Microstory 2431: Melodome

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Don’t let the name fool ya if you’re interpreting the pun to be mellow + dome. It’s not about melodrama either. It’s the first part of the word melody + dome. This is all about music. Recording studios, concert halls, smaller stages, other interesting venues, and even sports stadiums where no one ever actually plays sports. This dome has it all. You can make music, listen to music, watch music. Every genre, every level of interaction; everything. No place like this exists on Earth. Even the cities known for music, like Havana and New Orleans, still had to leave space for regular living. This is the Music City, no matter what Nashville tries to tell you. There are some things that I’m not entirely sure about, unfortunately. When my great great grandparents were younger, they remember a trend where dead musicians were starting to be resurrected through holograms. This isn’t the kind of volumetric immersion that you’re used to in the present-day. It was very crude, and very obviously fake, even if you didn’t know that the subject wasn’t alive anymore. They recall being quite upset by this, not because it was macabre—which it is—but because it was disrespectful. These were real people who lived their lives, and then those lives ended. Before virtual immortality was invented, that was just what happened. These musical artists were immortal because of their legacy. That was what they were striving for, because they probably didn’t even guess at the future of life extension research. Their flame burned bright, but it was short, and that’s what was special about it. If you missed it, that was sad, but it was sad in a good way. The holograms robbed the industry of these artists’ authenticity, and sadly, that never went away. The technology kept improving, and the industry kept embracing it, despite pushback from the audience. There was evidently enough money in it, probably because of people’s morbid curiosity. Melodome has not shied away from this concept. They’ve brought the dead back to life using realistic androids. Not all of them are even dead, but living performers who just aren’t freaking on Castlebourne. I guess they signed away the rights to their likeness, but that doesn’t make it okay. I’m not going to name real names, but if John Doe can’t be here, then I shouldn’t be able to go to one of his concerts, and watch a convincing facsimile reenact his set from X number of years ago. I get that these are at least historically accurate shows, so they’re not merely contriving something entirely out of thin air. They justify it by saying that it’s like watching a recording, but I don’t consider that the same thing. There’s a lot of great things to see here. If you’re an artist, and you want a venue, they will find you one. I doubt the demand would ever surpass the supply. So if you’re a music fan who wants to discover someone new, you can do that. There’s always something going on, and it’s easy to find new acts on the dome’s prospectus, but there’s also this other side of it. They should really lean into the aspect of originality, because the reenactments are unethical at best. But maybe that’s just my point of view. You have to decide for yourself where your line is.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 14, 2496

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“Anything?” Mateo asked.

“Nothing,” Leona replied.

“Where could they possibly be?” he went on. “You need at least three people to make the new slingdrives work, if it even works at all.”

“Maybe he was wrong about it,” Olimpia offered. “Maybe it works with only two.”

“We should still be able to detect them,” Leona reasoned, “wherever and whenever they are.”

“Unless they’re shrouded in dark particles,” Mateo pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s my hypothesis,” Leona agreed, “but Ramses’ systems are being finicky with me. I technically have access, but it’s...argh!” She didn’t want to have to explain the complexities of it all, and she didn’t have to.

“If it is dark particles, you know who we can call,” Angela said.

“Won’t work,” Marie countered as she was walking back in from the other room. “Buddy was here. He disappeared with them.”

“How do you know?” Leona questioned. “The surveillance was garbled.”

“I didn’t look at the footage from the lab. I looked at the recordings from the drone in Dome 216.” She lifted her hands, and projected a hologram of the video recordings from Dome 216 last year. They could see Buddy standing there with Romana and Ramses. There was no sound, and it wasn’t detailed enough to read their lips, but their body language appeared nonconfrontational. None of the others remembered experiencing angry emotions from this moment, though there was some agitation leading up to it, if they were remembering correctly. As the three of them were standing there in the desert, the dark particle creature appeared out of nowhere, and seemingly tried to kill Buddy. It kind of looked like Romana was trying to save him, further reenforcing the idea that they were not at odds at this moment. Marie closed the hologram with a drop of her hands after the creature grabbed Romana and disappeared, and the other two left, presumably to rescue her.

“You gotta fix that machi—” Mateo began.

“I know,” Leona interrupted. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“I know that you love her too,” Mateo acknowledged. “I’m just sick of worrying about her.”

“I don’t think that ever goes away,” Olimpia said.

“There’s another possible way to find her,” Angela began. “Maybe we don’t need Buddy. Ramses has given us all we need.”

“You wanna use the tandem slingdrives, and hope that they take us where we’re trying to go, even though we don’t know where exactly that is,” Leona guessed.

“If it doesn’t work, we’ll try again,” Angela reasoned. “If we can’t navigate back here for another attempt, it probably means that it never mattered if we knew where they were, because they’re probably out of range, and the tandem slingdrives don’t work right.”

