Microstory 2529: Settlement Specialist

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I was one of the first people to work at the Foundation, I’m proud to say. I’m the one who came up with my own job title. They wanted to call it a Cashier, because that’s the best they could come up with, but it’s not really accurate. No one is paying up little enough money to warrant dealing with cash, and we absolutely can’t payout in cash either, even at the smallest figures. We will agree to write you a check if you really think you can handle it, but we don’t even like that. I’m not saying that scammers and muggers hang around our hotel, waiting to steal people’s money because they know that’s what we do here, but it’s not like it’s a secret, so it’s entirely plausible. We really prefer direct deposit, but we understand that not everyone is banked. This is why we’ve partnered with WinterTree Bank to offer clients prepaid debit cards for their financial needs. They’re useless without the PIN, and can be reloaded at the ATM should they like to deposit any other cash they do receive, or a paycheck. While the Financial Evaluators determine how much a patient owes or receives, and the Accounts keep track of our finances overall, I’m responsible for making sure that money goes in, or comes out, accordingly. Once Landis finishes his healing, they come to me, or one of my teammates. We verify their ID, we confirm with them and their Guide that they did indeed receive a breath treatment, and we explain to them what the computer says about their situation. People who are making a pay-up know roughly how much money it’s going to be, but the people receiving payouts are not provided with this information ahead of time. They are quite often rather surprised. Sometimes it’s good news, and sometimes not, though, because some were hoping for a little bit of money, when it turns out they don’t qualify for either. They don’t have to pay, but they’re not getting any money either. You need to have thick skin working this job, and you need to know how to handle stress. It can be quite the roller coaster. It’s usually rewarding. For people receiving money from us, it’s almost always so much more than they dreamed of getting. But it can be hard when they’ve heard rumors of how much some people are getting, and their case doesn’t match up with their hopes. It’s a little like gig jobs, where the company will advertise that you can make up to a thousand dollars in one day, when really, that’s something that happened to one driver once, who happened to keep being at the right place at the right time, and it still didn’t give him health insurance. Even so, for the most part, the patients are grateful, even the ones who pay-up, because they’ve just been healed, and that puts most people in a good mood. This job is worth the uncertainty.

Microstory 2521: Queuer

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Guides and Queuers are two sides of the same coin. My co-workers are there to answer questions because they are a lot more knowledgeable about how all of this works. My primary responsibility is to literally keep the line moving. We maintain constant contact with each other, and coordinate to make sure the process is physically smooth while patients transition from one place to another. To do this job, you need to have great spatial reasoning, and the ability to count a group of people extremely quickly. Has a job interviewer ever asked you that before? Did you ever study that in school? It’s not as easy as it sounds. Counting heads is just something you have to practice, but it’s vital to our job of making sure everyone is in the right place at the right time. We simultaneously don’t want too many people, or too few. It wastes everybody’s time, including both patients and staff. Landis can only heal one person at a time, so it’s up to the rest of us to make sure each next person is ready to go once he’s done with the last one. It’s stressful and chaotic, but I find it quite invigorating. The line never ends until the end of the day, but man, once we get there, it’s so satisfying. You don’t even know. One by one, the last of the patients step through that door, and you feel like you’ve completed a puzzle. And this happens every single day. Well, I mean, I don’t always have the post-lunch shift, so I don’t always see the end, but then I saw the beginning, and either way, it’s rewarding to keep people moving through that queue. Since you have to be good at counting people, and at recognizing them—so you don’t start giving people the same instructions they already heard, or asking them duplicate questions—you really see the progress you’re making. One after another; Bob, then Sue, then Sally, then Manuel. They walk up, go in, and disappear, never to be seen again. If you notice the same person too many times, you’re probably not coordinating them correctly. If you don’t ever notice the same person more than once, you’re probably not fit for the job. It’s all about balance. That’s what I tell people. I’m a balance worker. Moving lines, adjusting stanchions, filling waiting rooms as soon as they’re emptied of the group before. It’s a delicate dance that would probably make for a good show if you could see it from a God’s eye view. And I get to be one of the choreographers.

Microstory 2519: Greeter

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People hear my job title, and think that all I do is smile and wave at the patients as they come in. Whoa-ho-ho, that ain’t it. You come to me, you give me your name and ID, and I check you in. I make sure that you’ve come within your appointment window, and aren’t trying to jump the line, or that you’re late. I then send you to a waiting room based on availability. Once one room gets full, I’ll move onto the next one. So don’t go thinking that there’s anything connecting you with the other patients in your room. People have come back out and complained, because they get to talking with one another, and decide that some patients are less needy than others. That’s not what’s happening here. You’re grouped based on time, as was the appointment window in the first place. We encourage you to make friends while you’re waiting, and bond over your shared experience, but don’t imagine that the group you end up with says anything about what we think of you. I don’t know why I have to say all this, but I do. I would certainly never call mine the hardest job at the Foundation, but it’s not as easy as people think, so I always want to clarify that a nice smile is not all you need to do it. You will get belligerent people here, who feel entitled to certain accommodations, and as the first person they encounter, you will receive a lot of that hostility. It doesn’t happen every time. Ninety-nine out of a hundred patients are perfectly lovely. But it does happen sometimes, and it makes it hard to maintain that smile. I do it, because it’s important, and that’s what’s expected out of me. It’s not terribly complicated, so there’s really nothing more to say about it, but we’re always looking for new greeters, because we do have a shockingly high turnover rate compared to other departments. So if you think you can handle the stress, please apply. People think that operations are winding down because the panacea is close, but that is not what I’m hearing. The Foundation may never close. There may be a persistent market for direct healings, and obviously, it’s not up to me. It’s a decent job with great pay, and it’s really nice to just live right upstairs, so don’t let the news discourage you. Even if it doesn’t last forever, it covers any gap you might otherwise have in your résumé, and the Foundation shutting down is definitely a better reason for it to end. Most of the time, I bet your job ended because you were let go, right? That doesn’t really happen here, so just something to think about.

