Microstory 2769: X Marks the Spot

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Elise instinctively teleports back to Rage holding the jacket that they last saw Minotaur wearing. She’s on the verge of hyperventilating. There were no clues where she found it, at least none which was obvious. She takes Rage by the arm, and jumps back to that spot with her friend in tow. “Over here, guys!” she cries out to the rest of the group.

Together, they start to dig in the sand, looking for any sign of Minotaur, be it evidence they left behind, or—if they were taken—a deliberate clue left behind by their captor. They cover a ground of a few square meters, but there’s nothing. There’s no trapdoor, which would be the most likely explanation, or maybe something less manmade, like a hidden hole. If something had taken them away in the air, someone probably would have seen it. Rage tells everyone to stop digging as she narrows in on Miracle. “This looks like the work of a teleporter. Besides Azad, who else can do it?”

Miracle shakes her head. “There are far too many to list, and remember, we’re generally called time travelers. They could be from the future, or the past, or a parallel timeline. There are too many options to use that knowledge alone to locate them.”

“Well, are any of them bad?” Rage presses. “Do you have...villains?”

“Sure we do,” Miracle confirms. “I...was technically one for a bit, though we tend to use the word antagonist amongst each other because who’s to say which is which?”

“This isn’t helping,” Rage argues. “You’re not giving us anything.”

“I’m sorry,” Miracle begins, but she doesn’t get the chance to finish her thought.

“Can I find them?” Elise interrupts. “Just now, I wanted to jump to Rage, and so that’s where I went, instead of several kilometers away. I didn’t even know exactly where she was, on her hands and knees behind that ridge. I thought about her, and it happened. Could I do that with Minotaur? I don’t wanna try without understanding it.”

Miracle sighs. “Have you ever seen the 12 Monkeys movie, and have you ever seen any of the Back to the Future movies?” she asks weirdly.

“Not recently,” Elise answers. “What’s your point?”

“They follow different rules,” Miracle begins. “In the former, time travel is a contained loop. It’s called predestination. It doesn’t matter what you do, you can’t change things. Whatever happened always happened, and you’re just following a preexisting path, blind and in the wrong order. In the latter, you can change the future, and they, in fact, do it multiple times. Those stories aren’t contradictory because they take place in different universes. They have nothing to do with each other.

“In our universe, there are—well, no, it’s not like there are no rules—it’s that we have all the rules. Can you teleport without being able to see where you’re going, or beyond some distance limitation? I don’t know. We all have our different abilities and restrictions. It’s utter chaos. I can teach you how to try to jump to Mino, but I can’t promise it will work. I can’t even promise you won’t end up kilometers away this time, or dead, stuck halfway through a wall. It’s a crapshoot. Most are born the way that they are, and discover what they can do intuitively. People who are transformed into travelers typically have a harder time. They’re usually older, and have developed more traditional coping mechanisms, which makes their new skills low access.”

“Then you’re not doing it,” Rage decides. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Wait, you could teleport before,” Zelda says to Miracle. “You said that Hrockas couldn’t take that away from you because it was in your mind, not your body.”

Miracle nods. “He figured out how to suppress it when he gave me a new, new body. I’ve already tried since I returned, and have not been able to do anything.”

“Then I’ll do it,” Elise insists. “Before you say anything, Rage, this is my body, my choice. Hrockas just told us that counts here a few hours ago. You can’t stop me.”

“I can’t,” Rage acknowledges, “but I don’t wanna lose you too.”

“Borrowed time, remember?” Elise asks. She faces Miracle. “Tell me what to do.”

“I’m inclined to agree with our fearless leader,” Miracle says. “It’s risky.”

“Then we vote,” Elise offers. “Who here thinks I shouldn’t do it?”

Everyone raises their hand.

“Just kidding, it’s my body! Tell me what to do, or I’ll try it on my own!”

“Very well,” Miracle agrees. “But I’m not responsible for what happens to you.”

Everyone pays close attention when Miracle explains how the process of using teleportation to find someone might work. They’re just as curious, even though they can’t do it themselves. Finally, it’s time to try. Miracle suggests she practice first, but she also said one thing about potentially running out of something called temporal energy, so talk about a risk. Elise closes her eyes as Miracle instructed. At first, she focuses on her whole family, but most of them are already here with her. She only needs to concentrate on one person. She visualizes Minotaur’s face, and considers how they make her feel. It seems that Elise is falling in love. She does realize she keeps thinking that.

The air was hot and dry, but now it’s cool and humid. Though Elise’s eyelids were closed, she could see the light penetrating her skin. Now that’s all gone. She opens them to find herself in darkness, with only red emergency lighting. It’s enough for her to see that she’s not alone, and she can even tell who it is. “Mino.”

Minotaur is startled. They spin around and desperately grab Elise’s mouth. “Shh,” they whisper. “I don’t know how you ended up down here too, but this is a maze...and we are not alone. I’m going to let go of you now, okay? Just whisper.”

Elise nods, and once she’s free, whispers even quieter than Minotaur, right in her ear. “I teleported to find you. Do you know who took you, or where we are?”

“No idea,” Minotaur answers. “I didn’t see who took me. They were totally robed up. I managed to push them off and run away, but not too far, and I couldn’t scream. That’s when I felt the sharp pain in my neck. I was hot before, but then I felt like I was burning up, so I took off my jacket while I was passing out. Then I woke up here. I’ve been trying to navigate the maze this whole time. I figured you were all taken too.”

