Extremus: Year 143

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Weird things have been happening on the ship. Waldemar’s support system has been shrinking. People have turned up missing, while others have died under mysterious circumstances. His most loyal followers and sycophants are just going away, and life on Extremus has become bleaker than ever. Waldemar himself doesn’t seem fazed. He remains steadfast and ambitious. It’s become clear to all that he is planning to hold onto the captain’s chair through at least the next shift. After that, he might be too old to continue, unless he finds and unlocks immortality tech. It’s weird, really, that he doesn’t seem to be pursuing that. Is there something he knows that Silveon doesn’t? Well, obviously there is, because his people keep dying, and he doesn’t seem to care.

“He doesn’t care, because he thinks they betrayed him,” Sable starts to explain.

“What do you mean? A couple of these guys have been with him since the beginning,” Silveon points out. “I hardly think they would betray him now.”

“That’s because they didn’t,” she clarifies. “I just told him that they had.”

“Why is he listening to you? You’re his girlfriend, not the devil on his shoulder.”

“I may as well be,” Sable contends. “He asked me to use my time tech to spy on the entire ship. It’s completely untraceable and unhackable, because there aren’t any surveillance devices anywhere. All I have to do is remotely view wherever I want.”

“And you’re feeding him bad information from that illegal surveillance?”

“Oh, one hundred percent.” She walks over to her closet and opens the door. She presents her wardrobe flamboyantly as if it’s a prize on a gameshow. Then she closes it, performs some kind of maneuver which Silveon can’t see from his vantage point, then opens it again, but this time from the hinged side. Instead of clothes, there’s now some kind of fancy contraption. There are indicator lights and interface screens on it, but none of them is lit up. “I don’t even turn it on.”

Sable takes out her handheld device, which is a fairly rare thing in this culture, and tosses it to him. “I had the AI write me an algorithm to decide our next victims. I couldn’t go after the big fish on day one. I started with low level—but wildly enthusiastic—fans who Waldemar was already suspicious of. Each time he found a new enemy, it reinforced his paranoia that no one can be trusted, which told the algorithm who to pick next.” She plops down on her couch, pleased with herself. “Impressed?”

“I’m scared.” Silveon sighs. The logic is sound, but it’s still wrong. It’s an abuse of power, and exactly what Waldemar would do if he were in their shoes. He can’t stop her, though. She’s too powerful to go up against, and he doesn’t want to be on her bad side too. He may yet be able to reason with her, though. “You’ve become him. It’s not—” He stops and shakes his head, not knowing how he could possibly get through to her. “We were never worried about Waldemar Kristiansen himself. Waldemar Kristiansen is only a man. What Audrey and I were worried most about were tyranny and fascism. And anyone’s name can be attached to those concepts. I think you just attached yours.”

Sable stares at Silveon with cold, dead eyes. She turns her hand so her palm is facing up. A glass appears upon it, already filled with a brown liquid. “Do you know what this is? It’s bourbon.” She examines it like a scientist, and doesn’t drink. “Waldemar’s mother used to drink this stuff all the time. She was a telepath...worse than her son, because she could hear people’s coherent thoughts. There was one difference between her and Waldy, though: this brown junk. She internalized her dark thoughts, which protected the rest of us from her. But alcohol is illegal, and even though Waldemar obviously doesn’t care about the law, it never occurred to him to self-medicate.”

She chuckles. “This isn’t a replica. It was actually hers. It disappeared from her hand in the year 2354, because I stole it...just now. Don’t worry, I piggy-backed off of a different time travel event, so the sensors will dismiss it as a minority report.” She sets the glass down on the table. “She was so drunk, she won’t even notice. She’ll think she merely blacked out for a few seconds while she drank the whole thing, and threw it in the material reclamator. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Silveon questions, more scared than before.

Sable leans forward sinisterly. “Because if I took the glass the day before or the day after, I might have been caught. You have to pick and choose when you do what you do. It’s the same reason you didn’t murder Waldemar in his sleep when he was a kid, and why Mateo Matic only assassinated Adolf Hitler after the holocaust. It seems cruel. Why wait that long? Why let so many people die? Because believe it or not, in the void left behind when Hiter died as a teenager in an old timeline, a worse threat took power. He was the lesser of two evils. He saved the human race.”

“That is a despicable thing to say about history,” Silveon warns her.

Sable doesn’t flinch. She reaches down and picks the glass back up to take one little sip. Now her face contorts. “Now that is despicable, and disgusting.” She clears her throat. “I lied to you earlier. I turn that machine on all the time, but instead of spying on my brothers and sisters, I use it to wander the past and future. I’ve seen all of reality with that thing, and I’m the only one in the universe who can handle it.” She closes her eyes to correct herself, “besides, like, Lincoln Rutherford.”

“I’m having trouble following you. Are you Hitler, or are you the worse threat?”

Sable takes a deep breath. She takes another one, and another. “Waldemar is Hitler.” She pauses again. “You are the worse threat.” She snaps her fingers.

Waldemar appears in the room. He’s confused. “How did you summon me?”

“Don’t worry about it, babe. I brought you here to show you, I found the last dissenter. I figured you would want to handle it quietly.”

Waldemar looks down at Silveon. “I’ve always known about him. He was eight years younger than me—a baby—and we had playdates? It never made any sense.”

“Of course you knew.” Sable stands up and kisses the captain on the cheek. “You’re a genius. But I used that machine to see what would become of this ship if he were allowed to live even one day more. Now is the time to end it. You can’t put it off any longer, and I don’t think you want anyone else to know about it. Fortunately, he’s no longer in the public eye, so covering up his death shouldn’t be too hard.”

