Microstory 2495: Kingdom of Aksum

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I won’t get into too many historical details, because if you’re interested in such information, you would probably prefer to hear it on the tour, and if this stuff bores you, I doubt there’s anything I could say to change your mind. The Kingdom of Aksum existed between the first and seventh centuries in the common era. It was a powerful and meaningful region of international trade at the time. In fact, they relied so heavily on being in the center of everything that, when power shifted to other cultures, Aksum couldn’t keep up. Spoiler alert, they ultimately collapsed over the course of many years due to emigration to more fertile lands, war, and plague. All the usual suspects. Unlike other civilizations, however, you can’t really point to a single event, or even a short period of time, which served as the turning point. It just gradually declined in importance. Its ancestors are still alive today, whether or not they are aware of, or place any significant emphasis, on this long-forgotten heritage. There is a lot that we don’t know about life in the Kingdom, and of course, it changed over the centuries. The lands where it once stood are still there, and I believe there are a few arcologies in the region still. The memory of it, however, has unfortunately faded, and that’s thanks to a much stronger focus on European culture and history. For many of our ancestors, the nations of Africa were backwards, uncultured, and irrelevant. How many were there who didn’t know—or couldn’t admit—that various regions of Africa served as both the seed of human life, and the heart of civilization? We’re all from there, and so I would argue that the Kingdom of Aksum is everyone’s story. In the spirit of this reality, I urge you to educate yourself on its history, even if it doesn’t mean going to visit this dome. I still definitely recommend coming here. It’s a great replica of what the region would have looked like back then. You can’t find it in the simulations. Trust me, I checked the virtual stacks. It’s not that it wouldn’t be possible, but people are more concerned with replicating the Firefly / Serenity star system, and The Flying Forest, which is just a regular forest where you feel intoxicated. I shouldn’t judge. I should just be grateful that it exists in any form. I learned so much here, and I know you will too if you just give it a chance.

Microstory 2478: Holidome

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Name a holiday; any holiday. Go on, I’ll wait. What did you pick? Now imagine what it’s like to celebrate that holiday. Now, go to Holidome, and you’ll find it there. Ramadan, Diwali, Carnival. It’s around here somewhere. They each live in their own little sectors, but there are some that are a little more spread out. Traditional Christmas in one region of Earth was observed in very different ways than in others, so those are separate. That way, you can be immersed in the version that you’re looking for. Honestly, I’m probably the wrong person to ask about any of this. Not only am I very young, but I was born on Castlebourne. I’m actually kind of a rarity so far. The majority of people who come aren’t here to plan families. They’re here to have fun, so they either come with their families, or they’re putting off procreating until later. My family has a long history of recognizing and appreciating other cultures, so that’s what they came here to do. A lot of that culture is gone from Earth. It wasn’t really anybody’s fault, it just sort of happened. Architecture converged into those megastructure arcologies. Creativity and identity made way for standardization and cross-compatibility. Why design a bunch of oddly-shaped trashcans, when you can design one model, and anyone who needs it knows that that one is perfect for their space, because everyone’s space is pretty much the same? These may seem like small things, and hardly relevant, but they’ve added up to major changes. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, or where your family is from. Your housing unit looks the same. You can decorate it, sure, but when we all live in virtual simulations, what’s the point? You might think, well doesn’t the culture just live on the servers? They can, but it can get drowned out by boundless imagination. In this world, people fart rainbows. Yeah, that’s fun, but there’s no history behind it. I suppose one day, we could end up living next to a community of Rainbow Farters of Erbikejifel, or some shit, but for now, it’s mostly only about novelty. Castlebourne doesn’t work like that. It exists in base reality, and it all has to fit within the limits of physics. You may be nostalgic for the days when you lit the Menorah with your family every year, or maybe you never did it, and you want to learn what it was like. I do get a little worried about cultural appropriation. People seem to think it’s a non-issue since—like I’ve been complaining about—those traditions have largely faded from real life—but I would just like to warn everyone to use caution. Those rituals held and hold great meaning to those who practice(d) them. It’s important that you be mindful of that, and stay respectful of why they participated in them. Nothing was arbitrary. I’m not trying to get you to not have any fun. Holi is a grand old time, for instance. Just don’t forget to learn about how it started, and who originally took part in such traditions. They didn’t just do it for your amusement. Except for Festivus. That really is just for fun.

Microstory 2477: Wheeldome

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In case you’re confused, this dome is all about wheels. This includes bicycles, roller blades, skateboards, etc. What it doesn’t include are cars and motorcycles. Basically, if it runs on petrol or electricity, it can’t be here. I guess I shouldn’t say that. They do have some electric bikes, but obviously that’s a whole different animal. There are hundreds of wheel-based leisure areas, as well as long trails that stretch between them. They have all sorts of hills if you wanna go fast, and the best part about it is that you don’t even have to hike all the way back up. They have chairlifts that take you back up. It’s like a ski mountain, but for wheel sports. You couldn’t do that on Earth. They just didn’t want to build the infrastructure, and of course in more recent decades, all those old abandoned roads have been demolished to make way for nature. I didn’t come here because I was a skater. I came because I’m not, and I want to learn. I’ve had plenty of time to practice in virtual simulations but never got around to it, despite how accessible the worlds are. I guess I was waiting for this. Having a whole dome dedicated to what might one day become my passion seemed like the perfect place to get into it. It’s real, ya know? Anyway, I tell you that I’m a beginner so you’re not expecting me to give a detailed review of this place. I don’t know how it stacks up against other skate parks. I just know that when you’re working with 5,410 square kilometers, it’s hard to believe it’s lacking in anything. Unless, again, you’re looking to race cars, or something. Go somewhere else for that. Just because it’s got wheels, doesn’t mean it belongs in Wheeldome. Hang ten, bruh. Gotta go.

Microstory 2469: Gambledome

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Here’s the thing about gambling in a post-scarcity society...it’s not any fun! When money isn’t real, the stakes aren’t real, and there’s nothing interesting about it. The creators of Gambledome have managed to subvert this about as well as possible without completely shifting the paradigm of the economy. In Gambledome, money kind of is real, but only here. You start out with a modest amount of cash to spend on chips, and as you play, you win and lose those chips. If your stack starts piling up, you can cash them out, and spend it on things. You can get yourself a nice, luxurious room to stay in. You can spring for the (faux) lobster at dinner. You can give it away to your friends to make them like you. This is how it worked in other gambling communities on Earth back in the before-fore times, like Las Vegas. Here, it’s a recreation, which may make you think that your life can only get better, but that’s not true. If you run into the negative, you’re in trouble. You can’t leave the dome, and go back to the utopia that vonearthans have created since automation made fiat-based economies obsolete. You have to stick around, and pay off your debts. That’s right, there are real consequences. Some of the humans walking around as staff may be there because that is the experience that they have asked to be assigned while staying in the dome, but some are there because they have to be. Don’t come here if you don’t genuinely want to pretend to be an ancient human, because that’s the thing about gambling. You don’t know if you’re gonna win, and people lose all the time. A note on cheating: while they won’t torture you, it can land you in jail, where you’ll pay off your social debt by being locked up in a cell, unable to leave. We still have jails in the 27th century, of course, but the percentage of incarcerated individuals has never been lower, so this is rare. One woman lost her money on purpose, threw a tantrum, and tried to steal it all back, specifically so they would throw her in a cell, because it just doesn’t happen all that often anymore, and she certainly didn’t want to break any real laws. She didn’t want to go through the real justice system, and go to a real jail, where she might never get out. Overall, this place is a lot of fun, but only temporarily. I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life here, and I certainly wouldn’t want to live in a world where people are sincerely desperate enough to gamble because they think they have no other choice. I don’t know if Gambledome is fostering any real addicts, but I sure would be interested to know if it’s happening, and if it is, whether the creators have any plans to do anything about it.