“I think this is mostly about you,” Elise figures. “There is no way they could have set this all up after they found out that I could teleport. They expected you to find your way out, and for us to find our way to you. We’re cheating. I don’t know if that’s okay. But I’m just gonna go with it. I teleported in, so we can teleport out.”

“No,” Minotaur argues. “There’s something here. The monster is guarding something. Trust me, we want it. I’m glad you’re here, but I don’t want to cheat any further. Let’s play this straight, and find the way to the prize. Are you up for it?”

“We’re a team. We should all do it together.”

“Yeah, if you can gather everyone, then go for it. Just tell them to stay hushed.”

Elise transports most into the maze, but before she can do the same for Colley she evidently runs out of temporal energy, leaving them both stranded on the surface.

Microstory 2739: Nobody Exists on Purpose

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Pribadium’s friends once compared her to Rick Sanchez. She is not as cartoonish as he is, and she doesn’t break any laws of logic, like building a robot in a couple seconds with a screwdriver just to pass the butter. She does, however, frequently invent things just because the ideas are floating in her head, and she has to get them out. Or rather, she did. She has not developed anything significant in years, so she’s a little rusty.

Humanity is nowhere near the end of science, but they have pretty much solved every problem. Primary drivers are moderate performance improvements, scale, distribution and access, and most importantly, efficiency. The most pressing issue facing the universe right now is figuring out how to perform the most complex calculations using the least amount of energy. It’s profoundly important, and will only become more so further down the timeline as entropy progresses, but it’s certainly not fun, especially not for her. She pivoted to Administration and Operations because it was a challenge.

Now she has to go back to her old self to understand who this self-proclaimed embodiment of the population of this universe is. But if she’s gonna do it, she’s gonna do it her way, and her way...is not the normal way. Instead of trying to recall the procedural memory that she has lost over time, all she has to do is call forth a younger version of her who still has the required skills. She playfully calls it instantiating her panda.

“Why do you call it that?” Sora questions as he’s watching her prepare.

“Inside joke,” Pribadium explains as she checks the imaging chamber’s integrity.

“So you’re going to contact yourself from another time? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“It would be, if that were it,” Pribadium begins. “Any time travel risks irreparably throwing off our current conditional state. This is more like a revision history.”

Sora nods. “So you’re still trying to do the mobile command center thing.”

Pribadium stops working for a moment. Though everything has changed about their circumstances, nothing has changed about their objectives. Well, at least not Pribadium’s goals. She still wants to separate this pocket of the universe, and she still wants to travel the bulk with it. “I can’t think of anything more important than that right now. Understanding that amalgam in the other room is only in service to that end.”

“I see,” Sora says. “Well, I’ll leave you to it, then.”

“Oh, you’re not going anywhere, mister.” Pribadium is still not looking at him, in favor of focusing on the work. “You stole my tech and abused it. Don’t think I forgot about that. I don’t know if it led to what happened with the Stonehenge model, but that’s exactly why you’ll have to be tested too.” Now she looks at him like a shushy librarian. “You placed this whole lab at risk, not to mention the universe. I forgive you on a personal level, but you may yet pose a risk, so you’re next on the list.”

“Okay,” Sora agrees with his tail between his legs. He sits down on the bench.

Pribadium is ready. She boots up the machine, and waits for a previously saved state to appear in the form of a hologram that both of them can see and hear.

Pribadium!Zero’s image slowly renders at first before completing in a blink. She looks around to orient herself before looking at Pribadium!One. “Whassuuuuuuup!!!!!!!”

“Aren’t they supposed to say, report in these situations?” Sora questions.

“I was an ornery little bitch.” Pribadium looks at her self. “Listen up, Egg. I got some work to do, and I need your brain to do it.”

“Fuck you, Chicken.”

Microstory 2733: The Cost of a Life

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The Pribadiums have been hard at work for the last three days. They have been performing, checking, and rechecking calculations. They have been running simulation after simulation after simulation. They have sent probes out to scan, analyze, and synthesize. And now they have a better picture of their situation. The first probes told them how expansive the pocket dimension bubble was. These more recent probes are telling them how big it is now, and those figures are not the same. It’s shrinking. At this rate, the window of opportunity will close by the end of the week. Well, they wanted to know their time constraints, and now they have them. That is only part of the puzzle, though. What happens to people and objects who pass back out?

Or are they passing through the dimensional barrier at all? Their intuition suggests that they are, because the Pribadiums are losing contact with the probes, but that doesn’t mean they’re slipping safely through. It might be vaporizing them, shunting them somewhere else, or simply generating too much interference to maintain the connection. Someone is going to have to go out there and gather more information.

“I volunteer as tribute,” Sora says.

Pribadium!One chuckles. “That won’t be necessary. We’ll flip a coin.”

“I’m serious,” Sora insists. “If something happens to me, it’s no big deal. I only have maybe a hundred years left in this universe anyway. If one of you dies, you’re losing eternity. Besides, you’re more valuable than I am. Really, I wanna do this.”

“Well, if we’re going by a simple value analysis, we have an excess of Pribadiums,” Pribadium!Two says. “If I go, my alternate is still here, and we’ve not lost anything.”

Pribadium!One rolls her eyes at her alternate self, and doesn’t validate her words. She faces Sora. “This wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with Elke, would it?”

