Microstory 2753: Dropoffs Only

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The football match started right after this Miracle Brighton woman claimed that she and her team were interested in the same thing in Treasure Hunting Dome. Rage didn’t have a chance to talk to her afterwards, because they were separated into different locker rooms, and then she couldn’t locate her again. Rage says that she’s not entirely surprised. The possibility of an ultimate secret prize isn’t something that she randomly came up with on her own. The rumor has been around since Treasure Hunting Dome first opened. Over the decades, with no proof that anyone ever won it, however, most have lost interest. They assume now that it doesn’t exist. Perhaps the rumor was started by the planet owner, who wanted to build hype, or it started organically. The fact that nothing has ever come of it has only served to intrigue Rage more, and Miracle evidently had the same idea. They try to find her on the local network, but no luck.

They train with each other in the Sandbox warehouse for about another week, but they have to be careful, because their efforts are not being made in secret. If they wanted complete privacy, they would have needed to go to a different planet. No one has ever said anything, but it’s plausible that the Custodians who run the game will use the team’s experience against them. If they get really good, for instance, at driving on the right side of the road, they might end up with a task where they have to drive on the left. And if they practice both, they might not get any driving challenge at all, and it will have been a waste of time. There’s no way to know, which also means there’s no reason to keep doing this indefinitely. They all agree that it’s time to dive in head first.

Before the big day, they check into the Apex Suite at the Palacium Hotel for a good night’s rest. Minotaur was able to secure it for them on short notice because they know someone who knows someone who knows someone. They would have been—

Smoke. Smoke and fire. Elise wakes up to find her room ablaze. She checks her consciousness stream and finds that it’s been severed. Her last upload was three hours ago. If she doesn’t get it turned back on, and dies here, the person who boots up in her backup body won’t really be her. It will only be a copy who thinks she’s Elise. How can this place be on fire? Things don’t catch fire anymore. It just isn’t done.

The door bursts off its hinges, and falls to the floor. Jolanda scrambles back up. She scoops Elise off the bed, and carries her out to the common area. It’s on fire too.

“I’m not streaming!” Elise warns.

“None of us is!” Jolanda is still carrying her as she finds her way across the room.

Zelda is holding a chair, pounding the leg against the edges of the window.

“We’re two kilometers up and that’s security glass!” Elise warns. “It won’t break!”

“Not without some help!” Zelda says. “Stand by Mino, Jo!” She keeps pounding.

“I think you can put me down now,” Elise tells Jolanda.

“We agreed that I would be the one to take you out,” Jolanda replies.

“What?” Elise questions. “What do you mean, take me out?”

Rage appears to their left, holding Colley like he’s also a little baby.

Zelda stops striking the glass, and puts her steampunk goggles on. “Ready?”

“Do it,” Rage orders. She grips Colley tighter. “Everyone turn off your lungs!”

Zelda takes Minotaur in one arm, then reaches out with the other to grip the doorknob of what’s either a bathroom or a closet. She yanks it open. It explodes.

Fire rushes out of the room, and crashes into the window. It’s destroyed instantly, and in that same instant, all six of them are sucked out.

Jolanda never lets go, but now she looks more worried than ever. Even though she has less experience skydiving, she doesn’t have none. They wouldn’t have done this if they weren’t each packing the right equipment, like parachutes and/or wingsuits. Why does she look so scared? She holds Elise tighter with one arm while she maneuvers her other one, hovering her watch above Elise’s face.

It takes a second for Elise to realize what Jolanda is trying to show her. Their altitude is about 35,000 meters and falling. They should not be anywhere near that high. That’s damn near the apex of the whole freaking top. Despite its name, that’s not where the Apex Suite sits. It’s just at the top of the building. She turns her head enough to look back up, but whatever they just fell out of has now been covered by clouds. She can see the other two pairs, though. Wait, four—no, six. Other people are also falling alongside them, presumably from some nearby suite that was also on fire. What is happening?

They keep falling for about a minute before Elise gets her head turned enough to see land below. It’s coming up fast. If Jolanda doesn’t do something soon...

“You can turn your lungs back on!” Jolanda shouts. “Or don’t, you don’t need them! But you do need to hold on tighter, with your arms and legs! I need to pull!”

Elise tightens up and buries her face in Jolanda’s neck. She may be falling in love.

Jolanda pulls the ripcord. The parachute flies out of the back of her belt. Elise’s legs slip off, and begin to dangle, but Jolanda wraps her arm back around her to compensate. After a few seconds, the initial shock wears off, and now they’re just floating. They’re actually going to be okay. They’re going to survive this.

Elise gets another look around now, and starts to run attendance. Rage, Colley, Zelda, and Minotaur; everyone’s here. She looks in the other direction, at the strangers. They’re actually not strangers. She recognizes Miracle’s face. She’s holding the girl who did a backflip on the football pitch. Instead of a parachute, they’re staying aloft via Miracle’s white feathered wings. Which is all sorts of crazy, but it’s clearly working.

As they’re drifting towards the ground, Elise feels something bite at her arm. Some kind of bug? She can’t get a look at it to check. She’ll just have to tough it out. But then she feels another bite on her other arm. She also sees rain begin to fall all around them, which doesn’t feel like a coincidence. She looks up in horror to find holes forming on the parachute above them. The holes are growing as something begins to shred the material. Rain plus stinging plus tearing equals only one thing. Acid rain.

Either someone is trying to kill them, or they’re just having a little fun, and they don’t know that the team isn’t streaming properly. The fact that they were somehow moved to the very top of the dome leads her to believe that this is attempted murder. Hours from now, when the unscheduled data gap triggers emergency resuscitation procedures, her latest backup will wake up with no idea what went wrong. She will have no reason to suspect foul play, but at least some version of Elise will exist. With that, there is a modicum of hope for justice.

After only a few seconds, the parachute can’t take it anymore. It violently rips apart, sending Elise and Jolanda away from each other. Not that it matters. At this height, even their advanced substrates won’t survive it. Elise keeps falling and falling until she runs out of room and splats on the ground.

