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August 30, 2526. The girls have been looking for an alternate way across the
four-kilometer wide chasm separating them from the northern pole. They
didn’t find a rocket, a drone, or replacement IMS units, but that doesn’t
mean they don’t exist somewhere. In one of these apartments, a resident of
this closest dome might have stuffed an IMS in their closet, and left it
there. They can’t search every unit, so they’re just looking in the common
areas, hoping to get lucky. They have either been picked clean, or nothing
useful was ever there. The people who lived in this dome were already pretty
far north when the planet went to hell. They would have had a lot more time
to make their own evacuation while the equatorial settlements were rushing
to reach even a modicum of safety.
They’re in the main control room now, trying to find some kind of master
asset database. They aren’t finding any luck here either. Suddenly, they
hear a beep that isn’t too irritating. “What’s that?” Cash asks.
“Proximity alarm. Non-emergency. Someone’s coming in for a visit.”
“There are still people on this side of the death chasm?”
“Apparently.” Cash opens a channel. “Unidentified extra-domal vehicle,
please respond. Unidentified vehicle, this is the control room of Queen’s
Egg Dome, are you reading me?” She waits a bit longer. “I don’t think the
signal is punching through.”
“Do we definitely want to get their attention or maybe no?” Breanna poses.
“They might have what we need, I say it’s worth the risk.”
“All right.” Breanna turns back to her own workstation. She identifies the
flare array, and shoots them all off. There is no reason to be conservative
here.
They both watch on the viewscreen as the flares go up one by one, just
outside the dome. Cash glances back down at the proximity map. “It’s
turning. It sees the flares.”
Breanna grabs her helmet from the table in the corner. “Let’s go say hi.”
They cart down to a maintenance garage not too far from where the flares
went off. They open it, and wave the rover down. The driver pulls into the
airlock, then waits for Breanna to repressurize it before getting out. He’s
not wearing a suit. He shakes their hands after Breanna and Cash take their
helmets back off, and introduce themselves. “It’s very nice to meet you. My
name is Sorel Arts, and I’m here to save your life.”
“How would you do that?” Breanna questions.
Sorel smirks. He gestures for them to follow him to the back of his rover.
He opens the hatches to reveal a mind-uploading set-up. “This is how you’re
gonna get out of this mess. I can send you anywhere in the known universe at
the speed of thought. Ladies, let me ask you this, have you ever heard of a
planet called Castlebourne?”
“We’re undigitized,” Cash points out, “otherwise we would have already
left.”
“That’s okay,” Sorel says. He slaps the manifold like an ace salesman. “This
baby can digitize you as well as transfer your mind. It’s an all-in-one.”
“No, what I mean is we don’t want to be digitized, or we already
would be,” Cash clarifies. “We’re looking for a physical way to get to the
other side of the chasm.”
“Chasm?” Sorel asks. “You mean over the equator?”
“No,” Breanna begins, pointing. “There’s one to the north of us. We’re cut
off from the northern pole.”
“We think it goes around the entire circumference at that latitude,” Cash
adds.
Sorel frowns. “I came this way to pick up stragglers. You two are the last
I’ve found, but I wasn’t planning on quitting after this. Once I reached the
northern domes, I was going to spread the good word there too. Resources
will be spread thin, and rescue will be delayed at best, I’m sure. It is
still the best way to escape this dying world.”
“Unless you have an IMS unit with a working parachute, you’re not getting
across that chasm,” Breanna says. “Maybe you send your mind to a substrate
on that side.”
“I don’t have a substrate there, and no one is answering me through my
quantum terminal. I can get you across empty space, but I think there’s too
much interference for ground-to-ground communication.”
“Then I guess we’re in the same boat,” Cash muses. “Unless...you have an
actual boat...and it can float on lava?”
Sorel chuckles. Then he sighs and shakes his head, annoyed. “No. But there
is something that you might be able to use.” He sighs again, and is
maybe a little scared. “There’s an osmium mining operation towards the night
side. It may technically be on the night side, which would be why
it’s fully automated. The mining automators extract the raw materials, and
shoot it towards the domes in a mass driver. We actually use a little bit of
Os in our apparatuses, and I think it comes from there.” He pats his machine
again.
“How far away is this mass driver?” Breanna asks him.
“From here? About a thousand kilometers,” he answers “It’s actually closer
to the northern pole than we are. It’s right below the Chappa’ai Mountains,
which I’m guessing is where this chasm has formed. If the mass driver is
still intact, it can shoot you across the gap, because that’s exactly what
it was designed to do. Well, it was designed to do it with rocks, but if you
slow it down, you should be able to make it over safely.”
Breanna eyes the rover. “If we have to walk, it will take us a month to get
there.”
“I dunno...” Sorel says.
“You have to get over there too,” Cash reasons. “We can take the rover with
us. It will actually be safer to be strapped inside of it, inside of the
payload pod. It is the only logical choice. Railgun or death.”
He nods. “Yeah, you’re right. There’s nothing left for me on this side. I
have to go where the people are, and that’s at the pole. I’m just...nervous
about it. I don’t relish the idea of being shot out of a railgun. I only
live in base reality to facilitate others leaving it. I would prefer a
virtual simulation, where it’s safe.”
“The rover has a computer, right?” Breanna figures. “You could always upload
yourself into that, and leave your husk behind.”
“No, I’ll be all right. I have ten or eleven hours to psych myself up.”
Sorel claps his hands. “Okay. Let’s go shoot ourselves out of a giant-ass
cannon across a giant-ass canyon.” He opens the rover door. “Ladies first,
but I’ll drive, and I get to pick the music. Fair warning, I like heavy
metal.”
And so the three of them get back on the road, and head to the dark side. It
feels a little awkward, remembering that they warned a faction of their
caravan to not go this way, because it wasn’t safe. But to be fair, that was
much farther south. As insanely dangerous as their new plan is, it’s their
only hope.