“Elke?” Sora asks. “I told you, I’ve moved past that. You telling me what happens when you die has given me closure. That’s why it doesn’t scare me to do this, because I know whatever happens, I’ll survive. I didn’t realize I was digitized, and I’ve been grumpy about it, but we might as well take advantage. It sounds like you can’t come back, or dead people would be doing it all the time. So you should stay.” He looks at Pribadium!Two. “Both of you. Two heads are better than one if they’re both you, right?”

“I’m the one who said that,” Pribadium!One reminds him.

“Same result,” Sora reasons. “And anyway, death isn’t a guarantee. It’s a test.”

Pribadium!Two shakes her head. “Survival is what is not guaranteed. The afterlife simulation is based on a certain set of criteria. In order for your consciousness to be transmitted to it, you have to both originate from the main sequence, and be in the main sequence. I’m guessing you qualify for the former, but not necessarily the latter. That’s one thing we would be testing out there with this manned mission. The bottom line is that you may not end up in the sim, or in Fort Underhill. The risk is real.”

“Again, that is how I have always lived,” Sora explains. “I never thought I was going to live forever. There is a freedom in that which you have either forgotten, or are too young to remember. I’m part of a long history of doomed souls. I’m proud of that.”

Pribadium!Two nods. She pulls down her pants and removes a teleporter dartgun from a flap of skin on her hip.

“You always had that?” Pribadium!One was surprised. “You could have escaped.”

“Yes,” Pribadium!Two confirms. “But he won’t be able to.” She shoots him.

Microstory 2728: Talking to Yourself

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This. This is why Pribadium doesn’t like to travel through time, because it causes headaches. Just because someone looks like you, doesn’t mean they share your values. Even if you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are a version of you, you might not be able to trust them. They have been through different experiences. Even if you literally split from each other moments ago, one of you was standing on the left, while the other was on the right. That may not seem like much to a human observer, but that can alter your whole perspective, and with each passing second, the differences only compound. Many time travelers recommend not seeing your alternates as that at all, but as entirely distinct people. Trust, but verify, as you would a stranger.

With Sora’s help, Pribadium!One has locked Pribadium!Two in a special holding cell. Since she’s the one who created it, one might assume that she has a way out of it; that she knows its secrets. It doesn’t work like that. Pribadium knew that something like this could happen. It was designed with that in mind, which is why the codes are random. She didn’t think she would ever have to use this feature, but it was always a possibility. She can’t risk the other her finding a way out just by drawing from their memories. One of them is the prisoner, and one of them is the warden. Only the warden has the code, and it was given to her as soon as that door shut tight.

“Are you going to give me the chance to explain myself?” Pribadium!Two asks.

“What good would that do?” Pribadium!One snaps back. “We’re a liar.”

“You used the collective singular there,” Pribadium!Two points out, “yet you’re othering me at the same time. You can’t have it both ways, so to speak. Hear me out.”

“You threatened to kill me, and now you want me to talk and listen to reason? Oh, honey. Our point of divergence must have been more significant than I knew.”

“I was never going to kill you,” Pribadium!Two contends. “I just wanted to shock you for a sec, so you wouldn’t simply roll your eyes and use the communicator anyway.”

“And look where that got you,” Pribadium!One points out, pointing at the cell.

Pribadium!Two shakes her head. “But it worked, didn’t it? Now you can’t use that communicator because you’re wondering what might be worse than me killing you.”

“But you just said that—”

“It doesn’t matter that I was lying,” Pribadium!Two reasons. “You can’t take that risk. You’re too smart for that. So tell me, do you want me to explain why you can’t use that communicator, regardless of whether you calibrate it for the reality that we’re in?”

Pribadium!One shakes her head again. She doesn’t know what to do in this situation. Hearing her out could do damage, even if it’s only words. Still. Even if the only reason Pribadium!Two doesn’t want her to try it is because it might reveal that this is the main sequence, and the rightful reality in the universe, it’s not a great reason. They would work it out. She wouldn’t let the other reality die. They’re not monsters. Right?

“I can practically see the gears turning in your head,” Pribadium!Two muses. “Have a seat, and I’ll explain. It’s not only about the transversal communicator.”

Pribadium!One stares at her alternate self. It probably won’t hurt to hear the explanation, but she can’t give someone who threatened her life the satisfaction. “When we were down on Doma Tertia, Sora left me in a cell alone for twelve days.”

“No,” Pribadium!Two argues, knowing where this is going.

“I will see you in twenty-four.” Pribadium!One leaves.

Microstory 2724: Report Back

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As far as the Teaguardians—and everyone else, for that matter—knows, Pribadium is dead. She died in the destruction of Doma Tertia, along with the Doma Tertians. That’s quite all right. She doesn’t need anyone looking for her, or watching her as she travels to her secret laboratory. It takes them a long time, since they have to teleport there without a ship, but since they’re about to go back in time, it’s fine.

“If it’s a secret, does that mean no one knows, or just not the public?” Sora asks.

Pribadium looks at him with a side eye. She’s going to be taking him with her into the past. He can’t know about the hot pocket—how she stores up waste heat in another dimension, and purges it periodically, perfectly timed with the transit of neighboring and distant stars. “Only you and I know about this place. Will I have to kill you later?”

