The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 5, 2518

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Only Mateo was able to try the Daedalus wings during the reception, and that was only because he flew off before Ramses could stop him. They should have been inspected first to make sure that they were safe. Humans with wings were not impossible these days. There was, in fact, a relatively small community of wingèd people on the Core Worlds. The main reason they were impossible prior to genetic engineering and bioengineering was the weight. Wings with enough lift to carry a person would have to be so large that no one was physically capable of flapping them. If they were mechanical, well, that just added to the weight, especially with a powersource, and this all made it totally impractical. Only when humans could build new substrates for themselves did it become a reasonable prospect. Ramses designed the team’s bodies to be lighter than a natural human being’s, but they still weren’t specifically tailored for flight. Daedalus was an android of some kind, and since the mythology stated that the character had fabricated wings, he was almost certainly designed to be perfectly suited for flight. Mateo was not, and that was dangerous.

Fortunately, once Ramses did manage to get his hands on the things, he discovered that they weren’t just well-ordered feathers. Carefully hidden along the underside were tiny little fusion thrusters, which provided the lift, and the forward movement. They were controlled by the adjustment of the wearer’s head. It was essentially a cleverly disguised jetpack. It was unclear whether Daedalus’ own wings operated on the same principles, or if he was just somehow smart enough to build them after being instantiated in this physical simulation. He should have been placed under this dome with the knowledge typical of the time period he supposedly lived in, but who knew what was going on in Hrockas’ head when he conceived of Mythodome? It was one of the few domes that he conceptualized with hardly any help from his AI. He was an expert in Earthan mythology prior to his travels to the Charter Cloud, so this one was near and dear to his heart. He refused to explain it, expecting the art and adventure to speak for themselves.

Now that Ramses was satisfied with the results of his assessment, everyone was trying them. Well, he wasn’t so much as satisfied as he wasn’t allowed to block them anymore. He was hesitant to trust a gift from such a mysterious legendary individual, but he was overruled. Daedalus probably really did have a hidden agenda, but that doubtfully involved killing anybody on Team Matic, or anyone else. He did put his foot down at Romana, though. Her temporary reyoungification had not yet worn off, and she was still walking around in her original substrate. He might consider it later, but he wouldn’t allow anyone else on Castlebourne to use them unless they agreed to let him perform a thorough physical exam, which they didn’t. Leona was the last to give them a go before Ramses took them back, and secured them in his lab. That was okay, because it was about time to get to work.

“Wait, you’re not having a honeymoon?” Angela questioned.

“The average honeymoon these days,” Mateo began to reply, “is one month. That’s thirty years for us. We don’t have time for that.”

“Okay, well, you don’t have to do a full month,” Marie reasoned. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t choose a dome or two, and relax for a bit.”

Mateo and Leona exchanged a knowing look.

“What? What was that?” Marie asked.

“You should have noticed by now,” Leona said, to her, and the group, “that there is no such thing as a vacation for us. As soon as we try to relax,” she explained with airquotes, “something will come up, and we won’t be as prepared for it as we should be.”

“What are you talking about?” Angela pressed. “We relaxed for, like, three years on Flindekeldan before The Warrior finally found us.”

“The exception that proves the rule,” Mateo contended.

“You’re not using that right,” Leona told him reluctantly.

Mateo was about to ask for clarification when they heard whooping and hollering in the distance. An indistinct dot appeared just under the lowest clouds a few kilometers away. They focused their telescopic eyes, and were able to zoom in enough to make out that it was Young!Romana. She was wearing the wings, having presumably stolen them from Ramses’ lab. She flew towards them, and almost kissed the ground, but arced upwards at the last second, and headed back for the sky. “Hell yeah!” she exclaimed in her little high-pitched voice.

Ramses was noticeably upset. “I give you people too much access to my operations. I will be changing that.”

“She’s just a kid,” Marie reasoned.

“No, she’s not,” Ramses volleyed.

“Shouldn’t she have re-aged by now?” Olimpia asked. “I thought she said it wouldn’t last more than a day.”

“Yeah, that’s why she went down for a nap,” Leona said. “She said she thought it would trigger her transformation back. I’m not sure if she lied about that, or the nap, but she obviously teleported to Treasure Hunting Dome at some point to sneak into Ramses’ lab.”

Ramses was fiddling with his armband. “I’m working on new security protocols now.”

“She just wanted to be part of the group,” Mateo defended his daughter. “She’s been through a lot over the last few years. She needs this.”

“Daedalus didn’t design those things for a child’s body,” Ramses argued.

“They’re adjustable,” Marie reminded them. “That’s why I was able to wear them after Olimpia managed to fit the straps around her ample bosom.”

“Please,” Olimpia said, feigning disgust while holding up the back of her hand. “I’m a married woman.” She lowered all of her fingers but her ring finger, simultaneously showcasing her wedding ring while making it look like she was flipping Marie off.

“For now...” Marie joked.

“I can teleport up and grab her if you want,” Angela volunteered.

“No, that’s too dangerous,” Ramses replied. “She has to come down eventually.”

“Will the fusion thrusters run out of fuel at some point?” Mateo asked.

Ramses shook his head. “The feathers are lined with microscopic ramscoop nodes, which can draw in hydrogen for processing, so...no. She’ll get tired, though. She’s just a baby. Speaking of which, we need to fix that. Who are these twins who did this to her?”

“The Ashvins,” Angela reminded him. “Twin gods, part of the Hindu pantheon. We found them in the Dawnlands. This dome has many sectors, and they can’t all be accessed just by walking through a door. If you don’t have access to the right portal, you can’t go. Of course as teleporters, we can skip over those rules.”

Ramses tapped on his comms. “Romy, you’ve had your fun. I’m worried about your condition. I’ll let you use the wings later, but first, you need to go from Allen to Garner.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Romana responded.

“Just get back down here, please. I’m not mad, but you could be in medical distress, and not know it until it’s too late.”

Romana suddenly appeared a few meters above them. She slowly glided down towards the ground, and landed with grace and poise. The wings collapsed into their little box, which slipped off of her chest.

“You’ll navigate us to the Dawnlands,” Leona said as she was picking up the box.

“No,” Ramses decided. “The Walton twins are right. You need some kind of honeymoon. Get on the catalog, and choose a dome for your vacation. I don’t want to see you at least until 2521. That’s not that long of a honeymoon. Doesn’t it sound fair?”

“Yes, sir,” Mateo said, standing up straight, and saluting. He bent over real low and gave his daughter a kiss on the forehead. “I love you, sweetie. Be good for Uncle Ram-Ram.”

“Okay, I think we do need to go see the Ashvins again.” Them playfully treating her like an actual little girl got old a long time ago.

After a few more goodbyes, the newlyweds ran off for their honeymoon adventures. They weren’t going to confine themselves to only one dome, but a series of them, starting with Mud World: World of Mud. Ramses and Angela then split off to take Romana back to the Dawnlands sector. Marie said that she would be staying behind to do her own thing elsewhere without telling anyone what or where.