Leona sighed, and looked back over to the screen. The computer was trying to find them just as it had when Buddy abducted Romana years ago. “I don’t know if this thing is good enough. That seems to be an entire person made out of dark particles. It could be orders of magnitude more powerful than the stasis field that Buddy put Romana in before.”

“Is that a yes?” Angela asked.

“I would have preferred to test the tandem slingdrives in a more controlled situation, but you make a good point that that doesn’t really exist. The whole purpose of these things is to push the boundaries of intergalactic travel. If we get lost, that was always going to be the result, and we’ll be no further from locating Rambo and Romana than we are now.”

“The great thing about these suits he made for us, we’re never not ready to go.” Mateo mused.

Olimpia interlocked her arm with his. “As long as we have each other.”

“They could be in a harsh environment,” Leona warned. “Suit up.”

Mateo released his emergent nanites, and commanded them to turn mostly green. He now looked strikingly like Green Arrow. When Leona looked at him funny, he shrugged and said, “she loved this show.”

“She had time to watch it?” Leona questioned.

Marie looked at the time readout on her interface. “Eleven, ten, nine...”

Everyone shut themselves up safe in vacuum mode, though Mateo kept the superhero costume on over it to keep things light. If he didn’t laugh, he would cry. No one lost track of their children as many times as he had. Put a bell on her, he thought to himself. Well, she had a bell. A psychic bonding bell, which should always let them know where the other one was. These dark particles were incredibly frustrating, and how funny it should be that they would come into their lives around the time the quantum connection was too. Their fates were sealed, whether they were aware of it or not.

Marie finished counting down, and they all slung away, concentrating on nothing but Ramses and Romana’s location. It looked like they were still in the lab, but it was very different. It was a hell of a lot darker, and these flashlights that looked like forearm weapons weren’t doing them much good. They couldn’t make out any details in the room around them, it just had the vague shape of everything back home. The right angles of the tables, desks, and chairs; the curve of the gestational pods in the corner; the height of the ceiling. They were here, but not here, kind of like the Upside Down. Everything was just a shadow of its true self, nothing more than a slight hint of its presence. Shadows, really. They could call this a shadow realm. It was very much like that in more ways than one. This was seemingly where the dark particles lived. They were swarming all around them, not paying the humans much attention, but clearly aware of their sudden appearance, however complex their intelligence might be.

Something was coming at them from the darkness. It was moving steadily, and maybe a little threateningly, but not too quickly. Before it reached them, it split in two. Shortly after that, they could be recognized as people; people wearing EmergentSuits. It was Ramses and Romana. Nice, it worked. Ramses took Mateo by the hand. He was already holding Romana’s. She took Marie’s, and together with everyone else, they completed the circle. With nothing more than a sense of homesickness, and no words exchanged, they reactivated the tandem slingdrives, and left this place as quickly as they had come. They were back in the lab; the real lab, complete with light and solid objects.

Ramses collapsed his helmet, and fell to his knees, sliding on the floor a few centimeters. At first, they thought he was hurt, but he was positively ecstatic. He was laughing and crying simultaneously, holding his arms up and to the side like he had just won Olympic gold, panting, both relieved and proud. No one had a clue what was going on. Romana was just as perplexed as the rest. “Oh my God. Yes! Yes! That’s it! I finally figured it out! I saw it! Me! Well, Romana and I, but I understand it. Whew!” he whooped.

“What happened in there?” Mateo asked his daughter.

“I don’t really know,” she replied. “We couldn’t talk, but he was super excited the whole time. He kept tapping on the interface modules of his suit. I’m guessing he was taking readings, but who knows?”

Ramses was still laughing. “Yeah. I was taking readings, all right.” He stood up, all giddy and cheerful. “I know what it is. I know what it all is.” He squealed. “I have to write it down.” He rushed to find the nearest device.

“Care to share with the class?” Leona asked.

“Yes, class first. Then the paper.” He clapped, then started gesturing with his hands as he prepared his remarks. “Neutrinos.”

“Neutrinos?” Leona echoed. “Are you saying that that’s what the dark particles are?” She didn’t seem to believe him. She was the only one who was following him even remotely.

“Yes.” Oh, Ramses was still so jazzed about this whole thing, whatever it was.

“That doesn’t make any sense. They’re subatomic particles. You can’t see them.”

“I was wrong,” Ramses went on. He kept talking with his hands. “I thought that they were lifeforms, which were replicating, but that’s not it. They don’t breed, they congregate. They form masses. They’re like...snowflakes; water adhering to a mote of dust, and clumping together until it becomes too heavy to stay up.”

“So, a dark particle isn’t a neutrino. It’s billions of neutrinos.”

“Exactly. But not like water forming on a mote of dust—”

“You literally just said that that’s what it’s like,” Angela reminded him.