Microstory 2750: Directions

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Now that she realizes there’s another platform on the other side of the gap, Elise can make out the edge. Her flashlight gloves aren’t illuminating Zelda, though, and neither is the glowstick over there. She tries to scan back and forth, but nothing. “Zelda!” she cries. “Zelda, did you survive that? Keep shakin’ that bush!”

“If she fell to her death, we should have heard her screaming,” Colley reasons.

“Not necessarily,” Elise returns. “Some adrenaline junkies die so often that they don’t even have the reflex to scream in fear anymore.”

“You said there was another chute?” asks the girl in the yellow shirt, whose name Elise still doesn’t know.

“That’s what it looks like,” Elise answers. “I would sooner throw my body against the exit than try to do what Zelda did. If she couldn’t make it, I could never.”

“Such a compliment,” Zelda’s voice comes. She’s upside down, hanging over the doorway.

“How are you back on this side?” Colley questions.

“Rule number two,” Zelda begins, “in an escape room, there is always a second way. Come on, I’ll pull you up one by one. The catwalk is narrow, but doable.”

Elise goes up first. She and Zelda then help the others up too. They walk single-file along the three walls until making it to the other side, where they find another door. This one opens up to a garage. It’s barely big enough to fit the land vehicle that’s parked here. Unlike the last room, this room is pure white and glowing. It’s pristine in an eerie sort of way. There are no other doors. The vehicle has nowhere to go. It’s also locked.

“If there’s one thing I know from the few escape rooms I’ve tried,” the yellow-shirt girl says as she’s sidestepping around the car, “is that if they give you a lightswitch, you always flip it.”

All these people have done escape rooms before. Elise has never tried. They take skill, but not definable skills. They’re not in Skilldome.

She flips the switch. The lights turn off for a few seconds before being replaced with blacklights. The walls are absolutely covered in graffiti. “I’m Jolanda, by the way. I don’t remember if I said that.” She’s looking at the writing and images, as is everyone else. “I saw this in an ancient show once. He hurt his leg real bad.”

Colley sidesteps around the car now, going the other direction, and looking at the graffiti carefully. “I see the pattern. It’s a coded language.” He runs his hand along the paint. “It’s actually not that complex.” He points at various sections of the walls with both hands like he’s making connections in his head. “I’m guessing Rage doesn’t want us to spend days in here. Just give me a few minutes to compile the vocabulary.”

“What’s your specialty again?” Minotaur asks him.

“Anthropology, history, linguistics, culture,” Colley answers as he’s still looking over the imagery. “I cracked the mystery of Empty Planet in record time.”

“I’m not familiar with that one.” Elise is probably showing how sheltered she is.

“You pretend you’ve landed on an alien world where all the aliens have disappeared. You have to figure out what happened to them, and where the om—never mind, that’s saying too much.” He looks over at Jolanda. “Is there a keypad on that car?”

“Yes,” she responds. “It’s alphanumeric. Did you crack this code too?”

“Not yet,” Colley says. He’s staring up at the very center of the ceiling, where a circle about half a meter in diameter is suspiciously blank. “I’ll be asking you to turn them off and on again in a particular sequence. Always flip when I say to, with no delay.”

“Okay.” Jolanda gets into position.

Colley is still staring at that blank spot. As he instructs her when to turn the lights off and when to turn them on, he deliberately changes tempo. She has to flip them at the right speed for the new images to appear one by one. Elise doesn’t recognize the glyphs but Colley seems to know exactly what he’s seeing. “Stop, I got it. Here’s the code. One, seven, three, four, six, seven, three, two, one, four, seven, six, castaway, three, two, seven, eight, nine, seven, seven, seven, six, four, three, temple, seven, three, two, volunteer, seven, three, one, one, seven, eight, eight, eight, seven, three, two, four, seven, six, seven, eight, nine, seven, six, four, three, seven, six.”

The door opens. “I’m driving of course,” Jolanda says, getting in the driver’s seat.

Everyone else gets in too, even though they don’t know how to get out. Elise is in the back. She watches Jolanda stare at the console, evidently not knowing what to do.

“Uhh...I don’t see a start button. Machine...go!” Jolanda attempts.

“Here.” Something Elise actually knows. She leans forward and flips the visor down. The keys fall out, so she catches them in her other hand. She sticks it in the ignition, and turns it. She tilts her head when it revs up. “Hm. Either this is gas-powered, or it’s simulated to be. To be safe, we better open the door.”

“How do you do that?” Jolanda asks.

Elise reaches up again and presses the button on the garage door opener.

The wall in front of them recedes from them, splits in half, and slides to either side. Jolanda smirks when she sees the traffic on the expansive roadways ahead of them.

“We don’t technically have to drive,” Colley points out.

“Yes, we do,” Jolanda and Zelda say simultaneously as if having rehearsed it.

“Hold on to your butts,” Jolanda warns.

“Samuel L. Jackson,” Colley cites, “circa 1993.”

“Wait!” Elise interrupts. “Those straps are called seatbelts. You put it around your chests, and buckle them securely to keep your body in place.”

“You may have learned how to drive safely,” Jolanda warns as she grips the steering wheel, and decidedly doesn’t put her seatbelt on. “I learned how to drive well.” She slams on the accelerator, and shoots them onto the track.

Immediately, a robocar nearly collides with them, but she doesn’t let it. Each time Elise thinks they’re about to die, Jolanda finds a way out of it. She doesn’t ever turn her head. She can watch straight in front of her while knowing everything else that’s going on around them. It’s a wild ride. Elise can’t help but keep checking her mind stream. She trusts that Rage chose this driver for a good reason, but Jolanda was right; Elise only knows how to drive safely. She has to try to relax and let the chips fall where they may, so to speak. After ten minutes, they find themselves right back where they started.

“How the hell did that happen? Is this another puzzle?” Jolanda questions.

Elise unbuckles, leans forward again, and retrieves a map from the glovebox.

“Give that to me,” Minotaur requests. They spend a minute looking it over. “Okay, I know the route. You can drive the same speed, but follow my instructions.”

Microstory 2749: Mind the Gap

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After Elise and Rage get dried off and cleaned up, the former follows the latter to the vactrain station where they head for a dome called The Sandbox. Rage evidently wants the team to meet each other on neutral ground. Before they embark on the treasure hunt, it’s prudent for them to get to know each other first, and learn how to work as a team. Rage expects them to be here for the next few weeks. She hasn’t yet explained why this particular dome. Elise has never heard of it before. She still isn’t sure why she was picked for this at all. She hasn’t excelled at the skills she’s attempted. She just likes to try new things. It was time for a break, though, so she’s not complaining.

