa will be destroyed on both ends. What the council believes is that the Nexus will simply be disabled, and can be turned on again for emergencies. What only the small group of the original non-clone, non-secret explosion survivors knows is that the connection will just stay up the whole time, and they’ll be free to move back and forth however they please. They probably won’t do it much, but they’ll at least be able to communicate with each other. Lilac, Aristotle, and Niobe are staying on Verdemus. The latter two feel that it is their home, and the former wants to be with her son. Vaska will be staying too, not only because she isn’t on the Extremus manifest, but also because she wants to keep studying it. Omega and Valencia will be working on Jaunemus for now, but if anyone’s going to be using the Nexa after the one year grace period, it’ll be them. They have important jobs to complete, and they need the leeway to complete them. Tinaya will be staying on Extremus with Arqut, and of course, the Captain will too. Spirit and Belahkay have not yet made a decision, but they’ll surely stay together.

This is a joint presentation, but Lataran will only be responsible for answering questions at the end, since this is just for the crew for now. Tinaya is the one who will be explaining everything. She’s pacing on stage, nervous but using her breathing techniques. The curtain that separates her from the audience is soundproof. She could scream as loud as she pleased, and no one would notice. She almost wants to do this, just to recenter herself. She’s not dealt with the crew much as of late, since her leadership experience has been mostly relegated to the civilian side, and she’s been away for so many years anyway. Very few currently on rotation were there back in the day, so he doesn’t know many of these people.

Tinaya checks her watch, not wanting to be late. The seconds are ticking by, but she still has about twenty of them left, which is more than enough time for her to get over her nerves, and figure this out. Right? Why is she so anxious about it? She’s been around people. Well, in a different way, sure, but not like this. Extremus is a hollow chunk of metal hurtling through space. It has to be a structured well-oiled machine, or everything falls apart, and everyone dies. They had so much more freedom on the planet, and life was a lot more forgiving. Holy shit, how did ten seconds pass so quickly? Okay, get ready. There’s the button to open the curtains. Why isn’t Lataran here with her? Oh yeah, she’s greeting people by the door. That’s stupid, and annoying. The only thing worse than speaking in front of a huge crowd of people is being alone. She needs support. She needs Lataran. “Lataran.”

The Captain’s hand pushes Tinaya’s out of the way just before she can open the curtain. “Don’t push the button. Button is bad.”

“What are you talking about?” Tinaya questions.

“We’re not doing this. Trust me, it’s a bad idea. I’ll explain everything, but we need to get you out of here right now.”

“What about the crew?”

“I’ve sent them back to their assignments,” Lataran replied.

“You have?” A completely different Lataran asks. “That’s news to me.”

“What the hell are you doing back here?” The first Lataran shoves Tinaya behind her as if trying to be a human target.

“Well, one of the new Forest Rangers was running a little late for the presentation when he saw me sneak backstage, and then immediately saw me again at the entrance. I could have teleported, yes, but it didn’t look like that’s where I was headed.”

“Well, shit.” The first Lataran lets go of Tinaya, and holds up her hands defensively. “Now, I know you have to place me in hock, but you should know that I’m not here to hurt anyone. I’m not an impostor. I’m a time traveler.”

“I’m not taking you anywhere,” the second Lataran corrects. “Tinaya is taking both of us, because neither of us can be trusted.”

Tinaya doesn’t move.

“Tiny, that is protocol. You have to assume that we’re both bad guys.”

“She’s right,” the first Lataran says. “I never meant for the two of us to be in a room together. I wanted to get us away from here before I explained why I came back.”

“That’s a great idea,” the second Lataran says. “So stop talking!”

Tinaya removes the magcuff from her belt loop, which is standard issue for all crewmembers, and some key civilians. It’s so thin, she forgets that one is in every pair of pants that she owns. She only has the one, so the two of them will have to share. They look like twin sisters holding hands, but not for long. Tinaya teleports into the hock entrance, and checks them in with the Hock Watcher. He’s totally indifferent to the situation. He quietly locks them up in two separate interrogation rooms, and alerts the council, as well as First and Second Lieutenants. While he’s doing that, Tinaya reaches out to the current crew consul. She’s actually never met Icarus Faulkner, but he’s said to be just the nicest guy in the world.

In these uncertain situations, both copies of the same person will be treated equally until the authority can determine which one of them belongs, and which one doesn’t. But one version of Lataran is claiming to be real, and from this time period, while the other is admitting to being an interloper. So they’re starting with the assumption that both of them are telling the truth, and focusing their efforts on the latter version. Consul Faulker pulls Tinaya’s seat out for her, but doesn’t sit down next to her right away. “Can I get you two anything? Water? Tea?”

Tinaya reaches her hand towards him. “That’s not your job anymore, Consul.”

When he was still young, before he began his apprenticeship, he really did serve as an assistant to an earlier consul. That was so many years ago; he should not be experiencing a conditioned response like this. “It’s quite all right, I’m still standing.”

“We’re both fine,” Tinaya insists.

“She’s right,” Lataran is forced to say when Icarus looks over at her so she can answer for herself.

He finally relents, and takes his own seat. Poor eyesight is virtually a thing of the past. It really just depends on what you define as normal. Almost no one needs to wear lenses. Those who do almost always want some sort of enhanced vision, like telescopic, microscopic, or otherwise augmented. Icarus, however, is legitimately farsighted, and has not elected for corrective surgery, apparently because he doesn’t want to put the surgeon out. Yeah. There is such a thing as being too nice. He puts his reading glasses on, and inspects his tablet. As he goes through his spiel, he skims through the early report, and doesn’t look up at anyone. “This is Consul Icarus Faulkner of the VMS Extremus, sitting with former First Chair, Tinaya Leithe. We are interviewing a purported time traveler who has appeared in the form of current VMS Extremus Captain, Lataran Keen. The interviewee has been magnetically bound to the table, and is being treated respectfully and humanely. She has been offered refreshments, and...” Now he looks up. He quickly taps on the screen. “Do you need to use the restroom?”