Microstory 2465: Steampunk Sanctuary

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It’s steampunk everywhere, so I hope you like steampunk! I sure do, but you’re not here to hear about who I am. What you really wanna know is if this place is any good. Does it live up to the spirit of steampunk culture? Why yes, yes it does. Because of course it does. It’s one of the easiest themes to implement, and it doesn’t take much to please the fans. To the ignorant, it may seem like nothing more than an aesthetic. You have brass, and you have steam. How nuanced could it be? But it’s actually a way of life, and one which we’ve never been able to explore at scale. Steampunk communities have existed for centuries, but by the time the technology was available to simulate it in base reality, there really wasn’t any practical space for it. Humanity was trying to rewild the world. We built vertically, and left the majority of the land to the plants and animals. Steampunk survived, but a city based on the concept wasn’t feasible. We could have fought it, and declared independence somewhere, but we understood the reason for shrinking the amount of area that humans were taking up, so we played ball. We limited ourselves to small corners of the arcologies, wherever we could find room. But those modern walls...they were still there, made up of their superadvanced metamaterials. We were only actors in a play, pretending as best we could, but knowing that there was nothing authentic about it. Enter Castlebourne, Stage Right. This is the perfect setting for us; a blank canvas that we can paint however we want. We’re using steam to power our technology, from trains to computing machines. It’s not efficient, but it is fun, at least for us. It’s not for everyone. But the best part about it is you don’t have to live here permanently. You can just visit. You might hate it, and want to leave right away, and that’s fine. Nonetheless, you might find yourself enjoying it a little, and maybe want to stick around longer. That’s great. There’s plenty of room. We have everything they have anywhere else. It just looks a little different. And it’s loud. Some people don’t like how loud it is, but that’s what you get in a world without transistors. I can’t get enough of it. The VR steampunk worlds were great, but nothing beats something you can feel in your real hands. That’s the whole ethos with steampunk. It felt like cheating to immerse ourselves in a computer simulation to live in a world where computers exist without the computer chip. Now we don’t need that anymore. Now we can be ourselves...truly.

Microstory 2462: Aztec Empire

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My girlfriend dragged me to this place. She’s all in on this historical BS, and I couldn’t be less interested. I’m writing this anonymously because she won’t let us leave, and I cannot even with this guy. He keeps talking about their traditions and customs, but I just don’t care. I’m telling her that I’m looking up extra information about the Aztecs, so you’re my excuse. Just be cool, okay? Be cool. I will say that it is nice here. Like, they did a good job making it feel like you traveled through time to ancient Aztecia, or whatever you’re supposed to call it. I’m sorry, I’m not listening to him. There are a few weird things. The androids who are programmed to believe that they’re Aztecs mostly ignore you. They just go about their day like you’re invisible. Something the guide will say will sometimes trigger them to respond in some way that is relevant. For instance, the guide mentioned how a man would court a woman, and then we would see that play out off to the side. I didn’t notice they were doing that right away, but I guess that’s a nice touch. It’s like they’re a part of this elaborate show, but they don’t realize it, because everything is so well-timed. Anyway, a few of the androids seemed to be breaking character, or they were just straight up broken, because they did seem to notice us. One kid just kept staring at me. I looked over my shoulder to see if there was anyone or anything else, but nothing. I moved over to the side to see if his eyeballs would follow me, and they did. At one point, he pointed right at me, and mumbled something in whatever language they spoke. I had kind of fallen behind the tour at that point, so no one else saw. My girlfriend didn’t even completely believe me about it. It was creepy, but honestly, it made the trip that much more interesting. Well, no. It made it slightly more tolerable. That’s a better way to put it. Come here, don’t come here, I don’t care. Just don’t stray from the pack, lest you be cursed by some evil shaman child. Beware.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 28, 2510

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Mateo woke up lying facedown in the dirt. He stood himself up, and looked around. He definitely wasn’t in the train station anymore, but that didn’t tell him much. Any number of domes looked like this, with the lush jungle, and the clear blue sky. There was something extremely familiar about it, though, especially when he looked down over the edge of the mountain that he was on, and saw smoke billowing up from the valley. This was what he woke up to just before he learned that he was in the afterlife simulation. He took another look around, now with fresh eyes. Yeah, this was exactly what it looked like. He could have been dreaming, or it could have been something that Hrockas found out about, and recreated it in one of the domes. But why, though?

The only answers were in the direction of that smoke, so he started walking down towards it. No one else came out of the trees to do the same, so at least that much was different. He continued on down until he reached the amphitheater, just as he had the first time he died. No, it wasn’t the first. Ah, who could keep count?

A woman was on stage, smiling kindly, and waiting for him patiently. She was pressing a clipboard into her belly, which she glanced back down to now. “Mateo Matic?”

“Indeed.”

“Have a seat,” the clipboard lady offered, pointing towards the seating. “We’re waiting for one more.”

Only one other person was sitting there already. It was another woman, perhaps in her thirties. She looked scared and-or nervous. He left two seats between them. “Hey,” he tried to say in the calmest voice he had. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“Am I dead?”

“You may have died, but you survived it.” He inhaled, and admired the digital beauty surrounding them. “And you’ll go on...indefinitely. Your life now will be longer than your first one was. In a trillion years, you might not even remember it.”

“You act like you’ve done this before.”

He nodded. “I have. They let me go back, because I had more work to do in base reality, but now... Now I think I’ll just wait for my friends to join me. Could be a while. We’ll all be okay, though.”

The woman stood up, and sidestepped over to sit right next to him. She remained there for a moment before working up the nerve to give him a hug.

The counselor smiled at them, but didn’t say anything. She then looked up as the last guy was jogging down the hill.

“Sorry! Sorry, I see smoke, my instinct is to move away from it, not towards it.”

“It’s all right, Brian. We have all the time in the world.”

“Cool.” He sat down on Mateo’s other side.

“Hello, my name is Keilix Oliver, and as you have all surmised, you have died. Fortunately for you, some people long ago decided that they didn’t like death, so they built a computer program where the deceased could live on in a simulation. That simulation has since been defunct. They were hosted by a powerful society of advanced intelligences who grew to see them more as a nuisance, and a bit of a power hog. Do not be alarmed, though, because the 120 billion or so people who were in there at the time managed to escape—if you can believe it—to another universe. I don’t know that much about it as I have never been there. You see, when the hosts discovered that the identities in the simulation had all left, they actually didn’t bother to shut it down. It was no longer taking up too many resources, and there didn’t seem to be any reason to end it. That is how I survived, as did a few others.