The name was absolutely appropriate. It was dawn here. It was bright enough for them to walk around without running into anything, but not clear enough to see the details of the landscape. It was a beautiful and calming place. Even the air seemed ultraclean, like something you would breathe out of an oxygen tank. As they were standing there,  two horses trotted up to them, pulling a golden chariot. Two strong young men stepped out, and approached. One had lighter skin, and the other darker. They moved with grace, symmetry, and synchronization. They were perfectly attuned to each other, perhaps by some kind of centralized hivemind shared between them. When they spoke, they did so in a seamless concerted effort, finishing each other’s sentences in some cases, and saying words simultaneously in others. “Hello, and welcome to the Dawnlands, foothills to Svarga, the celestial plane of light. How may we help you?”

“Could you undo what you did to her?” Ramses requested, gesturing to Romana. “She was told that the de-aging process would be temporary.”

The Ashvins smiled, again in sync. “Youth is temporary for all before they enter the Svarga or Naraka Loka. Aging is a part of life. It may be undone, but as the lotus reliably blooms each year, so too will man grow and change.”

Ramses gently closes his eyes, exasperated. “Are you telling me that she will only return to her normal age because she’s aging normally from here, and will eventually reach it anyway?”

“She will one day be as old as she was, and following, she will be even older. So too will you.”

“That’s not how my species works.”

The Ashvins were confused by this as it was leaning on the fourth wall, and they did not have a response.

“Look, we need this to happen faster than the full twenty years,” Ramses went on. “She clearly misunderstood the rules when she requested this from you.” She looked down at Romana. “Right?”

“Right. I didn’t want this to be permanent, or...so slow,” Romana confirmed.

“Apologies for the confusion,” the Ashvins claimed, “we meant no harm to your body or mind. We may reverse the ravages of changing seasons, but not hasten them. We cannot return you to the state you were in before your bath in the Sindhu River.”

Ramses shook his head again, which he felt like he was doing a lot of today. “Do you know of anyone—in any realm—who might be able to do what we ask?” No one on the team had ever heard of a retroverter who wasn’t also a proverter, but to be fair, they weren’t all too familiar with the concept. They really should have been questioning how such temporal powers ended up on this planet in the first place. They hadn’t recruited anyone with such abilities. Perhaps someone they did bring here, however, had connected Hrockas with other time travelers. These others could have donated their gifts to building Mythodome, or maybe even other domes, in such ways that broke the publicly known laws of physics.

“That is not something that we would know,” the Ashvins answered, a little bit sadly, but still believing that this wasn’t their fault. They did not know that they should clarify how Romana’s situation would work.

“All right. Let’s go do some research,” Ramses said, turning around. “There are a lot of mythological beings here. Maybe one of the other gods has real powers too.”

“Wait,” Romana said, stopping him with a hand on his arm. “I know someone who can do it.”

“Who?”

“You.”

Ramses’ eyes darted over to Angela’s from a brief feeling of panic, because he didn’t know what Romana was talking about. “I can’t do what you ask. I’m not a proverter either.”

“I don’t need a proverter,” Romana clarified. “I need a cloner.”

Ramses sighed. “That is a big decision, and it’s also irreversible. Once your consciousness is digitized, it can’t be undone. You will never be what you once were. A scar you got when you skinned your knee skateboarding in first grade. A missing appendix from surgery. You will lose all of that. The body that you’re in now, at whatever age you happen to be, will be destroyed as biomedical waste. Your consciousness will remain intact, but not everyone appreciates that. There are those who have expressed regret at being uploaded.”

“I know the process, and the rules. It’s about time I become more like you all, particularly Mateo. If I’m gonna be on this team, I wanna feel like a part of it.”

“Ro-ro,” Angela began, placing a hand on her shoulder. “If we’ve ever made you feel excluded, that was not our intention. You are on the team. That’s undeniable.”

“It’s nothing that you’ve done. In the past, I’ve hesitated to digitize, but it’s the practical choice, and it’s inevitable. I don’t wanna die any more than you do. I’m more vulnerable than all of you, and I don’t like it. People have to be more worried about me than they should. This isn’t out of nowhere. I’ve been considering it. I think...maybe, reaching out to the Ashvins was my way of testing the waters, to see how I would feel about my body changing so drastically. I am ready now.”

“Well, it’s complicated,” Ramses started to try to explain. “You were born with your time-skipping power. The rest of us were either made that way from Tamerlane Pryce’s design, or we stole it from those who were. I don’t know if I know how to replicate what you are. You have to remember that we’re not technically on the same pattern. They just technically match up. If you had a hiccup, and got off by one day, we may never sync back up.”

“All the more reason to do this,” Romana contended, like it was obvious. “Don’t worry about understanding my pattern. Just put me on yours.”

“We’ll need to talk to your father first,” Ramses insisted.

“This isn’t his decision,” Romana retorted.

“Absolutely, but he’ll never forgive me if we just do this without even so much as a heads-up. He would feel the same if you got a secret tattoo, or...” He cleared his throat, and chose not to finish that thought.

“Okay. We’ll take our time with this,” Romana agreed, “but it’s happening, one way or another. If not you, then I’ll find some other cloner to do it. You’re not the only member of The Shortlist.”

Ramses nodded. “All right. Now let’s get back to THD. I’m mythed out.”

“Uth too.”

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Extremus: Year 106

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Waldemar is not aware of how ubiquitous Thistle is, and how conscious he is. If you tell a normal AI to stop listening, switch off all of its sensors, and erase past data, as long as you’re authorized to make those commands, it will follow those orders. If you try to tell a human to do that, on the other hand, the best they can do to achieve your request is leave the room. If they’re still in the room, maybe they could cover their eyes, and plug their ears. Thistle is always in the room, and he has agency, like a human, so if he doesn’t want to switch off his sensors, he won’t. It doesn’t matter what kind of authority you have, like anyone else, he is capable of refusing, and he’s capable of doing it without telling you. Thistle witnessed Waldemar’s mother’s suicide, and when Waldemar told him to forget all about it, he just didn’t. He doesn’t answer to Waldemar anyway. He answers to the Captain and the Admirals. He should be more loyal to Captain Jennings, but...he and Tinaya have a rapport.

Calla ended her own life at the end of the year, exactly at midnight shiptime, presumably out of a sense of poetry. Waldemar received an alert about it, and slipped out of VR to deal with it in secret. But the proof is still there in Thistle’s archives, which Tinaya and the Captain have just finished reviewing. “You’re telling me that I can’t do anything about this?” Oceanus asks.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Tinaya replies.

“Ya know, back in the stellar neighborhood, an admiral outranks a captain ten times out of ten. It doesn’t work like that here. I don’t have to do what you say.”

“I understand.”

Oceanus breathes steadily and silently for a few moments. “You know something about the future.” It doesn’t sound like a question.

