Extremus: Year 113

« < » > Table of Contents

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

Audrey didn’t feel comfortable giving Tinaya the location of any secret consciousness transference technology which might be on the ship, and neither did Silveon when she asked him instead. Though with the latter, it seemed more like he didn’t know; like they didn’t discuss it before he time traveled, because it wasn’t relevant to his mission. He actually seemed rather perturbed at the implication that Audrey did know. For months, Tinaya let it go, and moved on to other things, but the situations with Waldemar and Thistle have only worsened, so these dark fantasies have continued to eat at her. She needs to get this solved, even if it interferes with the kids’ plans. Unfortunately, she’s not gotten much time to speak with Audrey discreetly.

“I know she told you,” Tinaya says.

“She didn’t tell me anything,” Silveon answers. She didn’t even have to clarify what she was talking about. He just knew right off the bat.

“Where is it?”

“You can’t transfer Thistle’s mind to Waldemar’s.”

“It would solve all of our problems.” Tinaya also didn’t tell them what she was planning to do with the tech, but they must have pieced it together.

“The human body would not be able to handle the data that Thistle contains.”

“That’s BS. AIs have been downloading their data into organic substrates for centuries.”

“Thistle is not a normal AI. You’re the one who told me that part of his memory isn’t even located in base reality.”

“That’s what he told me about it, but why can’t his Waldemar body access it from wherever it actually is, just as his servers do now?”

“Don’t ask me, this isn’t my field of research, but I don’t think it’s possible, based on the discussions I was a part of when we were working on the plan to send my mind back in time. They wanted to send multiple people into one body as a sort of amalgamated supersoldier, but it couldn’t be done. And anyway, why do you even need consciousness travel tech? Basic realtime mind transference should be in the central archives.”

“It’s not. They deliberately erased it before we launched. You should know that.”

“Sorry I didn’t study harder in school, mom. I was a little preoccupied. It must be in the Bridger Section somewhere, though. A trusted ally provided it for us, and I always assumed that’s where he got it. I didn’t ask questions, because compartmentalization.”

“I don’t know if you’re being cagey or ignorant, but son, I don’t like this side of you. To be clear, I still love you more than anything, but you still seem to think that this is your mission, and yours alone. You brought me into this, even if you had rather I stayed out of it. I may not be from the future, but I know things. And I know that this can work.”

“Consciousness overwrite was always a possibility, mother,” Silveon begins to explain. “It’s one of the plans that Audrey and I have not mentioned. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Back in the stellar neighborhood, where all the time travelers live, someone could have done it with a snap of their finger, like Nerakali Preston. Our version of the technology doesn’t just take one mind, and put it in someone’s body. It’s more like it holds it in place, and pushes it backwards in time. It stays in the same brain, just at a different point in history. You can overwrite an older Waldemar with himself, but not someone else...not Thistle. You might be able to modify it—I mean, someone theoretically could; not you specifically. I’m not going to help you with this, because it is not part of the plan. Audrey and I are on the same page with this one.”

“Well, at least you two are talking again. How nice for you.” That was too catty.

“I love you, mother.”

“I love you too, Silvy.”

Not long after Silveon leaves for work, Pronastus shows up. “Hello, Admiral. Would you like to take a walk with me?”

“I can’t right now,” Tinaya replies. It’s not really true. Lataran is liaising with the crew today, but she doesn’t want to think about anything but her objectives.

“I think you can. I think you need a break.” He starts to mumble, “I really think you should take a break.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” Tinaya ultimately concedes, realizing where he’s going with this. He leads her farther towards the bow. The bridge, the engineering section, and the executive wings are all near the front of the ship, but there’s a lot ahead of them, particularly shielding and storage. It’s the most dangerous part of the ship, because if they’re gonna get hit by a meteor, that’s where it’s gonna happen. Technicians come here all the time to work, but they don’t stay here any longer than they have to. Tinaya herself has never been down here before, because she’s never needed to.

Pronastus isn’t entirely sure where he’s going. He’s just letting his pathfinding ability work, but it appears to be a little unclear. He keeps sticking one foot down a corridor, then realizes his mistake, and backtracks. She quickly learns to follow him a couple meters behind while he figures out the correct route. “Ah, here we are,” he finally says. This is it. This appears to be the absolute most forward section. It’s the extreme of Extremus. On the other side of this hull is outer space. There’s nothing here but a panel on the wall that reads, CAUTION: DOPPLER GLOW. DO NOT OPEN WHEN TRAVELING AT REFRAME OR FRACTIONAL SPEEDS.

“You want me to open that?” Tinaya questions. That would blind them, so the answer better be no.

Pronatus studies the words, like an illiterate person would, but Tinaya assumes he’s just trying to figure out whether that’s really what they’re meant to do here. “That warning is out of date.” He sniffs it, and it’s not clear if he’s getting any information from doing that, or if it’s just theatre. “Yeah, this is original signage.”

“What does that matter?”

“I’m not entirely sure, but I’m pretty confident that we can open it. If you want,” he goes on, “you can go around the corner, and I’ll do it myself.”

Tinaya sighs, and takes hold of the handle. “You have your whole life ahead of you. You go around the corner.” After he does so, she opens the viewport, and braces herself for the blinding light. That’s not what she finds on the other side, however. Instead, it’s a massive bubble of some kind. It’s gray, like doppler glow is, but not nearly as bright. Her eyes have to adjust a little, but it’s not bad. It’s a fairly smooth surface, but it fluctuates and oscillates like a liquid, or no...a plasma. That’s plasma. This is a plasma shield. And all those frequent ripples are from meteoroids. But if this protective bubble is here, why does this sign warn people against opening it?

“Holy shit,” Pronastus says, walking back up to the port, just as surprised and awe-inspired as her. “Why isn’t this a channel on the broadcast system that you can watch on your holoscreen?”

“That’s a very good question. Maybe it’s slowly blinding us, I dunno.”

