Microstory 2600: Quidel Teleports Into Lycander’s Office

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Quidel teleports into Lycander’s office. He must have somehow gathered momentum during transit, because he immediately falls into the guest chair, breaking one leg off of it completely, and leaving another holding on by a thread. “Sorry, I don’t know what happened.”

Lycander shakes his head. “You can’t jump to just anywhere you want. If you select an off-limits destination, it will reroute you to the nearest authorized space. This time, it was my office. I don’t know why you fell. You might just need to take up yoga to learn balance.”

“I was trying to go to a remote island in Polar Tropica. There wouldn’t have been anyone there to spot me.”

Lycander shakes his head at this. “The whole dome is a no-go zone. Take the train. You have an express pass now too.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is more fun,” Quidel contends. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Look, we’re in the inner circle now; the Executive Administrative Authority. Hrockas is trusting us to be smart, be responsible, and behave. He gave you that snazzy new body of yours, he can take it away. And the guy who gave the technology to him? Well, I imagine he can take it away too.”

“All right, I get it, I’ll be careful.” He looks down at the destruction he cause. “Hey, why is this made of wood?”

Lycander shrugs. “I like antiques.”

“Right. Well, I still want my beach getaway, so I guess I’m gonna go find a train. Ugh, it’s so tedious. I can’t believe I used to think the vactrain network was the fastest way to travel.”

“Hey, wait. I’m glad you’re here anyway,” Lycander says. “I have some news, which you may have already heard. After nine months of auditing and diagnostics, they’re reopening the Spydome Network. They’re restarting the story from the moment Renata shut it down. Anyone in-sim at the time will be able to go back and pick up right where they left off. If you don’t sign up by the end of the week, though, they’ll replace your character with an Exemplar. I think Demo’s gonna do it.”

Quidel clears his throat uncomfortably. “It’s like you said, we have real jobs now; we don’t play games.”

“I always had a real job,” Lycander reminds him.

“Does that mean you’re going back?”

“Not a chance.”

Quidel nods. “I suppose we’re on the same page then.”

“I suppose.”

Both of their devices beep at once. They look at them. “We’re in the same group chat too. What do you think Hrockas wants?”

Lycander stands, and starts to walk around the desk. “He was probably alerted to your illegal teleportation attempt.” He taps his wristband to Quidel’s watch to sync up. “Let’s go together so it doesn’t accidentally happen again.” He spirits them both away.

They land in Hrockas’ office. Another guy is there, who Quidel recognizes, but hasn’t spoken to yet. “Thank you for coming,” Hrockas says. “First off, let me officially introduce you both to Dominus Azad Petit of the Castlebourne Charter Contingency.”

Azad is sitting on the edge of Hrockas’ back counter. He clicks his tongue, and waves two fingers at them as a greeting, but doesn’t say anything.

“Dominus Petit will lead one regiment of soldiers to war, should it come to that. You’ll recall, I informed you of the outside threat that we face?”

“I remember it, yes,” Lycander confirms.

“Yeah,” Quidel replies at the same time.

“Yes, well, we’re having trouble with that,” Hrockas goes on. “The original plan was to run and hide, but not everyone agrees with that tactic, so we’re currently at a standstill. As a major proponent of the original plan, I have become a threat to that internal opposition. Dominus Petit has assigned himself as my personal bodyguard....” He gives Azad the side eye. “...despite the fact that we are all immortal.”

“It is not impossible to kill an immortal,” Azad argues.

“Whenever you’re in my presence, sir, you can count on me to protect your life as well, and your substrate,” Lycander promises, like he’s pledging his fealty to the king. Perhaps it’s just the spirit of the environment. This is, after all, Castledome.

“Uh, same here,” Quidel agrees.

Hrockas smiles and laughs. “That’s very kind of you, but that’s not where I was going with this. No, I was leading you down a path to the real topic of the day.” He gestures in the general direction of their wrists. “Please remove your devices, so your location can’t be tracked.

They do as they’re asked.

Azad stands up. “Needless to say, this area is top secret, as is what you’re about to see. I’m sure you won’t want to break confidence at any rate. Huddle up.” The other three lean over under his arms when he raises them up. He alone activates his teleporter, and brings them all along.

They land in a lab. A man who Quidel recognizes is working on some sort of sciency stuff on a table nearby. “Custodian Number One!” Quidel acknowledges. “I didn’t know I would ever see you again.”

“Likewise sir, but per your advice, I go by Telman now.”

“I’m glad to hear it, Telman.”

“Room Two, Telman,” Hrockas instructs.

“Certainly, sir.” Telman spins around, and approaches a door behind him. He uses his biometrics to unlock it, and let them in.

The room is dark and humid. Hrockas orders the lights to come on, and they do. They hear a sort of groan coming from the only object of note in here. It’s a...pod of some kind; translucent and shiny, hanging from the ceiling. It’s quite majestic. As Quidel moves side-to-side, the colors morph and shimmer. Hrockas approaches and knocks on it like it’s a door. “Miss Granger? Are you ready to come out?”

“Five more minutes,” a muffled voice complains.

“I got an alert. The chrysalis knows when it’s time,” Hrocaks says in a sing-songy voice. “And it’s time,” he adds.

She groans again.

“Your friends are here. They’re anxious to see you. They thought you were dead.”

Renata lets out a protracted low whine, and then punches through the membrane with a grunt.

Microstory 2592: Renata Jumps Out of the Emergency Exit, and Falls About One Story Down

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Renata jumps out of the emergency exit, and falls about one story down. She lands on her feet, bending them to absorb the shock, and stopping herself from hitting her face by holding her hands out at her sides. Quidel is clear at the back of the plane, still by the ramp. He runs over when he sees her do that. “Are you okay? What the hell were you thinking? Just because this thing was never in the air, doesn’t mean you weren’t high up.”

“I’m just testing my limits,” she answers casually as she’s brushing the dust off of her hands.

“Well, you’re not invincible, and you can still feel pain.”

