Microstory 2760: Heave Ho

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The way Laise described the traditional means of lifting a sunken ship sounded exhausting and time-consuming. Their ancestors would have sunken barrels and tied them to the bottom. To make them buoyant, they would push buckets down and transfer air pockets little by little until the last barrel was enough to lift the boat. They didn’t have time for that. They had no freshwater, and as it turns out, no food. The barrels weren’t airtight. Each had a hole on the side, presumably to let air through, but when the boat sank, they all flooded with seawater. Most of the fruit had spoiled before they even showed up. The coconuts were okay. They floated on their own, so once that barrel was opened, they were easy pickings. That was what they ate during their break periods.

The first thing they did was rip all of the heavy metal and other unnecessary pieces off of the vessel. They pushed them over the side, and let them drop down to the shelf that the boat was on. This made it as light as it could possibly be.

After clearing the spoiled fruit mush, they tied ropes around the barrels one at a time, and created a makeshift pulley system around the bulwark and other parts. Then they stood on the crow’s nest and pulled the barrel up. Once it was on the surface and full of air, they closed it back up and plugged the bunghole securely. Now they had to reverse the process, which was even harder. The air-filled barrel wanted to float, so five of them had to stand on—or even hang off of—the crow’s nest. That was as many as they could fit before they ran out of leverage. The sixth person freedove down with the barrel, and held it in place so it didn’t wobble around like a watermelon.

While the pullers tied off the rope to hold it in place, the freediver came back up to recapture air for themselves. Then they would go back down with the seventh person to tie the barrel to the bulwark, and untie the original rope. Each barrel took about an hour, factoring in break times and errors. They were so tired, blistered, achey, hungry even with the coconuts, and absolutely thirsty. Rain would make their job harder, but it would at least give them something to drink to survive another day. They were able to learn from their mistakes and get into a good rhythm, but they were also losing energy with each one, so they never ultimately sped up the process. It took them two days to get through the lifting phase, but man was it worth it. As soon as that sixteenth barrel was in place, before the pulley rope could even be removed, the boat let go of the shelf, and rose. The people who were on the crow’s nest all jumped off to make it that much lighter, and watched the mast fly up above them. It was  glorious to behold.

Now the boat is close enough to the surface to stand without drowning. It’s still totally filled with water, but bailing it out will be the easy part. At least they think it will. They obviously start with the wet deck, which is the most appropriate term for it today. They think it’s going pretty well. Some water is splashing back in since the surface is so close to the railing, but it seems to be working. Then they realize their mistake. The boat didn’t simply sink on its own. There must be damage. Sure enough, when they swim down to a small storage room, they find the hole. It’s not particularly big, but it has to be patched first. That isn’t even their biggest problem, though. They’re about to tip.

“Three people on starboard side and three people to port side!” Rage orders.

Five of them run to one while Elise is alone on the other. Rage stays in the center.

Rage points. “That’s starboard, and that’s port. Minotaur, Zelda, join Elise. Okay. The water is out but the boat is unstable. Does anyone have any idea why?”

Jolanda raises her hand. “I don’t have any sailing experience, but I’ve been on more than one boat. One thing they all have in common is this thing called a ballast. You don’t actually want it to be super light, unless it’s a speedboat or jetski. You want some weight to keep it in the water so you don’t tip over. Modern boats use water itself. Don’t quote me on this, but I believe in the olden times, they used metal.”

Rage looks over at the water. “We just sank our metal to make it lighter.”

“I did not want to do a seventeenth barrel,” Minotaur contends. “Dumping our heaviest stuff was the right call. We just need to bring some of it back up. I wouldn’t mind having some chains anyway. Chains come in handy in mazes all the time.”

“Well, I’m glad we dumped everything onto the shelf, instead of the depths.” Rage sighs and centers herself. “Okay. We did this once, we can do it again. Zelda, Colley, please stay on the boat on opposite sides to maintain balance. Hopefully that will be enough. The rest of us need to get in the water so we don’t literally rock the boat.”

“Our pulley rope has been through quite a bit by now,” Laise says. “I don’t think it’s gonna make it. It might snap. We need to use a different rope.”

“We don’t have more rope,” Rage points out. “We’ve already snapped two.”

Elise looks up. “Take it from the sail. It’s long enough that we can double up and distribute the stress. Then we’ll put it back up where it belongs.”

“So many concessions and compromises,” Rage laments. “Very well. Do it.”

So they add another phase to the work even though they thought they were done. They pull up the bars and grates, but they leave the cannons. Their combined strength isn’t enough to make that happen, and the rope probably isn’t strong enough either. They’re into their third day before they feel like they’re ready to learn the ropes, so to speak. Laise knows some history of sailing, as does Colley, but none of them knows how to sail. They spend the rest of the day trying to figure it out methodically. They still don’t have any regular water, but they’ve been drinking coconut water, and it won’t matter how long it takes to find land if they sink or crash before they even get there. It’s smarter to take their time, and do this right. Everyone is drained, but they’re not stopping.

“We don’t even know where we’re meant to go,” Minotaur reasons. “I’m not used to that. I mean, of course I’m used to being lost, but I always have something to orient myself. This dome has a diameter of 3,300 kilometers, and we could be in the very center of it. Sure, if we sail in one direction, we’ll eventually hit the wall, but that’s assuming we don’t die of thirst, starvation, or exposure before then. Everything else is ocean or an island, and those are notoriously hard to target, even with a map.”

“I have a map.” Jolanda is climbing up from below deck holding a piece of paper.

Colley doesn’t have to ask, she hands it to him. He examines it a little before looking up at the sky. “We’re gonna need to orient ourselves again. For that, we need the stars back.” He returns to the map. “Narratively, I know where this thing set sail, and I know where it’s going, but it may have gotten knocked off course. Even if it didn’t, I have no idea how far the original crew supposedly made it before they sank.”

“Rest up,” Rage instructs. “We set sail tonight. Once again, I hope it rains.”

It doesn’t rain, but that night, they are given an opportunity to find out what happened to the original crew when their ghosts appear. Or they’re zombies, or something else like that, because they can make physical contact with the living. That’s exactly what they do by attacking too, because as one might expect, they were pirates.

