The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 22, 2535

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Ramses and Leona were going to have to spend all of their time in the new lab. Since the former lost his forge core, he wasn’t able to build everything they needed in only a year. He kept a data chip on his person too, which at least stored all of the equipment specifications, but it couldn’t build anything, so the process was slow. There wasn’t much waiting for them when they returned. Most of the resources available out here had been used to excavate and habitize the celestial body itself, so the lab would even have a place to sit. Instead of dragging him to some central location, Pribadium opted to lock the prisoner up here, so part of the work was dedicated to constructing that as well.

Not useful in the lab, Mateo decided to go visit the prisoner. “How are they treating you?”

“They’re fine.” He was down, and couldn’t look Mateo in the eye. This facility was entirely automated, so he probably hadn’t spoken to a human-level intelligence in almost a year.

“Linwood, right?” Mateo asked. “Linwood Meyers?”

“That’s what they called me, back when they called me anything.” His accommodations weren’t just some tiny cell with concrete walls. It was a luxury condo, not much worse than the coin habitat. The psychological toll of not having a choice, however, was the real problem, and there were probably missing amenities.

“What did you have in your personal crabitat that you don’t have here?” A crabitat was a kind of habitat that hermits lived in. Just a bit of play on words.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I wanna help. What are you missing?”

“Well, I didn’t just sit on my ass on the beach all day,” Linwood said. “I spent most of my time in simulations. My coin was just to keep me alive while I did that, and the planetesimal was there for raw materials.”

“And armor.”

“And armor,” he acknowledged.

“So, they didn’t let you keep your VR setup. Do you know why not?”

“Takes power,” Linwood admitted. “There’s plenty of it here, but I wouldn’t be able to manage it myself. They would have to let me have a dedicated bot to do it, and that’s just giving me too much. I have a holoscreen, with basic entertainment, but nothing immersive. And also...”

“Also what? You can tell me,” Mateo encouraged.

“I wasn’t always in sims, and even when I was, I wasn’t always alone. There’s a reason why I built myself a staff.”

“You need companionship,” Mateo realized. “They destroyed those too? They destroyed life?”

“They boxed their consciousnesses, and are storing them somewhere. They only destroyed the substrates.”

“Harsh system they designed here. Why did you choose Gatewood? Why not Proxima, or the Alpha system?”

“I wanted to be alone. Those are too heavily populated. I know it seems ridiculous. In any case, I would be millions and millions of kilometers away from civilization, but I want to be very isolated. I’m afraid of people.” He gestured at his environment in general. “I was right to be.”

“Well, you’re not dead yet, which should really be your only concern.”

“I’m not entitled to life extension procedures here either. Reactive medicine only. I will die eventually.”

Mateo nodded. “Well, that settles it. The Gatewood establishment wants us to take you away from here, so that’s what we’ll do. You’ll get your dwarf planet, and all the equipment you need to hermit back up, including your staff.”

“I don’t need a dwarf planet,” Linwood said, “I’m not greedy.”

“My wife says that you can live off the in-situ resources in a dwarf planet for around a hundred billion years or longer.”

“They’re too valuable,” Linwood contended, shaking his head. “No one would let me keep that.”

“We can take you somewhere so far away, it won’t be another 150,000 years before anyone can reach you. In all that time, you can burn some hydrogen going into the intergalactic void, where you’ll never be found.”

“Well, it’s not really practical to move a dwarf planet...”

“That’s your call. Burn bright and fast, or slow and long. Either way, you’ll have that choice, and like I said, you’ll also have tens of thousands of years to change your mind. Change your mind a thousand times, whatever. But the only option you won’t have is coming back to the stellar neighborhood. At least not quickly. We can take you out, but we won’t come back if you get bored, lonely, or homesick.”

“How do you have the power to do this? How do you have FTL?” Linwood questioned.

“We’ll place you in stasis, and not wake you up until we’ve arrived. You will never know how we did it.”

“Do I get to choose the direction, at least? So I at least have some idea of where I’ve ended up.”

“You’ll be on the other side of the Zone of Avoidance. Someone else will work out the particulars with you.”

“Not that I’m not grateful, but why would you do all this for me? I tried to kill you when we met.”

Mateo winced. “That was a year ago. I’m over it.” Obviously, it hadn’t been a full year for the team, but he genuinely wasn’t holding onto any grudge. The guy was trying to protect his home, and the bullets were no match for their armor. Not a big deal.

Linwood narrowed his eyes at him. “Are you...aliens?”

Mateo thought about this for a moment. “We’re all aliens now, aren’t we? It used to be that there was only one dominant species. You could carry on a conversation with another human, and that was pretty much it. Sure, you could engage in some basic communication with your pets. Elephants buried their dead, dolphins handed people their phones back, but by and large, it was just us. Now, I doubt there’s an official record of how many species there are. How could there be? You could genetically engineer yourself to be quite literally unique, making you incompatible with anyone else. So either alien needs to take on a new meaning, or simply be retired as a concept. I know what you’re asking, if I came from an independent evolutionary line, and the answer to that is no. I was born on Earth, in Kansas. But the true spirit of your question is why should you trust me when I’m behaving in a way that you don’t understand? In that sense, yes, I’m an alien, because my experiences in this universe have diverged from your own in unprecedented ways. You don’t have to understand, just accept the gift.”

“I accept the gift.”

“Great! In the meantime, as it will take another year at least before we can leave, I’ll speak with Pribadium about better arrangements. I get that she might not what to build you a master escape artist who can get you out of here, but you deserve companionship. That is a basic human right. Or whatever you identify as, if not human.”

“I would appreciate your assistance. That’s quite magnanimous of you.”

Mateo returned with a tight nod, and then left the visitors area.

Pribadium was standing just outside the door. “Making promises that you are not authorized to keep?” she asked.

Mateo looked back into the little prison where Linwood probably heard that. He closed the door behind him now. “All he wants is his favorite entertainment, which keeps him occupied in there, and some companionship, which keeps him from going insane. This doesn’t have to be punishment, which is what prisons were back in the dark ages of the 21st century. You’re just trying to keep him from roaming free, so what exactly is the problem?”

