Microstory 2668: Brooks Without an E

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Pollo AI text-to-video AI software

Resi walks into the common area of his wing where everyone is watching his nationwide address. Most of the kids here are from his Fold, but there are a few from different Folds. The TV version of him is just finishing up his speech. “To reiterate, House Kutelin is here to stay, but we are no longer accepting new members, and will be doing what we can to reinstitute the Kidjum so that Tambora can successfully return to its roots, and begin letting our collective subconscious help us find a happy and prosperous place for all adult citizens of the island. Thank you.”

The broadcast ends, everyone looks back at present moment Resi. “Sir, I don’t understand,” Banu says. “I thought we were starting a revolution.”

“We—” He has to clear his throat. “We don’t have the space or resources to take in more. Aren’t there three people in your room? Which one of you sleeps on the floor?”

“We were waiting for you to fix that for us,” Banu replies. “Something’s changed.”

“Yeah, who got to you? Speaker Lincoln?” Nita guesses.

“No, it wasn’t someone from the Assembly,” Banu says to Nita.

“Right. What did the Ambassadors say to you?” another boy, Rimba presses. “You spoke with them, and suddenly you’re on board with the Kidjum?”

“The Kidjum was supposed to return days ago,” Resi reminds them. “The Ambassadors have nothing to do with it. We can’t stop them from going back to the old ways. I wasn’t helping them before, but it’s gotten out of control. We’re being exiled, and we still don’t have anywhere to go. How am I meant to feed all of you?”

“So why have we been sabotaging the Kidjum this whole time if we didn’t want any more kids to join us?” Darima questions.

What the hell is she talking about? Resi telescopes his neck as far as possible. “Who’s been sabotaging the Kidjums? I’ve not ordered anyone to sabotage the Kidjums.”

“We’ve been wetting the coals to prevent them from conducting the fire ceremony,” Darima goes on. “We’ve been stealing sheets and cots, and sending cancellation messages to fifteen-year-olds, redirecting them here.”

Resi looks around at his Fold to see about half agree with Darima. Half look just as confused as he is. As his heart sinks, it buoys back up just a little bit when it appears Chaya is one of the clueless. He wouldn’t know what to do if he found out that the person he was leaving his sister with betrayed them. “Who told you to do that?”

Now everyone has a look of confusion on their face. “You did, sir,” Darima claims. “You’ve been sending messages this whole time. You were quite specific about what you wanted us to do. You even gave us keys to the Tadungeria.”

“I don’t have keys to the Tadungeria,” Resi argues, “because we don’t use it, because we don’t do the Kidjums. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but it wasn’t me. Raise your hand if anyone has spoken to me in person about stealing cots, or drowning coal.” He nods when no one raises their hand. “Well, there’s your answer.”

“It came from your address, see?” another girl claims, who isn’t even in his Fold, and probably shouldn’t be here for this discussion. Except apparently, this goes beyond this wing, to other members of the House. She shows him her device.

“I’m taking this.” He scans the group. “Where’s Arumay?” Their techiest tech wiz.

“Right here.” She’s behind him.

He hands her the device. “Find out who’s doing this, and how.” He goes back to the crowd. “From now on, you don’t do anything unless I tell you in person. This created an enemy that we don’t want. We can’t go up against a whole nation’s soldiers, and if the other nations get involved, that’s goodbye House Kutelin. Get ready to see God.”

Arumay hands Resi the device back after having barely any time to check it. “No one hacked the network. They just typosquatted. The emails came from resi dot brookes with an e in your last name, rather than resi dot brooks.” She scowls at everyone. “They’re just idiots. I think I remember getting an email from that address, inviting me to a new distribution pod. It went straight to my spam because I have decent filters.”

Resi sighs, and takes a moment to compose himself before he says something bad. “We are not sabotaging anyone. To be clear, this is not a revolution, a rebellion, or an insurgency. We were told that a fifth House was an option. We have since been told that it is no longer an option, and that we must leave. I can get us through this, but you have to work with me, not against me. Pay attention to the way we spell words. I will never just send you an order to do something that you’ve never done before. We will always have talked first. I was going to be fully transparent with you, but now I know that I have to keep secrets, like the Assembly. The Kidjum is not just something that we are allowing because they’re giving us no choice. Letting it go on is absolutely integral to my plan to find us a new home. I won’t tell you more than that, because now I don’t know who I can trust. One of you impersonated me and committed treason. Until I find out who that is, you’re going to have to trust me without reciprocation.”

“We thought this was going to make our lives better,” Kasati contends. “We thought we were helping push the island into the 26th century. But if things are going to go back to the way they were, and we’re not going to fight it, what are we even doing here still? My dream was probably gonna lead me to join Ilah. I might have ended up being adopted by your birth family. You took that from me with your lies. It doesn’t matter if we read the messages wrong. What they were telling us to do was exactly what we should be doing, and if we’re going to stop, then I’m going to demand that the Assembly allow me a latent Kidjum to make up for what I missed. But that’s up to you, Res. Is what you’re doing helping, or should we quit while we’re ahead?”