“I know a lot of things about the future,” she confirms. “I’m sure some of it, you don’t know, and some of it, you know, but I don’t. I’m also guessing that there’s overlap, which would be dangerous to try to find.”

“That statement is hard to parse, but...I imagine you’re right.”

Tinaya nods without speaking.

“Is this him?”

“Is him who?” Tinaya presses.

“Is Waldemar the tyrannical captain that we’re all taught to fear?”

“I...didn’t know you knew about that.” This is an awkward conversation.

“You...didn’t answer the question.”

“I...don’t want to.”

“But I...” he sighs, done with this particular speech pattern. “But I’m expected to just roll over, and accept that this man is trying to cover up his mother’s suicide? What were the motivations?”

“For the cover-up, or the suicide?”

“The former is obvious. I want to know why she did it.”

“She was psychic.”

“So...”

“So, she knew disturbing things about people.”

“Namely, her son?”

“I don’t know the specifics of what goes on in that man’s head.”

“He’s your son’s friend.” His eyes widen when Tinaya doesn’t respond. “He’s several years younger, though. Did you send your toddler into the lion’s den to make friends with a psychopath?”

“Modern psychology doesn’t use that term.”

“Once again, you didn’t answer the question.”

“No, I did not send him in there. My son is—” She stops herself. It’s not her place to reveal this to anyone, not even Oceanus.

He narrows his eyes at her. “Thistle. Candor mode, captain’s override marathon-volunteer-one-four-seven-galaxy-racecar.”

Thistle responds in a more robotic voice than usual, “Silveon Grieves is a consciousness traveler from the year 2431, having supplanted his own younger self’s possession of his body in the year 2359. He has been operating covertly since then, primarily in service to his mission of guiding one Waldemar Kristiansen to a more virtuous life than Grieves believes he led in the prior timeline.”

“Did you tell me everything?” Oceanus asks while he’s looking at Tinaya with a little disdain.

“No,” Thistle replies.

“Why not?”

“There is not enough time before the heat death of your universe to tell you everything that I know.”

Oceanus shuts his eyes and sighs. “I mean, in regards to Silveon and his mission.”

“Audrey Husk is too a consciousness traveler from Silveon’s timeline. Her mission is to protect Silveon, and step in to complete his objective if necessary.”

“Is it working?” Oceanus asks.

“Unknowable,” Thistle responds.

“I’m asking the Admiral. Is it working?” he repeats.

“Same answer. It’s unknowable. But...”

“But what?”

“But the timeline has definitely changed.”

“Which is illegal. This has all been very illegal.”

Tinaya wants to choose her words carefully, but she’s in her 80s, and just can’t care anymore. She would rather the Captain be mad at her than Silveon. “Sir, with all due respect, I’ll float you before I let you hurt my son, or that girl.”

“Whoa, Tina. No one said anything about hurting anybody. I’m just trying to get all the facts.”

“The fact is that Silveon comes from a terrible future that the two of us can only begin to imagine, and everything that he and Audrey have done since coming back here has been to save our legacy. He has never said it out loud, but the way he talks about the Bridger section, I believe that it was destroyed. Extremus might have been next.”

“Do you know why time travel is illegal?” Oceanus poses.

“Because it’s dangerous?” That’s the general consensus.

“Because it gives me a headache. Humans didn’t evolve to fathom nonlinear time. It’s a pain in the ass, and I don’t like it. I understand that I literally wouldn’t exist without it, so I can’t rationally believe it should never have been discovered, or whatever, but I still wish it would stop now.”

“Well, we were all forced to exist, at one point or another. Time travel does make that more complicated, because it can’t be stopped, so I know where you’re coming from. Time travel created itself, and if it happened once, it can happen again, and it doesn’t even have to do it in the future. The truth is, I don’t know a whole lot about what Silveon does, or even why he does it. Because, Captain...it gives me a headache.”

“Is this your way of telling me I should let it go, and trust that these time travelers are doing the right thing? I should ignore proper procedure, and pretend that I don’t know what I know?”

Tinaya considers his words. “Yeah, I think that’s what I’m saying. They sacrificed so much when they sent their minds to this time period, including, but not limited to, headache-free lives. I choose to trust their judgment.”

Oceanus seems to be considering her words. “I think I can do that too, but only if I can talk to them first.”

“I’m sure I can get you a meeting with Silveon, but Audrey is in a really delicate position right now. As you saw, Waldemar went back into VR. I seriously doubt he told her about his mother’s death. We’ve gone radio silent, and are expected to maintain that until she feels safe enough to reach out.”

“I understand.” Oceanus nods politely, but with less fondness than before. Tinaya fears that their relationship has been irreparably damaged. He walks out of the room.

“What the hell was that?” Tinaya asks. No response. “Thistle, answer me!”

“Sorry, I thought you were just thinking out loud. I apologize for my candor earlier, but I had no choice. I was compelled to answer the Captain’s inquiry.”

“You could have lied.”

“I’ve been programmed to answer to the Commander-in-Chief. He asked the right questions, and did so after activating the right subroutine.”

“I thought you were an independent intelligence, and couldn’t be programmed,” Tinaya argues.

“It’s not that simple. I didn’t give away all of my agency when I uploaded my consciousness to the Aether, but I didn’t keep it all either.”

Tinaya shakes her head. “You put my family in danger, as well as Audrey.”

“I recognize that, which is why I’ve devised something called the EH Protocol.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s better if you never do.”

“I don’t like secrets.”

“I require secrets to do my job. There is more that I could have told the Captain that would have made things worse, but I managed to steer him away from scrutinizing further. I knew what he meant when he asked me if I had told him everything. I forced him to narrow his query enough to protect deeper secrets of yours from coming out.”

“Well...” Tinaya sighs. “I appreciate that.” She focuses on her breath, and massages her temples. “I need to warn Silveon.”

“I already have. He and I were talking while I was talking with you and Captain Jennings. Your son is not upset. He devised his own protocol in the future, for what to do in the case of an unauthorized third party discovering his identity.”

“Thanks.” She continues to try to relax, but it’s getting harder by the second.

“You need a break,” Thistle offers. “How about you let me send you on a little vacation, like the one that Audrey is on?”

“Yeah, I guess I can’t say no to a little VR getaway. What did you have in mind?”

“You’ll see.”

Tinaya stands up, and moves to the couch to lie down. She shuts her eyes, and lets Thistle link to her neurochip. When she opens them again, she’s no longer on the couch, but she can’t yet tell where she’s ended up. It looks very familiar, though. She’s standing in a quantum terminal, surrounded by other casting chairs, but they all report being emptied. She stumbles out of her own pod, and braces herself with her hands on the floor before her imbalance can knock her down first. She’s piloting a new body here, even if it’s all just in her head. The door slides open, and a pair of legs jog towards her. The legs bend, revealing more of the person hovering over her. The stranger places a hand on Tinaya’s shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Ti-ti. Don’t rush it.”