“The problem is optics,” Pribadium said. “We can’t have people thinking that our response to illegal possession is getting whatever they need to live comfortably anyway.”

“No one is coming all the way out here, stealing an entire icy body, making it a home, hoping that you will give them a different home. They’re not unhoused. They just want to leave wherever they already were before. You cannot provide them with anything that they couldn’t get on their own somewhere else without all the headache of dealing with your rules, and the risk of being locked up like this.”

She shook her head. “I’m not trying to torture the guy, but I have to draw lines somewhere. You’re right, this won’t inspire a bunch of people to come here with the hopes that I will give them free room and boarding, but they might risk stealing material because they know that getting caught isn’t a big deal. We’ll give them whatever they need until we can get rid of them, and they’ll be fine.”

Mateo sighed. “Those cameras in there. Are they for security, or a reality show?”

“Huh?” She was confused about the sudden shift in the topic, and the topic itself.

“Is it to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself or break out, or is his life being broadcast for people’s entertainment?”

“They’re just for security, of course, I’m not a monster.”

Mateo nodded. That wasn’t what he was thinking. He knew what the answer was, but getting her to vocalize the answer was necessary for him to prove his point. Or rather, it was better that she walked the path with him, instead of him just jumping there. “We are taking him clear across to the other side of the galaxy. Who the hell cares about the optics? You don’t have to tell them about it. Like I said, the VR keeps him inside. He’s not making phone calls or anything.”

Now Pribadium sighed. “I appreciate your point of view. It’s just not as easy as you say. You have no idea the kind of pressure I’m under, running an entire solar system of resources. I am being scrutinized by everyone; not just the other core worlds, but everyone, because this is where everyone comes to get their shit. Even if it’s a state-sanctioned colonial mission, we’re only six light years away, so Earth usually chooses to come here for their resources too. We’re the biggest store in the universe. Practically a monopoly.”

“I know what it’s like to be scrutinized,” Mateo argued. “It wasn’t technically an entire star system, but there were billions of people who were looking to me for guidance in their everyday lives. And that’s people, not assets. I didn’t have the benefit of much established institutionalism. They expected me to help come up with the new laws. That’s why I was there.”

She put her tail between her legs. “I kind of forgot about that part of your life. Running Dardius must not have been easy.”

“It wasn’t, but it was rewarding, and everything was so much easier when we were able to be generous and hospitable to people, rather than restrictive. I know, you have your laws, and I respect that. Just don’t become a tyrant. Not only is that bad for people, but it’s bad for you. It doesn’t ever end well.”

“I appreciate your advice.”

Mateo smiled awkwardly. “I’m not trying to mansplain your job to you. I apologize if I strayed in that direction.”

“It’s okay. Mansplaining isn’t much of a thing anymore as gender isn’t as important as it was in your time.”

“Right.” They stood there in silence for a bit. “It’s been a long time, and I don’t feel like we ever knew each other all that well, but would you be amenable to a hug?”

“I would like that.”

They hugged.

“Do you know how it’s going in the lab?” Mateo asked once they released.

“I never gave you an answer on whether I was gonna give the guy VR and his companions back.”

He turned his chin up thoughtfully. “I know you’ll do the right thing. You’re not a monster, right?”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “The lab people are fine. I offered my assistance, but he, uh...”

“Doesn’t know you,” Mateo finished, knowing full well that it wasn’t what she was going to say.

“Yes, let’s go with that.”

“Does he think that we’ll be ready to go by the end of the day next year?”

“I would assume so. I also offered to make his lab better during his interim year, but he declined. I think he’s treating this as quite temporary, so he’s limiting his projects to only what he needs to get you guys out of here. You should know, though, that you are welcome to stay. I do have some leeway. I can essentially put you on the payroll without actually giving you any jobs, which would allow you to live here. Plus, not existing for most of the year works in our favor. For the optics.”

“That’s very kind of you, but it looks like you have everything well in hand, and we typically try to go where we’re needed.”

“I understand. I just want to make sure that our relationship remains healthy.”

“We’ll always be friends,” he promised. After a proper beat, he continued, “I’m gonna go check on my wife.”

“Which one?” she asked after he had already passed her. “You dog,” she joked.

He looked back with a wide smile. “Why, you wanna split me into thirds?”

She shrugged. “I’ll consider it.” It almost didn’t sound like a joke.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 21, 2534

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They were abandoned and stranded in the middle of interplanetary space in the Gatewood Collective. Their communication systems were advanced, but a signal could only be so powerful in such a small form factor. Ramses hadn’t given them quantum messengers to store in their pocket dimensions, but even if he had, those were mostly gone. When Spiral Station was thrown into the quintessence bubble, all of their pockets exploded. He built a new one for each of them while they were trying to escape, but these were only a stop-gap measure until he could fabricate a new lab for himself. Their supplies would be enough for them to survive here for a few days, but if they didn’t find somewhere to land soon, they could be in trouble.

When they reappeared in the timestream on August 21, 2534, another ship was waiting for them. It didn’t even reach out first. Whoever was on it was expecting them to arrive, and at that very second, for it transported them inside of it instantly. It looked like the average starship bridge, with the horseshoe-shaped console that allowed everyone to see everyone, as well as the viewscreen. The difference here was that the room wasn’t rotating. It didn’t need to. It was equipped with dimensional gravity, which was one of the few technologies that The Shortlist granted the vonearthans use of following The Edge meeting. That wasn’t why it was here, though. One of the people on the list was evidently in command as she was sitting at the head. It was Pribadium Delgado. “Hey, guys. Perfect timing. I could set my clock by your appearances...for now.”

That was a weird thing to say, but Leona chose not to address it. She stepped forward. “Miss Delgado, it’s nice to see you.”

“It’s nice to see you again too, but if you want to get technical, I’m not a miss. I was selected to be Gatewood’s Chief Asset Manager.”

“Which means...?” Mateo asked vaguely.

“We don’t have presidents or prime ministers here,” Pribadium began to explain. “This is nothing more than a materials depot. Travelers only come for what they need to get out of the stellar neighborhood. Not many of us live here permanently, but we are necessary to manage the resources. I’m not in charge of the people so much as I’m in charge of the stuff. I decide who gets what, how much, and from where. Well, I don’t do it alone. There’s also the Chief Distribution Manager, the Chief Allocation Manager, the Chief Fabrication Manager, and the Chief Personnel Manager. We’re all chiefs, but I’m at the tippy top. I’m the Chief Chief.”