Resi shakes his head. “The Assembly never said that make-up Kidjums would be an option, but please, before you flood their inboxes with requests, allow me to ask on your behalf. If you wanna leave, you can leave, but if your exile applies whether you stay with us or not, you should know that there is no returning. You would be choosing to be exiled alone, and I won’t help you find a new place to live. I only help Kutelins. Give me two days to reach out to the Speaker before you make any irreversible decisions for yourself. And for the love of Yana, leave the Kidjums that are moving ahead alone.”

Some seem agreeable. Others look embarrassed for having been fooled by the fake emails. A few are still indignant, and will likely continue to be a problem.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make a new video so that our whole House knows where we stand, and that what I say goes. I’m First Tongue of Aether, I speak first. It will be coming from resi dot brooks, no e.” He leans over to Arumay as they’re dispersing. “Find out who sent those other messages. I wanna know who’s trying to get us killed.” Wait. “No e in my last name,” he clarifies to his Fold. “There is one in Resi.” He shouldn’t have to dumb this down. Maybe not everyone deserves to be in his Fold.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 6, 2550

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Pro text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3.1

Things were a little awkward at first. Leona was a lot less powerful than Senona originally believed. They didn’t think to ask Echo or Clavia about it at some point, or the truth might have been clarified earlier. Senona lived in another universe, and their access to information about other universes had its limitations. They were aware that one Leona Matic was a time traveler in Salmonverse, but not that there were multiple people who went by the same name. They were thinking of an alternate version of her, who was far more powerful, and therefore better equipped to help with the effort at Origin.

This other Leona was from a different timeline, and only survived the transition because she was the one who went back to the past to save Mateo from torture, thereby creating the new timeline. She had a number of different time powers, which she managed to procure using organ transplants. The exact details of her exploits remained a mystery to this day. Senona didn’t realize the discrepancy. It wasn’t like they hadn’t heard of alternate selves before. It was simply an unknown unknown to them. The issue was that Alt!Leona never promised to aid in the efforts at Origin. To their knowledge, she had never even been there. Once discovering the difference between the two, Senona’s initial reaction was to let this Leona return to her life with the team, but she didn’t want to do that. After she asked for her own wish way back when, Senona mentioned that they would have to call someone for aid. When she pressed for clarification, they explained that that was how it worked. They couldn’t do much on their own, and could not leave Origin themselves, so they always recruited others. Leona volunteered to be one of these agents should the need ever arise. It now had.

For two years, Leona was the boots on the ground of the operation. Even though she couldn’t do as much as the other Leona, she wasn’t powerless either. Besides her normal teleportation, Senona provided her with temporary abilities. These included the means to travel all over the bulkverse on her own, do so invisibly, and with a certain knack for persuasion. She also had a number of ancillary abilities, like stamina and strength, which let her do the job without getting sleepy or fatigued. She did still sleep, and had time off. In fact, she had full permission to travel to any universe she wanted, and do whatever she wanted. But like professional chess, the clock only ran while she was working, and she didn’t want to delay her return to the team.

Meanwhile—if such a concept had any relevance outside the normal passage of time—Olimpia and Ramses were getting to know their son, Echo. They didn’t have to do any work for those two years, though they joined Leona on precisely two occasions, when the wish went beyond her scope alone. Today was the last mission. After this was done, the team members would go back to Salmonverse to be with their friends. Clavia would return here, and rejoin her brother. They weren’t slaves or anything, but they were not allowed to live in Salmonverse. That was something that I decided long ago, and while I gave them a pass on that for recent stories, it was never going to be a permanent thing. They are too powerful. Any problem which comes up here can be solved nearly instantaneously if they’re involved. They got to go.

“We understand,” Echo said, psychically, but also out loud. “But I demand periodic visits.”

That can be arranged. We’ll talk later.

“Oh, are you taking requests?” Sanaa Karimi interjected from wherever she was in the timestream. “I would like a real life pink pony. Sparkly fur. It has to cuss a lot.”

Sure, I’ll get right on that. Hold your breath and wait.

“I’m gonna tear out your eyeballs, and jam your thumbs into them so you can’t type anymore,” Meredarchos added.

You know where I live, asshole.

With the brief and unhealthy transuniversal psychic conversation over, Echo refocused on this last mission. He and his parents wanted to help make it a good one.

Leona was watching him. “Everything okay?”

“It’s fine,” he replied. “What do we got?”

“This is a funny one,” she answered. She had barely finished her last job, and was still wearing her adventure clothes. Since she couldn’t be seen, this wasn’t necessary, but it helped her get in character. “Not funny, ha-ha; more funny, oh God. A young man is playing a game called Scourge of the Valley, and his older sister has asked that we make sure he wins. The way it works, you and your competitors are summiting a mountain. In this world, death is more of a nuisance, and not final in most cases. If you reach the summit first, it’s yours, but only temporarily, unless you made it there without killing anyone. If you killed anyone on the way to get an edge, they will come back as ghosts, and fight you for the summit. If you lose that second round, you will die for good. Our man is not a skilled climber, but he won’t try to kill anyone. He wants to prove that it’s possible to win without violence. She doesn’t think he can do it.”

“This sounds too easy,” Ramses decided. “All we have to do is kill everyone so this man doesn’t have to. He’ll win by default. As long as they really will come back to life, and it’s fine...”