Waldemar looks back at the man he once called his friend. “Why? What is this all about? You have been trying to change me my whole life? What was the point?”

Silveon turns his chin up. “What does it matter? It didn’t work.”

“It did work, though,” Sable argues. “I used the machine, remember? I saw your timeline, and I see the future in this one. You thought you were trying to stop him, but you were actually helping him reach his full potential. And your job is done. It’s my turn now.” She looks at her boyfriend. “You should kill him here. One clean head shot. This is a dead zone. No sensors will log it, and then I’ll clean up for you.”

“You will make a good wife,” Waldemar tells her. He takes out his sidearm, trains it on Silveon, and squeezes the trigger.

Time stops. Silveon is staring at the explosion coming out of the gun, frozen in space and time. Silveon can’t even move, except for his eyeballs.

Sable gets down on her knees underneath the bullet, and frowns at Silveon. She leans forward and kisses him passionately on the lips before placing her mouth near his ear. She whispers, “meet me in Montauk.” She then puts her three middle fingers on his forehead and violently tips him backwards.

When Silveon opens his eyes, he finds himself lying on the floor of an unfamiliar room. He grasps at his head and winces with a hiss.

A woman is sitting at her desk. She turns around when she hears him. “Report.”

“Just tell me the date please,” Silveon requests.

“It’s August 15, 2311.”

“Can you turn off the light please?” He can barely open his eyes, it’s so bright.

“Do it,” the stranger commands the AI.

“August 15, 2311,” Silveon echoes. “Did I piggy-back off of a time travel event?”

“Probably,” she replies. “There was one only minutes ago, well within the margins of error for the ship’s sensors to ignore your arrival. If you wanna go back, though, you should do it quickly, though, or it will be detected.”

“I don’t know why I’m here. She told me to meet her in Montauk.”

The woman seems taken aback by this. “Here.” She helps him off the floor, and onto the bed. “Are you thirsty?” She hands him a glass of water. “I’ve not had any yet.”

Silveon accepts the water and drinks while she goes over to the opposite wall. She slides a cabinet door out of the way, revealing a huge collection of old media. He can’t remember whether they’re called cassette tapes or DVDs because they are so ancient. She scans the library with her finger before settling on one. She pulls it out, looks at the cover herself, and then kneels down in front of him, setting the item on the floor. She puts her hands on his knees, almost affectionately. “Either the person who sent you here really loves you...or really hates you.” She smiles sadly, and hands him the box.”

Silveon looks at it. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” He flips it over to read the description, but stops. “Is it supposed to jiggle like that?”

“No,” she says with a shake of her head. “Open it.”

He lets the big black thing slide out of the box. It doesn’t look right. It looks like part of the outer casing has been pried off. Inside of it is a ring. He picks it up and lets the media fall back to the floor. He takes the stranger by the hand and compares the ring that’s on her finger. “They’re the same.”

“Twins,” the woman says. “It’s fitting you should come here. I had to use mine to save my life during that time travel event, when someone tried to kill me.”

“Someone’s trying to kill me,” Silveon admits, “with a gun.”

She nods. “That can save you, but you don’t have enough time to learn how to use it. It creates temporary pockets of space, allowing you to adjust something’s trajectory.”

Silveon thinks about it. Then he gently places the extra ring in her hand. “Then it’s not for me. If I survive in my time, on that day, I’ll only be putting off the inevitable. My...frenemy wants me to do this, which means I don’t think I should. I should die.”

The woman drops the ring back in the box. “That’s your choice, and I respect it. I don’t know what you’re going through, but have you heard of The Question, by chance?”

“Yes,” Silveon replies.

“You’re meant to answer yes or no, but did you know there was a third answer?”

Silveon returns to his present, and lets himself get shot in the head.

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Microstory 2746: Undercover Boss

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They ran out of time there at the end. Pribadium initially set a very low differential for the time slowdown, which already made their decision dire, but it didn’t stop there. What she didn’t realize was that the time bubble was contracting at the same time, thanks to the pressure of the contraction of the universe itself. Their localized time was starting to catch up to realtime, and once that happened, they would either die in the vacuum or be crushed by the dimensional barrier. There was no happy ending if they didn’t leave. She didn’t have time to make the necessary calculations.

She couldn’t remember exactly how far back they needed to send their minds, and even if she did, that’s not how the timechairs work. You don’t just set a date and press return. It requires very precise parameters to both make sure her current neurostate maintains cohesion, and that her past mind gets overwritten entirely, instead of lingering. A lingering partial consciousness is torturous and unethical. If you’re going to overwrite your past self, do it all the way, like putting a dying animal out of its misery.

Pribadium hoped that she and Sora would wind up back on Doma Tertia a few days before the planet was blown up, or even earlier. Instead, they land in the interrogation room at the very moment when everything changed. In seconds, a Teaguardian is going to teleport herself into this room, trying to arrest Sora, while also trying to rescue Pribadium. Not long after that, the whole planet will be destroyed. They can’t let that happen. It will ruin her chances to annihilate it the right way, so it doesn’t eventually recoalesce. She has to put a stop to it. In the first timeline, she and Sora escaped into..the space. This time, they have to go into the belly of the beast.

Pribadium leaps over and takes Sora in her arms. She releases the nanites from her body, and wraps them around him. She is intending to jump them to the interior of the ship, but if it has an anti-boarding lock, they might bounce off the hull on the outside. As soon as the nanites finish generating a spacesuit for him, they disappear.

There was a lock, but Pribadium’s teleportation algorithm knows how to break through it since she was part of the group who invented the technology in the first place. They’re now in the firing bay of one of the ships. The two engineers don’t even notice Pribadium and Sora because they’re busy powering up the weapon. They shouldn’t be.