“No.”

Tap. “...an opportunity to use the facilities, which she has so far declined.” He leans back in his chair, and carefully adjusts the microexpression detector attached to the one-way mirror behind them. “Okay, here we go.”

Tinaya instinctively holds to the back of his chair in case he tips all the way back.

“Thank you kindly.” He goes back into the formal questioning. “Please state your full name for analysis.”

“Lataran Keen.”

“Middle name included.”

“Don’t have one.”

Icarus looks back at the detector over his reading glasses, which doesn’t really tell him anything, of course, so he looks down at the results on his tablet. “Very well. Are you a time traveler?”

“Indeed.”

“What was your date and time of egress?”

“October 12, 2355 at 15:52.”

“What was the purpose of your journey back in time?”

“To stop the announcement of the true nature of our relationship to Verdemus.”

“Why should this announcement not be made?” he presses.

“It becomes disastrous for both the ship, and the planet. Four months into allowing passengers to visit Verdemus, attacks begin. It starts with individual killings, and quickly escalates into full-on bombings. We believe that a message was recently sent to the Exin Empire, alerting them to the survival of the planet, and its inhabitants.”

“You believe that a spy infiltrated the visitors in order to sabotage whatever harmonious society has, and will have, been established there.”

“That’s correct,” Lataran confirms.

“Do you know for sure that it was one of the visitors?”

“Who else would it be?” Lataran asks, very confused.

“Well, when I was briefed, I was told that there are already thousands of people living there. Clones of Mister Omega Parker?”

“Omega Strong,” Tinaya corrects.

“Apologies. Let the record reflect that I misnamed Omega Strong.”

This sounds like the stupidest thing that Lataran has ever heard. “It wasn’t the clones. They were there for years before the passengers began to show up.”

“I am afraid that you have proven a correlative connection, but not a causal one. That two things occurred in sequence—”

“I understand how logic and causality work,” Lataran interrupts. “Thank you, but I did pass second grade.”

“You will show respect to the Consul,” Tinaya warns.

“I’m sorry,” Lataran says. “I understand that I have not given you enough information. Tinaya, you confiscated a flashdrive from me when I checked in?”

“Is that what that is?” Tinaya asks. “It looks ancient.”

“Intentional obsolescence,” Lataran explains. “For security purposes. Reach out to the Technology Historians Club. They’ll know what to do. It will have all the evidence you need to cancel the announcement. We were wrong. No one can know that Verdemus still stands. We don’t know who we can trust, but someone is not on our side.”

“We’ll review the data you submitted,” Icarus goes on, “and the claims you have made. In the meantime, the other Lataran Keen will remain in hock on the ship, and you will be transported through the Nexus for indefinite detainment on world.” He switches off the recording, and stands up.

“That’s it?” Tinaya asks him. “No more questions?”

“Until the data can be verified,” Icarus begins, “I would not like to contaminate my investigation with more, possibly corrupt, information. I’m sure that we’ll have more to ask once we learn more from that...flashdrive thing.” He begins to leave the room. “I’ll arrange for covert transport. I’ll let you two have a moment for a private goodbye, but Miss Leithe, you are not leaving the ship, and you are not speaking with the other Captain.” He exits the room with a polite nod to the both of them.

Tinaya and the visiting Lataran do say their goodbyes, because it really feels like they’re never going to see each other again. It could be that Lataran’s image has been forever tarnished, and that the real one will be relieved of her position as well.

After a thorough investigation—with the help of time travel experts Omega and Valencia, and the current temporal engineers—it’s determined that the time traveler was telling the truth. The announcement is postponed until further notice. Five months later, though no passengers are ever allowed to visit Verdemus, the murders begin, and the planet falls under attack.

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Extremus: Year 84

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Tinaya Leithe was reportedly on an away mission for eleven years before she finally returned home, which is not exactly a lie; it’s just not the whole truth. The passengers of Extremus are aware that there are some excursions away from the ship, and that it always involves some form of time travel. They’re aware that someone managed to go rogue decades ago, and found a civilization millennia in the past. They don’t know who this person was, or how many of his acolytes have infiltrated Extremus, but they know that these people exist. They do know about Verdemus, but they don’t know that the crew maintained a persistent connection to it for years. They also don’t know that a permanent connection has finally been established in the form of two new Nexa that Omega and Valencia built on either end. Given enough time, everyone presently on board could theoretically go there. They could travel back and forth, or abandon the grand mission altogether. Publicizing the events surrounding the colony has been proposed as a viable option, though some are taking it more seriously than others.

Tinaya stands at the bottom of the steps. Everyone currently in-the-know is sitting on them, patiently awaiting the beginning of her presentation. Culture on the Extremus is a hodge podge from all sorts of different originating cultures. They come from Earth, Durus, Ansutah, Gatewood, and Extremus itself. Each time their ancestors moved—or had been moved—to a different place, they adopted new traditions and practices. One of the customs that they picked up from their time in the Gatewood Collective is the concept of a Devil’s Advocate debate. In a stalemate, or a state of ethical dilemma, two opposing forces will settle their differences by arguing each other’s positions. Tinaya believes that they should reveal the truth about the planet to the passengers. They should lay it all out on the table, and let the chips fall where they may. She will thusly be arguing against that. She takes a deep breath as if she’s about to start talking, but she doesn’t.