“I know, but not really,” Ramses insisted. “It’s more like...a whole bunch of neutrinos who happen to be on the same trajectory as each other. They emit some kind of energy. Individually, it’s negligible, but combined, we can actually see it. We perceive it. It’s dark, because neutrinos don’t interact with photons very well either, but these bursts of energy, firing in rapid succession, do occasionally repel light like a solid object would. Again, it appears dark, because it’s a minuscule amount, but it is technically visible. For fractions of a second, but as I said, when they get close enough to each other, these bursts are happening all the time. Normally, you don’t see it, because we can’t see the neutrino dimension, but Buddy can...call them forth.” He pointed while adding, “and so can Romana.”

He was talking real fast, but no one bothered to ask him to slow down, because they didn’t understand him either way. Except for Leona. She knew what he was saying, she just  couldn’t believe it. She crossed her arms, but didn’t say anything else for now.

“So, they’re not alive?” Romana asked.

“No, as I said, I was wrong. They just seemed to be that way, because baryonic matter freaks them out. No, that’s personifying them again. They’re not used to baryonic matter, because they usually pass right through it, but in these clumps, and with some sort of weird charge that Buddy can artificially generate, they do find themselves running into us.”

“That doesn’t make any sense either,” Leona pointed out. “The particles move around people. That requires some level of sentience.”

“Yeah, I was thinking about that. I don’t think they’re diverting with any semblance of intent. I think as soon as this energy comes into contact with normal matter, they split off into different directions, ultimately colliding with other clusters, and forming new temporary trajectory masses. It only looks to us like they’re swarming, because we can’t effectively track one clump at a time. They don’t have to hit us directly, because a sufficiently concentrated layer of air is all around us at all times. To us, it’s meaningless, but it’s like a wall to them. I thought they were disappearing and reappearing, and I was sort of right. They don’t hold together for very long, but they do form clumps constantly during this charged condition. I would really love to get my hands on Buddy, and see how he does it. I may have learned all I can from Romana.”

“Where is Buddy, by the way?” Olimpia asked. “We saw you with him on the drone cam in Dome 216.”

Ramses brushed it off. “Oh, I dunno, we lost him in there. He could still be trapped for all I know, or he knew exactly how to escape. I’m sure he’ll show up again at some point.”

“Hold on,” Leona said, still unconvinced. “Where were we? What was that place? The neutrino dimension? That’s where they live? Why? Seems random.”

“It’s not,” Ramses continued his lesson. “Let’s say you have a vacuum-sealed room with two doors. There’s a screen door, and then the fully sealed door. When you open the sealing door, only the screen door remains, which allows the air to rush through the screen, and into the room. That’s because nature abhors a vacuum. As you know, neutrinos don’t interact with electromagnetism, or the strong nuclear force. The dimensional barrier is apparently made up of one or both of these, which is why the neutrinos pass into it. It’s just like entropy, where a state of order naturally flows into a state of disorder. It wasn’t made for neutrinos specifically, but those are the particles that go into it, because nothing can stop them. And they don’t usually come back out, because there’s so much space in there.”

Romana tapped on her arm interface. “Yeah, that was my interpretation too.” She lifted her arm up. “That’s what it says here, neutrino clumps.”

Mateo laughed. “You’re adorable. Like a young me.”

“Why are you dressed like Green Arrow?” she asked.

“Why aren’t you dressed like Speedy?”

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Microstory 2383: Earth, November 1, 2179

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Dear Corinthia,

Huge news. I couldn’t wait to write this until after your next message, whenever that ends up being. I know that dad told you what he found out from our old neighbor, so I won’t go over all that again. While he was gone, I managed to make contact with my old nurse. Her name is Madalena Rich, and she was part of it all. She wasn’t just hired by the researchers to observe me. She was part of the braintrust that came up with the idea to study twins separated at birth throughout their entire lives. It was she who located our mother, since her name was in the records as being pregnant with twins. She didn’t make first contact with your mom, but they did become friends after Alizée was read into the program, and honestly, kind of brainwashed into believing that this all made sense. At first, mom thought that they were just going to have her live a few towns over, but then they kept talking about it, and a few towns became a few states, and a few states became a different country, and so on and so forth, until we ended up where we are today. It was this whole long-con. They just kept getting her more and more excited about what kind of data they could get from this study, and how beneficial it would be for the advancement of science. Madalena was already a nurse by the time this happened, which means that she lied to our father about being a student. It was an excuse she came up with for why she wasn’t demanding much money to care for me. She didn’t need money, she just needed to get into that apartment, though obviously it would have been quite suspicious had she agreed to do it entirely free.

We talked about a lot more than this, so these are only the highlights. I screen recorded our conversation—in secret at first, though I later divulged it, which she didn’t argue against. She said that she has done a lot of growing up, and has dedicated her career to helping the less fortunate. She also regrets having participated, especially since it made little sense to begin with. It took them a few months to build up to the whole Vacuus expedition offer, and just when they had it, they discovered that we were fraternal twins. We were right that it was really disorganized. They didn’t try to develop a relationship with any other candidates, this was their one chance, or they would literally miss the boat that took you across the interplanetary void. They realized how little meaning their study would have at this point, but decided to press forward. Over time, they eventually gave up. At least, that’s what Madalena believed. She stopped treating me (by the way, but illnesses were real, it’s not like she was getting me sick on purpose), and she walked away from it all. She only later found out about her old business associates approaching our neighbor for further observation when I was a little older. One last thing. The screen recording doesn’t have this, because she never said it out loud, but she sent me an old contact card with the name of the person assigned to study you on the ship, and on the planet. It was Elek Katona. Isn’t that Velia’s last name?

