Microstory 2363: Vacuus, August 9, 2179

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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)

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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.”

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Starstruck: Lie Low and Sing Small (Part VIII)

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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.”

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Microstory 1775: Shield Ring

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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

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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.

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Extremus: Year 6

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Over the next year, the micrometeoroid problem worsens. Several even manage to slip through the field. Or maybe the field actually teleports the objects inside of it, instead of away, which was an early problem that the technology had. A woman named Weaver figured out how to reduce the chances of that happening, but she was operating under the assumption that the interstellar density would not change this dramatically. Fortunately, it’s not like Extremus was designed with a single layer of aluminum foil. The bulkhead has so far proved strong enough to withstand the damage, and robots have been dispensed to repair the dents immediately. Many of the meteoroids don’t even hit the ship itself anyway. The field is meant to be a buffer; not the last line of defense. Still, it’s a concerning issue, and it still needs to be dealt with.

After a week, the new committee that Halan formed reconvenes. Individuals and teams give their own ideas about how to solve this issue. The Bridgers make another appearance, but it’s their last one. Any information that they need to know about the future of the mission can be passed along to them at a later time. They don’t vocalize any ideas themselves, but everyone else has more than one possibility. Head of Security Gideon has the simplest idea. They could make a lateral course adjustment, and fly parallel to the galactic plane, rather than right through the center of it. It’s not the craziest plan, but it’s also not ideal as it extends their mission time by a measure of years, and potentially uses up too much energy. Lead Mechanic Holgersen thinks that all they need to do is bolster the hull by adding Whipple bumpers, and other armor. Again, this isn’t insane, and it’s certainly doable. Almost all of the ideas come with downsides. They are only short-term solutions, or they make something else about the mission harder, or they just won’t necessarily be good enough for an even higher interstellar density. And then there is one that is the craziest of them all. Surprisingly, it comes from passenger representative, First Chair Ebner.

Omega and Lead Engineer Ocean have been working out the details for the last year, and now it’s time to present it to the rest of the engineering team. So far, no one else has been brought into the mix—not even the rest of the crew—and this strategy has been working. That has to change now, but they should still be able to keep the circle tight. “Thank you all for coming,” Veca begins. “I know you’re all worried about your apprentices, but I’m confident that they can survive the next few hours without you. That’s what they’re here for.” When the mission began, a certain number of people were approved for the crew, based on their education and background. Now that the mission is six years in, some of the younger passengers are finally ready to prepare to replace the initial crew members at a one-to-one ratio. Each current crew member has been assigned an apprentice to train, who will supposedly take over their responsibilities when their shift is over.

Veca continues, “before I begin, due credit is owed to the woman who came up with the idea. She has no engineering experience, so it’s the rest of us who will have to make it actually work, but it’s a good example of how everyone has something to offer, and solutions can come from some of the most unexpected places. First Ebner, would you please stand up?”

Satyria likes to be heard, but she doesn’t just want people to think that she’s important. She wants to actually be important, and to earn all of the recognition she receives. She works hard to contribute to the cause, and never rests on her laurels. Still, she doesn’t love to be the center of attention. She would rather just know that people are pleased with her contributions on their own time. Even so, she stands up, and thanks the crowd as they clap politely.

“Now. Again, we need you. This is a massive endeavor. About half of you are directly responsible for the construction of Extremus. The other half was still in the middle of your education. Either way, you all know what it took to make this dream come true, and none of you takes that for granted. It is a magnificent vessel, and I am profoundly proud of the work we have all accomplished. Unfortunately, as you read in the pre-meeting brief, there is one flaw, which comes out of a lack of data about the composition of the galaxy. You built a great ship. Now I’m going to have to ask you to do it again. It won’t be an entirely new ship that’s the same size as this one, but it will be heavily fortified, and it will be responsible for acting as a sort of frontrunner shield. We’re tentatively calling it The Spearhead.”

One of the engineers raises his hand. “You want a second ship to fly in front of us, so it can take all the micrometeoroid damage on our behalf?”

Before Veca can answer, another engineer piggy-backs on the question. “How do you suggest we get this thing in front of Extremus? Even if we build it in modules, and assemble it on the outside, we’re literally going as fast as relativity allows us. We’ll have to slow down so it can accelerate, and get ahead of us.”

“That’s what those three are for.” Veca points to the corner of the room.