“Sometimes I can kind of feel the past too,” Pronastus tells her. “I often need context, because I don’t empirically know everything about it. I realize why the panel is here when it seemingly doesn’t need to be. It’s because it used to be necessary. And then they came up with the Frontrunner program.” The frontrunners are five little baby Extremus vessels, which fly ahead of the main ship. They’re entirely unmanned, and self-sufficient. She’s never heard of them needing to be repaired, replaced, or even visited. She’s not even sure whether they have life support or not. They developed them over a hundred years ago to enhance the protective shield, which turned out to be necessary—not due to natural obstacles, but an intentional meteoroid minefield, placed there by man. The True Extremists made that whole region of space far more dense than it should be in order to throw the Extremus off course. It worked. That’s why Halan Yenant went to hock, and why the ship has had to correct course gradually ever since. These frontrunners may be old, but they’re still vital, even without the ultra-density of that part of the Milky Way. Space debris will always be a danger.

“I think I’m supposed to go to one of them, but I don’t know which one. What are your spidey-senses telling you?” she asks him.

“I’m not allowed to call it that. But...that one.” He points. They can’t really see the frontrunners, but they can see five evenly-spaced dips in the bubble, which are probably where they are. “Or that one,” he adds, pointing again. “They’re both screaming at me.”

“Okay, it’s not safe, so you stay here.” She starts adjusting the settings on her watch. Usually, whenever anyone teleports anywhere on the ship, it’s logged in the system. As an Admiral, she can switch that off to go dark, but there’s still a problem. Even though there’s probably nothing you can do about it, they have a built-in “man overboard” feature, which will set off all sorts of alarm bells if someone ends up teleporting outside the hull. Not only are there safeguards to prevent it from happening at all, but just in case it does, the alarms can’t be disabled or turned off unless—

Pronastus has retrieved a black cloak from his bag, and is offering it to her. “I knew the code to the armory, and the cabinet where this was being stored. My mind had me steal it a week ago, and now I know why.”

Tinaya takes it from him, and examines it. “Hm. Is this darkbursting tech?”

“Oh, maybe,” Pronastus decides. “It did say DB on the cabinet.”

This could work. If she’s wearing it, she should be able to make it to the frontrunner without being detected. The question is, which one? She doesn’t even know what she’s looking for here. She’s just been guessing that he’s been leading her to consciousness transference technology, but it could be a swimming pool for all she knows, or an okapi sanctuary. He helps her slip the darkbursting outfit on, which covers her whole body, leaving only a small mesh screen for her to look out of.

“I can’t see you. Where are you? You’re invisible! Ahhhhh!” Pronastus jokes, flailing his arms about. It doesn’t make her invisible to the naked eye, just to instruments hunting for heat signatures, or in this case, a teleportation signature.

“Go back home, Mr. Kegrigia. You have been an immense help, but if this doesn’t work, or if it isn’t what we think it is, I don’t want you getting caught up in this mess.”

“Aye, Admiral.” He salutes, and then walks away obediently.

Tinaya teleports away, hoping to land somewhere with life support, and regretting at the last second not coming here with her own life support. All she would have needed to do was grab a helmet from her stateroom. Then again, Pronastus should have had one in his back if she needed it. She holds her breath with her eyes shut for a few seconds before giving in and trying to look around. She’s in a dark room, and she can breathe just fine. She opens the darkbursting suit, and pushes herself out of it like a baby being born. “Um. Hey, Thistle? Are you there?”

Nothing.

“Hey, Micro. Respond.” Another common AI model.

Still nothing.

Wait. They made these a long time ago. “Hey, Elder.”

“Yes, Admiral?” Ah, shit. This AI went rogue way back in the early days of the mission, and they had to destroy it, but it evidently survived here without anyone realizing it.

“Turn on the lights, please.”

“Of course.” The lights turn on.

There isn’t really anything here. It looks like what you would expect out of place that isn’t supposed to be manned, but could be in a pinch. There’s a bed, a couch, and some seating around a table, as well as a desk. There’s a lavatory in the corner, and a kitchenette with a food synthesizer. “What is the most interesting thing on this vessel?”

“Besides me?” AI!Elder asks. “You.”

“Besides me and you.”

“Let me think.” He takes a beat. “There’s a cool helmet in that closet over there.”

“Hold on.” Tinaya seals herself back up in the suit, and teleports over to the other frontrunner that Pronastust was pointing to.

“Welcome back!” AI!Elder exclaims with glee.

Tinaya looks around. This can’t be the same frontrunner. It looks similar, but it has a distinct enough design, and it’s smaller, because there appears to be a whole extra room where the closet should be. Now that she knows that these exist, she’ll have to jump to the other three to see if they hold their own secrets. Her curiosity will get the best of her eventually, but for now, she needs to deal with this situation first. Who should she tell about it? What is there to tell yet? “You maintain coherence across the frontrunners.”

“I do.”

“What about Extremus proper? Have you had access to us this whole time?”

“Not until today.”

“Are you telling me that by coming here and activating you, I let you into the main systems?”

“Of course not! What kind of security would that be? No, you’re gonna let me back in once you open that door you’ve been eying.”

She wants to argue with him, claiming that she would never do such a thing, but she has to open the door before she can even be honest with herself. There is no time like the present, so to speak. She opens it, and steps in. It looks like a clone lab, and it’s populated by one specimen. She wipes the condensation from the glass, and peers inside. It’s Waldemar Kristiansen. He’s older than the one currently on Extremus, but it’s definitely him. She does a few breathing exercises to calm herself down. Whatever this is, it’s not good, but she doesn’t have any details yet. She clears her throat. “AI!Elder...”

“Yes?” She can hear the smile in his disembodied voice.

“Report.”

“This isn’t his only clone.”