Reeling from the truth,

Condor

Microstory 2382: Earth, October 31, 2179

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Dear Corinthia,

I’m sure that my son has already informed you, but I was recently on a trip to Eastern Seaboard, which if you don’t know, is a city-state in the former United States of America. I was taking part in very early negotiations for future possible trade deals. The platform is still circumnavigating the continent of Australia, even though our initial required proximity period has passed. We ended up extending that another four months after some people from other Australian domes began to express interest in moving here. We currently don’t know where we’ll go after this, but it’s always good to have your options open, and it’s not like we have to float over to a trading partner in order to trade with them. That’s what jets are for. So I went out there for my work, but I was also doing something else. After investigating my own past, and reaching out to my contacts, I discovered that an old friend of ours from before the collapse of society—or, I guess it was kind of during it—was living there. I couldn’t pinpoint his exact location remotely, or find his contact information, so I decided to fly up there to look for him myself. And wouldn’t you know it, I found him. I told you that I wouldn’t send you another message until I had a solid update for you, so I hope this qualifies. I confronted Gunnar about his motivations back then after we started catching up, and felt like he was being rather evasive. He seemed to have mixed feelings about seeing me again, like he was happy, but also pretty worried. In my head, I thought for sure this was the guy. He knew something. He was part of it. He was Condor’s secret observer. As it turns out, not exactly. When we met, he was genuinely trying to be my friend. He didn’t even like sports or outdoorsy stuff either; he just figured that I did, because they were very common hobbies, and he was desperately trying to connect. The reason he approached me in the first place was because he had social anxiety, and his therapist recommended he intentionally step out of his comfort zone, and try his hand at small talk, explaining that the worst that could happen was an awkward conversation that ended quickly. I felt really bad about accusing him of something nefarious but then he admitted that he was once contacted by a mysterious someone, asking him to keep tabs on us; Condor in particular. Out of fear, he actually agreed to do it, but he fed this stranger false information. He would just straight up lie about how Condor was doing, and how his personality was developing. He didn’t know if this was the right thing to do, or if he should have refused entirely. He wasn’t sure if he should have told me what was going on either. He always regretted not speaking up, though, and was grateful for the opportunity recently. Except for the first one, Gunnar recorded every conversation he had with this other man, who never gave him his name. Gunnar kept these recordings all this time, so he was able to give me copies of them. I’ve put in a request to the forensics specialists to have them analyzed, and will update you again if and when they find something. We’re getting closer, Cori. We’re gonna find out who did this to you. To us.

Your distant but doting father,

Pascal

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 6, 2398

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Ramses is standing, but hunched over, hands in a steeple over his mouth. He’s looking at the floor as the rest of the team looks at him from the audience, and waits patiently. No one has anything else to do for the rest of the evening, so they might as well just give him the time he needs. Finally, he drops his arms, and picks the book up from his chair. “This book could hold the key to everything we ever needed to know about this world, and the next. I’ve read it twice already, and there is no denying that it was written by a time traveler, or perhaps a human compatriot. The attention to detail is unmatched even by The Superintendent’s words. At first, I thought maybe this was all a coincidence, and I didn’t know exactly what I was reading. I didn’t recognize any of the names of the characters, but upon my second time, I realized they were surely changed to protect the real individuals. There’s a family of powerful people who are obviously the Prestons. There are two people who call themselves gargoyles. There are even those I recognize as leaders of the Freemarketeer movement that I was a part of. That’s the focus of the story. The travelers are really just secondary to a historical account of 22nd and 23rd century Sol.” He stops to gauge their reactions. “Nothing?”

“Wait, are you done?” Mateo asks.

“No, I just thought...isn’t this exciting?” 

“Yeah, of course,” Mateo agrees. “We just didn’t want to interrupt. Who’s the author?”

“It’s a man by the name of Ildemire Lorenz. I did a little digging, and I believe that he’s still alive, and doing so in an Austrian city called Innsbruck.”

Leona taps the query into her tablet, sets the device on Ramses’ chair, and throws a hologram into the space between them and Ramses. “It’s not too terribly far from Croatia. We were planning on going to Austria anyway before sneaking over a couple borders.”

“Well...we were,” Mateo corrects. Everybody already knows by now that Mateo, Ramses, and Marie will be doing this one alone.

“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” Heath jumps in. “You’re just going to add a new destination to the itinerary. It’s not even on the list.”