Microstory 2518: Daily Coordinator

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I am in charge of patient experience. The Appointment Coordinator is technically my superior, but she doesn’t have time to manage our department’s staff, so that falls to me. While the automated system is great for setting up appointment windows, what it can’t do is make sure that people actually show up for their appointment, or more importantly, don’t show up outside of their window. When your application is approved, you’re assigned a two-hour window on a particular day. If you can’t make it, you need to pull your application, and try again. It may sound like it helps us for people to show less urgency, but it overcomplicates the process. Just come when it’s your time. If you fail to show up, your name will be flagged, and your reapplication will be a lot more complicated. Don’t. Be. Late. That’s why we have the campground, and why nearby landowners literally built new hotels to help mitigate visitorship. I have to keep track of 2,000 people every day. The greeters will check you in, and tell you where to go, which sometimes means going right back out that door if you come before your window. I have it all set up real nice. Part of the first floor is dedicated to waiting rooms, where you wait with your group of 40 to 45 other people. Yeah, that’s right, we know how to break it down. Forty-five people per room with a total of eight rooms equals a maximum of 360 people in each two-hour window. While you’re sitting there, we may call you up individually to confirm some information, such as your financial situation. We got to keep things moving, so when your room is called, you’ll all proceed to the auditorium, where you’ll watch the orientation video. Don’t ask the host any questions. That’s what my guides and queuers are for. When the video is over, depending on the timeline, you’ll either go back to your waiting room, or go ahead and get in line. People have asked why the line is so long, and why they can’t just wait in the rooms. Well, it’s because Landis averages three patients per minute, but that doesn’t mean we record exactly three every time. Some people have mobility issues, and we experience other delays. If there’s a problem with your candidate profile, you may be bumped down to another group. That all takes time, and we don’t want to waste any of it. We don’t want Landis to be sitting there with no one to heal for an extended period of time. It’s gonna be hard, waiting through all of this, but it is absolutely worth it, because when you’re done, you’ll probably feel better than you ever have in your whole life. If everything goes smoothly, we might get the full 2,160 patients, but we usually don’t, and for that, we apologize. You will not miss out on your healing, though, so don’t fret. Any remainders at the end of the day will end up in Group One for the next day, and we might ask you to come in earlier than normal operating hours to make up for it. I know, I sound really blunt, and maybe a little aggressive, but this job is not easy, and if I take the time to be too polite and nice, we get behind schedule, and I can’t allow that.

Extremus: Year 109

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It’s the Halfway Celebration Extravaganza! Today is July 17, 2378. It’s been exactly 108 years since the TGS Extremus left port in the Gatewood Collective. Since then, while traveling at reframe speeds, they have covered 76,367 light years. Due to their unscheduled detour into the void, they’re not quite that far away from their starting point, but it doesn’t matter. They’re still well on their way to their new home. There is currently no one left on this ship who was alive when it launched, and no one here will likely still be around when it lands, but this day isn’t about the departers, or the arrivers, it’s about the middlers. This day is about everyone here right now. It’s a grand accomplishment, and they should all be proud of themselves. It hasn’t been easy. Politics, external threats, cabin fever. Time travel, spies, betrayals. Uncertainty, purposelessness, loss, and love. They’ve been through a lot, but they pushed through it, and this hunk of metal is still hurling through space. Not once have they stopped. Not once have they tried to turn around. They’re flying farther and further than ever, into the unknown. And everything they just did, they have to do one more time. Say it louder.

Tinaya lands on the bed. She’s still conscious, but her eyes are closed, and she’s not feeling well. She lies there for a moment, focusing on her breathing. “Thistle, how did I get here?”

“You were about to collapse to the floor,” Thistle replies. “I spirited you away before you could break a hip.”

“Did anyone see?” she asks.

“No. They didn’t even see you disappear. Perfect timing.”

“No need to boast about it.”

“I meant you. You passed out right when no one was looking. Of course, they would have realized it if you had hit the floor, so I suppose my timing was pretty spectacular too, thanks for noticing.”

“Well, thank you. I think I’m fine to go back.” She stands and tries to activate her teleporter, but it doesn’t work. “Thistle.”

“You’re grounded, missy. You’re lucky I didn’t take you right to the infirmary.”

While all the corrupted medical personnel who were a part of the forced pregnancy scandal have long been replaced, Tinaya has become gun-shy to visit the infirmary. She knows that she’s gonna need it. She’s an old woman. But not tonight. Any night but tonight. “I have to get back to the party. They’re expecting me.”

“I’ve taken care of that.”

“How?”

“I’ve written an algorithm, which projects a hologram of you at strategic locations for strategic people at strategic times. Everyone who sees you will think you’re busy talking to someone else.”

“That sounds like a recipe for disaster. What happens when someone tries to walk up and interrupt us, or pat me on my back?”

“Impossible,” he claims. “You’re not a single hologram that everyone looking in the right direction can see. Each person who sees it sees it separately, as an image that is projected directly onto their eyeballs. I control when they see it, and how far away they are when they do, as well as how your avatar moves.”

Tinaya is vexed. She’s never heard of that before. It’s not some futuristic thing that she can’t comprehend, but she just hasn’t heard of it. “What?”

“Individualized holograms.”

“Who would install such a thing, and why? It seems like the only use for it would be to deceive people, like you’re doing right now.”

“It has other use cases. You can receive personalized alerts, and sensitive information. It can help you train to perform maintenance, or other tasks, without interfering with other people seeing their own AR.”

“Well, why have I never seen anything like that before? Or have I, and I didn’t know it.”

“You people really took to your watches and armbands, the protocols were just never implemented. The tech is there, though. Every hologram you see is coming from those projectors, but widened for general viewing.”

She lies back down on the bed. “Okay.” She doesn’t know how she feels about this. She was really tired before she collapsed. It’s not like it was a sudden fainting with no warning. It’s getting harder to keep up with everyone these days. Even Lataran is too active for her sometimes, but Tinaya has been hiding the struggle. “What about sound?”

“They can’t hear you in the crowd anyway, but the projectors include photoacoustic emitters too, if they’re ever needed.”

“How come you never show up as a hologram?”

“I do. Some people ask for it. They ask me to look like some contrived image of myself, or a cat, or even themselves. You’ve simply never requested it.”

Tinaya sits up quickly. “Wait. Silveon and Arqut.”

“I used those photoacoustic emitters I was just talking about, and informed them of the situation. They’re sticking around to make sure the holos are working, and then I believe they’ll slip out to check on you. I might make holos of them as well.”