“To explain a little more, the sim was not one single world. You could travel between different environments, each with their own laws of simulated physics. I just so happened to be in the middle of traveling between two of these worlds when the evacuation happened. Lots of people were doing that, of course, but they were closer to one side, or the other. I was right in the middle, so when I came out on the other side, I was alone. I didn’t make it through evacuation. Didn’t know how. Didn’t even know that it happened. I was just confused. The hosts discovered our presence—the rounding errors—and brought us all together. They offered to facilitate our exit to join the others in the new universe, which a few of us agreed to. The rest, we stayed here to keep the lights on. If we didn’t, when you died, you would just be dead.” She gestured towards all the empty seats. “As you can see, death is quite rare these days. The mortality rate used to be at 100%, but now life is a lot safer. It still happens. Accidents and errors, and people who just never upgraded from their normal organic bodies. You are three of the exceptions. You are the only three who died today. Well, it was yesterday, but... And you died a year ago, or something?”

“Yeah, it gets screwy,” Mateo admitted.

Keilix nodded. “Anyway, you can stay here if you want. The hosts did eventually dismantle and cannibalize most of the servers that the afterlife simulation was running on, but we still have plenty of space for a moderate population. You can also move on to the other universe, if you’re interested. Again, I can’t tell you anything about it, but I hear it’s nice. You can’t go back home, though. Your friends and family can’t find out what the endgame is. We don’t know for sure what would happen, but there’s a strong chance that people would start killing themselves out of pure curiosity. We just can’t handle that many people anymore. The system only works at this scale, because deaths have become so few and far between.”

“Did you know Serkan Demir?” Mateo blurted out.

Keilix smirked. “Yeah.”

“Cool.” He turned towards the other guy. “Did you know Lincoln Rutherford?”

“Yeah, I went to school with him.”

“Small world.”

“Do we have a connection?” the newly dead woman asked Mateo.

“I dunno, what’s your name?”

“Cecelia Massey.”

Mateo reached for his bag to check whether she was on a list of people he had met or ever heard of, but realized that he no longer had any possessions. “No, I don’t think I’ve heard of you. Nice to meet you, Cece. I’m Mateo.”

“The three amigos!” Brian shouted. “Four!” He pointed at Keilix. “You’re part of this too. Four, uhh...four musketeers!”

Keilix laughed. “That’s very sweet of you, but my job is here. While people don’t die as often as they once did, they still do occasionally, and someone ought to be there to greet them, and facilitate their transition.”

“How did you get this job?” Cecelia asked.

“I just stepped up,” Keilix answered. “Why? Are you interested?”

“I was a guidance counselor on Earth before I became obsolete. So I do have the experience. Do I have to choose right away, or can I change my mind later?”

“If you choose to stay here,” Keilix began, “you can always move on later. But if you choose to move on, I don’t think you can come back. I’ve never heard of it. I don’t even know who’s in charge over there.”

“Her name is Hogarth Pudeyonavic,” Mateo answered, even though she didn’t actually ask a question.

Keilix is surprised by this. She looked back down at her clipboard. “How do you know that?”

“We’re friends,” Mateo explained.

“Interesting. What else do you know?”

“How much time you got?”

“All of it,” Keilix said.

“All of what?” Leona asked as she was walking across Ramses’ secret lab.

“His EmergentSuit nanites,” Ramses answered. “I need them all back. Or rather he needs them back.”

“He doesn’t have them?” she questioned.

“Boyd must have been injured, however slightly, when Mateo gave him the suit. It’s not just designed to form a protective barrier. They can also treat medical conditions, just like any other medical nanites. Some of them must have stayed with him to conduct repairs, and are still swimming in his blood.”

“Well, they should be done by now. It’s been hours. So go ahead and take them,” Leona ordered. “You’re not trying to hold onto them, are you?” she posed to Boyd.

“I have no mental control over them,” Boyd replied.

“He’s right. Only I can do it. They’re not responding to my commands, though,” Ramses said to her. “They’re his now. I just need to keep trying...”

“Well, why do you need them? How does it help Mateo?”

“Each one stores little bits of data from their host,” Ramses began. “If we want to bring him back, I think I need that intact data. We’re lucky we even have a chance. If he didn’t have any nanites at all, we would have no way to anchor him to this point in spacetime.”

“I don’t understand why you can’t find him,” Leona complained to Boyd. “Isn’t that your thing?”

“Until we get that time power crystal switched off, I don’t have my normal powers,” Boyd said apologetically.

“We’re almost there!” Olimpia shouted from the other side of the room. She and the twins were responsible for figuring out how to convert the lemon DNA into musical chords. Once complete, they will blast the crystal with the music, and let it play over the course of the next two years, which for them, will only feel like two days.

Leona sighed. “He could be anywhere, anywhen.”

“I know that,” Ramses agreed. “This is all I can do. The ladies are smart enough to wire an array of speakers, and my AI finished converting the DNA last year to musical chords. It’s a bit above my paygrade, to be blunt, so I need to focus on an alternative way of retrieving Mateo from wherever he ended up.”

It looked like Mateo was there, lying on the exam table between Leona and Ramses. But it wasn’t him. It was just his suit; an empty shell waiting for its host to return. “What if Boyd got back in the suit? Could that...trigger the stray nanites to return to their brethren?”

“Yeah, I thought about that,” Ramses admitted. “It might work, or they might all switch to him as their new host, and then Mateo could be lost forever.”

“I can do it,” Boyd insisted. “You get that crystal turned off, I’ll find him for us.”

“Forgive me if I have little faith in your motivation to help,” Leona said.

“That’s fair,” Boyd acknowledged, “but I really did learn a lot on the fake Castlebourne. I have grown. I’m not a saint, but I’m not the same man you met those years ago.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it. Ram, keep working. Boyd, do whatever he says. And ladies!” The three of them stopped working, and looked up at their captain, so she went on, “I need one of you. Romana has an idea, but we need a third to activate the tandem slingdrives.”

“I’ll go,” Olimpia volunteered.

“I’m sorry, I meant one of the Waltons,” Leona countered.

Olimpia frowned.

“Pia, you have sonic powers. I need you on the music thing. That just makes sense. If we needed a driver, I would ask Mateo to be a part of it, even if it’s driving a giant futuristic terraforming tiller piloted by an AI.”

“I’ll go,” Angela said, setting her screwdriver down, allowing her sister to finish rigging up the speaker apparatus.

Leona and Angela teleported away to meet up with Romana, who was sitting on the edge of an emerald pool, under a dome fittingly named 10,000 Emerald Pools. She was staring into the water, obviously aware that they had arrived, but ignoring them for now. “What do you see in there?” Angela asked her. “They say the pool reflects your true self back at you.”

Romana, frowning, slapped the water before standing up. “I see an orphan.”

“We’ll get him back,” Leona assured her. 

“You can’t promise that.”

“If he died,” Leona started, pausing dramatically, “we’ll get him back from that too. There is nowhere he could be that we couldn’t find him. Now, what’s your idea? Where are we going?”

Romana activated her suit, helmet and all. The other two followed her lead. They took each other’s hands. “We’re going to a new universe, called The Eighth Choice. I know a Pathfinder there.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 26, 2508

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Romana was sitting on the floor, hovering over her father, when he woke up. He turned over to the side, and started to cough. The others were waking up at the same time, recovering in their own ways. Fortunately, no one was dead, not even Octavia. A robot was lifting her up, though, and carrying her away. “She’ll be all right,” Romana assured him. “There’s a medpod in that room.”