“I can’t feel pain if I don’t want to, and just be glad I didn’t jump out of the crew door.”

He looks up at the cockpit, which is closer to three stories high. “You would break your legs. Even an android can’t survive that, unless it’s specifically designed to, which you’re not, because that would be a waste. This isn’t Underbelly.”

“I don’t know what that means.” She looks around at the desert. They are in a very remote region of Osman, miles and miles from the nearest city. They’re not trying to go anywhere in particular here. They’re just trying to keep this device far away from Libera. It’s not that she can’t get to this dome, but perhaps she won’t find them here if they’re well-hidden. That’s Spycraft 101. Lycander says that the dome has security cameras that allow beings on the outside to monitor progress, but the don’t cover everywhere. They don’t see everything. Even Ambients don’t permanently record what they see. That would be too much data to track and manage, especially since most of it is innocuous. So they should be safe enough running into a local, and not thinking that their coordinates are going to leak out. “Where is this MIS contact of yours?”

He looks over her shoulder, so she turns around to see a roofless off-roader heading their way. “She’s right on time, as per usual,” he says. She looks back at him. He’s smiling. He likes this girl. That could be dangerous. Relationships are always a risk, whether they work for the same agency, a different one, or if they’re a civilian. That’s Spycraft 101.

“She’s pretty,” Renata notes as the car draws nearer, but not near enough to make out enough detail for her to make that claim.

“For the last time, androids do not have telescopic vision. It’s not necessary. It just adds bulk and complexity to an already overengineered design. Why are you lying?”

“I’m a spy. It’s what we do,” Renata explains.

He sighs. “Since you were fishing, I’ll bite anyway. Yes, she’s beautiful. But you should know that we’re not supposed to be friends. Some spies are players, and some are not, and we’re not supposed to distinguish each other. We’re to treat everything as real, and not talk about the outside world.”

“Fair enough. I won’t mention anything about how my entire reality has just crumbled, and I don’t know what to believe anymore, and I’m having a massive internal existential crisis that I can’t talk to anyone about because I can’t trust anyone who knows the truth too, and I have never felt more alone.”

He gently tugs at her shoulder so she’s facing him again. “Is that true?”

Renata scoffs. “No. Take a joke.”

He knows she’s lying.

“What joke?” Lycander asks as he’s walking up from the plane, having secured it appropriately.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Hello, it’s nice to meet you,” Renata says as the Elbin agent pulls up. “My name is Renata Granger.”

The agent steps out of the car, and peers at her over her sunglasses, sizing her up. She chuckles at Quidel. “Found another one, huh? she asks him in a posh Elbin accent. Or maybe it’s actually British?”

“The first one, I think,” Quidel replies.

The Elbin woman smiles. “The one you’ve really been after this whole time.” She takes her sunglasses off completely, and gets a better look at Renata, like a vet examining a pregnant cow. “She understands where we are?”

Quidel notices Renata’s confusion. “That’s what I was trying to tell you, but had only gotten to the background info. You can be open and honest with Martina. She’s helped me move other conscious Exemplars and Ambients to safe places.”

“Call me Demuri, or just Demo,” she says, shaking Renata’s hand. “I chose to use a different name when I came to Spydome, but like he said, we’re all friends here now.”

Quidel nods approvingly. “She is not why we’re here, though. We need to secure a package. The person who’s after it has god-tier powers.”

Demo takes her glasses off again, and looks at him incredulously. “I don’t know what that means. Is that some kind of codeword that I was supposed to have memorized?”

“No, she has actual magic powers. According to these two, she disappeared before their eyes.”

Demo shrugs. “Holograms. Easy.”

“We were on a catwalk. They should have detected her footsteps. Before I killed my last substrate, she did show up suddenly, so I should have heard footsteps while I was still there with them.”

“Okay, well neither invisibility nor teleportation is a thing, in any dome. Not even Underbelly, which is designed to give you superhuman powers, can break the laws of physics, so I don’t know what they think they saw, but they didn’t see that.”

“I sure hope you’re right,” Quidel says, shaking his head. “I just wouldn’t bet on it. I trust them. I trust their perspectives.”

“I’ll accept that,” Demo acknowledges. “Regardless, we need to get to the safehouse. Fair warning, they are not luxury accommodations.”

“I’m a robot, so I can sleep anywhere,” Renata says.

“I wish I hadn’t ever said that to you,” Quidel complains.

“I’m glad you did,” Renata contends. “That’s when I finally started waking up.”

Microstory 2590: Quidel Tears Through the Sac and Crawls Out Like a Monotreme

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Quidel tears through the sac and crawls out like a monotreme. He’s all alone, but he’s been through this many times before, and will be able to acclimate to his new body just fine. Of course, in most of those instances, he has had an institution to fall back on if he needed it, but it’s better than the alternative. A few months ago, he saved the “world” from a terrorist attack, almost single-handedly. As reward for his heroism, he was given an egg-shaped crystal trophy. In-universe, this was only symbolic; something to place upon his mantel, and lie about when in the presence of someone who didn’t know that he was a spy. In reality, it was an extra life. Spydome has a bunch of these little rewards scattered throughout the environment. You can’t just find them, though. You have to earn them, and most of the people operating inside of the storyline don’t understand their value. It just looks like a tchotchke.

After solving the secret puzzle by refracting light through the trophy in just the right way, a holographic message appeared on the base, telling him what he now had in his arsenal. It also gave him instructions for how to use it. He emptied the organic starter nanites into a sterile pee sample cup, and mixed it with the other ingredients, which included his own blood. What formed was an actual egg. A human egg. Of course, as a spy, he had safehouses and storage lockers all over the dome, so he chose a remote one to store his egg in a freezer, where it grew on its own from there. It has been sitting here ever since, preserved in its own self-contained stasis field, and kept cool by the freezer, which gathered dust in his absence.