Sora laughs. “Honey, if you can travel through time, I’m not stupid enough to get on your bad side. I just thought you were immortal, like Tertius and Aeterna. I had no idea that there was so much more out there. No, you won’t have to kill me.”

Pribadium starts running her preflight checks. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. Did you name that planet after him? Was he a friend of yours, or...?”

“It’s a coincidence,” Sora responds. “I didn’t name it myself. Proxima Doma means next home. Doma Tertia means third home. I tried to argue, but I didn’t want to tell anyone about the immortals I met, so I didn’t have a leg to stand on.”

Pribadium nods, then flips the time machine on. She hoped never to use this thing again. She doesn’t take any of this lightly. It’s only for emergencies. Messing with the past is dangerous, which is why she rarely does it. It’s also why she doesn’t spend much time with other travelers. She will manipulate time and space all day, but she would rather do it in the present. The circumstances call for an intervention, though.

“It is exactly as I pictured it,” Sora says. “A sleek, well-lit chamber, about the height of a normal ceiling, wide enough for several people. Like the old movies.”

Pribadium sometimes gets ultra excited, talking about her science. She can’t trust very many people. “This works differently than the ones you see in films, which are powered by radioactive materials or phlebotinum. This is powered by vacuum energy, which means as long as the universe exists, so does this machine. Except not for long,” she explains. “Since you know about it, I will have to destroy it on the other side.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Sora reasons. “I don’t even know where we are.”

“I can’t take that risk,” she says. “You know enough. I shouldn’t even be showing you at all, but I need you. If I try to go back and replay the scenario, it will probably end about the same. The Teaguardians have their own access to certain advanced technologies. Going against their plans requires finesse. Can you do this, Mr. Shimizu?”

“It depends on what happens to the other me when I go back in time,” he decides.

“I can’t describe the exact process, because I genuinely don’t know it, but one of you will simply stop existing. The way I understand it, the one with fewer memories usually disappears, but I’ve heard of cases where they sacrifice for their younger selves.”

“That is not always what happens,” a voice from behind her points out.

Pribadium turns around to find an alternate version of herself standing there.

“Whoa. Did we already do it?” Sora asks. “Did we go back in time?”

“No,” both Pribadiums reply to him simultaneously.

There is a protocol for this. “Report,” the Pribadium who belongs here instructs.

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 2637: The Ghost of Castlebourne

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Mandica has become a ghost. She sat in a cool-looking chair where a helmet read her brainwaves, and generated an authority profile for her. Now she can go anywhere she fancies, and the automated systems won’t register her as an at-risk organic human. That doesn’t mean she’s going to run head first into danger, but it gives her that option. The other normal humans are limited here, and she doesn’t want that. She wants to be free. That’s why she risked everything just to come to this planet. Trilby is gone now, so she is alone. He said that he had to get back to where he belonged, and kind of made it seem like wherever that was, it was a secret. She doesn’t know much about his backstory, just that he’s been all over, and since they first met, he has spent a lot of time on and around Bungula and Proxima Doma, which are Earth’s nearest neighbors.

She’s looking over the modified prospectus that he compiled for her, and finding herself gravitating towards the red zones, which he said were way too dangerous for someone with only one life to live. The green ones sound boring. In one of them, you pretend to be a pioneer. Like, okay, she likes period pieces, but that’s way too much work for no gain. The reason real pioneers did all that was because they had to. Why are you trying to go back? Anyway, like she’s one to talk. She has an unhealthy obsession with medieval times, particularly the legend of King Arthur. She should have explored this information while she was still on Earth, but it looks like there was nothing to worry about. She searches for the keyword Mordred, and finds a dome called Loegria, which is the realm where Arthur lived, as well as Merlin, Guinevere, and the Knights of the Round Table. It looks fascinating. She’s been cosplaying as Mordred’s lover for years, but that was only one companion. This is a whole immersive world for her to explore.

She’s about to tap on the link to map and schedule her vactrain trip, but then she notices something. At the bottom of the page is a carousel showing other similar domes that she might be interested in. The main dome here is literally called Castlebourne. It’s not Camelot, and is in fact, not an adventure dome at all. It’s where the big boss lives and works, along with his staff. No, thank you. If she’s ever gonna get caught, it’s going to be by running into a bona fide administrator who knows that she’s a fraud because she wasn’t at the end of the year party last year. But the third recommendation. It’s called Mythodome. She taps on it, and starts reading about it. This place sounds insane. It doesn’t limit itself to only one Earthan mythology, but just about all of them. All these gods and creatures coexist in the same environment, and have evidently figured out how to reconcile their contradictions naturally. The NPCs genuinely believe that this is all real, and there is no world beyond the walls. She has to see what that’s like.

She taps on the VISIT NOW link...and it takes her to a pre-registration form. Oh, no, this is a problem. She can physically enter any dome, and pass through their internal security systems, but she doesn’t actually have a genuine identity. She can’t input her name, and she doesn’t even have a Castlebourne Visitor ID number. Trilby said nothing about this, but this isn’t the right route. The way she gets into Mythodome is to schedule the vactrain herself and walk in without warning. She knows that she can do that. That’s how they got to Capital yesterday. It takes longer than making a schedule ahead of time, but when you’re potentially traveling to the other side of a whole terrestrial planet, it’s not that big of a deal, and it’s her only choice. Is she ready, though? Is she ready for this? Perhaps not quite yet. The prospectus gives an overview of what being in the dome entails, but another link leads to this whole subnetwork of pages, talking about all of the mythological beings. It tells her how the stories unfold in the real world, and how these contradictory entities intermingle and adapt to a shared universe. The AI, Thistle can prepare her for what she’s about to face.

