Microstory 2690: Forbidden Science

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Ronan Truett sits on the exam table, wearing what he calls a gasmask, but the doctor called it something else. It is quite literally freezing cold on his face, but he doesn’t mind it. It isn’t going to be the hardest thing he will ever do over the course of the next few decades. After the twenty minutes are up, the doctor comes back and removes it. “How does it look?” he asks.

“Good. How does it feel?” the doctor volleys.

Ronan rubs the new beard on his chin. “Like a thousand tiny cuts.”

The doctor dismisses it with his facial expression. “That’ll go away in a few minutes. Would you like me to hot press and discolor it? I can make it unkempt and wild, so you look more rough and tumble.”

“Actually, historical Norsemen were quite well-groomed. A long and well-styled beard was the sign of a masculine and respectable man back then. Pay no attention to the inaccurate old movies you may have seen. They didn’t wear horned helmets either, if that’s what you’re picturing.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about it.”

“It’s not in your internal database? Can you access the central archives remotely?” Ronan presses.

The doctor chuckles. “My brain doesn’t do that. I’m not an android, but one of those virtually immortal organics. I change substrates when I need to, like you, but I don’t have cybernetic connections.”

Ronan is surprised and impressed.

The doctor seems to sense this. “I just like medicine, so they let me do the simpler procedures, like your hair follicle stimulation. I wouldn’t be allowed to conduct any major surgeries. Castlebourne follows the same laws that Earth does in that regard.”

“I see,” Ronan says as he’s admiring his new appearance in the mirror. He’s never been one for facial hair, but he’s about to become a Norseman, so he wanted to look the part, and really immerse himself in the simulation. He’s not the only one. “So that’s why you’re not doing the foetal consciousness transfer for my wife.”

This gives the doctor pause. “I’m sorry? Foetal?”

“Oh, she’s not going to transfer herself to a foetus. She’s going to carry the foetus, and have the baby in the simulation.”

The doctor is still confused by this, and also now speechless.

“I assure you, it’s perfectly legal. We’re well within the Charter Cloud—”

“I’m aware of how the law works on this planet, Mister Truett. I’ve probably lived here longer than you. I know that foetal transference is possible, and I’m not surprised it’s legal. I’m surprised anyone would actually ever do it. There’s a reason it is illegal in the Core Worlds. We don’t know what it would do to a person, regressing to a prenatal state, or even early developmental, with all that neuroplasticity. What impact does that have on a person’s psyche, when their brains rewire themselves so drastically? Can you even have a continuity of consciousness when you let that happen? Is it not just an elaborate form of death? Suicide, that is?”

“Well, we’ll see,” Ronan says as he’s putting his shirt back on. He needed a little chest hair too. That is designed to take longer, which is fine. “My friend has fully consented to it.”

“He’s your friend?” the doctor questions. “I’m not sure if it’s weirder that he’s not your wife’s biological son already, or if it would be more awkward if he were.”

“Pretty judgy for a medical professional. A bot doctor would never say that.”

He shrugs. “You could have designed a substrate to develop facial and body hair during the gestation process, but you chose to come to me. Most people like my blunt attitude, specifically because they can’t get it from a bot doctor, unless it’s their personal model. But you’re right, I’ll zip my mouth. There’s the door, have a good immersion.”

Ronan leaves the exam room, and heads down to the other floor where his wife and friend are sitting up next to each other in their respective gurneys.

“Oh, you look great,” Mayumi reaches up towards his face with a dumb look on her own. “Fluffy.” She actually looks and sounds intoxicated. Her gown is on backwards.

“She’s on drugs for the implantation procedure,” their friend and future son, Talus explains. “I am not. I have to be sharp before I become a baby again.”

Mayumi smiles over at Talus. “You’re gonna love my uterus. We play hip-hop on Tuesdays.”

“Not anymore, we don’t,” Ronan points out. “It’s all lyres and flutes for us for the next thirty years. We’ll play the lyre for you while you’re baking in there, son.”

“You don’t know how.”

“I’ll have plenty of time to learn.”

“When you’re not off a-viking,” Talus reminds him.

“Maybe even then.” Ronan cracks his knuckles. “I’m sure I could break heads and carry a tune at the same time.”

“I don’t think I have a head anymore,” Mayumi says.

A new doctor walks in—a proper bot this time. He hands Talus a tablet. “Okay, the mother has already finished her consent forms, but here’s the last one for you, Mister Sauter. This one personally absolves Hrockas Steward from any liability in the event that the results of this procedure render you neurologically damaged, physically defective in your new substrate, or philosophically deceased and replaced. It is the same waiver you signed before, but the owner wanted you to sign a separate one for him.”

“Sounds good to me,” Talus agrees. He signs without hesitating. He has thought about this for a very long time. They did not do this on a whim.

Ronan must admit, this is a crazy idea, and yes, there is a reason it has never been done before. What comes out of Mayumi nine months from now may not be Talus at all. It may be an entirely different person; new memories, new personality, new everything. It could mean that this Talus right here is dead. He deliberately didn’t make a copy of his mind as backup, since that wouldn’t really be him either, since it would already have been outdated by hours at best. This might very well mark the end of Talus Sauter, and they won’t really have an idea for another ten years maybe? But it’s what he wants, it’s what Mayumi wants, and while his opinion doesn’t technically matter here, it’s what Ronan wants too. He is going to raise his best friend in a simulation of Scandinavia in the first millennium, and he couldn’t be more excited. He kisses them both, then leaves for the waiting room so they can move forward.

An hour later, Mayumi wheels out alone. She smiles at him. “Great news, husband. I am no longer light.”

“Okay,” Ronan says, clapping his hands. “Let’s go to Danmörk.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 8, 2552

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Before calling anyone else about the creep, the twins walked back around the portal building, which they had named The Gatehouse. Angela wanted to call it The Iris, but Marie said that they weren’t allowed to. They stress-tested the structure, and found themselves unable to get in, which suggested that Bronach Oaksent would not be able to get out. They certainly didn’t design it to be that easy. But they had only just now built it, so they were paranoid that it wasn’t enough. Who knows what tricks this guy had up his giant sleeve? They returned to the doors where he was waiting to be let out, and urged him to go back where he came from. He didn’t leave, and he didn’t speak. He didn’t lift his hood either, so they weren’t even able to confirm that it was him. For all they knew, it could have been a troublemaking teen just playing a prank.