Microstory 2759: Sunk Cost

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Elise is the last person to emerge from the depths. She practically begged one of the other hunters to come with them, but they refused. They said they didn’t want this anymore, and would be finding a way back or out. The implication was that they would kill themselves, but Elise didn’t ask any more questions. It is not her job to protect strangers. Suicide isn’t impossible these days, but it’s much harder for most than it used to be. A version of them will survive out there somewhere unless they don’t want it to.

So she went into the fountain behind the others. She didn’t have to put any effort into swimming. It was like the water sucked her down before pushing her back out at full speed. It was really hot for a minute there too. Now she’s in the torrent of the open water with no land in sight. She appears to be completely alone.

She feels a pair of hands on her chest. “Elise! We thought you were lost!”

Elise can’t even tell who it is amidst the chaos of the storm raging above them. She turns around to find Colley. “Where are we? Where are the others?” she cries.

“Get on my back!” he shouts back. “We found something!”

After she climbs on and straddles his hips, he breaststrokes away. They end up traveling pretty far. It’s a wonder, really, how he managed to find her at all.

At last, she sees the others. They’re huddled together, and staying together, which must mean they’re holding onto something. It’s too dark to see it. Only when Colley pulls her right up and helps her get a handhold does she realize where she is. Or she can guess, anyway. It appears to be the crow’s nest of some kind of wooden ship. Minotaur and the Bidan girl are standing in it, on either side of the pole thing. Everyone else is holding onto the railing thing so they at least don’t have to waste energy treading.

The irony is that Elise was just about to start learning how to sail one week after Rage found her in Skilldome. She saw underwater basketweaving as a cute transition to it. After she mastered a regular basket, she was intending to weave a model of a ship, and then she would take it with her to the docks. It was going to be this whole thing. To be fair, she was going to learn 21st century sailing at first, and only maybe make her way down the centuries after that, but it doesn’t matter, because now she knows nothing. It’s a pole thing and a railing thing until someone tells her exactly what they’re called.

They spend hours there, because there’s nothing else they can do. Before Elise arrived, Zelda reportedly climbed up to the very tippy-top to get a look around, but the waves were too big and the moon too obscured by clouds. There are some waterfronts in Treasure Hunting Dome. There are plenty of challenges to be completed involving the water. But it doesn’t have anything like this. Elise knows that because Rage made them memorize as much of the layout of the dome as is publicly available. You need space to make the kind of storm and angry sea that they’re dealing with right now, and where they were before simply doesn’t have it. But two domes have exactly that. One is called Polar Tropica. It’s a gargantuan resort. The other...is Aquilonian Deep.

Miracle must not have been lying. Time travel is real, and they just came out of a portal. They didn’t simply jump into the fountain and sink to another level of Treasure Hunting Dome, or even the next dome over. They were sent halfway across the planet in the short amount of time they could hold their breaths. Now anything’s possible.

The seven of them take turns standing up while everyone else holds onto the sides. They are able to yell a few things at each other, but it’s too loud to have full on conversations. Elise explains that she stayed behind to try to convince the other hunter to come with them. Zelda confirms the time travel when she explains that she was here alone for a few minutes before the next person bobbed up. Each time someone new appeared, they reported that only seconds separated them at the fountain, even though minutes passed for those already here. They ultimately waited almost an hour before Elise came. When she asked them how they knew she was there in the first place, they said lightning would strike the spot where they were just about to come up. But Elise knows the truth. The lightning wasn’t marking the spot. They were riding the lightning.

The storm passes, and the sun rises in the sky, no doubt programmed or controlled by Hrockas or his Custodians. They’re dead tired, but still alive, and everyone here still wants to fight. This whole time, ever since the locker room, no one has brought up the fact that only one person can win. What’s the point? Except for one person now, they’re all friends. And the Bidan, Laise LeMaire, is quickly becoming part of the team too. Whatever the prize is, they can surely share it one way or another. It doesn’t help to become cutthroat now, especially not since it will take all of them to survive this.

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” Laise says. “I’ve been trying to remember the stories I was told from my home planet. I lived in a particularly advanced region, but many others were intentionally rustic. Some had boats like whatever we’re on top of right now. They never sank, because while they looked antiquated, the underlying structure was more modern. But I used to date one guy who grew up on one of these ships, and he talked about the real past—I’m giving you way too much background. I’m saying they had ways to lift sunken boats. It wasn’t easy, but it didn’t require gizmos or gadgets either. But we do need a lot of barrels, and even more patience.”

Without even asking for Laise to elaborate, Zelda volunteers to dive down to see how many barrels the boat has, if any. They don’t know this woman yet, but they trust that she wants to survive as much as they do, even if she has stopped caring about winning. Elise volunteers to go down too, because while she never had the chance to learn to sail, she absolutely knows how to freedive. It was one of the first things she practiced when she came to this planet. They search all over, but only find twenty.

“That’s not enough,” Laise says, shaking her head. “You said there were cannons down there too? That’s not enough. We would need at least twice that.”

“What if we got rid of the cannons,” Colley suggests. “While we’re at it, get rid of the chains and the big metal grate thing. Take out everything unnecessary.”

“I am not good enough at math to know whether that would work,” Laise admits. “The guy said forty. I guess I don’t really know what kind of boat he was talking about.”

“What exactly do we do with these barrels?” Rage asks her.

Laise sighs. “We attach them to the bottom of the boat, and then we pump the water out. Once they’re all filled with air, they should lift the boat out of the water.”

They stare at her like they can’t believe their ears. It sounds insane, and insanely grueling. Elise saw where they are, though. They’re sitting on the edge of a sea shelf, and there is no other land in sight. Their only hope is to get this bucket out of the water so they can stand. They’ll figure out how to move it after that. If this doesn’t work, they could die from exposure. But not starvation or scurvy. The barrels are evidently filled with fruit. There’s no drinking water, though, so they take a vote. Either they go for it, or let themselves die just to escape and give up. It’s unanimous.