Temporal Engineer Raddle and her apprentice, August are sitting with a second apprentice whose first day on the job was yesterday. Valencia stands up. “We don’t have to slow down to get something in front of the ship. All we have to do is teleport it to a point in space ahead of us. FTL technology isn’t fast or safe enough for general interstellar travel, but it’s perfect for short range jumps. We’ll attach the Spearhead to the bottom of the hull, fire up its engines, send it to the edge of shield space, and let it fly in front of us. Boom, easy.”

“Yeah, that sounds easy,” someone from the crowd groans.

“Simple, not easy,” Veca corrects Valencia’s point. “Look, I know that this sounds crazy,” but Omega and I have been running simulations for months now. Quite frankly, we should have designed the ship to have an external shield the entire time. It will create a clear path for us to follow, and warn us of other dangers ahead of time, like gamma-ray bursts, and collapsed stars. The Spearhead is about more than just micrometeorite strikes. It’s about knowing what’s coming before risking any lives.”

Before anyone can say anything more about anything, they hear a thunderous explosion, and feel a shockwave ripple through their bodies. Captain Yenant, who’s been quiet this whole time to let the experts carry out this presentation, jumps up and activates his emergency teleporter. He likes to walk from place to place most of the time, but obviously he needs to get to the bridge quickly. Mayhem has taken over, and crew members are screaming data at each other, and trying to communicate with their comrades around the ship. “Report!” Halan screams.

“Fires on decks nineteen through twenty-two. Casualty reports still coming in. Deaths upwards of eleven.”

“Sir,” someone else begins.

“What? Just say it!” Halan demands.

“Deck twenty-four, main engineering, has been obliterated. Twenty-three is exposed.”

“Has it been sealed off?” Halan questions.

“Yes, sir.”

“Teleport all injured parties to the infirmary.”

“Already done, sir.”

“Main engines.”

“Holding.”

“Power efficiency.”

“Down to 83%, but rising.”

“Hull integrity.”

“Stressed between twenty-two and three.”

“You’re sure that everyone is out of twenty-three,” Halan asks.

“Sir,” he confirms.

“Decouple,” Halan orders. “Jettison deck twenty-three, and what’s left of twenty-four, before they tear us apart.”

“Jettisoning twenty-three and down,” he agrees as he inputs the command into the computer.

Halan waits a moment, and watches the screen to make sure the damaged sections are successfully removed from the ship. “Okay. Reframe speed.”

“Seven-oh-seven-C.”

Halan sighs and shakes his head in sadness. “All that. All that death, and we’re still just moving along like nothing happened. Did we even lose any time?”

“No, sir.”

“Great. I’m sure everyone we lost was comforted in their final moments that we’re all still doing okay.”

“Sir?”

“Compile the data, and run full diagnostics on every single system on the ship, including the passenger sections. I’m going to the infirmary.”

Fifty-five crew members, and one passenger were killed in what they could come to learn was yet another micrometeorite strike. According to what little data could be recovered from the incident, it was about the size of an ancient Earthan baseball. Though not so big, it was able to do sizable damage, because of how fast the ship was moving. The teleportation shield made an error when it transported the object closer to the ship, where it was able to rip straight through the lowest deck, and kill everyone there instantly. The only silver lining was that this was the main engineering section, which was designed to sit lower than anything else. The passenger sections were numbered from the opposite direction, since it was more intuitive for them to think of it like an above-ground building. Level one actually coincided with Deck 20.

Since nearly all of the current-shift engineers were in the middle of the meeting on Deck 2, they managed to survive the strike. Sadly, their apprentices were down there instead, monitoring systems, and relogging data. They were all killed, and as if that wasn’t sad on its own, it also meant that there would be no one to replace those crew members once their shift officially ended. Perhaps Halan would be able to convince them to extend their shifts until replacements could be sufficiently trained, but that isn’t what matters right now. They have to rebuild, and fortify the physical shield, and increase power to the teleporter field, if possible. Nothing like this can ever happen again, and it falls on Halan’s shoulders to ensure that. No one seems to blame him for it, but as Captain, he is ultimately responsible for literally everything. A lot of people were nominated for the position, and about half of them declined specifically because it was too much pressure. The other half are probably feeling lucky right now that they weren’t put in charge. Well, one of them doesn’t feel lucky, because she’s dead.