She taps on that, and asks it to generate a syllabus. She spends the next two weeks taking a self-directed crash course on the subject. She absolutely does not learn everything there is to know. Scholars could spend years studying this environment. She believes that some academics actually visit Mythodome specifically for that purpose, with the intention of publishing papers and-or teaching classes that have never existed before. This is enough for now. If she doesn’t place a boundary here, she may never, and she will never actually get to go on her first adventure. So she shuts off the tablet, drops it on Trilby’s bed, and leaves.

To her surprise, a vactrain pulls up for her as soon as she taps on the wall interface. Usually, someone going on an impromptu trip would have to wait longer for the right train and right route to be available, but it zooms up like it knew what she was going to ask for. There is no train schedule. It’s based purely on need and interest, and a version of Thistle is constantly shifting it to account for more information. Others, in fact, are waiting on the platform because theirs have not arrived yet. But the transit token on the pod’s display matches the one that the system assigned her. It’s an express train, though, which is very weird. Maybe admins always get those? But no, because she and Trilby didn’t have that the other day. They still had to change to connecting trains. As she enters the private pod alone, she looks back awkwardly at the waiting legion, but none of them seems bothered by her skipping the line. Immortals—they have no sense of urgency. She will never understand it, and honestly does not want to.

The pod takes her directly to Mythodome, instead of via a hub first. She’s in the intake plaza now, and about to head for the main entrance when something catches her eye. That transit token should have only been relevant to her trip here, but she sees it on a hologram on the wall, along with an arrow pointing to the left. She’s hesitant to respond to it. But for the briefest of moments, the hologram changes. The words THIS WAY, MANDY flicker just long enough for her to see, but hopefully not long enough for anyone else to notice. She follows the directions away from the main entrance. She has to. If she’s already been caught, then walking in the opposite direction isn’t going to insulate her from the consequences that they have in store for her. It’s going to delay them at best. The lights take her to a different door, which leads to a set of stairs, which leads down to a tunnel, which leads her to a second set of stairs, and a second door, but this one is horizontal. She walks back up and opens the trapdoor to find herself on the edge of a forest clearing. It is incredibly beautiful here. It reminds her of her favorite spots on Earth; the ones away from all the crowds.

Suddenly something races overhead, from one side of the trees to the other. It comes back, but is higher in the sky this time, and barely visible. There are a number of things it could be, like a Fury, a Roc, or even a Cherub. Is this it? Not even a month into her trip, and she’s already about to die? When it swoops back down, she starts to see that it’s a man, and the wings look almost artificial. He lands gracefully on the ground before her. “Mandica Kolar, thank you for accepting my invitation. I’m Daedalus.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 13, 2526

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There were some major issues with the sensor array, which delayed its activation. Aeterna promised that she had nothing to do with it, but they weren’t the dome police, so she wouldn’t have owed them an explanation either way. It was a year later now, and they were back on track. It would be turned on in a few days, when the team was out of the timestream again. It was inevitable, though, that the descendants of the Oblivios would start noticing the giant tower in the middle of their habitat. Well, they wouldn’t notice it, per se, but their instruments would claim that it was there, and if the Valerians didn’t want to damage people’s psyches, they would reveal themselves. They still didn’t know exactly how they were going to explain it, but now hoped maybe someone on the team had a good idea.

“I don’t know that we have to worry about it,” Leona claimed. They had spent the rest of yesterday in the penthouse, but now they were getting a look at the lower floors. She recognized them, and it clicked. “This is Arvazna.”

Mateo winced. “That micronation that you owned in The Third Rail?”

“That I will own,” Leona corrected. “It hasn’t happened yet, from this building’s perspective.”

“It was 130 years ago,” Marie reminded her. “I know, we’re time travelers, but if this thing ends up on an alternate Earth, thereby avoiding being detected here on Doma, it’s going to have to leave soon, and it’s going to have to go back in time, and then it’s going to have to be shunted to a parallel reality that doesn’t exist in present day.”

“The whole thing doesn’t have to end up there,” Mateo said. “This thing is, what, forty times larger than that one?”

“That’s true,” Leona agreed, examining the walls. “Tertius, how is this thing attached to the dome? Is it buried in the ground, or hanging from the apex?”

“Both, basically,” he answered. “They’re connected. It’s like a giant pillar connecting the ground to the top. Or a column? I don’t know, I’m not an engineer. I just asked Étude to build it, and she used her magicks.”

“I assume you have specifications for it, though,” Ramses said. “We would like to look at those. If we’re gonna bootstrap this tower to the Third Rail—or part of it—we will need to know how it works first.”

“Are you being serious? Are you just gonna make the tower disappear for us?” Tertius pressed.

“I think we’re fated to,” Leona said. The three of them went back upstairs, along with Aeterna and Marie, who was mostly just curious.

“I don’t know what understanding the engineering of the tower is going to do for them,” Mateo lamented. “You can’t just move a tower like this. None of us has that kind of power.”

“It doesn’t have to be one of us,” Olimpia claimed. “We already know someone who can do it. Well, we don’t know they can do it at scale, but we just met them. You partied with one of them.”

