Microstory 2748: One One Cocoa Full Basket

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Elise Perkins has dropped her rapping iron again. All of her tools can float except for that one. It keeps sinking to the bottom of the pool, and every time she dives down to retrieve it, she ends up pushing all of her other tools away, so she has to swim around to get those back too. She has taken so many courses here, but has never found a class called Keeping Track of Your Stuff 101. She did find underwater basket weaving, though. She knows it started as a joke, but she’s having fun with it, despite the drops.

Her basket is fairly complete at this point, so she uses it as a little liferaft for her other tools while she very carefully sinks below the surface herself, and slowly swims down to find the rapping iron. It’s an awkward shape, so it doesn’t always land right below. The chlorine stings her eyes as she’s hunting for it. She could have designed a body for herself that doesn’t feel that kind of inconsequential pain, but she wants to immerse herself in the culture. She wants to feel what her ancestors felt when they were doing these kinds of things. She wants to be authentic.

She spots it. Huh. It’s right next to another one. Wait, no. That one isn’t a rapping iron. What the hell is that thing? No one else is in the pool right now. Did they really drop something earlier, and it was never picked up? It’s not like the droids to make such a mistake. She swims towards it, but before she can catch it, the second metal object latches itself onto her iron and they both begin floating upwards. She keeps grasping at them, but they’re moving too fast. She follows them up to the surface, only noticing then that someone is standing on the pool coping. Are they trying to steal her tool? Who the hell would do that? It’s not worth anything. They can get their own!

Elise makes one final push. She takes hold of her rapping iron, as well as the magnet, and the string it’s attached to. She yanks it away, which causes the figure to totally faceplant into the water. Serves them right. But now there’s a problem. What if this stranger is a serial killer? Now she’s in a very vulnerable position with a person who she has just royally pissed off. She breaks the surface quickly, and swims the rest of the way to the wall so she can pull herself up. She hears a bunch of splashing behind her.

The stranger is flailing about, trying to keep their head above water. They’re panicking, and can clearly not swim. Well, maybe it’s not so clear. They could be faking.

This is ridiculous. Elise is immortal, and there’s security all over the place. She doesn’t have to be afraid. So she jumps back in, thankful that she learned to become a certified lifeguard not two months ago, and rescues the non-swimmer.

The stranger is still panicking as she scrambles out of the water, and lies on her back on the deck to catch her breath.

Elise stands there patiently, wringing water out of her hair, and adjusting her bikini, which magnet girl nearly tore off of her during the struggle.

The woman rolls over to her side, and stands back up. She stares awkwardly at Elise. “This is not how I wanted this to go. How embarrassing that I should not know how to swim. I just...didn’t think you would pull me in.”

“I didn’t think you would try to steal from me,” Elise replies.

“That was only my way of introducing myself. I thought it would be funny.”

“Well, it wasn’t. It was just confusing, and honestly, a little scary for me. I change substrates when I feel like it, but I never let my body die. I have an aversion to pain.”

“I get it,” the woman says. She takes a deep breath, and holds out her hand. “Hi. I’m Ciaragie Benetton, but everyone calls me Rage. Don’t worry, it’s ironic. It might not seem like it, but I’m typically very cool under pressure.”

“My name is not important,” Elise replies. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I would like to get back to my basket.” She starts to scan the surface because now her tools will have scattered all over the place. She sees her basket first. It is completely mangled and broken. She looks back over at Rage. “You ruined it. I’ll have to start over.”

“I’m sorry, Elise. I should have said just hello, like a normal person.”

“How do you know my name?” Elise questions.

“I came here to find you,” Rage explains as she’s stripping naked. “I’m putting together a team to compete under Treasure Hunting Dome. I believe that there is a secret, hidden level to be played. I believe there is a prize which no one has ever heard of, let alone attempted to locate. I’ve been going around, finding the best of the best from people who have experience in other domes. I myself have spent decades in Escape Dome. But I also have a navigator, and adrenaline junkie, even an anthro—”

“I’m sorry, what the heck does this have to do with me?” Elise asks. “I’m not the best of the best at anything. I spend my time learning archaic skills, like underwater basket weaving, and bricklaying. You must have me confused with someone else.”

Rage shakes her head. “No, you’re who I’m looking for. I don’t know what you know about Treasure Hunting Dome, but the challenges often involve exactly things like those skills. Some are inherent, like digging through a haystack to find a data-needle which contains your next clue. But for some of them, completing the challenge is just what tells the Exemplar that you deserve the clue, so they hand it to you.”