Microstory 2758: Headwater

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The survivors look up at the sky, expecting Hrockas to reappear to announce Miracle’s death, like this is some kind of dystopian survival game. He doesn’t do that, though, and doesn’t need to. They all saw it. Miracle’s first teleportation could have been a weird trick of the mind, but it’s harder to explain it away this time. It looks like various forms of time travel are possible, and that one of these forms killed her. She will survive, or at least one version of her will. She will have no memories of her life after she was taken from her hotel room, and thrown out the window at the start of this. It’s unclear what she’ll think happened, or what she’ll do now. She may try to fight her way back, but if they really are in another dimension, that might be impossible.

The stakes have officially been raised. Death is plainly on the table, and the traps might be unpredictable, and even inexplicable. They have no idea where any other mines could be hiding. Hrockas wouldn’t have let them get this far if there were no way out, though. If he actually didn’t want them to find the treasure, he probably would have simply erased their memories. That’s not illegal here in the Charter Cloud of the galaxy.

“This is another escape room,” Rage determines. “I’ve even played one very similar to this before. They were regular land mines, of course, but the trick is finding the only safe path between them. We need to get to higher ground.”

“I will take care of that,” Zelda volunteers. She tries to jump up to a beam attached to the outside of the dome, but she can’t get that high in her tiny frame.

Minotaur helps her up. They’re taller, so they follow on their own with less issue.

They can’t climb up too far because they’re constantly curving away from the street, eventually reaching a point where they would lose the perspective advantage.

“See anything notable?” Rage shouts up to them. “Darkened squares? Anything?”

“There’s nothing!” Zelda cries back. “Minotaur is getting nauseated!”

“Come on back down!” Rage tells them. “It’s not safe!”

Everyone has been looking up at them, of course, but Elise has just now realized that Colley has been looking in the wrong direction. His eyesight is darting back and forth across the sky, and he sometimes turns completely. “What is it?” she asks.

“Has anyone here been to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida?” Colley asks.

“I have,” says one of the only two remaining hunters from Miracle’s team. Elise has not even gotten the chance to learn her name yet, even though it would have been plastered on her locker at the starting line. “I was born on a stasis ship that was part of the original fleet because my parents were awake the whole time as Shepherds.”

“Do you know Bida’s constellations?” Colley presses. “Because I don’t...except for that one.” He points. “That’s the feather duster, which is how I know this is a clue, because we’re a hundred light years from Tau Ceti. It has to be on purpose.”

The girl looks up as well. “Umm...I think you’re right, but I’m not much into the astrology. Unlike Earth, my ancestors never needed stars to navigate. Colonists contrived constellations for fun, according to what I remember. I think that might be the River Dhel, though. It’s the most important one for many of the world’s superstitions because it reflects the real river for a brief window every night.”

“When is the window?” Elise asks her. “And does anyone have a watch?”

“I have a watch on my multitool,” Minotaur says as Jolanda is helping them back down to the ground. “Why do we need it? What did we miss while we were up there?”

“The window depends on what day of year it is,” Colley explains. “We would need a Bidan calendar, and we would need to know what time it is—”

“We don’t need a Bidan calendar,” the Bidan girl argues. “I know we don’t need it because we don’t have it, and had no chance of taking one with us. I just need to know what time it is right now. It doesn’t even have to be the right time according to anyone in the outside world. Hrockas would have accounted for that when programming it.”

“She’s right,” Elise agrees. “You have a timekeeper because he wanted you to.”

“It’s 20:42,” Minotaur answers. “It’s true, I don’t know what planet.”

“For now, it’s Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida,” the Bidan decides, “and we’re too late. The reflection happens at the same time as the lunar culmination every year on the same night between 20:24 and 20:31. It’s a holiday. We took too long to figure out the clue.”

“Point out the river again,” Colley says. He moves over to stand next to her. They quietly work out exactly which stars make up the constellation while he looks down at the ground, a little off to the side, away from Miracle’s still dead body. “We got it.”

“You remember where the stars were fifteen minutes ago?” Rage asks him.

Colley clicks his tongue and taps on his head. “Hrockas can force me into any substrate he wants, but he can’t stop me from having an eidetic memory,” he echoes Miracle from before she hit an apparent teleportation mine and fell to her death.

Rage takes a breath. “Okay, we’ll draw for lead. Colley, you’re out of the running this time since you have the map. Our new Bidan friend is too for the same reason.”

“No, please don’t draw,” Jolanda says. “I’ve not been contributing anything to the hunt, and need to feel useful. I’ll take lead. I had a conversation with myself shortly before my consciousness stream was cut. I’m prepared to wake up without memories.”

“Okay, we have a volunteer.” Rage looks around at the group. “Any objections?”

No one objects, so Jolanda stands in front. Colley stands behind her, but far enough away to be hopefully safe from the blast of a land mine. It will hopefully not happen at all, but they’re not too naïve to be prepared for it. Everyone else walks in a single-file line behind him and the Bidan. Colley directs Jolanda slowly. The assumption is that the river mouth ends at the fountain in the center of the square. It’s less likely that they would have to walk the entire length of the river in order to perfectly replicate what the believers on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida would do during their special annual holiday. They seem to be correct once they reach that fountain and no one has died yet. Assuming this will lead them further down the path to their prize, there’s now another puzzle to solve, though. And they don’t know where to begin.

Zelda sticks her face in the dark water. She then slowly starts diving deeper and deeper until only her feet remain, which Rage and Elise have to hold onto so she doesn’t sink to the bottom. After a few more seconds, she taps on her own hip, which they take to mean it’s time to pull her up. “It’s bottomless.”

“You don’t know that,” the other non-team member contends.

“I think we’re supposed to get in,” Zelda figures. “A leap of faith.”

The Bidan nods. “In my planet’s origin story, which we all know someone made up, the creator God takes a leap of faith in the River Dhel where she finds the energy she needs to conjure the star.” She points to a sculpture. “She is represented by a fish.”

That’s all Zelda needs. She jumps in headfirst. Nearly everyone else follow.