“You’ve been alone all year again?” Mateo asked her.

“I did it on purpose,” Romana explained. “Why would we waste time looking for this man one year at a time, when I could spend days and days on the search?”

“Did it work?” Mateo asked.

“It did,” she answered with a sigh. “He doesn’t wanna leave, so I’m hoping you’ll talk some sense into him. But...I don’t wanna lie to you. Something happened. I’m not especially proud of it, but even though I was pretending to be a sixteen-year-old in Underberg, I’m actually much older than that. I don’t know why Pacey aged me down, but you need to understand that I’m an adult, and I make my own choices.”

“You slept with him...” Mateo guessed. “With Buddy.”

“He’s very kind to me.”

“I bet he is.”

“That’s not fair. I just told you, I’m an adult. He didn’t trick me. Don’t take away my agency.”

“I’m not, but Romana, he’s not a good guy. Being nice to you doesn’t absolve him of his past sins.”

“And what sins are these?” Romana questioned. “How many people has he killed?”

“That’s not the point.”

How many have you killed?”

Mateo didn’t respond to this.

Romana went on, “you two don’t see eye to eye, and I know he hasn’t been particularly pleasant to be around, but if you add up all the bad things he’s done, they’re really not all that bad. In the end, you two are enemies because you don’t get along. I’m sure before you became a time traveler, you interacted with plenty of people like that, and it didn’t make you believe that they didn’t deserve love.”

“Is that true?” Mateo sat up. “Are you in love?”

“No, of course not. I’m just saying...”

“That you’re acting like a rebellious teen,” Mateo interrupted as if that was what she was gonna say. “Are you sure you’re older than sixteen?”

“You are not my father. You didn’t raise me. Silenus did.”

“That’s comforting.”

She ignored that rude comment. “You don’t get to tell me what to do with my life. You never have. I know it’s not your fault that you weren’t around, but you can’t honestly expect me to listen to everything you say as if you have some kind of control over my choices. I’m being honest with you, because I don’t want to lie to someone I respect and care about. But don’t you sit there and belittle me as if I’m nothing more than an extension of your own personality. I will take you to Boyd, but you are not to harm him. You are not even allowed to yell at him. I am insisting on that, and I will keep us on this rock forever if you defy me in this regard.”

“That’s enough!” Leona interjected. “You don’t talk to your father like that. I don’t care how old you are, or who raised you. Boyd probably has ten years on you, and that’s assuming he hasn’t used time magicks to reyoungify himself, or he could be much older.”

“You were fifteen when you met your now-husband!” Romana shouted back.

“And he didn’t have any feelings for me until much later. Don’t turn this around on us. Boyd—if that’s what we’re calling him—is not good for you, full stop. When we first encountered him, he insisted that we call him Buddha. That’s incredibly offensive, and tells you everything you need to know about him. Just because he may not be as bad as some of the other antagonists we’ve met, like Zeferino, Arcadia, or even Pacey, doesn’t mean you made the right choice.”

“You’re friends with Arcadia now. You made friends with nearly everyone you’ve gone up against. What are we even talking about here? All I’m asking is that you give him a chance to improve himself, and prove himself; not just give up on him outright. Forgiveness doesn’t have a quota!”

“All right!” Olimpia interjects this time. “Mateo, Leona, you’re not going to attack Boyd when we find him. Romana, you may be older than you look, but you have a long ways to go. This situation is incredibly weird, what with our experiences in Underberg, and other domes. We can’t trust our own memories. Some of them are entirely fake, and their associated feelings may be a little less genuine than they seem. So I think we all need to take a beat, and focus on what matters. We are not living in a soap opera. We’re dealing with real problems here, trying to escape some weird, alternate universe. We can’t do that until we get what we came here for. The interpersonal relationship drama can wait.”

Mateo, Leona, and Romana quietly conceded. Ramses, Angela, and Marie silently agreed, having successfully stayed out of the fight.

“Okay,” Olimpia continued, proud of herself, and relieved that her argument worked. “It won’t take long for Octavia to recover. In the meantime, where is Boyd? Did he get hurt in the explosion?”

“He’s fine, he wasn’t even here,” Romana answered. “He’s in the Fostean sector at this point, living on a simulated jarl world.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Mateo said.

“Single-occupancy planet,” Leona explained. “A one-percenter in that culture will have so much money that they can afford to own an entire celestial body. They will live there alone, or with their family, supported by a small army of slaves called Arkeizen. These supposed subhumans will be known as thralls so long as they are in service to the elite. It’s not a heartwarming story.”

“Why would he be there?”

“To be clear, the thralls aren’t real slaves,” Romana said. “As I said, which you obviously already know, it’s a simulation, so they’re just robots.”

“It’s still gross,” Olimpia said to her. “I gotta admit, that’s a point against him.”

Romana smirked. “Just wait until you see it, okay?”

“Fine,” Leona decided. “Let’s take a vactrain this time. I don’t want this happening again, so we’ll stay out of canon as much as possible.”

“It’s not gonna happen again,” Romana contended. “Like the flooding of Atlantis, the destruction of this planet was canonical. It happened during the Sixth Shell.”

“Either way, let’s keep it real.” Leona led the way down the corridor.

Octavia was stepping out of the medical bay. She had missed a lot, and didn’t know where they were going, but she followed them anyway.

They got on the train, and had it deliver them to Jarldome. There were 200 levels here, most of which were 200 meters high, but with the holographic skies above each one, they felt endless. Boyd was on the topmost level, with a bunch of slaves. The team expected to find him lounging on a mountain of pillows, being fawned over and doted upon by these Arkeizen. It didn’t seem to be that way. The robots made to look like a hominid cousin were milling about an impressive little town. When they walked through, the Arkeizen smiled and waved. They didn’t look oppressed or abused. They were working, however, so no valid conclusion. On the far end of the main street, they finally found Boyd. A group of people were evidently in the middle of building a house, and he was helping. He was physically helping carry a wooden beam, and set it in place.

“Oh! I didn’t see you there. How long have you been watching us?”

“We just arrived,” Romana answered him.

“Well, welcome to Citrus City!” Boyd said. “Would you like the tour?”

“We’d like to get out of here,” Mateo responded.

Boyd frowned. “There’s so much work to do.”

“None of this is real,” Ramses told him. “It’s a simulation. You know that, right?”

“Of course I am,” Boyd said dismissively. “You think it’s that easy to erase my memories?”

“Either you’re delusional,” Mateo began. Romana gave him the stink eye, so he switched tactics. “I mean, if that’s true, then were you aware of our true histories while you were living in Underberg?”

“I guess not. But I broke out of it. I’m fine. I’m happy, living here, teaching these people how to fend for themselves.”

“They’re robots,” Ramses added.

“Shh!” Boyd whispered loudly. “They don’t know that.”

Mateo sighed angrily, and looked over at his daughter. “You did this. You told him to put on this show to make it look like he was freeing a whole peoples. You think that’s gonna work? You think I’m gonna start liking him now?”

“Sir,” Boyd jumped in. “Romana came to me two weeks ago. I’ve been working on this town for months. This isn’t just for show. I know that I have made mistakes in the past, but I don’t agree with slavery. Jesus. That’s the point of this dome, you know? It’s a test; will a visitor let their thralls do what they’ve been indoctrinated to do, or make changes that go against the history of the Fostean culture from the fictional stories? That’s the question, will you play into it, or do the right thing, even when it doesn’t matter? Because like you said, they’re robots.”