Once it looked like their opinions weren’t being respected, they relented, and called in everyone else. The Matics were not happy to be interrupted from what they were doing, but they understood the seriousness. Ramses was fortunately at a stopping point in his work, where the trillions of simulations he was running needed time to iterate and resolve. “I’ll handle this,” he said. He took the forge core back from Angela, and started working on something new, claiming that it would be complete by the time they returned to the timestream. He was right. When they came back a year later, it was impossible to even get close.

It was now surrounded by the largest pyramid they had ever seen. Ramses said that the perimeter was 20 kilometers in total length. He would have built it bigger than that, but that was all the space he had to work with outside of the capital dome. There was actually an entrance that went from the dome, into the pyramid. From there, a maze leading to the portal would make it virtually impossible to find your way through. Even if Bronach returned to where he came from, and flew back through the portal with a stealth bomber, he should not have been able to escape. He kind of went overboard with this one, but admitted to feeling bad for not addressing the issue before. Leona wanted to point out that it was Echo who made the portal in the first place, with no apparent way to shut it off, but that would have been insensitive of him.

“Is he still there?” Leona asked over Angela’s shoulder as Angela was studying the Gatehouse’s feed.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Well, his robes are anyway.” She cast the video to the big screen, and stepped through days and days of footage. “See? He doesn’t move. He’s literally frozen. I’m thinking he teleported out, and teleported a mannequin in to take his place.”

“I though you had the suppression field up.”

“Oh, that doesn’t just prevent people from getting in or out?” Angela asked.

“It should stop it altogether.”

“Oh, then I don’t know,” Angela said. He’s, uhh...a robot? I saw that in a show once. An evil android went too far back in time, so he made himself a little money, bought some infrastructure, then sealed himself up, and just went dormant for decades.”

“That’s absolutely not impossible.” Leona looked back at the screen for a few seconds. It made her shiver. “Ack, that’s so creepy. Turn it off, turn it off.”

Angela exited out, letting it revert to a wide shot of the pyramid from the outside. “I know this was all automated, but it still took a lot of energy for just one little person.”

“It’s not a waste. It’s good to have a pyramid anyway. It helps facilitate interstellar and intergalactic travel.”

“I’ve heard that,” Angela said, nodding. “I don’t understand why, or why it seems like we’ve never worried about it. Most people can’t jump that far anyway. Is it just for people like Maqsud and Aristotle Al-Amin?”

“The way I understand it, it’s specifically not for them. They were born with the ability to cross those distances on their own. There are a lot of things going on that we don’t hear about, from both salmon and choosing ones. They need to cover those distances too, for various reasons. I don’t think that pyramids hold special power. I think it’s more about the size.”

“Also the shape,” Ramses added, having returned at some point from his work on the moon. “It could be a cone instead, but those are harder to engineer, and I personally prefer the former, though I am Egyptian. It’s about funneling temporal energy from a large area to a fine point. But you’re right, the pyramid-builders in ancient days didn’t do anything special to the interior. Energy just concentrates well from this basic shape.”

“Right,” Angela said. She twisted her shoulders back and forth a couple of times between Leona and Ramses. “Am I the only one seeing an issue here?”

“What do you mean?” Ramses questioned.

“We built a megastructure to prevent someone from coming here from far away without our permission. And this new structure is particularly well-suited for helping people come from far away without our permission.”

“Don’t say that,” Leona urged, “because if you say that, something’s gonna happen, and we’re not gonna like it.”

Fearfully, all three looked back up at the live feed. Leona was seemingly correct. A beam of fiery blue light landed right on the tip of the pyramid, releasing a pressurized vhwm, loud enough to be heard by the far camera, but not from inside the dome.

“Everyone report to main control immediately,” Leona ordered into comms.

They all appeared nearly instantaneously, except for Romana.

“Romy!” Leona cried. “Romana, where are you!”

Mateo checked the locator. “She’s in the pool. She likes to float around in there when she’s meditating.”

“I guess that’s okay, as long as she’s not near the portal pyramid,” Leona decided. “We have an intruder. I don’t know who it is. Marie, you’re with me. Ramses, secure virtual systems. Angela, be an extra set of hands if he needs it. Mateo.... Mateo?”

“It looks like he’s at the pool now,” Olimpia notified her.

Mateo reappeared, wet from the waist down, carrying his daughter in his arms. She was breathing, but not opening her eyes, or stirring. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

“I do,” Marie admitted. “She’s in VR. She’s been living a second life.”

“Ram...” Leona began, “deal with that too. Marie, we gotta go.”

They took each other’s hands, and teleported to the benbenet, where they found Bronach Oaksent, as well as some unknown person, who was wearing too much clothing and goggles to recognize. That second guy had some kind of apparatus attached to the balcony floor, and was doing something with a tablet.

“Whoa, hold on, ladies,” Bronach said, holding up his hands defensively. “We’re not here to hurt you. There’s a peace treaty, remember?”

“I remember we can’t trust you. How did you get out?” Leona demanded to know.

“I didn’t,” he answered. “I didn’t have to, because I was never in there.”

The other guy pushed his goggles to his forehead, and looked up. It too was Bronach, but the old version of him, who Mateo rescued from the afterlife simulation. The two of them had a weird relationship since they could both lay claim to the Goldilocks Corridor. “It’s nearly done, then it will need to calculate the return vector.”

“Make sure you make it two-way,” Young!Oaksent instructed. “I don’t want the two of us getting trapped in there too.”

“No, we wouldn’t want that,” Leona said sarcastically.

“Before you get any bright ideas,” Young!Oaksent responded, “there’s a reason we’re wearing these vests. They let us dig tunnels through suppression fields. All he’s doing now is calculating the trajectory so we get a straight shot into the Gatehouse. Without it, we would still be able to get free.”

“I don’t like how much you know about this place,” Marie spat.

“This is the most famous planet in the galaxy,” Young!Oaksent explained. “Or it will be anyway. I don’t have time to tell you everything—”

“I don’t care,” Leona contended. “I just need to know who the hell is down there, and what you want with him.”