“Fitting for you,” Mateo said to her. “Congratulations.”

“They wanted someone from the Shortlist,” Pribadium went on, “and we agreed that one of us ought to be here since they’re getting so much time tech. They might have asked you, but your condition makes that impossible.”

“I’m not jealous or mad, Pribadium,” Leona said. “I think they made the right call. The question is, what call are you making now? Is this a rescue, or something else?”

“It is a rescue, of course,” Pribadium agreed, “but it’s true, I need to make sure that you don’t cause any trouble. I’m not saying you need to leave, but you won’t be going anywhere—or doing anything—without an escort.” She glanced over at the rest of the crew.

“I was hoping to build a new lab,” Ramses said. “We can’t leave until I do, and it’s going to take some time because I lost a very valuable piece of technology. It’s quite sensitive, even in light of the Edge, I would rather be able to work alone.”

Pribadium nodded. “Gatewood is a well-oiled machine. I don’t have to micromanage anyone. If you need to build a lab, we will find you a pre-excavated asteroid, and I will personally monitor you there.” She pointed at one of the crewmembers on the starboard side, who started tapping on his console, and then looked back at Ramses. “I’m sorry, but that’s the best I can do.”

“No, I’m not mad about that,” Ramses insisted. “I trust you to be there. I just didn’t want someone who, uhh...”

“Doesn’t really understand the nature of the time tech?” Pribadium guessed. “We still hold secrets. The Edge meeting didn’t result in the promise of one hundred percent transparency. These guys know not to ask questions.”

The crew had been silent this whole time, but one of them tensed up. “Yes, sir, no questions, sir!”

“He’s joking,” Pribadium said with a smile. “I mean, what he’s saying is true, but his tone isn’t genuine. They’re not my minions, or however it looks from that side of the console.”

“From this side, it looks like you’re judging us,” Romana blurted out.

Pribadium laughed. “Yeah, that’s one purpose of the horseshoe layout. It’s quite standard. The main purpose is so no one has to crane their neck to look at anyone else, but there’s a reason why there’s all that open space in the center, and why it’s two steps down. It’s nice to meet you, by the way. Pribadium Delgado.” She reached her hand out towards the center.

“Romana Nieman.” She stepped up to a little platform at the top of the horseshoe, which was designed specifically so the captain could shake hands from this vantage point. “I’ve heard of you, but not much.”

“We’ll get to know each other better as Mister Abdulrashid focuses on his lab.” Pribadium looked over at the crewmember who she pointed to earlier. “Have you found us a good candidate?”

“I assumed you wanted something at the extreme,” he replied. “I found one in the CDS that is pretty remote.”

“Perfect,” Pribadium decided. She looked over to someone on the port side. “Plot a jump.”

“CDS?” Mateo asked Leona in a whisper.

“Circumstellar debris shell,” Leona answered, loud enough for the whole team to hear, in case they also didn’t know. “Like the Oort cloud, but a generic term. Almost every star system should have one.” She looked back up at Pribadium. “What is your teleportation range? It’s gonna be a year for us if it’s only one AU per second.”

Pribadium smirked. It’s not the AU-range. It can jump a light-month in one second.” She looked over at her pilot again. “Cycle us out.”

After a minute of burst mode, they were at their destination, on approach to an icy planetesimal which the viewscreen said was about three kilometers long at the major axis and two at the minor. One of the crewmembers suddenly stood up. Her section of the console rose up with her. “Sir. I’m picking up a distinct power signature. Someone is living out here.”

“Mauve alert!” Pribadium ordered. “Registrar?”

“It’s empty!” the registrar insisted. “This body should be empty! It’s barely excavated, just enough for a standard hopper dock and a pressure seal!”

“It’s not that one,” the woman who alerted them to the problem clarified. “But it’s nearby. Computer, highlight the signal.”

The view zoomed out, panned over slightly, then zoomed in to a different object that was reportedly roughly only 11 million kilometers away from the first one.

“Get me over there right now,” Pribadium ordered.

They jumped.

Someone who hadn’t spoken yet stood up. “Should I prep an away team?”

Pribadium thought it over, her eyes quickly drifting over to Team Matic.

Leona sighed, not upset or annoyed, more just to focus her breath. “We better earn our keep.”

Angela rematerialized her helmet, and let the visor slam shut. The rest did the same at varying speeds. They started to teleport individually to the celestial body. Before he left, Ramses flicked a comms disc up to Pribadium. “If you can’t figure out how to integrate this into your comms array, just hold it against your mastoid.”

The first thing that Ramses and Mateo saw once they caught up was Romana falling on her face, right at their feet. “Careful,” Mateo told her as he was lifting her back up. “Ice is slippery.”

“It’s not slippery, though,” Marie contended. She lifted her boot, and it looked difficult.

Mateo did the same. Yeah, it was tacky, like they were on the surface of a solidifying tarpit. “What the hell?”

“Ice out here works differently than it does under an atmosphere,” Leona explained as she started to walk. “Keep moving. Our suits might actually be welding themselves into it.”

“Why did she fall then?” Mateo questioned.

“Because she tried to slide,” Angela said.

“I’m a little scamp,” Romana said cutely.

“Testing, testing. One, two, three. Testing, testing. You and me. Testing, testing. Catch a movie?”

“Comms work,” Mateo responded to Pribadium.

“Our scans are detecting a modular habitat; family-sized. One rotating coin, one dormant hammer, three shuttles. An in situ harvester, and a fusion torch drive. This thing is a laser bore, which isn’t technically a weapon, but we’re gonna move away. We’ll keep an eye on signal integrity, though, and stay in teleporter range. We’re not picking up any lifesigns, but it could be sufficiently shielded. We’re not exactly equipped with the best sensors as they are typically not needed.”

“Aye, Captain,” Leona acknowledged.

“Aye, Captain,” Pribadium said back.