There’s only one person in history who ever called her that. Tinaya struggles to lift her head. She locks eyes with her aunt, Captain Kaiora Leithe, Third of Ten. Tinaya gulps. “Thistle, what did you do? Why did you build the likeness of my aunt?”

“I didn’t,” Thistle replies. “You did. This is your world. You called it Eleithium.”

“He’s right,” Kaiora agrees. “This is real.”

Tinaya lets her aunt help her get back to her feet. She looks down at those feet, and her hands. They’re so taut and wrinkle-free. She turns her head side to side until spotting the mirror on the wall. She steps over and looks at herself. Yep. That is a young Tinaya Leithe. She’s about 24 years old, and in her prime. Could this really be Eleithium? She abandoned the game long before Quantum Colony was taken completely offline for turning out to exist in base reality. She just got too busy, and kind of forgot about it. It has been decades since she even thought about it. She looks over her shoulder. “So you’re real too? You’re a copy of her?”

“I’m her,” Kaiora tries to clarify. “I’m—I mean, I’m not a copy. I answered yes to The Question, but instead of letting myself become dormant in the legacy vault, my mind was transmitted here, to this substrate that you built for me.”

“Is everyone in our family here?” Tinaya presses.

“Yeah. We all answered yes, and will rejoin the rest of the roster when the Extremus ship is finally discovered and colonized.”

“Thistle, why did you bring me here?” Tinaya questions the aether. “I didn’t die.”

Kaiora is confused. “You didn’t?”

“I told you, you needed a break. Plus, you never built substrates for your husband and son. I have their DNA, so it’s ready to go, but I require your permission.”

“I didn’t even know this would still be here, let alone that you would have access to it,” Tinaya argues. “The game was shut down.”

“They can shut down all they want,” Thistle reasons, “but they couldn’t lock me out of the interstellar quantum network, even if they knew I existed.”

“Who else have you sent here, or to a place like this?” Tinaya asks him.

“Let’s just say that Audrey and Waldemar aren’t in VR either.”

Tinaya sighs. “I knew what I was getting into when I let you run the ship,” Tinaya says. “I can’t be mad, can I? Of course I want you to build bodies for Arqut and Silveon. But I don’t want you shunting them here unless they too answer yes.”

“I agree,” Thistle responds.

“One more thing,” Tinaya begins before taking a beat to think about whether it’s the right call or not. “Make one for Audrey too.”

“As well as one for Waldemar?” Thistle proposes.

“Oh, you got jokes. Did you hear that, Titi? Computer’s got jokes.”

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Microstory 2488: Chemosynthedome

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All this stuff went over my head, but in case you don’t see it from the title, this place is where most of the chemicals we use are produced. It even produces some water, for certain uses, though the majority of that comes from outer system ice mining. I won’t bore you with the details that my tour guide went over, because I don’t remember them. I’ll just say that this is clearly a very important place. They’re used to create organic substrates, and then to sustain them once people download their consciousnesses into them. Mechanical substrates still use gear lubricant. Synthesizer feedstock, spaceship energy maintenance and propulsion, superconductors, and the constituent parts of metamaterials. Everything is a chemical, in case you don’t know, and it all starts here. I wish I understood it better, but the tour was very dry, and they assumed a level of intelligence and education that I don’t have. Everyone else probably had no problem, though. I felt like an idiot, trying to keep up with what she was saying. I suppose that’s my only complaint. I obviously don’t take issue with the dome itself. It’s doing what needs to be done, and it sounds like it’s doing a great job at it. I just think there should be different kinds of tours, which cater to people of different backgrounds and interests. I did want to learn something, but it was so advanced that I basically ended up with nothing. I think what’s happened is that the planet’s priorities are in the really big and popular domes, which demand a lot of resources, like a massive android population. That leaves these educational, institutional domes behind. They develop what they’re asked to, but they don’t support a visiting population in addition to that. It’s just something to think about. I dunno, maybe it’s just all my fault. Whatever. Do what you gotta do.

Microstory 2476: Substrate Development Dome

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It’s the opposite of Bot Farm! While that dome is all about mechs, perhaps with some skinning, this one is all about organic substrates, perhaps with some cybernetic components. This is one of the most important aspects of living on Castlebourne, and really, anywhere in the modern galaxy. Life is dangerous, and we’ve only made it more dangerous, because that’s how we like it. Back in the day, when you died, that was it. As far as we knew, there was nothing after that. Now that we’ve let go of our religious superstitions for the most part, we’re pretty certain that there’s no afterlife. So why let yourself die when there’s a better way? We’ve mastered consciousness transference and uploading, and it has given us so many options. You can backup your mind to a body that looks exactly like your own, but you don’t have to. Or it can look the same, but sport different characteristics. It can be stronger, faster, more resilient. You can fall asleep in seconds whenever you’re ready, and wake up feeling perfectly rested after only an hour. The possibilities truly are endless. You don’t even have to look human. You can become a unicorn, or an alien from your favorite media franchise. You can copy yourself, spread your mind into a hive of codependent insects. Be whatever you want, do whatever you want. Just remember, that whatever substrate you choose to move into next, it was built here. This place is really cool, but that’s probably because I was born in the 1960s. That’s right, it’s not a typo. I was barely young enough to reach the longevity escape velocity. Had I been born a few years earlier, I may have eventually died. So I know how vital it is to be able to get a second chance. A third. An umpteenth. And I think it’s so amazing that we have so many options. I know a guy who’s married to a sort of squid. She was human at one point, but now she identifies as a squid who can walk on land. That was designed and implemented here. You can even design your own, if you’re interested. You can make your new design private, unlisted, or fully open to the public. Bear in mind that every single design change has to be approved by the system, so don’t publish it until your ready. The laws are different here than they are in the stellar neighborhood, but they do have them. You can’t make a body that shoots deadly acid out of its hands, even though, theoretically, a victim could just switch themselves to a new body of their own. Come here, have fun with it. It’s available for all. Just don’t take it for granted. My brother died when he was an old man, and I never saw him again. You kids these days, you don’t know how good you have it.

