The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 25, 2569

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Romana had gotten out of control. Her father, and everyone else, fully understood where she was coming from—she was lonely, and she needed companionship—but she was playing with fire. They blamed the progression and simplification of technology. A lot of what Ramses did involved temporal manipulation, which most researchers and users didn’t have access to, but a lot of the rest had become ubiquitous. Their advanced substrates were quite common these days, except for the bit about being able to teleport, and their attached pocket dimensions. The computing power and the detail of simulations; the whole galaxy had it, or at least it was available to them.

Downloading what began as a programmed intelligence into a mobile body was nothing new, but it had certainly become easier over the centuries. And that was what a lot of the development focused on now. All everyday problems had been solved, so the primary changed involved removing friction from the processes. You used to have to know how to program a dayfruit with the right ingredients. Now you just told it what you want, and it grew. It even did it faster than the original species could be produced. It used to be that if you wanted to give a digitized consciousness a body, you had to have the education and experience for it, and to account for all sorts of variables. Now you pushed a button. All Romana had to do was push a button, and Boyd 3.0 was just there.

But Boyd was not perfect. She wanted him to be just like them, which meant he had to skip a year at the end of every day. That was time tech, and not in the central archives, so she had to come up with a workaround. According to her, every day at midnight central, his brain went dormant, and didn’t come back online until midnight 365 days later. This was the only way she could do it. If she had asked, Ramses would not have helped her, so she probably made the smart call in that regard. That didn’t mean it wasn’t a problem, though. If his mind could be switched off like that, he could be switched back on. Where were the safeguards? What if someone else showed up during their interim year? What if Boyd got tired of skipping time, and turned himself back on in the middle of a cycle? Did he even want to skip at all, or did he want to leave this planet, and go find his way elsewhere? Romana still hadn’t thought this through.

“I have thought it through,” Romana insisted. “You are just not listening.”

“No, you’re not listening,” Ramses argued louder when Mateo tried to. “Sorry, Matt, but I’m gonna have to take this one. She’s old enough to make her own choices, and suffer the consequences beyond a scolding from her parents.” He looked back at her. “This is dangerous stuff. There was a reason I was quarantining him, and I know you knew that. This was reckless, childish, and stupid, and there will be consequences.”

“Oh, you’re just mad because you’ve become irrelevant,” Romana contended. “Now suddenly the great Ramses Abdulrashid isn’t the only one on the team who can create life. I’m sorry science caught up to your genius, but it was inevitable. Get over it.”

“No.” Ramses was generally a chill guy. He usually only had anxiety over his own insecurities, but he was livid today. “You may not have used my personal lab, but you used equipment that I fabricated.” He stopped her before she could interrupt, “don’t bring AI into this. Of course I didn’t program them character-by-character. They are still mine, and you abused my trust in you by doing this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to you and your parents, but there may be something seriously wrong with you, so you’re going in hock.”

“You can’t do that.” She laughed it off. No one else was laughing. “No, he can’t do that. I’m an equal member of this team!” No one said a word. “Dad! Moms! Stop him! Stop him!” They didn’t. The time bullet hit her, and sent her straight into lock-up.

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Microstory 2435: Bloodbourne

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This dome is scary, even though you know that you’re technically safe. I won’t go into specifics, but it’s heaven for fans of the horror genre. While Zombie Dome has its niche, due to its broad appeal, Bloodbourne takes care of everything else in the genre. Ghosts, goblins, evil demons, and other monsters. If you’ve read about it in a book, or saw it in a movie or show, it’s here...somewhere. Lurking. Waiting to pounce. Some are trying to kill you, some are trying to scare you, and some have more bizarre motives. Bear in mind that the safeguards are extremely strong here. If you go in there with a regular human body, nothing is going to hurt you. I even think they’ll lower the scare level so they won’t even give you a heart attack, though I don’t know how they ensure that when everyone’s personal constitution is different. If you’re wearing a sufficiently mechanical or strong substrate, you’re fair game. The monsters can kill you, and they will. They follow whatever rules they’ve been programmed to follow, based on their nature in the source material. If you see a guy in a mask holding a knife, you better run, or try to fight. That’s another important note. Even though you may be in a mechanical body, it’s not superhumanly strong. You will not be able to bat the hostile force around like a cat with a ball of yarn. You’re meant to be in a simulation of what the horror would be like if these characters were real, and that goes for the victims just as much as the bad guys. Your body is capable of bleeding, and it’s capable of dying. Of course, you’re consciousness will survive, but getting back into the scenario is difficult. I think it should be easier. They could treat it as a learning experience, where you get to try new tactics, but I guess they think you should have to choose a different scenario to keep going. That could change in the future. That’s why feedback like this is so important. I hope they read them. Now here’s the question, can you play one of the bad guys yourself? No, you can’t. I think that’s a shame, and they should change that too. My mind can just as easily be uploaded into the body of a psychopathic killer as a scream queen. I wonder if they just have an issue with potentially targeting people who are already psychopaths, and just haven’t had the pleasure of living out their wildest fantasies. People have been debating these things for centuries, because virtual reality affords us the same opportunity to be our sickest selves completely free from punishment or other consequences. We still haven’t found an answer, though some black market stuff can be really disturbing, so I think we kind of have settled on some boundaries. There’s something very different about doing it in base reality. Maybe that’s just taking a step too far. I’m not sure. See? This is why the debate is still raging after all this time. Draw your own conclusions. In the meantime, enter the scariest place on Castlebourne...if you dare.

Microstory 2417: Racetrack Dome

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I’m gonna say this real slow. This is a racetrack dome, which means there are...racetracks. That’s all it is. It’s hundreds of racetracks just all over tarnation. A racetrack here, a racetrack there. There’s even a track that runs the entire circumference of the dome, which is something like 260 kilometers. That sounds boring to me, but hey, you do you, right? I would much rather stay close to the inner tracks. They’re so much more interesting. The vehicles are electric, obviously, but they’re also electromagnetic. This allows them to do all sorts of crazy stuff, like drive up the wall, or even do loop-de-loops. There are jumps and shortcuts, and drops into rivers of lava. Yeah, this particular dome was chosen for its proximity to a volcano. The volcano isn’t inside the dome, and if there were ever an eruption, there are safeguards in place to seal off the lava flow, and protect the dome. But as long as everything’s copacetic, it’s there. Plus, they have clear emergency procedures in place. I mean, this hasn’t actually happened since I’ve been here, so there’s no way to know how effective their plans are, but they claim to be ready. Of course, the lava they do have is dangerous, as are all of the other tracks. Well, almost all of them. They have bumper cars, and some go-kart tracks too, for the kids, or people who want something a little lighter. If you do get hurt, and don’t want to just jump your consciousness to a new body, they have excellent medical teams on standby. I was never injured, but I did walk in once to find someone having just crashed on one of the traditional intermediate tri-ovals. I heard the collision from the corridor, and by the time I rounded the corner, they were already loading the driver into an ambulance. I asked after him later, and he’s fine; didn’t even have to switch to a new body. I can’t even begin to describe what other kinds of tracks they have here, but if you’ve ever played a racing video game, they’re pretty much all recreated here. They don’t have boats, planes, or spaceships, though. Man, people kept asking about that. I’ll say again, it’s a racetrack dome, not races in general. Look for that in another dome. I’m sure they’re somewhere. I see all these negative reviews from morons who are disappointed when the name alone tells you everything you need to know. Just think it through, and you’ll be pleased with what you find.