Microstory 2636: Don’t Forget To Bring a Towel

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Trilby throws a silky towel at her. “I hope you understand that I removed your clothes to provide you with medical treatment. I would have been waiting for you on the landing pad, but you showed up way too early. Why didn’t you go down on a slower trip, with the animals? That would have been a lot safer for your fragile human body.”

“They would have caught me,” Mandica explains briefly. “What is this?”

“Temporary,” he says. “I call it the cloak of invisibility. You will be perfectly visible to the naked eye while we’re out there, but the identity sensors won’t spot you. You will appear as an infrared aberration, caused normally by too many people beaming data to each other’s devices at the same time. We will take a particular route to where we’re going so that sort of thing doesn’t stand out.”

She frowns at the towel. Yeah, it isn’t a cloak, it is a towel. No hood, no draw string. It is see-through, but still just a big cloth square. “Will I not look a little odd, walking around with this thing over my head?”

Trilby laughs heartily. “Odd? Sweetheart, you’re on Castlebourne now. My next door neighbor is a giant beetle, and is probably smarter than me. They might as well call this world Substrate City. You’re not going to stand out. There is no way to stand out on this planet. Everyone is here to formulate their unique identity, and they change by their whims all the time. Now. Functionally, you’re rare. There are a few communities here who are just as unenhanced—less unenhanced, in fact—and they are not insignificant, but most people change bodies like you might change your hairstyle. But don’t worry, you can’t tell, and people are careful around each other, because there’s no way to know. No one’s gonna shoot you with a gun under the assumption that you’ll survive.” He taps his middle finger on a screen. “I took the liberty of building you your own modified prospectus. The green domes are fine. You’ll be safe in any of those. I’m talkin’ your residential areas, your museums, your educational historical recreations.

“Yellow, a little more dangerous. They have ways of protecting visitors. If they’re a normal human, the Custodians will make accommodations. They might even separate the unenhanced from the enhanced so there’s never any question. Red are no-go zones. Most of them are specifically designed for people who have disposable substrates. A visitor might even end up getting a whole fleet of bodies to switch to one by one. If someone like you without the spoof lenses were to try to sneak in, the sensors would flag them so fast, their head would spin off. Apparently, there was one guy years ago who got stuck in a dangerous game and nearly died because the people who were trying to murder him hacked the system. They won’t let that happen again. They installed new sensors all around the world, and are constantly checking. You will be walking around basically as an admin. They’ll let you in anywhere, but that’s why I made this list for you, so you can decide what you’re willing to risk. You need to understand your options.”

“You said something about spoof lenses?”

“Yes, it’s not just those. They have multiple ways of tracking identities, the most common of which is an eye scan. They also—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Mandica interrupts. “If people are changing bodies, and your neighbor is an insect, how would a retinal scan even be possible in a place like this?”

“It’s not only a retinal scan. The retinal scan is a second stage identifier that the system will only perform if the first stage scan turns up blank. Everyone capable of transferring their consciousness is given a unique watermark, placed upon their optic nerves. I don’t know if you know this, but humans have a natural blindspot in their eyes due to where the optic nerves connect to the eyes. Your brain fills in the blanks, but you can’t see light that hits that spot. Fortunately for optic void scanners, though, light does still hit that spot. They shoot an invisible laser into it to read someone’s watermark, to know who they are. They don’t even have to keep their eyes open. It can pass through eyelids, and many other materials. For a normal person, if it doesn’t detect that watermark, it will default to the retinal scan, and register your preferences and restrictions.” He points at the invisibility towel. “The scanner can’t pass through that, so it will see infrared interference, and not see your unregistered eyes.”

“Why do I need the towel if I have these spoof lenses?”

“You don’t have the spoof lenses yet. The woman who’s getting them for me is on the other side of the planet. We have to travel to her first. Before you ask, she can’t come to us, because she’s also protecting you from brainwave scanners. That’s another thing you need in order to be a ghost. They’re becoming more common. They’ll never do away with the optic void scanning system, but spoofing an authorized watermark is easier than fooling a brain scan. Don’t tell anyone, but about zero-point-zero-zero-one percent of the time, a cloned or bioprinted body doesn’t produce the watermark correctly, and it has to be fixed, either with a new replacement, or a visit to the optomeger.”

“This woman with the brain scanner—”

“The baseline imager. A brain scanner verifies your brainwaves. The baseline imager is the thing that inputs in the data. It’s highly regulated. There are only a few of them in the world. People would notice if she borrowed it and took it on a vactrain.”

“I see. The baseline imager woman; can she be trusted?”

“She’s already done for me what she’s about to do for you,” Trilby explains. “She holds a special office in a special government for a special community. They were refugees fleeing oppression, and live here permanently, not simply as visitors. Apparently, her now-husband initially refused to be enhanced, so she’s sympathetic to that sentiment, even though he’s now just like her, and I am too. The only reason she’s keeping him out of it is so that he can have plausible deniability, but I told her about you, and she thinks you and the Superintendent would get along.”

“Okay, I think I have all the information I need. I should say, I trust you. Let’s go out there and walk around like ghosts, me moreso than you.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

And so the two of them leave the apartment. Trilby already has his spoof lenses on, but Mandica has to stay under the towel the whole time. He seems to have been right. People don’t even just ignore her. They smile and greet her as if she is just another regular person on this bizarrely accepting planet. She doesn’t see any giant beetle people, but a few who look decidedly unhuman. A lot of animals, but also alien-like beings that don’t match to something that ever existed on Earth. She’s starting to feel more comfortable here, like she can actually breathe and live a life. 

After only a few hours, they have made it to a dome that’s just called Capital. They enter a gorgeous woman’s office, who holds her hand out, sporting a very kind smile. “Hi. I’m Deputy Superintendent Yunil Tereth. I hear you would like to stay unregistered. Why don’t you have a seat?”

Microstory 2622: Sometimes You’re the Windshield, Sometimes You’re the Bug

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August 27, 2526. The ragtag group of survivors have almost made it. They can see the Chappa’ai Mountains up ahead. They will still want to get as far north as they possibly can, but according to the science, crossing that threshold will allow them to breathe a sigh of relief. The ground is more stable and solid. After all this, salvation is within their grasp. So of course something else has to get in the way. And it’s huge.

“Brake!” Breanna orders. “Brake, brake, brake!” she repeats.

“I see it!” Cash responds, matching her energy. She can’t brake any harder than this, though. It’s just a button, and it does what it does as fast as physics allows.

