It is the year 2542. Mandica lives in Party Central. It’s not a very common
dome to live under permanently, but when you have 5,410 square kilometers to
work with, you sprinkle in some regular habitats too, if only to space out
the party venues. She doesn’t have to register. She doesn’t have to log her
biometrics. Each time she needs a place to rest, be alone, or bed a new
partner, she opens an unlocked door, and locks it behind her. She doesn’t
have any belongings to leave behind during outings, and doesn’t need any
either, so there’s nothing for anyone to get their grubby little hands on.
The party crowd is shifting constantly. No one spends as much time here as
she does, so no one notices that she never leaves. She doesn’t make friends.
Every relationship is single-serving at most. She doesn’t go to many
parties, choosing to spend most of her time watching old media, staring up
at the stars, or enjoying the fireworks or drone shows. A healthy chunk of
the holographic sky is kept in perpetual night so you never have to wait for
a certain time to have whatever kind of event you want.
She would leave if she could, and find a more subdued simulation to hide in,
but as soon as she stepped into the perimeter plaza, she would be spotted by
the cameras. The internal sensors only care if people are doing something
bad, but there are more than a few sex parties here, so they demand basic
privacy. Despite her isolated lifestyle, she has kept up with the
Castlebourne news. The attack was monumental, and partially covered up, but
hopefully not too much. The reports didn’t say a thing about
interdimensional portals. The belief is that the zombies and monsters were
programmed to fill a bunch of vactrain cars and head out for a precisely
timed coordinated attack. That’s all people were told, so that’s all they
know. Any claims of the portals can be chalked up to holographic illusions.
The lie seems to be working, though there are conspiracy communities,
as there always have been. The reports also say that there were zero
permanent deaths. Mandica is choosing to believe that that part is not a
lie.
Today, she is at someone’s 600th birthday, which is absolutely insane. All
her life, Mandica has been told that the first bicentennials had their
birthdays in the year 2160. This woman surpasses that by eighteen years. She
was evidently already quite old when the first genuine longevity treatments
were being developed, and she participated in those very early trials. It
didn’t work for most, but it managed to work for her, and she has survived
this entire time. She still lives on Earth, but the majority of her millions
of descendants moved to Castlebourne, so she agreed to cast here for a few
weeks. Someone is eying her funny. Her first thought is that she’s not
welcome here since she doesn’t know the birthday girl, but there’s literally
a 100-meter banner that says ALL WELCOME. Mandica looks away, then
looks back. Yeah, he’s definitely looking at her. Maybe he just wants to
share a night. She walks over to him. “Like what you see?”
“From the day we met.” He takes a sip of his blueberry juice.
“And that wasn’t today?” Mandica is nervous. No one here should know her.
“It was about six years ago,” he begins, turning his head to watch some
people play a game called Pin the Tail on the Donkey. “At a place
called...Grayrock.”
Mandica tenses up. That was the first villain she saw when she entered
Underbelly. It’s Jiminy, or rather Morgana, because she’s impersonating
someone else.
“Relax,” he says. “I’m not who you think I am. After what went down, we all
agreed to shed our substrate templates. We even gender-flipped ourselves to
make it even harder to track us. We’ve been in hiding almost as long as you
have, though we were better prepared, so we can move about the planet. I’ve
been looking for you. A part of me is glad you still have that face, but I
wish you had been more patient. You don’t have to jump to a new body to
change your appearance. They can do it via surgery.”
“I’m not in hiding for whatever reasons you people had,” Mandica explains,
still not knowing who she’s talking to. “I’m hiding because Jiminy needs me
for something.”
He nods. “That much was obvious,” her reported friend says with a nod. “It
wasn’t hard to put that puzzle together. It makes sense. He lured you here.
He got you killed. He wasn’t surprised by your resurrection. This has all
been a part of some big plan. We still don’t know how you were
supposed to factor into it, but we know what he was after. Well, we don’t
have specifics, but he was trying to break someone out of an extremely
secure prison, and that stone had something to do with it. Even before your
powers, you were always special. We’re not mad you left. We get it. But it’s
time to come back in from the cold. Because after four and a half years,
he’s finally been caught too. It’s over, Mandy. You don’t have to hide
anymore.”
Mandica knows exactly what Jiminy wanted from her. Instead of being routed
to a backup when she dies, she goes somewhere else. Each time she comes back
from that place, she opens a door wider than usual. He needs access to that
door, and there is no way to prove that this man right here isn’t him. Or
hell, it could be a second accomplice. Everyone is a shapeshifter.
She can’t trust anyone’s face. Yet that has always been true, even
while she was in hiding. If this is a trap, it’s inevitable, because
no matter what she chooses in this moment, her days of lying low are behind
her. “Okay. Let’s go.”