Leona generated a hologram of a coin-shaped object. Everyone adjusted their positions to get a better look at it. She tapped on the image demonstratively. “I want us in teams of two, back to back. Romana and Angela, jump right here to twelve o’clock. Ramses and Olimpia, over at three o’clock. Marie and Mateo, nine o’clock.”

“There are seven of us,” Angela reminded her.

“I’ll be alone at six o’clock, I’ll be fine,” Leona assured them. “We’ll only be three hundred and fifty meters from each other. Now, get into position, and go on my mark. We don’t have weapons, but prepare for resistance. Before you go, lower your center of gravity. Not all of us have teleported to a spin habitat before. It can be jarring. It’s not the same as regular mass gravity.”

They all got into position, Leona gave the signal, and they jumped. They immediately heard weapons fire. Mateo looked over to see bullets ricochet off of his daughter’s suit. Nothing was getting through, and it didn’t look like it was hurting her, or Angela, but the shooting needed to stop anyway. He used his HUD to calculate the source, finding one gunman hiding in a thicket of bamboo trees between the ladies and Ramses and Olimpia. Mateo jumped over there, and shoulder checked him.

The shooter was barely fazed. He pulled out a handgun, and started shooting Mateo instead, point blank. They were more powerful than the firearms of yesteryear, to be sure, but they weren’t even making a dent. Mateo stood there for a moment, taking it. Finally, he knelt down and snapped his fingers at a pile of dead bamboo leaves. They caught fire, which began to spread. The man stopped shooting, not because he was scared of the fire, or even of losing his bamboo. He was just profoundly confused. As the fire suppression system was putting it out, Mateo had enough time to disarm the man, confiscating the rifle from the ground as well.

Leona and the rest of the gang were here by then. She helped the stranger up, and set him down sideways in a hammock. “Hello,” Leona began in a friendly voice after receding her nanites until she was wearing normal clothes, maybe showing a little too much cleavage. “My name is Leona Matic. That’s my husband, Mateo, and our wife, Olimpia. Ramses, Angela, Marie, and Romana,” she said, pointing. “Report.”

“I’m nobody. Just tryna live my life.” He adjusted awkwardly. “Could we go somewhere else? I feel quite vulnerable lying back like this.”

“That’s kind of the point,” Leona replied with a smile. “I understand that you were trying to protect your home. And if you weren’t—if you’re just a sadistic murderer—then I’ll go ahead and write self-defense on the report, okay? But you’re going to answer my questions, because you are currently violating Gatewood law, as well as Core World law and Earthan law. Just all the laws. So my first question is, were you aware of that?”

“I was,” the squatter admitted.

“Okay. Did you think you just wouldn’t get caught, or was it an active act of defiance against the establishment?”

He shrugged. “Maybe a bit of both.”

“All right, I can work with that. Are you alone?”

“I have...a staff. Varying degrees of intelligence.” They heard a rustling in the leaves several meters away, and looked over to see a beautiful woman on approach. Now, she—she was showing too much cleavage. She just stood there with a mousey look on her face once she spotted them. The squatter looked at her over his shoulder. “That’s my companion model. She won’t hurt you.”

“Do you have a guard model?” Leona pressed.

The squatter sighed, annoyed. “He’s in maintenance at the moment. You couldn’t have come at a worse time. Unless...you planned it that way.”

“We didn’t know you were here,” Leona promised. “We might end up neighbors if the CAM lets you stay.”

“She would do that?”

“I doubt it, but it’s not impossible. You’re supposed to leave. Why didn’t you just leave?” Leona looked around in general. “At low subfractional speeds, this shell’s raw materials would last you hundreds of years, or thousands if you shut off internal systems, and go on ice.”

“It’ll last me a million if I stay put,” the squatter reasoned.

“But you would be in danger for those million years, since you are here illegally,” Leona volleyed.

“It’s illegal anyway,” he argued. “I didn’t have the resource credits. I stole this comet. I was trying to stay quiet.”

“Where are you from, partner?” Leona asked, seemingly shifting topics.

“Earth,” he answered.

“You don’t need resource credits if you’re in Sol. You could have taken something from the Oort cloud.”

He shook his head. “No one would take me there. It costs fuel to decelerate. Ironically, even though Barnard’s Star is farther away, it was easier to get here, because the cyclers run constantly. After deceleration, I snagged myself an escape pod, and drifted all the way out here until I found a suitable shell.”

“Hm,” Leona said. “That’s probably true, isn’t it?” Silence for a moment. “Well, I’m sorry, but the boss has already seen you. If we had encountered you on our own, we would have kept our mouths shut, but there’s no going back now. You are at her mercy.” She looked at her clock. “And we’re scheduled for a new assignment at the end of the Earthan day, so we won’t be able to advocate for you unless you come with us right now, and face the music.”

They returned to Pribadium’s ship, where they did attempt to advocate for this man, to the best of their ability. Pribadium said that she would take their recommendation under advisement, but when they returned to the timestream a year later, he had been in hock the whole time, and his hermit habitat had been completely dismantled. She claimed to have no choice, that if she didn’t enforce the laws, others would seek to be exceptions, and the entire system would collapse. Her proposal was that they take him out of there, somewhere very far away, since he had no resource credits, and wasn’t allowed to stay. They would take her request under advisement.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 20, 2533

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They were still breathing, and the station hadn’t been destroyed, but it was in no shape to travel. Ramses and Leona spent the rest of the day affecting repairs, or rather, programming the automators to start working on them instead. Séarlas was the engineering twin, and could no longer fulfill this role. Franka wasn’t completely helpless, but she couldn’t do it all on her own. They weren’t entirely sure if they were still on their time-jumping pattern since they were waylaid for a year in the quintessence trap, but come midnight central, they received their answer. When they returned a year later, the station was still in a spiral shape, but it was functioning normally, and Franka was eager to test their quintessence drive. While the team was capable of returning safely inside of a moving vessel, even if it ultimately moved light years away, slinging instantaneously across the universe might break that spatial tethering feature. They just didn’t know yet, so Franka and her crew had to wait it out for months. Now the question was, where were they going to go?

“What about—?” Mateo began.

“Nope,” Leona argued before he could even finish his sentence. “I don’t wanna go back to Earth.”