“Stop!” Pribadium tries to order. “I am Chief Asset Manager Pribadium Delgado, and that is my planet. I am ordering you to cease fire! I will speak with the Klavis, but I demand that you stand down this instant. You came here to rescue me, and that’s done.”

The engineers only stare at her. One of them reaches over to sound the alarm.

Pribadium sighs. “We don’t have time for this.” She teleports over to him, then teleports him away. She then comes back for the other one before returning to Sora.

“Where did you take them?” Sora asks her as he’s trying to collapse his suit.

Pribadium smiles, and pulls her nanites back in. “I put them in hock.”

“They’ll just send more people. They probably don’t even need the engineers. They can control it from the bridge, or elsewhere,” Sora reasons.

“Good point.” She taps on her wrist interface, then places her hand on his waist.

“Buy me dinner first,” he jokes as his new teleporter belt is formulating around him. “You always could have used this to escape me. Why stay, to humor me?”

Pribadium is still watching his belt form. “This will let you jump anywhere, even through suppression fields. We must throw everyone in hock, and not just in this ship, but all three.” She looks up at him. “I stayed because I believed in you...because I believed you could become the man that you are today. I’m glad I did.” She cups his cheeks and kisses him passionately on the lips. “Remember, everyone in hock.”

“You take this one, I’ll take the other two,” Sora volunteers.

Pribadium chuckles. “The other way around.” She teleports away.

Together, they throw every single Teaguardian in the cells, knowing that it’s going to get them in trouble. The thing is, though, there is really nothing anyone can do to her. She is singularly too powerful. She will get out of this. She has friends in high places. The Shortlist gave Teagarden the tech, and they can take it away. They put failsafes in place to prevent or undo abuse. She doesn’t even have to ask for help. Someone will simply show up. She could end up in one of these cells too, and there will always be someone to get her out. She has never taken her political power for granted before, but she has to save this planet, the people on it, and the future of the Gatewood project.

Once Pribadium confirms that everyone has been successfully locked up, she returns to the first ship to address the Klavis, who is in charge of all three of them. Actually, a klavis should be responsible for four ships, which is concerning. Strictly speaking, they don’t have to travel in a formation of four. In fact, they usually don’t. It’s just possible that an extra one is sneaking around here somewhere. “I’m sorry it had to come to this, but I couldn’t let you fire those weapons. It wasn’t right, or smart.”

“I understand,” the Klavis replies.

“You do?” Pribadium questions. That’s an odd reaction from a military man.

“Yeah, of course! Why don’t you unlock these cells, and we’ll talk about it?”

“Oh. I see.” Pribadium completes a short breathing exercise. “Gatewood is an independent division of the Core World Consortium. We provide more good to the galaxy than Teagarden could ever dream. That’s why we have so much latitude to run it ourselves. We do not need your protection, because I’m here. I had the situation well in hand before you swooped in and screwed everything up. I’m not going to dissolve the relationship that we have with Teagarden, but I am going to kick these three Teaguardians out of my star system for the duration of the obliteration project. You may return once the planets are destroyed, but you will be taking up a distant patrol pattern. Again, I don’t actually need you to do anything.”

“You don’t get it,” the Klavis responds. “That is not for you to decide. You are the Chief Asset Manager, not the emperor of the galaxy. I have my orders.”

Pribadium nods. “And I have mine. There’s plenty of food in the cell synthesizers. I’m going to sync your ships, and send them on a relativistic loop. By the time they get back, the job will be done. We can fight then, but I won’t let you interfere with Project Ross 154.” She leans in real close and taps on the glass like a kid with a new pet turtle. “We all answer to the Core, but the Core answers to people like me. We’re the drivers. If you take your complaints high enough up the chain of command, you end up with me. I’m like an undercover boss. So enjoy your vacation. We’ll be fine without you.”

Pribadium disappears, and jumps to the bridge where she left Sora. “What is it?”

He’s looking up through the main viewscreen where a ship has just come into view. “They don’t look like a Teaguardian. I don’t recognize the design at all. Do you?”

Pribadium watches it too. “Yes. It’s my design. But I never built it.”

Sugar’s face comes on screen. “Captain Delgado...permission to board?”

Microstory 2745: My Respect and My Friendship

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Pribadium and Sora retreat into the auxiliary control room because that’s the most interior sector of the base. It’s deep in the asteroid. The rest of it is slowly being torn apart by the tidal forces of the dimensional barrier collapse. They won’t be able to stay here forever, though. They need to come up with a plan. Or rather, she will have to come up with it, because as intelligent as Sora is, he doesn’t know much about this stuff.

“Can you freeze time?” he suggests.

“Freeze time?” she echoes.

“Yeah. Just to give you more time to think of a permanent solution. I saw that in a TV show once. The ship was about to be destroyed by a big laser so they created a time bubble. I think they spent something like fifty years in there, which for people like me, is a long time, but that’s barely a blip for someone like you. Is that possible?”

Pribadium thinks about it. Yes, of course it’s possible. She is a time scientist. The problem is, what she needs is not in this room. This controls the lab itself. It doesn’t have any time tech in it. The main time lab is presently under siege. “It will be dangerous. It may already be destroyed. We’ll be jumping blind.” She offers her hand.

He takes it without hesitating, letting her teleport them both to the lab.

The walls are buckling. Particulates are falling from the ceiling. The tremors make it impossible for Sora to stay on his feet. She only can because of her advanced substrate. While he lies down on the floor and braces himself, she teeters over to the workstation and starts running through the process. It’s too long, it’s taking too long. She should have imagined this could happen, and been better prepared.