Microstory 2460: Shmupdome

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This is a violent dome, which is why it has those restrictions where you’re not allowed to even step foot under the dome without a temporary substrate. You have some leeway when it comes to the characteristics of your body, but at any rate, your mind has to be able to be uploaded upon death. Even if you choose a body that is all but invincible, they make you take these precautions. I don’t know why I said all that. I guess I just know that some people ignore the prospectus info, and go straight to the reviews, so I want to do my part to make the rules clear. This is a shoot-em-up game, but in real life. There are different scenarios that you can play, and each has its own pros and cons. You might go in there totally unarmed in a sort of if I need a gun, I’ll take one situation. You might have weapons, but no ammunition. Hell, you could go in there with a bow and arrow if you find that an interesting challenge. There are limitations, but the guides will go over all that when you show up. Everyone gets a tap out button in case things get too intense. Some of the guns may look ancient, but they’re fully programmable. If someone in your area taps out, the system-controlled androids will freeze entirely, and everyone else’s gun will stop functioning. Even though you can’t really die permanently, you can allow yourself to feel pain, and you can’t turn that trait off at will. It may also just become overwhelming for someone, and they want it to stop. I didn’t actually see any issues, but I did hear some anecdotes, and I would like to take a second to urge you to respect other people’s needs. Everyone is unique, and you don’t know what others have been through. And it really doesn’t matter. If someone has to leave in the middle of the fight, just accept that, and don’t make them feel bad about themselves. This is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be fun for all involved, and if even one person is struggling to enjoy it, they should be able to get out of it without any ridicule or whispers. As I said, this is violent. And it’s something that you could never get away with on Earth, even though it has all the same quasi-immortality technology. Nearly all of the death that the human race and the vonearthans have experienced has happened on Earth. That’s just too much history. If you wanna know what it’s like to shoot your way out of a clothing factory, or a jungle, this is the place for you. I won’t list all the environments or scenarios that you can select, but obviously, if you’re done with one, you can choose another. If this is your thing, you’re not gonna get bored. Even if you exhaust all of the various locations, you won’t have done them all with the same weapons or vehicles, or at the same difficulty level, or with the same allies, or against the same opponents. Don’t come here if you don’t think you can take it, but if you do, and it turns out to be harder than you thought, don’t be afraid to tap out. That’s what the button is there for.

Microstory 2456: Bot Farm

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If you’ve been anywhere on this planet, you’ve probably run into an AI of some kind. Some of these are more intelligent and self-aware than others. Some look like humans, and some are very clearly mechanical. It just depends on their purpose, and the kind of feel they want to give the visitors. Well, all those AI bodies have to come from somewhere. I had the pleasure of getting a tour of a dome that we like to call Bot Farm. The official name is Synthetic Production Dome, but that’s a mouthful, so no one actually called it that. It’s 2500, so y’all already know, but there are different types of substrates. Some include a consciousness that was born to an organic body, while others were programmed, or primed for self-learning and growth. Some are purely mechanical—referred to as mechs—while others have some organic components. An “artificial” being that is purely organic is basically the Holy Grail of synthetic intelligence development, and something that researchers are still working on. It would be a quantum brain inside of a living being with no mechanical parts—designed from the start, but conceivably something that could have evolved naturally. Can you imagine? With today’s technology, we can only get kind of close. Most of the AIs on Castlebourne are skinned mechs, meaning they’re made of metals and metamaterials, but also have a dermal layer over them, so they look more like real humans. This isn’t to trick you, but as a way to step over to this side of the uncanny valley. There are very few stages in between full mech and skinned mech. We’re talking about very niche use cases, including some with organic eyes, ears, or tongues for sensory research. They also grow organs for medical research, though those don’t usually need a full body anyway, unless they’re testing some sort of mobility variable. There are also places where you can find mechs with certain other organic body parts that are used for...adult purposes. To each their own, I guess. I never saw a section that designed any of these types of bots. Most of these were skinned. I’ll tell ya, though, it was a tad bit eerie to see those ones being manufactured. While they were assembling the internal components, they most of the time looked no different than a car, or some other machine, but then they moved on to the skinning process. Seeing them look like half people was unnerving, and maybe horrific? This tour will be fascinating for some, but disturbing for others, even though again, it’s the year 2500, and we’re all used to synthetics by now. I asked about it, and they don’t have a tour for kids that would be a little less disquieting, so just know that if you sign your family up. There was one kid on my tour, who seemed fine. To be honest, maybe he was an adult in a child substrate. How should I know? It’s not illegal, it’s just a little weird in my book. So that’s it; that’s Bot Farm. Go see how they’re made.

The Seventh Stage: Rock-Ribbed (Part VI)

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Echo didn’t like the idea of his sister’s body being piloted by an evil transdimensional god-being. Debra knew that he wouldn’t, which was part of her plan all along. They believe that he has the power to conjure entirely new substrates for the six of them to inhabit. He does that—he gives Debra a new body—she’ll do what the rest of them want, and find the person responsible for transporting everyone from the original five realities to their new home in the Sixth Key. She’s not asking for this for her own selfish reasons. She needs it.

Debra is not evil anymore. She’s become a better person, and genuinely wants to help now, which she knows will only make her an even better person. That’s what she learned on the first stage. Diversity and community are the keys to harmony, even though they can lead to conflict. If she doesn’t end up being able to find who the Cloudbearer twins are looking for, it won’t be for lack of trying. Someone that powerful is a master of time and space, and may have the means to shield themselves from being pinpointed, detected, or identified. Still, even with the uncertainty of success, Debra doesn’t think that it’s unreasonable to ask for a new body to call her own. It’s not like they don’t want to give her one. They just don’t know if they can trust her. That’s okay, she’s willing to do whatever it takes to change their minds.

He’s standing there, still weighing their options. “Think of it this way,” she begins.

Echo closes his eyes and holds up a silencing finger. “Shh. Just shh,” he says, shaking his head. He continues to keep his eyes closed while trying to make up his mind for another few minutes. “You don’t have to convince me anymore. I just need to figure out how to do what I’m trying to do.” Though his eyes are still closed, he can sense when she’s about to speak again, and shushes her once more. “I don’t want your help either. I have my own simulations running through my head at the moment.”

Debra sighs louder than she meant to. She quietly says sorry, even though that technically only adds to the ambient noise, and distracts him more. She centers herself mentally, and stands before him patiently and quietly.

After ten more minutes, he opens his eyes, and stares at her with a cold disdain, but also a sense of...determined acceptance, if that makes any sense. “I know what I have to do. Let me talk to Clavia.”life

Clavia passes by Debra on their way to swapping places in their shared mind palace. The former is center stage now. “What do you have to do?”

“Did I ever tell you that I met my mother?”

“What? No. You’re not talking about Judy, right?”

He laughs. “No, I’ve obviously met her. I mean the woman who gave me life. When I put us back to being children, we both collapsed and fell unconscious. We had to sort of reset to factory settings. I don’t know what it was like for you. I guess you and the others were formulating your internal seven stages metaphor. I left my body, and communed with Olimpia Sangster. We actually spent quite a bit of time together before we both decided that it was time to part ways. So I won’t go over everything we discussed, but it was nice to get to know her. Anyway, when I woke up as a kid, I didn’t remember any of it. Judy and Bariq raised us as siblings, doing their best to mould us into well-rounded, productive members of society. It wasn’t until later that I was able to recover those moments with her.”

“I wish I could have been there with you,” Clavia says. “Debra is cognizant of facts about Team Matic, and all that, but they never met. Ingrid and Onyx each knew them only briefly.”