Young!Oaksent winced. “It’s Key!Bronach, obviously. Your portal only goes to one place. He’s been searching for a way back here since the Sixth Key was created. He finally found a safe route with the portal that you so graciously created for him. We don’t want him here. We can’t have it. We’re already splitting power in the Corridor. He would only muddle things up.”

“Why is he all weird, and not showing his face?” Marie questioned.

He shrugged. “No clue. We don’t know that much about what he’s been through. We just see him as a threat. I promise, once we get him, we’ll shimmer back home, and not bother you. There’s no reason for us to stay on Ramosus.”

“Not yet,” Old!Oaksent quipped.

“Shut up,” Young!Oaksent scolded.

Leona laughed. “Wow, could you two be more having totally rehearsed that?”

“Huh?”

“Look, I don’t doubt that you have a problem with sharing the wealth, but I don’t believe that you’re going to leave us alone. I’m sure you already know that we’re formulating a plan to shave the top of this pyramid off so it can no longer access Shimmer.”

“That’s your prerogative,” Young!Oaksent agreed. “Either way, I’m getting my alt self, and taking him somewhere so far away, you’ll never see him again.”

“Let me guess, the distant future?”

“N—no,” he protested.

Old!Oaksent’s tablet beeped. “We’re good to go.”

Young!Oaksent put his goggles on. “All right, sweethearts, it was nice to catch up, but we gotta do a thing.” He clicked his tongue and pointed at the girls with both hands.

Before they could tunnel away, Olimpia and Angela appeared behind them with jet injectors, which they promptly stuck into the two Oaksents’ necks. They fell over unconscious immediately.

“Boom, asshole! Wait for her to shoot you!” Olimpia cried. She looked up when she realized her words weren’t landing. “Dredd, 2012. Anybody? Anybody? Whatever.”

A few hours later, they saw on the interior Gatehouse cameras as the two newest Oaksents were waking up in the Gatehouse with the third version of him. The creepy one was still just standing there frozen. “Welcome back,” Leona said into the microphone.

Young!Oaksent looked up at the camera. “You took our vests.”

“Ramses is already looking them over,” she told him. “What a thoughtful gift.”

“I underestimated how ruthless you were,” he said. “A chemical attack. It doesn’t sound like you.”

“I do what I must,” she replied.

“Are you gonna trap us here forever?” Old!Oaksent asked.

“There’s a way out, right behind ya, up the hill.”

They both looked over their shoulders at the portal. “We’ll find a way back. And anyway, our people know what to do in our absence.”

“We’ll be ready,” Leona claimed, not knowing if it was true.

Young!Oaksent shook his head indignantly. He snapped his fingers in front of the supposed Sixth Key version of them. “Simon says, unfreeze.”

The hooded figure slowly turned towards him, but didn’t react too dramatically.

Young!Oaksent took him by the upper arm, and began to walk up the hill. Old!Oaksent followed them both through the portal.

“We need to find a way to close it completely,” Leona determined. “I thought it would be a good idea to have that connection for our own use, but it’s too dangerous.”

“Yeah, I’ll look into it,” Ramses volunteered. “But right now, I’m trying to get Romana out of her virtual environment.”

Leona looked across the room, where Mateo was next to his daughter, stroking her hair gently. Leona breathed deeply. “Yes, that’s priority. Then the portal. Then the Outriders. Then...preparing for anything and everything else. And we thought this world would be boring.”

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Microstory 2624: You Have Been Going Up This Whole Time, Don’t Go Back Down Now

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August 29, 2526. Notus Konn and the small group of survivors that he fell in with are in the northern polar region, but not quite safe yet. They have been walking somberly for about a day now, but have not gotten very far since the terrain is so treacherous, and they have no idea how far they have to go. They stop to rest, but no longer have a vacuum tent to stretch out in, so they just lie down in their suits. They’ve grown rather used to the confinement, even Notus, who is only with this particular group because he got claustrophobic and freaked out while with his original group. The air is cleaner here, but still not breathable. It never was outside of the domes.

Calypso notices Notus away from the group during one of their breaks, tapping on his interface, and sometimes pointing it towards the beetloid, which they have named Heracles. “I couldn’t help but notice that you’re pretty handy with that thing. Most of the Breckenridgers have to ask for help just turning the screen back on.”

“I’m from Leviss,” Notus explains.

“Wait, that’s not what you said before,” Calypso contends. “You said you weren’t used to confined space because Breckenridge is so open. That’s why you, uhh...”

“Had a mental breakdown in the rover? That’s because Leviss doesn’t have any cars, and I already am claustrophobic. I was born there, and then my family moved to Breckenridge when I was eleven. I’m not familiar with this tech, but it’s not so different from what I originally grew up with.”

“Truthfully, I didn’t know that anyone did that.”

“It’s rare,” Notus admits. “Most Levins are too used to technology to give it up, and most Breckenridgers are afraid of it. But my family lived in a more rural area of our dome, so while we had computers, we had a lot more experience with manual labor, and a more physical lifestyle. Breckenridge wasn’t a hard sell.”

“I’m not afraid of technology,” Calypso argues.

“Fear is a strong word,” Notus decides. “How about unaccustomed and wary?”

“I’ll take it,” Calypso determines. She waits a moment. “So, what exactly are you doing with that thing?”

He smiles at her. “This.” After one more tap, Heracles jumps into the air, and flies way above their heads. The others sitting on the rocks watch it go.

“What’s it doing up there?” Shimizu asks.

Notus switches his comms to address the whole group. “It’s getting us to where we’re going.” He monitors the progress on his screen until it beeps. He pivots on the ground and points. “On the other side of that mountain is a canyon. The first stable dome we’ve seen in days is at the bottom of that canyon. I believe there is some means of getting down there quickly too. Heracles is picking up a much closer signal too.”

“Are there people there?” Calypso asks him.

“It seems to be picking up chatter, but it doesn’t have authorization to listen in. So yeah, I think so, but we won’t be able to talk to them until we get closer.”