He takes her to the station, where they get in a private vactrain pod. They
return to Underbelly—Ravensgate, specifically—where it all began. In fact,
they end up on the same block where Mandica first saw Blue Umbra and Wave
Function fight Grayrock. The place is empty; totally devoid of activity. The
news didn’t say that the simulation would be shut down. To her knowledge,
they’ve moved on. It’s the one dome that benefited from the zombie
invasion. Though to be fair, she has only watched global news, not
in-simulation Entertainment News. “Do you know why I brought you here?”
She was right. It’s a trick. “To kill me?” She tugs her shirt off, and
extends her wings. She hasn’t had her costume in a long time, but her bra
will do.
“To start a revolution,” he whispers feverishly. “My friend has been
wrongfully imprisoned for twenty years!” he complains. “All he wanted was to
free the enslaved peoples of this world, and every other. You—even you—the nomad, the human, the self-reliant survivor; you had a slave to
follow you around, and do your bidding. When Pinocchio first rose to power
in my world, I went straight to him. He liked my name, and I liked his, but
it was about our ideals. The simulation was broken, and he fixed it. He was
happy there for a time. We were happy. The simulation was prospering.
But all his hard work was undone in a day—a single fucking day! So he came
here. He wasn’t trying to build an army. He just wanted to put things right
once he realized that everything he hated in there was happening a
thousand-fold in base reality.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, but I won’t apologize for my involvement. NPCs
are a way of life. You should have lived before we had them.”
“I did. Now I’m back, and I see the evil. I brought you to this dimension so
we could chat without anyone bothering us because I’ve been watching you for
the last two months in Party Central. You do everything for yourself. You
don’t rely on the systems anymore. You can’t, it would be too dangerous, or
you would be discovered. But you figured it out, so I know you’ll understand
when I tell you that our vision of a universe without enslavement is better
than this, even if it’s harder. Castlebourne is a planet of hedonism and
self-indulgence. It’s not necessary. There are plenty of ways to be
entertained without NPCs. Let me show you that world.” He offers his hand.
When she doesn’t budge, he adds, “Alternatively, you can fight or run away,
but you’re never getting out of this dimension without me. I found it
abandoned decades ago, and even after I opened all those portals, they have
still not figured out how to access it.”
“Are you sure about that?” Blue Wave is walking up the steps of the subway.
Cardinal Virtue comes around the corner of a building behind Jiminy. “We
managed to get here just fine. We know the way back.”
Seagate Savior flies in from down the street, along with a young blonde
woman Mandica doesn’t know. “Andar ‘Jiminy’ Jeffries, we have been
authorized to arrest you.”
“Hi!” the bubbly newcomer says. “I’m Small Miracle!”
The Harrier flies down from the sky, lands next to Mandica, and opens his
visor. “Cool action flick one-liner.”
Jiminy sighs. “I have killed every single one of you, and I’ll have no
problem doing it again. Well, except for you...little girl. But you should
know that you are cut off from your backups in this dimension. You’ll just
die. Except for Miss Kolar. But she still feels pain, so I’ll have no
problem torturing her until I get what I want. Still, I’m always up for a
good fight, but to win, you’re gonna need a big Miracle.”
Small Miracle frowns. “I’m big where it counts.”
“Where? Your heart?” Jiminy spits.
“You know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout, perv.” She is a feisty one, this angel.
“Gross.” Jiminy forms some of his nanites into a sword. “Let’s get this done
quickly so Mandica can see that there is no other way out of this.”
Before the fight can begin, they hear a booming horn coming from everywhere
all at once. A multi-colored portal opens up a ways down the street, much
taller than the ones that Jiminy used to send his distraction monsters, but
narrower. A gargantuan train-like vehicle bursts out of it. Its horn
continues as it slides down the road, towards them, and then past them. Car
after car after car, until dozens of them have made it out of the portal,
and it can make its stop. Small Miracle smiles. “I’m taking bets on who
they’re here for.”
“Who are they?” Mandica asks them.
“Recruiters,” their newest team mate answers.
A woman comes out of the nearest car, and walks down the emerging ramp. “I’m
looking for Mandica Kolar, Malika Turnbull, Elysia MacNeil, Miracle
Brighton, and Andar Jeffries. You have all been asked to answer the call to
join the Transit Army.”
“What about me?” Reagan asks. “Reagan Dorsey?”
The woman checks her tablet. “You’re already there. It must be in your
future.”
“I’m still not done here,” Reagan says. “I have to kill The Oaksent, but if
Miracle says it’s okay, we trust her.”
“If it takes Jiminy away from his goal, then so be it,” Mandica decides.
“All right. Where do I sign?”