Elise sighs. “It’s not really my thing. As I was saying, I enjoy the quiet. I don’t wanna go on an adventure. When I’m not here, I’m reading classics in Branch of Babel, or relaxing on a boat in Raindome. I don’t do fun. I don’t do challenges.”

“You don’t wanna do anything with what you’ve learned,” Rage presses. “So you can weave a basket underwater. So what? It’s not like the world needs more baskets. You don’t even need a basket. You could print one in minutes.”

Elise points to the water. “That was supposed to be mine. It was going to be something that I made myself. No, I don’t need a basket, but I want a basket that’s one hundred percent unique. It wasn’t programmed, it wasn’t generated. It would be mine. My house is filled with things that I have created with my own two hands. I made the house itself...on my own...from scratch. That’s what makes me happy. I do it for me, and no one else. I don’t expect someone like you to understand that.”

“I understand,” Rage argues. “Oh, I understand better than you think. The prize for winning an escape room is getting out of the escape room, which you already were before you voluntarily went in. We collect the same things. We collect experiences.” She holds her hand out again, but this time not to shake. “Come with me. Let’s experience something neither of us has before, which I believe no one in the universe has. You might not be able to put a physical object in your home, but you’ll never forget it.”

Elise stares at Rage’s hand with a frown. That’s a pretty convincing argument, she has to admit it, if only to herself. “I’m not promising anything, but I am willing to listen. Tell me more about this Treasure Hunting Dome.” She doesn’t take her hand.

Rage smiles as she drops her arm. “Let’s meet the team first.”

Microstory 2746: Undercover Boss

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I understand,” the Klavis replies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Microstory 2741: Cosmic Contraction

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Things are moving quickly, and it’s time to make some moves. Their pocket universe is getting smaller by the minute, and at this moment, a small construction base is in danger. Pribadium!Two was on her way to the dimensional barrier when it dispatched her to the other side, destroyed her ship, and killed her. She was intentionally attempting to cross it. Even so, the still-living Pribadiums have no reason to believe the same thing won’t happen to someone who gets caught up in it when the barrier descends upon them. They need to leave now, and there’s no time to explain.

“I can do it,” Runaway claims. “I can make them move to the escape pods, and head in this direction. Is that what you want? It has to be a joint decision.”

“Why do we have to agree?” Pribadium!Zero questions. “You have the power.”

“This won’t be all on me,” Runaway reasons. “If something goes wrong, I will accept responsibility, but not alone. We have to come to a consensus.”

“Yeah, get them out of there,” Pribadium!One decides, shaking her head.

“Absolutely. Agency is great until it’s an emergency. We can clarify later.” Pribadium!Zero then looks over at Sora, as do the other two.

Sora nods, but doesn’t vocalize his response. He’s kind of staring into space.

“Is that your answer?” Pribadium!One asks him. “Do you agree with us?”

“Me?” Sora asks. “Wait, I get a say in this too? Since when?”

“Since always,” Runaway insists. “You’re the only other one here who has any clue what’s really going on around here. We expect you to shoulder the burden as well.”

Sora takes a deep breath. “Yeah, sure. For this one question, I agree with the group. Morality takes precedence over ethics every time. But I want out. I don’t want to make any other decisions. You three may see yourselves as different people, but one of these things is not like the other, and I’m clearly the outlier. I have no business making decisions that impact a whole universe, no matter how small that universe might be.”

The girls don’t really agree to his pleas, but they have to move on. Runaway piles the workers and colonists into two escape shuttles, and pilots them away from the oncoming barrier. The nearest outpost is Tau Station. Before the event, it was on a wide orbit around Barnard’s Star, and would have taken ten years to complete a single revolution. It’s still attempting to complete that orbit, because the star system’s barycenter has not changed. It won’t make it unless it too moves out of the way. Which it can do. Pribadium!One decides to use it as a hub. As others need to be moved out of harm’s way, that is where they will all go. They really shouldn’t all be coming here.

After the immediate threat is over, the ladies continue working, to understand Runaway’s abilities and limitations, and to hatch a real plan. They have two objectives: to save everyone trapped here, and to pull this region of space out of its current state of reality. Whatever they end up doing, it all needs to happen at the same time, so neither move interferes with the other. That’s what Pribadium!One has to pivot to now, figuring out how they’re actually gonna get this pocket universe fully into the bulk.