Mateo considered all the people he had met recently before landing on a guess. “The Overseers?”

“Yeah,” Olimpia confirmed. “They can just make one of their black hole portals, and send it through.”

“How’s the building going to move?” Mateo questioned.

“Gravity,” Romana suggested. “They can make the portal on the surface of the ground, and it will just fall through.”

“Is that even possible?” Mateo asked. “I’m guessing the foundation runs several kilometers deep. Could they get under it somehow?”

“You’ll have to ask them.”

“You want me to Boyd my way to them,” Mateo presumed.

“We don’t have time to get there and back using the slingdrives,” Angela reminded him. “It takes too long to recharge.”

“Plus, only you can find them through the dark particles,” Romana added.

A few hours later, Leona chuckled upon seeing Magnolia and Garland. “We were just gonna suggest that.”

“Great minds,” Romana mused.

“Can you do it?” Ramses asked the dark portal makers. “Can you make a portal wide enough to fit the tower?”

“The width alone is not really the problem,” Garland began. “Holding it long enough will be.”

“It’s not really the time either, son,” Magnolia said to him before facing Leona, “it’s the mass. I can hold a portal open for several minutes if nothing goes through in that time. But a tower? How long would you need? How long would it take to fall?”

“If we time it right,” Leona replied, “from the moment we release the clamps, to the second the roof makes it past the threshold, I would feel most comfortable with a minute and a half. With Proxima Doma’s gravity, it’s going to fall fairly fast, and get there in under that time.”

Magnolia’s eyes widened. “Whew, that’s a lot.”

“Together we can, though,” Garland said confidently.

She smiled at him. “Yeah, I’m sure we could do it. It would be a hell of a lot easier to send it somewhere with lower gravity, though, like outer space. I don’t know how to get it to another reality in the past anyway, so this would be just a stop-gap measure.”

“We just gotta get it out of the dome,” Rames said.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, everyone,” Tertius finally jumped in. “I regret asking them to build it in the first place. It was never necessary, and this isn’t the first headache I’ve gotten from it.”

Everybody filed into the elevator, and went down to the surface. The Overseers and the smart people began to survey the tower, and the surrounding area, rapidly developing their plan to make a gigantic building disappear. It was not a good plan, it was just the only one they had. Any number of things could go wrong. The Valerians could make the inhabitants forget they saw something unexplainable, but if the calculations were off by a single decimal point, memory would be the least of their problems. The apocalyptic explosion from the falling tower would send shockwaves across the surface...literally. It would decimate the dome, at best, and certainly kill everyone in it. As they were standing there, trying to consider every contingency, a tremor came through to remind them what started all this. It was a small one, but a herald of times far worse. They could see the nearest city shake in the distance. Nothing serious broke apart, but they could see tons of dust from here, and it might have been more destructive in other regions.

“We better do this now,” Magnolia decided. “If the ground begins to shake during the attempt, we could lose our balance.”

“That tremor means the big one is coming,” Leona tried to explain, “not that we won’t have another for a while.”

“Then let’s get on with it,” Aeterna contended.

“It could be minutes,” Leona warned, “and it’s not your call.”

“No, it’s ours,” Garland argued. “I say we do it, and we do it now. Ninety seconds is all we have available to us anyway.”

Just in case they needed a couple of extra hands, Angela teleported up to the control room in the penthouse with Tertius and Ramses, so they could release the clamps connecting the tower to the dome. They were coordinating on comms, relayed to Magnolia by Leona on one side of the cylinder, and Marie on the other with Garland. They were still in the middle of the process when another tremor began. “Guys, we need to abort,” Leona urged. No, she begged.

It was pretty much too late, though. Declamping the tower links wasn’t a single step. For clamps that large, it happened in stages, and they had already opened the first two stages, which placed them at more risk if they didn’t just move forward, full steam ahead.

“On my mark,” the team could hear Ramses say through comms. As he counted down, Leona and Marie’s voices synced with his, “eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, mark!” They slammed their fists down in the air, and pointed to the Overseers.

Magnolia and Garland opened a joint dark portal, slicing through the bottom floor like a hot knife through butter. The tower started to fall through. It was a magnificent sight to behold. The people in the control room appeared back down on the ground next to Mateo, Olimpia, and Romana.

“We can’t hold it anymore!” Leona cried, just about immediately, repeating what Magnolia was saying.

Marie reported a similar sentiment from Garland. “It’s worse than we thought! Best we can do is collapse the portal uncleanly, and generate an annihilating vortex!”

“I’ve never done that before!” Magnolia argued.

“Do it now!” Garland urged. There was absolutely no time to argue. After only about ten or eleven seconds, the portal fell apart, but it didn’t just evaporate into nothing. It exploded from the ground, and ate up part of the tower like a Lucius bomb. Unlike an L-bomb, though, it didn’t travel very far. Almost all of the tower was now falling towards them, preparing to crash on the surface. Leona teleported Magnolia out of the dome while Marie took Garland. Ramses hugged both Valerians, and spirited them away to safety.