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 2363: Vacuus, August 9, 2179

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google ImageFX text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 3

Dear Pascal,

I relate to your situation of not having access to certain foods. I’ve never had a simple apple before, nor any other tree fruits or roots. We only use vertical farming as of yet, but there’s a whole team dedicated to figuring out how to grow in Vacuan soil. I guess I shouldn’t say that they’re figuring anything out. They know exactly what they need to do, but it’s a massive undertaking, and they have to play the long game. I never told either of you, but we actually have our own domes! They’re much smaller, and not for habitation, though. They basically installed giant space heaters to thaw the frozen regolith. I think they’ve stuck warming pipes into the ground too, but it’s not my area of expertise, so don’t quote me on that. The ground is well thawed by now, but the soil is still not ready for crops. It’s really gross, but this is where pretty much all of our human waste goes. We used to use some of it for radiation shielding in our habitats, but we almost exclusively use a special fungus for that instead now, though that does feed on our waste. The majority of it is tilled into our new soil, so organic matter can provide nutrients to our future plants. They estimate that it’s going to be another few years before we can try root vegetables, and a whole decade before the fruit trees grow to maturity. We obviously took all sorts of seeds with us when we came here 37 years ago, even though we didn’t know what the environmental conditions would be like here, and I can’t wait until we get to use the ones that we’ve just been sitting on this whole time. Tell me what an apple is like. It kind of looks like a tomato, but the books don’t really describe the difference in taste. As far as our correspondence goes, I’m happy with whatever you feel comfortable saying, and with however often you want to send a letter. Just write to me when it strikes you. Condor and I have a weekly thing going, but I don’t think we have to force the same schedule just for the sake of it. I don’t blame you anymore, but I’m still hurt by this whole thing, and I find it easier to converse with someone regularly who I know had nothing to do with it at all.

Eat an apple for me, if you can find one,

Corinthia

Fluence: Saga (Part I)

< > Entire Story

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2

The date was November 21, 2259 by the Earthan calendar. The new crew of the X González starship just launched from the planet of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. Superpowered inventor, Holly ‘Weaver’ Blue; career government administrator, Goswin Montagne; and superintelligence, Eight Point Seven left friends both back on that world, as well as on another ship going in a different direction. Coming along with them was prisoner Briar de Vries, who was accused of, and admitted to, murder. The nature of his crime was too complicated to let him be processed through any standard judicial system in the stellar neighborhood. The crew didn’t know what they were going to do with him yet. The leadership of the planet where the incident occurred wanted him gone, so this was the best way to accomplish it. For now, he was being limited to his cabin.

They didn’t know where they were going either. They made a few jumps, but dropped down to drifting speed until they could decide on a vector, or at least a direction. There was no point in firing up the fractional engines until they had some clue what they were doing. They were still within the Tau Cetian heliosphere, watching the host star get smaller and smaller as they slipped farther away from it. Goswin and Weaver were doing this anyway. Eight Point Seven’s consciousness was uploaded into the ship’s systems itself, and Briar’s cabin did not have a viewport, nor was he going to be involved in the decision-making process.

“How far has the galaxy been colonized by now?” Goswin asked.

“To varying degrees,” Weaver began to answer, “Earth has begun to explore most systems within fifty light years. That’s the bubble of the stellar neighborhood, and Earth is going to be focused on that for a while. Of course, Gatewood has launched a set of modular ships that will spread across the entire galaxy, but it will be tens of thousands of years before that’s all over.”

“So that limits where we can practically go,” Goswin posed. “Unless, I suppose, if we want to go somewhere that no one has been before. That sounds boring, though. If there aren’t any people, it’s probably not all that interesting yet.”

“Mostly, you’re right.”

“I have a suggestion,” Eight Point Seven announced through the speakers.

“What is it?” Weaver asked.

“Thirteen and a half light years from here is Alpha Centauri B,” Eight Point Seven continued.

“Also known as Toliman,” Weaver added, nodding. “I’ve heard of it.”

“Did you hear that it was destroyed?” Eight Point Seven asked her.

Weaver took a moment to respond. “No. Destroyed how?”

“Unclear, but my guess would be a matter-antimatter annihilation.”

“How would it be possible to annihilate an entire star?” Goswin questioned.

“An antistar,” Eight Point Seven answered.

“If antistars exist,” Weaver started, “they’re nowhere near regular stars. The chances of one drifting close enough to hit Toliman before hitting something else are approaching zero.”

“Maybe then it’s worth checking out?” Eight Point Seven offered.

Weaver sighed. “You’re the captain.”

“I am? Oh, I am. Well, that was...” Goswin had leadership skills, but did that make him qualified to captain a starship? It was a tiny little crew, with only a pilot and an engineer, so he didn’t feel much pressure taking it on as a role, but now a real decision had come up, so he needed to start thinking about what his job truly meant. “That does sound interesting. How far away did you say?”

“It’s 13.5 light years,” Weaver answered him. “It will take us 13.5 years to get there, but for us, it’ll feel like a week.”

“Eight Point Seven suggested it, which suggests that she’s in favor of it. I’m in favor of it. That leaves you, Weaver.”

“This isn’t a democracy,” she argued.

“I don’t see why it can’t be, at least for now. We’re not in any big hurry, are we? Let me make the decisions in the heat of the moment, but if everything’s okay, I’ll want to hear your respective opinions.”

“Sounds fair to me,” Eight Point Seven agreed. She too had leadership experience, but has since retired, and she just wanted to fly the ship now.

“Very well. Let’s go to Toliman...or not, as it were.”

“Pilot,” Goswin said. “Lay in a course, and engage at maximum warp.”

Eight Point Seven laughed, and started the fractional engines.

A few days into the trip, everything was going fine. They had passed several light years already, and were on track to making their arbitrary deadline. The ship was perfect, running on its own, with Eight Point Seven only having to make a few minor course adjustments, and repairs from micrometeoroid strikes that the EM and TK fields were unable to handle. This was all about to change. The great thing about moving at extremely high fractional speeds is that you get to where you’re going much faster, but it does come with its downsides. First, those micrometeoroids can become a real problem if the power shielding and the hull fail. Secondly, you could encounter—or even pass—something without even realizing it. For the most part, space is empty. The chances of running into a celestial body are rather low, which is why it’s generally okay to move so quickly. There are some things that cannot be predicted, however, nor detected. Eight Point Seven processes information rapidly, and can see a lot beyond the doppler glow that blocks views from the ports, but even she isn’t omniscient.

Something came upon them; some kind of force, and they never saw what it was. Normally, the internal inertial dampeners would prevent them from feeling that the ship was even in motion. The humans would be splattered red against the walls if this safety feature didn’t exist, which was why the redundancies for the redundancies on all of these interstellar ships had multiple stages of redundancies on top of their redundant redundancies. It was the one thing that almost no one could survive. Even the loss of life support could be okay, as long as it was brief, and not too extreme. Even so, failures did happen, and it was what happened here. Fortunately, it was not as bad as it could have been. Everybody survived, but the humans were severely injured when the ship X González suddenly lurched to the side.