They probably only have a couple of days to make this work before it becomes all but pointless. If they wait it out, the walls will literally close in, and they will end up with only one objective. Everyone will have to escape, even if it means abandoning the pocket altogether. Pribadium!One is more determined than ever to not let that be the outcome.

The universe seems to have other plans. The contraction of it is accelerating.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 20, 2564

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Time was weird in Romana’s simulation. Ramses and Leona worked the problem for the better part of three days before they were able to get Mateo and Boyd out of there. And they did get Boyd out of there too. They didn’t have a physical body for him to inhabit, since they didn’t know his wishes, but they moved his IDCode to a new server, and isolated him from Romana’s original system. They then ran a bunch of diagnostics on him, and medical tests on Mateo, to determine whether there were any lingering risks associated with them having been trapped in there.

Romana was devastated, but otherwise all right. Beyond her artificial implants, she wasn’t presenting any other signs or symptoms. She appeared to be physically and neurologically healthy. Still, Ramses extracted the implants, and flushed her of any dangerous foreign bodies. It was a relatively simple procedure, because it was one of the first things immersive VR researchers came up with, under the concern that something like this could happen. The only reason they didn’t do that earlier was because of her visitors. She was not saying much, save for apologizing profusely. It wasn’t her fault.

Mateo was pissed. Someone did this to her. It could not have simply happened incidentally. Glitches did happen, of course, but there was too much intent from the monsters. They were far too organized and driven. Of course, Mateo still didn’t know what they would have done if they had caught up to the humans, because they didn’t give them the chance, but they certainly weren’t trying to say hello, and they weren’t random. When he found whoever was responsible, they were gonna wish they had targeted someone else.

“That may not be what happened,” Leona said. “It may not have been an attack.”

“You didn’t see them,” Mateo argued. “They were absolutely relentless. Boyd and I literally had to keep running. Thank God I was able to shut off some of my bio-responses, or I would have grown too tired to make it.” He shook his head.

“The blobs,” Leona began. “Why did they chase after you at all? If they were a part of the system, why not simply materialize right in front of you. You didn’t actually run anywhere. You were only ones and zeros, as were the blobs themselves.”

“Exactly,” Mateo reasoned. “They weren’t a part of it. That’s how I know someone put them in there. It couldn’t have been your average file corruption, or whatever.”

“I have another hypothesis,” Ramses jumped in. “I think it could have been natural and unintentional. I think they were a part of her, but not the simulation.”

“What, like her antibodies, or her stress hormones?” Mateo questioned.

“Something like that,” Ramses went on. “Do you remember when Romana was abducted by the original Boyd? He placed her in a dark particle stasis field.”

“Yeah, it changed her,” Mateo said. “It made her just like him. That’s over now.”

“Perhaps not,” Ramses suggested. “I’m still detecting periodic neutrino collisions inside of her body, and in yours. It would be nothing to be worried about, it means your bodies can handle it. But it looks like her mind is being negatively impacted.”

“Well, she’s been dark particle-free for weeks, and nothing. What’s changed?”

Ramses frowned at Mateo sadly, but didn’t say anything. He looked nervous.

“Me,” Mateo surmised. “I visited her simulation. I have lingering dark particle-ness too.” He had to sit down. “I did this to her.”

“It’s not your fault either. It’s just nature,” Leona said comfortingly. “It could also be this star system. Different stars, different solar flux.”

“Fix this,” Mateo demanded. “Do whatever you have to do, even if it hurts.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 19, 2563

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Monster might not have been the right word to use for them. They were amorphous blobs that shifted their shapes as they moved in unpredictable ways. They were mostly a navy blue, though hints of other colors randomly appear like twinkling stars. They had no faces and no limbs, but they were heading right for the trio. Mateo didn’t know if Romana and Boyd were as worried as he was, so he took his eyes off of the apparent attack to study their faces. They both looked just as surprised as they stood up from the picnic blanket, and tried to back away. This was evidently not normal.

There were more monsters behind them, coming from up the ridge, in the tree branches, and even from burrows in the ground. The landscape and foreground objects, like the picnic supplies, started flickering. The waterfall moved backwards, and then forwards at superspeed. It wasn’t just that there were monsters in this world. It was that the world itself was unstable. The simulation was clearly corrupted. They would have to take it out of Romana’s head. But first, they had to find a way out of it. Any amount of time could have passed in the real world for them. She was not in control anymore. Perhaps she never was.