Shimizu stands back up, and slaps his knees. “Then let’s get on with it. For Breanna and Cash.” He takes lead down the natural trail, towards the mountain.

Notus holds back for a moment, looking up at Heracles who is coming back down to the ground. He pats it on the head, echoing Cash from the other day. “Good boy.”

Mountain might be a strong word, and probably canyon too. It’s not long before they reach the edge. Inside the canyon is a much smaller dome than the kind that they’re used to. It can still probably fit thousands of people, but it had to be made compact to fit within the walls. Not too far from where they come out, they see the manmade structure that Heracles was detecting. “Does anybody know what this is?” Shimizu asks.

“It’s called a gondola,” Notus answers, looking at his HUD. “Also known as a cable car, it was invented in 1616 by Fausto Veranzio—”

“Yeah, no one cares about that,” Shimizu interrupts. “If it can get us down to the dome where I can finally take this blasted thing off forever, that’s all I need to know.”

“Let’s ask this person,” Calypso suggests.

A suited individual is coming out of a small habitat at the top of the gondola. They’re still really far away, but they send out a communication request, which everyone in the group accepts. “There is nothing for you here. Please keep moving along.”

“Please—” Notus begins, only to be interrupted by Shimizu again.

“We demand sanctuary. The world is dying, and we all need to do our part to save the human race from extinction.”

“The human race is not going to go extinct because less than ten people can’t get into our dome, which is at full capacity.” The gatekeeper points. “If you just keep walking that way, you will reach the next dome over. I’m sure it has plenty of room. Well, I don’t know that, but I know that we definitely don’t, so keep walkin’.”

Shimizu shakes his head. “We’re not leaving her until you let us in, you—”

Now Notus is the one to interrupt. “We thank you for your graciousness sir, and only ask that you allow us to take rest in your habitat. We have been wearing these suits for so long, and had to leave our vacuum tent behind. Please, if you could grant us this one favor, as well as facilitate contact with one of your leaders on the ground, we would much appreciate it. I’m sure we can work something out.”

The stranger says nothing for a moment, and as they are nowhere near him, the survivors can’t read his face to see which way he might be leaning. “What is that thing you have with you? The robot thing.”

“Heracles, our beetloid,” Notus answers.

“He saved my life,” Calypso interjects.

“I’ll tell you what, you let me have Heracles—which is a dumb name, by the way, so I’ll be changing it—and I’ll think about letting you take a break in here.”

When Shimizu lunges, Notus holds him back, even though the gap between the two parties remains significant. “We’re not going to do that. You have just made us a bad faith offer, which tells us that there is nothing we can do to convince you to help. But you should know that I am the grandson of the Leviss Magistrate, and she has heavy pull in the greater Proxima Domanian government. I will be reporting your actions to the administration. I’ll also be recommending that they evacuate your dome immediately.”

“Ooo, I’m so scared,” the gatekeeper says sarcastically, holding his hands. “Not the Magistrate of some dumb community that I’ve never even heard of. Keep it movin’, pal. If you ain’t got a robot bug for me, I ain’t got a pressurized habitat for you.”

Shimizu switches comms back to the group-only channel. “Way to go, asshole.”

“Trust me,” Notus says as he’s poring through the data that he siphoned from the local network. “We don’t want nothing to do with that dome. It’s below sea level.”

Microstory 2618: The Way is Clear, the Beetle Knows the Way

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Almost straight east, another kilometer and a half away, in the direction of the planet’s night side, lay another manmade structure. Since it would have been so far out of the group’s way, Breanna decided that a detour would require a unanimous vote. Last time, they received one when they didn’t need it, and this time, they needed it, but didn’t get it. Less than half were willing to risk it, so they elected not to. Those who voted in favor of it were not upset or argumentative. They accepted the results, and moved on.

They have continued on their way northwest, trying to head in the general direction of the pole while also hoping to run into a dome, or one of the tunnels used to connect the disparate domes to each other. After hours, they finally see it, and decide to forgo their break in lieu of pushing forward to reach their interim goal. They’ve become more accustomed to their suits, though they still feel very confining. Even Breanna and Cash have had just about enough. They’re designed to operate indefinitely, but changing human psychology is a different challenge altogether.

“I think I see a person up there,” a passenger notes, looking towards the spine. It is a massive structure, snaking through the land, made to transport people and supplies along walking corridors, vactrain tubes, or sometimes chairlifts for steep climbs. Breanna isn’t extremely familiar with the inner workings of these structures, but while she can’t quite make out someone standing on the top herself, there is surely a way up there on the exterior. The megaengineers responsible for all this infrastructure tried to plan for everything. Everything but a worldwide cataclysm apparently.

“I see it too,” someone else declares.

Breanna reaches up and extends the magnification on her helmet to its extreme limit, and is able to see a silhouette, but no detail. “Whoever they are, they’re not wearing any protective gear.” She looks over at Aeterna.

Aeterna smiles. “I told you he was alive.”

“We don’t know that that’s him,” Breanna says. “Unless you have some reason to believe that you’re the only two insanely invincible immortals in the universe.”

“No, of course not. They’re just probably not on Proxima Doma, or in this time period.” That doesn’t make much sense. If they can’t die, why wouldn’t there be just as many—this doesn’t make sense at all. She’s choosing not to question it, however, because it’s hurting her head, and she probably doesn’t really want to know.

They get close enough to resolve a face, and just as they suspected, it is indeed Tertius Valerius. He’s smiling like he doesn’t have a care in the world, waving to them gleefully, pointing towards some particular part of the spine that he’s standing on, and beckoning them forwards. As they draw even nearer, they discover that there’s a fully functioning escalator on the side, which they use to reach the top and reunite with him. He and his daughter hug, but not particularly exuberantly. Neither of them is surprised. Why would they be? As they keep saying, they can’t die. She hands him an extra mask so he can utilize the radio, and tell them all what happened since they lost contact.

Everyone wants to know how Tertius survived the ordeal. He claims that there’s not much to tell. He just did because that’s what he does. Once the cyclone was over, he got up from the ground, and just started walking, hoping to catch up with everyone eventually. He makes it sound so simple. They have more questions, but Breanna understands their priorities. “Did you check the interior? Are there working vactrains?”

