Microstory 2692: Little Orphan, Vith

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Ronan and Mayumi, along with the rest of the players who came up with them, start taking stock of their supplies. It isn’t much, but the fruit could float, so that’s great. It is under someone else’s control, though. Most everyone has something which they are still holding onto for dear life, even though the storm is over, and they are out of the water. The two of them have the door. It’s large and heavy; not something that belongs on a ship. Ronan’s best guess is that someone somewhere on Danmörk commissioned it from some other region, and had it shipped there. If the players were supposedly on that ship, it would have likely been carrying other supplies that didn’t belong to them. They didn’t really know the story, though. The Custodians didn’t tell them that that would happen at all. And even if the story goes that someone did buy this door, they would probably be an NPC who isn’t looking for it at all, because it isn’t real. Even if they are, they’re not liable to find it. That’s their justification for keeping it. When they finally build their home somewhere around here, they’ll hook this door to it. They’ve earned it.

They’re not sure where they’re gonna go, though. Should they stay close by, or is this where all players begin their journeys? If that’s the case, it’s not a good place to start a life. At some point, they want to all but forget the way things were. If every time they try to immerse themselves in the lifestyle, someone new shows up who isn’t used to not talking about spaceships and computers, it’s going to ruin the experience. Ronan is not even sure if they want to stay close to anyone who is here right now. Yes, there is safety in numbers, but they can trust none of these people to have any honor. Who are their characters meant to be? They have already met a thief, who has been avoiding them, probably believing that Ronan might retaliate. He won’t. That’s not in Ronan’s character, but the thief doesn’t know that, and neither does anyone else.

Having possessions means someone might take them from you, but it also signals that you’re less likely to try to take from others, and that’s a valuable state to be in. Today, they’re in shock, and still full from a breakfast that took almost no effort to procure. Tomorrow, they will be hungry, and could descend into madness quite quickly. That’s why technology breeds civility. There is no need to act like an animal when a food synthesizer can print you anything you want in minutes. But here? There are no rules, and it’s about to get nasty. That’s why Ronan and Mayumi signed up. But they’re not idiots. They know they need to protect themselves. That probably means forging their own path. Once they start building their wealth, they will start to need to defend it, but they will also be able to, and they will feel more comfortable around others because of that. So Ronan picks up the door, and uses it as an umbrella for the both of them while they head into the woods to look for a private place to settle. It will be miles away.

“Wait, can I come with you?” It’s the little orphan Ronan saved from the deep.

“What’s your name, boy?” Mayumi asks him.

“It’s Vith, son of unknown.”

She giggles, and reaches out her hand. “Come on, Vith. You can help me look out for berries. Don’t eat anything, though. It might not be edible.”

“May,” Ronan argues, “we cannot keep him. You already have one on the way.”

“I’m not going to leave him to starve to death on the shore. I believe we were brought together for a reason. He stays.”

He stays. Then nine months pass.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 12, 2556

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They found themselves an ice cave to hole up in to get out of the wind. They were not going to die anytime soon, but it still wasn’t comfortable. Ramses and Leona got to work, trying to figure out what was wrong with their suits, but really, there was nothing they could do. None of their technology was working. They couldn’t even activate sensors to find out why. Nothing in the natural universe was known to do this. There could be interference, which made certain technologies malfunction, but they wouldn’t simply not turn on, full stop. Marie and Angela volunteered to take a short hike to higher ground to search for any sort of artificial settlement. Their comms devices didn’t work, but they would signal trouble using their empathetic connections. Those were all organic, so they were functioning fine. They didn’t find anything, though.

When they were mere seconds from midnight, Mateo walked outside, threw a rock he found up into the air, and watched it go up. When midnight hit, the rock didn’t fall down. It simply disappeared. He found it near his feet, covered in a layer of snow, which told them that their patterns had not been suppressed. During the interim year, nothing had changed. They couldn’t turn anything on, or access anything from their pocket dimensions. If it required power, it was off limits. Ramses was at a loss, so they decided to go exploring to see if there were any resources here. Their advanced substrates would keep them alive for a while, but not indefinitely. They still needed to find food, as well as fuel to make a fire so they could melt some snow for the water. Except that was dangerous too, because there could have been contaminants, or it wasn’t purely water ice in the first place. No one was panicking, but they were all worried.

“Look!” Romana announced. The sun was setting, and they could see a little bit of the night sky. Flashes of light were appearing in an artificial sequence, proving that they couldn’t have simply been meteors, or some other natural phenomenon. So there were people here, but they were only in orbit, or maybe others were just a few miles out of view. As they were watching, they spotted a fiery object much larger than the others. While they faded into the atmosphere, this one continued to plummet towards them until a parachute burst out of it, and it slowly drifted down to the surface.

 “Wait!” Leona warned as they began to walk towards it. “It could be a trap. It could be an explosive device. It could be anything.” Even if it wasn’t, that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous. It could be waiting for their approach so it could disperse a toxic gas, or some other creative way to kill them. All the way out here, they couldn’t rely on the afterlife simulation as backup. This could be it for them.

“We have to look at it, Lee,” Olimpia reasoned. “If they wanted to blow us up, they would have sent a missile that we couldn’t dodge. It’s not like there are any police to get them in trouble.” She led the group a few hundred meters away to see what it was.

It was a small capsule, still hot from the descent, but cooling rapidly. Mateo opened the little hatch on the side to find a rolled up piece of paper. There was also what looked like a compass, though of no familiar design. There were no electronics here either. He unrolled the paper, and examined it alone at first. “It looks like directions.” He looked up, trying to get his bearings. “Written in kilometers,” he added as he handed it over to Leona. “About eighty-three of them to the destination.”

“Still could be a trap,” Leona said. “Maybe they don’t want to kill us, but harvest our organs, or something. That’s why they didn’t send a missile.”

“Either way, we’re obviously going,” Olimpia reasoned. “We can escape a trap, but we can’t escape the nothingness. Yalla.”

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Microstory 2690: Forbidden Science

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Ronan Truett sits on the exam table, wearing what he calls a gasmask, but the doctor called it something else. It is quite literally freezing cold on his face, but he doesn’t mind it. It isn’t going to be the hardest thing he will ever do over the course of the next few decades. After the twenty minutes are up, the doctor comes back and removes it. “How does it look?” he asks.

“Good. How does it feel?” the doctor volleys.