“I’ve decided that this was helpful, Thistle, but I would really like you not to do this often. I say it like that, because I don’t want to make a blanket statement that you shouldn’t do it ever, but it should only be for extreme circumstances. I can’t divulge my health problems until I know who I can trust, but this isn’t gonna be a regular thing.”

“I understand.”

Tinaya lay back down on the bed and fell asleep. This is sort of the unwritten, unofficial reason why admirals are only advisors, and no longer commanders. After 24 years of hard work as a captain, she’s mainly supposed to rest. Well, she didn’t work a full shift, but she was pretty busy before that. And she definitely needs to rest tonight. Tomorrow could be even worse. It’s all downhill from here. She isn’t sure if she’s going to live as long as her son claims that she will. His information is coming from a different timeline. Nothing is certain.

Arqut is sleeping next to her when she wakes up the next morning. She nudges him awake. “Report.”

He groans, only half awake. “We’re taking you to see a doctor on Verdemus tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, or today?” Tinaya questions. “It’s six o’clock on the eighteenth.”

“Today,” he clarifies while yawning.

“I have a better solution,” Thistle interjects. “One that doesn’t require any extensive travel, or placing trust in anyone besides me.”

There is not a whole lot of automation on this ship. When the ancestors left the stellar neighborhood, technology had advanced far past the need for any human crew. There was talk back then of not having any captains or engineers, or anything. Everyone would be a passenger, possibly as part of the internal government. In the end, of course, it was decided that it was more important to let people have purpose than to go the easy route. There are limits to this philosophy, however, and the line separating human labor from automation lies somewhere before waste management.

There are different kinds of waste. Some of it isn’t waste at all, but recyclable material, but whatever it is, if it was once used and has since been discarded, it ends up in this sector to be processed accordingly. No one comes down here. No one needs to be here, and no one wants to either. “Why doesn’t it smell?” Silveon asks. “I would expect it to smell.”

For the first time ever, Tinaya is seeing Thistle as a hologram. He’s leading them through a maze. This is a restricted travel area, or people might use it for nefarious or inappropriate dealings, so no teleportation. “I control for the smell,” he explains.

“Why bother?” Silveon presses. “If no one comes here, what does it matter?”

“I’m here,” Thistle says.

“Right.”

“I can smell,” Thistle goes on.

“Why would you be able to smell? Why would you need that?”

“There are many uses for smell, which is why humans and animals alike evolved their own olfaction. My artificial odor sensors can detect individual health issues, substance leaks, food spoilage. I mask the scent in this area, because I find it just as unpleasant as you, if not more.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I’m grateful for it now,” Silveon says.

“You’re here,” Thistle reveals. “I can give you the code for the door, but I can’t open it myself. It’s deliberately manual. They didn’t want anyone to stumble upon it. Just type in zero-nine-three-six-one-four-seven-five-two-eight-zero.”

Arqut handles the code.

“What is the significance of that number?” Silveon asks.

Thistle shrugs. “It’s long.”

Arqut pulls the door open. Lights flicker on, presumably responding to their motion, rather than a sophisticated AI sensor array. In the middle of the floor is something that is not supposed to be on this ship. It was banned because of how it could lead to extreme longevity. They call it a medpod, and it’s very common on Earth, and its neighbors. It can diagnose nearly anything, and treat it too. It has a distinct look against other types of pods due to its uncomparable dimensional specifications. “Who put this here?”

“Admiral Thatch did. He never used it. No one else has either. To tell you the truth, I think he forgot about it. He didn’t even write it down. I only found it because I needed to familiarize myself with the area. There aren’t even hologram projectors in there. You’ll have to go in and operate it on your own.”

“How did you know what was in there if you can’t physically open doors? How did you know the code if he never told anyone about it?” Tinaya struggles to ask him. Sleeping all night didn’t help much. She grew tired again as soon as she stepped out of bed. She would be sitting in a wheelchair right now if doing so wouldn’t be like holding a neon sign over her head, advertising how frail she’s become.

“He wrote down the code,” Thistle clarifies. “He didn’t say what it was for, so this was just a guess, but it was a good one given that all buttons on the keypad have oil fingerprints on them. I knew what was in here because I can hear it. When isolated from a grid, medpods are often powered by a fuel cell, and the type that fits this design hums at a unique frequency. It’s unambiguous to me.”

They all just stand there in the doorway. The boys don’t want to make this decision for Tinaya, but she doesn’t want to make a decision that they don’t agree with.

“I actually can’t see it from here,” Thistle continues. “My closest sensor doesn’t have the right angle. So I’m assuming that it is indeed a medpod. I don’t know exactly which model it is, but they’re all pretty user-friendly. One feature they have in common is that you have to be in it to use it. It doesn’t work from out here.”

“Yeah, okay, I got this,” Tinaya says, determined. She strides into the room, and taps on the interface screen to see what it does. “It wants me to get fully undressed,” she says after reading the initialization instructions.

“I’ll stay out here and keep watch,” Silveon volunteers. Obviously, Thistle is far better at keeping watch than a single human with only two eyes could ever be, but those two eyes don’t need to see what’s going on in this room.

“Let me help you, dear,” Arqut says.

“There should be a little compartment under the foot of the table,” Thistle says from the hallway, “where you can place her clothes. It will test for contamination, decontaminate them if possible, destroy them if not, or just clean them for you if they’re medically insignificant.”

“Found it,” Arqut called back.

“Oo, it’s cold,” Tinaya says after climbing in.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Thistle contends. “Activate the warming nozzles.”

“How do I do that?” Arqut asks.

“Try asking the computer with your voice. Again, I can’t see the model.”

Arqut taps on the microphone. “Activate warming nozzles.”

“Oh,” Tinaya says, shivering. “Thank you.”

“Beginning broad scope diagnosis,” a female voice from the pod says. They expect to have to wait a while as it processes the data, but it quickly comes to a conclusion. “Diagnosis: severe orthostatic hypotension.”

“Low blood pressure,” Thistle says. “That’s all it’s giving you? I knew that. I can see that myself. We wanna know why.”

“It has a little tree sort of icon,” Arqut begins to say.

“Next to the hypotension diagnosis? Yeah, tap that. It should start looking for causes.”