Just as the airlock buckles and bursts open, the bubble engages, preventing the air from escaping, and saving their lives. She dives down to make sure Sora’s okay.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he assures her. He stands and looks at the hole. “It worked.”

“Sort of,” Pribadium says. “In my rush, I didn’t set the differential to be wide enough. For every minute that passes, a second passes out there. We probably only have about half an hour before this sector collapses too. I can’t raise the differential now. I would have to cancel it and start again. And if you were thinking about transporting the bubble back to the aux room, that’s not possible either. I only delayed the inevitable.”

“I wasn’t seriously suggesting we spend fifty years in here,” he explains. “You’re a genius, and if this is the main time lab, I’m sure you have everything you need to figure it out. Thirty minutes should be more than enough. I believe in you.”

Pribadium takes a deep breath, appreciating what he’s saying. It’s at least not so dire, but as she looks around, she’s seeing all the damage. All of her tech is lined up against the walls for feng shui reasons. The time machine, the time reverser, even the dimensional generators; they were all decimated prior to their arrival. There’s just nothing that will—the timechairs. They’re in the middle of the floor, intact. She looks over at him with sad eyes. “Our only hope is to send our consciousnesses back to their younger bodies. The only safe place is in the past. This timeline is defunct.”

“That will undo all of this,” he determines. “Runaway and Sugar will never exist.”

“No, they will,” Pribadium contends. “They left the universe entirely, which permanently protects them from timeline collapses. They’ll still be out there, and if they ever return, they will find the new timeline, but...what will that timeline look like?”

He offers her his hand like she did before. “Let’s go find out...together.”

Microstory 2739: Nobody Exists on Purpose

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Pribadium’s friends once compared her to Rick Sanchez. She is not as cartoonish as he is, and she doesn’t break any laws of logic, like building a robot in a couple seconds with a screwdriver just to pass the butter. She does, however, frequently invent things just because the ideas are floating in her head, and she has to get them out. Or rather, she did. She has not developed anything significant in years, so she’s a little rusty.

Humanity is nowhere near the end of science, but they have pretty much solved every problem. Primary drivers are moderate performance improvements, scale, distribution and access, and most importantly, efficiency. The most pressing issue facing the universe right now is figuring out how to perform the most complex calculations using the least amount of energy. It’s profoundly important, and will only become more so further down the timeline as entropy progresses, but it’s certainly not fun, especially not for her. She pivoted to Administration and Operations because it was a challenge.

Now she has to go back to her old self to understand who this self-proclaimed embodiment of the population of this universe is. But if she’s gonna do it, she’s gonna do it her way, and her way...is not the normal way. Instead of trying to recall the procedural memory that she has lost over time, all she has to do is call forth a younger version of her who still has the required skills. She playfully calls it instantiating her panda.

“Why do you call it that?” Sora questions as he’s watching her prepare.

“Inside joke,” Pribadium explains as she checks the imaging chamber’s integrity.

“So you’re going to contact yourself from another time? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“It would be, if that were it,” Pribadium begins. “Any time travel risks irreparably throwing off our current conditional state. This is more like a revision history.”

Sora nods. “So you’re still trying to do the mobile command center thing.”

Pribadium stops working for a moment. Though everything has changed about their circumstances, nothing has changed about their objectives. Well, at least not Pribadium’s goals. She still wants to separate this pocket of the universe, and she still wants to travel the bulk with it. “I can’t think of anything more important than that right now. Understanding that amalgam in the other room is only in service to that end.”

“I see,” Sora says. “Well, I’ll leave you to it, then.”

“Oh, you’re not going anywhere, mister.” Pribadium is still not looking at him, in favor of focusing on the work. “You stole my tech and abused it. Don’t think I forgot about that. I don’t know if it led to what happened with the Stonehenge model, but that’s exactly why you’ll have to be tested too.” Now she looks at him like a shushy librarian. “You placed this whole lab at risk, not to mention the universe. I forgive you on a personal level, but you may yet pose a risk, so you’re next on the list.”

“Okay,” Sora agrees with his tail between his legs. He sits down on the bench.

Pribadium is ready. She boots up the machine, and waits for a previously saved state to appear in the form of a hologram that both of them can see and hear.

Pribadium!Zero’s image slowly renders at first before completing in a blink. She looks around to orient herself before looking at Pribadium!One. “Whassuuuuuuup!!!!!!!”

“Aren’t they supposed to say, report in these situations?” Sora questions.

“I was an ornery little bitch.” Pribadium looks at her self. “Listen up, Egg. I got some work to do, and I need your brain to do it.”

“Fuck you, Chicken.”

Extremus: Year 139

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Sable has been playing a one-sided game here, which is to be expected, because for the longest time, Silveon was too. A few months ago, Waldemar revealed to her that he had been seeing and interacting with his late wife. Either he is sparse on the details, or Sable didn’t relay everything to Silveon when she told Silveon about it yesterday. He doesn’t know why she waited this long, but he can’t argue with her about it. They have a very fragile partnership, and it’s the only one he has, so he doesn’t want to lose it.

He asked Sable for more information, but she didn’t give it. He doesn’t know how this is changing Waldemar. Their relationship has grown more strained over time as the latter focuses on maintaining his power, and his relationship with Sable. They are probably more or less in a holding pattern, though. He is coming up on a crossroads in his career. In the original timeline, Waldemar threw the rule book out the airlock, and declared himself the One True Captain of Extremus, Eighth of Eight. His acolytes came up with the chant, “eight! Eight! Eight!” When spoken out loud, it sounded like they were saying hate, hate, hate, which in a way, they were very much saying exactly that.