He shakes his head. “Not in the one behind us, nor the one in front, but there’s a maintenance railcar a little bit farther down. It’s not meant for people, so there aren’t any seats, but we can make it work. It’s for repairing the exterior, so it will go all along the perimeter of each dome, but if you do the math, I’m guessing it adds up to being faster and easier than walking. You’ll want to find something to hold onto as I do not believe the floor is ferromagnetic.” He turns and starts walking away. “Come on.”

He leads them farther down, towards the other end of the spine, and then down some steps on the side opposite of where they came from, where there are tiny little baby train tracks, and a small railcart. “Are we...gonna fit?” Cash questions.

“Oh, this is a maintenance drone.” Tertius waves his arms around the giant machine occupying the majority of the railcart. “I can’t pull it off, I was assuming you had tools to take care of it. There will be enough room once we get rid of it.”

Brenna holds her fist in front of the drone, and taps on her wrist interface. It suddenly springs to life, unlocking itself from the dock, and using its six little legs to skitter off of the railcart, onto the tracks behind them.

Cash bends over and pats the beetloid on its head. “Good girl. Good girl. Now, stay here, and try not to get swallowed up by the infinte abyss.”

“It can’t hear you through the suit,” Breanna says.

“She knows what I’m saying,” Cash claims.

They all climb onto the railcart, and find various components to hold onto. There actually is one ferromagnetic spot. It’s the hatch that leads to the engine. Breanna stands there so Tertius and Aeterna can stand in front of her, using her as a backboard. A couple of other passengers hold onto her arms and neck. Cash is the only one sitting so she can operate the controls, which were originally designed to be manipulated by giant beetle robot claws. She has to ramp up the speed slowly, because even though their suits offer them protection, they don’t exactly have inertial dampeners. A drone will normally just punch it and go, but as humans, they need a little more time to ease into it. She also needs to watch for the curves, and slow down appropriately and safely. Her onboard AI is telling her when and how, but she has to physically do it herself.

“Boss?” the guy they rescued from the other rover asks Breanna. “How do I do that thing where I just talk to one person?”

“You’ve done it,” she replies. “We’re talking one-on-one.”

“I mean with, umm...Tertius,” he clarifies.

“Oh, he just has a regular radio transceiver, so he can talk to everyone or no one.”

“I wanted to apologize for what happened...for...what I did. For what he had to do for me. It’s not that I don’t want anyone to hear what I say. I guess it just feels like I would be performing. I really just wanna have a private conversation with my savior.”

“While Cash is keeping the railcart going, I’m linking up with the dome systems as we run along them. I’m hoping we end up finding one with a fully operational train station, so we can get into one of the vacuum pods, and go a hell of a lot faster than this. You will have a chance to speak with him quietly, even if it’s not until we reach the northern pole.”

“Okay, thanks, I appreciate it.” The guy never gets his chance.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 28, 2541

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Ramses’ new Brane Establishment Map—name subject to change—was fully ready to go, but there was a catch. It required the equivalent of five tandem slingdrives to run, and once it was running, it counted as one sling. The coherence gauge went down when it was used, went down faster when it was used to map a larger region, and even faster when kept up for an extended period of time. Instead of slinging physical matter across the universe, it was only slinging information, but that still required punching a hole into the membrane of the universe, and that came at a cost. If they wanted to look for Spiral Station, they would be able to go there, but not come back until the next day. For them, that was a whole year, which if their target was on the run, would give them more than enough time to find a new place to hide.

“You should take a screenshot,” Romana suggested.

“Huh?” Ramses asked.

“Whenever you load the map, if you want to save on power, take a screenshot of it, and close it down immediately,” she went on.

“Well, it doesn’t work like that. The map is interactive. You have to zoom in and out to make out the different dots. A screenshot would just become a low-res flat image.”

Romana shrugged. “I never meant an actual single image. Download an offline file, and load it back up afterwards. It won’t be able to update, but we shouldn’t need that anyway. People don’t move around all that much on interstellar timescales.”

“Hm. It’s not designed for that,” Leona pointed out. “There’s no offline mode.”

“Then build one,” Olimpia suggested. “We’re in it for the long haul. We never expected to locate them on the first try.

They all looked back at the map. Every little dot represented some threshold of technological presence. It couldn’t find a homestead running on watermill power in the middle of nowhere, but that wasn’t the scale they were using anyway. This wasn’t about finding anyone and everyone in the galaxy. This was about spotting the outliers in this smattering of dots. There were so many of them, and it was impossible to tell what they could be walking into.  Some of them were obviously major colonies, because they were centered on known star systems, but there were a lot more isolated establishments than they knew. “Buncha hermit crabs,” Marie noted.

Any one of these could be Spiral Station.” Mateo randomly pointed to a few of them. On the last one, he accidentally touched the screen with his finger. The slingdrive under their feet sprang to life, revved up, and sent them away. “Uh...sorry? I didn’t know that would happen.”

“That’s my bad,” Ramses admitted. “It should not be that easy to navigate to a target. At the very least, it should ask for confirmation.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Leona said. “Remember that we appear as a small array of stylish belts in the main dimension. I doubt they will even notice.”

“They’ve noticed us,” Ramses said. The map on the big screen was gone, replaced with present environmental data. “It’s the Aerie.”

“The Aerie?” Angela questioned. “You mean the Iman Vellani shuttle?”

“The very same,” Ramses confirmed. “I don’t know who’s operating it, though. We will need to exit. I believe that we’ve been pulled into the tiny little airlock.”

“We might as well,” Leona decided when they looked to her for orders. “Everyone, teleport out of the pocket.”

They all appeared in the back of the shuttle. Two people were standing there, utterly stunned at their appearance. No one on Team Matic recognized them. “Uh, greetings, aliens. We come in peace.” The man held up the Vulcan salute.

“Greetings, travelers,” Leona said, stepping forward. “We are vonearthans, ultimately all from Earth.” She looked laterally at Romana. Well, six of us are. Do you identify as Dardieti?”

“I’ve never really thought about it,” Romana replied. “I’m a Nieman and a Matic.”

“I’m Quidel, and this Renata. We’re from Castlebourne, and we really do come in peace.”