It might seem like overkill, but according to Rage, this will be an important crucible. If anyone decides to quit, it’s a lot better if they do it before they begin the hunt. Losing a member doesn’t immediately disqualify the remainders from moving on. Everyone could leave by the end of it, and as long as the last remaining player sticks around, they can succeed. But obviously Rage doesn’t want that. She wants them to be perfectly in sync. She told Elise that she doesn’t know what that looks like, but that will precisely be the point of the exercises.

It’s making Elise a little nervous, all this uncertainty, but knowing that she doesn’t have to commit to anything right away has taken some of the pressure off of her.

After the vactrain lets them off at their destination, they take a smaller one to the other side of the dome, to an entrance where no one else is around. Also weird, so Elise checks her consciousness stream to her backup bodies, and they’re all fine, so she presses onwards.

They have to walk across a meadow before they get to a big warehouse in the middle of nowhere. It feels even more remote now. There’s not even any other infrastructure, and it doesn’t match the normal institutional architecture of Castlebourne. Is this where Rage lives? What is the Sandbox even for?

Elise steps inside when Rage holds the door open for her. As she’s scanning the antechamber, spotting the other people here, she hears the door close behind her. She turns around and tries to open it but it’s locked. She tries for a few more seconds, but it’s hopeless.

“She locked us in?” one of the strangers questions. She’s wearing a graphic t-shirt and baggy camo pants. She, along with the others, look just as confused and anxious.

“I don’t suppose anyone has superstrength?” Elise asks.

“No,” the guy replies. “Rage told us to come with standard human substrates.”

“It’s a trap,” someone else determines. They’re sitting on the edge of a metal table, one foot propped up on a chair, and the other dangling loosely.

Elise tilts her head. “I’m still connected to my backups. If she wants to kill us, it’s not going to work on me at least.”

The person who figured that it was a trap stands up and takes a knife out of their pocket. “I can kill anyone who wants to get out of here the easy way. I can’t promise to make it painless, but it’s an option.”

“Let’s look for a bloodless way first,” a girl in a yellow shirt suggests.

Elise looks back down at the handle. It doesn’t have a keyhole, but it looks like the one on the other side of the room does. She walks over to it. “I can pick it, if anyone has something I could use. Whatever is on the other side could be worse, though.”

Graphic tee girl pulls a bobby pin from her hair and hands it over. “If you’re going through hell...keep going. Winston Churchill.”

“Unverified attribution,” the guy counters.

“Then I’ll take the attribution—Zelda Frances,” she self-cites.

“Colley Rochelle,” he returns.

“I’m Elise Perkins,” Elise adds as she’s finishing unlocking the door. She doesn’t open it, though. She straights back up, and hands Zelda her pin back.

“Can’t do it?” the girl in yellow asks.

“No, it was easy,” Elise answers. “We just need to all agree to open it.”

“As long as we’re streaming, the danger isn’t real.” Knife-wielder heads for the door without waiting for permission. “I go by Minotaur,” they add as they’re opening it.

Elise has to grab Minotaur by the shirt collar when they slip right over the edge. It’s dark inside; they can’t see how deep the drop off is, but Elise won’t be able to hold on alone much longer. Colley runs over, and reaches down to pick up some of the slack.

“Rule number one,” Minotaur says as they’re standing back up. “look before you leap. I’m humiliated. This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered a trapdoor.”

“I think we all realize by now that this is a test,” Zelda says. “Rage wants to see where we are, so she knows how to train us.”

“She doesn’t need to be tested too?” Elise questions. She puts her flashlight gloves on, and cautiously reaches into the room. The pit is wide and deep. Her lights don’t have the range to show her the bottom, which means it’s too far for them to dangle and fall safely. She gets a look around at the rest of the open area. At least two packs are hanging on the wall, over a very narrow ledge. “I think they’re parachutes,” she announces.

Zelda gently moves Elise out of the way so she can peek around the corner, holding Elise’s hand up to control the flightlight. Without saying a word, she leaps over to the ledge, and holds one of the packs to brace herself. She opens a zipper and takes out a glowstick. She cracks it in her teeth with one hand so the other hand can keep holding on. “I need quiet, please,” she requests, even though no one is talking.

Zelda drops the glowstick down into the pit, listening for it on the bottom. “Thirty meters. We would never make it. There are only two packs anyway.”

“So they’re just there to tease us?” Elise asks her.

Zelda looks over her shoulder. She cracks a second glowstick, and tosses it behind her. It lands on the other side of the pit, which is at the same elevation. She smirks.

“No,” Elise says. “You can’t be serious.”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Zelda recites.

“You shouldn’t try it,” Elise warns. “That’s at least fifteen meters, probably more!”

“It won’t be my first time.” Zelda takes her belt off and anchors it to the hook where the pack was hanging. She bites down on the belt to stay aloft, leaning backwards over the pit while she puts the parachute pack on. “I’ll find out what’s on the other side. There must be a drawbridge or something, or there would be a pack for each of us.”

“Or we’re meant to share,” Colley offers.

“Not possible with this maneuver.” Zelda holds onto the hook with her index fingers as she crouches on the ledge, facing the wall. After preparing herself mentally, she pushes off like a cricket. At the perfect moment, she releases the speedchute, using the force of the deployment to propel her just far enough to cover the gap. Hopefully.

Microstory 2626: The Horse Returned Home, Bringing Several Wild Mares

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August 31, 2526. Thank God for small miracles, the mining facility is fully intact, as is the mass driver itself. They used a lot of power getting there, and they didn’t start out at 100%, so they charge from the local mini-grid. Fortunately, it goes quickly as the geothermal generators are operating at peak performance these days. They spend their downtime getting to know each other better, Breanna and Cash have sex a couple of times, and Sorel enjoys breaks in a virtual oasis. They also prepare for departure, making sure they understand the procedures. The mass driver can fire them out at incredible speeds, including incredibly deadly speeds, so they have to be extra cautious. The pod is equipped with parachutes, but in case those fail, the rover actually has its own too, so they will be able to blow the bolts on the pod midair if they have to.