“We have to get out of here,” Mateo pointed out as they were running through the one gap they found between the monsters. “You leave first, Romy. I’ll follow.”

“She can’t leave,” Boyd argued.

“I don’t know if you’re real or not,” Mateo said to him, “but if you love her like you’re supposed to, you’ll let her save herself. I don’t know where you could go, but—”

“No, it’s not that,” Boyd argued. “The nanites are in her brain and body. She can’t simply log out. Whatever is happening will still be happening, and could still be damaging her. But at least here, she can see what’s going on from the inside.”

“Our friends don’t necessarily know that something has gone wrong,” Mateo reasoned. “We have to leave so we can tell them, so they can solve it from their end.”

“You go,” Romana urged. “Tell Ram and mother. I will stay and maintain the link.”

Mateo stopped, and stopped her by the shoulder. They had covered some ground. “That doesn’t make sense. You need to be able to talk to them about what you’re feeling, and what you’re thinking. They need to be able to ask you questions. I will stay here.”

“Time is different when she’s not here,” Boyd explained. “I don’t have to wait a full year for her to come back, but I do spend some time alone, so I live more like a normal person, instead of a program that she just turns on and off. Whatever these things are...”

“They could be messing with that.” Mateo turned back to his daughter. “That’s why you need to go. Please. We’ll take care of each other. If he were the original Boyd, or if he’s not; it doesn’t matter. I don’t know how to test for that. I have to assume that he’s a conscious being, so I will fight for him like I would anyone else.” He waited. “Now go!”

Romana gave Boyd a hug and a kiss, and Mateo only a hug. Then she disappeared.

“Do you have any idea what these things are?” Mateo asked. “Can we fight them?”

“I wouldn’t know, but I wouldn’t try. They might kill you. Just by touch, they might genuinely destroy your IDCode, leaving your body an empty husk in base reality.”

The monsters were closing in on them again, so they started running off again. “Can we simply shift to a different environment?” Mateo asked. “Anywhere but here.”

Boyd extended his hand, then transported them away when Mateo took it, but no matter where they jumped, the blobs were always in the exact same place, relative to their positions. The blobs could pass through solid objects, so the only way to stay ahead of them was to run. The humans had to keep running for a week before rescue came.

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Microstory 2723: Not Part of the Plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Microstory 2722: People in Glass Houses

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“Go ahead and ask your questions,” Pribadium encourages. She’s a good liar, so he can ask whatever he wants, it doesn’t mean he will get the answers he expects.

“How many like you are there out there?” Sora asks as if it’s a complete thought.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pribadium says. “Asset managers, or Chief Asset Managers? I’m the only CAM. There are a few other asset managers below me. There are other chiefs. Would you like me to list them?”

“I’m not talking about chiefs or asset managers!” Sora cries. “I want to know how many immortals there are! Stop dancing around the subject! I know what you are!”

Pribadium is confused. “How many immortals? Billions, I guess. I don’t have the numbers. Did you check the aggregate records? Those stats are probably in there.”

Sora shakes his head, growing even more frustrated. “Not people who became that way through life extension consciousness digitization. I’m talking about real, totally unkillable immortals who can survive being thrown into the air by a pyrotornado, and later falling several kilometers down a giant chasm in the planet.”

Pribadium stares at him. She has no clue what he’s going on about. “That’s not possible. No substrate is strong enough to survive what you’re describing.”

“Well, I saw it happen.” He sighs, seemingly working through a debate in his own head. “Tertius. Does the name Tertius mean anything to you, or Aeterna?”

“I have never heard of them. Are they bands, errr...?”

“Quit joking, and quit lying,” Sora whines. “They’re real immortals. They survived the impossible. I know you know them. I heard them whispering about you in the north dome. They said that survivors of Proxima Doma would end up here, and that you would be able to help. They acted like they knew you, and now here we are on Gatewood.”

She continues to stare. She isn’t lying. She genuinely doesn’t know who that is. The number of people in the timeline who have temporal abilities is a low fraction compared to the total population, but it’s still too many for everyone to know everyone. She has never cared to meet more. “Maybe they knew me, but I didn’t reciprocate.”

