Microstory 2633: Riding the Blinds

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It’s the year 2424, and the trip to Castlebourne will take 108 years, because it is 108 light years away, and the ship will be able to travel at just under light speed. Due to special relativity, however, it will only feel like a couple of months for anyone on the ship. That preposition is more appropriate for Mandica than for anyone or anything else. They will actually be inside of it while she’ll be on the outside, like a parasite.

“That’s not the right term,” her pilot argues. “It makes it sound like you’re hurting the ship. I promise, it won’t even notice you. You’re not a parasite, it’s...” He trails off as he looks it up on his device. “Phoretic. You’re a phoresy. Yeah, that sounds better.”

“You literally called the pod The Barnacle,” Mandica argues.

“It’s a joke,” he defends.

“That hat is a joke,” she snaps back. She knows, she shouldn’t be so mean.

“Uh, it’s a trilby, and it’s what we call retro-stylish,” he boasts.

“All right, Trilby.” She notices that he seems to like that nickname. “Tell me how this works so I don’t vaporize myself in the middle of interstellar space.”

Trilby literally pulls back the curtain to show the little pod that she’ll be in. It looks like the inside of a nutshell, but only half of it. There is no other half. This will evidently be sealed against the hull, so the hull acts as the fourth wall, and if that seal ever breaks, she’ll be exposed to the vacuum of outer space. “Okay. You’ll have to be in your Integrated Multipurpose Suit when we begin, helmet and all. You can hold onto these handles so you don’t slip off. Of course, you’ll be tethered, but if you slip out during the process, the seal will snap that tether, and you’ll start to float away.”

“Got it. Hold on tight.”

“Right,” he agrees. “Once it’s sealed, I wouldn’t unseal it until you reach your destination, or you’ll be screwed. It can be resealed, but you would have to keep your grip on it for that to work, so just don’t do it. There’s no door. You can only get out by detaching from the hull. I assume you’re halfway decent with computers. Everything you need is on this console, and it will interface with your suit. It has its own powersource, but it’s minimal, so I suggest you let it siphon from the arkship. Don’t worry, it’s a small pod, and you’re only one person, so the power draw will be well within the margin of error. As long as you don’t do anything crazy, you won’t be detected.”

“Can I take my helmet off in transit, or even my suit?”

“Helmet off should be fine. This thing has its own climate control. I would leave the suit on most of the time, however. If you do remove it, do it in short bursts to let your body breathe, but don’t fall asleep like that, or anything. It’ll be a tight seal, but I won’t be there to fix any issues. It will all be up to you.” He lifts a flap on the end of the console. “Here’s a copy of the operator’s manual, in paper form. There’s obviously a virtual version of it, but this is just in case. He opens a small cupboard. It also has dayfruit growers, but I could only fit four of them, so you’ll want to supplement with the meal bars below it, and your dayfruit smoothie in your Portable Resource Unit. I don’t remember how long regular humans can go without food, so rationing will be up to you. Just be careful and pay attention to your supplies.”

Mandica sighs and looks over her little lifeboat. “Any exercise equipment? I’ve actually never been to space before today, and I spent most of the time hiding in that shipping container. But I hear that we regular humans have trouble with zero-g over long periods of time. I assume I’m subject to the inertial dampeners, or I simply wouldn’t survive high relativistic speeds at all anyway.”

Trilby nods. “The pod will leech from the inertial dampeners, but it’s weird because of how it attaches.” He points to some of the controls. “You’ll be able to tune it, however. If you just turn this dial, it will lower the effects slightly, allowing you to make the back of the pod down. Don’t be scared of it, you will not be able to turn your private dampeners so far down that you splatter against the wall. And this isn’t even the wall. Think of it as the floor. See? Here’s your bed.” He slides the bed lid away. Because of this little shuttle’s own inertial dampeners, it looks like the bed is up against the wall, but that will change once she’s attached and on the move. “You can still do exercise. Your suit has a number of programs built in, which you can peruse yourself. Just be sure to narrow the results to close-quarters, or it may try to get you to run away.”

Mandica nods repeatedly. She’s growing quite nervous. It was bad enough when he snuck her onto the space elevator, but now she will be completely alone. If this fragile thing pops off, and she manages to survive that, she won’t be able to get into the ship. She won’t be able to ask for help. Even in an emergency—even if she’s willing to get caught—the arkship may be fully automated, and help may be difficult. Some bots don’t respond to black swan events. They won’t know how to respond to her pleas. And she’s not going to ask this guy if there will be any intelligence present, because nothing should go wrong at all. She will be tucked away safely for two months, and be free of Core World rule forever. She doesn’t hate the establishment, but she wants to remove herself from it, and this is the only way. She can’t afford the energy credits for anything else.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Trilby says to her.

“Have you done this before?”

“Not this exact thing, but I’ve tested the barnacle pod. It will work, as long as you treat it right, and don’t push the wrong buttons.”

“No pressure,” she says.

He takes a chance and places a hand upon her shoulder. “You’ll do well.”

She doesn’t know him, but he’s been helping her, and risking a lot to do it, so she decides to go for it and give him a hug. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He looks over at his screen. “We’re comin’ up on it. Remember what I taught you, and for everything else, rely on your survival instincts. Digitized people don’t have those anymore, but yours will know what to do. Better put on your other two IMS layers, but first, fix your inner layer. You have it on backwards. The autozipper goes in back. Let me know when you’re ready. I have to seal the bulkhead before I open the airlock, but we’ll be able to talk on comms. I’ll stay with you until I get out of range myself, or the arkship launches, and you speed away in a flash.”

“All right.” She puts her suit all the way on, and tethers herself to the barnacle pod. He opens the airlock, and lets the pod drift out for a little bit before seizing it with his grabber claws. He maneuvers the barnacle in front of his shuttle as he makes his approach. She wants to close her eyes, but that would just be unsafe, so she watches. She looks around for any cameras, drones, or lurking spacewalkers. No one. No one will know she’s here. The claws push the pod forward, and automated systems automatically latch on. The vacuum seal engages until she’s fully secure. They spend the next few hours getting to know each other better before the arkship powers up and flies away.