“We had no reason to believe that anywhere in Austria belonged on the list before,” Mateo explains. “Now we do. It’s probably our best lead since The Constant imploded.”

“This is what you’re gonna do?” Heath asks his wife. “You’re gonna go on a mission just before your procedure?”

“It’s just talking to someone,” Marie defends.

“That doesn’t mean it won’t be dangerous,” Angela says. “I don’t like that the three of you are doing this alone. I don’t like that our bruiser isn’t going with you.”

“I don’t either,” Leona concedes, “but I have work to do, and even though I don’t always have to be in the office, it’s best that I stay close; as I’m able, anyway.”

“The fact of the matter is that it’s Marie’s decision,” Mateo reminds them. “Ram and I will go wherever, whenever, and do whatever. If you just want to go straight to the doctor, that’s all right.”

“We need a good reason to be in Europe,” Marie decides after a certain amount of time. “A short tour is a good idea. We could visit Germany, Czechia, and hell, maybe even where London ought to be. The longer we stay in places other than Croatia, the more time we’ll have to slip away unnoticed, and take care of business.”

“If that’s what you wanna do, then I support you,” Heath says. “I can’t go with you anymore, but I can use my excellent travel agent skills, and plan it for you. Would this be acceptable?”

“I would love that,” Marie tells him graciously. “He’s really good at it. He told me about how he planned a family reunion at age thirteen.”

“I can’t remember why they asked me to do it,” Heath adds. “I guess they just saw my potential. Or they just didn’t want to deal with it themselves.”

“There’s another order of business,” Leona begins, “if we’re quite finished with the Innsbruck one for now.”

“There’ve been so many,” Angela says with a laugh.

Leona reaches over to select a recording on her phone. The forger’s voice comes through, “how would you handle someone like me? Would you teleport into my house at night, and slit my throat?” Mateo was secretly live-streaming the maddening conversation. It was his idea.

“Who are you, and why do you want me to become a federal agent? What can I do that you can’t do yourself, or have done for you by someone you know you can trust?” Mateo’s voice returns.

“I’m the only one in this world who’s on your side. The war is coming, Mr. Matic. You can either support the war effort, or put a stop to it. You’ll need a badge either way.”

Mateo releases a frustrated sigh. “Looks like you got me by the balls.”

“I wish.”

Leona pauses playback. “All right, that’s enough. You get the point.”

“That sounded like the forger,” Ramses figures.

“It was,” Mateo confirms. “I’m a little suit piggy now. She’s going to make me go on missions, or whatever. I don’t know what she has planned.”

“What does that mean for us?” Marie questions.

“It means that my husband is leaving the country without telling this woman anything about it, and if she needs someone to complete one of her missions, then I’ll do it in his stead.”

“How exactly do you think that’s gonna work?” Heath questions.

“Oh, I’ll make it work. That’s what The Olimpia is for. You don’t have to tell no one where you’re going. I’m sure she’ll make the appropriate arrangements when she realizes I’m a better choice. I’m going to pay her a visit tomorrow. You three just need to focus on getting packed and ready to leave. We’ll handle the war at home.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 31, 2398

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The team sits around the table, prepared to have dinner together, but not yet ready. Ramses is methodically walking around the condo, waving his wand at every wall, every floor, every object; sometimes more than once for good measure. They believe that they’ve been pretty sensitive to his needs, but there is a limit to their capacity to indulge him. “Rambo,” Marie says, but has to stop when her own grumbling stomach interrupts her. “This is the third time you’ve done that today. We’re all here to eat. Come to the table.”

“Yeah, it’s the third time, and I’m not with it yet. You think I’m gonna stop at two and a half? I just need a little more time.”

“You ain’t got more time,” Marie pushes. “Now we’re all here to celebrate Angela’s pending graduation, and you’re going to be a part of it.”

“Just one more room,” Ramses begs.

“No, it’s fine. No one snuck in here in the last three hours, and planted bugs. They would have to contend with our bugs!”

“I’m just trying to protect you in the only way I’m capable. I was once the only engineer, but now that everybody’s constantly studying, where does that leave me?”

“With any luck, at the dinner table,” Marie responds to his question, instead of trying to console him.

“Honey, he’s going through something right now,” Heath says, hoping to help.

“We’re all going through something,” Marie dismisses. “Angela has to steal my identity, Leona was just taken hostage, Mateo was...also just taken hostage, you recently quit your job, and I have to have an abortion.”

Ramses stops scanning for listening devices, and drops his arms depressively.

“You promised never to play that card,” Angela scolds.

“Why is everyone attacking me now?” Marie questions loudly.

“No one’s attacking anybody,” Leona contends. She stands up. “Ship or no, I’m still the captain of this crew. Ramses, come let us eat. Marie, be a little nicer. Mateo?”

“Huh, what?” Mateo wasn’t really paying attention. He’s too hungry.

“Pay attention,” Leona orders. “And Angela?” They hold their breath, not sure what criticism she could possibly have of Angela. “Congratulations,” she finishes.