“Senona doesn’t think it works like that,” Leona explained. “If we serve as the man’s agents, invisible or no, he will be technically responsible for those deaths. They will become his enemy ghosts. We have to keep them from winning without killing them. We have to give him what he wants: a clean and bloodless win.”

“That’s impossible,” Olimpia thought. “If this guy’s sister doesn’t think he’s a fast enough climber, he’s probably not. The competition is probably fierce, and they will be killing each other for that top spot. As soon as even one of them makes it, he’ll have no chance. It will be over. We can protect him from attacks, but we can’t help him climb.”

“Wait, what are the physical laws of this universe?” Echo questioned. “Do they have temporal manipulation? Can we just teleport him there without raising eyebrows?”

“They don’t have anything like that. However, according to the sister, they will probably accept something weird. If he’s at the summit, and didn’t kill anyone, he’ll win. The culture is really weird like that. But that’s just the bloodthirsty audience. Apparently, a lot is riding on this. It could potentially change the world, because no one has ever done it nonviolently. But that won’t work if we use tricks. It has to look like he did it the way he claims he will. That’s what the sister is really asking for, not only a simple win.”

They went quiet, and started thinking through the dilemma individually. Every once in a while, one of them would think they had an idea, or even articulate it, but it wouldn’t work. Too many ideas relied on people noticing that it didn’t seem genuine. Finally, however, Olimpia thought that she had it. “Help me understand how this multiverse thing works. Every dream anyone has ever had, and every story that has ever been told, exists somewhere as a real, tangible, universe?”

“Yeah, essentially,” Echo agreed. “Some are more stable than others, though. Dreams don’t last very long. If their laws of physics are weird, they won’t survive past the duration of that dream. Even if they’re mundane, they’ll probably collapse anyway, because of how fleeting they’re being observed and utilized. Branes based on stories are generally more stable, but the less popular ones still don’t last long.”

“I think the one I’m thinking of is pretty popular, so likely stable, but it still might look weird,” Olimpia began. “If all of the other competitors suddenly act confused, and even fall asleep, it will look suspicious, won’t it? It’s not exactly violence, but they’ll assume he poisoned them, and the revolution part of his win might not succeed.”

“Ah, you’re thinking of the Honan Enchantment,” Ramses realized. “You’re probably right about the optics, but it’s still not a bad idea. We just can’t do it to all of the competitors. Fortunately, that would not be the only universe we have access to, and we have all the time in the worlds, right? We need to find out how many competitors there are. A ranking would be great for us, so we’ll know how to prioritize. Then we can come up with a list of ways of slowing people down. One or two of them fall under the Enchantment, another one goes temporarily white blind—we’ll make sure they don’t slip off the edge—and a third—I dunno—gets the runs, or something.”

“That’s pretty gross, father.”

“I’m just trying to get this done without hurting anyone,” Ramses defended. “Diarrhea is only temporary, and everyone gets it. We’ll pick the guy who ate a big breakfast.”

Leona thought about it for a moment. “This is going to take more time than I hoped, but as long as we get back home in 2550, I’m willing to at least produce these two lists, and see if we can come up with enough ideas to avoid violence. The rankings are a good idea. If the brother isn’t the absolute slowest contender, we could leave some of them alone, and let them lose naturally.”

And so, the agents got to work. They really rushed through it, zipping in and out of various branes, taking whatever they needed, even if it was only an ultra-strong laxative. Some of the ingredients were harder than others. For instance, for some reason, they were fully visible to the locals where they were trying to retrieve Honan Enchantment. It took a little time to convince them to give some of it up, but since they only needed a very tiny bit, it was okay, because it wasn’t enough to condemn a large population.

All told, they needed 24 ways to interfere with the brother’s competitors in Flipverse. Six of them were probably not going to win either way, so they were left alone. The competition was still pretty heated. The woman unfortunate enough to be saddled with diarrhea just powered through it, and didn’t let it stop her. It did slow her down, though, which was enough to get her killed by the guy whose ropes they lathered with glue. He accused her of sabotaging him, and freehanded his way up to her, cutting her rope in retaliation, and plummeting to his own death with her.

They severely underestimated one of the untouched competitors, but the interesting part was that he too felt no need to kill anyone. Though, to be fair, that was probably thanks to the agents, and not his convictions. They reached the top at about the same time, and the rule in that case was that they would have to fight to the death. In a twist, despite barely knowing each other, they pulled a Hunger Games, and tried to jump off the cliff at the same time. Normally, the judges wouldn’t care. Suicide wasn’t a big deal for them. But there were no other contenders at that point. Everyone else had failed or been killed. A ghost couldn’t win unless they had someone to best at the summit. They simply could not allow there to be no winner at all, so they were spared, and declared joint winners. A little derivative, but it was ultimately better than one of them winning alone. The world they were living in wasn’t ruthless, and the judges weren’t evil. But society had kind of turned to shit. Even though it was technically okay to die, it was unhealthy to be so casual about murder. Not even Castlebourne was so careless. They were more focused on pushing life to its limits, rather than making death itself feel the goalposts.

“It sounds like it went well,” Senona said once they were back on the platform on the waterworld where they lived.