The world is falling apart, and maybe someone is to blame for that, but ignoring that one little apocalyptic eventuality, technology is fairly reliable, built with redundancies, contingencies, and redundancies. They fire themselves over the mountains and the chasm, and at the exact right time, the chutes deploy. They gently descend to the ground, landing only a few kilometers from the industrial vactrain depot. This is where the refined materials are loaded, and dispatched to the various domes in the northern polar region. Sorel looks at the map and finds their target. “This one.” He points to another spot. “If your hang-gliding friends landed somewhere around here, this is the dome they would have encountered first. But. It’s in a canyon, so there’s a chance they completely missed it, and just kept walking. If you know they don’t have a map, skipping it would be easy to do.”

“Still,” Breanna begins, “it’s the most logical place to start. Would you mind? They have passenger pods here too, so if you would rather go somewhere else, we can part ways.”

He shakes his head. “If this canyon dome is populated, they will be in just as much need of escaping. They could make for great customers. In fact, maybe better, because they’re less safe that close to the chasm than the more northern communities. They might be more willing to leave.”

“Okay, then we go there together,” Cash agrees.

Sorel drives the rover into the vactrain pod, and sends a message to the network AI, stating that they are ready to go. The tube closes up, and the pod slides away. Of course, the trip is a lot shorter than the one that brought them there, but it’s still not instantaneous, so the girls have sex again while Sorel occupies himself in his simulation. Once they finally arrive, the AI announces that it will not be able to let them out exactly at their destination. There is something wrong, and it has been sealed up. Instead, it takes them back up to the surface, and drops them off at the secondary depot, which leads to the outside. It’s farther away, and they will have to make their way down into the canyon from there, but it wouldn’t be so bad if not for the actual reason they have to do that. The main entrance was blocked because the dome....has been destroyed. Well, it has not necessarily been destroyed, but it’s not safe either.

“Holy shit,” Cash says as they are staring over the edge. The shape of the dome is still there, and in fact, may remain intact underneath, but it’s unclear how livable the environment would be inside of it. Molten lava has breached the canyon, some of it already having hardened into rock as it cooled. If the residents are still down there, there’s not likely a way for them to get out. The database doesn’t say a thing about who they are, or how self-sufficient they designed their community. They might be able to survive for millennia, or they need to be rescued today. Whatever the answer, the three of them are not equipped to help. Really, the only question on Breanna and Cash’s minds right now is whether their friends were there when it happened.

“Notus, Calypso, can you hear me?” Breanna asks into her comms. “Shimizu, anyone. Can anyone hear me? Anyone at all.”

Sorel looks down the way. “That hab. It’s for gondola ingress and egress. There might be survivors in there; perhaps your friends, or someone who saw them.”

They walk down there, and it immediately doesn’t look good when they round the corner. The entrance is wide open, exposing the habitat to the hostile outside environment. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any answers, though. They shut the door behind them and repressurize, then get a look around. Cash heads right for the logs. There aren’t any recorded reports, but there is still security footage. She feeds it into the auto-summarization software, and grabs the highlights. They watch when the lava breaches through the walls of the canyon, and heads for the dome. Shortly thereafter, the interior habitat cameras show the lone operator pull his helmet on, and bug out. It doesn’t even look like he warns the residents below what was happening. He just abandoned them. If they were using holographic imagery for their scenery, they might not have seen the lava, and if they didn’t think to include the right sensors—which would, admittedly, be quite odd—they might have sat there in ignorance for hours, or maybe even the last couple of days. They might still not know that they’ve become trapped. There’s no evidence that they tried anything to save themselves.

Cash rolls it back a little. Earlier that day, seven survivors appeared from behind a small mountain. “Oh, it’s gotta be them,” she notes. The operator came out of the habitat, and stood just outside the entrance, using hand gestures, likely talking to their friends. There’s no audio, so they can’t know exactly what he was saying, but the group turned around, and he went back inside alone. He obviously denied them entry, which was a dick move, but it possibly saved their lives.

Breanna lets out a sigh of relief. “So, they didn’t get in. Where did they go?”

“It looks like they went back where they came,” Cash replies, “but the cameras don’t see very far. They could have looped around to the other side of the canyon, or backtracked to the chasm.”

“Why would they do that?” Breanna questions. “There’s nothing for them there.”

“There might be,” Sorel says. He has the map up again as a hologram. “From where you lost them, they went northeast to get here. This area is impassable. It has all sorts of sharp rocks and hidden crevices; very hard to navigate, especially on foot. If they tried to head west, they would have hit that stone forest, and might have ended up all the way back where they came from before finding the trail that goes northwest, around the other side of the forest. Now, they could have skipped all of that if they had instead come towards this gondola station, and gone around the canyon’s east side, but it looks like that asshole didn’t direct them that way.”

“Sorel. We have to go look for them. Can you stay with us just a little bit longer?” Breanna begs.

“I would be happy to. Let’s get back in the rover.”

Microstory 2623: Move it to the Exits, I Hope You Have Found a Friend

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August 28, 2526. It’s been another day, but the survivors have made it to the top of the hill, which was harder than they believed, but it will give them their best chance of getting out of this alive, so no one is complaining. During the walk, Breanna and Cash taught everyone how to use their parachutes. The Levins were in awe of how the chutes were able to expand and retract with the push of a button. Base jumping was a not unpopular sport under their dome, but they never developed anything this sophisticated. The Breckenridgers were just in awe of the concept in general as they had not even dreamed of such technology. Everyone has done well, so Breanna thinks they’re ready to make the jump. She and Cash will not be able to help them if something goes wrong, but they’ll have the beetloid, which is evidently inclined to help people.