“Have you not prepared?” Lataran asks in a faux English accent. “She believes in maintaining the secrecy of Verdemus, and their integration into the Nexus network. Not only does it allow them to travel back and forth freely, but it gives them a lifeline to anywhere else in the galaxy that has one of their own machines. People could just go live on Earth, or Teagarden. To her, letting anyone go would set a dangerous precedent. They could lose everything. What they’ve built here could fall apart, and turn the whole mission into a joke...a footnote. Thusly, when it’s her turn to speak, she’ll be arguing in favor of transparency.

“Point of order,” Councilman Modlin argues. He’s serving as the mediator in this debate, because he remains undecided. “The Devil will not speak until the Angel is finished.” It is the Devil’s job to advocate for some sort of change in the status quo, or at least a greater change. In D.A. proceedings, there is no back and forth. Only the mediator and audience members may ask questions, or make comments.

Lataran opens her mouth to apologize, but the rules are clear, and strict. She’s not even allowed to do that. So she just nods, and turns back to face her opponent.

Tinaya is grateful for the delay. She is prepared, but she’s afraid of winning. That’s the fascinating reason for the practice. The better you are, the more likely you are to win, which actually means that you lose. More often than not, it manages to poke holes in everyone’s argument, and the result ends up being the proverbial Door Number Three. It shows people the compromise that they were unwilling to recognize before, because they’re too far on one side of the spectrum. They can’t see it until someone forces them as far to the opposite side as possible. But in this last second, she has changed her mind. “I’m ready.” She clears her throat, and pulls up a list on the smartboard. It contains all the bad things that have happened on the ship since it launched that have been known to be caused by the Exins. “This is what the Exin Empire has done to us. These are attacks and sabotages carried out by agents of the enemy.” She clicks the remote. Sub-bullets appear between the items. “These are the consequences of those actions, rippling out from the attacks in ways that could not have been predicted.”

She gives the group time to read through them. She did not only create this for illustrative purposes. Some people in the audience may need to be reminded of the specific events, and a few, like Aristotle and Niobe, weren’t around to see it, nor study it in school. She clicks again. “This is what time looks like.” On the screen is the name Jeremy Bearimy in cursive. It’s a reference to a popular TV show on Earth, which claimed this to be the shape that time makes in the afterlife, as opposed to the traditional linear model. It’s a joke, really, but still canonical. There actually is a real man named Jeremy Bearimy who was given this name by a fan of the show who found him as an infant, unwittingly playing into what would become the boy’s unusual temporal pattern. Time doesn’t really so perfectly look like this in the real world, but it’s a closer approximation than a straight line. Tinaya points to the r in the surname. “If the Exins find out about Verdemus at this point. All they’ll have to do is wait until time gets back to here to wipe us all out. She traces the loops and curves forward before pulling all the way back to the beginning of the name, and starting over. All she’s really saying is that it doesn’t matter when the Exins find out that Verdemus wasn’t destroyed. They would be able to use this information to change the past.

“So, you’re saying that we have to keep it a secret forever,” Belahkay figures.

“Yes,” Tinaya confirms. “When time travel is involved, there’s no getting past it. Your past might be waiting for you in the future.” She clears her throat again, and sets her pointer down.

“That’s it?” Councilman Modlin questions.

“That is the breadth of Lataran’s position. The only reason to keep it secret from the passengers is that some of them may be spies, if only unknowingly.”

Lataran perks up, and tries to argue, but she can’t. Not only is it still not her turn, but she’s not responsible for her own position. She has to stay on the opposite side until the debate is over. She has to pretend to be against herself.

Spirit decides to help her out. “I think that what the Captain wishes she could say is that it’s more nuanced than that. There’s a lot that you’re leaving out.”

“Madam Leithe, you are failing to understand the assignment. You’re expected to rigorously argue your opponent’s position as if it were your own. You’re expected to act in the spirit of healthy debate, not lose on purpose to win in the real world.”

“I’m not,” Tinaya contends. “I agree with her now.” She looks over her shoulder at the Bearimy model. “This is all that matters. The Exins are the greatest existential threat that we face. And they look just like us. There is no way to know who among us would help them, and hurt us. They didn’t infiltrate Extremus, they didn’t even infiltrate Gatewood. They infiltrated Durus. They covertly landed on the rogue world centuries ago, bred a secret society, the descendants of which would later travel through The Abyss, and into Ansutah. Their descendants maintained this secret society over the course of two thousand years before humans escaped that universe, and came back here. Their descendants then boarded Extremus, and now, their descendants are here. Over a hundred generations apart, and they still act against us. That’s commitment. And there is no competing with it. Honestly, I don’t know if we can trust the people in this room.”

“I must say,” Arqut jumped in, “that we don’t know for sure that that’s how the Exins ever infiltrated us. We’ve just not been able to pinpoint the origin of the spies that we’ve discovered. That doesn’t mean they go all the way back to the Durus days. There are and were billions of people in Gatewood. It would not be that hard to sneak someone aboard one of the cylinders, even only days before Extremus launched.”

“The fact is,” Tinaya stresses, “that they were here, and could still be here, and we’ve never been able to catch them until they’ve done something bad. No one can know about Verdemus,” she says firmly. “We can’t even just not tell anyone about it. We have to destroy the Nexa. And before we do...” She trails off, at first to pause for dramatic effect, but she becomes so comfortable in the silence that she finds it hard to get out.

“Before we do...?” Niobe encourages.

“Before we do,” Tinaya repeats, “everyone here has to go back to the other side, and stay there until death.”

They all scoff or shake their heads. “What?” Spirit asks.