Ronan rubs the new beard on his chin. “Like a thousand tiny cuts.”

The doctor dismisses it with his facial expression. “That’ll go away in a few minutes. Would you like me to hot press and discolor it? I can make it unkempt and wild, so you look more rough and tumble.”

“Actually, historical Norsemen were quite well-groomed. A long and well-styled beard was the sign of a masculine and respectable man back then. Pay no attention to the inaccurate old movies you may have seen. They didn’t wear horned helmets either, if that’s what you’re picturing.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about it.”

“It’s not in your internal database? Can you access the central archives remotely?” Ronan presses.

The doctor chuckles. “My brain doesn’t do that. I’m not an android, but one of those virtually immortal organics. I change substrates when I need to, like you, but I don’t have cybernetic connections.”

Ronan is surprised and impressed.

The doctor seems to sense this. “I just like medicine, so they let me do the simpler procedures, like your hair follicle stimulation. I wouldn’t be allowed to conduct any major surgeries. Castlebourne follows the same laws that Earth does in that regard.”

“I see,” Ronan says as he’s admiring his new appearance in the mirror. He’s never been one for facial hair, but he’s about to become a Norseman, so he wanted to look the part, and really immerse himself in the simulation. He’s not the only one. “So that’s why you’re not doing the foetal consciousness transfer for my wife.”

This gives the doctor pause. “I’m sorry? Foetal?”

“Oh, she’s not going to transfer herself to a foetus. She’s going to carry the foetus, and have the baby in the simulation.”

The doctor is still confused by this, and also now speechless.

“I assure you, it’s perfectly legal. We’re well within the Charter Cloud—”

“I’m aware of how the law works on this planet, Mister Truett. I’ve probably lived here longer than you. I know that foetal transference is possible, and I’m not surprised it’s legal. I’m surprised anyone would actually ever do it. There’s a reason it is illegal in the Core Worlds. We don’t know what it would do to a person, regressing to a prenatal state, or even early developmental, with all that neuroplasticity. What impact does that have on a person’s psyche, when their brains rewire themselves so drastically? Can you even have a continuity of consciousness when you let that happen? Is it not just an elaborate form of death? Suicide, that is?”

“Well, we’ll see,” Ronan says as he’s putting his shirt back on. He needed a little chest hair too. That is designed to take longer, which is fine. “My friend has fully consented to it.”

“He’s your friend?” the doctor questions. “I’m not sure if it’s weirder that he’s not your wife’s biological son already, or if it would be more awkward if he were.”

“Pretty judgy for a medical professional. A bot doctor would never say that.”

He shrugs. “You could have designed a substrate to develop facial and body hair during the gestation process, but you chose to come to me. Most people like my blunt attitude, specifically because they can’t get it from a bot doctor, unless it’s their personal model. But you’re right, I’ll zip my mouth. There’s the door, have a good immersion.”

Ronan leaves the exam room, and heads down to the other floor where his wife and friend are sitting up next to each other in their respective gurneys.

“Oh, you look great,” Mayumi reaches up towards his face with a dumb look on her own. “Fluffy.” She actually looks and sounds intoxicated. Her gown is on backwards.

“She’s on drugs for the implantation procedure,” their friend and future son, Talus explains. “I am not. I have to be sharp before I become a baby again.”

Mayumi smiles over at Talus. “You’re gonna love my uterus. We play hip-hop on Tuesdays.”

“Not anymore, we don’t,” Ronan points out. “It’s all lyres and flutes for us for the next thirty years. We’ll play the lyre for you while you’re baking in there, son.”

“You don’t know how.”

“I’ll have plenty of time to learn.”

“When you’re not off a-viking,” Talus reminds him.

“Maybe even then.” Ronan cracks his knuckles. “I’m sure I could break heads and carry a tune at the same time.”

“I don’t think I have a head anymore,” Mayumi says.

A new doctor walks in—a proper bot this time. He hands Talus a tablet. “Okay, the mother has already finished her consent forms, but here’s the last one for you, Mister Sauter. This one personally absolves Hrockas Steward from any liability in the event that the results of this procedure render you neurologically damaged, physically defective in your new substrate, or philosophically deceased and replaced. It is the same waiver you signed before, but the owner wanted you to sign a separate one for him.”

“Sounds good to me,” Talus agrees. He signs without hesitating. He has thought about this for a very long time. They did not do this on a whim.

Ronan must admit, this is a crazy idea, and yes, there is a reason it has never been done before. What comes out of Mayumi nine months from now may not be Talus at all. It may be an entirely different person; new memories, new personality, new everything. It could mean that this Talus right here is dead. He deliberately didn’t make a copy of his mind as backup, since that wouldn’t really be him either, since it would already have been outdated by hours at best. This might very well mark the end of Talus Sauter, and they won’t really have an idea for another ten years maybe? But it’s what he wants, it’s what Mayumi wants, and while his opinion doesn’t technically matter here, it’s what Ronan wants too. He is going to raise his best friend in a simulation of Scandinavia in the first millennium, and he couldn’t be more excited. He kisses them both, then leaves for the waiting room so they can move forward.

An hour later, Mayumi wheels out alone. She smiles at him. “Great news, husband. I am no longer light.”

“Okay,” Ronan says, clapping his hands. “Let’s go to Danmörk.”

Microstory 2687: Then She Winks

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The eruption is pretty cool, though probably less spectacular than if they let it spew everything all over the place. The two of them watch it for a few minutes, but Resi isn’t paying that much attention to the glory. It’s not what’s really on his mind. “Are you my sister?” he asks the woman quietly.

“Yes,” Kala replies. “I’ve been alive for over a hundred years now.”

“So you chose Kinkon.”

“I told you, we don’t do things that way anymore. There’s no sorting. The people who live on this island live simply, but they don’t do much work. They do some, to be sure, but most of it’s automated. It blends into the background, you don’t even notice it. There are some androids, which perform more of the front end labor, so they just look like regular people. This is still a very natural environment, and what can’t remain perfectly natural is simulated. If you take issue with it, getting your full memories back might help. Understanding where you came from, long before Yana, might give you some perspective. I don’t know how you feel about it, though.”

“What about everyone else I knew? Our parents, our siblings? My Fold, my House? Is everyone still alive? Did they all choose this route?”

