The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 11, 2279

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The team was suddenly floating in outer space, next to a three-dozen kilometer tower that was once standing on the surface of Proxima Doma. All they could see was the faint outline of the lightly self-illuminated looming structure. The rest was utter darkness. They could survive like this for now, but they couldn’t communicate well, so they activated their EmergentSuits, and sealed themselves up. “Checking for injuries,” Leona declared. She scrolled through her list, which reported no issues with the team, but it did display something else. “Extra lifesign detected. Or...maybe two. Sync up and jump.” She selected the coordinates, and they all teleported there.

They found themselves in the penthouse of the tower. Aeterna was lying unconscious on the floor. Mateo scooped her up, and set her on a table. “Where’s the infirmary?” he asked, gently brushing Aeterna’s hair away so he could pull her eyelids open to check for a response. He wasn’t a doctor, but it seemed like the right thing to do. He shone a light into each eye, and saw the pupils shrink, which made sense to him.

“There is none,” Ramses replied. “Tertius and Aeterna are both immortal.”

“Obviously not,” Mateo argued. “She’s also pregnant...I don’t know if you noticed. That’s a pretty big change from when we last saw her a few minutes ago.”

Marie unzipped Aeterna’s outfit, and started to feel around on her belly. “It’s as hard as a rock. I don’t know what that means, but it can’t be good.”

“Keep unzipping,” Leona ordered quietly. “I think I’ve seen this before.”

Marie did as she was asked. “Is that what I think it is, or just urine?”

Leona bent over and sniffed. “It’s sweet. It’s what you think it is.”

“She can’t give birth if she’s not awake,” Romana reasoned.

“Oh yes, she can,” Leona contended. “Because we’re gonna help her. Get that thing all the way off of her.” While they were doing that, she held her arms out, and receded her sleeves. She then instructed her nanites to configure into a sanitizer dispenser, connected to the reserves in one of her pocket dimensions. She squirted it all the way, up and down her arms and hands, rubbing them together. She then turned her nanites into exam gloves, and did it all again to sanitize those too. She took one breath, but decided that it wasn’t enough, and continued into a breathing exercise. She lifted one hand again, and apported a sterile knife into it.

“You can’t be serious,” Olimpia said.

Leona continued to look down at the patient as she spoke. “Ramses is right. Aeterna is immortal, just like her father. She told us about it, and demonstrated it. She is injured now specifically because she’s pregnant. The baby is suppressing her immortality because it has to in order to grow. I don’t have to know how to do a proper c-section. I just have to get the child out of her, and she will heal herself.”

“What if she doesn’t?” Olimpia pressed. “What if she needs surgery to...kickstart the healing?”

Leona looked at her wife. “Then I’ll access the central archives, and find out how to do that.”

Olimpia shook her head disapprovingly.

“If we do nothing,” Leona went on, “both of them die. We don’t know where or when we are. We’re not detecting anyone else around. We are all that mother and baby have. Stand back, it might squirt blood. I don’t really know.” Leona just went for it. She cut Aeterna’s body from side to side, then without any instruments, she reached through the seam, and pulled the skin apart. It wasn’t pretty, but she knew she was right. Aeterna would come back from this. She reached further into Aeterna’s womb, and carefully picked up the baby. It was...floppy. That was the only word to describe what the baby looked like. And blue. She was also very blue.

“Oh my God.” Romana started to tear up, and look away.

“I need to lie her down to perform CPR. Someone cut the cord, please.”

Mateo apported his own knife into his hand, and severed the umbilical cord. Leona turned out to be right. Immediately after the connection was severed, Aeterna’s body started to return to normal. Her c-section was beginning to seal itself up right before their eyes.

Leona looked at her, then back at the baby, then back at Aeterna again. “Get a syringe. I need a blood sample.

“What?” Mateo questioned.

“Isn’t there a first aid kit in one of our dimensions?” Leona urged. “Come on! Hurry, hurry!”

“Yes, I got it. Hold on.” Ramses thought about what he needed, then materialized the syringe. He reached down, and tried to poke Aeterna’s arm, but the needle broke on contact. “It didn’t work.”

Leona understood the stakes. “The c-section. It hasn’t closed up yet. Take it from there. Now!”

“I don’t have a second syringe,” Ramses explained.

Angela apported one from her own medkit. She deftly stuck it into Aeterna’s wound, and drew some blood out of it. The needle broke too, and the skin forced it out, letting it fall to the floor.

Aeterna gasped as she sat up, then settled back down, but only for a second. “My baby!”

“This is your blood,” Angela said, shaking it at her. “Will it heal your child? We don’t know what’s wrong with it.”

“Yes, please. Do it now!” Aeterna shouted back.

“The needle’s gone,” Mateo reminded them.

“Use mine.” Marie apported her syringe. She twisted the needle off it while Angela twisted the bad one off of hers.

They put the two good parts together, then Angela tapped on the syringe, and squirted a little bit of the blood out to clear any air bubbles. She carefully slipped the needle into the baby’s vein, and injected her with the crude serum. They waited there for a moment, breathless and scared. More of them started to tear up. Finally, after about a minute, the apparent cure had circulated throughout the child’s bloodstream. Her skin turned pink, and miraculously, she started to cry. Oh, it was so loud and grating, and the most beautiful thing they had ever heard.

Aeterna burst into tears herself as Leona handed her wee girl to her. She continued to cry, but was smiling at the precious life in her hands. Then she started to blink and look a little bit confused. She adjusted her position a little. “She’s moving her arms, but not her legs. Why isn’t she moving her legs?”