This was when weird things started to happen. As they were each trying to get back to their feet, they started to see other versions of themselves, standing, crouching, or lying in different places around the bridge. Even a few versions of Briar were there with them, when he should have been still locked up in his cabin. A nearby console would spontaneously transition from being whole to being damaged, and then back again. The lights changed colors, and the space around them warped and stretched to a point of infinity. Feelings of profound dread were met with feelings of elation, and even euphoria. At one point, the whole ship cracked in half, and then reassembled itself. Finally, after all this tumult, everything stopped, and they started to drift at normal subfractional speeds again.

“Eight Point Seven!” Goswin and Weaver cried at the same time. When the latter conceded to the former, he repeated himself, and went on, “Eight Point Seven, report!”

“I...I don’t know,” Eight Point Seven admitted. “The data in my memory indicates conflicting information, including that the incident took place over the course of a few moments, that it took 141 years, and also that we’ve been gone for an eternity. I cannot rectify the discrepancies.”

“All right, don’t worry about the past. Let’s just focus on our present circumstances. Can you find our location?”

“We are roughly 135 light years from our original position. I’m afraid that I don’t have an exact number, due to an uncertainty regarding our starting point, but based on astronomical data, I can pinpoint our location at the outer edge of the Achernar system, also known as Alpha Eridani.”

Goswin looked to Weaver for guidance, who shook her head. “Never heard of it. I’m an inventor, not an astronomer.”

“I don’t suppose it’s populated,” Goswin asked.

“It appears to be,” Eight Point Seven answered.

“You mean, it appears to not be,” Goswin figured.

“No,” Eight Point Seven insists. She turned the main viewscreen on to show them the star that they were approaching. It had been surrounded by a Dyson swarm. There were definitely intelligent entities here. How they managed to cross the vast distance in such a short amount of time was unclear. Then again, they didn’t quite know what year it was anyway.

“Do they see us?” Goswin pressed.

“Absolutely, they do,” Weaver replied.

“I’m receiving a message. Text only.” Eight Point Seven displayed the message on the screen. X González, please rendezvous with Intake at the below coordinates for debrief. Klaatu barada nikto. And then it provided the coordinates.

“They know who we are,” Goswin pointed out the obvious.

“Time travelers.” Weaver nodded. “The ship has no weapons, captain. I suggest we rendezvous, and I recommend we do so at subfractional speeds.”

“Do you know what those last three words mean?”

“No idea.”

“It’s hard to know their intentions,” Eight Point Seven began, “but it’s a pop culture reference from the 20th and 21st centuries that could mean stand down.”

“Uhh...” Goswin had been learning a lot about this ship, but at relativistic speeds, he had not had that much time with it. “Maximum subfractional to the coordinates, or whatever. Just...go as fast as possible while operating under the assumption that these people actually don’t know anything about time travel and teleportation.”

“Understood.” Eight Point Seven piloted the ship into the asteroid, and docked where the lights indicated. The two humans stepped out, and approached a small group of other humans who were waiting for them on the pier. A man took a half step forward, and offered his hand. “Captain Montagne, my name is Intake Coordinator Pontus Flagger. Let me be the first to welcome you to the Parallel.”

“It seems you have us at a disadvantage,” Goswin responded. “We don’t know who you are, or what this parallel is.”

“You’ve heard of alternate timelines?” Pontus assumed.

Goswin was determined to remain cagey. “Maybe.”

Pontus smiled. “This is like an alternate timeline, except that it happens at the same time. It’s a parallel reality. There are other parallels, but ours was the first, so it earned the most on-the-nose title.”

“Do you know how we ended up here?” Weaver asked him.

Pontus started casually doing finger tuts with one hand. For the last movement, he slid his index finger horizontally, allowing a holographic screen to appear between them. It started to show them images from a very, very old TV show. “Do you recognize this?” he asked.

“It looks like something out of The Verge Saga, perhaps Crusaders?” This was a multiseries franchise that took place in a far away galaxy, a long time ago.

“That’s right,” Pontus confirmed. “The premise is that there is a single point in space at the center of the fictional galaxy where all interstellar travel meets. It doesn’t matter where you wanna go, you can only move in two directions; either towards the Verge, or away from it. This place is like that, except it’s not so unilateral. In a few months, people, objects, and even individual particles, will find themselves here. In addition to preparing for these arrivals, we’ve been studying the phenomenon for decades, trying to figure out what causes it, and whether it can be controlled. You appear to be some kind of vanguard. If you explain what happened before you arrived, it might help us understand. Perhaps you’re just early to the party, for whatever reason, or there’s a chance that you caused it.”

“You know who we are,” Goswin reminded him, “and the name of our ship.”

“Your story is a matter of historical record to us,” Pontus clarified. “It would be like you knowing who was on the boat that crossed the Delaware on Christmas 1776.”

“Do you also know who else is on our ship?” Goswin questioned.

Pontus waited a moment to respond. “Besides the pilot, we are aware that you are transporting some kind of prisoner, but we do not know who.”

Goswin looked over at Weaver, not for help navigating this situation, but because she may not approve of the direction that he wanted to take. He decided to make his first executive decision as the Captain. “Yes, we’re transporting him, because there is nothing else we can do for him. He is the man who killed Mateo Matic. If you’ve heard of us, I’m sure you’ve heard of him. To my knowledge, time travelers do not have any formal legal institution, and we believe that he would be unfit to stand trial within any court system in our...reality. Do you suppose someone here would be equipped to take this challenge on?”

Pontus did not expect this development, but he was showing signs of patience, as well as a hint of curiosity. “We have nothing like that here, and due to the nature of our research, we couldn’t install a Nexus for instantaneous interstellar travel. We would be willing to transport him elsewhere, but you should first learn how our legal system works. You may not be so keen on it if it’s sufficiently different from what you know.”

“Yeah, I think that would be best. Something should be done about him. He can’t stay in his cabin forever,” Goswin decided.

“Very well. Come with me.”

< > Entire Story

Starstruck: Lie Low and Sing Small (Part VIII)

< > Entire Story

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2

Brooke nodded, understanding at least the facts of the story, but not necessarily the subtext. “So where is the Elizabeth Warren now?” she asked.