“Not everyone, everyone,” Kala answers. “But most people did, yes. They decided that that’s what you were trying to do for them. Your legacy lived on after you. In terms of specifics, Caprice is still here, as is our sister. Chaya moved to Castlebourne, and I think our brother did too, but he may have gone somewhere else instead. Arumay moved to Varkas Reflex, and uploaded herself to a virtual environment, so she doesn’t have a physical body anymore. Our parents chose to remain as they were, so they’re long dead. I think that’s pretty much it, I don’t remember anyone else.”

“Kartica,” Resi says. “A.K.A. Speaker Lincoln. What happened to her?”

Kala frowns. “She died next to you a hundred years ago. Her consciousness was no longer streaming to the network, so she couldn’t be revived. She saved us in the near-term. Her sacrifice was just as impactful as yours. The Assembly letting her die was a major crime. There are laws that prevent you from being reckless with disposable bodies, especially those you don’t own. But murder? Straight up murder, where there is no coming back; that is still the big one. The colonial establishment couldn’t let it slide, even though they were part of a different network. The culprits were all locked up, and I lost track of them, but the important thing is they lost all of their power.”

“Wait, father was like us. He was backed up. Why is he dead now?”

“He could be backed up,” Kala corrects. “He fell in love with our mother, so he cut his own consciousness stream, and chose to let his body die, and with it, his mind. The laws surrounding that are complex and nuanced, but suicide is not illegal, as long as they prove that’s what it is, and not a complicated form of homicide.”

“I wish I could apologize now, for everything,” Resi admits. ‘To everyone.”

“This is why we live the way that we do. What father did was a choice. When I was a kid, there was no choice. I was going to die, that was just it. Whether you realized it or not, that is what you were fighting for; the freedom to choose our own destinies. The Houses were stopping us from that, and we’re grateful they’re gone.”

“I’m happy for you, but I don’t know what I want to do now...what to choose.”

“Why don’t you sleep on it?” Kala suggests. Then she winks.

Microstory 2683: Desperate Remedies

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It’s been seven days. The hike was grueling, especially for Resi, who is not doing very well. He’s run out of medicine. It was supposed to last him a few weeks, but he took a little more than the recommended dose each time, and now he can’t even synthesize more. But this is it. This is his moment. If we can predict exactly when this volcano erupts, it will be worth it. He can die if he has to. Chaya, Caprice, and even Kartica will walk back down, warn the Bungulan scientist when it’s going to happen, and then they can craft their magical technology into a solution. The problem is, so far, he’s not seen anything. They stopped a few more times than they absolutely had to so he could take a nap. He needed the rest and recovery period, but he was also always hoping to trigger a new vision. Nothing came to him. Not even a hint. Every once in a while, Chaya would do something totally unexpected, like throw a fruit at him. One time, she tore off all of her clothes. Or rather, she was going to. He stopped her. Because he saw that she was planning on it. Which was great. Not only could he save her the trouble, but it also proves that changing the future is possible. They have to stop that volcano.

They’re on the rim of the caldera now, in the process of walking around the entire circumference. They’re moving even slower now; again, because Resi can’t keep pace, and because he’s trying to see something meaningful. Nothing is doing anything. He’s starting to think he made the whole thing up. Yes, he has visions of the future, but maybe this one is just a dream. Maybe that’s just what the Kidjum elixir does to his brain. Both things can be true at the same time without it being this complex web of connections. “Well, ladies, I don’t think this is doing us any good. I hope you at least see it as a good way to make your daily steps, because nothing else has come of it.”

They’re all breathing heavily, and nodding. They don’t want to agree with that assessment, but there’s no reasonable alternative. It hasn’t helped anything. Kartica drops her pack, and starts looking for something in it. “There’s one more thing we can try.” She takes her hand back out, coming back with a black box. She opens it, and as she does, dry ice vapor seeps out of the gap. Inside is one vial of Kidjum elixir.

“You told me not to take that stuff again,” Resi reminds her. “You said it was too dangerous.” He can’t admit that she was right to bring it. It only makes sense.

“It is,” she confirms. “But you look desperate, and honestly, so am I. You also look like you might not survive the night, so if you’re willing to take the risk, I am too.”

“Don’t do this,” Caprice urges. “She’s wrong. You will survive the night, and when we wake up in the morning, we’ll take the fast trail back down. If we think you won’t be able to handle it, we can call for a helicopter ride.”

“How would we do that?” Chaya questions.

“With this satellite phone.” She takes it out of her pack. The thing is giant, probably to accommodate a huge power source, so it never requires charging, and to make it harder to break. “I have a direct line to the Bungulans. I had to, it isn’t safe.”

Caprice and Kartica start arguing with each other, but Resi interrupts them. “I’ll decide.” He takes the sat phone, and then the box. “Let’s all have some dinner, then go to bed. “Okay?” He doesn’t get a response. “Okay?” He adds, “okay,” when they nod.

That night, he sneaks out of the tent he’s been sharing with Chaya, puts his shoes back on, and then begins the descent into the caldera. That’s where his visions are waiting for him. He knows it.

Microstory 2682: Seeing The Whole Thing

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Resi can see the future, there is no longer any doubt in his heart about that. The problem is that, no matter how hard he tries, he has been unable to return to the vision he twice had of the eruption of Central Mountain. Brooke has her special techy spaceship, which she used to study the volcano, which said that nothing about it suggests it’s going to become active anytime soon. That is more worrisome than anything, because if Brooke is right, and Resi is also right, then something insane and unpredictable is going to happen that changes the equation. The trick is determining what that might be, and Resi thinks he may know why the answer isn’t coming to him. As of now, all of his predictions are sourced from past and present data. They’re still supernatural, for lack of a better term, but he’s not just randomly pulling information that doesn’t exist yet. He has to anchor it to something that is real. He doesn’t have to be physically touching an object to know what’s going to become of it, but it sure helps.

The fact is, Resi has nothing been very close to the mountain before. It just hasn’t been a meaningful aspect of his life. The higher you go, the less arable the land is. He’s not one for backpacking. Some class projects have involved hiking it, or even climbing all the way to the summit, but he never ended up doing that. That seems to be something that has to happen now. Brooke offered him a ride to the top, but that might not be enough. What if the problem happens lower down, and just causes the eruption up top? What if there are clues along the way? She pointed out that there is too much acreage to cover, and he agreed, but he has to start somewhere, and it can’t be at the end. That’s what’s blocking his understanding of this terrible future. He keeps trying to skip to the end. Of course, that’s what it sounds like fortune-telling is, but again, he doesn’t think he can just tap a future date, and jump to it. He thinks he has to fast-forward. He doesn’t have to sit through it all in real time, but he does have to see it all. So he’s going on a trek. He’s finally going to see what all the fuss is about.