That was not what Mateo was going to say. He was going to suggest Castlebourne, and he was about to clarify that when he sensed caution from Leona. She didn’t want to go back there. He saw her eyes dart over to Franka and Miracle. No, she didn’t want them to go there. He had to save it so they wouldn’t get suspicious. “Sorry, we just hadn’t been back in a while. I was hoping to see what Kansas City looked like now.” Yeah, that sounded like a plausible sentiment.

“Mostly forest,” Ramses claimed, or guessed; whichever.

It had been a long time since Mateo had to spell something out using his emotions. He decided to use an abbreviation and hope that everyone on the team understood. He forced himself to feel Pride, and then Disgust.

The girls were confused, but Ramses got it. “Let’s go to Proxima Doma. We need to know what happened there anyway.”

“Perfect,” Franka replied before turning her head to face her crew. “Get in stasis,” she ordered them. It officially consisted only of Miracle and Octavia, but Dutch wasn’t on Team Matic, so he had just spent the last year on Spiral Station. The first two reluctantly agreed, but he seemingly didn’t know if he had to do what she said. “It’s for your protection,” Franka went on. “These guys are practically immortal, but one miscalculation in the inertial dampeners, and I’m scraping your guts off the walls. I just cleaned them, I don’t wanna do it again.”

“It’s not that,” Dutch said sheepishly.

“Are you afraid I won’t wake you back up? We can set a timer for ten minutes.”

“No.” He would have been kicking the gravel if there were any gravel. “I was just wondering if I could switch to using...one of the ones next to the girls.”

“Oh.” Franka was hesitant, for some reason.

“What’s the problem?” Leona questioned. “Are they VIP pods?”

“The P stands for pods,” Romana joked, trying to lighten the mood.

“They’re not special, but it’s in the crew section,” Franka explained. “He used one of the guest pods last year when we had to do a contaminant purge.” She looked back at Dutch. “If you’re asking to use a crew pod, are you asking to be on the crew?”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go.” He gestured towards Team Matic. “Lord knows I can’t go with them. I assume you will be parting ways eventually.”

Franka sighed, and stared at her once-parents for a moment. “Probably.”

“If we’re voting, I vote yes,” Miracle decided.

“Same,” Octavia concurred.

Franka smiled like a mother letting her child have another cookie before Thanksgiving dinner. “Okay. Go calibrate your new pod to your body properties.”

Dutch smiled, and ran off with the ladies.

“You’re getting in a pod too, right?” Mateo asked Franka.

“Of course. I just wanted to warn you that I don’t have enough for everyone, so I recommend you suit up, and be prepared to teleport. I mean, if the splat happens, it’ll happen fast...”

“I’ll sync our interfaces with the slingdrive countdown,” Ramses assured her. “We’ll teleport 500 meters away, whether the inertial dampeners hold or not.”

“Good idea.” Franka tried to pivot away, but stopped. “And it’s called a quintessence drive.”

“No, it’s not,” Olimpia defended her decision to coin the term.

As it turned out, they were all worried about nothing. The inertial dampeners held just fine. The quintessence drive itself went fine too. Or rather, it didn’t fall apart. Navigation was still bad, which Ramses suspected had more to do with the coherence gauge. He did have trouble repairing it as it was based on slightly different technology than the ones he built for the Vellani Ambassador, and their array. He was confident that he could fix it now since they had just gone through a test run, which gave him more data. Fortunately, they were in a safe enough place. It wasn’t Proxima Doma, but it was another core world. Or worlds, rather.

They were in the Gatewood Collective, orbiting Barnard’s Star, which was about six light years from Earth. “I thought there weren’t any planets,” Angela argued. “That’s what everyone has always says about it.” Gatewood was a special place. While it was relatively close to the seed of civilization, it was decidedly not a colony. It was sometimes called The Lumber Yard, because it was only a gigantic store, and permanent habitation was absolutely not allowed. It was only designated for raw materials, and there was a good reason for that.

A radius of 50 light years was allocated for the stellar neighborhood. Most of the colonization efforts were state-sanctioned, by one state or another, or maybe one of the institutions that used to be a for-profit corporation. A few of those held on past the transition to a post-scarcity economy because they had by then become legally classified as utilities. Think Google and Wikipedia. A growing number of colonists, however, were small factions of people who wanted to start fresh elsewhere. A select few of these were allowed to find a home somewhere in the neighborhood, but the vast majority of them were expected to travel all the way out to the Charter Cloud, or beyond. Since they were not commissioned by an officially recognized state, it would be unfair for them to use resources from the solar system. But this created a problem. If they couldn’t build spaceships, how were they going to leave? Enter Gatewood. While cyclers were transporting people to and from the other nearest colonies constantly, no route was as heavily trafficked as the one to Barnard’s Star. That was the limit to the resource expenditure for the pioneers. The state agreed to transport them to the Collective, and house them there temporarily, but they would have to begin construction on their ship or fleet immediately, and bug out as soon as possible.

“There are no habitable planets,” Leona clarified. “Proxima Doma and Castlebourne aren’t habitable either, but they’re hospitable enough to make special arrangements, specifically the domes. Other worlds prefer lava tubes, or orbiting stations. The planets you’re seeing over there in the distance—there are four of them total—are low mass and extremely hot. Yeah, you could technically build a settlement on one of them, but it wouldn’t be very easy. That’s why they chose this for raw materials. They focus mostly on the asteroids and comets, but I believe they’re already starting to stripmine the terrestrial planets too.”

“Sorry, guys,” Ramses said through comms. “Off the mark again.”

“No, I’m curious about this place,” Mateo insisted. “Do we know anyone who lives here? I know Team Keshida moved on, as did the Ansutahan refugees, or rather, their descendants, but maybe someone else set up shop since we were last here?”

“Oh, I don’t have any more information than you,” Leona answered. “There’s a chance that we know someone, but very few entities live here permanently. Most aren’t allowed to, so it would just be the few who manage the allocation of resources, and enforce the stay laws.”

“Stay laws,” Marie repeated. “I like that term.”