Sora buries his face in his palms. “You have to help us. You have to fix this.”

Before Pribadium can ask exactly what she wants him to fix, one of the other hostage-takers bursts into the room. “Shimizu. A Teaguardian is here.”

Sora’s eyes widen. He stands up, and paces frantically. “Shit. Get everyone to the tunnels. Hide. If they can’t find you, they can’t make you leave. I’ll watch the prisoner.”

A soldier suddenly teleports into the room. “Chief Asset Manager Pribadium Delgado? I’m here to rescue you.” She raises her gun when Sora moves a single muscle.

“Wait!” Pribadium orders. “I need him alive. He’s undigitized. In my domain, killing him would be a crime. We had a deal with Teagarden. You shouldn’t be here.”

“I just go where I’m told, CAM Delgado. We need to leave now.” They are about to glass this planet.

“That is not necessary,” Pribadium starts to explain. “We’re already doing it.”

“We know, but my superiors believe that there is not enough time for that. They’re going to do it the hard way. It will recoalesce, but that won’t help these people.”

Pribadium actively stops the soldier from teleporting her out of the room. “I’m sorry, but I’m not done here yet. And you gotta go.” She pushes the soldier into a portal, then turns back to Sora. “You can either come with me, or go with her. Your choice.”

Microstory 2691: Mettle

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Ronan and Mayumi are at the entrance, waiting for the elevator to lift up to the surface of their first dome. He’s staring at the screen, which is playing footage of the Nordome Network, as if they’ve not already bought into the adventure. He’s not paying attention to the video itself, but the fact that it’s on a screen. They weren’t invented until the 19th or 20th centuries. That seems like so long ago, and they’re jumping so much further into the past than that. But he’s not really thinking about that either. He’s thinking about that screen; about how it’s the last one he’ll ever see for decades. His character is 29 years old, and Mayumi was made to look about 18. Historically, she probably would have been younger, but there are limits to how authentic they’re going to be. This is wild west of the Charter Cloud. Castlebourne’s laws don’t care how old someone appears to be, as long as the totality of their experiences make them an adult. He’s never heard of any substrate-play which—he doesn’t want to think about it. They’re both adults. Their characters have been married for a year. She’s pregnant. That screen.

They’re sitting here with a couple dozen other people who are entering the simulation at the same time. The walls are gray and metallic in a very rustic way, almost like their means of bridging the gap between the modern era, and the Viking Age. Or maybe it’s just a cheap way to build since all this thing has to do is take you up to a forest that’s meant to look like one you would find in Danmörk on Earth. As he’s still watching that screen, getting a little bit of cold feet, Ronan starts to realize that the only reason the metaphor is creeping into his mind is because of what’s actually happening to his feet. At first, he thinks someone spilled their water, but then he sees that there’s way too much of it. The walls are leaking, and the pod is filling up fast. Others have noticed as well, and start to get worried. There are rules about what your substrate has to be. You can’t come in here as a condor, or have advanced physical traits, like the kind of strength a true Norsemen wouldn’t have ever been physically capable of achieving. And you can’t have gills. His and Mayumi’s consciousnesses are still streaming to the remote servers, and he suspects everyone else’s is too, but they still don’t want to die.

They’re floating now, the water is so deep. People are trying to find some kind of emergency hatch, or a way to contact help. Ronan looks over. The display is still showing the hype video, but it’s starting to shutter and shake. The lights are flickering, they’re about to die. Something bad must be happening on the surface, like a simulated hurricane so powerful that it’s breaking the fourth wall, and literally leaking into the infrastructure of the dome. All four walls suddenly separate from each other and fall away. The rest of the water rushes in so they’re fully submerged. He finds Mayumi, and holds her close to his chest as he looks up. There’s a light, filtering through the water, showing their way to escape. They kick their legs and breach. Ah, their supplies. Some of it is floating around, but some of it isn’t buoyant. The ocean floor isn’t too far away. He might still be able to reach it. “I’m going down for the tools!”

“Okay!” She yells. It is storming, though it’s probably not a hurricane. Splintered slabs of wood are scattered about, which weren’t in the elevator. It’s a shipwreck.