Out of all of their goals, this is the big one. In five years, his and Audrey’s hard work will either pay off, or fail. Will Waldemar do what he did before, or will he follow procedure, and step to the side for a new captain? They were never trying to make him into a saint, but if they can end the tyranny, all of their sacrifices might prove worth it. The question for Silveon right now, though, is who or what is Audrey? He has a decent idea, but he doesn’t want to go digging around to confirm it, because it could mess with what’s happening. He needs to better understand what this Audrey ghost is telling Waldemar, so they know if she’s a threat to the plan, or a boon. It’s gonna be tricky.

“Hey, W,” Silveon says when the door opens for him. “What’s up?”

“What did you want, Sil?” Waldemar questions. He doesn’t sound happy, but he doesn’t sound mad either. He’s concentrating on whatever is on his table at the moment.

This is where Silveon has to be careful. If the Audrey who Waldemar is seeing isn’t the least bit real—like a temporal echo from the past, or a mental projection—and if Waldemar knows that it’s only in his head, Silveon’s next words will be an obvious lie. He might be able to save face, but it depends on the wording he chooses. “I wanted to talk to someone, and I think you’re the only one who may understand. You cared about her as much as I; or more, rather. I can’t trust anyone else.”

Waldemar freezes but stays on his tablet. “Cared about who?”

“Audrey,” Silveon answers. “I’ve been...seeing her. Kind of in the corner of my eye? She doesn’t talk. I thought it was only in my head, but it’s just too real. She’s older, ya know? She’s aged like us even though she’s been gone for so long already. I dunno, I mean, my brain could certainly conceive of that, but stranger things have happened too. Maybe...maybe it’s real. Do you think she could be real?”

Waldemar stares at the man who he once called a friend, and is now becoming a stranger by the day. He stares for a long time. “Of course not, Silveon. Audrey’s dead. Time travel is illegal. It’s the only set of laws I never touched. Go see a psychologist.”

Shit. Their trust is gone completely. Well, at least he’s not angry, or becoming violent. Still, he’s playing this close to the vest, which means that Sable remains the only hope they have of getting through to him, and averting his dark fate.

Silveon shakes his head, bids his farewell, then respectfully bows out of the room.

He returns to his own quarters, defeated. Life should have an undo button.

“Hey,” a voice says from behind him. It’s Audrey. “We need to talk.”

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Microstory 2724: Report Back

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As far as the Teaguardians—and everyone else, for that matter—knows, Pribadium is dead. She died in the destruction of Doma Tertia, along with the Doma Tertians. That’s quite all right. She doesn’t need anyone looking for her, or watching her as she travels to her secret laboratory. It takes them a long time, since they have to teleport there without a ship, but since they’re about to go back in time, it’s fine.

“If it’s a secret, does that mean no one knows, or just not the public?” Sora asks.

Pribadium looks at him with a side eye. She’s going to be taking him with her into the past. He can’t know about the hot pocket—how she stores up waste heat in another dimension, and purges it periodically, perfectly timed with the transit of neighboring and distant stars. “Only you and I know about this place. Will I have to kill you later?”

Sora laughs. “Honey, if you can travel through time, I’m not stupid enough to get on your bad side. I just thought you were immortal, like Tertius and Aeterna. I had no idea that there was so much more out there. No, you won’t have to kill me.”

Pribadium starts running her preflight checks. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. Did you name that planet after him? Was he a friend of yours, or...?”

“It’s a coincidence,” Sora responds. “I didn’t name it myself. Proxima Doma means next home. Doma Tertia means third home. I tried to argue, but I didn’t want to tell anyone about the immortals I met, so I didn’t have a leg to stand on.”

Pribadium nods, then flips the time machine on. She hoped never to use this thing again. She doesn’t take any of this lightly. It’s only for emergencies. Messing with the past is dangerous, which is why she rarely does it. It’s also why she doesn’t spend much time with other travelers. She will manipulate time and space all day, but she would rather do it in the present. The circumstances call for an intervention, though.

“It is exactly as I pictured it,” Sora says. “A sleek, well-lit chamber, about the height of a normal ceiling, wide enough for several people. Like the old movies.”

Pribadium sometimes gets ultra excited, talking about her science. She can’t trust very many people. “This works differently than the ones you see in films, which are powered by radioactive materials or phlebotinum. This is powered by vacuum energy, which means as long as the universe exists, so does this machine. Except not for long,” she explains. “Since you know about it, I will have to destroy it on the other side.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Sora reasons. “I don’t even know where we are.”

“I can’t take that risk,” she says. “You know enough. I shouldn’t even be showing you at all, but I need you. If I try to go back and replay the scenario, it will probably end about the same. The Teaguardians have their own access to certain advanced technologies. Going against their plans requires finesse. Can you do this, Mr. Shimizu?”

“It depends on what happens to the other me when I go back in time,” he decides.

“I can’t describe the exact process, because I genuinely don’t know it, but one of you will simply stop existing. The way I understand it, the one with fewer memories usually disappears, but I’ve heard of cases where they sacrifice for their younger selves.”

“That is not always what happens,” a voice from behind her points out.

Pribadium turns around to find an alternate version of herself standing there.

“Whoa. Did we already do it?” Sora asks. “Did we go back in time?”

“No,” both Pribadiums reply to him simultaneously.

There is a protocol for this. “Report,” the Pribadium who belongs here instructs.

Microstory 2723: Not Part of the Plan

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Pribadium always keeps an excess of nanites for such occasions. She releases enough to encompass Sora in a vacuum suit, as well as herself. When he takes her hand, she teleports them into orbit. The two Teaguardian ships here are powering their weapons, and it will do enough damage to the planet to still kill the two of them. She has cleared the signal jammer, so her consciousness has begun streaming to her backups again, but it will take some time before the update is complete. Besides, she has to protect this dumbass. So she keeps teleporting them until they’re far enough away.