One by one, they help the other survivors launch. They get a running start, deploy their chute, jump off the cliff, and activate hang gliding mode. An electrical current is sent through the canopy to stiffen it up. This is the only way they’ll be able to cross over four kilometers without plunging into the depths. In fact, they might be able to go a lot farther, depending on the temperature and pressure on the other side. The gases would actually kind of be the holy grail for this sort of thing if the price for failure wasn’t death. If they remember Breanna and Cash’s instructions, they’ll stay aloft for long enough to reach the other side. From there, they will be able to continue northwards. They have beacons and comms, so if they end up separated—which they probably will, because it’s safer to let that happen than to try to stick together, and risk losing altitude—they will be able to reunite somewhere. They were all good students. They’re gonna be okay. Breanna couldn’t have asked for a better group, and while she won’t be around to get them all the way there, she got to see them through most of the journey.

“You’re not coming, are you?” The guy who Tertius saved from the cyclone is the last one, and the only one to see the writing on the wall.

“You should go. We’ll be right behind you, I promise,” Breanna lies.

He’s not buying it. “Why can’t you come with us?”

Breanna sighs. “We don’t have our parachutes. Well, we do, but not the kind that can be switched to hang glider mode.”

“I was born in Leviss. They had this thing called tandem diving. I never got a chance to do it myself before my family left, but...” He trails off, having said enough to get his point across.

Breanna nods. “We’re not equipped for that. Your suits are a different model, and don’t have the straps that we would need. We have some straps, but they’re worn out and too short.”

“We could rig something up,” he reasons. “Calypso is still in comms range. Let’s call her back, and figure this out.”

“It wouldn’t be safe. We didn’t want to lower your chances of making it across. If we were just base jumping together, I would go for it, but you need all the luck you can get to go as far horizontally as possible. It’s not worth the risk. We’ll be fine, we have education and experience in this sort of thing, so we’ll figure it out.”

“No, you won’t. You’re just getting ready to die. I was wondering what those looks of calm on your faces were about. Now I know. Now I understand.” He crosses his arms like a petulant child.

“That is not your concern,” Cash argues. “Tertius saved your life, and then it looks like he lost his. Don’t waste that gift. Get over there with the others, tell them we’re proud of them, and then keep moving until you find safety.”

Now he sighs. “Okay. Thank you...for everything.” He steps back, leans forward, but stops again. “Wait, the beetle.”

“Cash already suggested that,” Breanna says. “It can only hold one person, and before you ask, it can’t make two trips. It’s not designed to fly around. It’s just meant to hop from one part of a dome to another one nearby. It barely got Calypso back to us.”

“I took a look at its diagnostics,” Cash continues. “It’s running low on fuel, and the toxins are damaging its components almost as much as it would our bodies. Honestly, it might not make it across itself, and I certainly don’t want it trying to make it back up to higher ground. We can’t rely on it for another trip.”

“Over here, she and I stand a chance of finding another way,” Breanna finishes. “Now go on, git!”

“Very well,” he gets back into his stance, then runs off and flies away from them.

By the time he makes his jump, the first survivor has landed on the other side. They can’t see her from this distance through all the fumes, but the augmented reality is showing everyone as little dots on their huds.

The two of them stand on the cliff’s edge, watching those dots get farther and farther away. In under five minutes, everyone else has landed, including Notus. Breanna tries to make contact with them, but there’s too much interference. They’re on their own now, but she’s confident that they will do what needs to be done. The worst is behind them already. If they encounter any dangers up ahead like the ones they’ve already faced, then it means the whole planet is unsafe, and nothing would matter anyway. They continue to watch as the dots reconvene back on the ground. They’re surely close enough to communicate with each other by now, so everyone knows the deal. Even though it’s getting quite hot up here, Breanna and Cash don’t want to leave in case they see someone try to glide back to them. It might be possible, but more likely for an expert, which none of them is. There is just too much verticality to cover.

“We best be heading back down, eh?” Cash offers, feeling it safe to let them go.

“We best,” Breanna agrees. “Where exactly are we gonna go, though?”

“I suggest we head back for the nearest dome. There might be something there we can use. Hell, they might have left a rocket behind for all we know. This close to the safety zone, it would have been impractical for them to take it, but for us, it could be our only shot.”

“That would be cool, but I would settle for a couple new IMS units with working hang gliders.”

The two of them climb back down the hill, and walk back eastward along the edge of the chasm. They become tired, so they initiate the vacuum tent, which was too heavy to risk sending with the others. They climb inside and remove their suits to a great deal of relief. Then they look at each other. They’re alone together for the first time in a long time. Something has been brewing, but they have not had any opportunity to explore exactly what that might be until now. So they clamber to remove the rest of their clothing, frantically trying to help each other. And then, at last, at the very end of the only world they have ever known, they consummate their love.

Microstory 2622: Sometimes You’re the Windshield, Sometimes You’re the Bug

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August 27, 2526. The ragtag group of survivors have almost made it. They can see the Chappa’ai Mountains up ahead. They will still want to get as far north as they possibly can, but according to the science, crossing that threshold will allow them to breathe a sigh of relief. The ground is more stable and solid. After all this, salvation is within their grasp. So of course something else has to get in the way. And it’s huge.

“Brake!” Breanna orders. “Brake, brake, brake!” she repeats.

“I see it!” Cash responds, matching her energy. She can’t brake any harder than this, though. It’s just a button, and it does what it does as fast as physics allows.

“Hold on!” Breanna shouts. Even though she’s magnetized to the floor, she reaches up and takes hold of the overhead oscilight for balance. They certainly don’t need it to see, and if anyone is on the tracks, the oncoming railcart is the least of their concerns. Before them, the ground is opening up. The mountains are sliding apart from each other. They can see the red glimmer of the vengeful lava below, even as the day side begins to overtake the shrinking breadth of the Terminator Line. “Be prepared to jump if I say so! It may be our only hope! Once we do, you’ll wanna start running in the opposite direction! But not yet! We’re still moving too fast!”

“Can we just parachute off!” someone asks.

“Too much turbulence!” Breanna cries back. “Just wait for my instructions!” 

They all scream into the comms. Even Tertius and Aeterna look worried, though that may be more from empathy than fear. The chasm is pulling the tracks ahead of them down now, along with the spine that led others up to the safety of the pole. Hopefully, no one is in them right now. The train stations have all become non-operational, but that doesn’t mean no one is trying to walk it. Breanna isn’t so sure about her instructions anymore. There may be nothing they can do. Even if they manage to stop, the ground is falling away, and they don’t know when that’s gonna stop. The fact is, they started this evacuation late, and got held up too many times. Survival was never guaranteed. They did their best.