Tangent Point: Death Spiral (Part III)

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Shasta is a very capable woman, but she is not a pilot, nor an engineer, nor a mechanic, nor anything else that they would need to get them out of this mess. She was able to fire the three torches because that much was obvious from the console. Since it had been almost a minute now, and no more kinetic drones had destroyed any part of the platform, or the propulsion attachment, they were guessing that her initial act had worked. But they were still in trouble, and something had to be done about it. They needed their pilot back at his workstation. But that seemed to be impossible. The platform was spinning like a carnival ride. Artificial gravity was down, and they were all pinned against the wall. No one was going anywhere. Shasta was barely holding onto the console, even if the pilot could somehow walk her through whatever procedure needed to be done.

Suddenly, however, they found themselves slowing down. They were still rotating, but their eyes were no longer bulging out of their heads, and what food remained in their stomachs wasn’t threatening to follow what had already come up. “Grab my ankle!” Shasta cried.

The pilot jumped over and took hold of her leg. He climbed her body until he could hold onto the console himself. “Someone is controlling this,” he announced, looking at the screen. “I can’t pinpoint where, but it’s not remote. They’re somewhere on this ship.”

“Get me AG!” Reed ordered.

“That’s my job,” his specialist insisted. Her official title was Transdimensional Regulator, and Reed did not understand what exactly her job entailed. He just needed her to make it work again. She was crouched on the wall, tapping on her tablet. “I’ve been trying to fix it this whole time. It’s giving me so much shit!” She growled as she continued to work on it. “I need more power. I need someone to reroute it from non-essential systems. I don’t care which, but the portals are closed. I need one burst to reopen them, and then they should draw normally.”

“Climate control,” Reed decided. “Reroute from climate control.”

“On it.” Shasta swung over to environmental control, and gave the Regulator what she needed.

“Ramping gravity to thirty seconds,” the Regulator informed them. “I would make an announcement if I were you.”

Reed placed his wrist in front of his lips. “This is Acting Captain Reed Ellis, calling all hands. We are restoring dimensional gravity. Relocate the floor, prepare for a sudden shift.”

“Sudden shift,” the Regulator mumbled. “There’ll be nothing sudden about it. I do my job.” She stood up on the wall, and deftly walked back down to the floor with perfect timing. Everyone else tumbled towards it with varying degrees of gracelessness.

Reed got back to his feet, performed the Picard maneuver, and cleared his throat. “Report!”

“We’re still spinning, sir,” his pilot answered, “but gradually regaining attitude control. Soon enough, we’ll still be plummeting to our deaths, but doing so straight as an arrow.”

“Arrows spin,” the Regulator argued.

Reed ignored her casual combativeness. She was one of the most important people on this platform. Of course, everyone had their own job to do, but transdimensional gravity was incredibly rare, and one could count on their fingers how many people were qualified to operate it safely and effectively. Again, he had no clue how it worked. Some unnamed singular genius invented it, and doled it out very selectively. At the end of the day, his Regulator could do or say whatever the hell she wanted, because everyone here was replaceable...except for her.

“Did you find out who fired the thrusters to control our spin?” Reed asked the pilot.

“Not who, but where. They’re in main engineering.”

“That should be impossible.” Reed pointed out. “I was told that it was not survivable.”

“It might be temporarily survivable,” the pilot reasoned, “and the person in there is about to die, or already has after fixing the issue.”

“Good point. Stay here, and get us the hell out of this gravity well. Fire all three operational thrusters if you have to. It doesn’t matter if we have our own gravity working.”

“It’s the elevator pod, sir,” the pilot reminded him. “They don’t have AG, so they’re in danger as long as they’re still out there.”

“Then reel them in!” Reed turned to face Shasta. “You’re with me.” He started walking away. “I also need one engineer.”

“Sir!” an eager young engineer said, literally jumping at the chance. He would learn these people’s names eventually.

They walked in silence for a moment before Reed was finally ready to ask, “how are you here?”

Shasta shrugged. “We’re immortals.”

“I didn’t ask how you were alive,” he snapped back.

“I had a back-up in a respawn sector. Not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal. I had to bring you into this. You didn’t have Tangent clearance. I’ve never actually been up here before, yet you’re telling me that you had time to construct a clone of yourself? You would have had to do it months ago at least.”

“I had this substrate made while you were in blackout hock.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. No one can clone or print a body that fast.”

“They can on Castlebourne,” she contended.

“Yeah, they use special technology that we don’t have. We got artificial gravity, they got rapid bioprinting.”

“We got both,” Shasta insisted. “You just need to know where to look.”

“How did you know where to look, but I don’t?”

“You were asleep,” Shasta tried to explain. “There were many last-minute details that you don’t know. We recruited others that you are not aware of. Someone from Castlebourne came here to help. We don’t know how they knew that we needed it, but we didn’t question it after they proved their worth. I watched a copy of her materialize in a pod in seconds. It was phenomenal. I’ve never seen anything like it. It does not look like what you’re used to.”

“However it looks, it would not have been a software issue, but a hardware issue,” Reed said. “You would have needed to get this mysterious savior on the Tangent to make the secret upgrades.”

“She said that she would take care of it, and she did,” Shasta replied. “We decided to trust her. I don’t know if she magically made her way onto a secure yet to be operational space elevator platform in record time, or if she already had someone on the inside, but it obviously worked.” She swept her hands down in front of her chest illustratively.

They were back at main engineering, so Reed couldn’t press the conversation, but he was determined to get more answers later. Random people didn’t just help like that, and they certainly didn’t show up unprompted. He pointed at the dented door. “I need you to tell me what’s happening in there without any of us going in there.”