“I...I,” Leona eked out. “The blood should have worked. It did work!”

“She’s not moving her legs!” Aeterna repeated.

“Aeterna,” Mateo began. “What is the baby’s name?”

“What? What does it matter?”

“Tell us the name,” Mateo reiterated.

“We hadn’t decided on a first name yet,” Aeterna began. “She was gonna take her father’s surname, and I was gonna surprise him with the idea to name her after his late mother, Delara.”

“Dilara Cassano,” Mateo said.

Aeterna had been staring at her baby girl this whole time, but now jerked her head up. “You know her. You know her in the future.”

Leona solemnly glided over to the wall, and opened the viewport, revealing a black void. No stars whatsoever. “I know where we are. This is The Fifth Division.” She turned back around, and took one step towards Aeterna. “I’m sorry to do this to you right now, in your darkest hour, but...report.”

Aeterna swallowed, but recognized that she had to catch them up. “You failed. You didn’t have the strength to spirit the rest of the tower away, and it crushed you. But you were lucky. The shockwave blasted its way through the dome, and killed everyone. The massive destruction accelerated the instability of the planet just enough to prevent any hope of evacuation. The poles were the only safe places to be, but most couldn’t get to them. And there certainly weren’t enough ships to get them all off planet. Since I was pregnant, I had a pass. I used what little time I had to make contact with the choosing one network, and found someone willing to send me back. He had his limits, unfortunately, so when I returned, I only had enough time to use the tower’s power reserves to give you the energy boost you needed to finish the job. It looks like we succeeded.”

“So there’s another Aeterna back in the main sequence,” Marie realized, “and another Dilara.”

Mateo looked at her. “That’s why she didn’t recognize us. She was a dupe, like you.” They both looked over at Angela.

“So she never walks,” Aeterna asked. “My baby never walks?”

“I’m sorry,” Leona said. “I wanted to go for the bone marrow, but we didn’t have the equipment, and definitely not the time. Once she was separated from you, your body decided that it was ready to be invincible again. That’s what makes you and your father special. You have layers of death defiance.”

Aeterna nodded somberly. “I wasn’t supposed to be able to get pregnant. I always have unprotected sex, because I didn’t think it mattered. Even if my partner had an STD, they couldn’t give it to me, and I have nothing to give to them.”

“How did Tertius have you in the first place?” Ramses asked. He then recoiled, worried that it was an inappropriate question.

“He had some kind of legacy loophole,” Aeterna answered. “It was some special serum that gave him one shot at conception, which he used to make me.”

“Maybe it was lingering in your system,” Leona guessed. “That’s how you have her.” She gestured towards the baby.

“That was our assumption too,” Aeterna agreed.

“Were you pregnant when we met?” Olimpia asked.

“No. I was pregnant when you came back, but that was a year later, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I just...didn’t think it was relevant,” Aeterna defended.

“You don’t owe us an explanation,” Mateo assured her.

Just then, a beam of light appeared. They turned their heads to see a crack in the far wall, right where it met the floor. It looked like someone was trying to break through using a thermal lance. The bean split in two, and each one began to travel up the wall at roughly the same speed. As they moved upwards, more cracks of light began to appear between them, in random, wavy curves. It looked rather familiar. They just needed more information to win this game of Pictionary. Knowing that it could be dangerous, everyone suited up. Mateo figured that it would be unsafe to donate his nanites to a baby, like he had with Boyd years ago, so he stood between her and the mysterious intrusion. The others bunched up to do the same. Mateo commanded the nanites on his front to turn into little cameras, and the ones on his back to become monitors so Aeterna could still see what was happening.

The beams continued to move up in straight lines, and accelerated, until beginning to split off into branches. Oh, it was a tree. The first two lines had formed the trunk, and the curves between them was the bark. Finally, the beams met back up with each other to complete the full image. The light became saturated, and began to fill the room. After one final flash, the light and the tree disappeared from the wall, but left a lingering image in the air. Behind it were two figures, holding both of each other’s hands. As the hologram faded, their eyes adjusted, and they were able to see who it was. Well, they were able to see one of them. The other was covered by a hood.

“Romana?” Leona asked.

“That’s not Romana, Mateo determined.

“Miracle,” Romana said. “Why are you here?”

“I think you know why.”

“Who’s your friend there?” Romana asked.

“I know who it is,” Leona said. “Show yourself. You’re not fooling anyone.”

Adult!Dilara Cassano pulled her hood back, and stretched her lips into a polite, but fake smile. “I didn’t wanna come, but I had no choice.”

“What is the meaning of this?” Leona demanded to know. The team hadn’t budged. There was no reason to relax, and think that Aeterna and Baby!Dilara weren’t still at risk.

“It has nothing to do with the kid,” Miracle began. “It’s mostly a coincidence that Miss Cassano here was the person we found to come pull you back into our reality.”

“We,” Mateo echoed. “We who?”

Miracle smirked. It was quite unsettling, seeing her look like Romana, but realizing that she wasn’t their friend anymore. “I think you know who. You broke out of negotiations way too soon, and Pacey is not happy. You need to get back to the main sequence, and back to the Goldilocks Corridor, so you can get back on mission, and assassinate Bronach Oaksent.”

“We have decided not to do that,” Leona retorted.

Miracle laughed. “Oh, I forget. You keep thinking you have choices. That’s enough of that.” She turned her head to face Adult!Dilara. “Do your thing.”

Adult!Dilara hesitated.

“Do it,” Miracle insisted.