Ronan takes a deep breath, and dives back down. As he’s searching for their tool basket, he spots the elevator pod. The walls are coming back together as it’s dropping back down into the shaft. This is obviously not anywhere close to being an accident. The Custodians set up an elaborate way to introduce them to the world of the Norsemen, and they did it in spectacularly terrible fashion. He absolutely loves it, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to go back up there with nothing. He spots the basket, so he adjusts his heading, and goes for it. Someone else reaches it first. The stranger starts picking up the tools that fell out, and putting them back. Ronan is about to fight him for it, because that’s what a Viking would do, but then he sees something else. A young man is drifting around. His eyes are closed. He’s clean-shaven, wearing farmer’s clothing.

Ronan can’t vie for the tools and save the boy too. He doesn’t know who this is, but if he’s half as enthusiastic about this simulation as Ronan and Mayumi is, he wouldn’t want to die on his first day. Would they let him back in? Is there a waiting period for screwing up this badly this early? Plus, Ronan isn’t even sure that he’ll survive at all. You do not have to be immortal to come here. You have to sign a bunch of waivers, just like Mayumi did with baby Talus, but they will let you in if you really want to test your mettle. Yeah, he has to save this guy. He adjusts his heading slightly once more, and reaches the kid. He takes him by the underarms, and swims them both up.

“Ronan!” he hears Mayumi call. “Ronan, over here!” She’s holding onto a big wooden door. The guy who stole their tools is trying to find refuge on it too. “Get the hell off!” she demands, physically pushing him away. She wasn’t even there when he stole from them, but she has ver good instincts.

Ronan drags the victim over to the door, and together, they lift him onto it. Okay, back then, no one in the world had any clue how to perform CPR, but Ronan has his own rules and limits. He’s not going to compromise his integrity for what essentially boils down to a game. He went down there, and pulled this guy up, so he’s going to get the water out of his lungs, and make him breathe again, even if it’s not historically accurate. While Mayumi steadies the door, Ronan presses on the victim’s chest, and provides rescue breaths. He only does it for a few minutes, and never needs to take a break.

The boy lives. He instinctively turns to his side, and spits the water up. He coughs and breathes erratically as he fully returns to the land of the living, or rather the sea of the living. “Thank you!” he says when he gets the chance. “I’m an idiot.”

“It’s quite all right, son,” Ronan says. “Are you here with anyone?”

The boy shakes his head. “My character is an orphan who just escaped indentured servitude in search of a better life in Danmörk.”

Ronan smiles, and slaps him on the back, incidentally causing more water to spill out of his mouth. “Well, you’re gonna find it.” He looks over at the thief, who is trying to grab onto a skjöldr. It keeps flipping around, and as the storm starts growing even worse, he ultimately loses the tools to the deep. “Stop!” Ronan orders. “It’s gone! If we’re going to make it to that shore, we have to do it together!”

He continues to lead the participants. He figures out how to bring them all together, so no one gets pulled away by the waves. They make their way towards the land mass, which started out about a kilometer away. Man, these people really know how to make life interesting. He didn’t sign up to start this whole thing with practically nothing, but it’s the best thing that could have happened to him, and is only invigorating him. Now they have to really build something here. Now they have to fight for survival. The first step in their long journey is over, and it’s probably the easiest one they’ll run up against. They’ve made it. They start climbing up the beach. And so it begins.

Microstory 2685: We Have More Time Than We Thought

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Resi flies through the tunnel in his mind, searching for the vision that he’s meant to see. He spends more time in here than usual. So much passes him by, but it’s too quick for him to have any time to tell what other events he’s missing. He just keeps going and going and going until he sees it. Central Mountain. Framed in a circle like a painting on the wall. It’s terrifying. Smoke is billowing up into the air. Lava is rolling down the sides. People are dying. He can’t see that much detail yet, but he’s getting the feeling. It’s at the end of the line. This is the last thing that will ever happen to anyone on Yana. The painting grows larger as he draws near, and then he passes through the portal. Now he’s flying through the air. Unlike his other vision of this tragic fate, he’s not composed of the elements. He’s just a regular guy. A regular guy who can fly.

The still image begins to move in slow-motion, making it even more horrifying than it already was. Now he really can see the people dying on the ground as the ash overwhelms them. Bungulan aircraft are frantically flying in, trying to save as many as they can, but they won’t get anywhere near everyone. Catastrophe has struck, and the question is, is this what happens if Resi doesn’t report the truth to the island, or is it inevitable? Will people simply not believe him, or will he not even get the message out in time? He remembers Kartica in the caldera with him. She has that satellite phone. He has to make that call, or tell her so she can make it. That is, if he can trust her.