Microstory 2756: Skull and Bones

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The conveyor belt is heading for another void. This game has had so many chances already to kill them. If this is another attempt, it would be difficult to avoid. There is no way off this ride. Still, there may be a non-lethal obstacle in the darkness, or on the other side of it. Elise gets on one knee, and plants her other foot firmly on the belt. She holds her hands up defensively, prepared for anything. Well, almost anything.

She passes through the darkness, and catches a glimpse of the opaque dome they’ve entered before the belt ends, and sends her over the edge. She falls a couple of meters before landing on her feet on a mound of human bones. The others are starting to help each other up from the piles of thousands and thousands. It’s maybe a hundred meters wide, dimly lit, and getting dimmer. It’s noticeably cold, but not deathly so.

Elise spins around and opens her arms so when Zelda falls too, she can catch her.

“My hero,” Zelda says in a breathy voice from Elise’s arms.

“Just doin’ my job, ma’am.” Elise is really coming out of her shell now.

“Are these the previous secret hunters?” Minotaur asks, picking up a skull. “Does everyone die in here? From what? More acid rain? A deluge? A furnace?”

“Hold up,” Colley says. “Here, help me push these bones out of the way.”

Jolanda and Rage pull the bones between their legs to give him some space.

Colley gets on his hands and knees and examines the floor below. He then grabs a random femur, and snaps it in half. He puts on his loupe specs to examine the inside.

“Wait, how do you still have those?” Elise questions. “Isn’t this a new body?”

“They were in my locker,” Colley explains as he’s changing lenses. “They’re not my regular ones. They upgraded me.” He looks carefully. “Fake. They probably all are.”

“Plastic, or something else?” Rage picks up another bone and breaks it.

“No, they’re organic,” Colley answers. “The layering is asymmetrical, which is how the best machines do it, but it’s definitely bioprinted. They forgot to include the tendon entheses, and there’s no remaining viscera on the floor, or even residue.”

Elise wades through the bones to get to the wall, not grossed out anymore. “Look for an exit, or signs of Miracle’s friends. They may have already escaped.”

“Those bozos?” Miracle questions. “Not a chance.”

“I found a door!” Jolanda shouts. She’s on the far side of the dome.

“Don’t open it until we’re all over there!” Rage commands. “Elise, take safety.”

Because any door has just as much chance of being a trap as being their salvation, one player is always chosen to stay behind as the designated survivor. It’s also possible that they’ve been doomed, if the door has a time limit, and can’t be reopened, so the role is risky, rather than necessarily safe. Rage has a plan to cycle through the roster fairly.

Elise climbs up to a particularly high bone hill to have a better vantage point, and give her more time to survive if opening the door, say, also opens a drain in the floor.

Once everyone is in place, including Miracle and the strangers, Jolanda waves her hand in front of the entry panel. The door slides into its pocket, revealing...a second door. This one is different, though. Even from here, Elise can see that there are indentations on the door face that are vaguely in the shape of a human body.

“It’s a puzzle,” Colley decides. “We have to fill in the gaps with a full skeleton.”

“Rule number three,” Rage begins. “Don’t try to unlock a door that’s already unlocked.” She nods at Jolanda. “Go ahead, Jo.”

Jolanda takes hold of the knob, turns it successfully, and opens the door.

On the other side is what looks like a city square. Elise climbs down to get a better look. People are milling about, preoccupied with their own lives. They’re dressed in traditional early 21st century garb. Only two things look out of place. A man and a woman wearing the same blue shirt are balancing two bananas each on their head while they sing a song quite poorly. Two other women wearing the same purple shirts are running past them, and opening a mailbox that is conspicuously sitting out in the open.

“Other hunters,” Elise determines as she draws nearer. “This isn’t right.”

“This is obviously our way out,” one of Miracle’s people says.

“Hrockas Steward said that we wouldn’t be hunting around other people,” Minotaur reminds him. “Why break one of his few rules right at the beginning?”

“Who cares?” he asks. “I’m exiting and checking that mailbox for our next clue.”

“I don’t think we have clues,” Colley postulates. “We’re not racing, we’re not being eliminated per leg. I think we only have one goal, and we’re supposed to go straight to that. No, Elise is right. This is a red herring, or some kind of trick.”

“It’s a choice,” Miracle corrects. “If we walk out this door without solving the skeleton puzzle, we’re forfeiting the game. That’s probably where those two assholes ended up. They don’t know what they’re missing. Don’t follow in their footsteps.”

The guy sighs. “Okay, boss. We solve the puzzle.” He steps back in.

Jolanda closes the door back up, and everyone spreads out.

The puzzle is harder than it looks. They’re not just looking for a single copy of every bone. They’re all slightly different sizes, just like they would be if these once belonged to living beings. Each puzzle bone can hold in place on its own on the board, even if the one below it hasn’t been found yet, but only if it’s the correct one. Otherwise, it just falls out. Elise deduces that they used magnets. She turns out to be right.

Like Colley with his spectacles or Zelda with her parachutes, Minotaur never goes anywhere without their multitool. They found it in their locker too, and it includes a very small magnet. It’s not powerful enough to sweep the area for the right bones, but it’s easy enough to test one quickly and toss it aside before moving on to the next.

They created an open space kind of near the door, where they carefully stack the duds. That way, they don’t accidentally test the same ones multiple times. It’s Elise and Jolanda’s job to keep the used stack away from the untested piles by pushing bones around, and maintaining enough space between them at all times.

It starts getting dark in here, and no one has a light, so they open the door just so the natural light comes in for them. Unrelated hunters periodically come up, thinking that it’s important for their race. It’s Rage’s job to back them off by simply saying, “parallel play”. This is a known phrase that warns players that their games are intersecting, and that if they try to find a clue here, they will end up on the wrong track.

After several hours, they finally have the last piece. Fittingly, it’s the skull. It’s a good thing they’re done. The streets are still bustling, but it’s now dark outside too.

“Colley, you do the honors,” Jolanda offers since he served as their puzzle master. She closes the door again, allowing him to ceremoniously place the skull in the last slot. The whole skeleton glows, and they hear a whirring sound. Once Jolanda reopens it, they see the same street again, but now, even though it has only been a few seconds...it’s completely empty.

