Around the time that Tinaya was shutting the forced pregnancy program down,
something else major was being shut down. As it turns out, the popular
immersive role-playing game, Quantum Colony wasn’t only a game. It was real.
Players were piloting real substrates tens of thousands of light years away
in the Charter Cloud of the Milky Way. It was the infamous Team Matic who
figured it out, and threw their weight around to end the whole thing,
presumably citing the many ethical violations that it was making. The
Military outpost, Teagarden forcibly removed all players, casting them back
to their real substrates in the Core Worlds, or in the case of the
Extremusians, back here. This had two consequences, which came down to
timing. First, people were frustrated, because that game was one of the few
distractions that they used to escape the confines of the ship. Without it,
they felt more pent up and isolated than ever. But also, because they were
being encouraged to procreate anyway, people were relieving their stress
through sex. So it’s been a really complicated last few months.
Waldemar was a particularly avid player of Quantum Colony, and he is at the
age where he wants to have a lot of sex, even though he doesn’t have the
capacity to experience love or affection. Audrey was not his girlfriend at
the time, but she could tell that his eyes were starting to wander as he was
looking for a mate. She ingratiated herself to him, pulling his attention
away from the other girls in his vicinity. He didn’t see a problem with her
being a minor, nor being younger than him. Again, because of the way his
brain was wired, those kinds of social constructs seemed just as arbitrary
as anything. So he fell for her very well-calculated wiles, and focused all
of his attention on her. They have been keeping their distance from
Silveon—and his whole family, for that matter. Audrey knew that Silveon
would not react positively to the news that she was pregnant. On the
occasions that they did see each other, she wore carefully selected
clothing, was always eating to explain why she was getting noticeably larger
when the ponchos weren’t enough, and eventually resorted to holographic
trickery to fake her normal, thinner figure.
That has all been lost today. Silveon didn’t catch her showing the true size
of her belly, but a mutual associate did. She thought nothing of it, not
realizing that anything was being kept a secret. She mentioned it to Silveon
casually, having no idea the beast that she was awakening. At this point,
Tinaya has known the truth for a couple of weeks, and has been unable to get
Audrey to elaborate on the circumstances leading up to her situation.
Silveon is determined to get it out of her now.
“Silvy. Silvy! Stop! You look like you’re about to hit her,” Tinaya scolds
as she’s physically holding him back.
“I’m not going to hit her!” Silveon insists. “I just want an explanation.”
He looks back over at Audrey. “How did this happen? I didn’t even know you
liked him. Do you know what he is?”
Audrey is tearing up. “Dougnanimous Brintantalus.”
The initial look of horror on Silveon’s face when he hears that; Tinaya has
never seen it before. He’s always been so confident and collected. His
expression sinks now, as he begins to hyperventilate just a little. He’s
starting to have a panic attack. That, Tinaya recognizes. He’s never been
through it before, but she has seen it in his father. “Come on,” Tinaya
says. She pulls the two kids closer to her, and teleports them to the giant
sequoia. They’re not at the base of the tree, but a couple of decks up.
“Thistle. Cone of silence.”
Thistle doesn’t have a way to magically prevent others from hearing what
they’re saying, but he can place them in a parallel dimension where light
passes, but sound does not. People will be able to see them here if they
happen to walk by, but they won’t be able to eavesdrop. They came to this
location because the tree has a calming effect on people, which is why she
planted it in the first place, along with the rest of the forest. “Cone established.”
“Do what I do,” Tinaya says calmly. She begins to breathe deliberately as
she’s staring at her son, and holding his shoulders. No one speaks until
he’s matched her breathing for sixty seconds. “Good.”
Silveon nods, and steps back to give himself some space. “I’m okay.”
“I have this thing where you tell me five things you can see—”
“I’m familiar with the technique,” Silveon interrupts. “I don’t need it.”
Tinaya nods. She shifts her gaze between him and Audrey as she asks, “what
did that mean? That phrase sounds familiar.”
“It’s famous,” Audrey explains. “It’s called a trust password. People used
to think that you could use them to prove that you were a time traveler,
but...because of mind-reading tech, it’s unreliable. You could never really
trust them. Still...”
“In the future, we joked about using one,” Silveon says, taking over the
explanation. “At one point, we were both gonna come back in time. It seemed
logical to not have to do this alone. We ultimately decided against it,
because we agreed that partners would always distract each other. No
matter the dynamic between them, they would end up having too many
conversations that weren’t about Waldemar, or at least weren’t about
what we need to do to stop him. It’s a one-person job, because that one
person can focus all of their energy on this one mission.”
“I think I remember studying trust passwords,” Tinaya acknowledges. Then she
quickly realizes that that’s not the point. “I understand the logic in the
one-person mission, but she came here to protect you, not help you.”
“How long have you known about her?” Silveon questions.
“A few years.”
“I’ll deal with you later, young lady,” he says to his mother. He faces
Audrey. “Whose idea was this? Crow’s? He never thought that I should be the
one to go back, even though it was my idea.”
“It wasn’t anyone’s plan but mine. She was right. I came back to protect
you, not to complete your mission. You were such a tiny little thing. None
of us knew Waldemar when he was young in the original timeline. We didn’t
know how he would react. Maybe he would see you as an object to be
experimented on. He might have wanted to test what it’s like to set a human
on fire, or see what people look like on the inside. We didn’t know
anything!”
Silveon shakes his head. “You were meant to see me off that night...say
goodbye. Now I know why you weren’t there, because you were sneaking back
here, I assume through the prototype consciousness projector? You spent all
this time watching me in secret, and you did a damn good job keeping
yourself hidden, because we only met a few years ago.”