Resi doesn’t have enough information, but he can feel himself waking up. His body is stirring where it lies on the ground. He’s melting into the rock. He really will die, so he has to get this done before he takes that last breath. What he really needs is the date. He needs specific information when he makes that call. There’s a boat on the coast, taking evacuees in. Surely there’s a date there somewhere. He dives down towards the surface, and lands on the deck. No one can see him, because he’s not really here. They’re frantically scattered about, some using devices, but no one keeps still long enough for him to see a date. Don’t they know that he needs this? Don’t they know he can stop it?

He has to get to the bridge. It will have computers there. He dashes up and passes right through the wall like a ghost. As the vision is beginning to collapse, he gets only one decent look in the upper right corner of the nearest screen, but it doesn’t make much sense. The day and month are both fine. It’s the year that doesn’t make the least bit of sense. The number is weird and wrong; it can’t be right. He has to look around for something else. Maybe there was an EMP, and it screwed up all of the electronics?

He wakes with a start, not having had the chance to find any more clues to understand what it means. Still, it’s all he has to go on. He feels like he’s moments from death. “Pho—phone,” he ekes out, reaching his hand up aimlessly. He turns his head to find Kartica lying on her stomach next to him, probably as close to death as he is.

She fights to open her eyes. She reaches behind her back and pulls the phone off of the clip. She lifts it into the air, and starts swinging it around, delirious and confused, maybe seeing double vision. Their hands dance around each other for several seconds before they finally make contact.

Resi selects Caprice’s contact card, and tells the system to call her in whatever way will work. If point-to-point communication is best, do that. She answers, demanding to know where he and Kartica are, but there’s no time. “August 7, 0045.” She’s flummoxed. “That’s the date of the eruption. August 7, 0045.” He dies.

Microstory 2683: Desperate Remedies

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It’s been seven days. The hike was grueling, especially for Resi, who is not doing very well. He’s run out of medicine. It was supposed to last him a few weeks, but he took a little more than the recommended dose each time, and now he can’t even synthesize more. But this is it. This is his moment. If we can predict exactly when this volcano erupts, it will be worth it. He can die if he has to. Chaya, Caprice, and even Kartica will walk back down, warn the Bungulan scientist when it’s going to happen, and then they can craft their magical technology into a solution. The problem is, so far, he’s not seen anything. They stopped a few more times than they absolutely had to so he could take a nap. He needed the rest and recovery period, but he was also always hoping to trigger a new vision. Nothing came to him. Not even a hint. Every once in a while, Chaya would do something totally unexpected, like throw a fruit at him. One time, she tore off all of her clothes. Or rather, she was going to. He stopped her. Because he saw that she was planning on it. Which was great. Not only could he save her the trouble, but it also proves that changing the future is possible. They have to stop that volcano.

They’re on the rim of the caldera now, in the process of walking around the entire circumference. They’re moving even slower now; again, because Resi can’t keep pace, and because he’s trying to see something meaningful. Nothing is doing anything. He’s starting to think he made the whole thing up. Yes, he has visions of the future, but maybe this one is just a dream. Maybe that’s just what the Kidjum elixir does to his brain. Both things can be true at the same time without it being this complex web of connections. “Well, ladies, I don’t think this is doing us any good. I hope you at least see it as a good way to make your daily steps, because nothing else has come of it.”

They’re all breathing heavily, and nodding. They don’t want to agree with that assessment, but there’s no reasonable alternative. It hasn’t helped anything. Kartica drops her pack, and starts looking for something in it. “There’s one more thing we can try.” She takes her hand back out, coming back with a black box. She opens it, and as she does, dry ice vapor seeps out of the gap. Inside is one vial of Kidjum elixir.

“You told me not to take that stuff again,” Resi reminds her. “You said it was too dangerous.” He can’t admit that she was right to bring it. It only makes sense.

“It is,” she confirms. “But you look desperate, and honestly, so am I. You also look like you might not survive the night, so if you’re willing to take the risk, I am too.”

“Don’t do this,” Caprice urges. “She’s wrong. You will survive the night, and when we wake up in the morning, we’ll take the fast trail back down. If we think you won’t be able to handle it, we can call for a helicopter ride.”

“How would we do that?” Chaya questions.