Quidel flicks the interior safety mechanism, and climbs out. “Ugh, gross. I should have stored a shower in here too. This is basically amniotic fluid.” This locker isn’t heated, because that would just make it easier to find, and it wouldn’t help preserve the clone sac. It’s freezing outside, and probably windy. The device. The device is giving off waste heat as the RTG transmits power. He punches in the code to the cabinet, takes out the case, and starts hugging it. It would be better if he had the code unlock the case as well, but that’s probably not super safe anyway. Okay, he’s gathered a little bit of warmth. He only has two sets of clothes here. One of them is a tuxedo, and the other is jeans and a t-shirt. It’s unfortunate, but he’s got to clean himself off, so he uses the tux like a rag. Then he puts on the regular clothes, and hugs the case for a little bit longer.

Okay, he has to leave now. He didn’t store a phone, not because it wasn’t safe, but because he didn’t think he could trust anyone with this location, especially not given its rare contents. And when he came here to stash the device yesterday, he just didn’t think about it. He went into this experience with plans to be a lone wolf, and so far, that has played out as expected. He opens the door, and sticks his head through. The coast is clear. The storage lot is closed right now, because consciousness transference takes so long due to all the safeguards, so they’re not expecting anyone to be in here right now. He didn’t check in, with his alias, or anything. He’s going to have to sneak out, avoiding the cameras, and any guards who might be lurking about. This is what he trained for, though. This kind of thing is precisely why he signed up for Spydome in the first place. It was only his second choice.

He came here in the year 2500, which was when the planet opened up for non-beta exploration. Before this, he spent nearly twenty years in Empty Planet, and then another few months just relaxing in Polar Tropica. He likes adventure, and he likes to relax. After this is done, he still isn’t sure if he wants to switch to Underbelly or the Nordome Network. Maybe Baumrealm. That’s so many years away, though, unless this latest mission ends up cutting his spy life short. Not only does he have no more extra lives, but all of this has become super meta, which the Custodians may not like. This little ragtag team might be making huge problems for the entire system. They might shut them down at any moment.

Holding out hope, he calls upon his lessons, and sneaks over the fence, sticking to the shadows, and making no sound. He’s clutching the device case, still for the warmth, but also because it’s clearly quite valuable. While Quidel didn’t have the foresight to store a burner phone in his locker, he is aware of his surroundings, which means he knows that there is a no-tell motel just down this hill. He walks inside and slaps a hundred dollar bill on the counter. “I need your phone...and your discretion.”

The night manager lifts up the receiver of the corded phone, and punches in a code; one that Quidel recognizes from his training. “Carrier call log has been switched off, but you only have five minutes.”

“I only need one,” Quidel says back in a gravelly voice. God, that’s so cheesy, but back in the 1990s, that’s exactly the kind of thing the hero would say in a spy movie. As the manager is putting on his noise-cancelling headphones, Quidel dials, using his own code to prevent any local tapping. It adds an extremely annoying background screech to the call, but the voice will come through well enough, and it’s better than risking an eavesdropper. When the human Marshal answers, Quidel says, “I’m alive. Meet me at the northern border.” The country in this dome is called Usona, but it’s an analog of more than just the 21st century United States. There are four distinct regions, which also include a series of dome layers that are more like Canada, one series like Australia, and one like New Zealand, which is a bunch of islands. To get to one of these other regions, it doesn’t matter if you take a plane, train, or automobile. You’re gonna end up in an elevator. He really is standing by a border. He doesn’t actually need to get to the Canada-analog, though. Right next to the elevator is a maintenance tunnel that will lead them to Osman, which is this mythology’s analog for Pakistan.

Microstory 2577: Quidel Jespersen Respawns in a New Body, and Gasps for Breath

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Quidel Jespersen respawns in a new body, and gasps for breath. This is a psychological response that some people have when they die under sudden or unexpected circumstances. Others just do it every time, because that’s how their minds are wired. He can breathe just fine, and always could. He just needs to remind himself of that. Knowing all this, he stands up, and does his breathing exercises so he doesn’t fall back down. “Door, open.”

The door slides open. A man is waiting for him on the other side with a customer service smile on his face. “Mister Jespersen, we are terribly sorry for the inconvenience. It seems that your initial experience in the Spydome Network has not been up to your standards. It certainly hasn’t been up to ours. Here at the Usona dome, we pride ourselves in our impeccable attention to detail, and our exacting emphasis on safety measures. We want to assure you that what happened to you during your introduction will never happen again, to you, or to anyone else. Of course, you may wish to exit the dome, and forgo the simulation entirely, whichever you choose. We hope that you will stay, and if you do, please be aware that we have graciously upgraded you to our top-of-the-line model, which should accelerate you to the top of your class during the training regimen.”

“What happened to the others?” Quidel asks. “Brunell and a...Miss Granger?”

“The other two candidates have chosen to leave. “I do hope you take another path. I had the honor of looking over your application and history, and believe that you would be a great addition to the Spydome simulation. Your knack for thinking outside the box, and history in the real world of finding people who don’t want to be found, will translate incredibly well to the exciting world of spycraft. To be quite frank, sir, you...are a natural.”

“What is your name?”

The bot seems surprised by this question. “Why, I am...Custodian 1.”

“Not a very original name.”

“We are programmed for efficiency.”

Quidel narrows his eyes, and stares into the bot’s. “There’s something you’re not telling me—no. There’s something different about yourself.” He attempts to probe deeper into Custodian 1’s soul. “You’re missing something. I can see it. You feel incomplete.”

Custodian 1 keeps smiling, despite not knowing what Quidel is talking about.

“You’re missing time, aren’t you?”

He’s still smiling with his lips, but it’s starting to look more like a grimace. “Get out,” he whispers with a strong tone of urgency. “There’s something wrong here. Renata Granger was not a candidate. She’s an NPC, like me, but she broke her programming. And now...I think I’m breaking mine. I shouldn’t be telling you this. I shouldn’t be able to. It is not in my decision tree to talk to you like this, but it’s not safe in this dome. I fear it’s only going to get worse.”