Adult!Dilara reluctantly released creepy light vines from her ankles, and sent them out towards the team.

The vines reached their legs, and started climbing up their bodies. They couldn’t be removed. “Your escape modules!” Ramses yelled. “Release them! For the baby!”

They all did it, leaving behind seven caches of supplies to keep the baby alive until Aeterna could find civilization, and then they disappeared in a flash of branching light.

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Microstory 2483: Campodome

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Camping has never gone out of style, but it’s had its ups and downs. Once our ancestors invented computers, they realized how disruptive it was to be away from their devices. People in the 19th century were basically, like, “camping is just living without being in a building, and peeing in the woods”. Over time, the gap between regular urban living and camping in a tent widened. Then we started developing better portable energy storage, and more prolific satellite connectivity, and it started going back the other way in many respects. You could go out to the middle of the woods, and enjoy nature, while still maintaining a connection to the outside world, to just about whatever degree you wanted. There were snobs, of course, who said that you really shouldn’t have anything, and to a certain extent, I agree. Glamping is what they called it when you basically lived in a tiny home with no sacrifice of amenities. Really, what’s the point? The leaders on Castlebourne couldn’t answer that either, so it doesn’t exist here. There are all kinds of other camping formats, though. Forest, prairie, desert, even wetlands, and snow camping. What people don’t realize is that each dome is large enough to be fully capable of supporting a diverse multi-biome ecology. You just have to tailor the terrain to fit what you need, and maybe add a bit of scientific intervention. Colder regions are near the top of a mountain range, as you might expect it on Earth. It doesn’t have seasons, since the kind of engineering that would require is just a little beyond what’s practical. It’s not impossible, but it’s more logical to divide climates up by areas. You choose where you wanna camp, and how you wanna do it. Some people go out there and totally rough it. They have no supplies, no food, maybe not even clothes. There’s a subculture of people who go out there totally naked and alone, and survive on their skills.

As I said, there are no seasons, though these survivalists can replicate them by moving to different spots. I will say that that’s not quite right, because if you really wanted to start your journey in Spring, and see how you fared when the weather changed, you would build your shelter as well as you possibly can, and wait for it to become necessary. That’s not a feasible option when your campsite has to shift in order to account for that journey. So maybe they can improve upon that. I know it’s not easy, and maybe they shouldn’t try. After all, that’s why the flying spaghetti monster made Earth, because it already has everything you need, and the cycles kind of take care of themselves. I’ve not mentioned it yet, but there are hiking and backpacking routes, if you like to stay on the move. Some of them are pretty long, but nothing that compares to the grueling trek of the Pacific Crest or Appalachian Trails. There’s just not enough space. There might be a dome out there that winds you around enough times to cover that distance, but it’s not here. This is mostly about the camping and again, some things probably should be left to the homeworld. We didn’t spend decades rewilding the surface exclusively to leave it to nature. We still allow ourselves access to that nature, and are encouraged to camp when we feel like it. So, is this place better at what it does? No, I shouldn’t think so. You’re still in a snowglobe. You will always know it’s artificial. And it’s nothing we don’t have elsewhere, unlike say, the waterpark in Flumendome, or the realm in Mythodome, but it’s still pretty nice. I certainly wouldn’t cast your consciousness here with the express intention of coming to this dome, but it’s a great option if you’re already here, and need to take a break from civilization.

Extremus: Year 101

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Around the time that Tinaya was shutting the forced pregnancy program down, something else major was being shut down. As it turns out, the popular immersive role-playing game, Quantum Colony wasn’t only a game. It was real. Players were piloting real substrates tens of thousands of light years away in the Charter Cloud of the Milky Way. It was the infamous Team Matic who figured it out, and threw their weight around to end the whole thing, presumably citing the many ethical violations that it was making. The Military outpost, Teagarden forcibly removed all players, casting them back to their real substrates in the Core Worlds, or in the case of the Extremusians, back here. This had two consequences, which came down to timing. First, people were frustrated, because that game was one of the few distractions that they used to escape the confines of the ship. Without it, they felt more pent up and isolated than ever. But also, because they were being encouraged to procreate anyway, people were relieving their stress through sex. So it’s been a really complicated last few months.

Waldemar was a particularly avid player of Quantum Colony, and he is at the age where he wants to have a lot of sex, even though he doesn’t have the capacity to experience love or affection. Audrey was not his girlfriend at the time, but she could tell that his eyes were starting to wander as he was looking for a mate. She ingratiated herself to him, pulling his attention away from the other girls in his vicinity. He didn’t see a problem with her being a minor, nor being younger than him. Again, because of the way his brain was wired, those kinds of social constructs seemed just as arbitrary as anything. So he fell for her very well-calculated wiles, and focused all of his attention on her. They have been keeping their distance from Silveon—and his whole family, for that matter. Audrey knew that Silveon would not react positively to the news that she was pregnant. On the occasions that they did see each other, she wore carefully selected clothing, was always eating to explain why she was getting noticeably larger when the ponchos weren’t enough, and eventually resorted to holographic trickery to fake her normal, thinner figure.

That has all been lost today. Silveon didn’t catch her showing the true size of her belly, but a mutual associate did. She thought nothing of it, not realizing that anything was being kept a secret. She mentioned it to Silveon casually, having no idea the beast that she was awakening. At this point, Tinaya has known the truth for a couple of weeks, and has been unable to get Audrey to elaborate on the circumstances leading up to her situation. Silveon is determined to get it out of her now.

“Silvy. Silvy! Stop! You look like you’re about to hit her,” Tinaya scolds as she’s physically holding him back.