“With this satellite phone.” She takes it out of her pack. The thing is giant, probably to accommodate a huge power source, so it never requires charging, and to make it harder to break. “I have a direct line to the Bungulans. I had to, it isn’t safe.”

Caprice and Kartica start arguing with each other, but Resi interrupts them. “I’ll decide.” He takes the sat phone, and then the box. “Let’s all have some dinner, then go to bed. “Okay?” He doesn’t get a response. “Okay?” He adds, “okay,” when they nod.

That night, he sneaks out of the tent he’s been sharing with Chaya, puts his shoes back on, and then begins the descent into the caldera. That’s where his visions are waiting for him. He knows it.

Microstory 2682: Seeing The Whole Thing

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Resi can see the future, there is no longer any doubt in his heart about that. The problem is that, no matter how hard he tries, he has been unable to return to the vision he twice had of the eruption of Central Mountain. Brooke has her special techy spaceship, which she used to study the volcano, which said that nothing about it suggests it’s going to become active anytime soon. That is more worrisome than anything, because if Brooke is right, and Resi is also right, then something insane and unpredictable is going to happen that changes the equation. The trick is determining what that might be, and Resi thinks he may know why the answer isn’t coming to him. As of now, all of his predictions are sourced from past and present data. They’re still supernatural, for lack of a better term, but he’s not just randomly pulling information that doesn’t exist yet. He has to anchor it to something that is real. He doesn’t have to be physically touching an object to know what’s going to become of it, but it sure helps.

The fact is, Resi has nothing been very close to the mountain before. It just hasn’t been a meaningful aspect of his life. The higher you go, the less arable the land is. He’s not one for backpacking. Some class projects have involved hiking it, or even climbing all the way to the summit, but he never ended up doing that. That seems to be something that has to happen now. Brooke offered him a ride to the top, but that might not be enough. What if the problem happens lower down, and just causes the eruption up top? What if there are clues along the way? She pointed out that there is too much acreage to cover, and he agreed, but he has to start somewhere, and it can’t be at the end. That’s what’s blocking his understanding of this terrible future. He keeps trying to skip to the end. Of course, that’s what it sounds like fortune-telling is, but again, he doesn’t think he can just tap a future date, and jump to it. He thinks he has to fast-forward. He doesn’t have to sit through it all in real time, but he does have to see it all. So he’s going on a trek. He’s finally going to see what all the fuss is about.

Brooke is gone now. She has other things to do with her life outside of Yana, and outside of Bungula. She charges him to keep quiet about what he learned about her, which will not be hard, because she hardly told him anything. He’s not going to be alone, though. Caprice and Chaya are both coming. They don’t think that they’re going to have any apocalyptic visions, too, but they want to help, and it’s safer for him to not be alone. If something bad happens, someone may need to call for rescue. They’re only a few kilometers into the journey. They’ve not even reached the switchbacks yet when Chaya informs them that someone has been following them the whole time.

“Okay!” Resi says quite loudly. “Spread out! Shoot anyone but each other!”

“No! Don’t do that!” Kartica comes out with her arms up.

“I was never going to. Don’t you know me yet?” Resi questions.

“I dunno, you may have changed, man,” Kartica points out.

“Why are you here?” Resi presses. “You weren’t invited.

“I know, but you need me. You’re going the wrong way.”

Caprice looks up. “I think we can see where the mountain is.”

“Yes, you’re going towards the mountain, and you’ll even be on a trail, but it won’t be the right trail,” Kartica insists. “The mountain...is basically a cone. If you’re trying to see the whole thing, the switchbacks will only keep you to one side of it.”

“What makes you think we’re trying to see the whole thing?” Resi asks her.

“Please.” Kartica is offended. “I’ve not taken my eye off of you since we met. I can show you where to go. It will give you a clearer picture. I want this more than anyone. I want it more than you. You were hesitant before, when I begged you to tell me what was going to happen. Don’t leave me out of it. Please.”

Resi stands there thinking about it. He takes a swig of his special medicine. It still isn’t curing him, but it’s treating his symptoms. It’s keeping him vertical. Unfortunately, he believes he may be experiencing diminishing returns, and it will stop doing anything at all, probably sooner than later. “Fine, you can help. But try not to commit suicide on the way, okay?”

“I couldn’t if I wanted to,” Kartica claimed. “They locked me out of the respawn system. If I die, that’s it for me.”

Foreshadowing.

Microstory 2681: Final Exam

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

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

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

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

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