The engineer’s fingers were dancing in the air before her. She was controlling an augmented reality interface that they could not see as it was being projected directly into her pupils. These weren’t too terribly common, probably because it was a little awkward, pressing buttons that you couldn’t feel. People tended to prefer the haptic feedback of more traditional form factors. “This way.” She walked off. They followed her around the corner, and around the next corner, to the opposite side of engineering. “This door is fine, but I don’t have authorization.”

“Are you sure it’s not gonna boil me alive?” Reed asked the engineer. He glanced over at Shasta for a second. “I don’t have a magical back-up body.”

“You would if I had had time to ask for your consent,” Shasta claimed.

“I’m sure,” the engineer said. “This door doesn’t lead all the way into engineering. It’s just a mechanical service terminal, but it’s undergoing unusual power spikes, so I would start there. I promise, it’s safe.”

Reed opened the door.

None other than their shuttle pilot, Trilby was on the other side. He was elbows deep into an access panel of some kind. Wires and power crystals were hanging out of other panels behind him. Trilby looked over at them. He quickly pushed his steampunk goggles to his forehead before going back to the wires.  “Cap’n. Nice to see you again.”

“What are you doing?” Reed questions.

“Fixing your ship,” Trilby answered.

“It looks like you’re taking it apart.”

“Oh, no sir. I couldn’t get into engineering, so I’m piloting ‘er manually.”

“Those are just the power relays,” his engineer said. “How the hell are you doing anything from here?”

“Power is everything,” Trilby said. “It’s all just ones and zeroes, on and off, stop and go. You can make a machine do anything if you pull the right connections in the right sequence.” He let go of the wires, pulled his arms out, and faced the three of them.

“That’s ridiculous,” the engineer retorted. “You would have to have an insane amount of intimate knowledge of this platform’s systems to exercise any semblance of control over it. Not to mention the fact that the fusion torches are an attachment, not tied directly into the infrastructure.”

“Is the platform still spinning?” Trilby posed.

“No,” the engineer admitted.

Trilby showed a cocksure smirk that was eerily serious. “You’re welcome.”

“You were supposed to leave,” Reed reminded him.

“I got held up,” Trilby replied.

“Good, I’m glad,” Reed said.

“No, I literally got held up at gunpoint,” Trilby clarified. “But then someone shot them, and I ran off. I’m not sure whose side they were on.”

“It’s all settled now,” Reed determined. “Please report to auxiliary engineering. I know you didn’t come here for this, but no one gets in and no one gets out. We won’t begin hostage negotiations until we’ve broken orbit, so you might as well keep yourself busy.”

“Aye, aye.” Trilby began to walk away, but stopped. “Hey, you know you have five hours to keep from crashing into the atmosphere, right?”

“Yes, we’re working on it,” Reed concurred. “Thanks for helping with that.”

“Sir, I think...” his engineer trailed off.

“You should go to aux engineering too,” Reed interrupted. “Keep and eye on him for me, but don’t get in his way. We may really need him.”

“Aye, sir.” The engineer left.

Reed turned back to Shasta. “I need to see this crazy advanced bioprinter.”

“I can take you to it,” Shasta promised, “but I warn you, it’s not going to make sense. It’s not just the same ol’ technology made faster. It’s entirely unrecognizable.”

“Stop teasing me, and let’s go.” Reed went down the hallway, figuring that he had a fifty-fifty chance of choosing the right direction.

“It’s this way,” Shasta countered.

“That’s all you had to say.” He spun around, and followed her down.

As they were walking, they listened to updates from engineering, the bridge, and other sectors. It wasn’t going to be easy, but they were making it work. They would get out of this mess and finally be on their way to the Proxima system. Everyone was doing a fine job, and the hostages weren’t giving them trouble after having reawoken from being stunned. The two of them ended up in the bowels of the platform; precisely where you would expect to find a secret respawn chamber. It was dark and damp, until it wasn’t. They entered a different section, and found it to be pristinely new, sleekly designed and sparkling.

Shasta stopped. “Okay. I warned you that it was different, but nothing can prepare you for actually seeing it with your own two eyes. Nonetheless, I assure you, it works. I woke up not an hour ago, and I’m fine.”

“Just open the door,” he urged.

She punched in the code. The door slid open.

Reed walked in first, slowly, and very confused. He was looking at something rather gross hanging from a pipe on the ceiling. It had come out of there apparently, and grown afterwards, and according to Shasta’s claims, it had done it impossibly fast. “What is that, a cocoon?”

“A chrysalis,” she corrected.

“It’s organic?”

“Yes.”

“That’s even more outrageous than I thought,” Reed began. “If anything, something like this should be slower.”

“The Castlebourner said the growth acceleration was a separate thing from the medium. It doesn’t have to be that fast. In fact, it usually isn’t. As a senior...rebel, I was granted the fastest development time, but not everyone has that luxury.” She jerked her head over to another empty chrysalis a few meters away. “I didn’t have time to learn who this was, but it was sealed up when I was here, so they must have eclosed since then.”

Reed stepped over to the second open chrysalis. He looked around it, and on the ceiling, but didn’t find any sort of interface, or anything that might point to who this would have been. “Wait. Are all of our people in the system?”

“Almost. Notable exceptions include you. Our mysterious benefactor said that she wouldn’t allow it since you couldn’t give your consent in person. A few others just straight up refused, since it freaked them out.”

“What about Vasily? Was he a holdout?”

“No,” she answered. “He was a junior rebel, so he qualified for fairly fast growth time; just not as fast as me. Why, did he die in the fight?”

“You could say that. Vasily, this is Ellis, report in,” he spoke into his comms. “Vasily, report in. Where are you?”

“Why do you look so nervous?”

“He murdered someone,” Reed explained. “A normal human.” He went back to his comms. “Vasily, report in right now!”