“I’m not graduating anything,” Angela argues. “I’m just decent enough at my doppelgänger’s job to fake my way through a shift from here on out.”

“Pretty impressive, if you ask me,” Mateo says, hoping it’s enough to make it seem as if he’s been listening this whole time. He knew a kid like that in grade school. He would always answer one question, ask one question, or make one comment, per day. Sometimes it was very small and inconsequential, but that way, the teacher couldn’t claim that he never participated in class. He had some anxiety problems which otherwise made him the furthest anyone could be from the class clown, so that sort of thing was always a struggle for him.

“Well, the real test is tomorrow in the meeting.”

“I thought you had dealt with a meeting by now,” Heath says, digging into his potatoes, now that Ramses has surrendered.

“I’ve been to a meeting, yes,” Angela explains, “but I’m running this one.”

“It’s a big deal,” Marie says, trying to sound supportive, but realizing immediately that it also makes it sound like a lot of pressure. “You’ll do great.” Saved it.

“Thanks, but...”

“But nothing. You’re me, and I rock in those meetings, so you will too.”

“Who was that guy we met in the simulation?” Angela asks. “Somehow, we ended up teaching him how to play horseshoes? You remember?”

“Oh. Uh, Cyrano. What about him?”

“Well, we saw him at that restaurant something like fifty years later. He had won a ghosting mod in a raffle, and was using it to—”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” Marie recalls. “He was, like, hypnotizing people to make them say weird things to their dinner dates? I don’t remember how he did that part, or why we were able to see him. But yeah, I remember him. Why?”

“You could basically do that,” Angela suggests. “I could wear an earpiece and video glasses, and you could just tell me what to say, and how to act in the meeting. That way, I wouldn’t be able to screw it up.”

“Oh, right, that’s a great idea!” Marie says, giving Angela some hope. “Oh, but no, there’s a problem with that plan.”

“What?”

“The problem is I’m not going to do that.”

Extremus: Year 34

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Captain Kaiora Leithe of the Void Migration Ship Extremus wakes up with a throbbing headache. It’s unlike any she’s ever experienced before. It’s focused mostly around her eyes, which are red and maybe even a little misshapen? She goes over to her sink and flushes them out, which is an immediate relief. Her fingers feel smooth and oily now, like there was something in her eyes that’s coming out. That cannot be good. After drying off and taking another look in the mirror, she turns to teleport to the executive infirmary. A blinking blue light on her desktop device gives her pause. She’ll just take a quick look at the message, and if it’s not important, she’ll ignore it and leave, but if it’s really important, she’ll put off the self-care. Heck, it may even be about her eye problems. “Computer, play the message, please.”

An image of herself appears on screen. At first, present-day Kaiora believes the playback is frozen, but then the past version of her blinks. She’s just staring at the camera for a moment, seemingly waiting to find the words. “Good morning, Kaiora, it’s Kaiora. This is not a trick, I have something important to tell you. Authentication code shadow-schwa nine-eight-five-six-seven-three-oh. You may not be feeling great right now, but it’s going to be okay. According to the drug facts on the bottle, normal side effects include headaches, sensitivity to light, burning or itchy eyes, short-term confusion, irritability, and...”

“And what?” Kaiora questions.

“And fragmental phantom memories.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means that you’ll have flashes of the day that you lost, and while you’ll eventually also forget these fragments, you will remember that you had them, and that may cause the irritability.” Is this a recording, or is she actually responding to Kaiora’s questions?

“Did you eat all of the cookies?” present-day Kaiora asks, testing to find out whether there’s a real person on the other side of the screen.

“Anyway, it’s important that you don’t investigate, or try to remember anything that happened yesterday.” Okay, probably a recording. Probably. “You did this to yourself. You consented to the procedure, and no one else knows about it. I obviously can’t tell you why you erased your memories, but it was the right thing to do, and extremely necessary. On an unrelated note, do not look for Admiral Olindse Belo’s second disappearance. Make up a story about why and how she left the ship. The fact that it’s classified works to your advantage. You’re the Captain, you don’t have to tell anyone anything.” The recording of Kaiora breathes in deeply. “I think that’s it. I just wanna reiterate that everything’s gonna be okay. I have to go actually do the thing that you’ve already done, but...happy new year!” She smiles, and the picture freezes.

Kaiora frowns, and looks over at the clock. It’s not the new year. It’s February 2, 2303. She looks back to the screen, and sees the blue light blinking again. There’s a second message. She selects it.

Another recording of herself comes up. This one looks sad and nervous. “Captain’s log, January 2, 2303. I just woke up to find a message to myself. I was obviously meant to watch it yesterday. I don’t...I don’t know if it wiped more days than I realized it would, or if it, uhh...if I just didn’t wake up until now, or what. I can’t imagine it’s the second option. I mean, someone would have noticed the captain was missing for a day. I still don’t want to tell anyone that anything happened. I don’t know what happened, so there wouldn’t be much to tell. Past!Me didn’t want anyone to know about it, so I don’t either. I’m just gonna go through my day, and hope that no one asks me about yesterday. Ya know, if I agreed to—I dunno—release Halan from prison, or officiate someone’s wedding, I’m not gonna remember what they’re talking about. Hopefully, it will resolve itself by tomorrow morning, but I’m recording this in case something else goes wrong.”