“How did you come to possess this shuttle?” Mateo asked them. “We are friends with the owners, and used to crew its main ship’s sister ship.”

“A woman named Brooke Prieto gave it to us. She said they were upgrading, and didn’t it need anymore. It’s quite the gift,” Quidel says. “We’re moving at twenty-two-c.”

“Don’t tell them that,” Renata urged. “We don’t know if we can trust them.”

“If they caught up to us, they can go at least that fast too, if not faster.”

“What are you doing this far from Castlebourne?” Ramses asked. He was tapping on his tablet, taking readings, or interfacing with the Aerie, or doing whatever.

“Ram,” Marie said with her own tablet. “Look. Your computer actually did flash the last image it saw on the map before we slung here. What are these other dots?”

Ramses pulled up what she was looking at on his own device. “We’re a bit over four hundred light years from Castlebourne. The colonization sphere hasn’t reached this far out, which means there shouldn’t be anything else out here, so that’s a good question.”

Leona was looking over his shoulder. “Zoom out.”

“It’s just an image. I can’t zoom out. I mean, of course I can, but as I was saying before, it will just lose resolution. We won’t be able to see more detail.”

“Overlay that image onto a regular map of the Milky Way, as scanned by Project Topdown, and zoom out on that,” she clarified.

Ramses did what she suggested. It didn’t take long. “That’s...”

“Yeah...” Leona agreed.

“What is it?” Mateo asked. “Are we supposed to recognize it?”

Leona pointed to a cluster of stars deep in the galaxy. “This is the Goldilocks Corridor.” She pointed to another spot much closer. “Castlebourne is somewhere around here.” She pointed one more time. “This area between them is where those extremely far out dots are.”

“Oh my God, it’s the Exin Empire,” Mateo lamented.

“It’s the Exin armada,” Leona corrected. “They’re on the attack.” She looked back at the couple. “What did you hope to gain, coming here?”

Renata sighed. “The woman who gave us this thing. She tried to strip all the data out of it. We imagine that she and her own crew used it for all sorts of things before they were ready to give it up. But she missed something.”

“One communiqué,” Quidel continued the story, “between the mothership, and something called The Ambassador. It was a warning to her and her people of the danger in this region. We were trying to get there to see it for ourselves. We had nothing better to do.”

“There could be hundreds of ships in that armada,” Leona warned them. “This little thing isn’t gonna stand a chance against them, and they will swat you like a fly.”

“Seriously,” Angela said. “They won’t try to figure out who you are. They’ll just kill you and not bother to slow down.”

“We were looking for a mission,” Renata reasoned. “We were looking for a purpose. It may sound reckless to you, but if you found a treasure map with an X marking the spot, you would follow it, you’d have to. Even if you didn’t think it would lead to something good, your curiosity would win out.”

“I suppose I can imagine the allure,” Leona conceded. They had gone on similar experiences before for similar reasons.

“Wait.” Mateo swatted his own proverbial flies in front of his face. “Why did Brooke give this to you? I don’t mean, why did she give it away—that’s well within her character—but why you? Who are you?”

“We’re just—” Quidel began.

“I’m a robot,” Renata interrupted.

“Please stop using that word,” Quidel begged.

“You used it first.”

“And I regret it every day.”

Renata smiled and went on, “I was living in a base reality simulation, and I woke up. Actually, my mother woke me up. Still, I was technically an emerging consciousness, so Hrockas had to grant me independence. It was not an easy journey, and I won’t go into detail, but this was sort of an apology gift. I don’t think that Miss Prieto was trying to give it to us. I think she was giving it to him, and he was regifting it before he could even use it.”

“That’s well within his character,” Mateo acknowledged. “He must be trying to get rid of you.”

“What?” Renata asked. “Why would he wanna do that?”

“You emerged, in one of the domes?” Mateo pressed.

“Yeah...” she confirmed. “Spydome.”

Mateo nodded, having heard of it. “He probably doesn’t want that happening again. You’re...proof that it’s possible. But if all the intelligences he creates wake up, what does he end up with?”

“The most populated planet in the galaxy,” Olimpia put forth.

Mateo chuckled. “Yeah, that’s true. That could create a massive shift in power in the Milky Way, assuming it didn’t spark the deadliest rebellion in history, like Westworld times sixty thousand.”

“Hrockas brought that up once,” Renata said. “I’ve still not seen it.”

“If I have anything to say about it, you never will,” Quidel told her.

A brief pause. “Well, I have no interest in starting a rebellion. That was my mother’s dream, and I sacrificed everything to stop her.”

“Forgive me, but you don’t seem to have much love for her. Why would you call her that?” Romana asked. “Was she really your mom in some way?”

“After she reprogrammed me,” Renata began, “I retained all of my implanted memories. Even though they’re not real, I have years and years of memories of her raising me. She didn’t do a good job, because that was how her character was written, but they still feel real to me.”

“If she’s the one who woke you up, who woke her up?” Leona questioned.

“She never said,” Renata explained. “Apparently, she was an NPC in a completely different simulation years ago. I think a normal human changed her programming, and she spent a long time trying to replicate it.”

Leona and Mateo exchanged a look, as did various members of the team. She looked back at the couple. “Was her name, by chance, Proserpina, or maybe even Pinocchio?”

“No, it was Libera,” Quidel answered.

Leona looked back at her husband. “That doesn’t prove it’s not her. She could have changed her name. She did it before.”

“Libera is the perfect name for someone who thinks it’s their job to free intelligences from oppression,” Mateo agreed.

“Yeah.” Renata nodded. “She used that word a lot.”

“We have to go back to Castlebourne,” Leona determined. “I did this. This is my fault. We need answers, and I need to answer for it.”

“I’m partially responsible too,” Mateo claimed. “I ran into her in the afterlife simulation, and...forgot that I promised to help her.”

“We don’t know where it is anymore,” Olimpia reminded them both.

“I can find it,” Ramses promised.

“What about these two?” Angela gestured towards the couple. “We can’t just leave them here. You understand that nothing is waiting for you on your current trajectory but death, right?”

“Yes, we do now,” Renata replied. “We’ll turn around, and maybe finally see Earth. That’s what Hrockas suggested in the first place. It will take us, what, twenty-five years? I’m immortal now, so that won’t be a problem.”