“Okay, bad news!” Cash says seconds later. “The brake broke! I’ve lost control!”

Suddenly, as if in response to Cash’s problem, a large object flies in from the side, and slams into the front of the railcart. There is no time to figure out what it is. Two people are catapulted forward, one of them being Aeterna, and the other unknown with their IMS fully on. They arch over the object, and down into the bowels of the planet. Having finished saving the cart, the beetloid drone reopens its elytra, and reengages its rotowings. It dives down into the abyss. They hold their breaths and wait, too afraid to move on this precarious cart. It could tip over too at any second, and they want the beetloid free to rescue them again, so they’re gonna let it finish its latest mission. After a minute or two, it darts back into view, and lands safely on the tracks behind them.

Only one person is sitting on its head. They slide off, and appear to be hyperventilating, but otherwise alive. Tertius looks over at Breanna. “I missed out on 200 years with my daughter. I just got her back. I can’t abandon her again.” He leans back and lets himself fall into the chasm. Okay, he may have survived the pyrotornado somehow, but they’re not surviving that!

“We need to go,” Cash says.

Breanna doesn’t move. She’s looking out at the impassable new obstacle, thinking about the Valerians, and in general how deep of shit they’re in.

“Bre! We have to go!” Cash urges.

Breanna nods, then follows the group off the cart. They all stop and look back when they hear the sound of metal scraping against metal. The cart has finally slipped over the edge itself. “Go into a light jog, but slow down if the tracks start to feel unstable. We wanna get as far from that thing as possible, but not if that means falling over the edge anyway. Even away from that chasm, we’re pretty high up.

They go a little under a kilometer back southwards before finding a ladder to climb down to the surface, where they start walking westwards, trying to see where the new chasm ends. A young woman named Calypso rushes up to Breanna. She’s the one who fell over with Aeterna. “Why did it save me? Why did it save me and not her?”

Breanna looks over at the beetloid, which is walking alongside them like a loyal dog. It’s a specialized service drone. She’s not exactly an expert on them, but she wouldn’t have thought they programmed it with any sense of duty to rescue humans. But maybe they did, or maybe someone modified it aftermarket, or maybe it’s learning. “I can’t say for sure, but my guess is it calculated the likelihood of survival. Had it not caught you, and brought you back up, you would have fried in the toxic gases before your body could have hit the bottom. Aeterna was practically naked. It probably figured that she was already dead. There was no point in trying to rescue both of you, and losing the one person who might still stand a chance.”

“Is she? Is she dead?”

“If she’s not, I don’t know how she would get out of that. You don’t really sink in lava, but that’s because your body would be incinerated on the surface. But if she’s a god, and can survive that, she might not be able to get out anyway. I can’t imagine we’ll be seeing either of those two ever again.” That’s what they assumed last time, however.

“There,” Cash says, pointing. “That hill takes us high enough.”

“High enough for what?” Breanna asks.

“To parachute. We’ll glide across the ravine, and land on the other side. The plumes of gas actually help us. It won’t be easy, but it’ll get us there.”

“Well, you remember that the two of us don’t—” Breanna tries to begin.

“It will get us there,” Cash interrupts.

Brenna shakes her head, and looks at her wrist interface. “It’s already quite hot. The day side is drawing closer. We shouldn’t go that far west.”

“We won’t be there long,” Cash justifies. “We’re just gonna jump off and go, and then we’ll scramble back to the Terminator Line, and continue northwards.”

“Fine. Let’s take a vote,” Breanna says. “Fair warning, your parachutes might not make it. Those fumes are dangerous. We’ll have to teach you how to control them, you might need to change directions midflight, and you still might come up short. I will say,  there’s nothing for you on this side. The northern pole is the only option.”

And so the group heads for the hill in the middle distance. Breanna and Cash choose not to tell the others that there’s a problem.

“Wait, what about that thing?” Cash suggests.

“That?” Breanna looks at the Beetloid again. “That can only hold one person.”

“We could play Rock, Paper, Scissors for it?”

Microstory 2608: The Floor is Literally Lava

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August 19, 2526. Breanna and Cashmere are plummeting through the air. This high up, they’re going to be falling for about four minutes, which is enough time for a brief conversation. Breanna taps on her wrist interface to control her HUD. “Okay, Cashmere, I’m programming my parachute to deploy at 600 meters, just in case I pass out before then. You should do the same, but if something goes wrong—and you’re hopefully still awake—you’ll have to pull it manually. It is not safe to go below 200 meters, so if you reach 599, and it hasn’t opened, go ahead and pull. Don’t wait.”

“Hold on.” Cashmere taps on her own suit. “There. Now you have full control over my IMS. If I do pass out, and the chute does fail, please don’t let me die. And you can just call me Cash, if you want.”

Breanna gives Cash control over her suit as well. “Good idea...Cash.”

Neither one of them passes out, and neither one of their parachutes malfunctions, but by the time they stop falling, and start drifting, they notice a problem. The ground is no longer solid. It’s churning around like soup. Buildings have collapsed, and are sinking into the soil. Debris is floating every which way. If they try to land in this stuff, they’re gonna sink and die. “This is an extinction level event,” Cash points out. “What could cause something like this?”

“A coronal mass ejection. That’s what happened. It destroyed our ship, it expanded the atmosphere so it was closer than we thought, and it has turned the surface into melted butter. It’s called thixotropic liquefaction, and it probably didn’t happen to the whole planet—the equatorial regions are at most risk—but that doesn’t matter right now because this is where we are.”

“Where can we land?”

Breanna points. “That hunk of metal right there is probably a building. It’s still sticking up high enough for us to land on it.”

That’s gonna be tough. It’s pretty far away.”

“Then start navigating there now.”

“I am!”

They adjust their risers, combatting the unpredictable weather, trying to cover the distance to the only safe area that they are close enough to. Cash was right, it’s extremely difficult, especially since the wind is doing everything it can to keep them from it. Cash is a little bit lower than Breanna when they make it there, or rather when she almost does. Her feet hit the fallen down side of the building, but she doesn’t find purchase, and ends up tipping over to her back, into the soup.