Mateo was about to teleport too when he saw his wife, Olimpia take her Sangster Canopy out of her bag. She didn’t even give him the chance to protest before she jumped only a couple hundred meters away, directly underneath the falling tower. She opened it, and aimed it at the annihilator. She sent pockets of new space out of the tip. It wasn’t holding up the tower, but perpetually making the ground farther and farther away from it. She couldn’t hold on forever, though, and in fact, not for any meaningful amount of time. The Oblivios could not evacuate before she lost control. The first to escape would probably still be in the tunnel when it happened, and still be caught in the destruction. This was a desperate attempt doomed to fail.

But maybe Mateo could help instead. Both he and Romana jumped over to her, and took hold of the umbrella. “No!” he argued. “Just me! You two get out of here!”

“I know what you’re planning, dad! I can help!”

“You don’t have dark particles anymore!”

“Oh, yes, I do! Get out of here, mom!”

“Mom?” Olimpia echoed. “You’ve never called me mom before.”

“Go!” Olimpia reiterated.

“I love you!” Olimpia disappeared.

“Is this gonna work?” Mateo asked his daughter.

“Hell, yeah, it will!”

They both screamed their heads off. A massive swarm of dark particles erupted from them, through the umbrella. They were still adding space between them and the tower, but they were experiencing diminishing returns. It and the swarm met in the middle, but it was taking time for the dark particles to cover the entire thing. Meanwhile, it continued to fall, closer and closer to the surface. It might have appeared to be going rather slow from the outside, but it was actually accelerating, and would strike the planet with an even greater force than it would have had they done nothing but save themselves. The particles were nearly at full coverage and the tower was nearly upon them when the rest of the team appeared next to them. One by one, they took hold of the handle or the shaft, wherever they could find purchase.

“There’s nothing you can do to help!” Mateo shouted at them.

“We can die together!” Leona reasoned.

“That’s freaking stupid!” Romana volleyed.

“Don’t talk to your mother like that!” Olimpia scolded.

They continued to scream into the wind, as a team, and as they struggled to hold on, they started to float in the air a little. With one final push of their might, the dark particles turned all sorts of colors, and disappeared, as did the tower, and the whole team with them.

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Microstory 2469: Gambledome

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Here’s the thing about gambling in a post-scarcity society...it’s not any fun! When money isn’t real, the stakes aren’t real, and there’s nothing interesting about it. The creators of Gambledome have managed to subvert this about as well as possible without completely shifting the paradigm of the economy. In Gambledome, money kind of is real, but only here. You start out with a modest amount of cash to spend on chips, and as you play, you win and lose those chips. If your stack starts piling up, you can cash them out, and spend it on things. You can get yourself a nice, luxurious room to stay in. You can spring for the (faux) lobster at dinner. You can give it away to your friends to make them like you. This is how it worked in other gambling communities on Earth back in the before-fore times, like Las Vegas. Here, it’s a recreation, which may make you think that your life can only get better, but that’s not true. If you run into the negative, you’re in trouble. You can’t leave the dome, and go back to the utopia that vonearthans have created since automation made fiat-based economies obsolete. You have to stick around, and pay off your debts. That’s right, there are real consequences. Some of the humans walking around as staff may be there because that is the experience that they have asked to be assigned while staying in the dome, but some are there because they have to be. Don’t come here if you don’t genuinely want to pretend to be an ancient human, because that’s the thing about gambling. You don’t know if you’re gonna win, and people lose all the time. A note on cheating: while they won’t torture you, it can land you in jail, where you’ll pay off your social debt by being locked up in a cell, unable to leave. We still have jails in the 27th century, of course, but the percentage of incarcerated individuals has never been lower, so this is rare. One woman lost her money on purpose, threw a tantrum, and tried to steal it all back, specifically so they would throw her in a cell, because it just doesn’t happen all that often anymore, and she certainly didn’t want to break any real laws. She didn’t want to go through the real justice system, and go to a real jail, where she might never get out. Overall, this place is a lot of fun, but only temporarily. I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life here, and I certainly wouldn’t want to live in a world where people are sincerely desperate enough to gamble because they think they have no other choice. I don’t know if Gambledome is fostering any real addicts, but I sure would be interested to know if it’s happening, and if it is, whether the creators have any plans to do anything about it.