“Hold on!” Breanna shouts. Even though she’s magnetized to the floor, she reaches up and takes hold of the overhead oscilight for balance. They certainly don’t need it to see, and if anyone is on the tracks, the oncoming railcart is the least of their concerns. Before them, the ground is opening up. The mountains are sliding apart from each other. They can see the red glimmer of the vengeful lava below, even as the day side begins to overtake the shrinking breadth of the Terminator Line. “Be prepared to jump if I say so! It may be our only hope! Once we do, you’ll wanna start running in the opposite direction! But not yet! We’re still moving too fast!”

“Can we just parachute off!” someone asks.

“Too much turbulence!” Breanna cries back. “Just wait for my instructions!” 

They all scream into the comms. Even Tertius and Aeterna look worried, though that may be more from empathy than fear. The chasm is pulling the tracks ahead of them down now, along with the spine that led others up to the safety of the pole. Hopefully, no one is in them right now. The train stations have all become non-operational, but that doesn’t mean no one is trying to walk it. Breanna isn’t so sure about her instructions anymore. There may be nothing they can do. Even if they manage to stop, the ground is falling away, and they don’t know when that’s gonna stop. The fact is, they started this evacuation late, and got held up too many times. Survival was never guaranteed. They did their best.

“Okay, bad news!” Cash says seconds later. “The brake broke! I’ve lost control!”

Suddenly, as if in response to Cash’s problem, a large object flies in from the side, and slams into the front of the railcart. There is no time to figure out what it is. Two people are catapulted forward, one of them being Aeterna, and the other unknown with their IMS fully on. They arch over the object, and down into the bowels of the planet. Having finished saving the cart, the beetloid drone reopens its elytra, and reengages its rotowings. It dives down into the abyss. They hold their breaths and wait, too afraid to move on this precarious cart. It could tip over too at any second, and they want the beetloid free to rescue them again, so they’re gonna let it finish its latest mission. After a minute or two, it darts back into view, and lands safely on the tracks behind them.

Only one person is sitting on its head. They slide off, and appear to be hyperventilating, but otherwise alive. Tertius looks over at Breanna. “I missed out on 200 years with my daughter. I just got her back. I can’t abandon her again.” He leans back and lets himself fall into the chasm. Okay, he may have survived the pyrotornado somehow, but they’re not surviving that!

“We need to go,” Cash says.

Breanna doesn’t move. She’s looking out at the impassable new obstacle, thinking about the Valerians, and in general how deep of shit they’re in.

“Bre! We have to go!” Cash urges.

Breanna nods, then follows the group off the cart. They all stop and look back when they hear the sound of metal scraping against metal. The cart has finally slipped over the edge itself. “Go into a light jog, but slow down if the tracks start to feel unstable. We wanna get as far from that thing as possible, but not if that means falling over the edge anyway. Even away from that chasm, we’re pretty high up.

They go a little under a kilometer back southwards before finding a ladder to climb down to the surface, where they start walking westwards, trying to see where the new chasm ends. A young woman named Calypso rushes up to Breanna. She’s the one who fell over with Aeterna. “Why did it save me? Why did it save me and not her?”

Breanna looks over at the beetloid, which is walking alongside them like a loyal dog. It’s a specialized service drone. She’s not exactly an expert on them, but she wouldn’t have thought they programmed it with any sense of duty to rescue humans. But maybe they did, or maybe someone modified it aftermarket, or maybe it’s learning. “I can’t say for sure, but my guess is it calculated the likelihood of survival. Had it not caught you, and brought you back up, you would have fried in the toxic gases before your body could have hit the bottom. Aeterna was practically naked. It probably figured that she was already dead. There was no point in trying to rescue both of you, and losing the one person who might still stand a chance.”

“Is she? Is she dead?”

“If she’s not, I don’t know how she would get out of that. You don’t really sink in lava, but that’s because your body would be incinerated on the surface. But if she’s a god, and can survive that, she might not be able to get out anyway. I can’t imagine we’ll be seeing either of those two ever again.” That’s what they assumed last time, however.

“There,” Cash says, pointing. “That hill takes us high enough.”

“High enough for what?” Breanna asks.

“To parachute. We’ll glide across the ravine, and land on the other side. The plumes of gas actually help us. It won’t be easy, but it’ll get us there.”

“Well, you remember that the two of us don’t—” Breanna tries to begin.

“It will get us there,” Cash interrupts.

Brenna shakes her head, and looks at her wrist interface. “It’s already quite hot. The day side is drawing closer. We shouldn’t go that far west.”

“We won’t be there long,” Cash justifies. “We’re just gonna jump off and go, and then we’ll scramble back to the Terminator Line, and continue northwards.”

“Fine. Let’s take a vote,” Breanna says. “Fair warning, your parachutes might not make it. Those fumes are dangerous. We’ll have to teach you how to control them, you might need to change directions midflight, and you still might come up short. I will say,  there’s nothing for you on this side. The northern pole is the only option.”

And so the group heads for the hill in the middle distance. Breanna and Cash choose not to tell the others that there’s a problem.

“Wait, what about that thing?” Cash suggests.

“That?” Breanna looks at the Beetloid again. “That can only hold one person.”

“We could play Rock, Paper, Scissors for it?”

Microstory 2621: We’ll Build That Bridge When We Come to It, and We’ll Do it in Style

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August 26, 2526. The cataclysm has escalated. The ring fault surrounding the southern pole has torn open. Rivers of lava flow through the chasms, threatening to incinerate any who would fall to their deaths below. People are cut off from each other. Some successfully made it across before the mountains pulled away from each other, or already lived in the safe zone. Others could not make it in time. Soon, the land beneath their feet will turn to soup, or some other hazard will end their lives. Something must be done to bring these people back together. A bridge must be built. No one has ever constructed anything like this before, and certainly not at scale, but they are not wholly unprepared. The southern polar region is more mountainous than the north. That is the primary reason why it has fewer domes at this point, and why it is less populated. It is more difficult to travel between domes, and traditional forms of engineering are both tedious and slow. That is why they have been experimenting with new forms of construction, including the fast-woven graphene lattice.