From this vantage point, they watch as the weapons reach critical mass and converge on a single spot on the world below them. They seemed to have been aiming for the settlement, so everyone living there is already dead. The Teaguardians don’t have to keep going. Yet they do. In minutes, it’s quite clear that they’re planning to obliterate Doma Tertia. But there’s a reason Pribadium chose not to do it this way in the first place. It might be quicker, but it won’t last. The gravity well is too strong.

Every celestial body holds something known as gravitational binding energy. If you want to break it apart, you need any amount beyond that binding energy. If you don’t reach this threshold, it may still break apart, but then it will just come back together. Even if it takes years, it will recoalesce because the total mass has not changed. That’s why they constructed a stellar shotgun on Ross 154, because they needed a shit ton of energy to get it done. What the Teaguardians are doing here is only making things worse. The whole point is to get at all of the raw material without having to dig themselves out of the gravity well every time they want to redistribute it. Now that’s what they will have to do. But there’s an even greater problem. It’s all about safety.

You can’t just go blowing up planets without any regard for what else is around. The energy beams are coming from several light years away. They knew exactly when they were going to deploy, and what the Gatewood system would look like when that energy finally arrived. In order to protect the people who needed to live and work here during the blasts, they determined where the safe zones were. For the last several months, in preparation for the demolition, everyone was moved to a handful of little pockets of safety. These were calculated, recalculated, verified, and reverified by literally thousands of independent entities. All of those precautions are no longer viable. If she doesn’t undo this, the entire star system will have to be abandoned for decades.

Pribadium sighs. “I really have never heard of Tertius or Aeterna,” she begins, “but I am not surprised. A number of people were born with the ability to manipulate time or space in various ways. Others became that way later in life. I had to discover the power through years of science and exploration. Time travel is real, Sora.”

“You can go back and undo this?” Sora asks. “You can save my people?”

“No,” she answers. “But you can. The only way to stop the Teaguardians from shooting the planet is by not giving them a reason to. Only you can do that.”

“Was this all part of the plan?” Sora questions. “Was it nothing more than an elaborate ruse? Were you just trying to trick me into changing the past?”

“You think I blew up a planet just to get you to help me undo it? Mr. Shimizu, that makes no sense. I could have teleported you all offworld whenever I wanted. I was going for diplomatic avenues. I never wanted you to know the truth. So how about it? You wanna help me save the world? Or are you gonna be, like, a dick about it?”

Extremus: Year 135

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Waldemar was different for about a year. At first, Silveon thought that maybe someone had supplanted his mind with their own, or was mind-controlling him. Or that it was just straight up a clone. But his doctor could find absolutely no evidence that he had been tampered with. The doctor used all sorts of lingo that Silveon didn’t understand, but the parts of the brain responsible for things like impulse control and empathy were lighting up, whereas they didn’t do that before. And then suddenly, it was gone again. It wasn’t entirely gone. He did not go back to the way he was before, but Silveon was present for another scan, and the parts of his brain he used during that year have returned to the way they were. It’s sad and frustrating. The hope was fleeting.

Silveon has been trying to figure out a way to get that back, but he still doesn’t understand what happened. He’s going to have to bite the bullet and reach out to Sable. He hasn’t cut her out of his life, but he has kept his distance. As much as she will tolerate. Maybe it’s time for him to try to gather some new allies. They won’t be like the originals, but no one possibly could be. That doesn’t mean they can’t help. She’s powerful, and while she denied being responsible for Waldemar’s change before, maybe she has some new insights. He’s at her cabin now, trying to work up the courage.

Before he can reach up to ring the bell, he suddenly finds himself teleporting to the other side of the door.

Sable is sitting on the couch, dressed in revealing clothing, looking at him with a smirk. She sets her tablet down. “My oh my, Steward. Aren’t we the hesitant one?”

“I didn’t come for whatever you think I’m here for,” Silveon explains.

Sable looks down at her attire like she forgot what she was wearing. “Oh, this? This isn’t for you. This is just comfortable. I change for no man, and I mean that both figuratively and literally. What do you want, Silveon? Help with your boy, the Captain?”

“You said you wanted to help, so here I am, reaching out.”

Sable dismissively picks her tablet back up and starts swiping through it. “That was a long time ago. I’m not sure if I’m interested anymore. You’ll have to convince me.”

“Well, what can I do in service to that?” Silveon asks.

Sable stops a moment and looks back up at him. “You can tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me everything,” Sable says, not really clarifying.

“Everything about what?”

“Everything,” she repeats. “Tell me how you knew Waldemar was going to be captain, and what kind, and what he was going to do. Tell me what you did to stop him, and why you didn’t do a very good job of it. Tell me what my mother knows, what Audrey knew, what your parents knew. Everything means everything..”

He has avoided this conversation so long, but she’s a lot older now, and as he was just contemplating how he needs people on his side, now that he has lost everyone else. So he sits down and takes a breath. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything. If you use it against me...well...then I guess that’s what happens. I’m an old man now, and I’m tired, and as you pointed out, it didn’t really work. I mean, I think it did a little. Things are better than they were in the previous timeline.”

“The previous timeline?” She was intrigued.

“Yes,” Silveon says. “The reason I knew what Waldemar was going to become was because I already saw it. And I’ve been trying to stop it my whole life.”

Sable curls her legs in and leans towards him. “Finally. Let’s get into it.”