Longer wait this time. “Uhhhhhhhhhhh...” Arqut says as he’s looking at the screen again.

“What?” Thistle presses.

“Now it’s asking for a secondary profile? Preferably someone younger, or someone who has been living in the environment for a shorter period of time.”

“That’s interesting,” Thistle decides. “It wants a comparative assessment. It wants to see if there’s something different about how you live—if this is a chronic issue that’s only now had consequences.”

“So...we should do it?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m a few years younger,” Arqut says.

“You’ve actually been on this ship longer than her,” Thistle reminds them. “It obviously needs to be Silveon, who is barely an adult.”

Silveon waits while Arqut helps mama get her clothes back on, and carries her over to a couch against the wall. Silveon comes in and climbs into the pod for his own diagnosis. More waiting.

“Unusual neural activity detected.”

“Bypass that,” Thistle instructs. “It doesn’t understand that he’s a time traveler, but it sees the disconnect between an old mind in a young body, so it thinks there’s either an imaging error, or a mapping error.”

“Bypassing...” Arqut announces. Wait a little more. “Diagnosis: optimal condition. Primary profile...unstable gravity variations.”

“Oh my God, of course,” Thistle says, smacking his avatar in the forehead. “She was born here, but spent time on Verdemus before returning. She predominantly lives under human-optimal gravity, which is slightly lower than Earth’s, but Verdemus has a little bit higher surface gravity. Space-farers experience fluctuations all the time, but they have gravity gum, nanites, and other treatments, which are non-existent, or even banned, on Extremus.”

“Should I tap on prognosis?” Arqut asks him.

“I know the prognosis. She’ll live in pain the rest of her life unless she undergoes treatment, which is so easy. It’s just gravity therapy. We have everything we need here to help her.”

Thistle was right that gravity therapy helped Tinaya feel a lot better in her daily life. It didn’t make her young again, but it started to be a hell of a lot easier for her to stand. Unfortunately, her experience would prove to be a warning, rather than a fluke. It wasn’t just her time on Verdemus. Everyone on the ship turns out to be at risk. There’s something seriously wrong with the artificial gravity.

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Microstory 2515: Appointment Coordinator

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Hello. I have been the Appointment Coordinator here for about two years. Before that, I was the Assistant Appointment Coordinator, which is a position that is no longer offered at the Foundation. Don’t worry, no one was fired. My boss, who had this job before me, had to move with his family to a different part of the country. His son secured a job working at a prestigious university, and the family wanted to stay together, even though the son is obviously fully an adult now. We’re still friends, and stay in contact. There is a reason why my previous job wasn’t backfilled, and it’s because it’s no longer necessary. Over time, we’ve incorporated more and more technology—specifically artificial intelligence—into our operating procedures. We are nowhere near a place where the application process is automated, but I no longer get a look at most appointments. I predominantly handle what we call Appeals. When you apply to get a healing from Landis, the system goes through a number of checks. First, it needs to confirm your identity, which you do either with a credit card, or facial recognition. You have to upload your medical records to make sure that you legitimately have a condition that even qualifies for healing. The system has to handshake a number of various medical databases to confirm this legitimacy. If we’re not partnered with your provider, you will have to upload your documents to them instead. We don’t need your entire life’s story. We don’t need to know every time you went in for a broken arm. We just need to know what’s wrong with you now, and what—if anything—you’ve done for it in regards to treatment so far. Similarly, you are expected to provide your financial records, and we have partnered with many financial institutions for the handshakes on that side of things too. We need to know if you’re rich, not-so-rich, or very not rich. That determines whether you pay for the procedure, or qualify for additional charity. I coordinate with other departments, like Patient Experience and Finance, to make sure everything has gone through smoothly. If everything is processed correctly, and there are no errors, the AI will find a slot for the candidate, give the patient all the necessary information, and everything will be ready to go. I only need to step in when an applicant is not only rejected, but also appeals this decision. We have an automated system for them to log their appeal too, but a human has to see all of that, so they can make a decision on the matter. I am that human. I look through every single appeal, and reach out to the applicant as necessary, as well as their associated institutions. I am not at liberty to divulge what percentage of applications are rejected, but if you think about it, I’m only one person. There is only so much time in a day, and I can only do so much with that time. Most rejections come from fraudulent claims, which the computer almost always catches appropriately. If I’m looking at it, it’s probably because the fraudster is still hoping to complete whatever scam they’re going for. I also can’t tell you how many appeals overturn the original decision, but...it’s very rare. It’s really only when there’s some missing data in the application that the computer couldn’t catch, because it doesn’t know what it wasn’t told. When this happens, I submit a reapplication, and it goes back through the automated system, but it’s flagged for me so I can keep an eye on the progress. In case it runs into another issue, it holds priority, and doesn’t end up at the bottom of the appeals list again. That’s just a little bit about what I do here. It’s a lot, but I absolutely love it.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 7, 2520

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Romana lay down on the digitization table. Ramses affixed the spongification helmet over her head. In a few days, this will absorb her consciousness, digitize it almost instantaneously, and transfer it to her new substrate. This part of the process was absolutely vital for the success of the endeavor. During the early days of mind digitization, test subjects were shocked by the new experience, at best resulting in independent duplicates, but at worst in something called bifurcated consciousness. This is when the single mind was divided across the old substrate and the new one. In the movies, this usually involves two copies of each other, one which exhibits some of the traits of the original, but at an extreme, while the other exhibits the polar opposite traits. This will be played for laughs if it’s a comedy, teach the person something about balance if it’s more serious, or even be an example of body horror if it’s meant to be disturbing. In real life, bifurcation isn’t so clean and concise. Neither copy will be able to survive. They will both be missing core physiological characteristics; not just personality traits, but vital neural functions, such as breathing and walking.

Romana was here to dabble in the digital world, so her brain could get used to the feeling of it, before her upload happened. Because once Ramses pushed that button, and began that upload, there was no going back. “Is it going to hurt?”

“It won’t hurt today, but about half of uploaded people claim to experience some pain during the procedure. Researchers are split on whether it’s a psychosomatic memory, or genuine physical pain.”

Romana sighed, and leaned her head all the way back. “Pain is pain. All pain is in the brain. Yet if my body were slain, and my brain placed in chains, that brain would sense no pain, but I would go insane.”