Instead of laying blocks of material on one end, and slowly adding farther and farther towards the other side, drones fly clear across the gap. Fewer refugees are seeking shelter in the southern pole. An entire quarter of the Terminator Line is even more mountainous than the cap. And one advantage they have compared to the north is a newly built dome that is recently sealed, presently uninhabited, and fully available for temporary housing. So instead of dealing with an untenable onslaught of people, the leadership was able to dedicate resources to researching the threats. They realized that the ground was about to break, and began to plan for that as an eventuality. They still have to hurry, but this will work, as long as they’re careful.

They chose a spot where the two edges of the chasm are particularly close together. It’s not quite in the center of the Terminator Line, but they have sent volunteers in both directions in parallel to the chasm, on the dangerous side, to direct refugees to the right spot to cross. They have been gathering in an emergency pressurized inflatable habitat, but it’s quickly reaching capacity, so it’s time to make this happen. Timing is everything.

The southern pole is a little different than the rest of the planet. It’s run by an advisory-administrative government. There are two delegator boards, which come to decisions independently, and compare notes before making a joint decision, which they then delegate to the administrators. Each delegation includes a skeptic. It’s unfair to call them uneducated, but they are definitely meant to be out-of-the-box thinkers who are meant to question everything that they’re told. If you say left, they say right. If you say right, they say wrong. If you say wrong, they say wrung. Their job is to fight you, even when you start agreeing with them. It’s the devil’s advocate for the secular world. That’s what Thadeus Hogan’s role is, and he was here to make sure that what they were doing made sense. He’s done that, so now he’s mostly just here to watch.

Thadeus stands on the edge of the cliff. His consciousness is backed-up, both on the ground, and in orbit, but he’s tethered to a safety anchor in case he slips over the edge, and doesn’t want to waste time in a respawn pod.

“Ready!” the ordnance foreman cries from the perch. “Ready!” he repeats. “Fire!”

The artillery engineers activate the railguns. The cryogenic warheads soar through the air, arch over the chasm, and then plummet into the depths.

“Can I get closer?” Thadeus asks. When his guide nods, he leans over. The bombs crash into the toxic lava below. He can’t actually see it, but he sees the change. The thermal updrafts change from a sickly reddish color to gray. It just looks like steam.

“Why did we do that again?”

“We just froze the topmost layer of that lava,” his guide explains again. She knows he’s like this. Asking the same question multiple times is his duty, because if your answer changes, how can you be confident in it? “The fumes were chaotic and unpredictable, and just too much for the drones to handle. They were designed to fly in the Proxima Doma’s thin atmosphere, but to make that work, they’re slow. By switching from fumes to vapor, they fly through much more manageable paths. They surf the air, and safely find purchase on the other side.”

As the ordnance foreman sits back down, the head drone operator stands to take his place. “Prepare the drones!” she orders. “You have two minutes!” This is just in case something has gone wrong. They are a well-oiled machine, and the drones have been ready for hours. They had to wait to begin constructing the bridge to make sure the ground was stable enough. There is no point in building a bridge if the gap is going to widen another kilometer by the time everyone manages to cross it. He’s keeping one eye on his launchers, and the other on the barometric technician.

The technician is tracking the shifting composition of the air, and waiting for that perfect moment. He lifts his hand in the air. The head drone operator takes one last look at the launchers, but then focuses right on the tech. “Hold! Hold!” No reason he can’t have a little fun with it. This is a momentous occasion. Finally, he slams his hand down.

“Launch!” the head drone operator orders.

The drones fire into the unprecedentedly thick atmosphere. Thadeus loses direct eyesight of them too, but watches their progress through augmented reality. And he can still see the graphene scaffolding that the drones are pulling, spindling out like a silkworm’s silk. The drones are flying in pretty close tandem, but the pressure gradient isn’t perfectly smooth, so some lose attitude, and have to regain formation. Once they’re on the other side, they drop anchor, slamming hard into the ground, and digging in. Volunteers on the other side drive over in their rovers, and lower their suspension into hunker mode to provide extra support. It’s not sophisticated, but every kilogram helps.

“Launch the weavers!” the head drone operator orders now. The smaller drones fly along the skeleton lines. They distribute themselves along them, and begin wrapping the webbing around, over the gaps between them, and around each other’s lines. Over and under, over and under. They build tensile strength in perfect synchrony, and what results looks like a fully stable, strong, and lifesaving bridge.

The convoy master is on the perch now, having ordered the test rovers to the end of the bridge. The drones have finished their jobs, and it’s time to make sure the bridge will hold, and not kill anyone who tries to drive on it. The foreman nods her head, all the drones are back. The convoy master simply points to the rovers, and doesn’t say a word. The operators let them go, at high speed for the ultimate stress test. They make it to the other side. They go a hundred kilometers an hour, and make it there in two minutes.

“Send the first wave!”

Microstory 2615: If You Stay, There Will Be Trouble, But if You Go, It Will Be Double

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August 22, 2526. The caravan has been continuing on its way. They have started noticing tracks in the regolith which suggest that others have had to drive to escape. Their own trains might have also been damaged, or they just didn’t want to use them. There’s no way to communicate with people that far away, though. Radio signals can only reach a short distance with all this electromagnetic interference in the air now. Breanna has had to keep the vehicles closer together so they don’t lose track of one another. They obviously lost contact with the two dissenters right quick, so they don’t know what’s become of them, but it’s been more than a day. In all probability, they’re already dead. The truth is, it would be nice if they could confirm that just to be ultra confident that no one else will get the idea to do the same thing.

By and large, despite their horrific circumstances, everything has been going relatively smoothly. Breanna is still the de facto leader since she is the most knowledgeable one here, and everyone seems to be respecting that. While she still says that she’s operating the lead car, it isn’t always the one in front. One or more of the others will periodically come across a nice, road-like surface, and gain some speed. This is fine, it’s not like they’re in a single-file line, so there is no way to serve as vanguard for all of them. Unfortunately, that may be precisely what they should have done.

“So.” Cash spins her seat around to face the rest of the passengers. “Does anyone know any driving ga—?”

The vehicle suddenly veers to the left. They can’t quite tell why at first, but they certainly feel the lurch, and a bright orange light overwhelms their eyes. Breanna reaches up instinctively to take manual control, but that is not the right thing to do in this situation, so she holds back. The autopilot changed directions for a reason, and while it may not be smarter, it does have greater awareness, and can react faster.

“Oh my God!” someone on the radio screams. “It just threw them into the air. Oh my God what is that? What is that!” They continue to hear voices, but it’s just an unintelligible cacophony.

“Zero-three-one is down!” Cash declares, looking at her terminal.

“Down how?” Breanna demands to know. “What happened?”