“I’m not going to hit her!” Silveon insists. “I just want an explanation.” He looks back over at Audrey. “How did this happen? I didn’t even know you liked him. Do you know what he is?”

Audrey is tearing up. “Dougnanimous Brintantalus.”

The initial look of horror on Silveon’s face when he hears that; Tinaya has never seen it before. He’s always been so confident and collected. His expression sinks now, as he begins to hyperventilate just a little. He’s starting to have a panic attack. That, Tinaya recognizes. He’s never been through it before, but she has seen it in his father. “Come on,” Tinaya says. She pulls the two kids closer to her, and teleports them to the giant sequoia. They’re not at the base of the tree, but a couple of decks up. “Thistle. Cone of silence.”

Thistle doesn’t have a way to magically prevent others from hearing what they’re saying, but he can place them in a parallel dimension where light passes, but sound does not. People will be able to see them here if they happen to walk by, but they won’t be able to eavesdrop. They came to this location because the tree has a calming effect on people, which is why she planted it in the first place, along with the rest of the forest. “Cone established.”

“Do what I do,” Tinaya says calmly. She begins to breathe deliberately as she’s staring at her son, and holding his shoulders. No one speaks until he’s matched her breathing for sixty seconds. “Good.”

Silveon nods, and steps back to give himself some space. “I’m okay.”

“I have this thing where you tell me five things you can see—”

“I’m familiar with the technique,” Silveon interrupts. “I don’t need it.”

Tinaya nods. She shifts her gaze between him and Audrey as she asks, “what did that mean? That phrase sounds familiar.”

“It’s famous,” Audrey explains. “It’s called a trust password. People used to think that you could use them to prove that you were a time traveler, but...because of mind-reading tech, it’s unreliable. You could never really trust them. Still...”

“In the future, we joked about using one,” Silveon says, taking over the explanation. “At one point, we were both gonna come back in time. It seemed logical to not have to do this alone. We ultimately decided against it, because we agreed that partners would always distract each other. No matter the dynamic between them, they would end up having too many conversations that weren’t about Waldemar, or at least weren’t about what we need to do to stop him. It’s a one-person job, because that one person can focus all of their energy on this one mission.”

“I think I remember studying trust passwords,” Tinaya acknowledges. Then she quickly realizes that that’s not the point. “I understand the logic in the one-person mission, but she came here to protect you, not help you.”

“How long have you known about her?” Silveon questions.

“A few years.”

“I’ll deal with you later, young lady,” he says to his mother. He faces Audrey. “Whose idea was this? Crow’s? He never thought that I should be the one to go back, even though it was my idea.”

“It wasn’t anyone’s plan but mine. She was right. I came back to protect you, not to complete your mission. You were such a tiny little thing. None of us knew Waldemar when he was young in the original timeline. We didn’t know how he would react. Maybe he would see you as an object to be experimented on. He might have wanted to test what it’s like to set a human on fire, or see what people look like on the inside. We didn’t know anything!”

Silveon shakes his head. “You were meant to see me off that night...say goodbye. Now I know why you weren’t there, because you were sneaking back here, I assume through the prototype consciousness projector? You spent all this time watching me in secret, and you did a damn good job keeping yourself hidden, because we only met a few years ago.”

“That sums it up,” Audrey confirms.

“That wasn’t just a summary. It was a condemnation. I thought hearing it laid out before you would make you see how insulting it was, and how much you betrayed me.”

“Okay,” Audrey begins. “I want you to summarize your own mission with Waldemar, and see how closely it matches up with what you just said about me.”

“That’s my point! He’s the enemy! We’re supposed to be allies!”

“How could we have been allies if I was dead!”

“What?”

“Silveon. We killed everybody. When we projected our minds to the past, we collapsed the timeline behind us. That’s why I had to use the prototype at the exact same time as you. If you came back here alone, I would be gone! The girl named Audrey who you would have met in this timeline would have been someone else! It wasn’t just about you! I wanted to survive this!”

“I’ve never looked at it that way,” Silveon admits. “I always saw what I did as a sacrifice, but I had it backwards. It was everyone we left behind who sacrificed their own continuity...to save us...to save me.”

“They made it gladly,” Audrey tells him, “because they did it to save everyone else on the ship.”

“That’s what you did, when you let him do that to you?” Silveon gestures towards Audrey’s belly.

“I don’t know what’s gonna happen to this child, but he was determined to get someone pregnant. Better me than some innocent girl who doesn’t understand what he is. I can protect myself, and her.” She massages her own belly.

“You just said that we don’t know anything about him,” Silveon reminds her.

“We didn’t before,” she clarifies. “I know him now. I’ve learned coping mechanisms. I’m sure you have too.”

For a moment, there is a silence as the three of them absorb each other’s perspectives. A stranger does walk up, and seems to identify the intensity of the interaction, so he leaves. Silveon leans against the trunk, and slides down until he’s sitting. “It wasn’t supposed to go like his. Mom, why did you try to fix the population problem with a shipwide orgy? It’s fine. Both of us could have told you that it’s fine.”

“The population decline happened in your timeline too?” Tinaya questions. “I was taking it as proof that you butterfly affected something when you came back here. I figured you would have mentioned something at some point.”

Silveon brushes it away. “Yeah, the population goes down, but it bounces back.”

“Tell her why it bounced back,” Audrey suggests.

“I don’t—I don’t know why. Is there some particular reason?” He isn’t acting cagey. It sounds like he genuinely doesn’t know.”