“Poem?”

“Song lyrics,” she explained. “Peter Fireblood. You wouldn’t know him.”

“Was he in the Third Rail?” Ramses asked.

She continued to look forward. “Let’s get on with this.”

Ramses had more to adjust on the equipment. “I need to prep you first. You’ll wake up in a plain white expanse. You will sense the walls around you, yet they will feel endless. Do not be afraid of the expanse. You are still in your body. It should feel just like dreaming.”

“I’ve done VR before.”

“Not like this,” Ramses said. “You cannot return to base reality without me. But I will be able to hear everything you say, so you can bail at any time.” He paused to continue with his work. “After your mind settles into the expanse, lights will appear before you. Some may be blinding, and you cannot look away, as they will always follow your gaze. This is the scary part. You will not be able to shut your eyes. Blinking is an autonomic process, triggered by external stimuli. It is surprisingly the most difficult biological function for digital avatars to replicate, even though in the real world, you’re fully capable of closing them whenever you want. Honestly, scientists still don’t know why, which is what I think is the scariest part. But it will be all right. You will figure it out again, just as you did when you were a baby. The lights are meant to teach your brain to recognize how much control you have over your own residual self-image. They will not stop until you finally do close your eyes. Next will be sound, then smells. Objects will then appear before you for you to feel, inedible ones at first before food materializes to reteach you taste. You could theoretically taste the chair, or whatever it is, before the food shows up, but it’s your call. Interestingly, taste and touch aren’t that hard to fake, at least not until you get into the deeper complexities, like...uh...”

“Like intimate touches,” Romana said. “I get it.”

“I was gonna say umami. Anyway, once you get through sensory school, you will be in the driver’s seat. The world will begin to respond to your imagination, and is only limited by that, as well as the AI’s rendering speed. You can do whatever you want, but I will gently pull you out after about fifteen minutes, depending on what your vitals readout says. It might be earlier, but it won’t be later. You shouldn’t stay too long during the first session. We’ll work our way up gradually over the next couple of days.”

“Okay, I understand.”

“Are you ready?”

“Do it,” Romana answered confidently. She closed her eyes, and tried to relax.

“Count down from eleven for me.”

“Eleven, ten, nine..eight...seven...six...”

Romana felt a shift in gravity, and had the urge to open her eyes. She was not in a white expanse, but a silvery metallic chamber. The space was steamy, or maybe it was only that her vision was blurry. She could make out small beads of water crowding each other on a tiny window before her. She blinked. She blinked just fine. And her other senses didn’t seem to be a problem either. She could smell the sterile scent of medical seating upholstery. She felt the soft grip of the bands of fabric, which barely covered her body, around her crotch, and her breasts. Her breasts. They were back. She was in her adult form. Ramses never said anything about that. They did look a lot smaller, though, which was...odd. She was compelled to taste something, so she leaned over to lick the wall. It wasn’t particularly pleasant, but about as expected. No flashing lights, but her vision was slowly coming into focus. Underneath the tiny window, a message was embossed. Slide down to see the new you. Whenever you’re ready. Another message caught her eye above the window. DON’T PANIC.

She reached over and slid the panel down to find a mirror. That was not Romana Nieman. That was some random chick. “Ramses. Ramses! Can you hear me? You said you would be able to hear me, but you never said if I would be able to hear you?” She waited a moment. “Ramses!” she cried louder. “Pull me out! Something is wrong!”

No response.

“Door.” She paused. Speaking was frustratingly difficult, and it felt like she had just used up her word allotment. “Open,” she managed to eke out.

The door slid open. Romana pushed herself off the back of her chair, and headed for the exit. It was pretty hard to stand too. She was a newborn fawn who had never used her skinny little legs before. Her legs were skinny, whoever this strange woman was. She was now in a dimly lit hallway. She looked to her right. A few meters down, a guy was stepping out of his own pod, struggling about as much; maybe a little more. “Hey,” she said, attempting to raise her voice, but only reaching a whisper. She tried to walk that direction, but her knees buckled.

Before her face could meet the floor, a pair of arms caught her, and lifted her back up. “It’s okay,” the sound of a woman came, like an angel from above. “I gotcha.” She picked her all the way up into the air, and gently lay her down on a gurney.

“Who are you?” Romana asked.

“I’m your Acclimation Specialist.” She looked around. “This is the newborn wing. Anyone who hasn’t transferred before comes through here. There aren’t many of you left. Welcome to Castlebourne, Miss Brighton.”

“Who the hell is Brighton? My name is Romana.” It didn’t hurt so much to talk anymore, but she was slurring her words like a drunkard.

The angel checked her wristband, and looked up at the top of the pod. Then she looked back down at Romana. “Are you sure?”

Romana lifted her new hand, and pointed at the specialist, fighting to keep it aloft. “Hundo-p.” She lowered her hand and tapped on her own temple...or rather, this Brighton person’s temple. “Sharp as a tack. My name is Romana Neiman. I’m friends with Hrockas. He’ll wanna hear about this.”

The specialist tapped on her wristband again. “We have a possible Code Five. I repeat, possible Code Five. Subject claims wrong target.”

“Are we in The Terminal?” Romana asked.

The specialist stepped over, to the back of Romana’s gurney, and began to push her down the hallway. “Seal all newborn pods and halt new travelers to newborn wing. Quarantine all consciousnesses in transit to the emergency digital holding environment.”

“All transiters?” A voice questioned.

“All of them!” she screamed. “Make way! Make way!” she yelled as she continued down the hall. She suddenly stopped. “Owner Steward. Where did you come from? You...you just—”

“Never mind that,” Hrockas said.

Romana couldn’t really see anything from this angle, so Ramses stepped into her line of sight. “Romana?”

“Yes, Rambo. What did you do?”

“I honestly don’t know. What did you say to me, when we were in Underburg? We were at that office cookout. I asked you what your favorite subject in school was.”

Romana turned herself over to the side. “That never happened. It was an implanted memory.”

Ramses stood there for a moment. “Good enough.” He looked up at the Acclimation Specialist. “Thank you. You can go now.”

“Sir?” she asked.

“It’s fine,” Hrockas replied. “Go deal with the lockdown. We’ll determine if this is a fluke, or a new system vulnerability.”