“This.” Cash flings the image on her screen to Breanna’s. A giant spinning vortex of fire is spiraling up into the air and widening. “I don’t know what any of this means. Weather and natural disasters science isn’t my bag.”

“It’s a pyrotornado. The methane levels just spiked off the charts. There’s probably a reservoir underneath us, which the CME destabilized, and it just went critical, possibly due to our presence.”

“Hello?” someone manages to radio clearly after a brief lull. “What do we do?”

Breanna grabs the mic. “Go radio silent and wait for my instructions. Don’t touch the controls.” She faces Cash. “The rovers haven’t stopped, so I assume it’s better to keep going. If we’re over the pocket, we need to try to get off of it.”

“Impossible to say,” Cash explains quickly. “We don’t have time to survey the land. The one behind us could be a baby. We could be driving towards the motherlode.”

“What’s that right there?” Aetrena asks, leaning forward over Cash’s shoulder, and pointing at her screen.

“The computer is calculating a 56% chance that it’s safer to hunker down than to bug out, but that’s too close to call, so it’s deferring to the operator. It maintains the status quo until you give it a new plan. So we should do that,” Cash urges.

Breanna glances back at the data and tries to make a snap decision. This really isn’t her forte. She likes computers. And that’s why she should trust it. Those are terrible odds, but 56 is higher than 44, so without any further information, the only logical response is to give yourself the best chance. “Do you think that zero-three-one triggered it by running over some kind of entrance? It literally lit a spark?”

“That would be my guess,” Cash concurs.

“Then I’m activating hunker mode for all vehicles.” She starts tapping her interface. “It looks like that thing is moving away or running out of gas. I don’t want what happened to three-one to happen to someone else.” Their rover comes to a complete stop, as do all of the others, spread out a little for safety. “We wait it out while we use our caravan sensor array to run that survey. We need to know where to go, and how to move safely.” She gets back on the radio to do her best to explain all that to everyone else. They have some questions, but Cash is going to have to field them...one at a time, in an orderly fashion. For now, they just aren’t going to move. The computer begins to lower their suspensions, and inject their anchor spikes.

“Boss? This is one-two-one,” someone radios in a panic shortly thereafter.

“Go ahead, one-twenty-one.”

“We lost someone,” Rover 121 says quickly. “He ran out, out of his mind. He doesn’t know anyone here, and has been a little crazy this whole time, but now he said he’s afraid of the small space, and just had to break free.”

“Is he wearing a suit?” Breanna asks.

“Not even a mask. He was scared of that too.”

“I see them, they’re not far,” Cash reports.

“Shit,” Breanna says, going back to the controls. “It will take some time to reverse hunker mode, but faster for us than anyone else, and we all have IMS units.”

Tertius is looking at the screens now. “No time. He’ll die out there. I’ll hoof it.”

“And then what?” Breanna questions.

Tertius grabs the door handle. “Then I’ll give him my suit. Lower your visors.”

They all seal up their suits, except for Aeterna. As soon as her father runs out, also without a vacuum seal, she casually closes the door. Who are these people?

“Come on, come on!” Breanna urges. She keeps one eye on the release progress, and the other on Tertius’ beacon. He’s moving fast, but they’ll be able to catch up if this blasted thing ever gets going. “Goddammit, let’s go!” She impatiently waits a little more, and a little more. “Finally!” She activates manual mode this time, peeling out, and spinning a doughnut.

Visibility is low, but they draw close enough to see Tertius open his suit in the back, grab the panicking guy by the wrists, and shove him into it in his place. Without even waiting for the vehicle to stop, Aeterna opens the door again just as a new explosion right underneath flings them all into the air. She grabs the man just in time, and pulls him in to safety. Her father, though...Breanna doesn’t care how enhanced he is, he’s not surviving a thermal cyclone out in the open like that wearing little more than shorts and a t-shirt. He’s just not. They might not even survive.

Microstory 2614: The Cooler Side is Not the Safer Side, Which They Will Learn Soon Enough

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August 21, 2526. The caravan has been roaming up through the Terminator Line at a decent pace. They have come across some pretty rough terrain, but these rovers were built for the harsh environment, so they either go around them or even right over. The lead car has the most trouble, but they still make it through. They’re combatting two different things here—besides the physical obstacles—and those are fear and boredom. It is not a clear split. Everyone seems to be feeling both emotions, as well as plenty others, simultaneously. The vactrains are incredibly fast. They would be in the safe zone by now had they been able to take them. It’s going to be several days before they reach it at this pace, and there is really nothing they can do to speed that up. It’s a trade-off, being able to traverse all of the rocks and crevices, but not being able to do it super fast.

There is also some ignorance. Even though the Levins have been advancing for 300 years, they don’t really understand concepts like the sun and tidal locking. This is the first time they’re even seeing outer space for real, and there are some misconceptions about how it works. “Is this thing working, can you hear me?” a voice comes in through the radio.

“This is lead actual, I hear you four by two, who is this?” Breanna asks.

“Uh, my name’s Langer.”

“No, I mean your callsign. You should see it on the light field display in the corner of the radio. I just need the last three numbers.”

“Zero-one-zero.”

“Go ahead, zero-ten,” Breanna encourages.

“Where are we going?” 010 asks.

“North,” Breanna replies plainly.

“Yeah, but where exactly?” 010 presses.

Breanna rolls her eyes. “The safe zone.”

“How do you know that it’s safe?” 010 goes on.

“That’s the science. The poles are the only safe regions in the world right now. The closer you get, the safer you are. We are already better off here and now than we were ten minutes ago back behind us.”

“Wait, we’re in the back!” a girl cries. “We are where you were ten minutes ago!”

Breanna sighs. “You are not ten minutes behind us, and the logic stands. You are still better off than you were before. We just need to keep going to reach our destination. Please stay off this channel unless you’re actually facing trouble.”

“Oh, we’re all in trouble,” 010 argues. “Because it’s the sun, isn’t it? The sun is what caused this whole thing.”

“Yes,” Breanna agrees. “We don’t have all the information yet, but it’s looking like our host star, Proxima Centauri underwent a sudden, violent polar reversal. This caused a snap, which released something called a coronal mass ejection. It’s important to note that the gravitational instability was going on for some time leading up to the event, and is still wreaking havoc on the surface, subsurface, and atmosphere. As I said, the poles are the only safe regions.”

“Our ancestors came to this planet on ships,” 010 begins. “Why can’t we just get back on those ships and fly away?”