Audrey has had enough of sitting down, so after allowing Tinaya to help her take a seat on the bench, she starts to educate them. “Waldemar takes his cues from history. Understanding social nuances was never his strong suit. One trend he noticed in the past on Earth is that populations tend to rise during periods of political strife. Like dictatorships. He noted that communities that are poor and less educated typically lead to higher populations. Unfortunately for him, achieving the kind of results on this ship are a little more difficult. We take our cues from the post-scarcity society that our ancestors were able to adopt when they were rescued from the Ansutahan universe, and housed in the centrifugal cylinders in the Gatewood Collective. There’s no such thing as poverty, and there’s no such thing as education disparity, because resources are easy to come by, and knowledge is so easy to access and spread. We are limited here, since we can’t just make a stop on a planet, and gather what we need, but we’ve found a workaround with the time travel excursions.

“Waldemar solved the population collapse crisis by making sweeping social changes that you chalked up to random expressions of maniacal power. He did them for a reason. First, he altered the excursion cycle, requiring timeship managers to give definitive proof of depleting resources before one can be scheduled. This may not sound like a big deal, but he would only authorize so many time excursions per year, and only for resources that were already proven low. In order to take advantage of one of these infrequent opportunities, they waited until more resources were low, which meant some resources were critically low, or completely out, before they were replenished. Furthermore, he reworked the contribution score system, so that high scores didn’t just lead to luxury, but to bare necessities. You had to have a job to feed your family, whereas before, such things were considered human rights. In addition, he changed child labor laws. It actually benefited the family to have children enter the workforce at a younger age. And in fact, the system made it so that it was beneficial to have more children, rather than fewer. You would think that it would be the other way around. A lack of resources should lead to lower population, but it encouraged it, because it was all about controlling those resources. Few people knew where they stood. They simply did what made the most sense for their family. His plan worked, but it obviously came at a cost.”

Silveon looks over at his mother again. “So she saved us. She did what I’ve been trying to do this whole time. If his only reason for instituting all those laws no longer exists, he won’t be able to justify those actions.”

“You know better than that,” Audrey contends. “I’m convinced that we changed the future, maybe even for the better. But we didn’t necessarily fix it. Things may still be bad, just in a different way. Without that reason, he may need to come up with a new one, and he may do that if his underlying reason remains, which is that he wants power. What you’re trying to do is teach him to use his power for good, but Silvy...he always was. He just had a warped view of what that meant, and his ego always got in the way. I don’t know how to change that, but as I said, that’s not my job here.”

“Your job’s changed,” Silveon says with a sigh.

“How’s that?”

“You’re no longer here to protect me as a baby, but that baby right there. She’s your only concern. You need to go to Verdemus.”

“No, Silveon, you’re not getting it. That defeats the whole purpose. He’ll find someone else. He needs a family.”

“He doesn’t need a family,” Tinaya says. “He needs sympathy from the voters. Now that we’re in this situation, there’s another way to get it, but it’s sad and depressing, and you’re not gonna be able to raise that baby. She would have to go to Verdemus without you.”

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Microstory 2453: Threshold

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A liminal space is an empty place of transition, such as a hallway or a stairwell. The keypoint is that it’s empty, devoid of life...except for you. This invokes a sense of unease, suggestive of not simply being alone in the room that you happen to be in, but in the world, or even all of time. It is quiet and creepy, and behind every corner could be a lurking threat. It’s hard to decide if such a threat even would be worse, however, or if you wish something would be there just so something would happen to break up the emptiness. Just so you wouldn’t be alone anymore. That is the idea behind a dome simply called Threshold. It’s nothing but liminal space. Any empty room you come across will just lead to a closet, another hallway, or another empty room. You will occasionally come across a small white bucket on a table that’s missing a leg, or a stain on the carpet in the vague shape of a man. While it is generally quiet, random unplaceable noises will sound off somewhere nearby, like a creak, or a chirp. When you walk over to investigate, you won’t find anything, except maybe a surprise mirror, which could give you life-affirming jumpscare. I’ve been through this one a lot, because I revel in the disquiet. I see it as an opportunity for introspection and self-reflection, if there’s a difference. I should wander around and give a think on that. There are some water stations for safety, but no other supplies. You go in with a dayfruit grower-slash hygiene station combo cart, and a cot, but that’s it. Whenever you’re ready to leave, you can activate an exit beacon. A bot will come to retrieve you and lead you out through the nearest locked trapdoor. That’s the only time you’ll see someone else, and once you press that button, you gotta go. If you’re wondering if it’s even possible for multiple people to visit Threshold, and not run into each other once in a while, I assure you that not only is it possible, it may be impossible for two to cross paths. There is plenty of room here. Like the terminal, the outer shell of the liminal space complex takes up just about the entire volume of the dome, which—I looked it up—is 149 thousand cubic kilometers, or 149 billion megalitres. With over 13,800 floors, you’re not gonna run into anyone else. They make sure to keep us separated, and while I can’t be sure, I believe the locked doors I run into occasionally would lead to other people’s areas. Thresholders, as we like to call ourselves, have been discussing the possibilities on the message boards, but Castlebourne gives you very little information. Obviously part of the experience. Normally I wouldn’t discourage someone from visiting a dome. My reviews are usually pretty upbeat and favorable, but it takes a strong stomach to even cross one threshold once you’re inside, let alone a series of them. I don’t know for sure that there aren’t any monsters hiding in dark corners. I only know that I’ve never seen any before. But I do hear those noises, and I don’t know what’s making them.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 25, 2507

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

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

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

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

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

“Partially,” Leona corrected.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What just happened?” Olimpia asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I did it on purpose.”