While Breanna manages to land safely at first, the wind continues to try to pull her into the soup too. It’s even stronger than the retraction mechanism. Her only solution is to dump it. It breaks off, and flies away. She dives down to her stomach and reaches out for Cash. “You’re too far away, can you get closer?”

“I think the only thing keeping me from sinking is how evenly my weight is distributed. I don’t think I should move.”

Breanna inches closer, but if she goes too far, she’ll slip in, and they’ll both sink eventually. She’s agonizing over whether she should get up, and try to look for something to extend her reach, or to stay here and keep trying. She just needs a few more centimeters, and maybe she can at least touch the tip of Cashmere’s boot.

A man suddenly appears next to her, on his hands and knees. He’s not wearing a suit of any kind, but just regular clothes. The air is extremely toxic right now, he should be dead unless he specifically designed his substrate to survive just about every deadly gas and particulate known to man. He must be one hell of a posthuman. He slides back and takes hold of Breanna’s ankles, then he nods.

Breanna nods back, then lets herself slip into the soup. She grabs onto Cashmere’s ankles, and lets the man pull them both up to safety. She rolls over to her back and finds that the man is not alone. He’s with a woman who looks similar to him, and is also walking around completely unprotected. She helps Breanna up while the man handles Cashmere. After he smiles and gives them both the a-okay sign, Breanna takes off her first stage air filter. She’s not using it as her internal carbon scrubber is working optimally. It has this handy little feature where it remains tethered to her, though, so even though this guy apparently doesn’t need it, it’s the best way for them to communicate, like a tin-can telephone.

He accepts it, and places it against his mouth so the sound will travel through. “My name is Tertius Valerius. This is my daughter, Aeterna Valeria. We detected your arrival on the roof via a rectenna’s diagnostic alerts, and were making our way towards it when we saw you parachute down. What luck, we met in the middle.”

“How are you even alive?” Breanna consults her environmental readings again. “The glassified dust particles alone should be shredding your lungs.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tertius replies. “We need to get you to safety. We were only still in Leviss to look for stragglers who refused to evacuate before. Breckenridge is still safe for now, but they’re in danger too. If this liquefaction spreads, they’ll need to continue northwards. You can join us in our...boat,” he adds as he’s looking over towards the other side of the pylon that they’re standing on. “Hm. It’s sinking too.”

With their only means of transport gone, they start looking around for options. There’s a hill jutting out from the soup, which Breanna’s sensors show is solid enough to stand on. If they can reach that, they will be four and a half meters closer to North Exit. Their IMS units come with smaller speed flying parachutes, which can launch and retract much faster than a primary chute. They’re designed to cross chasms and ravines, but they will work in this situation, as long as these islands are sufficiently close to each other. The problem is Tertius and Aeterna. They’re not wearing suits. Even if their bodies can survive this environment, they likely can’t fly.

“We have tandem straps,” Cash reminds Breanna.

“Those are designed to carry children, like a bjorn,” Breanna argues.

Cash shrugs. “They’re strong enough to hold an adult man.”

Breanna sighs. “Okay, we can try it.”

Tertius straps in against Breanna’s chest while Aeterna straps in with Cash. Despite the awkward configurations, they manage to get a short running start, and then jump. Their speedchutes pull them upwards just enough to fly forwards, and drop them on the hill. “Told ya,” Cash teases

“You were right,” Breanna admits. “This might actually work. Let’s go look for the next place to jump to. Hopefully it, uh...exists.”

Microstory 2449: Windbourne

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Holy crap, it’s windy here! It’s almost like that’s the point! I’m yelling, because it’s hard to hear with all this wind! Did I mention that it was very windy? Why did they make a dome that’s just super windy? Well, I don’t know, why the hell not? What would you do instead? I’m asking a lot of questions, and I’m not a prolific reviewer on the network, so no one’s going to answer them. The staff certainly didn’t. It’s windy here, because that’s the way they wanted it, and they were technologically capable of it. Before you read on (if you do manage to find this review) you should know that I’m one of the uneducated. By early 21st century standards, I would have been an average student. By today’s standards, with perfections in educational tools, and individualized lesson planning, I’m well-below average. I did this on purpose. I don’t find value in learning beyond a certain point. I’m happy, and I’m content with who I am. So if you’re looking for a scientifically dense explanation for how the wind generation works here, tap on, buddy...tap on. Windbourne. It’s windy. The topography has been moulded to create the perfect conditions for wind, where they want it, when they want it. Air is heated and cooled in very precise configurations to create the wind patterns as planned. Temperature usually flows spontaneously from hot to cold, I remember that. I’m not sure how they’re heated, but I think the process is solar-powered, perhaps by use of mirrors, rather than just solar panels to convert into electricity. They also use gargantuan fans to control the airflow, but I didn’t see them, so the must have cleverly hidden them behind geographic features, or maybe holographic illusions. Some regions are windier than others, of course, and they tell you where these are. The map color-codes the zones by the speed of the wind, so if you just want a light breeze, you can stay there. If you want near tornado-like conditions, baby, you’re gonna wanna go to Gale City. Winds in this area reach up to 400 kilometers per hour. That sounded like a lot to me, but I didn’t have much of a frame of reference until I tried it myself. What you do is enter a tunnel where you can walk through, or stand on people movers. Once you’re on the other side of the Arnett Mountains, you climb up to these towers. There are robot staff here, so they’ll tell you where to go, and how to get there. You get to your platform, which is fully protected by walls, and situate yourself in the waiting station. You have a few options here. You can strap yourself in, hold onto the straps, hold onto a bar, or freehand it. Once you’re ready, they’ll open the flap behind you. At this point, you can hear the wind roaring at your sides, and above you, but you’re still protected. This only lasts for a few moments before the wall opposite you opens up. The wind rushes in, as I said, at 400 km/h. What happens to you next is entirely dependent upon your choices, both leading up to it, and once you hit the point of no return. Did you grab on to something? Can you keep holding onto it? Are you gonna fly over the edge? If you do, will you activate a parachute, or a wingsuit? If not, will you manage to land in one of the scattered foam pits, or plummet to your death? Please note that, due to the obvious dangers, there are certain criteria that you must meet before they let you go to Gale City, such as, do you have a heart condition, and do you have mind-transference on, or are you a suicidal moron? I’ve already gone on the ride several times, and I’m gonna end this here, so I can go back to see if I can beat my own record for the farthest fall without wings. Wild ride, friends, wild ride. Catch the wind, and fly out of control!