Microstory 2755: Please Don’t Hold the Handrail

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Two of Miracle’s guys don’t hesitate for a second. As soon as that door cracks, they’re running right for it. They evidently have no loyalty to their teams. Elise doesn’t know how long they’ve been training together, but she’s not finding it so easy to leave them behind. She didn’t even always want to do this. The only reason she agreed is because of the team. If they’re going to take that from her, what reason does she have to go on? She’ll have to think about this first, and ignore that door in the meantime.

Minotaur jumps out of their seat too. They only manage to intercept the second guy, body-checking him against the wall as the first one slips over the edge right on the other side of the door and plummets to his death. Minotaur stands up and catches their breath. They’re not used to an analog body either. “You’re welcome.”

Miracle stands from her own seat and casually walks towards the lethal exit. She stands before her former teammate as he’s catching his breath too. She slaps him hard.

“I’m sorry, boss. You just talked so much about the prize. He and I started coming up with what it could possibly be. We think it’s unlimited energy credits. We could go anywhere. We could do anything. You know what, I’m not sorry,” he goes on as Miracle spins around and places her back to him. “What did you expect, pulling me out of Bloodbourne like you did? Running for my survival is what I do best. That’s why you—”

Since she turned around, Miracle has been mocking him with her facial expressions, and by mimicking mouth movements with her hand. She suddenly donkey kicks him in the chest, sending him over the edge to fall to his death too. She takes a deep breath, and half a step forward. “Does anyone in this room need me to define the word alliance for you, or are you at least slightly smarter than a panda bear?”

Rage calmly stands now, in just the same way Miracle did before. She approaches her slowly before suddenly jamming her forearm against Miracle’s clavicle and pinning her to the monitor, cracking it. “I know what an alliance is, but I don’t work with killers. You stay out of our way, and we’ll leave you alone too, but if you ever treat any one of my people like you did your own friend, you will wish you had jumped out too. Savvy?”

“Savvy?” Miracle echoes in an accent. “Are ya lost, love? This isn’t Piratedome.”

“Do. You. Understand me?” Rage reiterates, squeezing her chest even harder.

“Ooo, buy me dinner first, and I’ll understand whatever you say, Mistress.”

Rage angrily lets go and turns away from Miracle. She has spoken about this with the team before. It is absolutely crucial for her to temper her anger so her nickname remains firmly ironic, rather than simply not technically accurate. She centers herself with her eyes closed for a moment. “Zel, you’re up. Remember, they know what we’ve done. The tricks you used last time probably won’t work in this place.”

Zelda gets out of her seat and picks the sconce that Elise used to free her up from the floor. “I need silence,” she announces before she drops it into the pit. “Fifty meters.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Elise determines. There was something wrong about the way the sconce sounded compared to the way the men did. Their shouts actually didn’t sound right from the start, but she initially shrugged it off because she doesn’t know the acoustics of this room, or the pit. Now she suspects they’re vastly different than they appear to be. The void before them might not exist at all.

Elise takes her shirt back off, and uses it as a glove to remove a shard from the monitor that Rage broke. She sets it on the floor, reflective side up. She then gently nudges it towards the blackness to get it in the right place. Once it’s partway into the dark, she pays especially close attention to the way the light bounces off of it at the threshold. She bends down and starts to retie her shoes while she speaks. “A few years ago, I took a course on volumetric emitter placement. These days, an AI will decide where to place them for optimal image projection, so it’s become a lost art, but designers, architects, and engineers used to have to plan it carefully.

“Which of you has seen the movie Thunderbolts*?” Elise asks the whole group.

Colley raises his hand. “It’s a perfect example of combatting historical superhero fatigue in the early to mid-21st century media by actually lowering stakes.”

“Remember the elevator scene?” Elise presses.

“You don’t mean...” Colley begins.

“I need you,” Elise encourages. “You’re the only one who doesn’t need me to say it out loud, which might skew the results for us. Get over here, we’ll be fine.”

Colley walks over to join Elise. “Up or down?” he asks, sighing.

“Sideways,” Elise answers him. She turns him around then turns around too so they’re back to back. “Leading foot is one, trailing foot is two. Ready...one.”

Colley plants his left foot against the wall while Elise plants her right one.

“Now two.” They both step fully off the ground, holding themselves up by applying pressure to the walls with their feet, and each other’s backs. They begin to chimney walk through the darkness. One of them always makes sure their leading foot has something to press up against before the other tries their side. They could always end up with a wider hallway, or some sort of opening that completely destroys their plan, at which point they would have to go back. They can see nothing in this void.

They don’t end up having to go too terribly far, though. After only a couple of meters, they are out of the holographic void, and into the hallway on the other side. A people mover is running at incredible—and incredibly unsafe—speed below them. That’s what it was. The men who were sent over the edge merely fell on this, and they cried bloody murder because they were being suddenly dragged away into the unknown after believing that they were gonna fall to their deaths. This doesn’t explain the sconce, and it doesn’t explain why their friends aren’t responding to their shouts now.

“We’re gonna have to go back,” Colley determines when they give up.

He’s right. The belt is moving far too fast for their puny human legs to carry them the wrong direction to explain it to the others. If they don’t chimney walk back, their friends will assume that they fell to their deaths too. They prepare themselves mentally, call upon a second wind, and make the hard return journey to the chrysalis chamber.

Once they reappear from the void, Jolanda and Minotaur help them get off the walls safely so Elise and Colley can explain the situation. Rage then conceives the plan.

Elise should feel tired, but she’s wired, so she volunteers to be on carrying duty. She and Zelda hold each hunter by the shirt and pants, low to the ground. They toss them into the void from that position, allowing them to fall onto the belt with a far lower center of gravity. It isn’t painless, but those first two guys probably had it much worse.

Finally, only the two of them are left. “How do you wanna do this?” Elise asks.

“I’m strong enough.” Zelda picks Elise up and drops her onto the belt on her own.

As Elise is flying down the hallways on her ass, she looks back to see Zelda surfing on it like a pro. What a total badass. Elise may be falling in love.