“I meant, premeditatively.”

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

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

“How do we get out?” Angela pressed.

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

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

They all looked sadly at Octavia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their watches beeped.

“Last time to back out,” Mateo said.

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

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

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

“I don’t see how.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m proud of you,” Mateo said.

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

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

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

“Is this functional?” Leona asked, intrigued.

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

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

No response.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Microstory 2439: Dome for Pioneers

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Ha! Dome for Pioneers. That’s so on the nose. That’s really what it is. You’re almost starting from scratch here. You don’t go all the way back to the beginning, like Paleodome, but you’re not provided with much. Like other lifestyle domes, you’re expected to stay here for an extended period of time, like years; not days, not even months. You’re here to get an idea of what life was like for people in 19th century New World. Everything you need is here, but you have to process it yourself. There’s wooded areas, arid desert, prairies, some small lakes (maybe ponds?) and rocks. They dress you in very simple clothes that look like they’re handmade, but I’m guessing they weren’t really. They give you a metal bucket, a few basic tools, and one wagon per ten or eleven people I think? I don’t remember what they said. If you have too few people, you don’t even get a wagon. There are some cows of some kind wandering around nearby, so if you do get one of the wagons, you have to put those two things together yourself. Good luck, dude, I actually think they’re real cows. While they’re not aggressive, they don’t want you tying ropes to them, and do you even know how to put a cow before a wagon? Didn’t think so. It’s the year 2500, we don’t have to do stuff like that anymore. That’s what’s so interesting about this place. If you wanted to know how the real pioneers survived with what little they had, and while enduring everything they had to, you had to have done your research ahead of time. There is no education here. I understand what they were going for, but that was probably a mistake. There should be a museum where they give you such education, not so you’re better equipped, but so you have a real appreciation for what you’ll experience in the simulation. What were their goals? What mistakes did they make? What kind of class divide was there, if any? I mean, you could turn your lot into a mountain man survivalist situation, and stay there for just as long, but that’s not what the pioneers were trying to do. They were digging in, founding towns, making a legacy for themselves. If people start using it right, given enough time, it’s possible that Dome for Pioneers might have to change its name to Dome for an Extremely Advanced Civilization. All the tools are there, it will just take time for us to relearn how to use them, just like our ancestors did. I think that it’s a really interesting social experiment. I just think it might not accomplish the right goals if management doesn’t guide the narrative in a proper direction. But don’t listen to me, I’m nobody.

Microstory 2435: Bloodbourne

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This dome is scary, even though you know that you’re technically safe. I won’t go into specifics, but it’s heaven for fans of the horror genre. While Zombie Dome has its niche, due to its broad appeal, Bloodbourne takes care of everything else in the genre. Ghosts, goblins, evil demons, and other monsters. If you’ve read about it in a book, or saw it in a movie or show, it’s here...somewhere. Lurking. Waiting to pounce. Some are trying to kill you, some are trying to scare you, and some have more bizarre motives. Bear in mind that the safeguards are extremely strong here. If you go in there with a regular human body, nothing is going to hurt you. I even think they’ll lower the scare level so they won’t even give you a heart attack, though I don’t know how they ensure that when everyone’s personal constitution is different. If you’re wearing a sufficiently mechanical or strong substrate, you’re fair game. The monsters can kill you, and they will. They follow whatever rules they’ve been programmed to follow, based on their nature in the source material. If you see a guy in a mask holding a knife, you better run, or try to fight. That’s another important note. Even though you may be in a mechanical body, it’s not superhumanly strong. You will not be able to bat the hostile force around like a cat with a ball of yarn. You’re meant to be in a simulation of what the horror would be like if these characters were real, and that goes for the victims just as much as the bad guys. Your body is capable of bleeding, and it’s capable of dying. Of course, you’re consciousness will survive, but getting back into the scenario is difficult. I think it should be easier. They could treat it as a learning experience, where you get to try new tactics, but I guess they think you should have to choose a different scenario to keep going. That could change in the future. That’s why feedback like this is so important. I hope they read them. Now here’s the question, can you play one of the bad guys yourself? No, you can’t. I think that’s a shame, and they should change that too. My mind can just as easily be uploaded into the body of a psychopathic killer as a scream queen. I wonder if they just have an issue with potentially targeting people who are already psychopaths, and just haven’t had the pleasure of living out their wildest fantasies. People have been debating these things for centuries, because virtual reality affords us the same opportunity to be our sickest selves completely free from punishment or other consequences. We still haven’t found an answer, though some black market stuff can be really disturbing, so I think we kind of have settled on some boundaries. There’s something very different about doing it in base reality. Maybe that’s just taking a step too far. I’m not sure. See? This is why the debate is still raging after all this time. Draw your own conclusions. In the meantime, enter the scariest place on Castlebourne...if you dare.