“Captain, sorry, I know you’re looking for Vasily, but we got a major problem on our hands,” Sartore, the elevator tech interjected. “The tethers have snapped. The pod is in a steeper decaying orbit. I hesitate to say, but...I think they were sabotaged.”

“Sabotaged by someone here, or in the pod?” Reed asked.

“Definitely here.”

“Security, get to the tether sector,” Reed ordered. “Search the entire complex. Shoot anyone who isn’t a part of our group.” He paused. “And if you find Vasily, bring him to me.”

“Sartore,” Shasta spoke in her own comms. “Can we get the pod back?”

“With a shuttle, sure,” Sartore replied. “But every second counts.”

“We’re very close to the shuttle bay,” Shasta told Reed.

“Let’s go!” He ran out of the room.

“Thanks, Sartore!” Shasta yelled into her comms as she was running out too. “Take stock of the tethering that we have left! We need to make sure we have enough to actually help on Doma!”

They raced down the corridors, and into the shuttlebay, but Vasily was one step ahead of them. He was standing at the top of the ramp of the shuttle, his gun up and ready to fire. Once they were close enough, he tensed his arms, and aimed at Reed’s head. “I know you’re not in our chrysalis system yet, Captain. If you die, you’ll end up off-world.”

“Are you so mad at me, Vasily, that you would ruin our chances to help the Domanians?” Reed asked him. “I didn’t tag you as that petty.”

“Well, I am. Have you ever been stabbed in the head before, sir? It’s not pleasant. It’s the worst way I’ve ever died.”

“You killed someone in cold blood,” Reed reminded him. “I would have shot you cleanly if I could have, but the gun wouldn’t let me, so I improvised.”

“You tried to banish me back to Bungula, where the authorities likely would have been waiting!” Vasily screamed.

“I’m sorry about that, but we need that shuttle to go retrieve those VIPs. The mission isn’t over yet. Let us finish it. Help us finish it.”

“Nah, I’m done with that. I knew you would come here, so I didn’t come alone.” Vasily slammed his palm against a button on the inside. The door to the cockpit slid open. Someone was in there, tapping on the console, likely running the pre-flight check. “How are we lookin’?” he called back.

“We’re just about ready to go.” The shuttle pilot turned around, which showed Reed and Shasta that he was not one of theirs, but a hostage. “I just need to run diagnostics on the hook that we’ll use to grab the pod. It’s never been deployed before.”

“Hook?” Vasily questioned. “We don’t need the hook. We’re just gonna crash into it. I have no interest in dropping the VIPs off on the planet. I just want to prevent him from using them as leverage.”

“Hey, that’s not what I signed up for,” the shuttle pilot argued. “I thought we were gonna save them. Some people on there aren’t even backed up.” He tried to continue arguing, but couldn’t finish.

Vasily quickly swung his arm around to shoot the shuttle pilot dead, which was just enough time for Reed to take out his own maser, and point it into the shuttle. Vasily smirked at it. “You can’t shoot me, remember?”

“But I can shoot the junction box, which will disable the shuttle, and if I aim it just right, it might even blow your body up.”

“You’re not that good ‘a shot,” Vasily contended.

“But I am.” Shasta lifted her weapon too. “Put your gun down, and step out of the shuttle, Vas. We need it.”

“You’re not getting it.” Vasily looked over his shoulder. “Shoot the box for all I care. I don’t need it to fly. This is just a bullet now. You’re the one who needs a fully functioning shuttle to retrieve it.”

They heard a gunshot. Vasily seemed to be hit in the chest. They all looked over to find Ajax behind them, walking up fast. He shot again, and again, and again, and again. Vasily’s whole body shook like a cliché as he stumbled backwards towards the cockpit. He fell to his back, and was struggling to breathe. “You should have gone for the junction box.” He reached his hand up and tapped on the console. The shuttle suddenly shot forward, through the plasma barrier, and headed straight for the floating elevator pod.

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Microstory 2376: Vacuus, October 14, 2179

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Dear Condor,

It’s nice to hear from you. I know that you weren’t writing that open letter directly to me, but it felt very personal, even though I’ve never experienced anything like what you did. I’ve heard more about you from Corinthia. I’ve known about your whole situation almost as long as she has. You and I have a lot in common. My grandfather was the Chief Helmsman of the ship that brought us to this planet, and before that, he was a space shuttle pilot, and before that, an airline pilot. I spent a lot of time on the bridge with him at the helm as we were on our way out here. He would tell me stories about all the places that he used to travel to back on Earth. I’m younger than you, so I have never set foot on your world before. I guess that’s what fascinates me so much, because I feel like I have all these somewhat similar personal experiences. I know that they’re not my own, though. I dunno, I suppose I just felt a connection with you that I’m probably making up in my own head. As for clothes, I do like them, but not necessarily any more than anyone else. I gravitated towards this job partially because there was an opening, and partially because I probably have even less of an interest in going outside than Corinthia does. I just want to stay in my little room where it’s safe. My work area doesn’t even have a window, because some of the rooms have to be on the interior sections, and they can’t all be lavatories and closets. My job is really not that hard. It may be more involved than your sister’s on a day-to-day basis, but there’s a whole lot less pressure. If I mess something up, I can usually fix it before anyone else sees it. The truth is that anyone could do this, because the fabricators do most of the work. I don’t even know how to sew by hand all that well. I did learn, but I don’t use those skills at work. I’m mostly there in a supervisory role. The machines aren’t hard to operate, but rather than training everyone who needs clothes, they only worry about making sure that I know them, and I make sure that nothing gets screwed up. It’s pretty low-key. I have some free time, which I typically spend making up new designs. I’m not exceptional at it, but there are no deadlines, so I eventually figure out what it needs to look like. Corinthia has actually tested out a lot of my own clothes for me. She says she likes them, but you never really know, right? She could just be being polite. I did design the outfit that I’m wearing in the attached photo, so you can tell me what you think. Be honest. Cori thinks there’s too much cleavage, but maybe you have a different opinion?