“Because the infrastructure has been destroyed,” Breanna explains. “There is no way to get to the ships. They are not designed to land, and even if they were, they could not land on this terrain. We are doing the right thing, and moving as fast as possible.”

“Why would the poles be safer?” This Langer guy is not letting up. She’s holding back the urge to warn him that his ignorance is showing, staying silent as he continues. “The poles are still in the sun. We have been driving in the sunlight this whole time.”

“Yes, this is called the Terminator Line. Proxima Doma is tidally locked, so one side always faces the sun, and one side always faces away from it.” She has spent her whole life around people who learned this stuff as babies. It’s frustrating, having to go over it to a bunch of adults, even though she fully understands why they don’t already know it. “Right in the middle, all along this longitude, it’s temperate enough for habitation. They still had to build domes, because the atmosphere is too thin, but it would have been impractical on the night side, and nigh impossible on the day side.”

They hear him sighing. “If the sun is over there!” He’s probably pointing. “Then why wouldn’t we go..over there!” He’s probably pointing in the opposite direction now.

“The stellar activity still has an impact on the night side. The heat passes from the day side, to the night side. As it does, it creates its own turmoil on the night side. Ice sublimates, the ground becomes unstable. It’s still freezing, but now it’s unpredictable, and non-uniform. Believe me, you don’t want any part of that.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” 010 shouts. “We’re in between them! If what you’re saying is true, we should be dead, or at least worse off here than over there!”

“I don’t have the time or patience to explain tidal heating and basic atmospheric science to you! My father died dedicating his life to protecting people like you, and you didn’t even know he existed! So trust me, we have to stay in the Terminator Line! It’s shrinking, and will eventually disappear too, but we still have time...if we don’t stop!”

There is some silence for a few moments, but the eerie kind, not peaceful. Finally, 010 returns. “We just took a vote. We’re going to head into the dark. The way we see it, it’s getting too hot. The air conditioning is at maximum, and we’re still burning up. Anyone who wants to may join us. We can teach you how to take manual control.”

“Shut out controls right now, Cash,” Breanna orders.

“It is too hot,” the woman in the back agrees. “I’m barely wearing anything.”

“You should be wearing IMS units,” Breanna instructs.

“We don’t have those here,” 010 claims. “We only have respirator masks.” She didn’t realize that. That was poor planning. The 010 car veers off in the wrong direction.

“I can block future override,” Cash divulges as she’s operating the console, “but I can’t reverse it for anyone who has already switched to local control.”

“Don’t do this!” Breanna urges. “It is not simply more dangerous. It is uninhabitable. You are not maybe going to die. If you leave us, death is a guarantee.”

“We’ll take our chances, thank you very much. Zero-one-zero, over and out.”

“You don’t have to—never mind.” She hopes to appeal to anyone who managed to gain control of their own destiny before Cash locked them out. “No one follow them. Please. Even if you don’t get hit by a geyser or thermal cyclone, or fall into a hidden chasm in the dark, there is nothing for you out there. They didn’t build anything.”

That rear unit complaining about being hot, naked, and in the back decides to go with Langer, but fortunately, no one else does.

Microstory 2613: The Irony That if They Had Opened the Gates, They Would Have Found Their Salvation

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August 20, 2526. Breanna, Cash, Tertius, and Aeterna made it out of the soup, and onto solid ground. They escaped Leviss, and walked through the tunnel that led to Breckenridge. After taking a perimeter railtrain to the next exit, they walked downstairs to the vactrain station, which could take them anywhere in the colonized world. Breanna turned out to have credentials, which allowed her to look through the logs to determine that the Levins and Breckenridgers had gotten on train pods to travel northwards. They apparently stopped before reaching the northern polar region, however.

“Something must have gone wrong,” Tertius says. “The northern pole might have denied them entry. Aeterna, we’ll have to stop where they did to investigate.”

“We’re on the same page,” she agrees.

Tertius sighs, and looks back over at the empty vactrain. “You two get on this one and go as far north as possible. We’ll take the next one.”

“No, we’ll go with you,” Cash volunteers. “We lived on a sentinel. Our entire job was to watch over these people. We’re certainly not gonna stop doing that now.”

“We might encounter more toxic air, though,” Breanna warns. “I know you two are pretty hardy, but if you could put on your own suits, it would help us communicate. I prefer to keep my filter fully on, in case my carbon scrubbers stop working.”

“We don’t have suits,” Tertius says apologetically.

Cash is operating her handheld device. “The dome where they had to stop is a lot more advanced than these two. It will have IMS units for you to check out. Let’s get over there before the roof collapses.” They all file into the pod, but have to come right back out. This station was disconnected from the network due to the hazardous conditions. The tubes aren’t safe enough anymore. They spend the next two days traveling through the spines, and along the perimeters of the next several domes, sometimes using railtrains, sometimes electric carts, and sometimes on foot.

August 21, 2526. Finally, they have reached the dome where the Levins and Breckenridgers went, but no one is here. It’s totally empty according to the life signs detector. So they start to walk down the next connecting spine. Near the end, they find a ton of people, which Aeterna says could plausibly make up the entire population of Leviss and Breckenridge combined. She recognizes someone from Leviss, who doesn’t act like he recognizes her back. “What’s going on here?” she asks.

“There were a lot of people living in this dome before, but some of them died in an explosion, or something. Now, the people who are still here won’t let us through the gate. They say it’s for our safety, but we’ve been trying to negotiate with them this whole time. We know that we can’t go back, so we’ve been camping out here. ”

“It’s not safe in there?” Tertius presses.

“The dome itself is evidently safe enough, but they’re afraid if we all come in, we’ll try to get to the train station, but if they say we shouldn’t, we’ll listen to them. We’re fine with just walking.”

“That’s not the problem,” a young woman says. “One of the negotiators is my sister, so I heard that the Summerspringers are so afraid of the train now that they’re looking for land vehicles. They don’t want to share, because they don’t know how many there are. They’re not even sure if there are any left. They found a bunch, but there weren’t enough for everyone. It was apparently quite dramatic, the chaos of deciding who got to leave, and who had to stay behind to look for other alternatives.”

Breanna steps over as she’s working her wrist interface. “I think it’s right here.”

“You think what is here?” Tertius asks.

Breanna chuckles lightly. “I have credentials for this too.” She makes one more tap, and the giant door starts to slide open. The Levins and Breckenridgers back away nervously as they watch it open. Lights begin to flicker on inside the big open space. It’s a garage. It’s a garage full of cars. Real big ones.