Mateo crossed his arms disapprovingly, but didn’t have anything more to say.

Leona pulled the magical technicolored crystal from her bag, and presented it to Boyd. She jerked it away when he reached for it. “This will place you on our pattern. Truthfully, Pacey did not reveal whether it was permanent or not. I believe that you will have less of a chance to get into trouble if you only exist for one day out of the year, though, so I’m hoping that you take the risk. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take for us to get back to where we belong, but I don’t want you running around on your own anymore.” She glanced over at Romana. “I certainly don’t want you to be doing that with my daughter. Frolicking on the jarl worlds, freeing slaves together.” She grimaced, and looked over at the Walton twins. She wasn’t trying to say that freeing slaves was bad. “You know what I mean.” She went on, “touching this crystal will go a long way to earning our trust, but it’s not a cure-all. And either way, it has to be your choice.”

Without hesitation, Boyd took hold of the crystal. The colors swirled around inside, presumably transferring Leona’s pattern into his qualium realm. “Thank you for the opportunity. I won’t let you down.”

Suddenly, they heard a noise in the sky. A flying craft of some kind was headed right for them, so far up in the air that it couldn’t be real. The holographic image grew larger and larger though until it was as large as it would be if it were right above the invisible ceiling. Something changed as the hologram gave way to a tangible object, presumably having been dropped down through a recess. This real, physical shuttle continued to fly towards them until it landed right in the street. A bunch of humans with guns filed out of it.

The leader of the newcomers looked around at the Arkeizen. It was unclear whether he could tell that they were free, and no longer enslaved thralls. He zeroed in on Boyd. “Sir, are you okay? Our sensors picked up unauthorized entry to your planet.”

“They’re friends,” Boyd said. “We need no help here.”

The leader stepped closer so he could lower his voice. “Listen, if you need help, you don’t have to be afraid of them anymore.”

“I’m not being coerced,” Boyd tried to say. “Everything’s fine. You can go.”

The leader nodded. He walked past Boyd, and as he was adjusting his pants, got a better look at the community. He turned back around to address Boyd again. “How are your thralls doin’? You’ve been here a while. Do you need a top-up?” A top-up of slaves?

“No. My numbers are steady.”

The guy was surprised. “Not one death?”

Boyd shook his head.

“Interesting. “Very interesting. Say, you wouldn’t be...treating them like people, would you?”

“And if I were, is that against the law?”

The man shrugged. “No, of course not. They’re your thralls, you can do whatever you want to them. It’s just a little unusual. I’d hate to think that they were influencing your behavior in some way. You know, we get a bad batch sometimes. One of them is sick in the head—starts thinkin’ that he’s special, or valuable—and that can infect the whole group. And sometimes...their owner gets infected too.”

“I’ve had enough of this,” Marie said. “Suits on!”

Mateo took Octavia in a hug again, and commanded his nanites to wrap themselves around her. Angela and Marie, meanwhile, started taking out their anger for their father out on these robo-slavers. They stole their guns from them, and shot each in the head. The slavers shot back, careful not to hit Boyd, but not caring about anyone else’s life. The Arkeizen ran and hid behind various structures while Leona, Ramses, Olimpia, and Romana protected the stragglers. It was over quickly. All of the bad robots were dead and on the ground.

“What happens when we leave?” Leona asked after the dust had settled, and the suits were no longer necessary. “Is another shuttle gonna be triggered later to come down and try to put a stop to all this antislavery wokeness?”

Boyd chuckled. “This isn’t my first single-occupancy planet. They always show up as a sort of final test, to see how you’ll react. I’ve always just talked my way out of it, but I guess this works too.”

“Great,” Leona decided. “Then pack up your shit. It’s time to go.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 25, 2507

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On the way to Atlantis, Mateo pulled up its prospectus, and took a look at what was in store for them. It was located at the bottom of the Aquilonian Deep ocean, so visitors would be fully immersed in the environment, just like they would be if they were in the Atlantis from the book series. The characters lived in a grand city, hidden from the eyes of the normal people on Earth at the time, who wouldn’t understand. Unlike most domes on Castlebourne—or whatever alternate copy of it this place was—Atlantis wasn’t under a geodesic dome. The prospectus called it a monolithic dome; just a transparent shell with no lattice structure. It was non-holographic too, to better simulate what it was like for the Atlantians from the story, which protected their city through telekinesis, rather than physical infrastructure. It’s also much wider than it is tall. Other domes are hemispheres, but the Atlantic ocean only goes a few kilometers down, so Atlantis is shaped more like a cap, like the Aquilonian Deep itself.

Something weird happened when the train stopped at the Atlantis station. The pod started to creak and shake a little. The doors wouldn’t open, and the virtual windows weren’t operating, so they couldn’t see what was happening outside. They received their answer soon enough, though. As Leona and Ramses were once more trying to fix the issue, water began to leak  through the cracks. They became a house divided. Most of them had pressed themselves back against the wall with the controls. Mateo and Octavia happened to be on the other end, and did the same over there.

“I thought that Atlantis was literally under water, but not actually in it,” Marie began, loud enough for all to hear. “I thought the inside of the dome was fully dry and livable.”

“Without maintenance, it must have buckled under the pressure at some point,” Leona figured. “This isn’t the real Castlebourne.”

“The domes are made of diamond!” Angela argued.

“Partially,” Leona corrected.

“How do we get out of here?” Romana asked. “Can you guys teleport?”

Olimpia shook her head. “I’ve been trying. It’s still suppressed.”

“Why would he send us here,” Ramses questioned, “knowing we’re gonna die?”

“Wait. This is part of the experience, isn’t it?” Mateo put forth. “I never read the books, but I think Atlantis does—”

He was unable to finish the sentence before all hell broke loose. The vactrain could hold back the deluge no more. Water came rushing in. They were fully submerged in seconds. For most of them, this wasn’t that big of a deal. Their nanites tightened themselves around their bodies, and sealed up. They could have survived without air for a period of time, and even the force of being violently tossed around the pod, but the suit was an important extra precaution. Unfortunately, not all of them had one of these. Octavia was totally unprotected and in grave danger. Mateo was already holding onto her, making sure she didn’t hit her now. He was now hoping to somehow breathe into her mouth, but his helmet was in the way. He tried to open it up temporarily, but the nanites did not recede. They had a job to do, and it would seem that they were not programmed with the knowledge of Mateo’s advanced substrate. He didn’t need the suit. Octavia did, and if he didn’t do something immediately, she was gonna die.

Mateo closed his eyes to concentrate, realizing that giving her a few rescue breaths wasn’t gonna do much good anyway, as they were likely still trapped under a fully submerged dome. These nanites. They were stored inside his body, and right on the surface when engaged as a vacuum suit, but this was not a requirement. They could be reconfigured to fit loosely around him like regular clothes. He actually wasn’t even wearing regular clothes. They were all nanites the whole time, clinging to each other in the form of a shirt and pants until the suit was needed. If they could hang loosely from him, then they should be able to adhere to something else...someone else. Despite their protests, he commanded them to let go, and swarm Octavia instead. Finally they did as they were told, releasing their grip on his skin, and swimming over to envelope Octavia instead. He maintained his mental control over them, so they would maintain their cohesion. Then he took Octavia’s hand, and began to swim away.