Blue light again, a third message. This version of Kaiora is the most upset yet. “Captain’s log, January 3, 2303. I just watched two videos I evidently made for myself. I don’t remember December 31, I don’t remember January 1. I don’t remember January 2. In case you’re watching this on January 4, there’s a weird, silky, film on my eyeballs.” She lifts a little green bottle of eyedrops, and shakes it in front of the camera. “It’s probably memory-erasing stuff, but it’s empty now!” She throws it across the room. “So if you’re still feeling that tomorrow, something fishy is going on. I’m going to record another video at the end of the night, giving you a rundown of everything I did today. Like I said, I don’t recall the last few days, and that led to some awkward moments that made me look like an idiot. I don’t want Future!Me to go through that again. I’m still choosing to not tell anyone that I erased my memories, or that it apparently can’t wear off at some point. January 4!Me, January 5!Me, January 6!Me, and so on, you’re going to have to decide that for yourselves. I can’t make that decision for you, but I don’t think anyone should know about it, because it would really put Olindse in danger. Okay, so that’s it for now. As previously mentioned, I’ll record another one so you’re not lost tomorrow. Today. Your today, my tomorrow. ARGH!”

The blue light comes on again, but Kaiora ignores it, and navigates to the folder where the clips are being stored. There are 33 video files in there. Past!Her has made one for every day, presumably to catch the spotless minded new versions up on the goingson of the ship. Each one is several minutes long. It’s going to take, like, three hours to watch all of the rest. What captain has that kind of time? Wait, some of them are tagged obsolete. She must have rendered those ones redundant with further updates. Even so, this is not a sustainable solution. The memory wiper chemicals must be severely corrupted, or maybe just old and expired. If only she could find the bottle, it may provide some answers. Kaiora gets on her hands and knees by the dresser, and looks around on the floor, hoping it’s still there somewhere. No luck, but that’s not super surprising. A different past version of her probably grabbed it at some point, and may have decided to throw it away. Or one of them found it, and a different one threw it away, because the whole point is she can’t remember any of this!

Something has to change. This version of Kaiora has to break the cycle, or no one will. So she calls Dr. Holmes. “Hey, are you busy right now?”

“I’ve been expecting your call,” Dr. Holmes replies. “Come on down.”

Kaiora cleans herself up, and gets dressed. Then she teleports to the infirmary.

“Glad you could make it,” Dr. Holmes says. “Have a seat.”

Kaiora hops up onto the table.

The doctor begins a cursory examination; ears, nose, and throat. “Did you watch Episode 33?”

Oh, so she knows. “I stopped after the first three. So you’ve known about this the entire time?”

“No at all,” Dr. Holmes promises. She feels Kaiora’s lymph nodes. “You came to me yesterday, and said that something had to be done about this.” She finishes the exam, and begins to pull off her gloves.

“And...?”

Dr. Holmes takes off a necklace with a key on it. She unlocks a cabinet with it, and takes out a bottle, which she hands to her patient. “And I concocted this.”

“This doesn’t look like a very pleasant way to squirt something in my eyes.”

“That’s because it doesn’t go in your eyes. It’s a nose spray. One shot in each nostril before you go to bed. When you wake up, you should have your memories back.”

“You’re sure it’ll work?” Kaiora rolls the bottle in her hand.

“Only one way to find out.” Dr. Holmes takes a burnbag out of her pocket, and hands it to Kaiora too. Most of the waste on this ship is recycled, to the best of their ability. In fact, everything that can possibly be constructed out of aluminum is as such, because it has 100% recycle potential. There is no limit to how many times it can be reused, which makes it an invaluable resource in a closed system. Of course, they can mine raw materials from nearby planets by using a form of time travel, but that demands energy, and isn’t the best option in most cases. Still, there are some things that need to be destroyed, either because the waste is a health hazard, or because it contains sensitive information. A bottle of memory restoration solution is a little bit of both, because it could be used as leverage, or to gain knowledge of things that not even the original user wanted to keep. The best way to get rid of it is to place it in this bag, and teleport it to the stern of the ship, where the powerful force from charged relativistic plasma melts pretty much anything.

“You’ve not been able to test it?”

“Not in a day. You can wait, but...”

“No.” Kaiora takes the bag. “I’ll try it. I trust you. I don’t want to remember what happened, but it seems there is no other way.”

“Make a 34th video, just in case it doesn’t work,” Dr. Holmes advises.

“Thanks doctor, and...”

“And I already have this programmed to delete from my own memory tonight. It’s easy to target memories when you know they’re coming.”