Tertius takes his daughter by the hand, and guides her in front of the entrance. He kneels down. “Get on my shoulders and address the people. You know what to say.”

Aeterna climbs on, and has no trouble balancing when he stands all the way up so she’s towering over the crowd. “People of Breckenridge and Leviss, this is your way out. These vehicles are automated, and syncable.” She leans over. “They are, aren’t they?”

Breanna nods.

“We will drive the lead vehicle, and tell yours where to go,” Aeterna continues. “All you have to do is sit there, and enjoy the ride. Is anyone too nervous to try?”

Many people raise their hands, presumably all from the less advanced Breckenridge.

“Is anyone both too nervous to try and ready to die?”

They nervously lower their hands.

“It might be scary, but you will get through this!” she cries. “If the Summerspringers aren’t going to let you through, this is the only way! We’re not gonna force you, but if you stay, things will not be getting better. What you were running from is going to catch up to you, sooner or later.” She pauses for effect. “If you wanna live, follow us inside.” She hops off of her father’s shoulders, and they begin to walk in.

They don’t really pay attention to who chooses to stay in the main corridor, if anyone. There are more than enough vehicles for everyone here, but since they do not belong to them, they decide to not be greedy. Once these evacuees are secure, they will send a message to Summerspring, informing them that this garage is what they have been looking for. Until then, they’re going to prioritize the people who did not actively decline to help their neighbors. The vehicles are completely vacuum sealed, so they are in no danger from the inhospitable environment outside the domes, as long as they remember to actually stay inside.

The four outsiders initially lock out nearly all of the controls, so the intentionally technologically illiterate can’t accidentally push any wrong buttons. The Levins are more advanced, but they have never operated anything like this before. The domes are relatively small, so they had no reason to invent the car. Still, they will be able to figure things out after some studying the operator’s manual, so every vehicle is about three-quarters Levins and one-quarter Breckenridgers. They will be able to override controls if they so choose later, but that will be up to them.

Breanna, Cash, Aeterna, and Tertius select a smaller vehicle for themselves. The giant rovers can hold a few dozen people, but this one only maybe a dozen. Several other people ask to join them, seemingly out of pure curiosity. Finally, amidst all of this death and destruction, there might actually be hope. They open the exterior doors, send that quick message to the Summerspringer authority, and then head off into the unknown.

Microstory 2612: In a Panic, the Ants Will Scramble For Their Salvation, Even Where it Can’t Be Found

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August 20, 2526. The crowd stands before the monitors as they watch the breaking news feed. They were pushing each other around, trying to get into the train, but that has all stopped now. The handful of people who were already let through are watching the news too. “Tragedy struck at the train station underneath Summerspring Dome sixteen minutes ago. A domaquake shook the platform and caused several support beams to collapse. The vacuum tube was weakened, and ultimately imploded due to the stress. A current count of 815 people were killed in the implosion. Experts are currently working on ways to mitigate the damages that these seismic events have on our infrastructure. One new procedure they will be implementing is single-pod travel. No longer will pods be linked together. They are mapping the quake patterns, and determining optimal safe launch windows so this never happens again. Furthermore, polar leadership recognizes the magnitude of the crisis, and is preparing to receive evacuees, but stresses that resources are low. If you live between the 40th parallels, on either side of the equator, you are urged to evacuate to the higher regions of the Terminator Line. If you are northward of the 40th parallel in the northern hemisphere, or southward in the southern hemisphere, you are being asked to shelter in place for now so that your friends and neighbors in the more volatile regions can make use of the vactrain tubes.

“Some trains are being sent to the poles, while others will be stopping along the way. You are asked to accommodate any evacuees, providing them with food and shelter while we work towards more permanent solutions to this extreme adversity. Experts and leaders would like to remind you that what happened in Summerspring Dome is a tragic but rare event, and assures the public that the vast majority of the vactrain network is safe for travel. To quote the Administrative Council of the southern pole’s official statement: ‘The equatorial regions are quickly becoming uninhabitable, and the southern pole is extending a helping hand towards all displaced communities. Please remember that we are all Proxima Domanians, and a respectful and orderly evacuation is paramount for the safety and survival of us all.’ Comforting words from someone already living in the safe zone, who didn’t have to watch their loved ones die, and their homes get swallowed up by the crust.” He looks off camera, presumably at an angry producer, and clears his throat.

The anchor sits there for a moment in silence, staring into the lens. “Get out. Get out now. Every dome comes equipped with massive land vehicles. If you can’t get in a train, go! Just go! Even if you live in the middle regions, save yourse—” The feed cuts off.

The crowd stands there silently as the images return to the basic weather information for their own dome. The whispers grow louder and louder, threatening to turn this relatively peaceful crowd into a clamoring mob. The Regent is here to coordinate the evacuations. As this area of the planet is not too terribly dangerous right now, the process has gone okay. “Now, hold on!” he cries to quiet everyone down. “There are plenty of vacuum tubes to get everyone out. We will not leave you here. But we will be slowing down the process to make way for the equatorials.”

“You saw what happened!” a rabble rouser shouts. “These tubes aren’t safe anymore!”

“No, they are safe,” the Regent insists. “We have not been experiencing what the others have been. I promise you, they will hold.”

“The tubes are all connected!” another person argues. “If you damage one closer to the equator, it can have an impact on it all the way out here!”

“That’s not how it works,” the Regent contends. “We will be taking the trains. It’s the only way. There aren’t enough land vehicles for everyone, that is not an option.”

“Did you hear that, everyone? There aren’t enough vehicles! We better go now before someone else gets them!” That’s it, that’s all it takes. The swarm of evacuees turn and rush out in the opposite direction. The people who managed to get on the train fall in line behind them. They all run up the stairs, and out of the station. The Regent tries to calm them down, and bring them back, but his voice is drowned out by the heavy footsteps, and is also just ignored. He doesn’t need the stairs. He simply steps backwards, and enters the executive elevator, which he takes back up to the surface.

They are in the main station now. None of the sprinters is explaining why it is they’re running, but it looks scary, so everyone up there just starts running alongside them on instinct. The Regent shakes his head. These people have no clue where they’re going. Those land vehicles were made for specific purposes. You don’t just hop in one, and take a trip because you feel like traversing the treacherous terrain outside the dome. He doesn’t understand exactly where they think they’re headed. He continues to rise in the transparent elevator, up to the roof of the station. He watches them rush out of the building, towards the perimeter, which is a couple of kilometers away from here.