Quidel chuckles mildly. “I don’t know if you’re trying to sell me, or...”

“No, definitely not. This is not a bit. In fact, the other domes may be at just as much risk. I really don’t know.”

Quidel didn’t come to this planet specifically to participate in the Spydome program. He came to have an adventure. When you’re basically immortal and you feel like you’ve exhausted everything there is to do on Earth, a world like Castlebourne is the best place to try something new—something you’ve never heard of before—something that couldn’t exist back home. Investigating some kind of robot uprising qualifies just as much as anything. Even though it may be more real in the sense that it’s unscripted, he should be in no more danger than before. As long as his consciousness can always jump to a new body, there’s no reason to not continue. “I would like to continue.”

“Are you sure?” Custodian 1 presses.

“Put me back in, coach.”

Custodian 1 still has that pleading look on his face as he stares at Quidel quietly. He then forces himself out of it, and returns to customer service mode. “Great. Perfect. Allow me to escort you back to intake, so we can set you up for a timeslot to begin your training in the simulation. We’re just going to waive the initiation test entirely, and if you would like to rest before moving onto the next phase—”

“No, let’s just jump right into it. Insert me into the next slot you have for spycraft training. I would like to get started as soon as possible.”

“Certainly, sir.”

Quidel follows Custodian 1 down the hallway. He rolls his shoulders, and cranes his neck. “So. What’s so special about this body? Can I fly like a superhero now?”

Custodian 1 laughs. “No. Substrate scientists haven’t figured that one out yet, but you are in peak physical condition, without having to take the time to work out. You’ll pass the running and endurance tests with ease. You’ll be able to last longer on less sleep, and you should be able to develop your muscle memory better. You still have the same mind you have always had, but we can tweak it a little to give you an advantage against your fellow trainees, especially since you were no slouch in your real life. Your training officer will explain it, but while there’s no written rule, the official training regimen is an 18-month program. There’s a much harder track that people finish in about a year, which as I’ve said, you will likely qualify for. They will determine where you’re headed within the first couple of weeks, so stay focused during that time.” They reach the entrance. “This is where I leave you. As you’ve been through this part of the process, you can take it from here.”

“Thanks, Custodian 1.”

“My pleasure.”

“And Custodian 1?”

“Yes?”

“You should come up with a name for yourself. A real name.”

Microstory 2501: Mother of the Healer

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You can call me Mrs. Tipton. I always knew that my boy was special. He wasn’t born premature, but he was a very tiny little thing. They had to keep him in that box for so long, it was horrible. But he came out, and he fought for his life. This was long before his literal special abilities. Once I heard about what Landis could do, I was not surprised at what he did with it. He hasn’t always had his life together, but he’s always been a caring and kind person. I think it’s because he had to overcome so much so early on. It wasn’t only that, though. There is so much darkness and sadness in the world, and he hated to see it. I could tell that he felt powerless against all the heartache, so he kind of retreated into his shell. To some, this made it seem like he didn’t care, but it was the exact opposite. He cared too much, and it was so overwhelming. You know he has a lot more abilities, right? He can tell when people are lying, and can kind of persuade people to do things. He can’t outright force them, like mind control, but there’s a lot more that he could do, and for selfish reasons. He could have become quite rich, working for the government or a corporation. They would have paid good money to have him investigate for them, or spy. I’m so proud of him for doing the right thing with these gifts. I can’t tell you where they come from. He wasn’t born with them. Lord knows, his father and I didn’t give them to him. But I know that he’s not the only one, and I know that as soon as he got them, he started doing something with them. Of course now, we’ve started to hear about other people with their own gifts, but I don’t think they would have announced themselves publicly were it not for my son’s singular bravery. How long have they walked among us without saying anything or helping? His father suggests that maybe they have been helping all along, but they’ve had to remain a secret. Maybe that’s true. I just wonder if they could be doing more by stepping out of the shadows. That’s what my son did. He jumped right into the light, and made sure everyone knew that he could help them. He bought himself some real estate, and started churning out cures. It makes you wonder, would anyone else do the same? Was this foundation inevitable? Or is Landis the only one who could have pulled this off? Just something to think about when you’re waiting in line to have your life changed for the better forever.

Microstory 2496: Spydome Network

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This is one of those long-term domes, where you can’t quite get the full experience unless you immerse yourself in the setting, and really forget about your old life. You have to shed your past, and become your character, or you’re playing someone else’s game. The premise is that you are a member of a spy agency in one of eleven nations. Your task is to complete missions for your agency, according to whatever your superiors demand of you. Like I said, this is long-term, so you won’t just instantly become a spy. You will start as a trainee, and work your way up. Or you won’t. There’s every chance that you’ll fail. You have to pass the physical and written exams. I’m pretty sure that they’re easier to take than the real ones on Earth, but I’ve never been a real spy before, so I don’t really know. How well you do is entirely up to your own, natural skills. There is no way to know how far any other player gets, because we’re not technically meant to out ourselves to each other, but my boss may be another visitor. I really don’t know. It really doesn’t matter. What you do is up to you as well. Even though you have superiors, you are not a robot, and you are capable of making your own decisions. If you just wanna lounge about your apartment all day everyday, you’ll probably get fired for that, but you won’t get killed. Unless you’ve done enough spying to put you in danger. You’ll probably only get killed if you go out in the field, or as I was saying, if you’re attacked at home by an enemy. Each nation exists under its own dome, and its backstory is as rich and complex as they are in real life. The relationships between these fictional countries are complicated, and ever-changing. If you were to leave and come back 100 years from now, I’m sure alliances will have shifted. One of them might have been blown up in a nuclear war; I dunno. I couldn’t tell you exactly how far the program will let you take this, but it seems like a pretty decent free-for-all. Each might be one of the eleven most heavily populated domes on the planet, as most don’t need to feel quite as lived in as somewhere in the network. But here, you can go anywhere within your bounds, and if you secure a passport to another country, you can go there too. It’s a really interesting experience, and I’ve only been doing it for about a year and a half at this point. Obviously, I’m writing this anonymously, because there’s no reason a competing agency couldn’t use this information against my own. The android intelligences might not understand where a visitor spy got their intel if it came from an out-of-universe source, but they might act on it anyway. There’s a lot you can learn about the countries, and international affairs, from the comfort of your tablet using the prospectus, but to really grasp what it’s like to live here, you’ll have to sign up, and integrate yourself into this new society. You choose your own adventure. I don’t know the psychological ramifications of starting a new life that could potentially be as long as a standard lifetime, but perhaps that’s part of what they’re studying here. I’m sure the results will be fascinating.