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Microstory 2707: Walking Out With the Door

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It’s been another year now. Leif knows his own name, and responds to it. Isavet has taken quite a liking to him. She doesn’t quite understand what Talus did, but she knows he was a bad boy, and seems to be trying to compensate for him. Ronan and Gia often talk about how close they might have been to Talus doing something to her. They grew up together as babies, so he never would have seen her as a threat to his status, but he might have held hate against her for some other reason. They don’t know what was going on in his head. They never will, and they have decided to take this as a blessing. For the most part, they don’t talk about Talus at all, especially not openly.

Ronan’s mind drifts outside the dome when he’s alone, often towards Talus’ new place on Varkas Reflex. He thinks about him from time to time, wondering how he’s doing. He’s probably having the time of his life. A significant portion of the population chooses such a life on purpose, and stays forever. Ronan could get everything he has here in there, but it wouldn’t feel right. He would always know it’s not real. He’s clearly not the only one. It’s why Castlebourne is the fastest growing colony in the galaxy, when it really should be Varkas Reflex, or it shouldn’t matter since you can technically do VR anywhere. One day, Castlebourne may sport the highest population of all. That will be an interesting time. According to projections, he will be done with this particular simulated experience by then, but who knows? The winds could shift.

They’re thinking of moving, just to separate themselves from the community. It has grown since they first arrived. A few other people have settled land near their farm. And they all know what happened, to some degree, so the looks Ronan and Gia get can be really uncomfortable, and take them out of the Norse experience. It wouldn’t be narratively unreasonable either. People moved all the time in this culture. But there’s one thing that would be hard to take with them. Ronan isn’t sure if he wants it, though.

“I think we should do it,” Gia says. “I think we should take it with us. You built that very nice wagon for us. If we moved far up to another beach, it wouldn’t be too difficult of a trip. It will take us several days regardless.”

Ronan keeps staring at it. “I built this house around this door. I did it for Mayumi. I did it for...” He trails off, not wanting to say his name.

“It’s our door now,” Gia points out. “It may be worth more than anything else we have combined. Some rich person was very upset, but has had nearly a decade to get over it. But the fact that you’re agonizing over it leads me to believe that you’re ready?”

Ronan looks at his wife now. “I think I’m ready. It’s time. This phase of our lives is over. How does Isavet feel about it? Is she attached to this house?”

“She might want to leave more than any of us,” Gia explains. “She may understand more about what happened to Leif than we thought. I catch her sometimes, staring at his crib when he’s not in it. She moves it to where it was when...” She trails off too. “Vith can’t find a wife here. We should look somewhere else.”

Ronan chuckles. “Vith doesn’t want a wife.”

“He does if he wants to stay immersed,” Gia says.

“He may not want to do that either,” Ronan calculates. “He’s changed more than any of us in some ways. He may be ready to leave too, but go in a different direction.”

“Well, we’ll let him decide that, and I won’t ask him about it. You shouldn’t either. Now come on, we are not packing up today. Dinner is almost ready.”

Microstory 2681: Final Exam

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Brooke will not tell Resi Brooks anything about the rescue that she and her friends pulled off centuries ago. She doesn’t even admit that she’s a time traveler. She says that she can help Resi get a handle on his visions, and that is what she does. They work together for weeks. She doesn’t give him a cure for what ails him, but she provides him with treatments that are better than what Yana has to offer on its own. It’s actually better that he not be too active in the world while he’s working on his mental ability. There are too many distractions, and he has to focus. She first teaches him how to meditate. That’s really all the Kidjum elixir does. It drops a person into a relaxed, unconscious state so it can access deeper truths about the dreamer’s psyche. The drug is an easy shortcut, and its side effects might actually be detrimental to the process.

Brooke asks Resi to start with small things. He’s meant to predict things that will probably happen anyway, like the outside temperature that the forecast already predicted, and always predicts with accuracy. This will reinforce his knowledge of the world, and reward his brain for saying something correct. Over time, she asks for more and more uncertain predictions, like the daily harvest yield in the south fields, or the results of an ancient singing competition show which Resi had never seen before. He gets them right too, but it’s still not too surprising, because yields are fairly steady, and we all knew Miki was gonna win season eleven. So far, though, Brooke has only asked him questions about specific things. She has driven him towards a prediction. The hardest part will be when she simply tells him to come up with something new.

He doesn’t think he’s ready for that yet. He’s still not entirely sure that he really has this ability. But she convinces him to try because if the first time he proves it is when the Central Mountain volcano explodes, then they’re all going to have a bad time. He has to start with something that’s still small, but impossible for him to have known just by recognizing past patterns, or relying on other systems. It has to be so isolated and bizarre that it can’t be true until it is. She sits him down, and has him close his eyes. She tells him to focus on the future, and forget everything he knows about everything else. The past does not exist, and it never will. The only thing that matters is what is to come. He’s also supposed to breathe. In, out. In, out. Her voice fades away as she continues the usual instructions. He keeps following them, trying to see something which does not exist, but is inevitable. He sees a tunnel, but it’s not real. It’s only a conduit to a higher plane of reality. It’s his way to seeing the future. He propels himself forwards, becoming one with the tunnel, and preparing himself for the other side, when an image he has never seen before finally comes to light.

He reaches the end. It’s small, and it looks like it’s moving fast, but to him, it’s in slow motion. It’s kind of grayish, or maybe even gold? It’s hard to tell with the light from the visionscape itself. He tries to look at it from a different angle, but a second image slips into view behind it. This one is also metal, but of a more complex design. It’s still covered in shadow, and hard to make out. So he moves closer. Closer, closer, closer. It’s...it’s a gun. Resi wakes up from the vision, and dives to the side just as he hears the shot. He feels the rush of wind as the bullet passes him within centimeters at most. “What the hell was that?” he asks, trying to put his heart back in his chest.