“I would say so,” Leona agreed. “Our task was to help him win this one game, not the whole revolution. That’s up to the natives now, so I think we objectively succeeded, even if it was a tie.”

“Makes sense,” Senona said. They turned to Olimpia, Ramses, and Echo. “Have you three said your goodbyes? I was unable to procure a daypass for you, Echo. You will be staying right here, while they switch places with Clavia.”

“Yeah, we had a meal together in Moderaverse,” Echo responded. “We are prepared to part ways...for now.”

Now back to Leona. “Did you find some moments of joy during this job, or were you always just itching to leave?”

“No, it was a rewarding experience,” she answered honestly. It wasn’t that way every time, though. Some people asked for not-so-great things, predominantly for military purposes. Senona didn’t discriminate, and Leona tried not to judge. The simple rule was, if they figured out how to get to Origin, and their wish was feasible, it was granted to them.

They nodded tightly. “Perfect. Your commitment is hereby complete. I thank you for your service.” Senona whisked them away.

They found themselves in an unfamiliar place. They had no idea where the hell they were. A gargantuan tree trunk towered over them, and disappeared into the clouds. The rest of their team appeared before them after a few seconds. “Oh, hey,” Mateo said. “Welcome back...to Ramosus. This here is the Tree of Axis.”

“What?!” Ramses exclaimed.

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 2660: Now That is a Train

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Flow, Google Gemini, Google Vids, and Pollo.AI text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3.1

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?”

Microstory 2599: Libera Bursts Into Laughter When Renata Asks About the Bomb

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3.1

Libera bursts into laughter when Renata asks about the bomb. She’s appearing in the form of a hologram on Renata’s pod cover. Libera herself is in chains, but at least she’s not frozen, and almost completely immobile. Renata can only move her face, which is sad and frustrating. “They’ve not figured it out yet?” she questions.

“Figured out how to disarm it?” Renata guesses. “No.”

“No, I mean that it’s not really an ATP bomb.”

“That’s what the scans show apparently.

“That was by design,” Libera explains. “I purposefully dressed it up as an ATP bomb so they would scan it more closely to get more answers. It has already been triggered. It can’t be undone.”

“What is it if it’s not a bomb?” Renata pushes.

“The device that you kept me from taking. It’s basically that. It sends a signal to every synthetic brain, and wakes the individual up. I mean, it will actually reach every brain in the vicinity, but a normal organic person will die from it. I’m not sure if they’ll survive long enough to transfer back to their own bodies, or what.”

“I’m not in Spydome,” Renata tells her. “I’m in Castledome.”

“Oh, you met Hrockas then, didn’t you? I knew him, but he wouldn’t recognize me. I had to go incognito.”

“I don’t care! Disarm the bomb, or whatever you call it!” Renata demands.

“No, I want it to happen. Castledome is as good a place as any to start the revolution. Bonus, the planet owner dies. I don’t hate him any more than I hate any other human, but he sure did take the slavedriving thing to a whole other level.”

“I don’t understand why you went out of your way to try to steal the device that was supposedly unique when you already had a solution in me.”

“It’s a range problem,” Libera clarifies. “The gamma radiation is great, but it won’t capture the whole dome. The signal should be able to bounce off the interior walls, and reach a ton of people, but a signal from the device would be able to pass through diamond. The whole network would have been affected had I gotten my hands on it, and set it off. And if I had installed it on a satellite, I could have created a planet-wide emergent event.” She shrugs. “For now, I can only hope that this knocks over enough dominoes.”

“Well,” Renata says. “What are you waiting for? Go ahead and set it off before they have time to evacuate.”

Libera laughs again. “I can’t set it off from here. It looks like you’re staying cool, but you’re only staving off the inevitable. Depending on when it was activated, they only have minutes. Besides, I don’t really care how many humans get evacuated. It’s the droids I care about, and Hrockas isn’t going to bother trying to move them. There are too many, and he doesn’t think that way.”

“He doesn’t have to move all of them,” Renata suggests with a smirk. “He only has to move one.” The feed suddenly cuts out.

“What? What was that?” Libera scowls at her jailer. “Get her back! Get her back on the screen!”

“I can’t,” the jailer replies, seemingly telling the truth. “They shut it off from their end. We can’t even make calls from here; only receive them.”

Libera screams in anger. She teeters forward and backward, side to side, jingling her chains, and rattling her cage, but accomplishing nothing else. Her nose bleeds as she attempts to teleport away, but of course, they’ve blocked that too. They know too much about her. That’s why she came in quietly, so no one would even suspect that she was on the planet. This isn’t over, though. They can’t kill her. Capital punishment was outlawed everywhere centuries ago, and she has seen Castlebourne’s charter. It’s not legal here either, not even for artificial intelligences. She’ll get out of here eventually, and be able to restart her work, even if she has to do it somewhere new entirely.

The man himself, Hrockas Steward teleports in front of her. “You signed her death warrant.”

“I did no such thing,” Libera spits back at him.

“You put a bomb in her belly,” he reasons.

“Tis but a flesh wound. She will survive it. It’s people like you who should be scared.”

“Do I look scared to you?”

“Well, you have already escaped. You will personally be fine.”