“We got company,” Franka said through Ramses’ comms disc. He was the only one who returned to Spiral Station. The rest of the team was just floating around nearby, enjoying the view of the red dwarf.

Leona activated her maneuvering thrusters and turned around to see a big, dark spaceship on close approach. “Yeah, we see. Probably Gatewooders, trying to figure out where you came from.”

“Yep, that’s what they said,” Ramses confirmed.

“Please teleport back here,” Franka added. “They’re going to sweep the station, and if they don’t find you now, but see you later, they’re gonna think we’re smugglers.”

They all jumped back. “What do smugglers smuggle these days? Whisky?”

“Resource credits,” Franka answered as they were waiting to be boarded. “There are all sorts of criteria that determine what Gatewood gives you for your colonization efforts. Stealing credits gets you the best ores, and more of it, for higher luxury, if that’s your thing. If you have enough, you might even be able to buy antimatter...” She trailed off.

A man had suddenly appeared in front of them. “Ain’t nobody getting antimatter out here.” He pulled off his balaclava. “Fusion for all, but there’s a refinery 42 light years from here called Rasalhague, if that’s what you’re looking for instead.”

“We’re square,” Franka said to him. “Who are you? I’ve never seen you before, and I’m familiar with just about every choosing one in the timeline.”

The man winced.

“He’s not a chooser,” Leona determined. “He’s a product of The Edge. He uses tech to teleport.”

“How else would you do it?” the guy asked.

“Are there a lot of teleporters like you?” Mateo pressed.

“This isn’t about me,” the man contended. He bobbled his head, weighing his options. “But I will answer your question, Gatewood is vast, and some people here don’t like each other, so we distribute them widely. To keep our contingency at low numbers, we were given a special command ship that can teleport somehow. That way, we don’t have to keep one at every single dock to supervise the pioneers effectively. A few of us can teleport as individuals. I earned that right.”

“We’re not arguing with you,” Leona promised him. “Just curious. I’m one of the people who gave you that technology.” She jerked her head towards Ramses. “He’s on the council too.”

The man stared at her, shocked by this news, but also recognizing that she could simply be lying. “Prove it.”

Leona receded her nanites until she was completely naked. Then she simply teleported to the other side of the room. Other members of Team Matic did the same a few times each, though not naked, because it really didn’t add anything.

He stared at her again, but with more shocked belief than skepticism this time. “The New Gods,” he uttered breathlessly, dropping into a kneel and bow.

“This is what we were afraid of,” Leona said with a heavy sigh, “but I had to test it, because I needed to know. There were two ends of the spectrum. We could hoard the time tech forever, or give it all away freely, with no conditions. We chose something in the middle, of course, because we’re rational human beings, but...every iteration came with risk. This is one of the consequences, which I have sheltered myself from for over a century now since I was so busy with other things.”

“Can we...stop him from worshiping you?” Mateo asked her.

She laughed. “People have been worshiping gods for millennia. They literally fought wars over it. I can tell him I’m not a god, but if he wants to believe, he’ll believe.”

“Then let’s take advantage of it,” Franka suggested. She placed herself between Leona and the man, who immediately stood up, because he didn’t know if he should revere her too. She wasn’t one of the ones who exhibited teleportation abilities just now. “You came. You swept. You found nothing. You left.”

He looked over Franka’s shoulder, at Leona, who was afraid to encourage his devotion, but she knew that she really didn’t have any choice anymore. She just shut her eyes and nodded. He lifted his wrist to his lips. “Fall back. This vessel has full access to our resources. Anywhere they want to go, let them go there. Anything they want to take, let them have it. Disconnect once everyone is out of the umbilicus. I’ll jump back to the bridge before you’re out of range.”

“Thank you,” Franka said to him.

“I would do anything for you.” He didn’t say it to Franka, though, but to Leona.

“What you can do is use the tech wisely; not to hurt people.”

“Always,” he agreed.

“Thank you. You can go now,” Leona all but ordered. Once he was gone, she physically turned Franka around by the shoulders. “I don’t care if we end up lost in M87, or NGC 253.” She also looked over at Ramses. “Get this thing out of this star system, and you will never come back for the rest of time, or so help me God, you will wish I wasn’t your mother in any reality. Do you understand me?”

“Do I seem like the kind of person who would abuse this kind of power?” Franka asked.

“You absolutely do look like that,” Leona said bluntly.

“She stared at her once-mother for a moment, not breaking eye contact, even when she spoke to Ramses. “Spool it up Rambo. I guess we’re leaving.”

Ramses did what he could to fix the quintessence drive before joining the rest of his team at the lower tip of the station. Franka asked to handle programming the sling herself. She just sounded bitter and annoyed at the time, but it turned out to be something else. During the interim year, she had programmed the repairs to make it more modular, so sections could be separated from each other. She released the section the team was on, and teleported the rest of the station away. Before they could track where it had gone, they saw a burst of technicolors in the distance, and realized that she had indeed slung away to parts unknown.

“Oh, crap!” Ramses cried. “She still has my forge core!” Since he kept losing access to his labs, he kept having to rebuild them from scratch. The forge core made it easier to do this. He always kept it somewhere in normal 3D space. The data drive module stored the specifications necessary to rebuild anything and everything from scratch, and an AI to process it all. It also came with starter nanites, and some other bells and whistles. He left it in the timestream so it could fix Spiral Station up while he couldn’t even be around to answer Franka’s questions.

“Is it unlocked?” Leona asked.

“Yes, it’s unlocked. I thought we could trust them.”

Angela looked over her shoulder. “I guess we’re going to land on one of those planets after all, huh?”

“No,” Leona reasoned. “We’ll go to the intake station, or whatever they call it these days. We couldn’t have been cast away somewhere better. We need resources.”

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Castlebourne Capital Community: Here by Default (Part I)

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The year was 2521. Dreychan didn’t agree that it should be, though. He had the idea to stop tying themselves to the Earthan calendar, and form their own identity. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that popular of an idea, and one of the reasons was that a lot of people living here didn’t have a very decent grasp of the passage of time anyway. On some homeworlds, it wasn’t necessary. They produced what they were indoctrinated to believe should be produced for the Empire, and that was just how things were. You didn’t need to know what day it was. The transport ships would come and grab what they demanded on their own schedule. As long as everyone kept up with quota, everything was fine. They weren’t living in the Goldilocks Corridor anymore, however, and were not subject to the Exin Empire’s rule. They needed to assimilate into this region of space while somehow forming a new, distinctive culture. That was no easy feat, and it wasn’t Dreychan’s job to do that. Perhaps in the future, when the war is over, they will be able to focus on their own self-fulfillment. For now, though, they just needed to survive.