His pilot is walking towards the elevator platform, wiping the grease off of her hands as she watches the army of panicking ants as well. “You’re early, sir.”

“Is it ready to go?” he asks, still watching the people who he was supposed to represent desperately trying to figure out where these fabled cars are.

“Yeah, she’s prepped and ready. Your family’s inside.”

“Then we’re leaving now.”

She shakes her head. “My guy’s not in place to open the airlock.”

“Punch through it.”

“Sir, I’m not gonna do that. The toxic air will kill anyone who isn’t killed by the razor rain.”

The Regent takes out his gun and points it at her head. “Punch...through it.”

“Fine, fine,” the pilot agrees. “My co-pilot isn’t here yet either, though, so I’m gonna need someone sitting next to me to flip a few switches.”

“I can do that, just get us the hell out of here.” They walk over to the VTOL rocket and climb inside, passing his wife and kids on the way to the cockpit. His children smile at him, not understanding the gravity of the situation, but he doesn’t smile back.

“Shut that hatch behind us, and press the button in the top corner.”

“It says SOUND DAMPENER,” he points out, not sure why they would need that.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” she confirms. “Then sit right there and look for a yellow lever sandwiched between the seat and the hull.”

He pushes it, then sits down and fumbles around for the lever. “I don’t see it.”

While he’s turned away, the pilot shoots him in the head. “I’m not...punching through the dome.” She proceeds to sit there quietly for another few hours until her people are in place for a safe and ethical launch.

Microstory 2609: No One Can Agree When the World is Divided by Design

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August 20, 2526. Premier Xaovi Rue can’t stand sitting anymore. There’s something about its new substrate that makes it feel uncomfortable to bend its legs, and distribute its weight upon its buttocks. Still, it doesn’t have the luxury of being comfortable in this situation, because it makes others uncomfortable instead. This is the most important meeting of its life, likely surpassed only by every meeting it ends up being involved in from now until its latest term as North Premier ends in three years. The people aren’t going to reëlect it again, if there’s even a colony to inhabit at all at that point. In fact, they may vote it out of office entirely, depending on how it handles the current crisis. “Report!” it demanded.

“The thixotropic liquefaction,” Environmental Administrator Gerver began. “It started at the equator, but is spreading rapidly.” EvAm Gerver did not technically answer to Premier Rue, but both Delegator teams are currently missing, so Xaovi has stepped up to deal with all this.

Xaovi was elected as a representative of hundreds of millions of people, who all live in the Northern Pole domes. It needs to know if the cataclysm that is killing people near the equator is going to kill them eventually too. “Are we safe?”

Gerver hesitates.

“Are we safe!” Xaovi cried. It didn’t like to repeat itself.

“From the liquefaction, yes,” Gerver confirmed. The poles are the safest place to be right now, which brings me to the real problem. Residents of the more central domes are on their way here. Some have already arrived in the first wave, having simply come in as visitors. But soon, those vactrains are going to pile up as they become refugees. We need to know what to do with them, and as neither Delegator can be reached—”

“I will make the decision on that, and the decision is that we let them in. We let them all in. If they’re dying out there, bring them all to safety. If I have to, I’ll send emissaries to the intentionally unadvanced domes if they’re afraid to use technology to come here.”

“That hasn’t so far been the problem,” Gerver goes on. “Some of the tunnels are warped or cracked, but most of them have been able to take alternate routes.”

The Foreign Policy Administrator clears his throat. “According to our Science Admin, who was too busy to join us, the issue is life support. Our carbon scrubbers were not designed to keep this many people alive. Our waste heat ventilation system would not be able to handle the influx. Quite frankly, each polar dome is currently at capacity. We always build new ones to accommodate population growth.”

“Please do not refer to the polar domes as ours,” Xaovi warns. “In your role, you represent the entire planet, not just the dome where you chose to live. We are not elites, people,” it says to the whole room. “The pioneers at the equator are just as valuable. In fact, we must place greater emphasis on their well-being, as they are less equipped to defend themselves against these threats.” It refocused its attention to the Foreign Policy Admin. “And FpAm Pletcher, do not forget that your job is to facilitate communication with other worlds, such as Bungula and even Earth. The equatorials are not a foreign peoples. Please stop othering your countrymen.” It takes another pause. “There is no question of whether we will open the doors. There is no question of whether we will upgrade our carbon scrubbers, and ramp up food production. The only questions are about how we do such things. Please raise your hand if you disagree.”

A lot of people raise their hands. The Transportation Administrator is a deer, and does not have a hand to raise, so he hops up to rest his forelegs on the conference table.

Xaovi smiles, but not kindly. It nests its fingers together upon the table. “Now. What if I told you that I will have any dissenters escorted out of the capitol building. Who would keep their hand raised?”

Nearly everyone who needs to lowers their hand. The Transport Admin gets back down on four legs. Only Pletcher keeps his up. He looks around, disgusted. “Cowards.” He stands. “You do not have the power or the right to remove any of us from office! We were duly elected, and obligated to serve the best interests of our people!”

“The best interests of all our people,” Xaovi corrects, annoyed that he still isn’t grasping the concept. This has bothered Xaovi for so long. The domes on Proxima Doma are probably the most unregulated and fragmented of any colony. It makes sense. Some of the first colonists left Earth because they wanted to separate themselves from the establishment, and that sentimentality has held. The first settlers of Doma didn’t just want to leave, they felt like they had to, and back then, every light year was exponentially more difficult to cover than the last, so they naturally targeted the closest exoplanet. They agreed to be governed by an advisory-administrative model, but to many, it’s more of a formality. Multiple domes reject what they consider outside governance, and for the most part, that’s been okay. The domes inherently keep them isolated, and insulated from each other. But in this case, the disconnectedness is unacceptable. It’s going to get people killed.

Xaovi believes that they are all Domanians, and this is no time to preach or practice the nuance in that. They just have to save lives. It was one of those first settlers 300 years ago. It only stayed hoping that Proxima Doma would reach the level of unity that made it possible for humanity to even achieve interstellar migration in the first place. It took a long time for it to realize that one reason there was so much interest in such unprecedented migration was because it allowed people to break from the unity. Getting back to it has been a long road. They have definitely made progress, but not nearly enough, especially considering what’s happening now.