“Thanks again.” After making a pitstop to drop her goodies off in her cabin, Kaiora heads for the bridge, where Lieutenant Seelen is waiting to go through the morning briefing. Once that’s done, she goes about her day, and doesn’t run into any awkward situations, even though she never did watch those latter highlight videos. No one seems to suspect a thing. It is a pretty big day, though, with a lot of running around, putting out fires. It feels like she’s busier than she has been lately, though that doesn’t mean much, because even with the videos, she wouldn’t have much idea what the past month has been like. At the end of the night, she is so exhausted that she jumps back to her cabin, and literally falls faceforward on the bed. She completely forgets to take the nose spray that the doctor gave her.

That night she dreams of Olindse Belo, jumping into a portal to the future. That’s it. That’s what she was so afraid to remember. They risk deconstructing the timeline if anybody knows even a little bit of what’s coming.

When she awakens, she remembers asking Dr. Holmes for help on Day 11, and that she has received the so-called memory restoring nose spray 22 times since then.

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Microstory 1397: Evidence

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Fiore Stern [on audio recording]: Yes, I agree. We should nip it in the bud, lest you poison the world with your claims about me.

Psychiatrist [on audio recording]: Mr. Stern, what are you talking about?

Fiore Stern [on audio recording]: Why don’t you stop recording, and I’ll explain.

Psychiatrist [on audio recording]: Stop. Don’t touch that. Please keep your distance, Mr. Stern. Mr. Stern! If you don’t—

Detective: That was the last recording from your psychiatrist. We couldn’t find a local copy on her computer, so I bet you erased it without realizing her sessions are automatically uploaded to the cloud so her assistant can transcribe them for her later.

Fiore Stern: Why are you playing this audio for me? If you want me to sue the psychiatric practice for breaching my privacy, then okay, I’m in.

Detective: That’s not why you’re here, and you know it. Madam Psychiatrist was killed two days ago. Her assistant happily supplied us with this evidence, because it appears to suggest you killed her to cover up whatever it is you shut off the recording to prevent anyone from finding out about.

Fiore Stern: Well, play the rest of it.

Detective: There is no rest of it. That was it.

Fiore Stern: Oh? So you don’t actually have any evidence that I killed her. All you’ve heard is that my psychiatrist didn’t want me touching her crystal awards, and then some kind of technical malfunction ended the recording.

Detective: You literally ask her to stop recording, and then your voice becomes slightly louder, which suggests you approached the microphone. You’re not going to get me to believe you didn’t turn it off. Now all I have to do is prove that you killed her. And honestly, I don’t really care why you did it; just that you go down for it.

Fiore Stern: This  is exactly what’s wrong with this country. You’re so eager to punish whoever you find first, you end up letting a lot of guilty people walk away unscathed.

Detective: You didn’t seem to hate the authorities very much when you were praising how well they handled your case with that bomb-making organization you worked for.

Fiore Stern: I was playing nice for the cameras, but the truth is that company wasn’t even on anyone’s radar. Hell, the Financial Regulation Commision didn’t even suspect there was something wrong with their books. I only needed the authorities, because I’m not allowed to arrest people. You’re completely incompetent, and totally pointless without people like me.

Detective: I suppose that’s true. I wouldn’t have a job if killers like you didn’t exist.

Fiore Stern: That’s not what I was talking about—I mean, that’s not what I meant, because I’m not a killer, and you have nothing on me.

Detective: I have an adjudicator working on a warrant for your apartment as we speak.

Fiore Stern: Great, I’m happy for ya. All they’ll find is a stack of dishes I wasn’t able to clean before you so rudely forced me to come down to the station, and a bunch of requests for book deals to tell the world my story. When you don’t find anything illegal, I’ll have even more material for a tell-all book. It’ll be a scathing indictment of Usonian Law EnFARCEment.

Detective: The warrant’s just for safety. We didn’t need one to search your greenhouse.

Fiore Stern: What?

Detective: Yeah, we had probable cause. One of our officers saw some splatter on the glass that looked a little like blood.

Fiore Stern: It was paint. I use some of those plants to make art supplies.

Detective: No matter. We couldn’t know for sure. The only way we could run a test to see whether that was true was if we went in, and procured a sample.

Fiore Stern: This will never hold up in court. A little red on the window isn’t enough for probable cause. Besides, I built that greenhouse with my own two hands in the middle of the woods, which means there aren’t any public records of a property, so you couldn’t have known about it unless you broke the law to peek at my GPS history.

Detective: We didn’t need that. Your mother told us where to find it.

Fiore Stern: She doesn’t know anything.

Detective: She’s seen you go out there. She’s worried about you, Mr. Stern. You’ve always been a dark person with a frightening fascination with deadly plants.

Fiore Stern: You can go to hell.

Detective: We have you, Mr. Stern. You don’t have to tell us anything. Everything will come out in court, but you can help your situation if you talk to us now. Start by telling me how your colleagues from the garden team died.