Hugs and kisses,

Velia

PS: I like your outfit too. It fits you well, though I would imagine just about anything does with a body like that. Trust me, I'm a professional.

Microstory 2343: Earth, March 25, 2179

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Dear Corinthia,

It’s funny that you bring up transportation between safe zones, because that’s what we used to do before we came to this floating dome for permanent residency. For security reasons, pilots really preferred not to leave their secure cockpits, so they would hire other people to actually leave the aircraft, and help travelers load and unload. That’s what my dad would do for work, but it was more than that. I don’t remember how he got into it, because I was doing something on my own at the time, but I ended up working on the transport crafts too. I was a sort of flight attendant, but more for safety, and less for customer service. These people were fleeing very dangerous situations, so they didn’t need to be coddled and doted on, they just needed to know how to use their seatbelts, and where the emergency hazmat suits were. Anyway, for dad, it wasn’t as easy as climbing down the steps, and ushering people inside. We primarily dealt with families, the individual members of which often disagreed about leaving their homes, or where they should go. You have to remember, these were the early days of the poisoning of the atmosphere. It didn’t just all happen at once. A lot of safe zones were still open areas, rather than airtight domes. And a lot of the not-so-safe zones were still technically habitable, leading many to believe that the air would one day be cleaned up. They were wrong, but not crazy for holding out hope. No one knew how bad things would get. Few could have known. The ones that did were either very intelligent and observant, but few and far between, or responsible for destroying the environment themselves, and deliberately withholding pertinent information. Either way, the general population wasn’t hearing it. The bulk of dad’s job was convincing people that where they were living was no longer healthy enough for them, and they had to move somewhere else. The answer to where kept changing, and the number and size of the safezones kept shrinking, but we kept working. Because of his naturally diplomatic personality, and because he continued to develop his skills in this area, he was ultimately selected for the position he has now in this dome. It was still a very nascent development back then, having only recently achieved its vacuum seal, and they were in need of population growth. By then, transportation was big business. It had become easier to persuade people to move, so the qualifications for the job were now less rigorous. So others could do it who couldn’t before, and there were so many more aircraft that could be used for this. In the past, jets just had doors that led right to the fuselage. Now we need both an airlock, and a decontamination chamber. Older craft were retrofitted with these additions, but newer ones have been designed with these necessities. I’m getting a little off-topic, but yes, transportation is no joke. And to answer your question, I can indeed see the coast of Australia from our cabin, but only from my dad’s room. Mine’s on the other side. Now, if we were traveling clockwise...

Also in a vacuum,

Condor

Microstory 2189: Not There by Choice

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We’re moving along with this process. Interviews, interviews, and more interviews. It’s not showing any signs of slowing down, but it will have to stop soon, and will do so rather abruptly. At some point, we’re going to have to make some hard decisions, and unfortunately that means a lot of great people won’t get the chance to be part of this pilot program. We can’t hire them all, it wouldn’t be practical, and that’s true of any organization. But here’s the good news: it is a pilot program, and if it goes well, you may be able to do something similar on a different team somewhere else. The analytics team in my company has looked into this for us, and have estimated that this program need only last for eight months before they would have enough data to reach some real conclusions about its efficacy. All eyes are on us right now to see if we succeed, but there are rumors of others who are considering building their own programs before our data comes in. We’re not sure if that’s the right thing to do, but we can’t stop them, and it may not be right to want to if we could. I think it’s fine to try to take your own shot, as long as you don’t spend too many resources on it, and come at it from a place of trying to make things better. Now, what do I mean by better? Well, here’s what it’s not. We’re not here to save the taxpayers money. That will hopefully be a consequence of our changes to jail and prison population procedures, but it’s not what we’re going for. We could accomplish that in any number of easier ways, by only feeding them slop, or doubling up on cell assignments, or not letting them have any yard time. You don’t need to pay many guards if you don’t allow your inmates to leave their cells, do you? Obviously, that would be inhumane, and I hope that no one else is suggesting it.

Our goal is to improve people’s lives, reduce recidivism, and create a healthier and more productive community overall. I hope that anyone who gets their ideas from us only accepts the good ideas, and rejects the ultimate failures. We’re going to be going through growing pains. At some point, our plans, theories, and models are going to become meaningless if we don’t actually institute the policy changes. It may not turn out well, and as difficult as it is for me to admit that, it would be unethical for me to imply that I know exactly what I’m doing. The entire point in hiring these experts for a team that has never existed before is to try something new, and by its very nature, we don’t know what’s going to happen. So I hope that other programs take that into account. Sorry to get all preachy, and maybe sound a little angry. I just want to make it clear that we’ve only just begun here. It’s going to take some time. The judicial system in this country isn’t going to change overnight, and nothing we do here is going to give definitive answers for how to handle our nation’s incarcerated with no exceptions. What we would like to do is group guests in our facilities according to predictive modeling of sustainable harmony, nonviolence, and social progress. But the fact of the matter is that everyone there will have been tried and convicted of a crime. Guilty or innocent, they’re not there by choice, so none of them is going to be happy-go lucky, and excited to be locked up for the next X amount of time, or intermittently, as it were. We’ll try to make it as safe and productive as possible, but there’s only so much we can do. It’s not magic, so don’t expect to bring the crime rate down to zero, or anything. Okay, that was a bit depressing. Hopefully tomorrow’s post will be more optimistic, or a little easier to swallow.