Microstory 2455: Flumendome

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If you don’t know what a flume is, it’s a waterslide. I mean, it’s a certain type of waterslide, but who am I to get bogged down in the intricacies of linguistics? Oh, that’s right, I’m a linguist. I suppose this rolls off the tongue better than Waterslidedome. Or Waterslidome. Well, hmm. Waterslidome. Yeah, it should be that, but pronounce it like slid. Whatever, it doesn’t matter what the name is, people! Waterslides is the name of the game. I don’t even know how many there are, because I did not read the prospectus. I saw that word, then saw the main picture, and I was hooked. I’ve loved waterslides ever since I was a kid. I remember going to the waterpark every summer, but just once per year. Oh, I would beg my parents to take us more than once, but they wouldn’t do it. It wasn’t about the money, it was about keeping it special, and learning delayed gratification. Parenting is a crapshoot; when I had kids, I learned that myself. I don’t fault them for their line of reasoning. I still wish I could have gone more, but we’re all immortal now, so yay, I have all the time in the universe! Back to Flumendome, this is the best park I’ve ever seen by far. Since it’s contained in this dome, its engineering limitations are a lot farther away from the ground than its Earthan equivalents. So are the slides themselves. The best one starts at the zenith, and goes all the way down to the surface. Again, I didn’t read the prospectus, so I don’t know how long it is, but I know it’s more than 41.5 kilometers. It could be double that, or more. I don’t have any friends so I shared a raft with some lovely, kind strangers. They calculated that it was probably close to 120 kilometers, which is insane to me. I grew up in the 2080s and ’90s; we didn’t have anything anywhere near this scale. It takes just an hour to get all the way down, and there is no escape. You’re moving too fast, and trying to fish you out of there would just be unsafe, for you, and anyone you’re with, or behind you. If you don’t think you can handle it, then absolutely don’t try. Fortunately, you can start small, with some regular waterslides, and work your way up. I told you, we’re immortal, baby, don’t be strict about your time. There is another that starts at the top, and goes all the way down, but it’s not as steep, and not as fast. It takes about four hours to get to the bottom, and if it’s a desperate emergency, a rescue drone can reportedly extract you, but only during lulls, so again, proceed with caution. I don’t think they’ve had to do it before, but I did hear about someone needing to get off this next one, which sounds like that wasn’t hard at all. The slide is the craziest one of all in some respects. It also starts way up there, but it’s even longer. We can’t even begin to estimate its length. It takes a full 24 hours to get down. They can extract you because you’re moving so slowly. It’s like being on a river, except if you climbed over the edge, you would fall off and die. Fortunately, that’s probably impossible, because the sides are so steep and wet, you’d have to be a tree frog, or something. And why would you? I’ve been talking a lot about extremes, but this place has a slide for everyone. Its prospectus is one of the most comprehensive (which is why I didn’t read it), but if you’re unsure, I suggest you take a look at it, and find what you’re looking for. It’s a lot of fun, for people of all ages.

Microstory 2379: Vacuus, October 28, 2179

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Dear Condor,

I saw the letter that Velia sent you, and the photograph that she sent along with it. I knew that she was curious about you, I just didn’t realize how attached she had become to the idea of getting to know you more personally. She’s been very lonely here. As you can see, she’s quite good-looking, but she has a little trouble communicating with others. I think she jumped at the chance to correspond with you, because the medium allows her to rethink and revise her thoughts before they ever reach you. Just be careful with how you approach the situation. A long-distance love story is romantic, but not very practical. You and she will never meet in person, and even if you can accept that, it will probably eat at her over time. Be nice, and don’t just ignore her, but really try not to lead her on. She deserves to be happy with someone who is living on the same planet, and she doesn’t deserve to be distracted from such fulfillment and contentment. Okay, that’s enough of me scolding you for something that may never be a problem. That’s exciting news about your nurse, please let me know how that goes when she gets back to you. It reminds me of that book two development where Roscoe tracks down his estranged grandfather, and learns that he’s the one who protected Audie’s grandmother from that storm when they were young. It was a cool symmetrical twist, and the writer handled it well. Though, I admit, the adaptation could have done it better. I don’t like when the leads are double cast into entirely different characters for flashbacks. It’s a little cute, but mostly annoying. That’s just my opinion, I guess. Anyway, it would be great to reunite with someone who was so important in your past. I hope it goes well. She sounds lovely. I’m worried about Pascal and his trip, though. I don’t like it when you have to breach the safe confines of your floating platform at all, but I’m more worried than I was before; probably because I know you two better now than when you were first telling me your whole situation. I know he’ll have already left, but remember to tell dad to be careful. I’m sure you always say something to that effect, but a lot has changed since he last saw your neighbor. He could be dangerous, even if he had nothing to do with our separation. A part of me hopes that he’s dead, or simply can’t be found, just to avoid the risk of an encounter that does not go well. Just be safe, and get him back home quickly.

Lounging on an imaginary beach,

Corinthia

Microstory 2375: Vacuus, October 13, 2179

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Dear Condor,

I trust that you’ve been getting my daily health updates. I think that’s all I’m going to do, just forward my morning vital stats. It’s a lot easier, and the system is already set up for it. Of course, the feature is typically meant for patients to update their doctors, but if it makes you feel better, then I can do it. Yes, I do have other people to help me when I’m having trouble, be it with my health, or anything else. Like I was saying, it takes a village, and we’re a tight-knit group here. Some are closer than others. Some have more friends than me, but overall, I feel like I could count on just about anyone on this base. I’ve been reading about it, and other colonies are facing similar issues, living in these controlled environments. People don’t ever get just a little sick, so when something happens, it runs rampant. No one knows what the solution might be, though I’m guessing that your domes make things a little safer. If you have plant life growing in them, you have bacteria growing on them. All those variables are making illness a real concern, but hopefully, a manageable one. I have been taking vitamins my whole life, which include more than one immunity booster, so that’s always helped me. It’s probably part of what staved the disease off for as long as it had been. Anyway, I’m okay now. Bray has been great, and if you don’t know how to interpret vital sign trends, I’m back to the way I used to be before all this. It was a scare, but I think I can safely say that I’m out of the woods now. You’re right, testing twins for this sort of thing could be a good idea if it weren’t horrific, and we probably weren’t the first to think of it. I’m sure our observers did too. I bet they were indeed studying the physiological differences between us, living in vastly  different environments, or at least they were trying to. We’ve mentioned that it makes little sense, trying to study anything in fraternal twins, but whatever. It’s over now, and we don’t have to worry about those people anymore. I hope you took my advice, and sent a message to Velia. I know that she’s looking forward to it.

Ta-ta for now,

Corinthia