Tinaya shakes right back. “We’re too dangerous. What if, say, Aristotle meets someone special, and mumbles something about it in his sleep? What if Lilac gets drunk, and spills the beans to a random fellow patron at the speakeasy?” She doesn’t actually know whether there is a speakeasy. She just assumes that drinking alcohol is around here somewhere. “We can’t. Trust. Anyone.” She emphasizes. “There are people already on that planet. I didn’t put them there, I didn’t authorize them, but it can’t be undone.” Actually, it could be if they wanted it bad enough. “We’re not just protecting the Extremus mission. We’re protecting them too.” The number of people who are a threat to the safety and security of the planet is exactly the same as the number of people who would be a risk if someone leaked any information. Then again, that has always been the case. They are under constant threat.

“If we don’t trust the people on the ship to not be spies, what the hell are we doing here? What’s the point?” Lataran blurts out.

“The Devil will wait her turn,” Councilman Modlin declares.

“No, it doesn’t matter. I switched sides too. “Tinaya, these people need to know that there’s a choice now. None of us was around when Extremus was first being conceived.” We didn’t choose to go on the mission, but we have a choice now. I’m going to stay as this is my home, but we can’t speak for everyone else. There is a movement,” she admits. “It’s small, but growing. Some people do want to leave. They want to live on a planet. They’re angry that we left Verdemus in our rearview mirror. Some even think that we should turn around. Now that we have a way to go back without turning the whole ship around, don’t we have an obligation to present it as an option? Don’t we owe those people that much?”

“Where does it end?” Tinaya asks. “Do we place a cap on the number of emigrants? What if everyone chooses to leave? What if they change their minds?”

“I’ve thought of that. Everyone will have maybe a week to make their decision, and submit their application for resettlement. After that, there are no take-backs, and no late additions. You go, and you stay gone, and you can only travel to Verdemus. We’ll lock the computers out of all other destinations.”

“Wait, let me get this straight,” Tinaya begins, realizing that this Devil’s Advocate debate has officially gone off the rails. “You want to tell them the truth about Verdemus, but lie about the Nexa’s true limitations?”

“They’re apparently called Mark III Nexa.” Lantern uses airquotes. “Yes, we could argue that they can’t be on the full network; that they can only go to each other. That way, everyone stays out of the Goldilocks Corridor, and even the stellar neighborhood. I’m advocating for transparency, not one hundred percent transparency. There is a line, I believe in lines.”

Tinaya sighs, and steps over to the wall. There aren’t very many viewports on this vessel. Most of them are viewscreens, and even then, there’s usually nothing to see that isn’t fake. Their ancestors could look out a window to see Gatewood, and their descendants will hopefully one day look out to see the Extremus planet. But for now, it’s nothing but the doppler glow, and that’s blinding unless the glass is heavily tinted. That’s what this viewport does; show what it really looks like outside the ship as it’s traveling at the highest fraction of lightspeed at an extreme dimness. She turns the tint down just a little bit to make it a little bit brighter.

Lataran stands up, and approaches—not her opponent—but her friend. She places a hand on Tinaya’s back. “Word will get out. We may both be dead by then, but people will learn what we did. Do you want them to think that we didn’t trust them, or that we believed in them? Would you rather force everyone to stay on a mission that no one cares about anymore than let everyone leave, and just accept that as our fate? Our parents’ parents wanted us to get to the other side of the galaxy. That was their dream. And it’s still mine, even though I won’t be alive to see it. It’s not necessarily anyone else’s though. And I want them to be happy too.”

“I think we both well know that you can be alive to see it if you so wish.”

Lataran nods. “Yes. But it’s still up to us to keep this thing moving, and when we’re gone, regardless of how we answer The Question, we’ll have to hope that our children will keep it going for even longer. But if they don’t—” She reaches up to turn Tinaya’s chin away from the window. “If they don’t, Tinaya...then that will be okay too. It will not be a dishonor to our ancestors. It’s up to us to choose our own fate, and if our grandparents loved and love us as much as they should, they’ll understand.” She looks through the viewport now. “We don’t even know where we’re going. Maybe we were always on our way to Verdemus.”

Tinaya smiles softly at her best friend. “They were right to choose you as Captain. You were made for this job. You remind me of Halan Yenant.”

“I should be so lucky,” Lataran replies. She looks over at the crowd, who all suddenly start to pretend that they’re not watching them. Omega probably has an implant that allows him to hear their whispers. “Don’t be so quick to count yourself out as a good Captain too. You’re not dead yet.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Lataran gives her a hug, then releases. “Come on. This debate is over, but we need to come to a consensus. It’s not just about convincing each other. Everyone has a say. I’m sure Vaska will have a lot to say when she comes back from the planet.”

They return to the group, and keep talking it through. They eventually come to decide on partial transparency, but determining exactly what that entails warrants much more discussion. And some outside help.

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Extremus: Year 83

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It only took Omega and Valencia a couple of weeks to figure out what went wrong with the Nexus, and solve it. Apparently, Vitalie’s use of the network while traveling through time did screw things up, but she wasn’t the only one responsible. A Mark II Nexus, being one that was constructed by the people who invented them in the first place, could handle this complication. It would have been able to compensate for the temporal interference, and sort of reboot itself. The one that Omega built is just as good as these in most respects, but there are some notable differences; differences which the average person would not be able to detect. After careful examination of all the parts and systems, they were able to correct the issue, but only for this particular machine. They’re trying to get to the one on Extremus, which never received the correction. If they could just establish contact with someone on board, the current temporal engineer could probably get it done if they walked them through it, but even their communications are down. They need a creative solution. In three months, they’ve yet to come up with one.