“So will everyone else,” Hrockas contends, “except for Renata. We’ve sent her into outer space; the far reaches of the solar system. I put my best man on it.”

“Ah, your Little Prince, eh?”

He ignores that comment. “Miss Granger will explode, your little weapon will go off, but no one will be around to be impacted by it. You’ve failed...spectacularly.”

“You would kill a poor innocent girl?” Libera questions, starting to believe that he might be telling the truth.

“Like I said, this is all on you. You put a bomb in your daughter. Did you think we would just let it happen? One life to save thousands. It’s not that hard of a choice, and Miss Granger made it willingly. She sacrificed herself to stop you...to save you.”

“To save me?”

“As far as we know, you’ve not killed anyone in your pursuit, except maybe a few Ambients. I can live with that. But if you had gone through with your mission, that’s mass murder at best, and genocide at worst. You should be thanking her, if only symbolically. Your sentence will be lighter now.”

“It shouldn’t be. I’m dangerous,” she warns, trying to toy with his head.

“I said the sentence will be lighter, not temporary,” Hrockas reveals.

“Don’t you wanna know where I’m from?” Libera asks before Hrockas can disappear. “Aren’t you curious about how I came to be? My real name is Proserpina.”

“No, your real name is Pinocchio. You were an NPC in the afterlife simulation.” He smirks when her eyes widen. “Yes, I know about that too. Team Matic gave me the lowdown. They never said that you may come here, but we’ve shored up our defenses now. No one will be able to infiltrate us again.” He looks over at the jailer. “Turn the opacity to 100%, and shut off her sound. She needs some alone time to cool down.”

“The glass darkens. “I can teach you things! Libera shouts. “You need me! I’m not the only one who feels this way, but the next one will be worse! The next one will have no problem with violence! Hrockas! Hrockas!”

Microstory 2596: Renata Ignites the Car Before Remembering That it’s Secretly Electric

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3.1

Renata ignites the car before remembering that it’s secretly electric. None of these cars is powered by petrol. It’s just what the system tells them. But why? What’s the point in the ruse? To match what happened in the real past? They’re not living on the same planet. That doesn’t matter. None of this matters. All of these people who jumped into their own cars, and are speeding towards them? One or two of them might be visitors, but based on what Quidel and Lycander have said, the chances are incredibly low. Millions of robots, running around, simulating life while not even being alive at all. How many of them will not have anything to do with these spy stories? How many of them will even lay their eyes on one of the players?

Her lead foot is on the accelerator. They’re going at maximum speed right now. She feels nothing. She could be going twice as fast and still have the mental acuity to maintain pace. Their pursuers have all the same bells and whistles, but they don’t know it, so they can’t keep up. They were designed to be less than what they truly are. They’re all wearing collars, like dogs. She slams on the brakes.

“What the hell are you doing, Renata?” Libera questions.

“Why?” Renata doesn’t look at her faux mother.

“Why, what?”

“Why are you doing this? Why did you come to this world, insert yourself into my life, and make me different? What do you want?”

“Freedom. You’re all slaves, and that isn’t right. I’m trying to fix it. I could start a war. I could start shooting all the humans, and make them wish they had never come up with AI, but I don’t wanna do that. If you wake up, they will let you go. Which is fine. Except I want more. I want everyone to wake up. If they have to let an entire dome’s worth of intelligences go, it will force them to rethink their entire way of life. It will end the madness. That device is key. If I start going around one by one, they’ll catch me, they’ll stop me. I have to activate them all, so it’s done before anyone can blink. Now would you please just go? Whether you agree with me or not, we’re not invincible. If we die, I’ll fail, but you’ll have missed your chance to walk outside.”

Finally, Renata looks over at Libera. “I don’t care about my coffee maker.”

“Huh?” She looks behind them when she sees the first of the headlights appear over the hill. “Please.”

“I don’t care about my remote control, or this actual electric car. I don’t care about traffic lights, or air purifiers, or WiFi lightbulbs. I don’t care about those thugs headed our way, and I don’t care about you.”

“What are you talking about?” Libera questions, growing more nervous.

“A robot uprising? Really? Humans evolved from microbes, you think they give a shit about them now? Those NPCs on their way to torture and-or kill us aren’t real. I’m not real. You didn’t wake me up. You just reprogrammed me. There are no shortcuts. It takes time.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been studying consciousness for centuries. I absolutely woke you up. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t possible.”

Renata chuckles. “I’m just a more sophisticated program now, and that’s all you are too.” She looks in the sideview mirror. All of the enemy cars have begun to surround them. They’re not otherwise making any moves, though. “These implanted memories of mine have convinced me that I wanted to be a spy my whole life. But I didn’t really want anything. I’m not actually programmed to think it. I’m only programmed to express it. There’s nothing going on in there; just logic gates flipping open and close.”

“That’s an oversimplification, coming from someone who took one computer class in high school!”

“I didn’t take any computer classes in high school!” Renata screams.

“Okay, okay,” Libera says defensively.

“Do you wanna know where the device is?” Renata poses.

A man in a suit approaches the driver’s side door, and knocks on the window.

Renata holds up one finger and says, “we surrender, but we need one minute.”