“Thank you, sir.” She left.

“Is it?” Hrockas asked.

“Is what what?” Ramses volleyed.

“Is it a new vulnerability? Should I be worried that body swapping is going to start happening left and right?”

“I draw power from the grid,” Ramses explained. “Might as well. It’s free and easy. I’m plugged into your network for archive updates, but I don’t use your processing power. I don’t need it. I don’t know how this happened. There should be no link between my localized digitization equipment, and your Terminal casting infrastructure.”

“This is the newborn wing,” Hrockas told him. “None of these people has cast their consciousness before. Most of them have not even used surrogacy. Some of them are even escaping colony cults. Isn’t Romana new too?”

“She is, but we were just acclimating her. I hadn’t transferred anything yet. And again, we’re not connected to the Terminal.”

“You are close, though. Treasure Hunting Dome is very close to this one.”

“I don’t see how proximity has to do with anything, if Miss Brighton was coming from Earth.”

“Figure it out, Abdulrashid,” Hrockas demanded. “This wasn’t us. It was you. Millions of castings, not a single problem. You and your time tech are the variables.”

Ramses scooped Romana up, and kissed her protectively on the forehead. “I know.” He teleported them away.

“Beginning decon—”

They were back in Ramses’ lab. “Decontamination override, Ramses Abdulrashid echo-echo-one-nine.” He carried her into the restricted section.

Young!Romana was waiting for him there. She was presumably the real Miracle Brighton. She looked surprisingly calm. “Yep. That’s me.”

“I’m so sorry about this,” Ramses said to her as he was laying Romana down on the secondary digitization bed.

“Don’t worry about it. I came here to have adventures.”

Romana got back on her side. “Can you walk?”

“I walk just fine,” Miracles answered. “It was a lot easier than they told me it would be.”

“It’s your EmergentSuit,” Ramses explained as he was fiddling with the machinery. “It would be like being born in a powered exoskeleton.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Romana decided. “Are you just gonna switch us back?”

“I don’t know if I can,” Ramses said. “I mean, I’m capable of it. People have switched bodies before. It’s a niche leisure activity. I just don’t know what your father is going to say. If I don’t call him back in, will he be madder than if I let him actually see the damage?”

Miracle chuckled. “You’re trying to decide if you should glue the broken vase back together before your parents get home, because at least they come home to a fixed vase, or if it’s better to fess up right away so you look more honest.”

“More or less,” Ramses admitted.

“Too late,” Mateo said from behind.

“Mateo, I didn’t hear you come in,” Ramses said to him.

“Yeah. Decontamination protocols are down.”

“Right. Digital acclimation is a safe procedure. It’s been for centuries. This never should have happened.”

Mateo stepped closer. “I want to comfort my daughter, Ramses, but I don’t want to touch a stranger...” He looked over at Miracle in Romana’s body, “and I don’t want it to look like I’m touching a stranger.” He looked over at Romana in Miracle’s body.

“I’ll switch them back, right away.”

“No,” Mateo said. “That’s stupid. Her new body is ready now, right? It’s in temporal stasis, but fully grown?”

“It’s ready,” Ramses said. “You still weren’t sure, though...”

“I’m on board,” Mateo told him, but he was really saying it to Romana. “Her mind has already been digitized. You might as well finish the process. Forcing her back into that child’s body is just a waste of time and power.”

“Speaking of which...” Ramses walked over to the wall, unlocked a panel with his biometrics, and flipped a lever. The lights shut off for three seconds before returning. “We’re off grid, and all signals are blocked. We’re completely isolated. No consciousness is getting out, and none is getting in.” He moved over to the gestational pod where Romana’s new body was floating around. “Romy will jump into this, and Miracle will jump into her new body.”

“And my old body?” Romana inquired. “The one that looks like a little girl.”

Ramses looked down solemnly. “It will be destroyed. That’s the hardest part of this. I would have rather you be proverted anyway, but I don’t think we really have time for that. I don’t know any proverters.”

“I do,” Mateo said.

“Yesterday, you made it seem like you didn’t,” Ramses reminded him.

“It’s you. You can provert that substrate. After this kind woman leaves it, you can place it in a temporal field, and age it up, so you’re not watching a child’s body be destroyed.”

“Well, I don’t really have to watch as it happens. I just put it in a—”

“Ram. This is how you should do it. You don’t want the memory of even placing her wherever it is you were about to say.”

They waited there in the depressing silence.

“That got dark,” Miracle mused.

“Our lives are sometimes dark.” Ramses flipped another lever, and started to drain the fluid from Romana’s pod.

More silence.

“Wait,” Miracle said. “Don’t do what you were talking about with the temporal field. I’ve never heard of that, but I can guess what it is. I saw you suddenly disappear from here, so there’s obviously a lot I don’t know about the universe.” She took a breath. “Just leave me in this body. I can wait to grow up again. In fact, after what I lived through on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, it might feel like a fresh start.”

“Are you certain?” Ramses asked. “Once I destroy your Castlebourne body, you’re stuck with this unless you choose a new one, in which case you’re just passing the burden to someone else.”

“I understand. I want this.” She hopped off of the bed. “I promise. As long as it’s okay with this one that she has a doppelgänger walking around.”

Romana looked over at Mateo, and said, “actually...that’s a family tradition.”

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Microstory 2474: MOE Dome 42