Microstory 2754: Starting Line

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Elise opens her eyes. She’s floating in artificial amniotic fluid. No, that’s not what it is, it doesn’t taste right. It tastes more...leafy? Like spinach that’s gone bad, or kale that hasn’t gone bad, because kale is the worst food God ever created. She’s trapped. She’s trapped in something opaque, which is not how body switching works. You’re supposed to be in a glass box, or in more advanced equipment, a clean and sterile pod. It’s not this, whatever this is. This is all wrong, and she’s panicking. She squirms around, looking for a way to escape, but doesn’t find it. She’s going to have to make her own.

She tries punching and she tries kicking, but neither of them work. That’s what makes her realize that this isn’t simply a pod. It’s a chrysalis. And that’s not how butterflies get out of their chrysalises. Elise feels around to make sure she knows where down is, and then she starts to spit. Opening her mouth amidst all this goo necessarily forces more goo back into her mouth. She thought it tasted bad before, but now it’s making its way down her throat. She starts to retch, and then she vomits. Even though it’s disgusting, the bile, saliva, and other fluids accelerate the mission.

The enzymes in Elise’s saliva weaken the chitin enough for her to tear through it. She can see light now, and feel the air. She vomits more so she can start breathing again. She continues to tear at the chrysalis until the opening is wide enough for her to get through. She tries to aim away from her own sick, but that’s stupid, because she’s already covered in filth. Elise reaches out to the floor with her hands, clumsily slipping on the fluids, but it slows her down enough to keep her from faceplanting.

She’s on her back now on the cool white floor of a small room. It’s not too small, though. It’s big enough to fit ten other chrysalises. Her whole team is here, plus the other team. Wait, there should be twelve in total, so who are we missing? She frantically starts knocking on the other chrysalises. “Jolanda? Rage? Is that you? Who’s in there?” she starts to say, looking for her people.

She can hear them moan back to her, but no one replies with words.

In the real world, with a real butterfly, you don’t want to help it get out of its chrysalis. The struggle is real, but it is not pointless. It’s a crucible, which strengthens the insect so it can literally spread its wings and fly. But they’re not in the real world, they’re in a simulation. It may be a base reality simulation, but it’s not natural. The others don’t need to go through what she just did. Elise stumbles over to a wall and wrenches a sconce from it. She starts tearing at the nearest chrysalis. Yeah, sometimes you gotta spit on that thing, but sometimes you need good old fashioned brute force.

A woman tumbles out of the chrysalis. It’s Miracle.

Elise catches her, and gently lowers her to the floor.

“Oh, thank you,” Miracle says. “I’ve forgotten what this feels like.”

“You’ve used this form factor before?” Elise has never even heard of it.

“Yeah, buncha times,” Miracle replies. As she’s resting on her hands behind her back, she looks around before her gaze returns to Elise. “You take left, I take right?”

They divide and conquer until the other nine hunters are free. Thankfully, all of Elise’s teammates are here. It’s Miracle who is missing one of hers. The girl she was trying to safely fly down to the ground, and who was wearing her shirt on backwards on the football pitch, is missing. Miracle says that she had an emergency mind transponder, which she probably used before she hit the ground. There was no way to know that they would survive it.

It’s different, though. Elise feels weak, and not just because she just had to force her way out of a chrysalis, and then help five other people do the same. Her vision isn’t as strong, her joints are achey, and she feels hunger in a way that she hasn’t since she was a kid, before she became immortal. This is a regular body, like the kind everyone had back in the days before humanity had even reached the longevity escape velocity. Her consciousness stream isn’t just unlinked. It doesn’t exist. There’s no backup plan now. If she dies, she truly dies, and she’s guessing the same goes for everyone else.

Once the last person is on his feet, the ceiling lifts up and to the side like the lid of a cardboard box, revealing only a dark void above them. It begins to rain once more, but this time, it’s just regular water, instead of acid. Well, it’s also a bit soapy. The room fills up around ten centimeters of water and suds before the drains open up and start to wash all the gunk and junk away. Next come the blowers to dry them off. They all just stand there and accept it, because there’s no door to exit, and they want to get cleaned off, even if at the end of this is, they get decapitated by a Jigsaw wannabe. They are here to play a game at any rate, and this appears to be the start of it, for whatever reason.

After they’re sufficiently dry, seams appear on the back wall. They slide upwards, revealing eleven chairs in front of eleven lockers. Each one is labeled with one of their names. The hunters proceed to their assigned lockers, retrieve the generic clothes that were placed there for them, and get dressed. But nothing happens after they’re done.

“I think we’re supposed to sit down to trigger the next phase,” Elise figures.

They follow her advice, and once that last butt hits that last seat, the wall in front of them transforms into a monitor.

A man appears on screen. “Hello, and welcome to Treasure Hunting Dome. My name is Hrockas Steward, and I own the planet of Castlebourne. Now, you may be wondering why I would record this message, and whether I do it for the other 69,814 domes presently in service. The answer is no. This is only for you. You twelve—forgive me, eleven—contestants have selected our Premium-Ultra Package. This is the rarest of hunts, which will take you on a journey few have traveled. In regular hunts, you would be out in the open, encountering Ambients who are simulating locals from various locales. You will not be doing this. You are on a special mission to find a unique prize.

“It’s important you understand that I am not admitting that such a prize exists. This is confirmation of absolutely nothing. You are being isolated from the other players so your hunt does not influence or interfere with anyone else. Everyone who expresses serious interest in this track experiences the same thing. Or do they? You may never know. You may not even survive. You have become decoupled from your consciousness streams so if you die along the way, your alternate selves will move on with their lives with no memories of these events. Even if you do find what you’re looking for, you might never be able to reveal its secrets. Thousands before you may have succeeded, but never returned to tell the tale. You will receive your next clue on the other side of this door.”

The seams of a door appear on the third wall.

“Oh, and one more thing. Those teams you worked so hard to build? They’re useless. Only one person can win this hunt. Good luck to one of you. Aaaaaaaaaand go!”

The door opens.