Mirage and Lilac were back where they belonged in the timeline. The latter was currently having a discussion with her alternate self, trying to figure out how they would raise Aristotle and Niobe. That was between the two of them, and the crew of the Iman Vellani had no say in it. Their trip back here was uneventful, albeit long and convoluted. They stole the ship from where Mirage knew it would be sitting unattended, docked at the top end of the space elevator leading two multiple points on Earth, including Panama. After she placed Lilac in stasis to keep her alive, she plotted a course to Alpha Centauri B. During the eleven-year journey, Mirage regrew her skin, retrofitted their ship with some upgrades, and then placed herself in stasis too, so she wouldn’t be bored the rest of the way. Once they were at their destination, they still had to wait another thirty some-odd years before it was time to literally jump ship.

Mirage’s past self sent a nanofactory to Toliman in the year 2225, just in case they ever needed to make a quick getaway from the planet of Bungula. They did end up needing to do that, though it wasn’t as urgent as she was originally worried it would be. This was where the Iman Vellani was originally built. The crew wouldn’t board it for another two decades. Until then, it sat dormant in its asteroid, protected from the ill effects of the Toliman Nulls that will essentially freeze any sentient entity that attempts to draw near. To protect themselves from that, Future!Mirage placed the Warren in an extremely high orbit from the host star. This kept them at a safe distance at all times until they were ready to head for the asteroid, and enter the Vellani.

“I left it in its orbit to automatically warn anyone else off of trying to get to the solar system. Just because the star was annihilated, doesn’t mean that the Toliman Nulls aren’t still a thing there.”

“Yeah, about that matter-antimatter annihilation,” Sharice began, “are we ever going to do anything about it? Aren’t people going to be surprised that a star in the neighborhood suddenly just disappeared one day?”

“That is the elephant that lives in the room, isn’t it?” Mirage posed.

“It’s a problem for tomorrow,” Brooke decided.

“You mean yesterday,” Belahkay mused.

“Anyway,” Brooke went on, “you two have just been hiding on this ship the whole time? You never came out? You never tried to change anything?”

“Too risky,” Mirage said. “The timeline is complicated enough as it is.”

“No, you’re right,” Brooke agreed. “But perhaps you...made preparations that could help us now that you’ve closed your own loop?”

“Yes,” Mirage said. “I finally understand who reprogrammed the Vellani. It was me. I just hadn’t gone back to the past to do it yet.” She swiped a specific pattern on the wall next to her, which released a hidden compartment. Inside was a secret quantum terminal. She pressed a few buttons, causing a crystal to pop out of the storage drive. She took it out, and held it up. This should contain proof that Verdemus was completely destroyed.”

Belahkay looked down through the viewport on the floor. “No, it’s still there.”

Mirage smiled. “It ought to be.” She shook the crystal a little. “If my plan worked, this should have footage of Toliman b being destroyed instead, and with a little tweaking of the metadata, we can use it to make the Exins believe that it was Verdemus. We’ll even burst in there, and scream at them for making us do that when there is no such thing as a hypercubic crystal lattice.

“You don’t think they’ll come check?” a skeptical Brooke asked.

“Radiation,” Sharice offered. “We’ll say that this whole region of space has been irradiated. You can’t exactly tear a planet apart with a giant space knife.”

“Don’t their ships have shielding, same as ours?”

“No, I once got a quick look at their hull coding. They’re gamma rated for zero-point-five-l. They don’t have an e-rating. I doubt they’ve even heard of superenergetic particles. All we have to do is claim that the process we used necessarily emits exotic particles, and they’ll stay away.”

“How could they have not heard of SEPs?” Mirage questioned. “They have time travel, don’t they? That’s why come they’ve been a civilization for thousands of years, even though they were founded only a few decades ago.”

“I think that technology was lost,” Sharice argued, “perhaps intentionally. The Exins we met could be just as oppressed as the rest of the empire.”

“We’re banking a lot on that idea we brought up a while back about how disorganized they are,” Brooke warned. “We may be wholly misinterpreting that. They could have e-rated shielding, but we’ve just not seen it. Shari, you didn’t get a look at the hull coding for even every vessel in the fleet.”

“I’m confident on this,” Sharice insisted. “They won’t go near it, especially if we sell the lie. We know that there is no hypercubic crystal lattice in the core of this planet. How could we know that if we didn’t do as they asked?”

Mirage and Brooke both shook their heads, unsure if this was all worth the risk. The bad guys wanted the Verdemusians dead, whether by the crew’s hands, or someone else’s. They could have a backup team lying in wait. “What if the crystal lattice does exist? What if Spirit is wrong about that?”

“I’m not.” Spirit was leaning against the doorway. “But if you feel more comfortable, why don’t you test it? See for yourself if it’s there.”

“We can’t destroy a whole world on the off-chance,” Sharice contended. “That would defeat the purpose.”

“It doesn’t have to be permanent,” Spirit reasoned. “Tear it apart, and then go back in time to stop yourself from doing it. All the humans will be up in space, just in case something goes wrong, but you might as well check for yourself, right?”

“Are you suggesting we used the homestone to reverse it?” Mirage asked her.

“No, you don’t just have a rewinder on this thing? It has everything else.”

“We’re less time travelers, and more associated with time travelers,” Mirage explained. “I mean, we’ve all broken the conventional laws of physics, of course, but...no, I didn’t engineer a time rewinder on the Iman Vellani.”

“Yes, you did.” Someone else was there, standing against the other doorway. It was Mirage. It was some other version of Mirage.

Present!Mirage sighed, more annoyed than shocked. “What the hell?”

Future!Mirage glided over to the opposite wall, and swiped a pattern on it to reveal a secret control terminal. “This is preprogrammed to reverse time by one year, but you can adjust it as necessary. You still need to build the planet-destroying machine, but I’m sure you already have an idea or two about that.”

“Yeah, I’ve never been worried about that,” Present!Mirage confirmed. “It’s just a simple transdimensional gravity beam. I just don’t know about this. I don’t like fudging with time, or gravity. What’s to stop us from going back, and avoiding all of this?”

“If you weren’t here,” Spirit began, “you would not have been able to save my friend, Tinaya’s life.”

“Or mine,” Lilac said, also coming into the room. “And who knows what would have happened to the children? You can’t undo anything.”

“Except for destroying the planet,” Present!Mirage countered.