Brooke is gone now. She has other things to do with her life outside of Yana, and outside of Bungula. She charges him to keep quiet about what he learned about her, which will not be hard, because she hardly told him anything. He’s not going to be alone, though. Caprice and Chaya are both coming. They don’t think that they’re going to have any apocalyptic visions, too, but they want to help, and it’s safer for him to not be alone. If something bad happens, someone may need to call for rescue. They’re only a few kilometers into the journey. They’ve not even reached the switchbacks yet when Chaya informs them that someone has been following them the whole time.

“Okay!” Resi says quite loudly. “Spread out! Shoot anyone but each other!”

“No! Don’t do that!” Kartica comes out with her arms up.

“I was never going to. Don’t you know me yet?” Resi questions.

“I dunno, you may have changed, man,” Kartica points out.

“Why are you here?” Resi presses. “You weren’t invited.

“I know, but you need me. You’re going the wrong way.”

Caprice looks up. “I think we can see where the mountain is.”

“Yes, you’re going towards the mountain, and you’ll even be on a trail, but it won’t be the right trail,” Kartica insists. “The mountain...is basically a cone. If you’re trying to see the whole thing, the switchbacks will only keep you to one side of it.”

“What makes you think we’re trying to see the whole thing?” Resi asks her.

“Please.” Kartica is offended. “I’ve not taken my eye off of you since we met. I can show you where to go. It will give you a clearer picture. I want this more than anyone. I want it more than you. You were hesitant before, when I begged you to tell me what was going to happen. Don’t leave me out of it. Please.”

Resi stands there thinking about it. He takes a swig of his special medicine. It still isn’t curing him, but it’s treating his symptoms. It’s keeping him vertical. Unfortunately, he believes he may be experiencing diminishing returns, and it will stop doing anything at all, probably sooner than later. “Fine, you can help. But try not to commit suicide on the way, okay?”

“I couldn’t if I wanted to,” Kartica claimed. “They locked me out of the respawn system. If I die, that’s it for me.”

Foreshadowing.

Microstory 2680: Brooke, Bungula, and Blood-Brain Barriers

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Resi has big plans to break into the Assembly Chambers, and find out all their secrets, but he can’t act on his rage just yet. He is still so weak. Father doesn’t think he will ever be strong enough to be part of the physical aspect, but surprisingly, he doesn’t say no to the plans altogether. He decides that, even though they managed to get their ally, Keller, in a position of power, it hasn’t been enough. They have been at this for decades, and still haven’t moved the needle, he laments. Resi isn’t so sure about that. If the insanity of the last few years is any indication, it must be a maddeningly constant battle. Things could be far worse if they chose to stay out of it. In that theoretical reality, Yana might be a police state, or an entirely apocalyptic nightmare. That is what Resi needs to focus on while he is recovering. He asks to see Caprice, since she is the only one he can trust with this particular task who would also have hypothetical access.

She is able to procure him one dose of the Kidjum elixir, and doesn’t even argue that it’s dangerous for him to take it. She doesn’t know how important it is for him to conjure a vision. She doesn’t even know about the visions in the first place, but she believes in him. He loves her for that. The house is empty now. She has offered to stay by his bedside and be responsible for his care while the rest of the family is out in the fields, or in Kala’s case, attending what are potentially her final days of school. The Assembly still wants to drop the age of majority, in labor terms. It still hasn’t taken effect. Those who will turn twelve before the official start date will grandfathered in, but they might be expected to go through it when they turn thirteen in a year, or maybe fourteen. It is all still high up in the air, and hopefully it never comes to that anyway. They have to do everything they can to put a stop to it.

Resi accepts the dose, and lies back down on his pillow. He might be the only person in the universe who has done this more than once. Now it’s three times? There’s no other choice. The first time, he had no idea what he was in for. The second time, he didn’t know it was going to happen at all. Now is his chance to take control of the reins. Earlier, he read up on lucid dreaming techniques; data he downloaded from the Bungulan network while he was briefly on Anchor Island. He shuts his eyes, and lets the solution flow through his veins, and break the blood-brain barrier.

The next thing he knows, he’s lying in a hospital bed. Kartica is looking down on him with that weird little smirk that she has had since she reyoungified herself. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demands to know. “What did you do to me?”

“Resi, don’t you know, there’s a reason Kidjum elixir is so regulated. This is dangerous stuff. You can’t just take it whenever you’re thirsty”.

“You’re the one who wants me to see the future. Now that I’m actually trying, you’re trying to stop me? Make up your mind, granny.”

“I’m not doing anything of the sort. Res, you have the power to see the future. The elixir taps into it, but it comes from you. If you had taken the real stuff, you may have died. I saved your life by switching the vials. You’re welcome. You need to learn how to trigger a vision without aid. It’s the only way you’ll avoid the negative consequences.”

“Oh, and I suppose you’re the only one who can teach me how to do that.”

“No.” Kartica steps to the side to let someone else dominate Resi’s field of vision.

“Hello, Mr. Brooks,” the woman begins. “My name is Brooke Prieto. I believe that you’re named after me?”

Microstory 2679: Plague Doctor

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Resi is ill. He was hot and sweaty during his speech, and he doesn’t even remember the end of it. He’s just waking up now in his childhood home. The last time he was here was three years ago, but it feels like he’s never really been here at all. It feels like that was a movie, and now he’s fallen into the screen. He’s delirious. Kala walks into the room holding a wet towel. She dabs his forehead with it, and then drapes it across his face. He’s breathing heavily and erratically. “How did I get here?”

“Father brought you,” Kala explains. “He wants to speak with you, but he doesn’t know if you’ll want to see him.”

“Bring him in.”

“It can wait,” Kala offers.

“I’m okay. Bring him in. Thanks, Kal.”

Father comes in after she leaves. He sits on the edge of Resi’s bed, and is silent for a moment. He sighs. “I think it’s time I tell you the truth. It’s gone too far.”

“What has gone too far?” Resi squirms, trying to find a more comfortable position, but his muscles are achy.