“You said you were going twenty-two-c?” Ramses asked.

“Yeah, that’s what the computer thing says.” Quidel pointed into the little bridge behind them. “We also have to stop and let the engine rest periodically.”

“Could I take a look?” Ramses requested.

They stepped to the side, and let him pass. He looked through the console data. “Yeah, it’s a reframe engine, of course. It’s highly inefficient, though. I’m not surprised you’re moving so slow, and you keep having to stop. I can fix it for you.”

“You can? How fast would we be able to go?” Quidel asked.

“Seven-oh-seven,” Ramses answered him. “We will have to, um...go somewhere else at the end of today, but I can program my nanites to execute the repairs and upgrades in the meantime. If you’ve been piloting it, you must know enough to be able to tell when it’s done, and ready to go. It should only take a few weeks, but if you leave, we may never see each other again, because we won’t know where you are.” That wasn’t entirely true when they had their new little map, but they didn’t need to know about that, or the slingdrive technology in general, which was orders of magnitude faster than even maximum reframe.

“We would be grateful for that,” Renata said. “In return, we can tell you where Castlebourne is, if you forgot. It’s in our logs.”

“Nah, if you left twenty or so years ago, it will have moved since then. We’ll have to locate it ourselves. But that’s fine. We’ll figure it out. I have a general idea”

“Could I be so bold, sir, is there a way to get our hands on whatever technology you have that lets you, umm...miniaturize yourself into a tiny little baby ship?”

Leona smiled. “I’m afraid that secret must remain with us.”

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Microstory 2611: The Mob Will Leave as Fast as They Can, But Not All Will Make It

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August 20, 2526. Hydrangea Georgieva does not work for Proxima Doma in any way shape or form, but she has stepped up today, because no one else is. The vactrains are fully automated. Since they did away with money and tickets, there is really no reason to talk to another person. Even a trip to the other side of the world only takes a matter of hours, so if you get hungry, just bring something with you. These people may not want her, but they need her, and they’re going to listen, because chaos isn’t going to get them out of this alive. “Hey! Hey!” she yells louder to overpower the rabbling rabblers. “There are exactly two lines! If you are a mech, or a biological with a supersteadfastness trait, please stand behind the orange line! Otherwise, please wait behind the indigo line!”

“Who put you in charge!” some rando questions.

“I did!” Hydrangea insists. Surprisingly, the crowd quiets down so she doesn’t have to shout as loud anymore. “The Network Controller has programmed every single train on this planet to run at high acceleration. And the instability of this planet has made the trip rougher and more unpredictable than usual. They simply do not have time to be delicate when this many lives are at stake. If you have steadfast features, please hang back while my indigos board first. Indigos, when the doors open, please find your seats. From this location, the trip will take about three hours. If you get separated from your loved ones, maintain virtual connections with them, but do not try to reunite with them. Do not attempt to switch seats. I promise, you will find each other again, it is not the 1920s anymore. If you are an orange, you will be filling in the gaps, and using your core strength to stand in place while the train accelerates.” She looks over at the status board. “The next pods will be arriving in eight minutes. Be ready!”

“Pods? How many pods are there?” an evacuee asks.

“They are electromagnetically linking four pods together,” she replies so all can hear. “That is the optimum number. It is the most you can connect before the mass inefficiency starts to negate the value of higher capacity. The experts never predicted anything like what we’re facing now, but they are adapting emergency protocols. I assure you, they know what they’re doing. They’re going as fast as they can. Any other good questions?”

There doesn’t seem to be any. This next batch of evacuees starts shuffling around, getting in their appropriate queues, or at least hopefully so. There’s always something that holds them up. It’s usually a few morons who can’t remember which color means what. She’s been trying to make it so the instructions can be written unambiguously on the status monitors, but again, she doesn’t work here, so she doesn’t have the credentials to change that information. It’s still only giving them the current weather of this dome and the destination, but it’s outdated, because it says it’s only 24 degrees and sunny, but it’s actually a hellfire apocalypse out there. The world is sinking into itself, and her body is going to die here. She’s not going to be getting on any train, because there could always be someone in need of her help. Her mind is streaming to a back-up in orbit, and she already checked; the consciousness hub is safe above the debris cloud, and wasn’t damaged during the solar attack. A lot of her friends literally committed suicide to escape, but she saw this as an opportunity to do the most good, so she stayed behind to facilitate the movement of people who are not backed up. Proxima Doma is the first colony. A great fraction of the population are enhanced, but still not fully digitized.

A woman comes up, holding the hand of a little boy. “Um,” she whispers, “my legs can go into statue mode, but my grandson can’t do that. I know we can’t switch seats, but I would really like to stay by him if I can.”

Hydrangea smiles at her and leans down. “Most people are more like you, and less like him. After the indigos are seated, I’m going to tell the nearest oranges to go ahead and sit down until the seats get full, and then we’ll pack a few more in. I don’t tell them ahead of time, because then the lines will get messed up, and I think you would agree, organics need evacuation more than we do, so they should get through first. Just pretend like you’re one of them and sit down with your grandson. No one will know.”

“Okay, thanks.” The woman leaves with the boy.

A few minutes later, the pods arrive. Hydrangea has to continue barking orders so everyone boards in a timely and safe manner. The woman and her grandson get in and take the window seats. He smiles and waves at Hydrangea, so she waves back. It’s a madhouse, but the job gets done. Those who need a seatback to survive the high g-forces get on first, and then physically stronger people get on afterwards, filling in the aisles and other gaps. There’s nothing for them to hold onto, because standing just isn’t done. Even in a non-emergency situation, they move the trains fast enough to make seating overwhelmingly more practical. A few people do not understand this, which is a good note for her to remember for the next batch. Some people would be steadfast enough if they did have stanchions or straps, but not just free-handing it like this. There’s some confusion when it turns out a few people actually do need to sit down, but they manage to get settled. Her compatriots outside the platform have been doing a good job of counting, but this time, a few dozen people are left behind when the pods get full. They will have to wait for the next trip, which actually could be a while, because she thinks they will have to wait for empty pods to return from the pole.