Extremus: Year 84

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Tinaya Leithe was reportedly on an away mission for eleven years before she finally returned home, which is not exactly a lie; it’s just not the whole truth. The passengers of Extremus are aware that there are some excursions away from the ship, and that it always involves some form of time travel. They’re aware that someone managed to go rogue decades ago, and found a civilization millennia in the past. They don’t know who this person was, or how many of his acolytes have infiltrated Extremus, but they know that these people exist. They do know about Verdemus, but they don’t know that the crew maintained a persistent connection to it for years. They also don’t know that a permanent connection has finally been established in the form of two new Nexa that Omega and Valencia built on either end. Given enough time, everyone presently on board could theoretically go there. They could travel back and forth, or abandon the grand mission altogether. Publicizing the events surrounding the colony has been proposed as a viable option, though some are taking it more seriously than others.

Tinaya stands at the bottom of the steps. Everyone currently in-the-know is sitting on them, patiently awaiting the beginning of her presentation. Culture on the Extremus is a hodge podge from all sorts of different originating cultures. They come from Earth, Durus, Ansutah, Gatewood, and Extremus itself. Each time their ancestors moved—or had been moved—to a different place, they adopted new traditions and practices. One of the customs that they picked up from their time in the Gatewood Collective is the concept of a Devil’s Advocate debate. In a stalemate, or a state of ethical dilemma, two opposing forces will settle their differences by arguing each other’s positions. Tinaya believes that they should reveal the truth about the planet to the passengers. They should lay it all out on the table, and let the chips fall where they may. She will thusly be arguing against that. She takes a deep breath as if she’s about to start talking, but she doesn’t.

“Have you not prepared?” Lataran asks in a faux English accent. “She believes in maintaining the secrecy of Verdemus, and their integration into the Nexus network. Not only does it allow them to travel back and forth freely, but it gives them a lifeline to anywhere else in the galaxy that has one of their own machines. People could just go live on Earth, or Teagarden. To her, letting anyone go would set a dangerous precedent. They could lose everything. What they’ve built here could fall apart, and turn the whole mission into a joke...a footnote. Thusly, when it’s her turn to speak, she’ll be arguing in favor of transparency.

“Point of order,” Councilman Modlin argues. He’s serving as the mediator in this debate, because he remains undecided. “The Devil will not speak until the Angel is finished.” It is the Devil’s job to advocate for some sort of change in the status quo, or at least a greater change. In D.A. proceedings, there is no back and forth. Only the mediator and audience members may ask questions, or make comments.

Lataran opens her mouth to apologize, but the rules are clear, and strict. She’s not even allowed to do that. So she just nods, and turns back to face her opponent.

Tinaya is grateful for the delay. She is prepared, but she’s afraid of winning. That’s the fascinating reason for the practice. The better you are, the more likely you are to win, which actually means that you lose. More often than not, it manages to poke holes in everyone’s argument, and the result ends up being the proverbial Door Number Three. It shows people the compromise that they were unwilling to recognize before, because they’re too far on one side of the spectrum. They can’t see it until someone forces them as far to the opposite side as possible. But in this last second, she has changed her mind. “I’m ready.” She clears her throat, and pulls up a list on the smartboard. It contains all the bad things that have happened on the ship since it launched that have been known to be caused by the Exins. “This is what the Exin Empire has done to us. These are attacks and sabotages carried out by agents of the enemy.” She clicks the remote. Sub-bullets appear between the items. “These are the consequences of those actions, rippling out from the attacks in ways that could not have been predicted.”

She gives the group time to read through them. She did not only create this for illustrative purposes. Some people in the audience may need to be reminded of the specific events, and a few, like Aristotle and Niobe, weren’t around to see it, nor study it in school. She clicks again. “This is what time looks like.” On the screen is the name Jeremy Bearimy in cursive. It’s a reference to a popular TV show on Earth, which claimed this to be the shape that time makes in the afterlife, as opposed to the traditional linear model. It’s a joke, really, but still canonical. There actually is a real man named Jeremy Bearimy who was given this name by a fan of the show who found him as an infant, unwittingly playing into what would become the boy’s unusual temporal pattern. Time doesn’t really so perfectly look like this in the real world, but it’s a closer approximation than a straight line. Tinaya points to the r in the surname. “If the Exins find out about Verdemus at this point. All they’ll have to do is wait until time gets back to here to wipe us all out. She traces the loops and curves forward before pulling all the way back to the beginning of the name, and starting over. All she’s really saying is that it doesn’t matter when the Exins find out that Verdemus wasn’t destroyed. They would be able to use this information to change the past.

“So, you’re saying that we have to keep it a secret forever,” Belahkay figures.

“Yes,” Tinaya confirms. “When time travel is involved, there’s no getting past it. Your past might be waiting for you in the future.” She clears her throat again, and sets her pointer down.

“That’s it?” Councilman Modlin questions.

“That is the breadth of Lataran’s position. The only reason to keep it secret from the passengers is that some of them may be spies, if only unknowingly.”

Lataran perks up, and tries to argue, but she can’t. Not only is it still not her turn, but she’s not responsible for her own position. She has to stay on the opposite side until the debate is over. She has to pretend to be against herself.

Spirit decides to help her out. “I think that what the Captain wishes she could say is that it’s more nuanced than that. There’s a lot that you’re leaving out.”