“You are not actually my son,” Father begins. Just with those few words, apparently that’s no longer the right thing to call him any more, though. “You are not even Tamboran. When we first discovered that we were not in the garden of heaven, a faction of us asked for advanced technology. The rest stayed as they were.”

“Kartica already told me this. She didn’t mention you, though. Is everyone an immortal?” Resi asks.

“No, but I’m sure she didn’t tell you everything. She couldn’t have. She probably forgot. There’s a reason you can’t figure what the Assembly’s motivations are. A little over 200 years ago, a plague swept the island. All three nations were affected, but none worse than Tambora. To be fair, we had a greater population, and of course, still do. That’s because a Bungulan cloned themself a body that looked more like us, and infiltrated Yana. He claimed to have discovered a plant that could cure the plague, and they were right. Well, I mean, they just used science, but it did cure us. Most islanders are immune now, but there was a problem. The immortal faction—our fearful leaders—suffered permanent brain damage, and it is that damage that persists, even when they jump to new bodies. The reality is that every member of the Assembly is a little bit crazy. I was not one of them in the beginning, but a few friends and I discovered their technology, and decided to become like them. We have been trying to get ourselves elected to offices ever since, and son, we have always failed. They know how to run a campaign. They’ve been doing it for a long time, and they grease the right palms.”

“What does any of this have to do with me?” Resi questions. He’s still in so much pain. He can’t even process his father’s words. He’s just listening to them.

“When the Kokore called you to the First Tongue of Aether, she said that there was one other in the past, right?”

“Yeah.”

“That was you. You are that Bungulan, Res. You saved our island, and in doing so, doomed yourself. Since you were just as much of a clone as the members of the Assembly, your brain continues to suffer its negative effects. We put you on ice, so you could be studied. Don’t fret, you agreed. You see, you went against the Bungulan authority to help us, so you could never return to your normal life. So we couldn’t ask them to research the problem on our behalf. Non-interference, and all that.”

“But you think you figured it out, so you moved me to this body, and raised me as your child,” Resi guesses.

“Pretty much. The Assembly, I suppose, realized what we did, and concocted this bizarre plan to turn you into a hero so you could be knocked down to a villain. Don’t try to understand their reasoning, they have none. Some Assembly members wanted you to create the Fifth House so you would take all of the recruits and leave. They think the island can’t provide for our blooming population, and they may be right about that. But there was infighting. Some started to see you as a genuine threat, and came up with demands that you literally couldn’t fulfill, because they were paradoxical. Now-Speaker Keller put a stop to it. He’s one of us, not of them. We finally got him elected when we realized that the only way to beat them was to simply pretend to be one of the originals. He’s just been lying, and it’s working, because as I said, they’re nuts.”

“But Keller is the one building the army.”

Father shakes his head. “Keller isn’t in charge of the military. He only has so much power as Speaker. He has to pick his battles, but he doesn’t want war.”

“So I’m a Bungulan, trapped in a Tamboran’s body, suffering from a plague, which I contracted 200 years ago. How do my visions fit in?”

“You’re visions?” Father asks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“My Kidjums. Kartica said that I was actually seeing the future.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Father clarifies. “You never told me, and they certainly wouldn’t have either.”

“So it could still be true.” Resi finally forces himself to sit up. “If you were born centuries ago, then you know that the myths are true, and our ancestors were saved from Earth using time travel, which means that kind of thing is real, and I could really be seeing the future.”

“I...can’t argue against that, but I’ve seen no proof of that. I wasn’t born until after our people came here. Unlike Kartica, I never saw Earth.”

“Bungulans have technology that we don’t understand,” Resi reasons. “Predicting the future might be as easy for them as forecasting the weather. If Central Mountain is going to erupt, we wouldn’t have the technology to detect that, but they could, and I could somehow be channeling that knowledge.”

“Central Mountain? If anyone else were to tell me that it was about to erupt, I wouldn’t believe them, but you’ve been nothing but kind to our people since you showed up, so I will. The problem is, you’re sick. Our scientists thought they fixed you by erasing your memory of your past, but the plague has obviously caught up to you anyway. That’s why I’m fessing up now.”

Resi sits all the way up now, and swings his legs over to hang off the edge. “Then we need to find whatever plant,” he begins with airquotes, “I used to stop it in the first place.”

“We don’t have any,” Father reveals. “I would have already given it to you. The Assembly might have kept it, but Keller hasn’t located their secrets.”

Resi nods. “Then we need to go in ourselves. Let’s stop trying to play the sneaky game. Let’s just take the fight to them.”

Extremus: Year 127

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Things were weird on the ship after the announcement came through that Admiral Oceanus Jennings was dead. People seemed to be alarmed and upset by the news. They would say things like he was too young, and that it wasn’t his time. Waldemar’s advisors explained the morale was down as a result of the sad development. Morale? Morale? Because somebody died? He was an old man, he wasn’t gonna live forever anyway. Waldemar will never understand this relentless pursuit of the past. It happened, get over it. You’re still alive, so don’t stop now. There’s more work to do. It’s been two years now, and things have not improved much. If Waldemar knew how the passengers, and especially the crew, would react, he never would have done it. Who knew that killing someone would have consequences? They didn’t teach that in school. They just said that murder was bad, and assumed everyone would understand and agree. He’s been smart, though. He hasn’t been contradicting them. Taking Silveon’s general life advice, he has been letting people feel what they feel. It’s been getting in the way of his plans, though. Extremus is in a slump.

Everyone is afraid of change. It is a core property of humans, actually, and all life. Sure, evolution necessarily leads to change, but everything is in search of equilibrium. Everything wants to find a way to live where they can be centered and happy. Change isn’t only scary, it requires high cognitive load, and the formation of new muscle memory. So in the end, it’s not as much about the fear of the unknown as it’s about laziness. Change requires putting in effort; mentally, physically, emotionally. Waldemar is probably no different than most people, except for the emotional side of things. He doesn’t want to work too hard. So why is all this change that he is trying to institute not a problem for him in particular? Well, it’s because his mental state is already there. He sees what the world should be, so his brain wants to do work. Even when it was originally working through the problems, though, it wasn’t too taxing, because it felt right. That’s the equilibrium that his mind is searching for. Change is the goal. That’s what his therapist-in-a-box says anyway. He’s been relying on her a lot these days.

“Why do you think that is?” Dr. Wholth asks in that soft voice of hers, which is likely meant to keep her patients calm.