Microstory 2745: My Respect and My Friendship

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Pribadium and Sora retreat into the auxiliary control room because that’s the most interior sector of the base. It’s deep in the asteroid. The rest of it is slowly being torn apart by the tidal forces of the dimensional barrier collapse. They won’t be able to stay here forever, though. They need to come up with a plan. Or rather, she will have to come up with it, because as intelligent as Sora is, he doesn’t know much about this stuff.

“Can you freeze time?” he suggests.

“Freeze time?” she echoes.

“Yeah. Just to give you more time to think of a permanent solution. I saw that in a TV show once. The ship was about to be destroyed by a big laser so they created a time bubble. I think they spent something like fifty years in there, which for people like me, is a long time, but that’s barely a blip for someone like you. Is that possible?”

Pribadium thinks about it. Yes, of course it’s possible. She is a time scientist. The problem is, what she needs is not in this room. This controls the lab itself. It doesn’t have any time tech in it. The main time lab is presently under siege. “It will be dangerous. It may already be destroyed. We’ll be jumping blind.” She offers her hand.

He takes it without hesitating, letting her teleport them both to the lab.

The walls are buckling. Particulates are falling from the ceiling. The tremors make it impossible for Sora to stay on his feet. She only can because of her advanced substrate. While he lies down on the floor and braces himself, she teeters over to the workstation and starts running through the process. It’s too long, it’s taking too long. She should have imagined this could happen, and been better prepared.

Just as the airlock buckles and bursts open, the bubble engages, preventing the air from escaping, and saving their lives. She dives down to make sure Sora’s okay.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he assures her. He stands and looks at the hole. “It worked.”

“Sort of,” Pribadium says. “In my rush, I didn’t set the differential to be wide enough. For every minute that passes, a second passes out there. We probably only have about half an hour before this sector collapses too. I can’t raise the differential now. I would have to cancel it and start again. And if you were thinking about transporting the bubble back to the aux room, that’s not possible either. I only delayed the inevitable.”

“I wasn’t seriously suggesting we spend fifty years in here,” he explains. “You’re a genius, and if this is the main time lab, I’m sure you have everything you need to figure it out. Thirty minutes should be more than enough. I believe in you.”

Pribadium takes a deep breath, appreciating what he’s saying. It’s at least not so dire, but as she looks around, she’s seeing all the damage. All of her tech is lined up against the walls for feng shui reasons. The time machine, the time reverser, even the dimensional generators; they were all decimated prior to their arrival. There’s just nothing that will—the timechairs. They’re in the middle of the floor, intact. She looks over at him with sad eyes. “Our only hope is to send our consciousnesses back to their younger bodies. The only safe place is in the past. This timeline is defunct.”

“That will undo all of this,” he determines. “Runaway and Sugar will never exist.”

“No, they will,” Pribadium contends. “They left the universe entirely, which permanently protects them from timeline collapses. They’ll still be out there, and if they ever return, they will find the new timeline, but...what will that timeline look like?”

He offers her his hand like she did before. “Let’s go find out...together.”

Microstory 2742: Pushing Through

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Over the last hour, Runaway has been reaching into the minds of her progenitors, and making them escape wherever they happened to be so they can find refuge in Tau Station. The station, meanwhile, has been moving closer and closer to the center of the universe, as has Pribadium’s lab. The Little Crunch, as Sugar—which is what Sora has chosen to call her—has decided to call it, is still heading their way. So far, there have been no casualties, but that’s only coming off Runaway’s knowledge. It could have happened prior to her genesis. And soon, there will be no safe place left to hide.

That’s why their priorities have completely shifted. They no longer have two objectives, but one. The barrier is dangerous, and a huge threat to all. They have no choice but to refocus their efforts on saving everyone. Having the mobile command center would be great, but it’s not worth people’s lives, and it’s an all-hands on deck situation. Runaway may be more powerful, but her knowledge doesn’t include anything about the lab, and Sugar is literally out of date, so Pribadium is in charge.

She has been barking orders at all three of them, Sora included. She gave him a teleporter vest so he can jump to various parts of the facility. He is mostly sealing bulkheads manually since all available power has been rerouted to propulsion. Runaway has done the same thing to Tau Station. This only solves the immediate issue, though. They are trapped in this pocket universe with no apparent escape.

“We have to punch through it!” Runaway argues. She’s figured out how to multitask, so she can carry a conversation while fully in control of her progenitors.

“Through what, the gravity generators? I’ve already thought of that,” Pribadium explains. “It won’t work. It will only crush us faster.”

“No, the dimensional generators,” Runaway argues.

“Those are for pocket dimensions. They’re not going to get us back to real reality,” Pribadium reasons. “We would still be crushed, except we won’t see it coming anymore.”

“Dimensional generators synthesize temporal energy. Don’t use them correctly. Break them open. Focus the energy through a hot pocket purge, and create a doorway.”

Pribadium shakes her head. “You’re talking about an artificial wormhole. Just because it’s manmade doesn’t mean it will be any more stable than a natural wormhole.”

“Stop!” Sugar suddenly cries before Runaway can push back on Pribadium.

Everyone halts. “What is it?” Pribadium questions. “Do you have a better idea?”

“I have the only idea,” Sugar contends as she’s stepping over and gently moving Pribadium and Runaway’s hands away from the controls that they were hovering over. “We are going about this all wrong. The only reason the walls are closing in is because we’re trapped between the membrane of the universe, and the false vacuum we call outer space. We may think we have to slip back in to survive, but even if we manage to punch a hole in the dimensional barrier, the resulting explosion could be catastrophic...for us, and anyone else in the vicinity.” She looks at her future self. “Pribadium, you wanted to leave the universe. You wanted to create your own. That’s exactly what we have to do. The bulk is a stable equilibrium. We will be safe there.”

“But we’ll be trapped,” Pribadium says. “These people can never go home.”

“Can’t they?” Sugar questions. “Isn’t traveling the bulkverse the whole point?”

They think quietly on their own. “So we push through,” Runaway determines.

“We push through,” Pribadium agrees.