“We can go to Earth first. From there, we can make contact with someone who can help us,” Spirit suggests.

“Do you know of anyone in particular in this day and age?” Tinaya questions.

“No,” Spirit admits. “The historical records don’t go this far.”

“What about Team Keshida?” Belahkay offers.

“Gatewood isn’t in the directory,” Omega explains as he’s pointing to the screen. “I don’t know why not. Maybe they cloaked themselves, or...they moved. A few of these Nexa are in weird places in the galaxy, which could be controlled by friends; maybe even Keshida, but maybe not. I wouldn’t feel comfortable reaching out to them. The Exins think that Verdemus was destroyed. We cannot disabuse them of this misconception, so we cannot risk connecting with any mysteries.”

“I can do it,” Aristotle volunteers for the umpteenth time.

“Remember what happened the last time you tried?” Lilac asks.

Aristotle nods. “I was young, and ignorant.”

“It wasn’t that long ago,” Niobe reminds him.

“I have the tools that I need now,” Aristotle insists.

“The timogramen,” Tinaya realizes. “You’ve learned something about it.”

“Not me,” Aristotle clarifies. “Vaska never stopped studying it. She understands how it works now. It interferes with temporal manipulation when not accounted for, so all you have to do is account for it. You have to know how much timogramen radiation is in your system, how much there is nearby, the temperature and barometric pressure,  the position of the sun and celestial bodies, the precise distance of the destination, and a few other minor factors. But she thinks she can do it. She’s been building something.”

“She’s been building what, a timogramen detector?” Valencia asks him.

Aristotle bobs his head. “She calls it a temporal radiation compensator, but like I said, it has to include a whole lot more in the calculations. Plus, it has to be calibrated for what you’re actually trying to accomplish. If you’re just trying to teleport, it’s one thing, but where I’m going, it’s a whole different thing.”

“Wait, but that’s true,” Tinaya begins. “We teleport on this planet without issue.”

Valencia sighs. “It’s not without issue. The relays just seem to work okay, because most of the time, people are only making short, simple jumps. But we’re doing a lot of maintenance on them. The old relays, before the explosion, were no better.”

“What do you mean, did something happen?” Tinaya asks.

“The Captain. I don’t have the whole story, because I’m not in the loop anymore, but just before the mirror exploded, she tried to hustle the kids through. They evidently didn’t make it to where they were going. I’m not sure how Lataran eventually made her way back, but she was gone for a year. The Ship Superintendent has to step in.”

Tinaya looks over at her husband. “Arqut, is this true?”

“I guess I forgot to tell you about that. The second lieutenant assured me that it was only temporary. She seemed to know something, and it seemed better not to press it. A year later, she showed up.”

“Without the kids,” Tinaya figures. She looks at Aristotle and Niobe now, who are also hiding the truth. “Why does it feel like I’m the only one in the dark here?”

“I am too,” Spirit assures her.

“As am I,” Belahkay agrees.

She’s kind of used to it at this point. There were a ton of things that Lataran didn’t tell her about while she was First Chair, even though she initially expected to be privy to everything upon being elected. Their persistent link to this planet was one of those secrets. Full transparency has never been assumed on the ship, and in fact, would be a dangerous goal to seek. Ignorance Tolerance is a subject that students study nearly every year. When it comes to time travel, no one is entitled to know everything, and children have to learn to deal with it maturely. This is where they memorize Leona’s Rules for Time Travel. She decides to let it go. “Where’s Vaska?”

“Her lab is in the megablock,” Lilac replies. “She likes to work near a lot of other people, like she did on Gatewood.”

Tinaya grabs Aristotle by the hand, and teleports him back down to Verdemus without a word. She sends a quick message to Vaska, who drops a pin. The two of them walk across the courtyard, and enter the lab.

“Miss Leithe, it’s been a while. How have you been?”

“I’ve been all right. Just trying to get home.”

Vaska’s gaze darts over to Aristotle.

“I told her about what you’ve been working on,” he divulges.

“Well, it’s ready. I mean...it’s ready to be tested.”

“Show me,” Tinaya requests.

Vaska opens up a cabinet behind her, and takes out a fairly large box. “It’s just a prototype, so it doesn’t look pretty, but I’m confident in its functionality.” She sets the box down, and removes the lid to reveal a plethora of gadgets, gizmos, and innerworkings. In addition to the expected wires and antenna, there are gears turning each other around, like a timepiece. Tubes are ready to transport fluids between an exposed logic board, and some other apparatus. Two buttons that kind of look like they were originally from a mechanical computer keyboard are rhythmically going up and down in an alternating pattern. LEDs are blinking, and a small display is showing status data. Vaska extends a tiny spyglass to have it standing straight up towards the ceiling. She lifts up what kind of looks like a tiny microphone, but Tinaya recognizes it to be a portable radiometer, probably full-spectrum, in this case. The familiar crackling sound that a radiometer makes when it’s picking up radiation begins to overwhelm the soft buzzing sound that’s been coming from somewhere inside.

“Well,” Tinaya says. “I don’t know what I’m looking at. I don’t know why I thought coming here would be helpful.”

“I can take a look at it.” Valencia turns out to have been behind them. “I’ll make sure it works, and if it doesn’t, make it so it does, or maybe just improve upon it.”

“It’s certainly big enough,” Vaska acknowledges. “I would love to streamline it. What if Mister Al-Amin could wear it on his wrist at all times?” She proposes.

“Does he need that?” Tinaya wonders. “I thought the only issue is when he’s coming from Verdemus. If he’s anything like his father, he’ll be doing a lot of traveling.”