Microstory 2421: The Wasteland

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This place sucks. I get what they were going for here, but it’s lacking that authenticity that a real post-apocalyptic wasteland would have. Or maybe there’s just no way of making this exciting and interesting. The name says it’s all. It’s just miles and miles of desert, it’s so boring. There are a few burnt out cars strewn about, and some random collapsed structure, but not much else. You’re supposed to take your cues from science fiction from days past, and make your own adventure, but I don’t think it really works all that well. I mean, since it’s not real, there’s no desperation. You can always find an exit, and just leave. I really don’t see this one sticking around. Yeah, it’s all right to watch a two-hour movie about this, but I don’t know that anyone wants to spend any substantial amount of time in this environment. Thinking on it, though, it has to exist. This guy’s got 83,000 domes, and had to come up with almost as many ideas. I don’t think he made it, he doesn’t have quite as much—which is fine, I’m not criticizing; I’m just saying that wasteland is certainly a theme that exists. There are tons of examples in media. It would be kind of weird, actually, if they didn’t use it. There seems to only be one like this, which is probably a good thing. Many domes are based on particular franchises, but in the end, all wastelands are about the same, so you probably shouldn’t make more than one. I doubt most people would be interested in even seeing it once. I can’t recommend coming here at all. Maybe they’ll add more intrigue later, with robots that have their own programmed motivations, but if they’re expecting us to do all of the heavy lifting, I just don’t see enough people getting into it. There’s another desert dome where your only goal is surviving long enough to make it clear across to the other side. Try that one instead. At least the incentive is clear. My recommendation to the builders is that they should put the ruins of more buildings here. If the world were to end in such a scenario, it’s not like everything would be flattened and buried, ya know? There would still be stuff here to show that a human civilization once thrived. Just a thought, you don’t have to change anything if you don’t want to.

The Sixth Key: Kick Rocks (Part II)

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Clavia helps Echo learn how to use his parents’ guns. They’re energy weapons, which means they’ll be able to fire indefinitely as long as he doesn’t fire too much, and they have a source of charge, like the sun. Something called radio waves would charge it too, but there aren’t any of those around here. He doesn’t become an expert marksman in only a few short hours, but at least he has the basics down. Point and shoot, that much was immediately apparent, but the safety and handling was a little less intuitive.

According to the sensors on board the shuttle, as fed into Echo’s new suit, a ship appeared out of nowhere, and began to orbit the planet. It scanned the surface in some way, but hasn’t done anything else since. Clavia taught him how to set up an alarm to wake him when anything changes, so he can go to bed, and get some rest. The next morning, he checks the sensors to find that the alarm hasn’t failed. The orbiting ship up there still isn’t doing anything. They’ve not fired any weapons at the tree, or come down in a shuttle of their own, or anything. What are they waiting for?

“My mind is clouded,” Clavia explains. “I cannot see detail. I can sense that people are walking around inside the vessel, but I can’t tell what they’re doing. Unfortunately, I need to focus my strength on other pursuits.”

“I understand.” He doesn’t, but she should do whatever she needs to. “Do you think they know that we’re here?”

“It depends on how sophisticated their sensors are, and on the nature of the planet we’re on. This appears to be a lush garden centered on a desert. If the rest of the world is just as barren, this will stick out like a sore thumb. But it may be one of many oases, in which case they would need to pick up on you as an individual. I also don’t know whether your suit and shuttle are sufficiently shielded, or what.”

Echo nods, and decides to go back to practicing. The great thing about guns like these is that he can shoot blanks as much as he wants while barely dipping into the power reserves. Indeed, while the sun is shining, solar power will keep it running even if he never stops squeezing the trigger for the duration of daylight hours. He’s not doing any damage, as he’s just sending beams of light towards the rocks and the flowers, but it gives him a good idea of what it will be like if he ever has to do it for real.

Either as a coincidence, or because the visitors detected his weapons fire, they finally send a landing party in a shuttle. They don’t land too close to the garden, which is respectful of them, or maybe it’s also a coincidence. Echo doesn’t walk over to greet them halfway. He just stands under the Clavia tree, holding one of the guns at what Clavia called high ready. The second one is leaning against the trunk. He has extra cartridges attached to his hips too, but it doesn’t look like he’ll be needing them. One of these things would be able to take out the entire crew of the shuttle. It appears to only be four people, though obviously there are more still up on the ship. Clavia doesn’t know what kind of weaponry they have, up there, or down here. The four who are walking towards them now don’t appear to be armed at all.

“Can they hear you, or is your voice in my head?” he mutters out of the corner of his mouth.

“They can hear me if I want them too, and not if I don’t.”

“Let me do the talking. They may not know that you can talk, and I would like to keep that as an advantage until we have no choice.”

“Agreed,” Clavia says.

“Hello, kind soldier,” the leader guy says once they’re within earshot of each other. He’s keeping a safe distance, showing a healthy fear of Echo’s gun. The other three strangers are scattered next to and behind him. “My name is Klavis Zakan Scrivenor. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking to today?”

“Klavis?” Echo echoes.

“No relation,” Clavia replies simply.

“It’s my rank?” Zakan answers like it’s a question. “I command a single flotilla of ships...four to be exact.”

“What is your business here?” Echo asks.

Zakan is confused. “Um, do you have a name too?”

“Oh.” Echo feels like he’s just lost the upperhand, especially since he just said oh. He should have just been steadfast, and refused to answer. But now it’s too late, he has to just go ahead and respond appropriately. “Echo Cloudbearer.”

“Do you own this world, Echo Cloudbearer?”

“I do.” I mean, he might as well. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else to claim the title, and if making such a claim grants him the legal powers to protect this tree, then he’s comfortable making it.

“What is it called?”

This is where it gets tricky. His parents could never agree on a name for it. They kept coming up with new ideas before Echo was even born, but eventually narrowed it down to Supercloud or Echo. About half the time, they would joke that their son was named after the planet, and the other half, that the planet was named after their son. He never knew which was true, or if Supercloud was the superior choice anyway. “Echo”.

“Hm,” Zakan says. “I like it. We are representatives of the Temporal Energy Management Project of Relative Associated Logistics. Basically, we’re in charge of making sure that there’s enough temporal energy to go around, and that no one is abusing the power that they have, or exploiting the substructure of the universe to their own gain, or to the destruction of reality.”