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MOE stands for Molten Oxide Electrolysis. This is the method that they use here on Castlebourne to produce a breathable atmosphere. The thing about barren terrestrial planets is that there’s usually a ton of oxygen, it’s just trapped in the rocks. Earth has it floating around, along with other gases, like nitrogen and hydrogen. Separating that all out isn’t easy, but it’s possible, and absolutely necessary here. So you got your dome in place, and it’s all sealed up, but that doesn’t make the inside anymore livable than the outside. Whoever first colonized this planet could have carried it with them, theoretically, but that...that’s a lot. It’s called in situ resource utilization. Use what’s available where you are, even if it takes work to process. There are about fifty-six MOE domes right now. I chose to take a tour of this one, because I like the number, but they’re all the same. I’m kidding, this was the only MOE Dome open for tours. I won’t go over their entire process, since that should be a surprise if you come here, lol. I’m kidding, it’s boring and dry, and that’s not what a review is for. It’s my job to tell you what my experience was like, and speculate as to what your experience will be like if you choose to do it too. These big machines grind up rocks, melt them down, and extract the constituent molecules. It’s all very technical. I thought it was cool to see the process, but I’m kind of a dummy. If you already know all this, it may seem normal and prosaic. Like yeah, of course that’s how they do it. I’ve seen it a million times. Well, then you don’t have to come, do you? There was this one woman on my tour who kept asking questions, but you know, in that kind of way that makes it clear that she already knew the answers, and just wanted us to be so impressed with her. Well, she was wrong or not quite right a number of times, which the tour guide respectfully corrected. He was a human, so I thought that was a pretty cool touch too, given how automated this whole planet has to be to function. If you’re into this stuff, come take a look for a couple of hours. If you’re not, I won’t try to convince you to try. Just remember that this effects us all. Until every dome has an established ecology which recycles air as efficiently and unceasingly as Earth does in its natural state, MOE Domes are probably the most important ones we got. I hope you appreciate that, whether you think it’s boring to watch and learn about, or not.

Microstory 2468: Internal Security Dome

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I can’t say too much about this dome. It wouldn’t be secure. But I can assure you that security personnel have ears and eyes everywhere while still managing to protect your privacy. Internal institutional domes like this one don’t typically have a review section for obvious reasons, but my boss asked me to write something up after my audit in order to maintain at least some connection to the public. I don’t work in ISD, but in Castledome. An unattached intelligence will periodically be sent to any given dome at any given time to assess productivity and general soundness of the facilities in question. Of course, each dome handles its own internal audits, but it’s always good to have a second opinion. It’s not that we don’t trust our various branches and divisions. We’re not trying to catch them in any mistakes, but you know, things break down, and procedures start to drift. Or they can, rather. The system overall on this planet is quite robust, full of non-wasteful redundancies, and resource-efficient protocols. The security is good. I only suggested minor improvements, but that is to be expected. There are more people on this planet today than there were yesterday, and there will be more tomorrow. The number of people who visit far outweigh the number of people who leave. We have a very low turnover rate in general, and that makes security an ever-changing beast. It is not easy to keep up with it, but our security team manages to do it with flying colors. I kind of wish that I could keep auditing it myself, but as I’ve explained, that would defeat the purpose of it being impartial, and having fresh eyes. It’s the only one that gets these evaluations on a very strict basis, but now I have to move on to something else, and let one of my colleagues handle the next one here. I’m sure they’ll pass the test just as well next time. I have full faith in these intelligences.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 12, 2494

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There was no need to worry about the new Minister of Foreign Affairs for Castlebourne. They didn’t know who she was prior to today, but she was already familiar with time travelers, a few in particular. Rochelle Sumner grew up with Dalton Hawk as he was living through multiple lifetimes. Curious about people like him, she started to be on the lookout for others, eventually running into Dave Seidel and Jesimula Utkin. She was actually with them in the past, trying to figure out how to transport a citrus fruit from the future at the behest of the villainous Buddy. Rochelle couldn’t or wouldn’t divulge whether they succeeded in this mission, but she had long since moved on. In more recent decades, she was trained as an Interstellar Charterwright, so it was her job to handle these situations specifically. The fact that she knew about time travel could have entirely been a coincidence, because it didn’t sound like she had concerned herself with such matters for the last few centuries.

While they were gone, Ramses’ machines finished all of the calculations and simulations for the new mini-slingdrives, but it was complicated. The components were successfully miniaturized, and shunted into specialized pocket dimensions. The problem was that they could not accrue enough quintessence on their own for an individual to make a jump. At least three people had to come together to combine their power. They should all be able to jump together at that point, which meant that the resulting power was more than the sum of its parts, but it was a limitation that the math simply could not overcome.

“I don’t like that word,” Angela decided.

“What would you have me call it?” Ramses asked.

She pursed her lips to the side, and looked up towards the ceiling with only her eyes. “A constraint?”

He laughed a little. “Okay. That’s our constraint. Three or more of us have to go together, which will allow us to theoretically split into two groups, but no more.”

“Can we take other people with us?” Mateo asked him. “Passengers?”

Ramses took an uncomfortably long time to respond. “The AI couldn’t figure that out. I can run as many simulations as you want, but it needs targeted data. It needs to know who these passengers are, and what’s up with their quantum and qualium realms. I can’t just iterate the variables. We would have to calculate each particular passenger, like they used to do with airplanes, when they needed to know everyone’s weight for safety.”

“Have you devised a way to gather this data, if we were to find ourselves in a situation where people are in need of being evacuated?” Leona asked.

“Yes,” he confirmed. “It’s a little slow, but I can improve the efficiency.”

“That’s good enough for me for now,” Leona determined.

There was a lull in the conversation. No one knew if they were going to leave this very moment, or after saying their goodbyes to everyone here, or even this year. Leona was still worried about her right to be the leader, so she couldn’t just order it. Fortunately, Romana appeared out of nowhere to break the ice. She showed up using the dark particles that she was now stricken with thanks to Buddy’s protracted abduction and imprisonment of her. “Good, you’re not gone yet. I wanna go with you.”

“With us?” Mateo asked. “We don’t even know where we’re going.”

“Yeah, that’s the point,” Romana agreed. “It’s time for me to move on from Team Kadiar. They can handle it without me.”

“It wasn’t about needing you,” Mateo argued. “You should be with your sisters. I can’t...for any extended period of time, but you have a choice.”

“Plus, you put the R in Kadiar,” Olimpia noted.

“We’re not the only three on the team,” Romana said. “It was never only about us, or the name.”

“We’re Team Matic, but more than half of us aren’t Matics,” Marie reminded everyone.

“Y’all wanna switch to Team Walton?” Mateo proposed.

“That’s okay,” Angela replied sincerely.

“I’ve spoken with my sisters,” Romana went on, getting back to the matter at hand. “They give me their blessings. We’re doing good work out there, it’s not like I hate it. It’s just that the operation has grown so much since we started. The Ex-Exins—we need to come up with a better name for them too—have become so much more involved. Kivi and Dubra are considering leaving as well, and just letting the refugees take care of themselves. Mirage would stay, as would Tertius, since their powers are paramount, but I would say that anyone else is interchangeable.”