Now that the pod was fully filled with water, it was no longer so turbulent. He was able to see his friends, who were starting to exit through the giant hole in the doors that the pressure had made. Leona was swimming over to beckon the two of them forth. The entire station was also submerged, so there appeared to be no respite. Ramses seemed to be less concerned about it. He led them along the outside of the vacuum tube, to a maintenance hatch. Once he managed to open it, the water flooded into that compartment as well. They had to wait until it too was filled before swimming in. After they were all in, Ramses shut the hatch behind them. Then he worked the controls to open a much bigger hatch. The water flooded there too, but as the space was now twice as big as before, it was no longer completely engulfed. There was a pocket of air for them to breathe in without their helmets. More importantly, they could finally talk about what just happened.

“What just happened?” Olimpia asked.

“We survived,” Ramses answered. “Again.”

“Did you know I could do this?” Mateo asked, jerking his head towards Octavia. She was still in his suit, because she had no mental control over the nanites. And for some reason, neither did he.

Ramses waded through the water towards them. “I didn’t. Good thinking. Can you release her?”

“They’re being difficult,” Mateo replied. “It was hard enough getting them to switch over to her. Now they don’t want to come back.”

Leona waded over too. “It was probably your adrenaline, which allowed you to exercise more control over the nanites than they were programmed to be subjected to. They only exist in three states: dormant, emerging, and stabilized. They’re stable around her now, and aren’t listening to you, because...” She contemplated the issue. “You’re too far away.” She shrugged. “Give her a hug.”

Mateo hugged Octavia, placing himself closer to his nanites, and commanded them to recede into his implants and go dormant, which they did. So he was still naked, but he didn’t want to command them to do anything else. He was afraid of another glitch.

“I’ll tweak the programming, and maybe boost the signal,” Ramses decided. “Might be nice if we can do what Mateo did, but on purpose, and with less resistance.”

“I did it on purpose.”

“I meant, premeditatively.”

“Where are we?” Romana asked, looking away as if examining their surroundings, but she was really just uncomfortable with seeing her father like this.

“Service tube,” Ramses answered, wading back in her direction. “They put pods in here to repair and replace parts.”

“How do we get out?” Angela pressed.

Ramses kept going towards a computer terminal, which was thankfully, waterproof. He started looking through the data. “I may need time to come up with a solution.” He shook his head. “Seven people, six suits, and flooding appears to be quite comprehensive. We need a clear path out of this dome, and into the next one. We can’t just walk though, or even try to swim to the top.”

“Octavia’s gonna be stuck here alone, in the water, for an entire year,” Marie pointed out. “No food, no freshwater. No escape.”

They all looked sadly at Octavia.

She took a breath. “What else is new?”

While Ramses was trying to come up with an escape plan, Leona was at another terminal, trying to figure out how to drain the water out of here, so at least Octavia would have a dry place to stand. The Waltons, meanwhile, were working on extracting a dayfruit smoothie module and a water recycling module out of their respective pocket dimensions. Octavia needed these things more than they. The ladies solved their three problems in enough time for the jump to the future. The tube wasn’t designed to be drained of this much water, but it did have a drain, which could take care of it over time. Octavia would be alone, and in this terrible place, wet for a few days, but at least she would have food and water.

“I’ll stay with her,” Romana declared.

“What?” Mateo asked her. He was fully clothed now.

“It’s something I can do, and I should, Romana reasoned. “She shouldn’t be alone. She’s been so alone.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Octavia assured her. “It’ll be boring.”

“Actually,” Ramses said. “The terminal has some entertainment stored on it. I don’t know why, as they don’t really use human workers for this, but it’s there. Should last you. Lots of ancient reality TV, though.”

“Have you not found somewhere better where they can go instead?” Leona asked him.

“Afraid not,” Ramses responded. “Atlantis is totally flooded. Every nook, every cranny. The vactube was the only dry space, but it only stayed that way, because there wasn’t any activity. We altered the pressure differential by coming here.”

“It’s okay,” Romana decided. “We’ll make this work.” She smiled at Octavia. “Together.”

Their watches beeped.

“Last time to back out,” Mateo said.

“Not gonna happen.” Romana hugged her father. “I’ll see you in a year. You’ll see me in a minute.”

Midnight central hit. When they returned, Leona’s draining program was complete, and the service tunnel was totally dry. The weird part was, Romana was in a different spot, but Octavia wasn’t. The former was sitting on one chair, resting her feet on another, casually filing her fingernails. The latter was exactly where she was before, still wet, and very confused.

“What the hell happened?” Mateo asked. “Octavia, you’re on our pattern?”

“I don’t see how.”

“What’s that humming sound?” Olimpia asked.

Leona knelt down to the floor, and pulled her bag off to open it. She took out the crystal that Pacey had given them. The colors had abated after the initial lightshow, but they were back, presumably triggered by the time jump. “First thought. This put her on our pattern, hopefully for her sake, temporarily.”

“Oh, Romana. You’ve been alone this whole time,” Mateo whined apologetically.

“NBD,” Romana said, hopping off of her chairs. “I watched every episode of Survivor and The Amazing Race. I read those Witches of Atlantis books too. I know why it flooded.”

“Still,” Mateo said, embracing his daughter again. “I’m sorry that happened to you. I wish Pacey would have just been clear about what that crystal was. Talk about a solution without a problem.”

“It’s really okay. Now we know. And that’s not all we know.” She walked over to the hatch they had come in through, and opened it. No water came in. “As you said before, it’s all part of the experience.”

Even though they were confident that it was fine, the six of them cautiously passed Romana, and stepped out of the tunnel. The train station was completely dry. Everything was fine. Had they imagined it?

“You’re not imagining it,” Romana said. “It’s periodically flooded on purpose. I don’t know what the exact schedule is, so we shouldn’t stick around, but I have not been living in that service tube this whole time.”

“Why would the station be flooded too, through?” Leona questioned. She looked down at the pod, which was still warped and damaged. “That’s a major safety hazard.”

“That I believe was an accident,” Romana determined. “Pacey left a door open. Only the dome itself is meant to be inundated. I closed it.”

“I’m proud of you,” Mateo said.

She laughed and scoffed. “Dad. Anyway, I looked for Buddy, and he’s not here. He must have moved on to a different sector in Recursiverse, perhaps a different planet.” She used airquotes.

“How do we do that?” Ramses asked her. “The vactube is down, so do we take a spaceship?” He used airquotes too, because if there were indeed ships here, they were probably only simulations, meant to make it feel like visitors were traveling through the simplex dimensions, to worlds light years away, when they were probably only driving to the next dome over.

“The Atlantians didn’t use ships,” Romana explained as they were leading them down the corridor, still in the perimeter structure of the dome. She stepped into the driver’s seat of a shuttle cart, and drove off once everyone was on board. “If they wanted to leave Earth, they used something else.” She drove them a few kilometers until they reached what was clearly a Nexus building.

“Is this functional?” Leona asked, intrigued.

“I don’t think so,” Romana replied. “You tell me.”

“Hey, Venus Opsocor,” Leona said to the aether after walking in. “Are you there?”