Everyone was arguing over each other, and Dreychan was staying out of it. He didn’t have much choice. They never listened to him anyway. They called it the Council of Old Worlds. Everyone here represented the planet where they once lived, and were elected by their constituent refugees, according to whatever methods they chose. Of course, a ton of people didn’t even understand the concept of voting, so it took some time, and a lot of education, but they all figured it out. Dreychan was different. You might even call it special, but be careful who you say that to, or they’ll laugh you out of the room. He was the only person from his planet who agreed to come to safe harbor on Castlebourne.

Ex-777 was one of the few places where the residents didn’t suffer. They were the ones benefitting from all the labor that the slaves on the other planets performed. The only known world more desirable was Ex-999, or maybe Ex-69, depending on your priorities and proclivities. The rest of the Council hated Dreychan, which he thought was ridiculous. He was the one person who defected. If anything, they should revere him. They escaped to a better world, but for him, it was a lateral move, but not even that, because he was too busy to enjoy all the recreation that Castlebourne had to offer.

Ugh, he should stop feeling sorry for himself. Yes, he was only on the Council by default, and yes, he deserved to have his voice heard anyway, but it wasn’t irrational for them to ignore it. He wasn’t representing anyone, but that was exactly why they did need to listen, because this council shouldn’t exist. They shouldn’t be maintaining their old world connections. They should all become one peoples. How could he get through to them?

“What do you think?”

Dreychan just sat there, and yawned a little.

“Drey,” she urged.

“What? Are you talking to me?” They weren’t usually talking to Dreychan.

“We need your opinion.” What was her name? Ex-777ers were all born with names, but just about everyone else only had a number. It was a way for the Empire to dehumanize its subjects. Once they came here, they were told that they could start using names now, and there were various ways of choosing them. He just couldn’t recall hers right now, which was very bad of him. She was actually quite nice, and didn’t seem to hold the same grudge against Dreychan as the others.

“What was the question?” Dreychan asked awkwardly.

“Oh my God.” Now, Dreychan knew Maaseiah. There was no way he was gonna forget a name like that. The Corridor was 16,000 light years away, and actually predated Earth’s bible times due to time travel, so none of Earth’s religions existed there. This meant that Maaseiah had to do a ton of research to decide on the most obnoxious name he could possibly find. He seemingly wanted to put his delusions of grandeur on full display, and he freakin’ nailed it. “Do you want to be a part of this, or not?”

The lovely woman sighed—Lubiti! That was her name. He didn’t know why she chose it. He was remembering now that she was from Ex-883, which manufactured spaceship shielding plates, and really that was it. “Calm down, Masy.” She always called everyone by a nickname. It was exciting to learn that names could be unique and interesting, and even more exciting to learn that each one came with variations and alternate spellings. She turned to face Dreychan again. “We’re trying to decide whether we want to move Castlebourne closer towards the Core Worlds, or stay out here in the Charter Cloud.” This was a fascinating concept. The closest colonies to Earth were the most cohesive, and the farther out you went, the less familiar the culture and laws became. These were divided into three-dimensional bands. The Charter Cloud wasn’t the farthest, but it was beyond the stellar neighborhood, which meant they were afforded no protection from hostile forces. They had to protect themselves, and the decision was already made to simply leave the area entirely.

“Hrockas needs an answer,” Maaseiah explained. Hrockas literally owned this whole planet himself. He was the one who built the domes, and filled it with all the fun and interesting things to do. He graciously let the refugees live here when they had nowhere else to go. He was even more powerful than the Council. “He said he needed it yesterday, which I suspect was metaphorical, though he might be expecting us to send a message back in time, which we will need to look into. Teemo, write that down.”

Teemo wrote it down. He was from a world with very few refugees, so it was relatively easy for him to be elected the council representative, though unlike Dreychan’s case, the ones who chose to stay behind did so because they were too scared. They were right to be, given Castlebourne’s predicament now.

Dreychan had already thought of this, because he was good at being ahead of the game. He just didn’t have all the facts. “If we move closer in,” he begins, “will we join the neighborhood? Will our status amongst the other worlds change?”

“No,” Lubiti answered.

“So we’ll be...weird. There might be colonies farther out than us who are better protected due to us being an anomaly.”

“I don’t agree with that interpretation,” Maaseiah countered. “To get to one of the other colonies, they might have to pass by us. In fact, I propose we intentionally place our star close to another colony, so we can receive some ancillary protection from them. From what I gather, the Teaguardians volunteer their firepower to protect the colonies. Surely if we ask for help, they will just help us, even if we’re not technically entitled to it. It would be a lot easier if we were only a couple light years away when we ask, though.” Teaguardians were battleships that came from an outpost called Teagarden, which orbited Teegarden’s Star. They evidently didn’t stray far from the root word. They were only obligated to provide protection to the Core Worlds and the stellar neighborhood. Castlebourne didn’t qualify, and it was sounding like it never would, even if they moved themselves closer.

“The whole point of moving our host star is to not have to ask for protection,” Lubiti reasoned. “We’re trying to hide, which is why we should limit the number of people who know where we are. Our location has already been leaked. Let’s not let it leak again, because we don’t know if we’ll be able to move again. Hrockas never told us how it’s going to be accomplished in the first place. It may be a one time thing.” She was so right about that. “Do you agree?” she pressed Dreychan.

“I do,” he said, and not just because she was pretty, and he never did find someone to love on Ex-777. “We must stay in the Charter Cloud. Our anonymity is our greatest strength. We can swing quite far from here, and still stay a hundred and eight light years from Earth. Hell, we could go a little farther.”