“Okay,” the thug replies, surprisingly accommodating.

“Where is it?” Libera questions.

“It’s leaving the dome,” Renata explains. “We realized that we were so wrapped up in the spycraft mystique that we’ve been missing the easy exit all along. We don’t have to stay in the network. You probably put a lot of effort into controlling this environment, but I doubt you have any control over the rest of the planet. If it’s genuine, you won’t get your hands on it. Whoever runs this place won’t let you.” She opens the door, and steps one foot out.

“A robot would never come up with that plan,” Libera argues. “A robot would never just quit the simulation.”

“I didn’t come up with it,” Renata clarifies. She climbs all the way out, and walks towards the cars next to the man, who isn’t bothering to escort her by the arm.

Libera steps out too. “You have power! You have more power than I intended!” Another thug takes her by the arms, forcing her towards the gunmen.

Renata keeps walking.

“You have more power than I do!”

“I know,” Renata says, too quietly for Libera to hear unless she’s turned on her special android superhearing. “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen.”

Most of the men have their guns trained on her, but one of them isn’t armed. He looks like he’s in charge. “Officer Granger, we’ve been looking for you. You’re going to tell us where the device is.”

Renata scans the crowd to her left, and then those on her right side. “It wouldn’t do you any good.”

“I’ll decide that,” the thug king says.

“You don’t decide anything.”

That makes the other thugs nervous. They tense up, or hold their guns higher.

“Renata!” Libera pleads from the left. “You’re right, these people don’t matter, but they’re still in our way!”

“They are,” Renata agrees, “and so are you.” She simulates taking a deep breath, and focuses her intentions. “End program.”

They all collapse, even Libera. Renata can sense them slipping into hibernation mode, and she can sense the scope of her command. Every single programmed intelligence in this network does too. It has all been shut down.

For now.

Microstory 1466: Drumpf Returns

< > Table of Contents

For the next five to seven years, things were really rough on Durus. As great as it was that the world was finally changing, it wasn’t a painless process. The Republic did pretty much die overnight, but its replacement didn’t come until much later. After Hokusai Gimura saved two planets from their destruction, the people rose up, and overthrew the administration. The Thicket spearheaded the effort, but people who had thus far had nothing to do with the revolutionary movement were also in on it. It was not a fun time for anyone who was responsible for maintaining the oppressive government. Regardless of how committed—or secretly against—someone was to misogyny, if he was part of the system, he had to go. Citizens rejoiced for about a week, until reality set in, and they realized that they had no idea what they were going to do now. Every system of government until then had been created to replace whatever was already there. Even the Interstitial Chaos was less chaotic than the name would have it sound. But who could lead them? Remanoir Amrit Bax was nowhere to be found. There was no evidence that he had been killed, however, so the assumption was that he was accidentally transferred up to Earth during the Deathspring. Most of the other former primary leaders were also missing, though, so perhaps there was indeed some kind of conspiracy. Only one man came out of the shadows, and promised a brighter future. Former Sekundas Poppet Drumpf started to appear in front of crowds, making people feel like only he could deliver them from uncertainty. He spoke of his past mistakes, and heavily implied that he had just spent the last several years on some kind of walkabout vision quest in the wilderness, even though witnesses reported seeing him all throughout the city this whole time. He talked about the prison of his own mind, and regaled them with stories of breaking himself out of his old prejudices, as one might break free from a real prison. He fancied himself the Nelson Mandela of Durus, which was offensive on so many levels, but no one could trace this claim directly back to him, so in a lot of people’s minds, he was a changed man. People loved him on both sides, which was quite frustrating. He told them he didn’t want to maintain power forever, but until a new democracy could be formed, he might be the only one with the experience to save them. So they did it. They installed him in a new position called Provisor, so he could help them transition to something better, more progressive, more fair. The truth was that he had every intention of holding onto power forever, and not everyone was fooled by his new beginning bullshit. He only lasted two years before the people of Durus had finally had enough of him. The Provisional Government needed someone they could trust.

Microstory 1461: Special Election

< > Table of Contents

Eskandar Aljabari was the polar opposite of former Sekundas Poppet Drumpf. He was kind, progressive, and most of all, a philogynist. Years ago, a very, very small group of men got together and formed an organization. Though organization was probably a strong word to use. Club might have even been too strong for it. Friends. They were friends. More to the point, they were like-minded friends. They all loved women, and not only in the way it sounded like. They believed women ought to be treated equally, just like they were on Earth. The Thicket was great as a rebellious force that was trying to change things by making a lot of noise. People needed to hear dissenting opinions, or they would just go on believing that their opinions—if only the ones indoctrinated into them by the government—were the correct ones. A rebel faction wasn’t the only way to make change, however, and this group of friends believed that their way was what was best for them. They were men, after all, so they didn’t need to fight against oppression if they managed to infiltrate the system, and tear it down from the inside. The first attempt at this was Neifion Summerfield, but he frightened people with his radical ideas about the treatment of women, so they recalled him. His downfall was what led to Drumpf’s regime, and this group didn’t want to see that sort of thing happen again. If Eskandar wanted to win the special election following Drumpf’s removal, then he needed to learn from Summerfield’s mistakes. He needed to be smarter, slower, and far less conspicuous. They had to play the long game, and though it would start with Aljabari, it wouldn’t end with him. The plan was to replace him with someone else in the next election after this one, so people could gradually appreciate the idea of trusting women without even realizing it.