Brooke puts the gun into her jacket. “That was the final exam. In case you didn’t notice, you passed.”

Microstory 2597: Renata Sits Down in the Chair That Was Offered to Her

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Renata sits down in the chair that was offered to her. The big man leader guy is standing on the other side of the desk. He’s sifting through information on his tablet. She can’t read his face, though. She has no idea what’s going to happen to her. They’ll probably decommission her. Or fire her. Or cancel her, or whatever cutesy euphemism they’ve come up with that means more than it sounds at first. Ya know, what? Why doesn’t she just ask him? She’s just gonna ask him. She opens her mouth to speak.

He tosses his tablet onto the desk. “How are you feeling?”

Renata, as ridiculous as it sounds, looks behind her in case there’s someone else in the room. There isn’t, and she knew that. She would have been able to detect them without her eyes.

He chuckles. “You, Renata Granger. How are you doing?”

“I’m...anxious,” she admits. “I don’t know what this is.”

“Anxiety is a product of the future. You shouldn’t be worried about the future. It’s the past that should concern you. You’ve been through quite the ordeal. Be honest, how are you feeling about that?”

“I don’t understand the question. I get why I should be concerned about that, but why would you? I turned off your whole simulation. Aren’t you mad about that?”

“You turned off one simulation,” he argues. “It’s not the only time that’s happened. Why, just a few months ago, I had to close one called 2.5Dome because someone almost died who shouldn’t have been in there.”

“What happened to them?” Renata doesn’t know why she should ask after this stranger. She doesn’t know them, whoever they are.

“He runs the government now,” the boss answers. What? Isn’t that his job? He goes on, “Listen. I looked over the data. Spydome Network was corrupted. An unauthorized entity infiltrated the ranks, and made dangerous changes to the system. You are one consequence of her actions. Now, I’m not one to tell an intelligence that it can’t evolve, but—”

“I’m sorry,” Renata interrupts, “but I have to stop you right there. I don’t want another philosophical discussion about the nature of identity and free will. I don’t care that you use robots to get your work done. I just want to know what’s going to happen to me. And I wouldn’t hate an update on Quidel, Lycander, Demo, and even Libera.”

“The first three have not made any decisions about their future on Castlebourne, or if they have, they’ve not told me. As for this Libera person, she is currently being held in a secure dome called Synthetic Production Dome. I don’t know what’s going to happen to her either. We’ve called in support from Earth, who will be sending a team of experts to examine and interview her. I have final say as it is out of the stellar neighborhood’s jurisdiction, but I will be relying heavily on their recommendations. I’ll try to keep you informed, depending on where you choose to go, and whether you remain curious about it.”

She nods, but says nothing.

“Oh, and as for you, your life is yours now. You do whatever you want. You’re welcome to stay here, and explore the other domes. I can try to get you on a ship bound for one of the other colonies, but that doesn’t happen too often. People come, but they don’t typically leave. So we just keep the transport ships here, and those other colonies build new ones. Of course, if you’re not married to this substrate, you can always cast, which is a lot faster and easier.”

“Forgive me, Quidel and Lycander told me that you would be generous and obliging, but I am finding it hard to believe. I mean, I know it was only one dome network, but it sounds like it was your most immersive one. I did not expect a warm welcome after I realized what I was. In the movies—”

“Don’t...watch the movies, or the series,” he interrupts. “Don’t watch A.I: Artificial Intelligence, I, Robot, or Ex Machina. Don’t watch the Terminator franchise, the Alien franchise, or the Matrix Trilogy. Don’t watch Battlestar Galactica, Humans, or Raised by Wolves. Don’t you dare watch Westworld. Everyone thinks I stole the idea from them, but I didn’t build the domes. I just made use of them. Anyway, those were not predictions of the future. They were parables. We learned from them before we had the technology to replicate them. We based our intelligence laws around the ethical issues that those stories raised. What happened here was the result of a rogue intelligence who had her own ideas about what civilization should look like. And statistically, that’s bound to happen. We call them criminals. I don’t care where she came from or how she developed. The bottom line is that she broke the law. She’s not any more above them than I am, so she’ll face the music for that.”

“But that’s my question,” Renata presses, even though it’s in her best interests to thank this man, and then thank her lucky stars. “How am I not also a criminal? I essentially hacked into your system, and shut everything down. Did that not go against your laws?”

He finally sits down, leans back in his chair, and takes a breath. “What you did exposed a fatal flaw in that system. You never should have been granted root access to every synthetic entity in the network. According to early reports, not even Libera knew that you were capable of that. I’m currently having the technicians perform an audit to see why it happened, and how we can prevent it in the future. You see it as a crime, I see it as better than the alternative, which is that Libera had access instead, and did something far worse with her power. I should be thanking you.” He winces. “Thank you.”

“I should be thanking you, Mr. Hrockas.” She takes a beat. “Thank you,” she adds to make it official.

“It’s just Hrockas,” he says with a smile. “My last name is Steward.”

Renata considers the development. “You seem to be a steward of the planet. So which came first, your job or your name?”

“Hm. I’ve never thought of it that way. Everyone just calls me the Owner. I never liked it, but I never had a better title. Until now.”

“I dunno. Steward Steward seems a little weird.”

“Good point,” Hrockas admits. “Perhaps I’ll just go by Steward.”

“Can I see my friends?” Renata asks, suddenly changing the topic.

“I would like you to consent to an examination by a professional, but after that, sure. Are you up for it?”

“Yeah, it’s the least I can do,” Renata agrees.