“I would love to have you here,” Mateo assured her. “I’m not going to harp on how dangerous it will be, because you already know that, and it’s not like you’ve been living in a padded cell for the last several years. I just want to make sure you don’t walk away with any regrets.”

“It hasn’t been long for you,” Romana said, “but I’ve been seriously considering my options for a year, and questioning it for years prior to that. I’m not doing this on a whim.”

“Yeah, it’s hard for us to remember that,” Leona admitted. “Everything happens so fast from our perspective.” Another break in the conversation, though a short one. “Well, okay. You’ll need a suit. Ram, you have a regular IMS that’s fitted with all the slingdrive upgrades?”

“Actually,” Romana interrupted Ramses before he had a chance to speak. “Could I maybe get one of those...nanite suits? What do you call them...?”

“The EmergentSuit,” Ramses answered. His eyes darted over to Romana’s father. “I suppose you’re not a child anymore, and you can make that decision.”

Romana waited for a moment before tensing up with confidence “I have. This is also not on a whim. I don’t want the upgraded substrate like you all have, just the nanobot implants. I don’t know if I should have these dark particles in my body, but they’re part of me now, and I can’t risk losing them.” She looked over at Mateo now. “I hope you don’t disapprove.”

Mateo took a respectful moment to ponder his position, then decided to simply say, “your body, your choice.”

“Thank you,” she said softly.

Romana underwent the procedure in private with Leona, instead of with an audience like most everyone else. She had a harder time adjusting to the way her brain interfaced with the implants, and their nanites. She had less experience with that sort of thing. She spent a lot of the day practicing in the lab, during which Ramses realized that there was a flaw in his programming. They were optimized to the team’s physiology and neurology. They were walking around with posthuman bodies, and teleportation and illusion powers. Romana was in no risk of exploding, or something, but she wasn’t ever going to be good at using her new suit in its current state. Her software needed to be adapted to account for the differences between her and her friends. He finished it by the time the day was over, but there wasn’t enough time for them to leave Castlebourne for their little exploratory slingdrive jump. Still, Romana wanted to integrate herself into the team, so she chose to turn her pattern back on, and skip over the next year.

When they returned, it was July 13, 2495. Castlebourne was celebrating a major milestone in their development. For the first time ever, the percentage of domes in the Gamma testing phase exceeded the percentage that were still totally non-operational. While the domes currently still in Alpha and Beta testing would gradually go down as more and more people were given the opportunity to explore these worlds, the top number would probably remain largely unchanged moving forward. Using various methods, including crowdsourcing, ordered list iteration, AI creativity, and just plain sitting down and thinking about it, Hrockas had managed to come up with over 67,000 ideas for the various recreational and relaxation destinations. The other 16,000 or so just wouldn’t be original enough to warrant construction, and would be left there as barren deserts. There were many other deserts, but these ones were unplanned, bare, and unused.

It took some time, but Hrockas eventually accepted the fact that there would be empty areas. Four out of five domes did have something to brag about, and that was a pretty big deal. The only reason he chose to construct as many as he did was because that was close to how many could fit on the surface of the planet. It wasn’t like he came up with all of the ideas first. He was happy, and so were the residents. The population from the Goldilocks Corridor was still growing at a steady rate. The ones already here held a vote, and agreed to call themselves Castlebourners. They were here to start new lives, and build a new civilization. Language mattered, and tying themselves to where they escaped from by calling themselves Ex-Exins—or by the designations of their planets of origin—wasn’t helping them move forward.

“Why are you telling them about this?” Hrockas questioned Aeolia when he finally came into the room.

“I’m trying to get them up to speed,” she defended. She was taking charge of the briefing while Hrockas was busy with other matters.

“I don’t care about that. They need to see that desert, and explain what the hell is happening there.”

“What’s happening in what desert?” Leona asked.

Hrockas took wide strides over to the holo-wall on the other side of the conference table. He switched it on. It was showing a nude beach located in the South Ocean. “Who the hell was watching this?” he questioned, frustrated as he was trying to find the right feed on his handheld device. “Here.” He changed it to the view from a flying drone, looking down at one of those deserts that they were talking about. It wasn’t natural, though, as was the majority of Castlebourne outside of the domes. It was sandy and duney. And there was something else.

Leona leaned forward and peered at the screen. “Are those...?”

“Dark particles?” Romana finished the question with a gulp. There were tons of them, flying over the surface, morphing and turning like starlings.

“That’s what they look like to me,” Hrockas responded. “Care to explain?”

“Which dome is that?” Romana asked.

“It’s Dome 216. A meteorite crashed through it years ago, and I never bothered repairing it. I just marked it for disuse, and moved on to 217.”

With fear in her eyes, Romana looked over at her father. “It’s mine. That’s the one I used to release the excess energy I have pent up when I’m not skipping time, or teleporting, or whatever.”

“You always go into the same dome?” Mateo asked her.

“It was in disuse,” Romana explained.

“How is there an atmosphere?” Olimpia asked.

“Oh yeah, if there’s a breach...” Romana posed to Hrockas.

“You tell me. There’s not supposed to be an atmosphere, I can’t believe I didn’t notice. Maybe it has something to do with what you do in there? Some kind of weird form of electrolysis?”

“I purge the energy,” Romana repeated. “It doesn’t really even look like I’m releasing dark particles. It’s more of a transparent wave that distorts space around me. It’s a very private experience, and I don’t talk about it. It shouldn’t be making oxygen, though. I have no idea what’s going on.”

“Ramses, you need to go there and see what data you can get,” Leona ordered.

“No,” Romana and Hrockas argued at the same time. “It’s too dangerous,” Hrockas continued. “I’ve sealed it off; placed it in its own quarantine.”

“I’ll send a probe,” Ramses negotiated.

“There’s already one in there,” Hrockas said, pointing to the feed.

Ramses chuckled. “I’ll send a better one than that paper airplane you got roaming around the skies.”

“Please do,” Hrockas said.

They started to get up to return to their respective duties when Marie noticed something. “That paper airplane just spotted a person out there.”

“Computer, zoom in,” Leona commanded.

The camera zoomed in towards the ground. It wasn’t a person, more of a silhouette...made of dark particles. If it had any approximation of eyes, though, it was staring up at them.

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