Captain Yenant addresses the whole ship on the evening announcements, explaining to everyone what happened, and what they will be doing to prevent another tragedy. It’s over the next few days that he starts to hear the criticisms, and they are all pretty much valid. He can’t condemn anyone for losing faith in his leadership, or in the mission as a whole. There is a carefully laid out procedure for recalling a captain, but the passengers have less to say about it than the crew does. For now, no one’s been talking about that, and Mercer has been keeping his ear to the ground for it. It’s not out of the question, though. It’s never out of the question. And Halan will step down gracefully, should the need arise. A battle for power does no one any good, and undermines the spirit of the ship’s mandate. Hopefully it won’t come to that, and it’s looking like it won’t. The crew still does not blame him for what happened.

The repairs themselves were fairly quick and easy. Extremus was designed to drop any section at will in case something like this occurs. The decks above were negatively impacted, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed. A significant portion of the vessel was designated for spare parts and raw materials. That’s not the problem, though. It’s the missing decks themselves that are going to make things difficult for them. They don’t ever plan on stopping, unlike most ships, which only have to make it to a destination in the stellar neighborhood. The really cool thing about relativistic travel is that it cuts down on the amount of time that something can go wrong. At the moment, the closest outpost is only twenty light years from Origin, which means while it takes a little over twenty years to get there from Earth, the crew only experiences ten days. Extremus, on the other hand, will be en route for 216 years. They can’t afford to have to rebuild the ship over and over again. They’ll be able to replace those missing decks over the course of the next year, but every time that happens, it cuts down on their reserves. They will eventually run out, and Halan doesn’t know what happens when they get to that point. For now, the problem has to be solved, and Halan isn’t sure they’ll be able to take care of it before another strike kills them all.

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Microstory 1437: Shieldon

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Shortly after Motus was created, and started jumping around the surface of the planet, a group of people came together to brainstorm ideas for the twelfth town of Durus. Now, what could they do? Some of the towns avoided the monsters, if at all possible. Others were built specifically to defend the whole species against them. Each seemed to have their own special thing. Even Astau had a unique history, even though it ended up fairly normal. The new town’s planners didn’t want to be like that, or like any of the others. They felt they had to do something to set them apart, even if that was a self-imposed obligation, and one which pretty much ended with them. Either way, there was a reason why their proposal was never attempted before. It sounded reasonable, but it wasn’t. They wanted to use time powers to deploy a dome over their town, which would repulse the monsters automatically. It would hopefully extend much farther than the border, so their enemies couldn’t even get near them. It was similar to the concept used for Splitsville, but their towers worked by sending signals outwards that disrupted the monster’s already fragile physical integrity. They only sent this signal when necessary, and the machines required constant electrical energy, because they weren’t based on mage powers at all. Now, they weren’t the first to think of a time power version. In fact, the source mages once believed that would be the best solution to their problems. If they had found someone with the ability to form a protective bubble powerful enough to keep any intruder out, they probably would have ultimately built a single city where everyone could live.

The 2050 Mage Games gave them someone who could do it, but only on a much smaller scale. She could raise a shield around her body, as well as those closest to her, which would force an attacker away from them, whether monster, human, or anything else. If she gathered enough energy for herself, she could essentially punch a monster hundreds of meters away. The bubbles didn’t last long, and producing them always wore her out eventually. She was now also old, retired, and trying to live out her days in luxury. With the help of a seer, The Diagnostician knew something about this person’s future. Upon her death, she was fated to release a blast of energy the likes of which Durus hadn’t seen for decades. The original plan was to apport her to the monster portal just before her death, and let that moment destroy the whole ring, break it apart, or at least damage it a little. The planners begged the source mages, and the rest of the leadership, to change their minds about it. No one knew whether her death would be able to accomplish what they wanted. Was it powerful enough to end everything? So powerful that it killed all the humans too? Would it even make any real impact at all? No seer had been able to confirm these details, and the planners used that in their argument against it.  This woman’s domes were not necessarily meant to be used as weapons. They were a defense tool, which her teachers trained her to use as weapons of war, because personal shields weren’t useful enough in battle. If they timed it just right, her death could theoretically make a permanent bubble, just as they wanted. It might require constant energy input to stay up, but the initial swell should be large enough to be a viable option. There were plenty of people whose responsibility it was to transfer temporal energy, so that would not be a problem. In the end, there was no convincing the source mages that this was better than the original idea. If they could stop the monsters from getting to their world in the first place, a town with a defensive bubble around it was obsolete anyway. But it didn’t matter. The shield creator was the one with the power, so she was the one who decided what happened to her when she died. She agreed to what the planners asked of her, and after three years of slow construction, it was time. The town of Shieldon was born in 2082.