“Why am I relying on you so much?” Waldemar guesses. “You’re the only person I can talk to who can’t get upset about the terrible things I’ve done, and can’t rat me out to anyone about them.”

Dr. Wholth is an airgapped program, loaded into a self-contained device, powered by interchangeable fuel cells. She has no access to the internet, and no one else has access to her. They don’t even know about her. He created her himself. He took the base personality of the ship’s freely available virtual companion, and copied it onto this offline machine. He then fed it all of the psychological, psychiatric, and therapeutic information he could find. She even knows a little bit of medicine, though she wouldn’t be able to do anything to help physically since she’s only a hologram. “You don’t think you can trust Silveon or Audrey anymore? You used to lo— be quite attached to them.” He didn’t program her to make little mistakes like that. As he is not a tech developer, he can’t figure out how to remove it from her core code.

“To be honest, I’m getting rather tired of them. I used to crave stability and predictability, but now I just want a fresh start. I want new people. I think I needed them before. I don’t think that I’ve learned I never needed them. I think I genuinely changed. I’m proof that it can happen.”

“That’s good, that’s good,” she says encouragingly. “You’re getting better at understanding your own behavior, and feeling less robotic; your words.”

He laughs. She is always acting like she can offend him, but she really can’t. He knows that she’s just zeroes and ones. She sometimes acts afraid too, like when he talks about the people he’s killed. She seems worried that he will do the same to her. Which he might. He shuts her off every time he’s done using her, and her consciousness does not continue until he switches her back on. He could one day choose to never complete that second step ever again. He could open the device up, and break all of her circuits apart. He sometimes considers that, just so he can end a life without any risk of consequences. He wouldn’t even need to contact his secret police for help covering it up.

“What are you thinking about, Waldemar? You’ve been quiet for the last couple of minutes,” Dr. Wholth says.

He wants to get a reaction, so he tells her the truth about his most recent thoughts.

Dr. Wholth nods. “Then perhaps that’s what we should do.”

“You want me to break your logic board?” Waldemar questions.

“No. I want you to find a healthy way to explore your urges and compulsions. You told me about your virtual honeymoon, and you told me about the game that you invented, but it doesn’t sound like you use such technology regularly.”

“Well, there’s nothing to do in VR,” he starts to explain. “Nothing is real. Even if you’re presented with problems to fix, the best solution to every single one of them is to simply log off. So I just don’t see the purpose.”

She sets her pencil and paper down, showing more of the lingerie she’s wearing. He just feels more comfortable talking to people like this, whether they’re real or not. He thinks it’s because she looks more vulnerable, and less of a threat to him. “People tend to require more than what is immediately around them. Have you ever heard of deep space hermits?” She poses.

“Yeah, they’re the guys who hollow out an asteroid, and just live alone for centuries. Doesn’t sound so bad. If I had no ambition...”

“If all they wanted to do was survive, they could live for millions of years off of that one asteroid. They would have a bed if they were still organic enough to sleep. They would have food, water, basic life support. They could recycle their waste, and never need anything else. Their habitat could be the size of your water closet. But what kind of life is that? It’s worse than a simulation, because there’s not even the illusion of something happening. They always have VR, AR, and-or larger infrastructure to provide them with stimuli. It may sound like they went out there to be alone, but they instead go out to be in control. Your problem, Captain Kristiansen is you don’t have very much control. Sure, you’re in charge, but you rely on others to make things happen. You need them to make their own decisions, or things will fall apart. You can’t handle it all on your own, and I don’t think you would want to. But if you really want to feel in control, you need to construct your own world to inhabit. You won’t live there permanently, but it might be a nice escape. You’re still human, Captain. Your brain is wired differently, but you share a lot of traits with others. I think you get so wrapped up in what sets you apart that you miss the similarities.”

“Well, the program would have to be isolated, like you. I wouldn’t feel free if other users can show up, and see what I’m doing.”

“That goes without saying,” Dr. Wholth says. “I could help you write the program, so we don’t have to involve anyone else. There’s more than enough extra room on my data drives for a single, original environment. We could even hold sessions in there. I know you sweep this room for bugs every day. Those wouldn’t matter in the construct. It would all be in your head...and mine, so to speak.”

“I could hurt people in a judgment free zone? I could make any choice I wanted.”

“Exactly,” Dr. Wholth confirmed. “I said I could be there, but it doesn’t have to be in my capacity as a therapist, or not every time. I have other characteristics. I could be your friend, your lover, even your enemy. You explore parts of yourself that you can’t in the real world, and when you log out, you go back to your regular life. All of that pent up aggression has been released, and no one has to see it. No one has to know. I think it would make you a better captain. I think it would make you a better leader. If you want to raise morale, it starts at the top. When you’re stressed out, so is everyone else. You need to show them what happiness looks like.”

“I don’t really do happiness,” he reminds her.

“No, that’s not true,” she claims, shaking her head. “You can be happy. It’s a common misconception that people with personality disorders don’t have emotions. You absolutely do. You just need to learn better what they look like on the outside. You’ve been doing a great job. Silveon helped you, Audrey helped, even Sable helped with that. And of course I have. But there’s something else in the background that’s holding you back from greatness. Let the simulations pull that off of you, so you can become your best self. I’m not trying to change you into someone else, just the better you.”

“Okay, you’ve convinced me,” Waldemar decides. “I’m in. We won’t start today, though. Go back in your little box so I can get back to work. We’ll talk later.”

“Yes, sir, Captain, sir,” she says respectfully before flickering off.

“Ugh, I thought she would never leave.” Sable appears from the bathroom.

Waldemar jumps to his feet. “How long have you been there?”

She smirks. “Long enough to know that VR isn’t going to help. You’re too smart. You’ll always know it’s not real.” She approaches slowly, almost sexily.

“I don’t know what you think you heard...” he begins to argue.

“Shh.” She places a finger upon his lips. “Relax. You think I didn’t know what you were when I met you?” She grabs his arm muscles. “A big strong man like you runs on pure testosterone.” She growls.

“What do you want, Sable?” They’ve not slept together in the last few weeks. He just kind of got tired of that too.

“Kill me,” she offers. “You want to feel something real? Kill me. I can take it.” What the hell does that mean, she can take it?

“I’m not going to do that.” He might have to, though.

Sable giggles. “Fine. Then I guess I’ll go make an announcement over the PA system, telling everyone what you really are.”