“He is standing right here,” Aristotle states the obvious. “And he considers this to be his home, so he’ll probably frequently return.”

“You’ll need this at any rate,” Vaska explains. “As you said, it’s your home. The temporal radiation that our respective bodies have been exposed to would eventually dissipate given enough time away. But you’re both a choosing one, and you were born here. “It’s a part of you, and it always has been. You probably can’t survive without it. I imagine you’ll have to return here whether you want to or not, or grow the timogramen elsewhere. I hesitate to suggest the latter.”

“Why is that?” Valencia questions.

Vaska is reluctant. “It’s not harmful. It’s time. Temporal energy and radiation are properties of time, and time isn’t harmful. Except that it is. Time leads to entropy. It’s what kills us, and destroys what’s not alive. The timogramen is dangerous. It could be weaponized, and abused...misused. It would probably serve as an invasive species if allowed to spread to other worlds.”

“How did it evolve in the first place?” Valencia presses. “Is it just a coincidence that it grows here?”

“That I don’t know yet, but I’m pretty sure that you did this. You may have created it when you came here. All the teleportation, and the parallel dimensions...Tinaya’s glass skin thing. Plus, the way I understand it, this planet was annihilated years ago, and then someone went back in time to prevent it. That may have had unforeseen consequences, I really don’t know. Fittingly, I need more time for my research. One thing I know for sure is that it’s not perfectly natural, but there has to be something here, or we would already find the stuff on Earth, and anywhere else that time travelers have visited.”

“This is all fascinating,” Aristotle interjects, “but what does it have to do with me, and the job that I need to get done? I have to travel to Extremus, and get that Nexus working, so we can reconnect. Does this do that; that’s all I need to know.”

“That’s not all that I need to know,” Valencia contends. “You will be taking me back, and I need to feel comfortable and safe with that. The questions that I’m asking now are directly related to me reaching that level of trust in your abilities.”

“Fair enough,” Aristotle relents.

“Can that thing make him more precise and reliable?” Valencia goes on, pointing to the contraption.

“On a planetary level, yes,” Vaska answers. “What happened to him before, when he went back in time, and landed way off course, that shouldn’t happen again.”

What does that mean, on a planetary level?”

Vaska clears her throat, and starts touching things on the compensator, and moving some things around as she’s explaining. “The spyglass is a modified form of the Jayde Spyglass, which is why it has any hope of seeing thousands of light years away. But relative to other stars, planets don’t really move. Of course they do—everything moves—but compared to the reframe speeds of the Extremus? It’s nothing. These tubes here feed clarified timogramen juice into the contaminant filter to capture and counteract the temporal radiation that’s bombarding the compensator while it’s in this environment. There’s a limit to that, which is dependent upon its size. The pure timogramen juice can’t absorb enough background radiation to protect the other instruments for the precise targeting that you’re looking for. Therefore, we can shoot for a planet, but not a ship.”

“What if you built a bigger one?” Tinaya decides to suggest. “You could be more precise then, couldn’t you?”

Vaska winces. “With the bigger one, you can specify a more precise target on the planet, but still not a ship traveling at reframe speeds away from us. At a certain point, size doesn’t matter. A larger surface area means more radiation, which means more clarified timogramen juice is necessary, and you end up with diminishing returns.”

“You didn’t say a bigger one,” Aristotle points out. “You said the bigger one. Did you already build it?”

“That’s what I built first,” Vaska answers. “This one is the prototype portable model. I didn’t think that you would want to use the other one, because it’s a power hog, and for my part, I don’t know why it would be necessary.”

“It still needs his temporal ability, right?” Valencia poses. “It just helps people do what they already do?”

Vaska shakes her head. “No, this one only works with him. The bigger model too. It would be useless for anyone else’s power. But yeah, he still gotta do what he does.”

Valencia nods. “We need the precision. Aristotle has to aim for a mining site in one of the star systems where the Extremus deploys a fleet of resource automators. We’ve been getting a lot of data from Project Topdown, so I know where those are going to be.” She consults her watch. “But if we’re gonna intercept them, we have to leave today. The next proverbial gas station isn’t for another proverbial hundred miles.”

“It’s ready when you are,” Vaska promises. “It’s in my garage, and it’s on wheels.”

“Do you wanna say goodbye to your husband first?” Tinaya asks Valencia.

Valencia taps on her neck. “Omega?” She waits for a few seconds. “Bye.”

Vaska leads them into the garage. Aristotle uses his manly strength to pretend to pull the giant temporal radiation compensator out, and onto the sidewalk while the electric motor does the actual heavy lifting. The pallet jack drops the machine onto the grass. A few of Omega’s clones approach out of curiosity. Vaska and Valencia hook it up to the grid, run through a diagnostic, and a form of a preflight check. She and Aristotle agree to take the risk, knowing that it could kill them, and then they unceremoniously turn on the machine, gather the necessary data, and have Aristotle interface with it. Once it’s at full power, he receives the literal green light, and they both disappear.

“I hope it worked.”

“Let’s go find out.” She takes Vaska by the hand, and teleports up to the moon base. They walk into the Nexus lab to find Valencia and Aristotle waiting for them.

“Welp,” Valencia begins. “It technically worked, but we were off schedule by about four hundred years, and needed to build a couple stasis pods.”

Vaska frowns. “I must have missed something. I’m sorry.”

“It’s quite all right, right?” Lataran says as she’s coming out of the control room, eying Valencia. “Now. I’ve been cooped up on that ship forever, and I haven’t been here in a long time. Who here is gonna give me a tour?”