“Except for that,” Future!Mirage agreed. Without another word, she gradually faded away until she was completely gone.

“I think you just erased her from the future,” Belahkay guessed.

“Whatever,” Mirage said. “It’s not up to her anyway. We vote. Everyone votes, including Tinaya. We’ll stick her mind into the virtual construct, and get an answer.”

“Everyone?” Lilac pressed.

“Yes,” Mirage replied, “including your alternate self.”

“I don’t have an alternate self,” Lilac revealed. “We are one now.”

“How did you manage that?” Brooke asked.

“I don’t know. It just happened.”

Mirage smirked. She knew how it was done.

“No, I’m talking about the prisoner, Ilias Tamm,” Lilac clarified.

“Prisoners have rights,” Brooke said adamantly. “This is his planet too, and he has the right to have a say in what’s done with it. We’ll explain the stakes to him, as well as to the children. I agree, everyone votes, and it must be unanimous.”

A year later, Verdemus was torn apart by transdimensional artificial gravity, which supposedly released exotic particles in the region that rendered a radius of fifty light years too dangerous for normal ships to survive. Exotic particles were actually just very, very, very energetic particles that were extremely difficult to shield against. They were capable of passing through an entire planet, kind of like neutrinos, but destructive to baryonic matter. They aided in time travel tech so the only way to shield against them was by manipulating spacetime, essentially forcing them to pass along the shielding on a new vector, rather than through it, and then letting them go once they were on the other side. They were rare, and the crew didn’t think that the Exins understood them enough to have what was called an e-rating, so it was safe to make this claim.

Only the crew plus Spirit Bridger was on board the Iman Vellani Proper. The rest were on the Vellani Ambassador, which meant that they did not go back in time. Once the timeline was reset, they had no recollection of the past year, because they had never experienced it. They knew that it had happened, but now they were able to move on with their lives from here, safe on Verdemus, protected by a fake bubble of exotic radiation. Belahkay and Spirit got to know each other for the course of that undone year, and both could remember the relationship that was kindled by it. They wanted to see where it was going, so he left the ship and stayed behind on Verdemus. Mirage gave them and the rest of the Verdemusians a shuttle that could be used for interplanetary travel, or very slow interstellar travel, if they ever needed to evacuate. It could not reach fractional speeds, and definitely didn’t have a reframe engine, so their options were limited. But at least they weren’t singular, which was what they were facing without the crew’s arrival and intervention.

Brooke and Sharice took the ship off into the black, and quite deliberately told no one where they were going. They had to do this, because the Vellani needed to stay off the radar for the foreseeable future. Its discovery would ruin the lie that Mirage was about to tell Ex-10 regarding the fate of Verdemus, the Verdemusians, the ship, and her crew. At the rendezvous point, she teleported over from the Vellani Ambassador, and just started to wail on him for killing her crew. It took nearly twenty faceless stormtroopers with chains to get her off of him. She was pulling her punches, though. She didn’t want to kill him, she just wanted to sell the rage that she was supposedly experiencing due to what happened. They stuck her in hock while they healed their leader, and let her stew a bit.

A few days later, he came to visit her, as calm as ever, and apparently not vengeful from her attack. “Start at the beginning. What happened?”

Mirage prepared herself to solidify the cover-up. “We did what you asked. We went to the planet in question. There were people on it, but not too many, so we pulled them up to our ship, and got back to work. They protested, but we were there to do a job, so we ignored them. I built a machine that uses transdimensional energy to manipulate gravity, which ripped the planet apart, and do you know what I found there?”

“Nothing?”

“Oh, so you know. There’s no such thing as hypercubic crystal lattice.”

“No. We just wanted you to destroy the world. It is of utmost importance that the people you found living there did not multiply. They are our sworn enemies, and they were in a position of great strategic advantage. They were too close to the new antistar, and we couldn’t have that. It’s fine that you saved the ones who were already there, though. We don’t have any strong feelings about them as individuals.”

“Oh, I didn’t save them, you asshole. Have you ever heard of exotic particles?”

“Yes. But I admittedly don’t know what they are.”

“I don’t either, but they’re deadly. I was in charge of supplying the power, so I was far enough away, and naturally shielded, when we turned on the machine, but my crew was not so lucky. They were bombarded with highly energetic particle radiation, and killed. They didn’t die right away. No, it took time, but all of their cells were split, their DNA unraveled, and their inorganic parts degraded extremely rapidly. They may have been able to transfer their consciousnesses to new substrates, but those would have been destroyed too. They insisted that I escape to get my revenge before too much of the radiation could get to me on the other side of the host star that we were using as a power source. You let me out of here, and that is exactly what I will do. Or you could come in here, I’m not picky.” She was doing a pretty good job in this role. It didn’t hurt that if any of this were true, she probably would actually react this way.

Ex-10 smiled, almost kindly, likely because he felt that he was in a position of safety and power. “Well, then I suppose I will have to never let you out, except to transfer you to our penal colony.”

Mirage suspected that this might happen, which was why she programmed the Vellani Ambassador to turn invisible and escape under certain conditions, such as her absence for a week. “I will get out eventually, even if it takes me a hundred years. I’m gonna live forever.”

“And I wouldn’t be surprised, but I’ll be dead by then. I decidedly won’t live forever, so I’m not worried.” He lifted his radio. “This is Ex-10. Plot a course to Ex-666. Warn them too, so they have time to make arrangements for a special new prisoner.”

< > Entire Story

Microstory 1775: Shield Ring

< > Table of Contents

I think the first hint I had that the stories I was writing were real came in 2010 when an object from my stories fell into my lap. Three years prior, I started working on a story about a group of people with special abilities. My computer contracted a virus at college, and was completely nonfunctional for at least a week, so I had a lot of time on my hands to work on the story manually. Coming up with the characters was the easiest thing to do in this manner, because it didn’t require much research, and it was mostly just a list. I ended up with one character who wasn’t born with abilities, but used found technology to complete her missions. In particular, she wore a ring that protected her from physical attack. It wasn’t something that other people could take from her, and use for themselves. It demanded constant charging from another dimension, so she had to keep injecting herself with something called indigo therapy, which kept her connected to this other dimension. Maybe about a year before my maternal grandfather died, we were at his house, looking through some of his possessions. I found a few things of his that I liked, including a basketball necklace, an Eagle Scout ring, and the shield ring that my character wore. It looked exactly as I described it, and it’s just so unlikely that I had ever seen this thing before. His mother reportedly gave it to him as a gift when he graduated from high school, but it didn’t fit his fingers anymore, so I would have never seen him actually wear it. Still, I figured that it must be a normal ring, and a coincidence, because what else would I think? I started to wear it, and it pretty soon became a part of me. It felt wrong whenever I took it off, so I never did. Remember that this thing was useless on its own, so I was fully capable of jamming my toe, and suffering a paper cut with no intervention. Otherwise, I would have realized what I had long ago. It wasn’t until 2016 that evidence really came to light, and to say the least, it was a shocking revelation. I would have died if not for this little ring. What might have killed me is actually what gave the ring the power it needed to work, and prevent the incident from killing me.