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 27, 2399

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Mateo is closest to the window. He looks out of it to see whether it explains why no one else is here. Based on what they’ve learned from Heath and Imani, even on the off hours, the auditorium is never empty. Whether the speakers are rehearsing, or worshipers are praying, this place is never as dead as it is now. It’s also falling apart, as is everything outside, which can really mean only one thing. “We’re in the Facsimile. Did we just skip over the entirety of Saturday?”

“Why did you bring us here?” Leona demands to know from Dalton.

“I just reset the timeline,” Dalton begins to explain. “Anyone who was still in the Third Rail has forgotten everything that’s happened in the last few days. Well, they didn’t forget. To them, it never happened. I brought everyone here so you will remember. This is not a gift. I did this so that you will know for the rest of your few remaining days that you did this to yourself. When the Reconvergence comes, you will have no hope of escaping. Reality will collapse, and you’ll just blink out of existence.”

“We’re supposed to be friends,” Leona reminds him. “Why are you doing this?”

“We’ve  not been friends for a long time,” Dalton argues. “As for why I’m doing this, I’m not. I told you, you brought this on yourselves. All you had to do was build your little satellites, and save your little refugees, and leave the rest to me.”

“So you’re just going to kill us,” Leona states.

“Alternate versions of most of you will remain. For the rest, you’re collateral damage. I’m sorry it had to come to this.”

“We know how to get out,” Mateo contends. “You’re not dooming us.”

“I am, though. The door in the un-Salmon Civic Center has been closed. It’s technically still there, but I filled it up with cement. You could try to chisel through, I guess.” Dalton looks at his watch. “I don’t like your chances.”

“There’s still time,” Leona pleads. “Don’t do this. When we get out of here another way, and we will, because we always do, you’re going to regret it.”

“Whatever. I’m not too worried about it.” Dalton reaches out towards Alyssa. “Come dahling,” he says in a British accent.

“I’m not going with you,” Alyssa spits back. She takes Mateo’s hand, but she’s not doing it just because they love each other. She’s slipping him a note.

“This is non-negotiable. You’re gonna give them false hope that all they have to do is teleport to the Constant, or something.” He takes her by the hand, and whisks them both away.

“I don’t understand,” Senator Morton says. “What is this place?”

Leona explains to all those not already in the know where they are. If they don’t find the exit by midnight, they will be stuck here for another week, and that’s assuming they can make it by the time it hits midnight again. That may be what Dalton wants. His primary objective seems to be getting people out of his way. As far as they know, though, he doesn’t kill people. This seems very unlike him, and unless he’s just another version of Constance, there is another way out of here.

“There is,” Mateo jumps in after Leona’s done. He holds up Alyssa’s note. Scribbled quickly in god-awful handwriting, it says BACK DOOR. “There’s another exit.”

“Great.” Aldona throws up her hands. “There’s a back door somewhere, but we have no clue where.”

“Aldona,” Leona begins, “if you know something about the future that will help us, now is the time to ignore my rules of time travel, and just tell us.”

“I would tell you if I did,” Aldona replies. “I was not aware that this would happen. If Dalton has the power to reset the timeline, maybe nothing I knew of the future has done us any good. I don’t know. I just don’t know anymore.” She’s distraught.

“We don’t have time to search the whole planet,” Leona complains, “even if he let us keep our trusty teleporter. I have access to an aircraft. Ramses specifically designed it to be duplicated into this dimension, and be ready to go if and when we ever needed it, but where are we going to take it?”

“I know where we need to go.” Tarboda looks at Mateo. “We’ve been there.”

Mateo looks puzzled. Then he starts to think. “The antipodes,” he realizes.

“Which antipodes?” Leona asks.

“What is an antipode?” Labhrás asks.

“Kansas and Madagascar,” Tarboda answers Leona. “I don’t know for sure that it’s right, but there’s a weird dimensional thing out there, and if I were to install a back door, the first place I would think is the opposite of where I put the front door.”

“That makes some sense,” Winona encourages.

“It’s our only hope. Can everyone walk? Our aircraft will fly, not none of the other vehicles in this dimension are operable, and the Lofts are about an hour away.”

The group starts the hike northward from the Plaza to the Crown Center area. They don’t slow down, and they don’t make any stops. Their destination being very intentionally the farthest point on Earth from where they are now, it’s pretty much the longest flight they could possibly have to take. The jet is small, and barely big enough to fit all of them. Not everyone has a seat, but they’re not exactly worried about federal regulations at the moment. There is not enough time to make more than one trip. Ramses engineered it to be fuel efficient, and that meant sacrificing speed. It takes them the entire rest of the day, placing them within minutes of their midnight deadline. They don’t even have time to find a landing spot in all this dense vegetation. There aren’t enough parachutes for everyone either, so they have to triple up, which is also extremely dangerous, but they don’t jump from very high. Leona and Tarboda go last after gaining some altitude, and making sure the jet flies off into the distance.

“Leona takes out her phone. “There’s no GPS here, but the terrain is the same as it is in the Third Rail, so I can get us there.”

“I can get us there,” Tarboda insists. “They were walking before, but now they’re running. With only a few minutes to spare, they find the half-hut. From the looks of it, it’s the other half. This is obviously not where Cheyenne and her key friends are living, though, because they were able to access the portal on a day other than Salmonday.

“Okay,” Leona says. “I’ll go first, and if I don’t come out in one minute, assume this is a one-way trip, and just follow me. If it’s killed me, well...you would have died in a matter of weeks anyway, right? All right, see you on the other side!” She runs through. Thirty seconds later, she peeks her head back through. “It’s two-way. Come on in.”

Everyone files in, with Mateo as the caboose. They’re in a world of white, like the Construct from The Matrix. A vague blur appears before them like a TV with a bad signal, then solidifies into Cheyenne. “You’re back.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Mateo begins. “We wouldn’t have come, except—”

“I was just gonna say that you’re right on schedule.” She points. “Walk that way.”