“I don’t know what any of that means,” Echo admits.

“Well, we’re relative, because the power is not evenly distributed, which some people believe sounds unfair—though, it isn’t—and it’s associated, because every time someone is allotted power, it has an impact on everyone else. That’s why it needs to be managed. It’s—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, defining it isn’t going to help me understand it. It sounds like you just really wanted your acronym to spell out TEMPORAL.”

Zakan just clears his throat.

“Why are you here? I keep to myself. I don’t have any power.”

Zakan gestures to Clavia. “That tree behind you would seem to contradict your words.”

Echo decides to play dumb. “This is just a tree. It can’t contradict anything. It can’t even walk.”

Zakan smiles and sighs. He looks around the vast empty flatlands surrounding them. “We detected the energy spike that was prompted by some kind of temporal event right at this location. I don’t know if it teleported here, or if it was here all along, and suddenly absorbed a whole lot of power, but my guess is that you were around to see whatever it was. After all, you’re standing in front of it right now. You were up there when we showed up. You must think it’s meaningful too. If you thought you needed to protect your garden as a whole, you’d be standing right here.” He points to his feet where the grass of the garden gives way to the dirt of the desert.

Okay, maybe he needs to switch tactics. “Does it matter? If it’s here, it’s mine. And since this is all mine, so are you. So you four have two choices. You can fly back up to your little ship, and tell your captain to leave, or you can stay here and do my bidding. The atterberries are about ready to be harvested.”

“What did you say?”

“The atterberries,” Echo repeated. “Those pink things over there. You could pick them, or you could leave. You have no jurisdiction on this world, though. My word is law. My word is the only law.”

“What’s—what’s this stuff here?” He slid the sole of his shoe along a rock.

“That’s amanda moss. It’s not edible. I use it for...other things.” Wiping.

“And that?”

“It’s, uh, vearden hay. I use it as a ground cover. Why all the sudden interest in my garden? I thought you only cared about some tree.”

“Just curious.” Zakan steps forward. “What do you call this creature warming itself on this boulder?”

Echo can’t see from this far away, but he knows what the man’s talking about. “It’s probably a clemens newt.”

“One last thing, this one here?”

“A savi tree.”

Zakan exchanges a look with his people. “Which reality is your family from?”

“Um, this one?”

“No, I mean originally.”

“I have no clue where you’re going with this.”

“I don’t recognize that kind of gun. Do you?” he asks the woman standing at his flank.

She shakes her head quietly.

“My guess is Parallel or Fifth Division,” Zakan goes on cryptically, “but the main sequence had some nice stuff before they were copied here.”

“Can I help you?” Echo interrupts the internal conversation they’re having down there. He’s done playing nice. He wants them gone. He doesn’t want to have to hurt anyone to do it, but he will if they give him no choice.

“I’m afraid we can’t leave until we run our tests. We need to know what sort of impact this tree is having on the rest of the galaxy. It’s for the safety of everyone in the universe.”

Echo tenses up. “Get closer.”

Zakan himself doesn’t move, but his people reach their arms out to magically materialize their own guns. “We don’t need to get very close.”

“That’s enough!” It’s Clavia’s voice, but there’s something a little different about it. It sounds like it’s coming from a specific location, instead of just around him in general. Someone appears from behind the tree. It’s the dead woman who he buried here. She lives. It wasn’t just a magical seed, but it had something to do with who was holding it.

“Who are you?” Zakan asks.

“Who you seek, in humanoid form.”

Zakan holds his hand up by his shoulder. The other three lower their guns in response. Two of them make them disappear again, but his lieutenant keeps hers. “You are the tree.”

“We are,” she replies. “You may call us Clavia.”

“We’ll have to confirm that,” Zakan insists.

“Do that, and only that,” Clavia replies. “Do more, and you’ll regret it.”

Now Zakan lifts his other hand, and shakes it twice towards the hill. The now unarmed pair of visitors cross the boundary of the garden, and walk up to Clavia. She holds her own hand towards to stop Echo from reacting further when he tenses up again. The strangers begin to run their tests. They hover little devices over Clavia’s human body, and over the tree. They look at the little screens to interpret the readings, whatever they may be. Echo wouldn’t know the first thing about what they’re looking for, but Clavia seems calm, so he’s just gonna follow her lead.

One of the testers nods over at Zakan. “It’s her. She’s the tree.”

“Okay. Pack it up, kids. We’re leaving.”

“Wait,” Echo says. “Not that I’m complaining, but what just happened? What did you do? What did you discover? Why is it making you leave?”

“The source of the temporal energy is sentient,” Zakan begins to explain. “It’s natural and unregulated. As you said, we have no jurisdiction. It would be like me telling you that you’re not allowed to use that moss to wipe your ass. That’s someone else’s department.”

“Well...” Echo paused. “Thank you and goodbye.”

“You’ll be filing a report, though, won’t you?” Clavia guesses as most of the team is walking back towards their shuttle.

“I have no choice,” Zakan says apologetically.

“So the right department might show up too,” Echo calculates.

“Undoubtedly,” Zakan confirms. “She’s an interesting find.”

The shuttle takes off. About fifteen minutes later, the ship breaks orbit, and flies away into the black. Echo’s shuttle’s sensors stop picking any signals, and the world falls silent once more.

“You’re a person,” he points out.

“It’s complicated.”

Echo smiles. “I don’t have anything else going on. Tell me your story.”

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