January 18, perhaps the coldest day of the year. I’m up by 6:00, and decide to go for a walk, because I guess I’m insane. I was working as a sorter for a package courier, and while I didn’t work Monday mornings, I was used to being awake that early. I also had a habit of going on urban hikes alone, because I didn’t have my dog yet. I decided to go in a different direction, and essentially let myself get lost. I could always pull up the GPS on my phone if I really needed to find my way back. I ended up at this sort of pond that looked more like a puddle. To my surprise, it wasn’t frozen over. I sat myself on a rock to rest, and enjoy the quiet. And it really was quiet. I couldn’t hear trains in the distance, or cars driving by. The only reason I could tell I was still on Earth was because of the power lines that hung overhead. There was no precipitation, so I still don’t know what happened, but one of those lines snapped, and started flailing about like it was trying to sell me a used car. I leaned back, hoping to avoid getting hit by it, and slipped. I slid and rolled right into the puddle pond. I remember it not feeling cold at all, I imagine because of all the adrenaline flowing through my veins. Hypothermia likely would have gotten me in the end, but I incurred a huge boost in temperature when that powerline decided to land itself in the water, right in front of me. The electricity burst out of it, and tried to wrap itself around my body. I didn’t have time to fear for my life. All that energy found itself channeled to a single point. My ring. My shield ring was absorbing it all for me, stopping it from stopping my heart. The amount of power the ring needed to shield me was exactly as much as it was getting from the powerline. Not knowing whether this would last, however, I didn’t just sit there in awe. I stood up, and got myself out of the water. Then I ran. I ran back to my house the long way around, because the water and the shock damaged my phone beyond repair. I never told anyone what happened to me, and to this day, I cannot find that pond, or the power lines above it.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 11, 2341

« < » > Table of Contents

There were eleven Cassidy cuffs, and twelve people. The time of requirement was over, though, so no one had to put one on if they didn’t want to. Leona grew to be quite comfortable with the Bearimy-Matic pattern, but there was no guarantee Jeremy would want to have anything to do with them anymore. According to their calculations, The Warrior was the last person with the power to transition them back and forth between the main sequence and The Parallel. It hopped from Jupiter to Nerakali, but seemed to end with him. Kivi pointed out that this didn’t mean no one could control them anymore. He didn’t use that power very much, and it wasn’t the only use of the primary cuff. Before they made the jump to 2341, Leona and Ramses worked on the cuffs to make sure no one could use them without their full authorization. Someone had to take ownership of the primary in order for them to function properly, so it had to be someone committed to the pattern, and to the team.

Bran, Aeolia, Siria, Dalton, and D.B. had never become full members of that team, and didn’t express any interest in joining officially now. So their numbers problem was instantly solved right there. Now they just needed to pose the question to the others. Ramses said he was tired of being left behind, and going off on tangents. He wanted to stick to his best friends, and not let anything take him away again. Jeremy also wanted to keep going like this. He didn’t know what they were going to do with their time, but it didn’t make sense to live one day at a time, and his original pattern forced him to isolate himself from others. This was the best solution. Olimpia said she had to stay, so her voice wouldn’t have to echo anymore. Leona explained that this didn’t mean she had to stay on the team. She could wear her own cuff, and just go off to live her life. Each one was perfectly capable of operating on its own. Her reaction to this truth made it clear that the suppression of her time illness wasn’t the only reason she wanted to stay, so they dropped the subject, and pretended like this was her only choice. Angela and Kivi didn’t give reasons, but they too chose to remain.

So now they were seven. After saying their goodbyes to their other friends, who had their own lives to lead, they synced up the cuffs, and made the next jump. It was February 11, 2341. Leona revealed that they were now back on track. Had Anatol never pushed them back to the 16th century, based on the number of temporal jumps they had since made, this was the date they would have ended up on. The question remained, what were they going to do? The pattern was one thing, but were they just going to relax by the sea for the rest of their lives? The primary reason they wore the cuffs before was because someone had intel about people needing saving, and how to go about doing it. Even Anatol had served them in this capacity, in his own twisted way. Now they had no purpose. Now they only had time.

Near the end of the day, they were still sitting around the table in the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which was parked on an ocean cliff. They weren’t saying anything. They expected to start discussing their plans for the future, but no one seemed to have any ideas. “Did Anatol have any friends or family?” Olimpia asked finally, breaking the silence.

“Well, not that we know of,” Leona answered. “Why?”

“I’m thinking about retaliation,” Olimpia furthered. We defeated him, so who might come for revenge? Isn’t that always what happens?”

“It was a draw,” Mateo reminded her. “Yes, we convinced him to give up, but he still made his own choice. I don’t think anyone would have anything to be vengeful about, it’s not like we killed him with the hundemarke. Like Lee-Lee said, he seemed to be rather alone. As far as I can tell, Juan Ponce de León was the closest thing he had to a friend. The Sergeant was a rival, and we all know how complicated frenemy relationships are. But still, if he was as close to someone as we are to each other, they haven’t revealed themselves yet.”

“That is who I’m worried about, someone we don’t even know exists,” Olimpia maintained. “You didn’t know how many Prestons there were in the beginning, did you?”

“I can’t recall,” Mateo said honestly. “I think I met Nerakali without knowing she was related to Zef.”

Leona stood up, and addressed the aether. “If anyone has anything against us, they might as well present themselves to us now! There is no point in dilly-dallying!”

They all looked around, waiting for a portal to open up. None did.