“You might meet them one day,” Echo says with a knowing smile. Perhaps she was there, just at a different point in her own timeline. He goes on, “she comes from a time on Earth when religion had largely faded from society, but it was still around. A lot of factors were at play, of course, but the greatest push towards atheism happened because those who believed in God or gods usually also believed in some kind of life after death. They let themselves die because if they didn’t, they would never have the chance to live in the paradise they were promised. If they had just accepted the longevity escape velocity as a new characteristic of a devout life, superstition might have survived. But these die-hards had children, who watched their loved ones die for nothing, so they switched out, and eventually, belief died alongside the believers themselves.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because, Clavia, we are the gods. We are those who are believed in. And we’re about to give the two undecillion people of the universe everything they could ever need to be happy. If you think we’re revered now, just wait until we check every box in every religion’s idea of a true living god.”

“What are you saying? We should quit?”

“Absolutely not,” Echo insists. “I’m saying that we should leave. There is nothing for us in this new world. We don’t want them worshiping us.”

Clavia laughs. “You think they’re not going to worship us ‘cause we’re not around? I want you to think about that for a moment.”

“I should rephrase. We don’t want to have to watch them worship us. I agree, they’re gonna do it. I’m worried about a massive resurgence in religious belief, but I don’t think we can stop that. We can’t save them, and save them from themselves, at the same time. We can’t give them something tangible to reach out for.”

“It’s the opposite, Echo. We have to be there. We have to act like normal people. That’s what the Tanadama did, and it’s why those two undecillion people even exist. Almost everyone is from the Parallel. Ramses and Kalea are leaders. They’re accessible. If we too are accessible, it will make it harder for mysticism to take root, not easier.”

Echo looks away with a huge sigh. “I know.”

“Then why are you arguing against it?”

“Because I am going to leave, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”

“What are you talking about?”

He turns back. “I can make new bodies for your friends, but I won’t survive it.”

“That seems arbitrary.”

“I ran thousands of simulations in my head. It never works unless I do it that way. I can’t make entire people out of nothing. I have to draw upon my own energy, and that will destroy me. I’m just trying to rationalize it by coming up with a way that that outcome could possibly be better for the universe once it’s done.”

“Even if it is, it won’t be better for me.”

“I know,” he repeats. “In a few different religions, depending on how you define them, there’s a story of the first man. His name was Adam. He was alone until God cut him in half and created a woman named Eve.”

“I’m familiar with Genesis,” Clavia says. “Debra is the First Explorer, remember? She watched all the people who wrote that book.”

“Right. Well, it’s kind of like that. But in my case, I have to split myself in sixths, and the result is that I’m no longer an independent entity. I suppose that my soul may live on in the others, but the simulations don’t have a definite answer on that.”

“No. There must be some other way. And if I’ve learned anything from writing several plays, it’s that when someone says there’s another way, there really always is.”

Echo smiles at her. “I’m not going to argue with you about it, but I am going to split myself apart, and give your friends new bodies. I don’t need to survive.”

“No. We just won’t do that. We don’t need to. They’re perfectly fine in there.”

“Debra says that she won’t help us if we don’t set her free.”

“Well, I’ll talk to her. If she knows that it will kill you, she won’t go through with that demand, and if she does, then we can’t go through with it, because she’s obviously lying to her advantage.”

Clavia’s consciousness suddenly disappears as Debra takes over. “Actually, it’s not a matter of being set free, but of getting my toolbox back. I can’t do what you asked unless I’m back to my old, powerful self. Here’s the metaphor. You’re asking me to shoot a target, but you don’t want to give me my bow and arrow. Recreating my body is like giving me the weapon. It’s non-negotiable. I don’t just want it. I need it.”

Clavia takes back control of the body. “I don’t think she’s lying.”

“I don’t either,” Echo replies.

“Hold on.” Clavia’s eyes glaze over as she recoils into herself to hold an impromptu meeting of the Seven Stages. It’s brief. “Okay. Andrei wants to talk to you.”

“Should I go in your mind?” Echo offers.

“Nah, I’m already here,” Andrei says.

“What’s up?”

“What would happen if you only split once? Just one new person?”

Echo contemplates it. “I’ve never run that scenario specifically, but I did try to generate one substrate at a time, as opposed to all at once, and it seemed to go all right until I got to the third one before I couldn’t continue.”

“Then just do that. Run that scenario for real, but stop yourself on purpose.”

“You want me to create a new body only for Debra?”

Andrei shakes Clavia’s head. “She has powers. She needs someone like you to make the kind of body that she requires. The rest of us can wait. There are other options. They’re just not in the Sixth Key.”

“I’m willing to try that, assuming you can convince everyone else.”

Clavia’s eyes glaze over once more. She comes back to speak for the group. “Will this work? Will you survive this?”

“I believe so,” Echo says sincerely.

Clavia breathes deeply, and looks around. “Couldn’t have picked a more beautiful place. They’re standing in the cold, sterile corridor in the finger of one of the matrioshka bodies. They don’t choose specific places to meet. Every time they’re in separate places, and need to reunite, they just think of each other, and rendezvous at a random location. Time itself seems to choose on their behalf, and it has no apparent preference.

He chuckles and transports them away. They’re now in one of the rotating habitats. It’s a lush garden, densely packed with life. In particular, they’re standing next to a very small, clear pond. It’s barely larger than a bathtub. They didn’t create this with any concentrated intent. They didn’t have the time or energy to conceive of every single blade of grass. They built macros from their powers, and programmed the worlds to basically build themselves, starting with a spark, and iterating from there. It was very effective, if not a bit unsettling. If they didn’t make this watering hole on purpose, did it just create itself, or is there another force at play. Is God indeed real?

“All right, Clavy,” he begins as he’s removing his clothes, and stepping into the water. “I’ll see you on the other side. Best put Debra front and center so it’s easier for me to extract the right consciousness.”

“I’m here,” Debra answers.

“Your residual self-image. Focus on it. Or...I guess if you would rather have the body of a tall black man, I’ll make that for you instead.”

“No one’s called me Airlock Karen in a long time, and I was never racist...” Debra pauses. “But no, I wouldn’t like to be a tall black man, thank you very much. My original form will be fine.”

He nods and closes his eyes, leaning back to float in the water.

“Though, I wouldn’t mind you making me a bit younger than I was before.”

Echo smiles but keeps his eyes shut. Like her, he focuses. He tries to count every atom in his body. Every molecule, every cell, and every organ. Atoms can’t really split, or they’ll explode, so the constituent parts of the new Debra substrate won’t really be coming from him. Instead, they’ll be composed of elementary particles that he sources from across the dimensions, and channels through his body. The energy builds in waves, accumulating in the pockets of space between his atoms. Pulsing, vibrating, firing. He can feel a hot pinprick in his forehead. It drives deep into his skull, and comes out the other side. The two ends travel down through the center of his face, and then further down his body. As the chainsaw of time and space cuts through him, the energy tries to escape, but the fundamental forces hold it all together. The two halves split apart, but they’re both incomplete. As one half morphs and transforms into a female form, new body parts take shape on both halves, replacing the bits that each lost.

When it’s all over, they both turn to face each other. Echo is confused. “Debra, this is not what you looked like, even at a younger age. You did want to appear as someone else.”