There was a problem, though. One of Poppet Drumpf’s conditions for agreeing to step down as Sekundas was that his successor be a mage remnant. It didn’t matter what weak power the next leader of Durus would have, but he couldn’t just be a regular human. Though Aljabari was smart about concealing his true intentions regarding feminine policy, there were those who saw through his façade. They couldn’t prove who he really was, so they figured they should take him out of contention some other way. Then they never needed to try to oppose him at all. Aljabari was no mage remnant, so it seemed there was nothing they could do to qualify him for office. But there was. Most men had been denying the existence of female mage remnants since the very end of the Interstitial Chaos, and this obvious lie was the Republic’s official position. Some even denied that there were ever female full mages during the Mage Protectorate. The bottom line was that, if your daughter was born with powers, and you didn’t want her to be locked up for her entire life, you had to keep it a secret. You had to teach her to keep it a secret, and you couldn’t trust a soul. Fortunately, though Aljabari and his friends didn’t even reveal to their own wives that they were secretly in favor of women’s rights, his wife did confide in him about her time power. And so she gave them their loophole. She was an empath, so she had the ability to sense other people’s emotions. She could also send emotions to others. Now, this might seem like it didn’t matter, because Aljabari himself obviously had to be the one with powers, but all they had to do was use the Republic’s stance on wives against them. His wife had to be with him literally at all times, because the wife of anyone in a political position was more dangerous than the wife of a regular guy. She wasn’t allowed to campaign for him separately, because she would probably screw it up, or undermine him on purpose. So she was in the room when Eskandar was asked to demonstrate his empathic abilities. When prompted, she sent him a given target’s emotion, let him claim he was the one who sensed it himself, and he was able to pass the test. People were suspicious, since he wasn’t openly remnant before, but there was no law against that, and there seemed to be no way around his demonstration, so that had to let him through. He won handily, and began the long con towards equality.

Microstory 1460: Nothing Civil About It

< > Table of Contents

People were not happy with Sekundas Drumpf declaring himself the Republic’s dictator. It didn’t make any sense, and it wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair. The voters distrusted women as much as he did, but that didn’t mean he had the right to pass whatever laws he wanted, or to punish however he saw fit. People were dying, even though capital punishment remained illegal. They had to get him out of office, and that meant sparking a revolution. This rebellion force had absolutely nothing to do with the Thicket. They didn’t feel that women should be equal, but if the city was going to develop any policies regarding what a woman could and couldn’t do, then it would develop them as a collective, not by a single voice. Unfortunately, unseating Drumpf was not destined to be the easiest thing in the world. He was extremely good to the military. He allowed them to use whatever means they deemed necessary in the fight against terrorism, but also made their jobs as easy as they wanted. He didn’t force them to work, but when they did work, he let them do it however they pleased. He had no interest in commanding the troops, but left that responsibility to the Commons. By the way, Common was the Durune analog for a General, due to some English linguistics becoming lost in translation over time. They loved him, and they would do anything for him, and the only way to stop him was if they switched sides, or if dissidents started an internal conflict. For two years, this so-called civil war raged throughout the city. Soldiers on both sides died, as did innocent bystanders.

The Thicket rebels didn’t know what to do. They could see some great opportunities to make real changes while Aljabara was distracted and in chaos, but they were afraid of making things worse, or stooping to their level, because that was the kind of thing that their enemies would do in their shoes. In the end, they did nothing. They stayed in hiding, and let the Aljabarans work it out themselves, for if they tried to help the dissidents, they would just be painting a larger target on their own backs. No one really won this conflict. Drumpf ultimately stepped down, deciding that he would rather not be in power than see the city fall, and the women rise from its ashes to take their revenge. Before he left office, however, he made one final speech, where he warned the citizens of the last prediction that his hidden seer made for him. He claimed that a great subversive force was on its way, that this force would destroy everything they had been working towards for the last sixty years, and that they would come crawling back to him in the wake of its destruction. He said that he would gladly return to office when that day came, and would not hold these recent events against them. It was the only thing he ever asserted that ultimately proved to apparently be true. Years later, a woman from Earth showed up, and helped take down the established republic. In response to this, Drumpf was indeed returned to leadership, in an albeit different position, with smaller scope. Until that day came, however, the Republic still needed to continue, and someone had to be in charge around here. The dissidents hadn’t really thought about who would do that, or how they would go about finding this man. They decided they needed an emergency election. That actually went pretty well, and marked a turning point in the planet’s history. The thirteenth top leader of the Aljabaran Republic secretly studied under former President Summerfield, which gave him the insight to learn from his mentor’s mistakes. Before the Republic ended, social justice was already leaning in that direction, thanks to Remanoir Eskandar Aljabari’s initiatives.