“I will have my voice heard!” Pletcher goes on. “I will not let you take over this government! Together, we’re stronger!”

“Security Administrator Matterhorn,” Xaovi says, “I will not order you to escort Pletcher out, but I would ask.”

“I will take care of it,” the Military Admin volunteers.

“Thank you, Chu,” Xaovi says. It never wanted it to come to this, but there is honestly no time for bureaucracy. There just isn’t. “Two more major things. Domestic Affairs Administrator Moffett, with Pletcher gone, I would say it falls on you to ask for help. If consolidating the population is going to cause problems, we may need to evacuate some people. As all of our launch infrastructure has been destroyed, please reach out to Bungula for potential rescue options. I don’t know who else we could turn to” It turns its head and sighs. “Adjudicator Okeke, I have just relieved a rightfully elected administrator of duty. Please explain the consequences of that, and also...the procedures for officially declaring martial law.”

Microstory 2608: The Floor is Literally Lava

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August 19, 2526. Breanna and Cashmere are plummeting through the air. This high up, they’re going to be falling for about four minutes, which is enough time for a brief conversation. Breanna taps on her wrist interface to control her HUD. “Okay, Cashmere, I’m programming my parachute to deploy at 600 meters, just in case I pass out before then. You should do the same, but if something goes wrong—and you’re hopefully still awake—you’ll have to pull it manually. It is not safe to go below 200 meters, so if you reach 599, and it hasn’t opened, go ahead and pull. Don’t wait.”

“Hold on.” Cashmere taps on her own suit. “There. Now you have full control over my IMS. If I do pass out, and the chute does fail, please don’t let me die. And you can just call me Cash, if you want.”

Breanna gives Cash control over her suit as well. “Good idea...Cash.”

Neither one of them passes out, and neither one of their parachutes malfunctions, but by the time they stop falling, and start drifting, they notice a problem. The ground is no longer solid. It’s churning around like soup. Buildings have collapsed, and are sinking into the soil. Debris is floating every which way. If they try to land in this stuff, they’re gonna sink and die. “This is an extinction level event,” Cash points out. “What could cause something like this?”

“A coronal mass ejection. That’s what happened. It destroyed our ship, it expanded the atmosphere so it was closer than we thought, and it has turned the surface into melted butter. It’s called thixotropic liquefaction, and it probably didn’t happen to the whole planet—the equatorial regions are at most risk—but that doesn’t matter right now because this is where we are.”

“Where can we land?”

Breanna points. “That hunk of metal right there is probably a building. It’s still sticking up high enough for us to land on it.”

That’s gonna be tough. It’s pretty far away.”

“Then start navigating there now.”

“I am!”

They adjust their risers, combatting the unpredictable weather, trying to cover the distance to the only safe area that they are close enough to. Cash was right, it’s extremely difficult, especially since the wind is doing everything it can to keep them from it. Cash is a little bit lower than Breanna when they make it there, or rather when she almost does. Her feet hit the fallen down side of the building, but she doesn’t find purchase, and ends up tipping over to her back, into the soup.

While Breanna manages to land safely at first, the wind continues to try to pull her into the soup too. It’s even stronger than the retraction mechanism. Her only solution is to dump it. It breaks off, and flies away. She dives down to her stomach and reaches out for Cash. “You’re too far away, can you get closer?”

“I think the only thing keeping me from sinking is how evenly my weight is distributed. I don’t think I should move.”

Breanna inches closer, but if she goes too far, she’ll slip in, and they’ll both sink eventually. She’s agonizing over whether she should get up, and try to look for something to extend her reach, or to stay here and keep trying. She just needs a few more centimeters, and maybe she can at least touch the tip of Cashmere’s boot.

A man suddenly appears next to her, on his hands and knees. He’s not wearing a suit of any kind, but just regular clothes. The air is extremely toxic right now, he should be dead unless he specifically designed his substrate to survive just about every deadly gas and particulate known to man. He must be one hell of a posthuman. He slides back and takes hold of Breanna’s ankles, then he nods.

Breanna nods back, then lets herself slip into the soup. She grabs onto Cashmere’s ankles, and lets the man pull them both up to safety. She rolls over to her back and finds that the man is not alone. He’s with a woman who looks similar to him, and is also walking around completely unprotected. She helps Breanna up while the man handles Cashmere. After he smiles and gives them both the a-okay sign, Breanna takes off her first stage air filter. She’s not using it as her internal carbon scrubber is working optimally. It has this handy little feature where it remains tethered to her, though, so even though this guy apparently doesn’t need it, it’s the best way for them to communicate, like a tin-can telephone.

He accepts it, and places it against his mouth so the sound will travel through. “My name is Tertius Valerius. This is my daughter, Aeterna Valeria. We detected your arrival on the roof via a rectenna’s diagnostic alerts, and were making our way towards it when we saw you parachute down. What luck, we met in the middle.”

“How are you even alive?” Breanna consults her environmental readings again. “The glassified dust particles alone should be shredding your lungs.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tertius replies. “We need to get you to safety. We were only still in Leviss to look for stragglers who refused to evacuate before. Breckenridge is still safe for now, but they’re in danger too. If this liquefaction spreads, they’ll need to continue northwards. You can join us in our...boat,” he adds as he’s looking over towards the other side of the pylon that they’re standing on. “Hm. It’s sinking too.”

With their only means of transport gone, they start looking around for options. There’s a hill jutting out from the soup, which Breanna’s sensors show is solid enough to stand on. If they can reach that, they will be four and a half meters closer to North Exit. Their IMS units come with smaller speed flying parachutes, which can launch and retract much faster than a primary chute. They’re designed to cross chasms and ravines, but they will work in this situation, as long as these islands are sufficiently close to each other. The problem is Tertius and Aeterna. They’re not wearing suits. Even if their bodies can survive this environment, they likely can’t fly.

“We have tandem straps,” Cash reminds Breanna.

“Those are designed to carry children, like a bjorn,” Breanna argues.

Cash shrugs. “They’re strong enough to hold an adult man.”

Breanna sighs. “Okay, we can try it.”

Tertius straps in against Breanna’s chest while Aeterna straps in with Cash. Despite the awkward configurations, they manage to get a short running start, and then jump. Their speedchutes pull them upwards just enough to fly forwards, and drop them on the hill. “Told ya,” Cash teases

“You were right,” Breanna admits. “This might actually work. Let’s go look for the next place to jump to. Hopefully it, uh...exists.”