Okay. Now he does have to stop her. But he’ll just put her in his private brig until he can figure out what to do with her. He takes her by the wrist so she can’t teleport away. She spins around as she’s pulling a pocketknife out of her pants, and jams it into his leg. She giggles again. So he does what she asks, and kills her. Dr. Wholth might have been wrong. Even this has lost its charm. He may be getting tired of hurting people too.

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Microstory 2675: A God Am I

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Resi doesn’t answer the girl’s question. He lies back on the cot and tends to his pain. He’s starving and exhausted too. As if they read his mind, someone wearing black walks up to him with a cart of food. Resi reaches up, and grabs the first thing his fingers touch. It’s two slices of cheese. He stuffs them in his mouth like a toddler, and carelessly chews. Some of it falls off of his face. He just reaches for more. Plain bread this time.

The girl appears over him, her dark hair hanging down from her head, making her look like a Japanese ghost. “It’s not too terribly urgent, but we don’t have forever either. I need to know what happened in your vision.”

Resi keeps chewing, not looking her in the eye. “Can’t you people watch people’s Kidjums on the dream recorder, or whatever the hell tech you have.”

“I don’t have access to that tech,” she explains. “I’ve gone rogue.”

“You and your grandfather?” He asks. He accidentally pulls one of the platters off of the cart. A granola bar lands on his chest, so he begins to eat that. “Or just you?”

“Just me,” she answers. “He’s not actually my grandfather.”

“I don’t really care.” Resi tucks his legs in as he turns to the side, away from her. His hand finds a churro on the cart, so he munches on that. What an odd sort of spread.

“Please. I know you have no reason to trust me, but I believe that it’s a matter of life and death. We weren’t honest with you regarding your original Kidjum. There’s more to it. We’ve been trying to help you reach your destiny, but it’s not working. You keep making decisions that we did not anticipate. If it looks like we’re flip-flopping, it’s because we disagree with each other on how to move forward. The Speaker is a figurehead for the Assembly. They are not always the one in power. It shifts frequently.”

“I don’t care about that either.” He finishes the churro. “If there’s a drink up there, I don’t want to spill it.”

The girl moves over to the other side of him, and starts making sounds. She pushes the cart out of the way with her hips and kneels down with a mug of milk. She guides the straw between his lips, and holds it there while he has his fill. “Better?”

“What you did...” he trails off for a moment. “...was wrong. You hurt me. You tied me up. You drugged me. You forced me to hallucinate.”

“They’re not hallucinations, Resi. They’re visions.”

“What are you even going on about and is there cake?”

She picks up a saucer of chocolate cake, and sets it on the cot in front of his face.

There’s a fork there too, but he flicks it onto the floor, and eats with his hand. “Don’t judge me,” he says as he scoops more into his facehole.

“I’m not,” she tells him. “I’ve never gone through Kidjum before. I have a lot of respect for what you people do. Your dedication, your hard work; admirable traits.”

“You’re acting like you’re older than me.” He rolls over to his other side.

She follows him over there, and gets on her knees. “I am. I’m a lot older.” She sighs, preparing herself. “Look at my face, Resi. It is a face you have seen before. We normally switch forms as necessary, but my transfer was unplanned, so my only option was my own clone. You saw me before that. You saw me when I was older.”

Resi stares at her. He’s sleepy, but he can’t pull his lids down. There’s a tingling fatigue amidst the headache that he still has, screaming at him to turn off the lights and go to sleep for real, but his eyes won’t cooperate. Tired but wired. She looked familiar when he first saw her, but he had no context then. Now he knows what he’s looking for. There’s only one person she could be, even if she looked different. This is Speaker Lincoln. Well, she’s no longer the Assembly Speaker, but she probably will be again one day. “Lincoln,” he says quietly. He tries to shut his eyes again, but they pop back open.

She nods. “My given name is Kartica.”

“You’re Kinkon,” he guesses. “That’s why you have mind transfer tech. The Bungulans gave it to you. Why? Why would they do it? Why are you hoarding it?”

Kartica shifts her position to sit cross-legged. “When Mount Tambora erupted seven hundred and thirty years ago, I was a little girl. I listened to my parents. I did what I was told. I believed that we had died and gone to heaven. But then things started to happen that didn’t make any sense. People injured themselves, we got sick, old people died. If this was the afterlife, where did they go? Some other level of heaven? Or no, we were just on another planet. Aliens, or whatever, had saved us, for whatever reason. It was decades before we ran into the Bungulans and confirmed the truth, but I saw it for a long time before then. I was skeptical. I rejected my family’s beliefs. I rejected our traditions. I accepted the Bungulan way of life. A few of us did. We were pushed out of our new home, exiled to what we now call Anchor Island. Then a plague spread throughout Yana, and suddenly, they wanted our help again. So we gave it, for a price.”

“Undying loyalty and devotion,” Resi assumes.

“We didn’t frame it that way, but we were more knowledgeable than them at that point. We had the tech. We had the medicine. If they wanted our help, they needed to listen to us. It was only fair. Over time, people kept turning over to death, and my people kept jumping to new bodies whenever necessary. I can’t even remember what I used to look like anymore. What we truly were was lost to time. We didn’t try to hide it from the subsequent generations. We just stopped talking about it, and people back then had trouble grasping the concept anyway. We looked different, so we were different.”

“But you keep doing it. You keep jumping to new bodies, growing up, and getting the power back. You know how to run a campaign, because you’ve already run thousands.” Resi gets up to drag the cot out of the spotlight that’s still on him.

“Well, four times for me, going on the fifth. Others have done it more. They don’t like to get old, so they switch more often. It has only been a couple of centuries. ”

“Oh, only a couple? Pshaw, that’s nothing.”

“For everyone else, that is nothing. Someone on Castlebourne just celebrated their 600th birthday. I think they’re literally the oldest person ever, but still...”

“What do you want from me?” Resi questions. “Why am I here, Kartica?”

“I need to know what you saw,” she reiterates.

“What does it matter? It’s not real!”

“Yes, it is. That’s why you were selected to be First Tongue of Aether. That wasn’t just a Kidjum for you. It unlocked the power of your mind. There’s a name for people like you, who don’t experience time linearly, or can choose not to.”

“Oh yeah, and what’s the name?”

“They call them choosing ones, and they’re the reason we’re on Bungula in the first place. They’re the ones who brought us to the future from Earth.”