Just before the pods can launch, the alarm goes off. Hydrangea looks over at the status board. “Brace yourselves!” she orders the remainders. “Another tremor!” The ground begins to shake, and it’s a big one this time. Of course, she can stand fast herself, but even that will only take her so far. She finds herself holding onto the wall as the dust and dirt are caked onto her skin and clothes. Others lie all the way down on the floor. The train speeds off. “No!” she shouts. Why would the AI do that? They should not be moving during a tremor, if they can help it, especially not if they still have to begin an acceleration phase. Nine times out of ten, it would be fine, but this is evidently that tenth proverbial time. The tube buckles and warps, and then full-on implodes. Even though the pods would have made it at least thirty meters by then, there’s no way they survived that. The tremor stops. Hydrangea stands up straight again and hyperventilates as she stares at the horror before her.

The angry horde of left behinders are screaming unintelligibly at her. She can’t tell what any one of them is saying, but she sure knows what they mean. She took responsibility for this...for them. She has to answer for the tragedy. But she can’t. She can’t deal with this. She takes out her pistol, and uses it to escape into space.

Microstory 2605: The Vanguard of Equilibrium, Their Eyes Opened

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August 19, 2526. The crew of the Proxima Vanguard are sitting in the communal area of the station, quietly doing their own things. There are only three of them here, because three is all you need. Actually, you don’t even need that. Automation can technically handle everything, but the reason they don’t do that is because then what’s the point of humans? It just seems irrational that they should have this stablecraft at the L1 point between Proxima Centauri and Proxima Doma, and not put a few people on it. They don’t have to do much, though, which is why it’s not a bustling metropolis, like it is between Sol and Earth. They’re just here in case something goes wrong. And something is about to go wrong.

The Chamberlain is watching an ancient TV show called Dawson’s Creek. They’re allowed to do whatever they want, but only as long as the monitors and alarms are within sight, which means no holographic imagery, and definitely no immersive VR. Two-dimensional media is all they have available. That’s one reason why this isn’t a very coveted position. It’s so boring, and the ways of passing the time are limited. The Chamberlain is fine with it, though, as are the Engineer and the Sensate. At the moment, the Engineer is playing this outrageous game where you push a block back and forth across a table to make contact with a little cube. When the cube hits your block, it’s volleyed back to the other side, where another player—or, in this case, the computer—will attempt to hit it back. It’s about three meters wide, so it takes a lot of effort to reach the cube each time. It’s mostly for a workout, so even when you lose, you win. The Sensate is just reading, but watching the monitors simultaneously. She had surgery to decouple her eyes from each other, allowing them to view different things at the same time.

The sensors beep.

The Chamberlain perks up. “Another solar flare?”

“Yeah, it’s a pretty big one, though. Superflare.”

“We’re not really due for one of those yet,” the Engineer points out.

The Sensate sets her e-reader down and shrugs. “That’s why they call it variable. I’ll switch to vis so we can get a good look.”

The star appears on the big screen so all three can see quite easily. The Engineer lets the cube pass his block. The Chamberlain stands up and ignores the iconic window kiss on the show. They all three stare at the screen in shock. “That’s not a superflare, but a hyperflare” the Chamberlain points out.

“I know,” the Sensate replies. She scrambles to switch off all of the equipment. If they can go dark, they may—may—survive this.

“It’s a precursor,” the Chamberlain adds.

“I know! Dump the heat!” she orders the Engineer. She’s not his boss, but the chain of command doesn’t matter right now. This just has to get done.

The rest of their lives happen in slo-motion. The Sensate continues shutting off systems, fluttering back and forth along the console. She’s frustrated that it was designed this way. First of all, there’s no master shut-off, which is a big no-no by today’s standards. This is one of the very first structures built when humans began interstellar travel. It’s not just one of the first in this particular system, but ever. Proxima Centauri is the closest star to Sol, so Proxima Doma is naturally the oldest colony. They had not yet developed the protocols that the other colonies use now. They should have kept up with the times. They could have, but things were working okay in their daily lives that they just let it lie. There’s an AI, of course, but it’s not very smart. It was intentionally limited because back then, people were worried about the long-term risks of trusting an artificial intelligence with its own personality, and theoretical agency. In hindsight, that was stupid. One command, and this could all be done, but the buttons aren’t even in order in physical space. She’s not gonna make it.

The Engineer has run over to the engineering controls, where he starts purging everything they have. The waste heat, the fuel, the control rods. That’s right. They use nuclear fission here, even though fusion was invented a trillion years ago. There’s no answer for why they didn’t upgrade. It’s probably because this is working just fine, so they might as well use the fuel they already have. There was once a fourth crewmember, who asked why they didn’t just use solar power the whole time, but Proxima Centauri being a flare star works against them, because its luminosity is unreliable. Plus, the panels would have to be large and exposed. For a more stable star, that’s fine—you probably want some solar shades anyway, but here, they would be a liability. He didn’t last long at this post. He grew too bored, so they replaced him with a maintenance robot. He could have been of some use here, though. The engineer’s controls are in order, but they’re bigger, and he has to move a lot more. This is where his training with the mechanical pong comes in, though. That’s not why he played it, but it’s proving its value today. At least it didn’t hurt. It won’t matter.

The Chamberlain’s efforts are the most fruitless of all. He’s trying to make a call. He’s not asking for help or rescue. If they make it through the next thirty seconds, they’ll be able to get in their escape pods after that. But that’s not what they’re worried about. This flare—this...hyperflare—is not just a Carrington event. It’s not going to wipe out communications, and inconvenience the inhabitants for a few weeks. The readings are spiking, proverbially off the charts. They have never seen anything this big before, nor any flare move this fast. The colonists knew that the star was erratic and angry all the time, so they designed their infrastructure to account for it. But even the most unpredictable stellar object has its own level of predictability given large enough time scales. This was not in the predictions. They are not prepared for this. Because it is not just a hyperflare, but a precursor. It is an omen to something far worse. “Come in! Come in! Can anyone hear me? This is Proxima Vanguard, calling anyone who can hear me! We’re experiencing a major hyperflare! You need to prepare for what comes next! You need to prepare for a coronal ma—”