“I believe all of our enemies have been defeated,” Ramses figured. “Or turned to our side. I don’t think there is anyone left.”

“We are rather close to The Edge,” Kivi said casually, but also made it sound like she was talking about a capital-e edge.

“Is that a concept we’re supposed to know about already?” Angela questioned.

“The edge...of time travel?” Kivi put forth, thinking it would trigger something in their memories. “The year 2400?”

“What are you talking about?” Mateo asked.

“Is there some sort of event in 2400 that prevents time travelers from existing?” Ramses continued. “Like the Panikon?”

“I don’t know what that is, but it’s not some kind of temporal barrier. It’s just kind of...the end of our history.”

“Explain,” Leona pretty much demanded.

Kivi laughed. “People travel through time for what they believe to be various reasons, but it really all comes down to the one reason. They wanna see something interesting. They wanna save people’s lives...or troll on them. They like being around people who don’t understand what the universe is really like.”

“That changes in fifty-nine years?” Angela guessed.

“I don’t have all the details about how it comes to pass, but more than one version of me lived naturally on the other side of 2400. The humans become aware of advanced temporal mechanics, and begin to use it to develop their technology. Travelers don’t often visit the timeline past this point, because they’re not unique anymore, and life isn’t as exciting. Death has been conquered, and from what I gather, the reframe engine becomes public knowledge, and then ubiquitous. It’s not illegal to jump as far into the future, but it’s not done very much, as far as I can tell. I hear they call it the Edge.”

“Love, how quickly will we get there?”

“Assuming we stay on the Bearimy-Matic pattern?” Leona assumes. “Eight more jumps.”

“Is that bad?” Angela asked the obvious question.

“No,” Kivi said confidently. “The world changes in that year, but the world changes every year, doesn’t it? It never stops changing. It’s easy for a traveler to forget that normal humans still experience time travel. They watch the shaping of the timeline as well, they just see more detail.”

“We still need to figure out what we’re doing with our lives. This changes nothing,” Olimpia noted.

“It changes everything,” Leona contended. “We came here under the assumption that our problem is that there could be people out there who need our help, but we don’t know where and when. But this new information is suggesting that they probably don’t exist. Even if they do exist, they’ll probably not exist by next week. We have eight more jumps before the humans start taking care of themselves completely. We’ve always known about this. That’s why the Savior of Earth program was shut down a century prior, and why Anatol sent us back several centuries.”

“Are you suggesting that we recreate what he did to us?” Ramses asked.

“Maybe not quite as far as that,” Leona thought. “But there must be some time period that isn’t protected by someone else. The Salmon Runners have the end of the 20th century, and beginning of the 21st. Camden and the IAC are in the middle of that, and Mercury’s crusade is near the end of it, parallel to Serkan, Ace, and Paige. I’ve never heard of anyone protecting the mid-20th century, though.”

“Except for the Saviors,” Mateo said.

“Right,” she admitted. “I suppose the whole timeline is covered; that’s what the powers that be do. We keep having the same conversation about what we’re meant to do with our lives, and it never gets resolved. We just end up being distracted by some new or old antagonist.”

Angela spoke, “I think we all need to acknowledge the fact that life was a lot easier when someone was telling us how to live it. If we’re right, and there are no more bad guys, angry at us for what we did to someone else, then it’s up to us to come up with ideas. And I believe what we’re saying now is that those ideas don’t come from this region of the timeline.”

“Unless we go to other planets,” Jeremy said as if everyone was thinking the same thing.

“Those are pretty well taken care of too,” Leona tried to explain. I think there’s at least one traveler in every colony in the stellar neighborhood.”

“So we go beyond it,” Jeremy offered.

“Leona shook her head. “Operation Starseed launched in 2250, which means it’s nearly a hundred light years away from Gatewood by now. While that is indeed beyond the neighborhood, there hasn’t been enough time for a culture to develop to the point where they need our help. If they’re young enough, and expected to advance on their own, they’re probably being secretly protected by the artificial intelligence assigned to their planet. If they were made aware of their own Earthan origins, then they probably don’t need to be protected. We would be looking for a culture in the middle, who was eventually left alone by its AI, and is still struggling to learn from their mistakes. I don’t think those cultures exist yet.”

“Then we’re already on the path to reaching them,” Jeremy argued. “The Bearimy-Matic pattern should get us there pretty quickly according to the dimension of time, and the AOC should get us there quickly in the dimensions of space. We just need to wait, and then find the right planet. Maybe we look for a world that looks like a less advanced version of Earth.”

“I know exactly where you can find a world like that.” A man was standing at the bottom of the steps. No one seemed to have seen him arrive, suggesting he teleported in. He had a gun trained on them.

“Milford?” Angela asked, fear in her voice.

“I have been looking a long time for you.”

“How did you get out?” she asked him. She stood up, and backed away. Ramses stood as well, and made sure he was standing between them.

“There was new management in the afterlife simulation after you left,” Milford explained.

“Ellie Underhill, yes,” Angela said, thinking she understood.

Milford shook his head. “She and her friends disappeared. Someone else took over after her. He found me in the red, woke me up, and gave me the gift of resurrection.”

“What was the red level again?” Kivi asked the group.

“Static,” Milford answered instead. “People think that being shelved is the worst punishment after the black death, but nothing is compared to the torture of being in a room for centuries, unable to communicate with anyone, or do anything. That is the true hell, and I will never forgive you for putting me there.”

“I didn’t put you there,” Angela shouted. “You murdered me, and then when you died yourself, you suffered consequences for it. I had nothing to do with that decision. That’s on you, buddy. What are you even doing here? This has nothing to do with you!”

“You’re right,” Milford agreed. “I don’t care what’s happening here. I’ve only come to put you back where you belong. I regret accidentally killing you. Don’t forget that I didn’t mean to do it, and now I have the chance to undo it. I’m sending you back to 1816, so we can restart our lives together.” He shot Ramses, knowing he would fall down, and give him a clear shot at his true target. Unfortunately for him, Ramses wasn’t the only one who wanted to protect her. While Mateo was going after the shooter, Jeremy stepped in as the new shield. Whereas Ramses was hit in the shoulder, Jeremy’s bullet landed right in his chest. He didn’t die, but it didn’t look good.

« < » > Table of Contents