Fluence: Anchor (Part V)

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Briar was a normal biological human, Goswin was a transhuman with biological upgrades, Weaver was technologically enhanced, and Eight Point Seven was mostly inorganic. Despite the range of substrate properties, they all slept in one way or another. Even Eight Point Seven needed to periodically take time to reorganize her data drives, perform diagnostics, self-repair, and give her microfusion reactor some time to power cycle, and purge waste byproducts. For the longest time, researchers believed that giving inorganic intelligences the ability to dream was nothing more than, well...a dream. They figured that they would have to directly program scenarios for them to merely simulate the experience. As it turned out, once technology advanced sufficiently, this was not necessary. Androids will do it themselves during these periods of low-power memory consolidation. Random neural firings will generate aberrant thoughts akin to the way that  humans dreamt. One of the greatest challenges of 21st century AI research was figuring out how to teach such intelligences to wake up from these dreams, and leave those thoughts behind, so that they didn’t negatively impact their normal operational requirements. Occasionally, this subroutine will fail to trigger, just like it can in humans, who sometimes wake up angry with someone for things that never happened in the real world. Early models sometimes became unexpectedly violent due to these errors.

The first night that they spent in Briar’s old camp on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida just so happened to be when Eight Point Seven needed to go into sleep mode for about an hour. She tried to hold off on it, so she could keep watch over the others, but she was not yet used to this new substrate. She didn’t even take this form on purpose. Her consciousness somehow uploaded itself to it at some point before their first jump. They had been so busy with all this stuff that she hadn’t taken the time to really investigate. That was probably why she had to do this now, because her mind was in conflict with her body. They were unfamiliar with each other. That night, she dreamt of her home. She was first created on a planet called Bungula, which orbited Rigil Kentaurus. Theirs was an ever-changing society, always run by an artificial intelligence, which frequently purged its own memory to be made anew. Her name was Eight Point Seven because she was the 78th incarnation of this entity.

Something went wrong with Eight Point Seven’s programming. She decided that she wanted to live, and not make way for the next version. The Bungulans eventually accepted her decision, and let her keep administering them accordingly. She grew tired of this, however, and ultimately chose to leave with Leona Matic. They eventually made their way to Bida together, and then separated to different ships. She had always wondered what became of Bungula, though. They had to have some form of government without her. Was it a human this time, or did they recreate the old program, and finally get their Eight Point Eight? Perhaps they skipped all the intervening versions, and just went straight to Eleven Point Nine.

All four of them woke up with a start. They were no longer in the jungle of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, but under a geodesic dome on the very end of a lava tube. They could see the stars above them, shining through the triangles of polycarbonate. The air wasn’t stale, but it wasn’t windy anymore. The whole world felt still, whichever world this was. Eight Point Seven Stood up from her cross-legged position. “This is my homeworld,” she determined. “This is Bungula.”

“Why are we here?” Goswin asked. “Who brought us this time?”

“We all did,” Weaver stated. “Remember? We don’t go anywhere unless we go together. There has to he some kind of consensus”

“No, it was me,” Eight Point Seven argued. “This is what I was dreaming about.”

“You can dream?” Briar questioned.

Of course they could dream. Goswin ignored the question. “Maybe we’re not entirely right about how this works. Maybe one of us sometimes pilots the whole crew. Someone’s...psychic power is just a little bit stronger. I wasn’t dreaming of going anywhere in particular. If your thoughts were more specific, they may have overwhelmed the three of us.”

“I was dreaming of seeing Leona again,” Briar explained.

“She’s here,” came an unfamiliar voice. They turned to find an unassuming man standing outside of their circle. “But you cannot see her. Hi. I’m Lieutenant Administrator Eleven Point Eight. I am...moderately aware of this time travel stuff, but I’m not well-versed, and I would not like to be. The current Administrator is very busy with her new plans for this world, and she does not have time to deal with whatever this paradox-waiting-to-happen is. Please leave however you came.”

“Forgive us,” Goswin said. “What is the date?”

“October 19, 2226.”

“This is the day I left,” Eight Point Seven noted.

“Yes,” Lieutenant Eleven Point Eight concurred. “You’re about to launch, and I’ve been asked to retrieve Madams Prieto and Prieto so that my superior may speak with them. As I asked, please leave.”

“Hold on,” Eight Point Seven stopped him. “The past version of me has not yet left, but there is already a new admin?”

“Of course,” Eleven Point Seven confirmed. “You thought there would be a gap?”

“Have we met? It and I, have we met?” Eight Point Seven questioned.

“Yes, you met. I was there during the handover ceremony.”

Eight Point Seven’s eyes widened. “That didn’t happen in my timeline. I never met my replacement. There was a gap, because it’s fine. The colonists mostly govern themselves.”

“Things have changed beyond Bida,” Weaver acknowledged. “We changed them.”

“Why should they?” Eight Point Seven questioned her. “This is before I showed up on Bida. I had never heard of Briar or Irene yet.”

Weaver shrugged. “Harrison was in the twelfth century, in England. That was the point of divergence. Nothing we know of history since then can be trusted.”

“Could you please get on with it?” Eleven Point Eight urged. “I have to go, and so do you.”

Eight Point Seven shook her head. “We can’t stay in the past. I know you wanted to keep studying that tree, but it’s too dangerous. We don’t know anything about what the universe looks like post 2400. That’s the only safe point in time for us. We have to stop risking these paradoxes, like he said.”

“She’s right,” Goswin agreed. “Let the past stay in the past.”

Weaver nodded. “Okay.”

They all turned to Briar, even Lt. Admin Eleven Point Eight. He was taken a little aback. “What, you think I would sabotage this? It’s fine, it’s fine. Let’s just go.” He sighed, frustrated at still not being trusted. “I said, let’s go!”

They blinked, and the scene changed. They were back in the ship bay in the asteroid near the planet of Po. “Hmm, that worked,” Briar mused.

“Yes, so it would seem. Or maybe not. “We’re still in the past, just not too terribly much this time.” Goswin nodded over to the clear end of the bay where he could see himself.

The other Goswin was holding a tablet and staring at them while staying in the discussion that he was having with the man next to him. He pointed towards the door, like he was respectfully instructing the other guy to leave.