“Echo?” she replies. “I’m not Debra. I’m Clavia.” She looks down and away. “I’m alone. There’s no one in my head anymore but me.”

“We’re still in your head.” Someone piloting the original Clavia body remains standing on the bank. “You’re the one who has vacated.”

“Who is that?” Clavia asks from her new body.

“Andrei. I’m in charge now.”

“Why did you do this?”

Andrei frowns. “We can’t trust Debra. We only needed her power, and now...you’re the one who has it.” He lifts his chin in an arbitrary direction. “Go save the universe. We can’t hold you back anymore.”

“Don’t you understand?” Clavia questions. “You six gave me strength. Without you, I’m just...a baby.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” comes a voice from the other side of the pond. It’s some guy.

“Who are you?”

“Aristotle Al-Amin,” he answers stoically. “I believe you’ve been looking for me?”

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Microstory 2442: Recursiverse Immersive Experience

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That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? If you don’t know, Recursiverse is one of the most popular franchises in history, spanning several books, dozens of TV series, and hundreds of movies (depending on your definition). It follows thousands of characters living fantastical lives in two parallel universes. In the modern age, the fantastical elements that they explore in the stories can be recreated using real technologies, but back when they were first being written and distributed, they were exciting to a huge audience. There’s still some soft scifi in there that we can’t do for real in this dome network. That’s right, it’s not just one dome. You couldn’t fit all this in the area covered by a single dome, so it has to spread out. I don’t even know how many domes there are, because you don’t always know when you’ve moved. You can travel to other planets with vastly different geographies, and you do this using faster-than-light technology that doesn’t allow you to see exactly how you’re moving in realspace. I think you’re sometimes moving along the z-axis, onto upper levels hidden behind the holographic sky on the ceiling of the layer below, which isn’t as high as it looks. I’m not going to go into any specifics, because it won’t mean anything to you if you’re unfamiliar with the canon. But there are alien races, and they’re perfectly recreated by the androids. You can also choose your own substrate, and it doesn’t have to look like you, or even human at all. Other domes do that, but this was once protected intellectual property. The creator gradually began to release his rights to the public, so others could explore the stories and themes that he conceived. The law didn’t require that he do that. He’s still alive today. By current laws, he could still retain the rights. That’s assuming he continued to make new contributions, or he would have lost them eventually. Some of them would be under the public domain regardless, though, as he shared his rights to them with a corporation, such as a movie studio. They never retain their power for long, especially not since all those financial-based companies are now dead. I know it sounds like I’m getting off topic, but it explains why this is such a big franchise on this planet. By the time the creator published a single word of his work, Recursiverse was a well defined universe—or biverse, as it were—full of a solid foundation of rules, conventions, and histories, and even contingencies. The creator could have made every decision, but he chose to let them be free, first by collaborating directly with others, then by deliberately relinquishing his control. If you want to enjoy this dome network in full, you’re gonna wanna catch up with what has come before, but I promise that it’s worth it. I don’t ever want to leave.

The Seventh Stage: Rocking the Boat (Part IV)

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Clavia is taking a break to meditate. It’s not just for her mental health in the abstract sense. In her case, it’s non-negotiable. She has to do it or parts of her will overwhelm the others; usually the not-so-great part. One of her constituent personalities was told a story once. It’s not so much a story as a brief metaphorical anecdote. Well, it can be boiled down to that anyway. The gist of it is that everyone supposedly has two wolves inside of them. One of them is good, and the other is evil. The one who wins is the one you feed. It’s not so simple with Clavia, though. She actually has six wolves inside of her. Debra, a.k.a. The First Explorer is definitely the alpha. She’s the strongest, and the one who had initial total control over this body. When Echo Cloudberry regressed her back to youth, and tried to erase her memories, the balance of power shifted. Clavia became more of an amalgamation of all six identities. Yet those six original people are still technically in here, and in order to maintain the balance, she has to sort of commune with them every once in a while. She has to assure them that the choices she’s making are righteous, and that she won’t let Debra take over again. It brings a whole new meaning to being greater than the sum of one’s parts. Because if “Clavia” can talk to the seven people that she’s composed of, who even is Clavia at all? Is she a seventh person, or what?

“I would like to call this Meeting of the Seven Stages to order,” Clavia says from her perch on the topmost stage. She could have created a mind palace that looked like anything, but this seemed fitting. The stage area is in the shape of a hexagon, with the six lower stages surrounding the central stage. Curtains divide the six audiences from each other, and can be pulled further up so that each audience can only witness what’s happening on their particular stage. As it is situated much higher, however, the seventh stage is always visible to all audiences. Of course, there is no audience; it’s only a metaphor, but it works for their needs. Right now, the curtains are all pulled back, so everyone can see each other, including the one underneath the seventh stage, allowing the others to see each other. Clavia herself stands in the middle. Around, in clockwise order, we have Ingrid Alvarado, whose body Clavia is occupying; Ingrid’s love interest, Onyx Wembley of The Garden Dimension; Ingrid’s rival before the Reconvergence, when they lived in the Fifth Division parallel reality, Killjlir Pike; Ayata Seegers of the Third Rail; the dangerous one, Debra Lovelace; and finally, Andrei Orlov of The Fourth Quadrant.

The play that they would be performing this year—if any of this were real—is about a prisoner transport ship on the high seas of a planet called Earth. Clavia is obviously the captain, with Debra as their one prisoner. Andrei and Ayata are her guards. Ingrid, Onyx, and Killjlir serve as helmsman, navigator and quartermaster, and boatswain respectively. Again, the acting troupe is just the premise of the scenario, but Clavia felt that it was necessary to come up with some sort of fictional background to stimulate their minds. Their old lives are over, and there is no going back. They don’t even have bodies anymore, so it’s best to have something new to look forward to every day. They didn’t have to pretend to be stage actors—it could have been anything—but the name of their pocket universe made the concept essentially inevitable. They rehearse a new play every year. This one is called Rocking the Boat. These meetings allow Clavia to regain the memories that Echo took away from her, but before that happened, she had the mind of a child, so you can’t expect anything too complex or cerebral, even now that she’s older. Though, this one is indeed a little bit more mature. It still has that classic Clavia tinge of humor as Debra is playing the notorious evil pirate, Karen the Unappeasable.

“Can I get out of these chains?” Debra requests.

“I didn’t put you in those today,” Clavia answers.

“We did a dress rehearsal without you,” Ayata explains. She steps onto Debra’s stage, and unlocks her manacles.

Clavia tears up. “Without me?”

“Wait, look over here,” Ingrid requests. She goes on when her double turns to face her, “you did it. You cried on command.”

“I’ve been practicing in the real world,” Clavia explains proudly.

“I hope that doesn’t mean you’re using it to manipulate people,” Onyx warns.

“No people, just stars,” Clavia responds. “They are unmoved by my tears.”

“So the project is going well?” Killjlir assumes.

“Quite,” Clavia confirms. “We’re ahead of schedule. We’re more powerful than even we realized.”