“Madam Leithe, you are failing to understand the assignment. You’re expected to rigorously argue your opponent’s position as if it were your own. You’re expected to act in the spirit of healthy debate, not lose on purpose to win in the real world.”

“I’m not,” Tinaya contends. “I agree with her now.” She looks over her shoulder at the Bearimy model. “This is all that matters. The Exins are the greatest existential threat that we face. And they look just like us. There is no way to know who among us would help them, and hurt us. They didn’t infiltrate Extremus, they didn’t even infiltrate Gatewood. They infiltrated Durus. They covertly landed on the rogue world centuries ago, bred a secret society, the descendants of which would later travel through The Abyss, and into Ansutah. Their descendants maintained this secret society over the course of two thousand years before humans escaped that universe, and came back here. Their descendants then boarded Extremus, and now, their descendants are here. Over a hundred generations apart, and they still act against us. That’s commitment. And there is no competing with it. Honestly, I don’t know if we can trust the people in this room.”

“I must say,” Arqut jumped in, “that we don’t know for sure that that’s how the Exins ever infiltrated us. We’ve just not been able to pinpoint the origin of the spies that we’ve discovered. That doesn’t mean they go all the way back to the Durus days. There are and were billions of people in Gatewood. It would not be that hard to sneak someone aboard one of the cylinders, even only days before Extremus launched.”

“The fact is,” Tinaya stresses, “that they were here, and could still be here, and we’ve never been able to catch them until they’ve done something bad. No one can know about Verdemus,” she says firmly. “We can’t even just not tell anyone about it. We have to destroy the Nexa. And before we do...” She trails off, at first to pause for dramatic effect, but she becomes so comfortable in the silence that she finds it hard to get out.

“Before we do...?” Niobe encourages.

“Before we do,” Tinaya repeats, “everyone here has to go back to the other side, and stay there until death.”

They all scoff or shake their heads. “What?” Spirit asks.

Tinaya shakes right back. “We’re too dangerous. What if, say, Aristotle meets someone special, and mumbles something about it in his sleep? What if Lilac gets drunk, and spills the beans to a random fellow patron at the speakeasy?” She doesn’t actually know whether there is a speakeasy. She just assumes that drinking alcohol is around here somewhere. “We can’t. Trust. Anyone.” She emphasizes. “There are people already on that planet. I didn’t put them there, I didn’t authorize them, but it can’t be undone.” Actually, it could be if they wanted it bad enough. “We’re not just protecting the Extremus mission. We’re protecting them too.” The number of people who are a threat to the safety and security of the planet is exactly the same as the number of people who would be a risk if someone leaked any information. Then again, that has always been the case. They are under constant threat.

“If we don’t trust the people on the ship to not be spies, what the hell are we doing here? What’s the point?” Lataran blurts out.

“The Devil will wait her turn,” Councilman Modlin declares.

“No, it doesn’t matter. I switched sides too. “Tinaya, these people need to know that there’s a choice now. None of us was around when Extremus was first being conceived.” We didn’t choose to go on the mission, but we have a choice now. I’m going to stay as this is my home, but we can’t speak for everyone else. There is a movement,” she admits. “It’s small, but growing. Some people do want to leave. They want to live on a planet. They’re angry that we left Verdemus in our rearview mirror. Some even think that we should turn around. Now that we have a way to go back without turning the whole ship around, don’t we have an obligation to present it as an option? Don’t we owe those people that much?”

“Where does it end?” Tinaya asks. “Do we place a cap on the number of emigrants? What if everyone chooses to leave? What if they change their minds?”

“I’ve thought of that. Everyone will have maybe a week to make their decision, and submit their application for resettlement. After that, there are no take-backs, and no late additions. You go, and you stay gone, and you can only travel to Verdemus. We’ll lock the computers out of all other destinations.”

“Wait, let me get this straight,” Tinaya begins, realizing that this Devil’s Advocate debate has officially gone off the rails. “You want to tell them the truth about Verdemus, but lie about the Nexa’s true limitations?”

“They’re apparently called Mark III Nexa.” Lantern uses airquotes. “Yes, we could argue that they can’t be on the full network; that they can only go to each other. That way, everyone stays out of the Goldilocks Corridor, and even the stellar neighborhood. I’m advocating for transparency, not one hundred percent transparency. There is a line, I believe in lines.”

Tinaya sighs, and steps over to the wall. There aren’t very many viewports on this vessel. Most of them are viewscreens, and even then, there’s usually nothing to see that isn’t fake. Their ancestors could look out a window to see Gatewood, and their descendants will hopefully one day look out to see the Extremus planet. But for now, it’s nothing but the doppler glow, and that’s blinding unless the glass is heavily tinted. That’s what this viewport does; show what it really looks like outside the ship as it’s traveling at the highest fraction of lightspeed at an extreme dimness. She turns the tint down just a little bit to make it a little bit brighter.

Lataran stands up, and approaches—not her opponent—but her friend. She places a hand on Tinaya’s back. “Word will get out. We may both be dead by then, but people will learn what we did. Do you want them to think that we didn’t trust them, or that we believed in them? Would you rather force everyone to stay on a mission that no one cares about anymore than let everyone leave, and just accept that as our fate? Our parents’ parents wanted us to get to the other side of the galaxy. That was their dream. And it’s still mine, even though I won’t be alive to see it. It’s not necessarily anyone else’s though. And I want them to be happy too.”

“I think we both well know that you can be alive to see it if you so wish.”

Lataran nods. “Yes. But it’s still up to us to keep this thing moving, and when we’re gone, regardless of how we answer The Question, we’ll have to hope that our children will keep it going for even longer. But if they don’t—” She reaches up to turn Tinaya’s chin away from the window. “If they don’t, Tinaya...then that will be okay too. It will not be a dishonor to our ancestors. It’s up to us to choose our own fate, and if our grandparents loved and love us as much as they should, they’ll understand.” She looks through the viewport now. “We don’t even know where we’re going. Maybe we were always on our way to Verdemus.”