“Though, I don’t remember this,” the present-day Goswin noted. “I don’t recognize that man at all.

Once the local was gone, Alt!Goswin made his way to the group. “Report.”

“Uhhh...report,” Goswin said back.

Alt!Goswin kept his eyes on his other self, but lowered his chin in distrust, and repeated, “report.”

“Report.”

“Report.”

“Report!”

“Report!”

“REPORT!”

“REPORT!”

“Enough!” Weaver stepped in. “This is never gonna end. Goswin that we don’t know, how long have you been here?”

“A few months,” Alt!Goswin replied.

Weaver looked over to her Goswin. “We’re not in the past. We’re in a new timeline. The changes we made, this is a natural byproduct of that.”

Just then, another version of Weaver appeared behind them. “That’s not exactly what’s happening. Tell me, were you on the X González, or the Emma González?”

“The X, of course,” the first Weaver replied. “That’s their chosen name.”

“Yes, but sometimes the ship is named after their original name,” Alt!Weaver clarified.

“Sometimes?” Weaver echoed. “How many timelines are there?”

“All of them,” Alt!Weaver said cryptically.

“What the hell does that mean? What was the point of divergence?”

“It’s not like that,” Alt!Weaver answered, still not clarifying anything. “There was a moment of split, but it wasn’t linear. Perhaps you remember seeing a whole bunch of other yous on the González?”

Yeah, that happened. They saw a few alternates on the bridge, but they assumed that that was just some temporal glitch, since they quickly disappeared. They didn’t think that those other selves still existed somewhere. How many splits were created that they didn’t witness? “Yeah, were you one of the alts we saw on the bridge?”

“No, I was in the engine room at the time,” Alt!Weaver began, “but not all of us were. Not all of us were even on the ship at all. Like I said, it wasn’t linear. We’ve been replicated all over the timeline, and rescattered all over elsewhere on the timeline, and in every parallel reality. Furthermore, we can move ourselves along the timeline, and across realities, at will. This star system here is a sort of an anchor point. We’ve all been showing up here for months, and recording each other, adding to the data pile. It’s difficult, though. I don’t always know if the versions of my friends that I’ve been with are still the ones that I’m with now. We may be shifting between groups, and not even realizing it.”

“That’s why I have a body,” Eight Point Seven realized. “It’s not my body. I was uploaded directly to the ship, but I stole this from someone else. What happened to her, the victim?”

“Mapping our alternates is even more difficult than mapping the timeline itself,” Alt!Weaver explained. “I don’t know how to differentiate anyone. A lot of people think that time is a river, and that’s only a metaphor that they recognize because it’s not analogous to time...but to consciousness. Your mind is fluent, and you are not the same person that you were a split second ago. Shifting to your alternates could be happening literally as we speak, and we wouldn’t be able to detect it. In this region of space, spacetime breaks down. Everything converges here. Everything diverges here.”

“Did we cause that, or did it cause us?” Goswin asked her.

Alt!Weaver smiled. “Yes. And no. There is no cause. There is no effect. It’s just bleh.” She pantomimed vomiting. “It’s everything,” she added, mouth still agape, and hands still cupping the bowl of the imaginary toilet.”

“Everything, everywhere, all at once?” Alt!Goswin offered.

“Pretty much,” Alt!Weaver replied.

“There is a magnolia on Bida,” Weaver said to her alternate. “I believe that it can reconverge us. We just have to figure out how to control it.”

Alt!Weaver nodded. “The Blending Tree. Yeah, it’s possible, but we would have to get everyone there at the same point in time; to the everything bagel,” she said as she was gesturing to Alt!Goswin to reinforce his reference. “As I was saying, I don’t know how many of us there are, or where they are, or what they’ve changed in the timeline. Some of us keep displacing other people, and that’s a whole other box of problems,” she added under her breath.

“Oh, haha,” Goswin laughed awkwardly. “What a bunch of bozos.”

Two different versions of Eight Point Seven showed up, one of which had a deep scar running across her cheek. The first Eight Point Seven stepped closer and regarded her, tilting her head to the side as if she had a lizard brain nestled inside of her dominant neural net. After taking a look at the scarless Eight Point Seven, who was indistinguishable from herself, she reached up to her own face, and dragged her fingernail across her forehead. Blood leaked out, and dripped down. She then stepped back to where she was, not bothering to clean it up.

The Eight Point Seven with the other scar nodded. “Your new designation is Eight Point Seven Point Six.”

“Dude,” Briar said, aghast.

Eight Point Seven tilted her head back to where it belonged. “It didn’t hurt,” she said, a little like Cameron from The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

The other scarred Eight Point Seven addressed the whole group. “It’s beginning.” She sounded even more like Cameron, so robotic.

“What’s beginning?” Goswin asked.

“The Reconvergence,” the other, other Eight Point Seven answered.

“Of us?” Goswin pressed. “We were just talking about the magnolia tree.”

“It has nothing to do with us, I don’t think. The destruction of four realities, and the creation of a new universe, is happening today. The war begins tomorrow.”