Microstory 2733: The Cost of a Life

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The Pribadiums have been hard at work for the last three days. They have been performing, checking, and rechecking calculations. They have been running simulation after simulation after simulation. They have sent probes out to scan, analyze, and synthesize. And now they have a better picture of their situation. The first probes told them how expansive the pocket dimension bubble was. These more recent probes are telling them how big it is now, and those figures are not the same. It’s shrinking. At this rate, the window of opportunity will close by the end of the week. Well, they wanted to know their time constraints, and now they have them. That is only part of the puzzle, though. What happens to people and objects who pass back out?

Or are they passing through the dimensional barrier at all? Their intuition suggests that they are, because the Pribadiums are losing contact with the probes, but that doesn’t mean they’re slipping safely through. It might be vaporizing them, shunting them somewhere else, or simply generating too much interference to maintain the connection. Someone is going to have to go out there and gather more information.

“I volunteer as tribute,” Sora says.

Pribadium!One chuckles. “That won’t be necessary. We’ll flip a coin.”

“I’m serious,” Sora insists. “If something happens to me, it’s no big deal. I only have maybe a hundred years left in this universe anyway. If one of you dies, you’re losing eternity. Besides, you’re more valuable than I am. Really, I wanna do this.”

“Well, if we’re going by a simple value analysis, we have an excess of Pribadiums,” Pribadium!Two says. “If I go, my alternate is still here, and we’ve not lost anything.”

Pribadium!One rolls her eyes at her alternate self, and doesn’t validate her words. She faces Sora. “This wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with Elke, would it?”

“Elke?” Sora asks. “I told you, I’ve moved past that. You telling me what happens when you die has given me closure. That’s why it doesn’t scare me to do this, because I know whatever happens, I’ll survive. I didn’t realize I was digitized, and I’ve been grumpy about it, but we might as well take advantage. It sounds like you can’t come back, or dead people would be doing it all the time. So you should stay.” He looks at Pribadium!Two. “Both of you. Two heads are better than one if they’re both you, right?”

“I’m the one who said that,” Pribadium!One reminds him.

“Same result,” Sora reasons. “And anyway, death isn’t a guarantee. It’s a test.”

Pribadium!Two shakes her head. “Survival is what is not guaranteed. The afterlife simulation is based on a certain set of criteria. In order for your consciousness to be transmitted to it, you have to both originate from the main sequence, and be in the main sequence. I’m guessing you qualify for the former, but not necessarily the latter. That’s one thing we would be testing out there with this manned mission. The bottom line is that you may not end up in the sim, or in Fort Underhill. The risk is real.”

“Again, that is how I have always lived,” Sora explains. “I never thought I was going to live forever. There is a freedom in that which you have either forgotten, or are too young to remember. I’m part of a long history of doomed souls. I’m proud of that.”

Pribadium!Two nods. She pulls down her pants and removes a teleporter dartgun from a flap of skin on her hip.

“You always had that?” Pribadium!One was surprised. “You could have escaped.”

“Yes,” Pribadium!Two confirms. “But he won’t be able to.” She shoots him.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 19, 2563

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Monster might not have been the right word to use for them. They were amorphous blobs that shifted their shapes as they moved in unpredictable ways. They were mostly a navy blue, though hints of other colors randomly appear like twinkling stars. They had no faces and no limbs, but they were heading right for the trio. Mateo didn’t know if Romana and Boyd were as worried as he was, so he took his eyes off of the apparent attack to study their faces. They both looked just as surprised as they stood up from the picnic blanket, and tried to back away. This was evidently not normal.

There were more monsters behind them, coming from up the ridge, in the tree branches, and even from burrows in the ground. The landscape and foreground objects, like the picnic supplies, started flickering. The waterfall moved backwards, and then forwards at superspeed. It wasn’t just that there were monsters in this world. It was that the world itself was unstable. The simulation was clearly corrupted. They would have to take it out of Romana’s head. But first, they had to find a way out of it. Any amount of time could have passed in the real world for them. She was not in control anymore. Perhaps she never was.

“We have to get out of here,” Mateo pointed out as they were running through the one gap they found between the monsters. “You leave first, Romy. I’ll follow.”

“She can’t leave,” Boyd argued.

“I don’t know if you’re real or not,” Mateo said to him, “but if you love her like you’re supposed to, you’ll let her save herself. I don’t know where you could go, but—”

“No, it’s not that,” Boyd argued. “The nanites are in her brain and body. She can’t simply log out. Whatever is happening will still be happening, and could still be damaging her. But at least here, she can see what’s going on from the inside.”

“Our friends don’t necessarily know that something has gone wrong,” Mateo reasoned. “We have to leave so we can tell them, so they can solve it from their end.”

“You go,” Romana urged. “Tell Ram and mother. I will stay and maintain the link.”

Mateo stopped, and stopped her by the shoulder. They had covered some ground. “That doesn’t make sense. You need to be able to talk to them about what you’re feeling, and what you’re thinking. They need to be able to ask you questions. I will stay here.”

“Time is different when she’s not here,” Boyd explained. “I don’t have to wait a full year for her to come back, but I do spend some time alone, so I live more like a normal person, instead of a program that she just turns on and off. Whatever these things are...”

“They could be messing with that.” Mateo turned back to his daughter. “That’s why you need to go. Please. We’ll take care of each other. If he were the original Boyd, or if he’s not; it doesn’t matter. I don’t know how to test for that. I have to assume that he’s a conscious being, so I will fight for him like I would anyone else.” He waited. “Now go!”

Romana gave Boyd a hug and a kiss, and Mateo only a hug. Then she disappeared.

“Do you have any idea what these things are?” Mateo asked. “Can we fight them?”

“I wouldn’t know, but I wouldn’t try. They might kill you. Just by touch, they might genuinely destroy your IDCode, leaving your body an empty husk in base reality.”

The monsters were closing in on them again, so they started running off again. “Can we simply shift to a different environment?” Mateo asked. “Anywhere but here.”

Boyd extended his hand, then transported them away when Mateo took it, but no matter where they jumped, the blobs were always in the exact same place, relative to their positions. The blobs could pass through solid objects, so the only way to stay ahead of them was to run. The humans had to keep running for a week before rescue came.

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