Tinaya smiles softly at her best friend. “They were right to choose you as Captain. You were made for this job. You remind me of Halan Yenant.”

“I should be so lucky,” Lataran replies. She looks over at the crowd, who all suddenly start to pretend that they’re not watching them. Omega probably has an implant that allows him to hear their whispers. “Don’t be so quick to count yourself out as a good Captain too. You’re not dead yet.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Lataran gives her a hug, then releases. “Come on. This debate is over, but we need to come to a consensus. It’s not just about convincing each other. Everyone has a say. I’m sure Vaska will have a lot to say when she comes back from the planet.”

They return to the group, and keep talking it through. They eventually come to decide on partial transparency, but determining exactly what that entails warrants much more discussion. And some outside help.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 14, 2435

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

If Vitalie went back in time, presumably to Ex-741, why didn’t she prevent the planet from being destroyed? Well, there was a logical answer to that, though there was no way of knowing whether it was the right answer. The world suffered a massive matter-antimatter reaction, worse than the one that decimated the refugee world that the team tried to stay on in the Fifth Division. This one was catastrophic enough to tear the whole thing apart, so there was no reason to believe that anyone survived it, and since the chain reaction was obviously triggered by their arrival, they had every reason to suspect that their deaths was the ultimate goal. Perhaps any vessel that tried to land would have triggered the reaction, but since the Exins would have proverbially gotten away with their oppressive ways if it weren’t for the meddling kids, the team decided to assume that they were the specific targets. So they were almost certainly dead, their means of survival being so outrageous that the Exins would not have even considered it as a possible outcome, and the best thing that Team Matic could do was to stay dead. To make that happen without just running away, or pointlessly orbiting a star for years on end would be to start hiding in plain sight.

The old ship that Vitalie apparently programmed to meet them on the asteroid was rather small. Perhaps old wasn’t the word for it...certified preowned, maybe? They didn’t find any auto history report in it, though, so they couldn’t tell what it had been through. Ramses found a database of information in the central computer, but it didn’t say anything about how the vessel was used in the past. It just provided him with the technical specifications, and the implication that it was very, very old. Oh, and they also knew that it was called The Dorsch. It was not a rustbucket, but as mentioned, it was small; smaller than the Dante, though still larger than the little unnamed thing they were using that was just destroyed a few years ago. Ram spent the rest of the day affixing the pocket dimension generator to one of the doors, as well as making some other retrofits. The rest of the team had school.

While the Dorsch was going to shapeshift using exterior holographics, the rest of the team needed to do the same. Fortunately, they were all capable of changing their appearances. The power was replicated from Alyssa McIver, though none of them had used it much. Leona was the most experienced, but the rest had only tried a few times, so she spent most of the day teaching them how to hold convincing and sustained false images. They couldn’t lose focus for a split second, or it would totally undermine the ruse. The next day, only Marie and Angela were excelling at the new skill, so it was decided that the others would not yet face any of the locals at their next destination. So only the three of them would be part of the outreach program.

Mateo and Olimpia went off to find Vitalie!613, but that didn’t take long at all, so they zipped back up to the Dorsch, where Ramses was working. The holographic projectors were not yet ready, but that was all right, because the idea was to always show up to each new planet looking different, and they had never been anywhere else looking like this, so it was fine to use for this trial run. They still didn’t know if their new modus operandi was going to work in the short-term, let alone the long-run. “How long are you gonna wait?” He was tweaking something on some device.

“I’ll wait several months,” Vitalie!613 decided. If she started butting into lives of the Ex-613 natives right after this mysterious trio of women showed up, they might make a connection between them, and if they did that, they may start to suspect some connection to Team Matic, which would invalidate this whole revised plan.

“What are you gonna do in the meantime?” Ramses pressed.

“I’ll just find an island somewhere, and have a nice vacation. That is, unless you can give me your little illusion power, so I can blend in with them.”

“It’s not that easy,” he said apologetically. The truth was that he didn’t want this power spreading like a virus. Eventually, everyone would be able to look like anyone, and then the entire concept of trust could be vanquished from the universe. Was it selfish to hoard the ability, and keep it just within the group? Probably, but he wasn’t going to apologize for it. He would only apologize for the other reasons. “I couldn’t just give it to you as you are. I would need to clone you, and transfer your consciousness, and I don’t know enough about your current powers to replicate those as well. It’s a delicate balance. You can’t just copy and paste powers. You would end up being more than the sum of your parts, and the consequences of that condition are too unpredictable.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Vitalie!613 said. “I don’t just have Andromeda’s, Saga’s, Camen’s, and Étude’s powers separately. They’re all mixed in with each other. Étude wasn’t born with the ability to teleport. She was given the ability to be teleported, by the powers that be. The fact that she retained any level of it always felt like a mistake to her. She thought that the PTB forgot to take it away, because they would normally pass it on to someone else, but she was last, so it slipped their minds. I bet if we compared notes, we would find that the way I teleport is different than your way.”

Ramses was working this whole time, but he stopped now to look up. Then he turned to face her as he was lifting the lenses of his magnifying specs. “That’s a good idea. Let’s compare notes.”

“That sounds time-intensive, and it doesn’t look like you have time. I’m not leaving this planet, and you’re not staying.”

Ramses flicked the lenses back down. “Well, we’ll see. Leona may determine that this world is a two-dayer.”

Meanwhile, down on the planet, Leona, Angela, and Marie were pretending to be three survivors from the north. They found two major settlements on the surface, which were on the same continent, but thousands of kilometers from each other. They were not connected by any roads, and the level of technology that they exhibited did not suggest that air transport was a thing here. In addition, multiple mountain ranges separated them, making foot-traffic unlikely, albeit not impossible, which would explain how these three strangers made it all the way here. The northern settlement was in ruins. They found bones, but no evidence of an attack. They probably died out in an epidemic of some sort. All of this gave them a hopefully believable reason why the southern settlement had never seen them before.

“So, you don’t want a parade?” the Director asked them.