“We can’t go farther,” someone else contended. Dreychan didn’t know his name, but he used to work out of Ex-741, which was a giant spaceship manufacturing plant, so he understood all this light year/special relativity stuff. “I mean, we technically could, but we shouldn’t. Castlebourne serves as a recreational hub for the entire colonial sphere. Everyone wants to come here, and the population is rising exponentially. Now, quantum communication allows them to make their connections without knowing our coordinates, but vast distances are more difficult than closer ones. It’s called coherence. Hrockas will not want to make the casting equipment work harder than it has to. If anything, we should get a little bit closer, but I agree that we ought to stay in the Charter Cloud, and mostly move laterally, relative to the Core.”

“We must remember that it is not our call exclusively,” Lubiti jumped back in. “Hrockas is asking for our input, not our decision. He probably will want to move a little closer, but stay in the Cloud, because that’s what gave him the freedom from the establishment. And don’t forget that we have our own defenses. We don’t need the Teaguardians. If the Oaksent finds us again, and we can’t get away, we can fight back. We will fight for our new home.”

“I agree with Biti,” Dreychan said.

“Of course you do,” Maaseiah spat.

Dreychan ignored that outburst. “If for no other reason than to stay in his good graces, we should give Hrockas the answer that he prefers. What is easier on him and whoever has this power to move a sun? What do they want to do?”

“Okay.” Council Chair Rezurah stood up. “I think it’s time for another vote. If we can secure the supermajority right here, I will be able to meet with Hrockas today to determine the particulars. Worst case, we will get back to you tomorrow morning for Council approval. If all goes well, we should be traveling at relativistic speeds by the end of the month. I urge you to vote wisely, as this decision could mean the difference between staying hidden, and being discovered by the enemy. Teemo, you’ll count this time, as you have not done it in a while.” They rotated this responsibility to make it fair, and to make sure that no one would have more than one opportunity to cheat.

The vote went in favor of Lubiti and Dreychan’s plan. Well, it wasn’t really theirs, and very much not his. Around half of the people agreed with it before they even started, and half of the rest had come around. Rezurah went off to her meeting with Hrockas, which she was already late for, and the Council meeting was closed. Dreychan was just going to return to his habitat, as he did every day, but Lubiti stopped him in the hallway. “Hey, a few of us were going to have some fun in 2.5Dome. You interested?”

“I don’t know what that is,” Dreychan responded, when he really should have just politely declined, since he didn’t like anyone who might be going besides her, and he wasn’t really the fun type. All his old peers were surprised that someone chose to give up paradise to become a refugee, but not surprised that it was him. He liked the boring life.

“It’s hard to explain. You just kinda have to see it. Come on!” she encouraged.

He did want to spend more time with her, to maybe see if his sudden feelings were just because she was the only person in the world who would give him the time of day, or if they were more substantial. “Okay. Sure. Why not?”

They sat alone together in a vactrain pod. The others had evidently either already left, or would be meeting up with them later. Despite Lubiti’s mild protests, Dreychan ended up looking through the prospectus for this adventure dome. There was reportedly a time when video games on Earth were so unsophisticated that they were two-dimensional. The player could move up or down or side to side, but no other direction. In fact, a lot of them apparently wouldn’t even let you move your character backwards, if there was something you missed before. The other half dimension was because the playspace was in base reality, so it was still technically 3D. Still, they would be in a very narrow field of play, and had to make it through the level without falling, or being killed by something. Both the prospectus and Lubiti assured him that the dome came with a number of different varieties. Most of this world’s visitors could die and come back to life in new bodies, so they could actually fall into a river of lava and be fine. For people like them, who only had one life to live, the levels were a lot safer, though the reviews promised that they were still fun. Good for her, not great for him.

The train stopped. They stepped off, and approached the counter for registration. “Froenoe, party of three. We already filled out our info, and signed consent forms.”

They did? That was news to Dreychan. He certainly didn’t sign anything. Whatever, he trusted her. But hold on, party of three?

Lubiti sensed his confusion. “It’s better in small groups. The others will be running their own game nearby.”

“Yes, I have you here,” the registration bot said to Lubiti. “Your third is already at the entrance.” He set two green bracelets on the counter between them. “These are your security bands. If you ever run into issues, squeeze that button, and a door will open up on the side wall, where you can step out onto a platform that follows you around the whole time.” Scary, but at least there was a theoretical way out.

“Thanks,” Lubiti said. She took the bands, and then they listened to a little more about how safe it was, that no one has ever been permanently hurt, and all that stuff.

They then took another train to their playspace, where they found none other than Maaseiah waiting for them. That was the most surprising development today. He and Lubiti didn’t seem to like each other, and he really didn’t like Dreychan. “Is he ready?”

“No. That’s the point,” Lubiti replied. Something had changed in her voice. She was no longer smiley and light, but overserious, and maybe a little angry? It was so confusing, Dreychan didn’t understand what was happening.

The three of them stepped through the entrance, and onto the first platform. It was very narrow. They would be able to pass each other, but only if they squeezed by, facing the restrictive walls, one way or another. After the door closed, a third wall slid across in front of it, and then began to make its way towards them. Yes, this was one of the ones that didn’t let you go backwards. Lubiti and Maaseiah walked a few meters forward. There weren’t any obstacles yet. They must have wanted you to get acclimated to the environment first. Shockingly, they exchanged a nod, then pressed their emergency buttons at the same time. Two doors opened up next to them.

“What’s going on?” Dreychan questioned, laughing, trying to sound friendly.

“We can’t trust you,” Maaseiah contended. “We can’t trust you to know where Castlebourne will move to. For all we know, you’re the one who leaked our location in the first place.”

“I didn’t,” Dreychan insisted for the umpteenth time.

“And now you never will.” Lubiti took one step through her special exit.

“You know I have one of those too,” Dreychan reminded them, shaking his green bracelet for them to see. It glowed a little in the dim lighting.

“Press it all you want,” Lubiti replied with a shrug. “I broke it.” She left, as did Maaseiah.

Dreychan pressed his button. He pressed again and again, but she wasn’t lying. There was no escape. The moving wall hit him in the ass, forcing him to move forward. He just stood there, letting it slide him down the path, ready to fall into the next foam pit or water tank. But it wasn’t foam, or water. It was lava. He could actually die here.

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