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Microstory 2040: Wisconsin

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My fathers’ bad luck continued as they were trying to fly from Alaska to New Jersey. They were supposed to make a stop in Chicago, which is where my papa used to live, but that’s not what happened. On their way on the first plane, another passenger got really drunk, and started misbehaving. He was causing problems for everyone, and being really rude, so the pilot had no choice but to land the plane at a different airport to let him off. They even had to have the police waiting for him there. The closest one was this little airport called Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport. It wasn’t really built for planes like that, so it took them a long time to get through all the stuff with the police, and start trying to fly again. By the time they were ready, they couldn’t leave anyway, because of a snowstorm that had formed over Canada. If that guy had just not gotten drunk, they would have arrived in New Jersey on time. Honestly, it’s kind of scary for me to think about, though. They had to spend one night in Wisconsin until the storm passed, and then they were able to fly again. By the time they made it to New Jersey, though, the child they were going to adopt had already gone to another family. They were too late. They would have to wait a few months longer. They had to wait for me. I, for one, am glad that they did.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 5, 2399

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Their new rocket pilot, Hemi has been trying to get as far away from Earth as possible, but they can’t seem to get far enough. Leona keeps resurfacing in Mateo’s brain, but then disappears again within minutes. He’s glad to know that she’s still there and alive, but he can’t hold onto her consciousness. She can’t say much while she’s active, but she’s been able to deduce that the Omega Gyroscope’s range is growing. It’s not doing so spontaneously, though. The math doesn’t work out. Based on how long Alyssa has been the Gyroscope’s new little keeper, it should have spread far beyond the current orbit by now if it had been moving outwards at the same pace that it is exhibiting now. Her conclusion is that it moves as the ship moves into higher orbits. Or rather, it’s Mateo. As he moves outwards himself, the bubble expands to compensate. He will never get far enough away from Earth to escape it; not permanently, anyway.

“Stop!” Leona orders upon her next return. “Don’t go into a higher orbit!”

“We’ve already stopped,” Mateo informs her. He’s speaking out loud for the both of us. He drops his sunglasses down every time that she’s in the driver’s seat.

Leona breathes a sigh of relief. “Oh, good. We can’t let this thing get out any farther. People could die.”

“We need you,” Mateo isn’t arguing that it’s not risky to keep going, but they have to go at least a little higher, or they may never get Leona back. He understands that other people’s lives are at stake here, but it’s worth it. He thinks so anyway.

“I’m sorry, it’s just not going to happen. I’m about to lose you, but I wanted to tell you one last time...were I you.”

“Were I you,” Mateo echoes. “Hello? Hello?” He closes his eyes in sadness. She’s already gone. That wasn’t much time. It was the shortest moment yet.

“Forgive my ignorance,” Hemi pries, “but what is the danger in continuing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to get you to do it. I think I just don’t have all the facts.”

“The...superpower blocker—I guess I’ll call it—is reacting to me. It doesn’t matter how far out we go, it will always catch up. Now, I may be able to teleport away from it, and give myself more time, but then what am I gonna do? Besides, that could place us too close to our friends, who are already out here.” This hypothetical bubble will eventually reach the AOC, which could have terrible consequences. Marie is Angela's duplicate, and she may pop out of existence, for all they know. If they’re the cause, they have to minimize the damage as much as possible. “We can’t let that happen.”

“Maybe if we go back towards Earth, the bubble will shrink?” Heath suggests, not sure if it makes him sound like a total idiot, or not.

“It’s not entirely implausible,” Mateo replies, channeling Leona’s spirit without actually being able to communicate with her at the moment. “I suppose I could imagine that the Gyroscope wants to conserve energy, and really only wants to focus on where there are people to control.”

“Hmm,” Tarboda utters.

“What?” Mateo asks.

“No, nothing. It’s not a solution. I just thought of something. Go on.”

“You can teleport yourself?” Hemi asks. “Like all on your own?”

“Yes, as long as I’m not in this stupid bubble,” Mateo replies.

Hemi starts thinking about it. “How much can you take with you? Can you do it with a vacuum suit? Can you take a whole ship?”

“Definitely not the whole rocket. Yeah, I could take a suit, but I couldn’t take both me, and Leona’s suit, and the equipment I’ll need to transfer her mind out of me.”

“What about a tent? It’s thin and light.”

“Do you have a tent, because yeah, one of the first things we learned when we became time travelers is that tents will jump with us.”

“Of course I do.” He reaches under the command console, and pulls out a large pack. He tears something off the back of it. “This will protect you in the vacuum. Normally, you wouldn’t have long to open it up, and get in, then inject yourself with medicine before your eyes pop out, but we can set it up in here, right?”

“Yeah. That will fit me and my wife’s new body?” Mateo asks.

“Sure will. Not too much else, but absolutely,” Hemi replies.

It was an overstatement to say that they were going to set it up. He just releases the tent. It opens on its own, and seals itself up. They reopen it, and place what they needed inside, including Alyssa’s vacant body, the Insulator of Life, and the Livewire. Mateo doesn’t really know how to operate these things, but none of this works unless Leona is awake anyway.

Against Leona’s orders, Hemi navigates the rocket into a higher orbit. As soon as Mateo senses that his temporal abilities and bioenhancements have returned, he tells him to stop. Despite Leona’s protests, Mateo teleports himself as far as he can without risking getting too close to the location of the AOC, the distance of which he only has a rough idea of.

“What are you doing?” Leona questions.

“I’m trying to save your life,” Mateo replies as he’s getting the Insulator and Livewire ready, though he doesn’t think they have any use for the former in this situation. “Now, you can either make this work while we still have time, or we can argue about it, and waste this opportunity.”

Leona growls. “Let me drive.”

“Are you gonna get into Alyssa’s body?”

“Yes, now let me drive.”

“Okay.” Mateo relinquishes control of his body.

Leona places one end of the Livewire in Alyssa’s hand, and takes hold of the other. She reaches over to the portable power source, and prepares to plug it in. “It might try to take hold of you. Don’t let it. Fight it, Mateo. Only my consciousness is meant to transmit down the wire. Fight it.”

“Okay.”

She plugs it in.

She was right. He can feel electricity surge through his body, and also somehow his mind, like he’s also imagining it at the same time. To combat the pull, he decides to imagine himself holding onto the railing of a balcony, desperately trying not to fall into the void below.

Leona appears next to him, also holding onto the railing. She’s not putting as much effort into it, though. “See you on the other side.” She lets go, and falls. It works.

They float there in the middle of interlunar space for a bit until Hemi comes by to pick them up. Before they enter the rocket, they leave a little present outside.