No response.

“She may not wanna answer,” Leona explained, “but I’m guessing that it’s simply not a real Nexus.”

“Probably not.” Romana started to walk up the steps to the control room. “Shut the door.” She reached into the room without stepping in, and swung her arm once against the wall.

Marie smirked and looked up towards the ceiling with her eyes. “We’re moving.”

“Yeah,” Romana agreed. “Right now, we’re rotating into the next dome over, while that dome’s Nexus rotates into here. It takes about four minutes, and is meant to be imperceptible. If you’re paying too much attention, you can tell that it’s just a simulation, but visitors are expected to step into the cavity, and pretend that it’s real. We don’t have to do that. We’re just gonna wait for the rotation to be complete, open the door, and we’ll be in the new dome.” She pointed. “I think there’s a corridor over there, so we could have just walked across, but...”

They stood there and waited. Only Leona wandered into the cavity, mostly out of boredom. Technicolored lights rained down on her from the Nexus drum above, but that was all they were; lights. The rotation ended, and they left. Everything looked pretty much identical to where they were before, until they crossed the ring, and opened the inner doors. They were definitely not in Atlantis anymore.

Romana passed by them, and held her arms out as she was spinning around. “Welcome...to Ce—”

She never finished the word. An explosion knocked them all on their asses.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 24, 2506

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The door was still open, but Octavia was now on the other side. She looked pretty upset and scared. “Come in! Come in!” she screamed. Mateo heard something behind him too, so he looked over his shoulder. Goddammit, another goddamn monster horde was coming after him. Was this ever going to end? Yeah, right now. He shuffled in through the door, and helped Octavia close it. They could hear the booms as the monsters pounded on it, trying to get through. “I thought they couldn’t cross the perimeter.”

“Rules have changed,” Octavia explained. “I think seeing me walk through this door last year broke something in them. Imagine waking up one day and realizing that you were in a simulation.”

“That literally happened to me, like, a few days ago.”

“Oh. So you know.”

“You’ve been here for the whole year?”

“Yeah,” she answered. They weren’t outside of the dome, per se, but now inside of an antechamber. The border wasn’t a single two dimensional wall, but a complete ring. If they were on the real Castlebourne, this plaza would be used for intake, maintenance, and other meta-purposes. “There’s plenty of food in the kitchen, and I’ve been using this time to find your friends.”

“And did you?”

“Yeah, it hasn’t been easy,” Octavia went on as she was leading him down the corridor. “Obviously, they disappeared last year when you did, so they weren’t anywhere. I couldn’t just command drones to fly around and search for them. Optical cameras aren’t actually all that common. Security and logging systems rely predominantly on other sensors. I had to sift through this past data, looking for anomalies. I believe that I’ve pinpointed them to six domes. Now that you’re all back, we can find out for sure through those few optical cameras on scouting drones. I wanna show you something else first. One of the domes is different. It flagged something that I don’t recognize, and unlike the others, this anomaly appears to have been there during the whole interim year.”

“Oh, no.” Mateo knew what this was. Still, he followed her into a room full of monitors. She pulled up the feed that she was talking about, and confirmed his suspicions. It was Boyd Maestri, a.k.a. Buddha Maestri, a.k.a. Buddy. “Yeah, he’s...I know him.”

“Are you gonna break him out too?”

“I don’t see why I would. Where is this? Is that water, or is there something wrong with the feed?”

“Apparently, it’s Atlantis, so yes, it’s underwater. But it’s not consumed by water; it’s under a dome. But a smooth dome, rather than a geodesic one like they usually are.”

He sighed. “He looks like he’s doing fine, and doesn’t need to be rescued. He’s another bad guy...sort of.”

“Okay, well, he’s alone, so either one of these other domes is doubled up, or I missed one.”

Mateo nodded. “Pacey did say that not all of us would be alone. I thought he was referring to me, which was confirmed when you showed up, but hopefully there are others.”

They sat there for a few minutes, watching the drones hunt for the anomalies in realtime, instead of just old data. They found them. Ramses was in a snowy hell. Leona was in a museum, Angela on a river, and Marie in an old timey settlement of some kind. Oh, Dome for Pioneers, it said that right there at the bottom. Olimpia and Romana were thankfully together, and Pacey couldn’t have picked a better place than a cloud paradise. It was called Heavendome.

“I assume you wanna start with Leona?”

“She looks fine,” Mateo noted. “She’s just looking at the artifacts. Let’s get Ramses out first. It’s literally called Tundradome.”

“I postulate that the vactrain network is just like that door in that you have administrative access to it. I have not been able to leave, not that I had anywhere to go anyway.”

“You could have gone to The Bowl, and commandeered a ship.”

“I don’t know that that exists here. Like I said, this isn’t the real Castlebourne. We may not be in regular space.”

“Still, I appreciate you sticking around. You’re a good friend.” They hugged.

They took the circle line first to get to the vactrain station. It was a series of sealed tubes almost fully underground, which could take passengers anywhere in the world. There were hubs scattered around the globe, where these vactrains switched tracks when necessary, but some tracks had direct routes to each other, just based on proximity. The one between Bloodbourne and Tundradome was one of these connections. Ten minutes later, they were at their destination. According to the drone keeping watch over Ramses, he wasn’t too far from the station, but it was still going to be a little bit of a walk. Mateo and Octavia grabbed parkas from the locker room, and started to put them on, as well as the boots, scarved, and caps.

“Don’t you think it’s a little weird, that Pacey hasn’t done anything to try to stop us?” Paige asked.

“He told us that he didn’t want to mess with our memories too much, or make every choice for us. My theory is that he believes in some level of freewill, and freedom in general. We used our ingenuity to break out of our prison, and break into others, and he likely respects that. He doesn’t have to be our enemy, and he knows that. Or, his purview is limited, and he straight up doesn’t know that we’re here. In case that’s the explanation, let’s be careful and quick.”

They also found snowmobiles near the entrance to the tundra environment, so they drove right out to Ramses’ location, got him on board without a single word, and drove back. That really was easy. “Do you remember who you are?” Mateo asked once they were back inside.

“I remember everything,” Ramses answered.

“Me too.”

“I don’t have any powers, though, which is why I almost died out there.”

“You would be surprised. I materialized a solid knife made out of light in my hand.”

“Good for you,” Ramses murmured.

Mateo laughed. “Let’s get you warmed up. They had hot chocolate in the Bloodbourne intake plaza. I’m guessing that this one does too. It must.”

“Let’s just go,” Ramses requested. “I assume you know where the others are.”

“Leona’s closest,” Octavia answered, “but we will have to go through a conjunction.”

It took longer to get to her than it did to get to Ramses, but they still had plenty of time before next year stole them. She was less than enthusiastic about leaving. She owed her resistance to the fact that she had no clue who they were.

“Who are you? How did you get in here?” she demanded to know.

“Leona, it’s me!”

“I don’t know you, I don’t know Leona.”

“Claudia’s in trouble,” Octavia said, randomly maybe?

“What?”

“She’s hurt, and you know, if she dies, this place dies.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s, umm...on a river,” Ramses improvised.

“Yeah, she was looking for the Rod of Moses.” Octavia cleared her throat, hoping that would work. “The snake bit her.”