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Extremus: Year 82

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Tinaya has a job to do. She’s standing in the Nexus cavity with Arqut. To her, he’s a hologram, and to him, she’s the hologram. Omega and Valencia want to activate their respective Nexa to full working order at exactly the same time. They have each left one component disabled so they can make their connections simultaneously at the end of a countdown. Tinaya and Arqut will be handling that countdown by syncing up. They’re just waiting for Valencia to finish septuple checking her systems to make sure that this isn’t a huge disappointment. If they end up having messed something up, and they fail to activate at the same time, it’s not the end of the world, though. This is more for fun.

“What exactly is going to happen?” Spirit asks. It’s rather surprising how little she knows about this stuff, given that she’s a Bridger. “Will we be free to travel back and forth right away?”

“No,” Omega answered from the top of the stairs. “We have to wait for approval. Each Nexus has its own term sequence; a unique identifier that allows it to be recognized by the rest of the network.”

“Who exactly makes these approvals?” Spirit questions.

Omega gives Tinaya a look, because he can’t give one to his wife. “Well, we don’t really know. When we built the first one decades ago, it just sort of happened once we fulfilled the requirements.”

“So if we don’t get one of these sequences, we’ll know that you did something wrong,” Spirit figures.

“Yes. It could be a faulty power relay, or even an open access panel. Things don’t have to be perfect all the time, but they do at its first moment.”

“She’s ready,” Arqut announces.

Omega smiles. “Wonderful. Start at eleven.”

Tinaya and Arqut nod, and watch each other’s lips. “Eleven, ten, nine...” They keep doing down until, “one, go!”

Omega pops his head over the desk in the control room, and looks through the window. He switches his gaze between the Nexus chamber and the interface screen.

“Did it not work?” Spirit asks him.

Omega reaches over to the PA microphone. “Everything is loaded, and we’re online. I can see a number of other Nexa that I can shake hands with, but we still haven’t been assigned a term sequence. How’s Val?”

“She seems to be seeing the same thing you are,” Arqut answers.

Technicolor lights fall down from the drum on the ceiling, and flood the cavity. They expand beyond the confines of it, though, and spread throughout the rest of the building, which it’s not supposed to do. Something really is wrong. In a final flash, they find themselves swept away, and dropped onto a floating platform in the middle of the ocean. It’s nighttime, and eerie, but still somehow reassuring? All of them are here together. Even though they still don’t know what the hell is going on, Tinaya instinctively reaches over, and pulls Arqut into a hug. Omega and Valencia do the same. Feeling left out, Spirit and Belahkay hug too, even though they were never apart.

A stranger pulls up in a rowboat with one passenger. They tie off the boat, and help the woman step out. They have to continue to help her when she stumbles like a newborn foal. She smiles at the crowd. “It’s okay, it’s just been a really long time since I’ve stood on a planet.” She clears her throat, and composes herself. A deep breath helps her find her center of gravity, and then she can begin the short walk towards them. “Good evening. My name is Venus Opsocor, and this is my associate, Senona Riggur. I’ve asked to borrow their space so that we may communicate, but understand that you are not entitled to any wishes. We are only here as guests.”

Everyone just looks at each other, trying to figure out what they’re talking about. Wishes?

Venus continues, “normally, when a Mark III Nexus model is adequately constructed, I automatically assign a term sequence to you, and then move on with my duties. It is not custom for me to speak with the builders directly. But I decided to leave my pod this time due to the fact that two Nexa activated at exactly the same time from their reference of time, which I found interesting. Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. I was just curious.”

“Are you the Nexus network?” Omega asks, stepping forward. “Like, are you the embodiment of it?”

“I helped build the Nexa, and I maintain them as a central intelligence. The network is just that, a network. I’m not the network itself, but I live in it.”

“Wait, you actually invented them?” Valencia asks her in awe.

“It was mostly my partner, but yes,” Venus answers.

“They are a wonder of technology. Can I ask what prompted you—her?”

Venus isn’t sure if she wants to give them an answer, but she does. “In my home galaxy, interstellar travel was difficult. Every journey required traveling to a single location in the center, where a military force kept the gates. Not everyone liked the system. They wanted anarchy. We built the first Nexus network as a sort of compromise to appease them. They thought that they were finally in control, and we...let them believe that. After our civilization collapsed to a great war anyway, I decided to go out and find others who might benefit from their own networks.”

“Fascinating,” Omega and Valencia utter simultaneously.

Venus widens her eyes, and tilts her forehead forward at an angle.

“Oh, right,” Omega says. “Our story. We were stranded on one of our outposts. The ship could not be turned around, so we each built a Nexus to reconnect. We activated at the same time for the symbolism. It’s nothing crazy. We apologize if you having to come here put you out. We didn’t know that it was such a rarity.”

“It’s not simply a rarity, it’s never happened before.” Venus looks around at the group. “You’re from Salmonverse. Are you familiar with a woman named Leona Matic?”

“She’s a celebrity in our culture,” Tinaya replies, “but we’ve never met.”

“I’ve met her,” Omega contends. “I might even call her a friend.”

“If you ever see her, could you pass along a message? Rules have changed amongst my own people. I may not be able to speak with her again myself.”

“We would be happy to,” Valencia promises.

Venus reaches her hand behind her, silently prompting Senona to hand her what looks like a shiny business card. “Can I trust you with this term sequence? Leona will find help there if she ever needs anything, but you would theoretically be able to steal it if you go before her.”

Tinaya reaches for the card. “You can trust me.”

Venus scans the crowd for a consensus on Tinaya’s trustworthiness, which they appear to give, so she hands Tinaya the card. On it are the sixteen symbols that she’s seen all over the place on the Nexa. Most term sequences don’t seem to use every single glyph, but what does she know? “Remind her that she will have to be accompanied by someone who has yet to make a wish of their own,” Venus adds.