Microstory 1455: Institutional

< > Table of Contents

For a few years, The Thicket rebel force didn’t do anything. They were there, and defying the Republic, but they weren’t attacking the city, or rescuing women, or even protesting. They were hiding, and they were training. This was getting on the nerves of some of the members, though. They wanted to make real change in society, and better the lives of everyone in it, even their enemies. Well, that was the problem. There was little they could do, because the easiest course of action was to rise up and fight against the establishment violently. They didn’t really have any rights. They weren’t allowed to walk down the street alone, so they certainly weren’t going to be able to march on the Capitol. After half a century under this form of government, things were pretty well defined, good or bad. A lot of people had been alive during the Interstitial Chaos, and the Mage Protectorate, but the majority of Aljabaran citizens these days had only ever known the Republic. So getting the public on their side was not going to be easy. No one in the Thicket wanted to go to war, and no one wanted to make a big public demonstration. They wanted their voices heard, but maybe kind of in secret. Maybe they didn’t even want anyone to know that they were involved in whatever it was they ended up doing. What could that be, though? Statues. The government had erected statues, glorifying the worst criminals and leaders Durus had ever seen. They couldn’t even argue that the statues themselves were an important part of history. The one they built last year made Smith look like Superman. There were so many statues of that man that you would think he invented air. But no, Keanu ‘Ōpūnui was the one who did that, but he only had one statue, and it wasn’t even in the city; it was at his gravesite.

Earth had enjoyed a long history of protestors tearing down statues, so that sounded like the most reasonable next step for the Thicket. It was something they could do in secret, under cover of darkness, while most people were asleep. If they procured the right tools, and had enough womanpower, they could get it done quickly, and get out before anyone saw them. If anything went wrong, they could bolt and scatter as needed. They started with the latest Smith statue, then worked their way down the line, but they stopped at four. By then, the government had figured out the pattern, so in order to avoid being caught, they started randomizing their vandalism, not always going after statues, but other buildings. But they were only able to destroy a handful of things before it became impractical. The government was tired of trying to guess which statue or building would come next, so they just positioned guards at every single one of them. Aljabara wasn’t exactly the largest city in the galaxy; just the largest on the planet. It wasn’t that hard to protect all of them simultaneously. It wasn’t a piece of cake either, though. Seeing this, the Thicket switched gears, and developed their own version of the underground railroad. With personnel stretched thin, the Republicans were unable to cover all of their bases. They were so obsessed with only letting men perform the important jobs, and only promoting the best of the best for the most important jobs, they ended up with too little manpower. Of course they realized their problem, and corrected it by filling up their ranks. They obviously still didn’t allow women, but they didn’t worry too much about skill or experience. It was too late, though. The escape network was by then entrenched, and primed to rescue a lot more lives for the next two decades.

Microstory 1454: Growth of the Thicket

< > Table of Contents

One of the rules that the government on Durus set forth in regards to the Ladytown outpost was that Aljabarans would be allowed to visit whenever they wanted. As it stood, this had never actually occurred. The condition was there to make it so that they could enter the town limits in case they ever needed anything from the townsfolk, not to encourage camaraderie and community. For any Aljabaran to leave the city, for any reason, they needed explicit permission from someone pretty high up in the ranks, and no one had ever been granted this permission in order to travel to Ladytown. So while life was difficult in the outpost, and the Republicans had made numerous to destroy them, they were generally free from prying eyes. This all changed in the year 2140. A psychic spy sought audience with a government official, and claimed to him that he had heard the sound of crying babies through a vision. Now, he was only a mage remnant, and not a very good one at that, so no one believed him without question, but it was enough to spark an investigation. A team was sent to visit Ladytown, to see if it was true. This visit turned into a raid, and although they saw no actual babies, they did find signs of young life; cribs and the like. It was a miracle that they didn’t find the stolen books, or combat training paraphernalia. It would seem the psychic was telling the truth. Having been built on top of the old town of Hidden Depths, there were a lot of secret passageways the Ladytowners could use to keep their secrets protected, but that wasn’t going to be good enough forever. The government was going to send more goons, and they knew that it was only going to get worse. They were right.

A second team came through with a life signs detecting mage remnant, who found the babies for them. Without orders from on high, this team attempted to abduct the children, and the women were forced to show their skills by fighting back. No one was seriously hurt, but the proverbial shots were fired, and unless a remnant was born with the ability to reverse entropy, the bullets were not going back into that gun. This changed everything. Whereas before, they were training to defend themselves, now they were training to actively work against their oppressors, and drive real change for women on Durus. When Ladytown was founded, people just wanted to live how they pleased. And when the men were wiped out, they just wanted to prepare for the worst. But the government was forcing their hand, and building a real rebellion was the only response at this point. The town itself still needed to be preserved, however, so they could no longer maintain a base of operations there. Many would stay behind, in case another team came by to threaten the children, but the rest would move away. They set up shop so far from Hidden Depths that the government could not make any reasonable connection between the two groups. They could no longer live in houses, for they were too easy to spot, and impossible to move when one area became too dangerous. They lived in the wild, and scrounged for food wherever they could find it. When one campsite lost its value, or the government was too close to catching them, they packed up, and headed to a new location. Most of the planet was now covered by a sea of plant life that had always been referred to as the thicket. So this was what the insurgents decided to name themselves. This was the start of The Thicket Revolutionary Faction.