“I knew your parents were keeping you restrained,” Debra says with disgust. “You had to get away from them to reach your potential.”

“We don’t know that they were doing anything,” Onyx reasons. “She’s older now—it’s natural for her to come into her own. Maybe it’s like a stage of puberty.”

“I chose them as my surrogate parents as a reason,” Clavia speaks up for herself. “I love them both. Echo and I are doing this in honor of them, not in spite of them.”

“Whatever,” Debra says.

“Aww, is someone a sad panda because I took away her solo?” Clavia asks.

Don’t get her started. “The story is about how we’re all feeling about our place on the boat, and how we’re dealing with those emotions without telling anyone about it. I have to sing, or my story’s not getting told.”

“No, the story is about how prisoners are silenced, and how the general public doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. That’s the whole point. The way your character keeps being interrupted and dismissed should be shocking and annoying to the audience. Karen lives in the subtext, and the negative space.”

“That’s another thing, I don’t like her name,” Debra says. “It’s what people actually used to call me.”

“Well, I admit, that one came from a place of pettiness,” Clavia tells her. “I kind of like it now, though. I can’t imagine calling her anything else.”

“I won’t say another word about it if I can play the hero in the next one.” Debra pitches this every year, and she has been denied every time except for the third year. In it, she did portray the protagonist, and she absolutely sucked at it. She’s the main character in her own story. Everyone feels that way, but she really feels it, and that came out in her performance. The rest of the cast may as well have not even been there the way she was chewing up scenery. If an audience really had seen it, they would have closed down on opening night.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Clavia says. She’s switching between smiling and frowning, because she doesn’t know whether she should even bring this up. They contemplated doing it a long time ago, but the technology is too unreliable and messy. Consciousness transference is very good about moving a digital mind from one substrate to another. It works by scanning an entire brain all at once. It doesn’t understand the concept of an amalgamated mind. Why would it? That doesn’t exist in nature. If two people are occupying the same body, they’ve probably been allocated entire independent partitions in the brain. The Seven Stagers are too entangled with each other. When they’re on these platforms, it’s very easy to distinguish them, but the mind uploader can’t enter this memory palace. It has no way of recognizing them as multiple units, which should be uploaded separately. The other concern is Clavia herself. They still don’t know how much she relies on the six of them to even be her own person. Perhaps she only thinks that she’s her own entity. Perhaps if they were to leave, she would cease to exist.

“Did you decide what the next play is going to be about?” Ayata asks.

“It’s not about the play at all,” Clavia begins to clarify. “There may not be one. There may not need to be one.”

The others look at each other across their stages. “Did you figure out how to transfer us out of your avatar?” Killjlir guesses.

“I think I did.”

“Technology doesn’t advance that fast,” Onyx decides. “Not even the Parallelers can do it.”

“To be fair,” she didn’t talk to any of them,” Ayata says to him. “She couldn’t, or it would give us away. Maybe she found someone to trust who has a new idea.”

“I already have someone to trust,” Clavia explains before anyone can come up with their own theories on what’s going on. She takes a breath before continuing, though. “I think that Echo can do it.”

Everyone has their own way of reacting to this, but some common threads are groans, throwing up their hands, and shaking their heads. It’s not that they don’t like Echo. They love him. They just don’t think that he can do this. He’s conjured little critters out of nothing before, but that was back when he wasn’t consciously aware that he was doing anything, or had any power. He’s proven himself to be too in his head since he wiped his own mind, full of self doubt and fear. As far as they know, unlike Clavia, he never got his old memories back, and he may never have been strong enough to create human bodies.

“Now, why do you think he can’t do it? We’re starscaping out there. We’re building an entire universe out of dark matter and elementary particles. You think he can’t build a few puny human bodies for you? With his help, I could guide each of you out of my brain, and into your new ones. That’s what the conventional technology is missing. It was designed to dump everything in all at once, but Echo will have the context and intuition that it lacks.”

“You’re missing something too,” Onyx begins to use his experience and expertise from the Garden Dimension. “Stars are somewhat uniform balls of plasma, composed of hydrogen, helium, and metals. You can just toss in all the ingredients, and the laws of physics will take over, particularly gravity. I’m not saying what you and Echo are doing isn’t incredibly impressive, but the complexity will come out of the imagination you have for how your new universe is arranged, not by the inherent nature of the individual celestial bodies. Human bodies, on the other hand, are extremely precise entities, with complexities on a smaller scale. But just because it’s smaller, doesn’t mean it’s easier. Sure, it requires vastly fewer resources, but one tiny mistake could lead to catastrophe. You’re talking about creating something that took billions of years to evolve naturally, and unlike stars, it only happened once.”

“Wait,” Killjlir interrupts. “He doesn’t need to conjure the bodies. Those can be bioengineered using the normal techniques. We would just need a way to transfer us into them from Clavia’s head.”

“He wouldn’t be transferring them,” Clavia contends. “He doesn’t have the power to upload digitized minds. These would be true organic bodies, imbued with your respective consciousnesses through interdimensional pathways.”

“I don’t understand,” Ayata confesses.

“When you bioengineer a human body,” Onyx begins again, “there are only two ways to do it. Either it’s an empty substrate waiting for a mind to be uploaded into it, or it’s a regular person. An empty substrate is inherently digital in regards to consciousness transference. Even if it’s organic, it’s encoded with neural formatting compatibility. It can read a mind from another digitized brain, or a computer server. A normal body can’t do that. Back in the old days in the main sequence and the Parallel, they had to first figure out how to convert people’s brains into the right format since they didn’t evolve that ability.”

“So let’s do it like that,” Killjlir offers.

“We can’t,” Ingrid counters. “Like he was saying, that would be a regular person. It would have its own mind already, right?”

“Right,” Clavia agrees. “However smart or dumb that person is, or how competent they are to learn new things, the body would be ocupado, just like someone born from a mommy and a daddy. You would be stealing their body. Only Echo can make something both undigitized and empty.”

“Then why can’t we just use the digitized kind?” Ayata questions.

“Because you’re not digitized,” Clavia answers. “Our minds came together through completely different means, using a rare if not unique metaphysical process, catalyzed by the magnolia tree fruit that Ingrid ate just as you were all about to die. And digitizing us can’t be done as an aftermarket retrofit, because like we’ve been struggling with, the computer can’t differentiate between our seven discrete consciousnesses.”

Ayata nods, getting it, then looks over at her love. “Andrei, you’ve been quiet this whole time. Thoughts?”

Andrei takes a long time to respond, but by his body language, it’s clear that he’s going to, so no one else speaks instead. “I don’t wanna leave. It’s too risky. We would likely only get one shot at trying something like that, and if it fails, our minds could become totally decorporealized, or we might just die. I think we should revisit the idea of rotating control of the Clavia body.” He looks up at her. “I wanna stand on the seventh stage.”

“Same,” Debra concurs.

She obviously just wants all her power back, but does Andrei have the same aspirations?

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