“What are these wishes?” Belahkay asks before being elbowed by Spirit.

Venus doesn’t answer. She just looks back at Senona, who nods. “Okay, you may all use the quantum summoning console, even though you didn’t come here on purpose. But try not to be greedy. Whatever you request, you take from somewhere else. It does not conjure something from nothing. I’m setting your return trip on a timer for eleven minutes. Be sure to ask for what you want before then.” She and Senona get back in the rowboat, and disappear into the darkness.

The group walks over to a pedestal sticking up from the platform. It has a dialing pad, and a speaker, but nothing else. “Has anyone here seen anything like this?” Spirit asks the group. “Strongs?”

Omega and Valencia Strong shake their heads. “Nope. This is all new to me, and news to me.” Omega leans his chin forward. “Could I have a pair of cool sunglasses, please?”

A tray slides out of the console, and materializes a pair of cool sunglasses. “It’s like I’m inside the internet.” He puts them on, and shows off. “How do I look?”

“Snazzy,” his wife answers. “Does anyone need anything?”

“I have everything I need right here.” Tinaya has had her arm wrapped around Arqut’s like two snakes this whole time. Now she tightens it.

“I can’t imagine there’s anything we could ask for that we couldn’t procure or fabricate ourselves,” Spirit determines.

“I’m more interested in these wishes,” Belahkay says. “I think they’re meant to be greater than sunglasses.”

“What could be better...” Omega begins, before pulling off the glasses dramatically. “...than these babies.”

They all mostly sit around for the next ten minutes. Belahkay jumps into the water, but climbs back up when Spirit worries that he might end up stuck here if he’s not on the platform when the imaginary timer hits zero. He suggests that they need to find a way back here to get their wishes, but no one else seems to care. They have finally reunited, and have a way to get back to the ship. What else is there?

Just before their time is up, Spirit thinks to request a big beach towel from the console. The technicolor lights overwhelm them again, and send them back, but this time to the same place. While Spirit is drying off her love interest like he’s a helpless child, Omega and Valencia go up to run a diagnostic.

Tinaya prepares to make the jump back down to the planet to tell everyone what’s happened when the Nexus powers up once more. “Are you doing that?”

“It’s not us,” the Strongs say, shaking their heads again.

The drum drops more light down towards the cavity, but this time, only red. After it subsides, one woman is standing there, wearing a heavy parka. She removes it, and looks around, surprised. She’s even more surprised when she sees that she’s not alone. “Oh, cool. You have your own Nexus.”

“Who are you?” Tinaya demands to know, very suspicious of this interloper.

The woman steps out of the cavity, and holds out a hand. “Hi, I’m the Caretaker.”

“You take care of what?” Tinaya asks, still concerned.

“Of your planet,” the Caretaker replies as if it should be obvious.

“We do fine on our own,” Tinaya explains.

“Great!” the Caretaker says. “Then my job should be easy. Sounds like I got the luck of the draw here.”

“Omega, does this facility have a hock?”

“Nope.” The Caretaker disappears, but she returns a few seconds later. She balances her hands on her knees, and catches her breath. “Coulda told me we were on an airless moon. Thanks for that.”

“We didn’t know that you were going to teleport out of here, or even that you could,” Tinaya argues. “Do you require medical assistance?”

“No, I’ll heal. I wasn’t out there for very long.” The Caretaker stands back upright. “Let me start over. My real name is Vitalie Crawville, and I really am here to help. I have no intention of taking control, or causing any harm. I used to help people on Dardius, and now I’ve decided to quantum replicate myself to spread myself around the galaxy. Well, around this galaxy, I mean.”

“I know that name,” Spirit jumps in. “Vitalie Crawville. She was a secondary god on the Elizabeth Warren. She was instrumental in creating the universe of Ansutah. None of the Extremusians would exist without her.”

“Just to be clear,” Vitalie begins, “you don’t actually believe that I’m a god, right?”

“No, that’s just what the Maramon called you, and we adopted it, because it’s a fitting enough description to categorize people who were on that ship on that day.”

“I don’t remember her from my studies,” Tinaya says to Spirit. “Is she okay?”

“I have to assume so. She was friends with Leona,” Spirit answers.

“I should like to believe that I still am,” Vitalie counters.

Omega looks down at the tablet that he uses to interface with the Nexus. “There’s no incoming address. Where did you come from?”

“The Nucleus.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Not many have.”

“I’m locked out. All of the destinations I could have selected before are missing, and while I can see that we finally do have our own term sequence, I can’t see what it is.”

Vitalie frowns. “If this occurred right when I arrived, then I’m sure it’s my fault, but I certainly didn’t do it on purpose, and I don’t know how to fix it. I’m terribly sorry.”

Omega frowns too while he’s tapping on his device. “Did you come here through time as well as space?”

“I did,” Vitalie confirms.

“The Nexa weren’t designed for time travel,” Valencia insists.

“The one at the Nucleus was,” Vitalie reveals.

Omega shakes his head, very annoyed this time. “You’re going to have to explain to me what the hell that is, what you did, and how to make it right.”

“Hey, show some respect!” Spirit shouts. “I told you who she was.”

“I’m not from Ansutah, so I don’t give a crap that the Maramon call her a god. She broke my new machine!”

“Omega,” Valencia says calmly, placing a hand upon his shoulder. “We’re back together now, and we’ll figure it out together. It will all be fine, I promise.”

He takes a deep breath in and grits his teeth before exhaling. “It’s just that I had an idea of how this was gonna go today. But you’re right, we only need time, and each other. But Miss Crawville, I will still need to know what you do know about it.”

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