“That sums it up,” Audrey confirms.
“That wasn’t just a summary. It was a condemnation. I thought hearing it
laid out before you would make you see how insulting it was, and how much
you betrayed me.”
“Okay,” Audrey begins. “I want you to summarize your own mission with
Waldemar, and see how closely it matches up with what you just said about
me.”
“That’s my point! He’s the enemy! We’re supposed to be allies!”
“How could we have been allies if I was dead!”
“What?”
“Silveon. We killed everybody. When we projected our minds to the past, we
collapsed the timeline behind us. That’s why I had to use the prototype at
the exact same time as you. If you came back here alone, I would be
gone! The girl named Audrey who you would have met in this timeline would
have been someone else! It wasn’t just about you! I wanted to survive
this!”
“I’ve never looked at it that way,” Silveon admits. “I always saw what I did
as a sacrifice, but I had it backwards. It was everyone we left behind who
sacrificed their own continuity...to save us...to save me.”
“They made it gladly,” Audrey tells him, “because they did it to save
everyone else on the ship.”
“That’s what you did, when you let him do that to you?” Silveon
gestures towards Audrey’s belly.
“I don’t know what’s gonna happen to this child, but he was determined to
get someone pregnant. Better me than some innocent girl who doesn’t
understand what he is. I can protect myself, and her.” She massages her own
belly.
“You just said that we don’t know anything about him,” Silveon reminds her.
“We didn’t before,” she clarifies. “I know him now. I’ve learned coping
mechanisms. I’m sure you have too.”
For a moment, there is a silence as the three of them absorb each other’s
perspectives. A stranger does walk up, and seems to identify the intensity
of the interaction, so he leaves. Silveon leans against the trunk, and
slides down until he’s sitting. “It wasn’t supposed to go like his. Mom, why
did you try to fix the population problem with a shipwide orgy? It’s fine.
Both of us could have told you that it’s fine.”
“The population decline happened in your timeline too?” Tinaya questions. “I
was taking it as proof that you butterfly affected something when you came
back here. I figured you would have mentioned something at some point.”
Silveon brushes it away. “Yeah, the population goes down, but it bounces
back.”
“Tell her why it bounced back,” Audrey suggests.
“I don’t—I don’t know why. Is there some particular reason?” He isn’t acting
cagey. It sounds like he genuinely doesn’t know.”
Audrey has had enough of sitting down, so after allowing Tinaya to help her
take a seat on the bench, she starts to educate them. “Waldemar takes his
cues from history. Understanding social nuances was never his strong suit.
One trend he noticed in the past on Earth is that populations tend to rise
during periods of political strife. Like dictatorships. He noted that
communities that are poor and less educated typically lead to higher
populations. Unfortunately for him, achieving the kind of results on this
ship are a little more difficult. We take our cues from the
post-scarcity society that our ancestors were able to adopt when they were
rescued from the Ansutahan universe, and housed in the centrifugal cylinders
in the Gatewood Collective. There’s no such thing as poverty, and there’s no
such thing as education disparity, because resources are easy to come by,
and knowledge is so easy to access and spread. We are limited here,
since we can’t just make a stop on a planet, and gather what we need, but
we’ve found a workaround with the time travel excursions.
“Waldemar solved the population collapse crisis by making sweeping social
changes that you chalked up to random expressions of maniacal power. He did
them for a reason. First, he altered the excursion cycle, requiring timeship
managers to give definitive proof of depleting resources before one can be
scheduled. This may not sound like a big deal, but he would only authorize
so many time excursions per year, and only for resources that were already
proven low. In order to take advantage of one of these infrequent
opportunities, they waited until more resources were low, which meant
some resources were critically low, or completely out, before
they were replenished. Furthermore, he reworked the contribution score
system, so that high scores didn’t just lead to luxury, but to bare
necessities. You had to have a job to feed your family, whereas before, such
things were considered human rights. In addition, he changed child labor
laws. It actually benefited the family to have children enter the workforce
at a younger age. And in fact, the system made it so that it was beneficial
to have more children, rather than fewer. You would think that it would be
the other way around. A lack of resources should lead to lower population,
but it encouraged it, because it was all about controlling those
resources. Few people knew where they stood. They simply did what made the
most sense for their family. His plan worked, but it obviously came at a
cost.”
Silveon looks over at his mother again. “So she saved us. She did what I’ve
been trying to do this whole time. If his only reason for instituting all
those laws no longer exists, he won’t be able to justify those actions.”
“You know better than that,” Audrey contends. “I’m convinced that we changed
the future, maybe even for the better. But we didn’t necessarily fix it.
Things may still be bad, just in a different way. Without that reason, he
may need to come up with a new one, and he may do that if his underlying
reason remains, which is that he wants power. What you’re trying to do is
teach him to use his power for good, but Silvy...he always was. He just had
a warped view of what that meant, and his ego always got in the way. I don’t
know how to change that, but as I said, that’s not my job here.”
“Your job’s changed,” Silveon says with a sigh.
“How’s that?”
“You’re no longer here to protect me as a baby, but that baby right there.
She’s your only concern. You need to go to Verdemus.”
“No, Silveon, you’re not getting it. That defeats the whole purpose. He’ll
find someone else. He needs a family.”
“He doesn’t need a family,” Tinaya says. “He needs sympathy from the voters.
Now that we’re in this situation, there’s another way to get it, but it’s
sad and depressing, and you’re not gonna be able to raise that baby. She
would have to go to Verdemus without you.”