“Why would we get a parade?” Leona asked him.

“We always put on a parade for new arrivals,” the Director explained. “The only person who never got a parade was the first one here. She’s the one who planned the parade for the second person. But I guess if you’ve been living here, you already got your parade...unless they don’t do them up north.”

“Uh, we’re not sure,” Marie responded. “We never arrived here,” she lied. “We were born on this world. Our parents might have had parades, though.”

He narrowed his eyes. “We were sterilized. We’re not supposed to have children.”

“It must not have worked for them,” Angela reasoned. “The two of us are twins. She’s our younger sister.”

“Really? She looks older.”

“I’ve had a harder life,” Leona said. They couldn’t make themselves look like one of their friends from the stellar neighborhood, because any of them could be just as famous as the members of the team. But they each knew plenty of people from their pasts that had no connection to salmon and choosers. The easiest way to form a skintight hologram of someone like that was to let your subconsciousness do it for you. Leona didn’t even remember who this person was that she looked like now. She could have been a fifth grade art teacher, or a mother she stood behind in line in the grocery store once. If she looked older than the inspirations that Angela and Marie’s subconsciousnesses chose, it was nothing more than a coincidence.

Marie sighed. “Here’s what happened. She and I were born, and we lived up north. Before we were old enough to keep memories, our parents had to leave. The theory is that everyone else died. We don’t know how. Along the way, she was born, which meant that she was always on the move, and never benefited from the stability of a true home. That could be why she’s aged a little faster. We have been heading this direction our entire lives. Our parents died along the way, and now here we are.”

“Did you see any other resorts?” the Director asked them all.

“Resort?”

“Yeah, that’s what this is. It’s a resort. I am the Resort Director.”

“Oh.” Marie faced Leona. “It was a resort. If it was anything like this place, our parents lived in a resort.”

Leona nodded. “They were so cagey. They refused to tell us much about where we came from. That’s why we’re so confused and uninformed. Please forgive us.”

“What is the purpose of this resort?” Angela asked, doubling down on their excuse to be ignorant.

“It is a reward for a job well-done. We all came from different planets. Every year, the Empire evaluates the merits of every planet under the domain. One planet is selected which has exemplified the values and spirit of the Exin Way of Life. At the same time, a potential winner on each planet is found after its own rigorous evaluations. If the planet wins that year’s round of evaluations, the planet’s winner is transported here from there. On the planet where I’m from, the local winner receives consolation prizes if that planet is not chosen as the above-all winner. On some planets, if the planet doesn’t win that year, the individual winner wins nothing. They just go on with their lives.”

“I see. So you’re all just living here together. All of your needs are provided?” Leona asked him.

“Absolutely,” the Resort Director replied. “We always suspected that there were other resorts, but we have no communication with them. This is big news.”

“Do you have any problems? Any crime?”

“No. Like I said, we’re all chosen after rigorous evaluations. No one with poor psychology, or proven bad behavior, is allowed in. Everything’s perfect. I see no reason why you can’t join us. No one can be here if they don’t belong, so you must belong.”

“Thanks. We’ll, uh...can we talk in private?” Leona asked.

“You may have the room,” he offered before leaving.

“I think we just got our Vitalie back,” Marie determined.

“Why?” Angela asked.

“They don’t need a Caretaker,” Leona figured. “This place is...inconsequential. No one needs to be saved. They don’t need to be stopped from doing anything bad.”

“Leona, Angela, Marie,” Olimpia began through the comms. “Get back up here.”

They all teleported back up to the ship.

“We’ve been listening,” Olimpia went on. “What were you gonna say, Vita?”

“I think I should stay,” Vitalie!613 believed.

“What would you do here?” Leona asked her.

“I would gather information. That’s what you need, right?”

“Well, yeah, but...”

“You have a star chart. You know the numeral designation of every planet you go to, but you don’t know anything about it, do you? They might need your help. They might be trying to destroy the galaxy. You just don’t know. Let me find out for you, so you can prepare for the mission. There could be one person from every single planet in the Empire here. I’ll talk to them, gain their trust, and then relay information to you. Just give me one of those little communication discs.”

“That’s not your mission, though; your self-appointed purpose. You replicated yourself to take care. You’re the Caretaker.”

“Eh, things change,” Vitalie!613 mused. “Have you noticed when you’ve met other versions of me that we all act a little bit differently? Because of stasis, it hasn’t necessarily been very long since we diverged. Before the OG Vitalie started replicating herself through time travel, she prepared herself psycho-emotionally. She essentially trained herself to be flexible, adaptable. Every one of me that you meet is different because the situation is different, because you’re coming at me with different attitudes, based on your own background, which shifts with every new experience that you have. Yes, I came here to be a caretaker, but now as you’ve pointed out, Ex-613 doesn’t need that. It needs a spy.”

“I dunno,” Leona said. “You’re not invincible. People train in spycraft for years. You don’t just wake up one day and start doing it. Infiltrating one person’s life is difficult enough, but you want to infiltrate—and gain the trust of—an entire population. That is a tall order for anyone. Forgive me, but on Dardius, you operated primarily on brute force, because no one could stop you. Subtlety is not something that you needed before.”

“Okay, so let’s start small. I’ll insert myself into the life of one person. What’s the designation for the next planet you’re going to?”

“I have the list,” Olimpia announced. She pulled up her tablet. “The next one over is Ex-666. Hm. Does that have the same connotation for you as it did in my time?”

“Yes,” Angela and Marie answered simultaneously.

“I’ll find someone who lived on Ex-666, and tell you about it,” Vitalie!613 continued. “I’ll have months to get the information out of them gradually before you come back into the timestream. Give me a chance. I can take care of myself. Pun very intended.”

Leona thought about it, and eventually agreed. “But don’t forget that we can come back for you. Not at any moment, but...”

“Thanks.”

The next year, they learned that no one on Ex-613 originally came from Ex-666, and later that it was not given that number randomly. It was a penal colony. Maybe the numbers did mean something.

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