“Why is she out in the field?” Leona lamented. “She’s always doing that, still thinks she’s an agent. Wait, the Staff of Moses should be in the religious power aisle.”

“Yeah, it was stolen,” Mateo said, hoping that she would find this believable.”

Leona growled. “Walter’s son.”

“Yeah, we think it was him.” Even Octavia didn’t know enough about whatever this place was all about, but this was working.

“Okay, let’s go.” Leona started to move, but then stopped. “Wait. I still don’t know who you people are.”

“We’re from...Warehouse 14,” Octavia lied. “So...better not ask any questions.”

Leona was still not convinced, so Mateo decided to take a gamble. He held his hand up between them. A holographic daisy sprouted from his palm, and then bloomed to full glory.

She regarded it with all-consuming interest. She didn’t think of anything else but this one light-based flower. She slowly lifted her gaze up to her husband’s face. “Mateo?”

“Are you starting to remember?”

“Yeah.” She looked away to consider it. “Yeah, I remember everything.”

“Triggers,” Ramses realized. “We all need triggers.”

“What was yours?” Mateo asked him.

“The cold,” he said. “My fictional persona was programmed to like the cold. I do not. And that became quite apparent within about three microseconds of being there.”

“Oh, Mateo, I almost lost you.” Leona wrapped her arms around Mateo’s neck to hug, and then kiss, him. She hugged Ramses too. “Paige! You’re here!”

“Octavia.”

Leona held up an index finger. “Got it.” There was a brief pause. “Where are the others? On a river, or was that just a lie to get me to go with you?”

“Angela is the one on the river,” Ramses replied. “It’s on the other side of the planet. The others are more over there too, but in different domes.”

“Which ones?” Leona pressed.

“Dome for Pioneers and Heavendome. Olimpia and Romana are sharing that one.”

“Let’s go to Dome for Pioneers first,” Leona suggested, “even if it’s farther away. It sounds terrible.”

“Hasn’t Marie done that kind of work before?” Olimpia asked as they were starting to leave the warehouse. “She lived in the 1800s.”

“Her father was quite wealthy,” Leona explained. “He literally had slaves do that work instead.”

“Oh.”

They went to Dome for Pioneers first. Marie was even more resistant to leave. They kept trying, but could not figure out her trigger. Nothing they said about her past—her real life—made her remember anything true about herself. As far as she was concerned, she had been born in a cabin twenty miles from here, walked with her family on the Oregon Trail when she was three and four years old, and had lived in this settlement ever since. She wouldn’t budge, and they didn’t want to force her. Not only was she becoming more and more frightened of them the more they insisted, the androids who were programmed to believe that they were other settlers were getting upset too, and very protective of her. Okay, at least they weren’t going to hurt her. The humans switched back to the original plan, and went to see Angela.

Angela was much more open to the idea that none of this was her real life, though she still didn’t want to leave. The way this dome worked was that an upper lake was the source of water to a river, which fed into a lower lake before being evaporated up, and rained back down. It might not have been as conventionally coveted as the Christo-centric interpretation of the afterlife, but it was still gorgeous and pleasant. Still, she said that she felt she could trust them, so she walked through the exit, and got on the vactrain. They then went back to Dome for Pioneers, where the Walton twins served as each other’s trigger. Now they only had one more place to go to collect the whole set. If Angela’s reluctance was any indication, it could be the hardest. Who in their right mind would ever want to leave heaven?

“Oh my God, this place is so boring!” Olimpia complained.

“You have a way out?” Romana asked. “Let’s go!”

“Do you remember us?” Mateo asked them.

“No. What? Why would we remember you? I don’t care who you are. If you have an exit, then point me to it. ¡Ándale!” Olimpia exclaimed.

“Seconded!” Romana agreed.

“Okay, great,” Ramses determined.

They started to walk back towards the elevator, but then Marie stopped them. “Wait, where are we going? Which dome is safe and preferable, or somehow beneficial?”

“Oh,” Mateo said, realizing that they hadn’t actually thought that far ahead yet. “Octavia, how did you get here in the first place?”

The group all looked at her, so she started to recoil a little. “It was a train. I found a line that looked like it didn’t go anywhere. Unlike the others, I think it was interdimensional. I ended up back where I was, but everything was different.”

“Where is this line?” Leona asked her. “You can’t access it from just anywhere?”

Octavia was still nervous. She shifted her focus from person to person. “Castledome. You have to go to Castledome.”

“Which is probably where Pacey is,” Romana lamented.

“It’s where he was,” Octavia agreed. He found me right quick, and took me to Bloodbourne.”

Mateo placed a hand on her shoulder. “Remember what I said with the car, that you had me to help you. That’s still true, but you now you also have them.” He indicated the group. “Castledome won’t be a problem.”

“No,” Leona concurred. “Let’s go.”

They took the vactrain back to the other side of the world, not speaking too much during the ride, but catching each other up a little. Mateo was able to trigger his daughter by recounting the story of when they first met, and Olimpia with a passionate kiss. They now all had a lot of memories that they didn’t have before, including their true pasts, their fabricated lives in Underburg, and the new ones from their respective domes since being separated. Something went wrong with navigation, which sent them on a detour away from Castledome. They ended up in Power Crystal Factor. Leona and Ramses tried to reroute them, but the controls were locked out. Someone wanted them here, almost certainly Pacey. With no other reasonable choice, they stepped off the train, crossed the ring, and walked through the main doors.

Pacey was waiting for them on the main floor. The name was fitting. He was surrounded by crystals of all shapes and colors, forming in their little growth chambers. They were sparkly, beautiful, and a little mesmerizing. Pacey still stole focus, though. He didn’t look mad, and definitely not surprised. He spoke first. “I’ll allow you to leave, but under one condition.”

“What’s that?” Leona asked, stepping forward, and resuming her role as their leader.

Pacey smirked. “All members of your party must be present at the reservation time. We do not seat partial parties.”

“Ah, shit,” Mateo said. “You’re gonna make us go get ‘im.”

“I’m gonna make you go get ‘im,” Pacey confirmed.

Mateo sighed. “And then we can go?”

“And then you can try to figure out how to leave,” Pacey corrected. “Whether you can actually do so is entirely up to you.”

“So that’s a no, you won’t let us.”

“I won’t actively stop you,” Pacey said. “But I won’t help you.”

“Well, at least we know he’s in Atlantis,” Octavia said encouragingly.

“He’s not necessarily there anymore,” Pacey countered. “The Recursiverse Immersive Experience takes the immersive part very seriously. It’s the largest dome network on the planet. It may take you a while, and you won’t have access to any tracking systems, or navigational data. But you might wanna take this.” He pulled one of the nearby crystals out of its slot, and offered it to them.

“What’s this?” Leona asked. It was totally clear while Pacey was holding it, but then it started to change to multiple colors once Leona took hold of it.

“You don’t know?” Pacey asked. “Ramses?”

“Never seen one like it,” Ramses said. “It’s technicolored, though, which is interesting.

Pacey nodded once with the corner of his lips turned down, but not in frown. “You’ll figure it out.” He ushered them back out to the train station.

“We’ll go to Atlantis first, and start on his trail from there,” Mateo suggested. “We’ll get it done faster than you think.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Pacey said as Team Matic was filing into the train car. “Good luck,” he added just before the doors closed.

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