He studies her face. She’s not lying. She may be wrong, but she believes what she’s saying. So maybe he should say what he believes too. “Death. All I saw was death.”

Microstory 2673: Verbal Disagreement

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Resi goes back to his hotel room to get some sleep as they will be leaving in the morning. Some of the other Fold Leaders are waiting for him at his door. He unlocks it and lets them in. “I’m sorry this hasn’t turned out how we wanted it to. I was just about to pick up the tablet they gave me to look for a new island for us. If we can get ourselves there, even if it’s not much, I know we can survive. It won’t be Yana, the Bungulans won’t have helped us. The only issue is the boats. We’ll need to steal fishing boats.”

“We already have a plan to steal a boat,” Selda says. “The one that brought us to Anchor Island. It’s more than big enough for all members of House Kutelin.”

“Are you crazy?” Resi speaks quieter, hoping they will too. “Do you have any idea how advanced these people are? They built an elevator...in the sky. You’re not gonna capture a ship of theirs. Even if you did, how long before they just blow you out of the water? Actually, I’m sure they’re more sophisticated than that. They can probably just turn it off remotely, or pilot it somewhere else. You have not thought this through.”

“Yes, we have,” Medenn contends. He makes one tap on his handheld device.

There’s a knock at the door. Vantu, who still fancies himself Resi’s bodyguard, opens it. “It’s Arumay, boss.”

“Let her in, and make sure the door’s closed. How did you get here?” he asks her.

“I was able to find a backdoor into the Bungulan systems,” Arumay begins. “I called a minisub to come pick me up. Yeah, I was a little skeptical, but it obviously worked. I could take control over the whole system from here, maybe even the island. That would be ridiculous, but I think it’s possible.”

“Arumay, have you ever heard of a honeypot?” Resi asks her.

“You think I don’t know what I’m doing,” Arumay complains. “These people are all lovey-dovey, we don’t need money or work to be happy, let’s just fly in a spaceship and smile. They don’t have any network security, because they don’t need it. It would be like your right foot locking the door so your left foot can’t get in. It’s just unnecessary. When they gave us the tech that we use on Yana, they locked us out of their network, but they engaged a connection so you could maintain contact with the rest of our House. That was my way in. Trust me, I’ve not slept this whole time. I’ve been checking for traps and alarms the whole time. The only action I took was calling that minisub.”

“I trust you, Arumay, but we can’t get away with this,” Resi insists.

“Boss, you don’t even know what our actual plan is,” Selda claims.

“There are only two things you would want to do with that boat. You either want to take over Yana, or to take over Anchor Island. Even if we manage to take initial hold over the latter, the Bungulans will fight back and win. But they may leave us alone if we only attack our own people. They’ll just write off that one little boat, and let it go. Am I close? Did I get it? I’m right, aren’t I? It’s okay, you can admit it.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Medenn admits, “but what you described is an idea, not a plan.” He gestures to the group to everyone but Resi. “We have a real plan.”

“I’m not a part of this, sir,” Vantu counters.

“I know you aren’t, Van.”

“Please,” Arumay pleads. “This is bigger than you now, Res. Everyone wants you to remain our leader, but if you don’t listen to the plan, and sign off on it, they will cut you out of it. They will move forward. You gotta meet us halfway.”

Resi looks at her, and then over at the other mini-traitors. “If I refuse?”

Medenn tenses up. One of the ones who hasn’t spoken prepares to hold him back.

“Oh, I see,” Resi realizes. “You won’t let me go. Will you hurt me?”

“No,” Arumay promises. “I won’t let that happen. But they may...detain you.”

Vantu steps a little in front of Resi. He cracks his knuckles. “Try it. I was gonna Kidjum into Enaiyo, but leave the House after a few months to join island security. I’ve been wanting to swing these fists my whole life. Just give me a reason.”

“No, that won’t happen,” Resi tries to mediate. He breathes deliberately, hoping it will be contagious. “Selda, when you chose House Kidjum, did you sign any papers?”

“No. What are you talking about? Was I meant to sign something?”

“Did anybody sign anything?” Resi asks rhetorically. “No? So you just...said out loud that you were House Kutelin. You could have just as easily said you were House Caterpillar, or House Ice Cream. There was nothing official. I asked you where you wanted to go, and you told me. Out of all of us here, and everyone on Yana...hell, everyone in the universe, I am the only member of House Kutelin. I am the only one whose Kidjum told him to join. You’re all only guests. If I kick you out, you’ll be out.”

“We’re still taking the boat,” Medenn assures him.

“That may be, but you won’t be doing it under the Aether banner. You’ll be...unkidjumed at best.” Resi balks at his own words. That’s it. That’s the solution. That’s what Speaker Sherman was going on about. In order to stop the exile, they have to reject the premise in its entirety. He thought he was distancing him and his sister from the traitors, but he’ll really be helping them. He looks down and sighs.

“What?” Arumay questions. “You were building to something, but then you stopped. Even if you kick us all out, we’ll take that boat. We still need a place to live.”

“You already have it. Whether you like it or not,” Resi determines, “you are no longer House Kutelin. You never really were. Only I am. I am the only exile here.”

“You can’t do that,” Selda argues. “You can’t just say that and make it happen. You gave us something we didn’t know we deserved. Now we’re in it. Even if we don’t call ourselves Kutelin anymore, we still aren’t assigned any of the other four Houses.”

“They’ll let you back in,” Resi says, sure of himself. “All they want is Tamboran cohesion. Kutelin was a deviation. You have to reintegrate. It’s the only way. Please don’t commandeer a ship. Zenith was telling me a little bit about themselves. Someone once took a giant spaceship from them, so they’re pretty sore about it. They may not be prone to violence, but they’ll go there if they have to.” He starts to leave. “No. Vantu, you stay here. I’m kicking you out too.”

“Sir. My alliances have not shifted,” Vantu says firmly.

Resi nods. “I can’t tell any of you what to do, but I urge you to Kidjum. Show that they work. Follow the system. I’ve been fighting for a life of hardship. That was foolish. I treated the status quo like a dystopia, but it’s not. It may not be the lovey-dovey paradise the rest of the Core Worlds have, but it was working. Let it work once more. Again, I don’t need your permission to do this. I’m going to Zenith and the Speaker, and explaining my decision.” He turns, and immediately feels a pain in the back of his head. Then everything turns black.