Microstory 2487: Skilldome

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I don’t want to speak for you, but I’m guessing that your life is pretty easy. Everything you need is handed to you, along with a few things that you might just want. There are those who spend their whole lives holed up in their modules, connected to VR or the network. Dayfruit growers provide them with food. Drones deliver their feedstock. Their electricity and water is piped in, and their waste is shipped out. Their personal robot does all their work. I’m not criticising people who live like this. This is just a preamble so you’ll understand what purpose Skilldome serves. So many things that you may or may not take for granted were either not cheap for our ancestors, hardly available, or outright didn’t exist. Obviously, different time periods came with different limitations, and over the years, there are skills that we’ve lost to automation, and engineered simplicity. I’m not saying that you’ll become a better person if you learn how to drive a car with your hands and feet. I’m just telling you that the skill is something that this dome offers. You can also learn how to churn butter, command an animal to plow a field, or write something down with a pencil and paper. It’s hard to describe what these activities are, since there’s such a broad range, but it’s basically everything that people used to have to do to be productive that we don’t anymore. To be sure, there are some things that still hold some merit in our world. You might not have access to a medpod or healing nanites, even today, so knowing how to perform first aid is one of those skills that some people have maintained anyway. But for those of us whose minds it didn’t cross to do it before, if you’re on Castlebourne, come on down and take a class. As far as skills that are less practical in the synthetic era go, like stuffing mail in envelopes, or coding a program in an obsolete computer language called C++, you can do it just for fun, or to have a greater appreciation for modern living. Or come up with your own reasons. There are no requirements on what you have to do when you come here, but if you do come, and you do choose a particular skill, it is asked of you to use the tools you are given, and not “cheat”. If you’re taking a math test, only use one of those old basic calculators that they will provide you with. Don’t just ask an AI to do it for you. That defeats the purpose. I actually saw a guy do this, which was so stupid, because no one was making him take this otherwise pointless test. What you get out of coming here is entirely up to you. Ain’t nobody gonna hold your hand. Nor should they have to.

Microstory 2468: Internal Security Dome

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I can’t say too much about this dome. It wouldn’t be secure. But I can assure you that security personnel have ears and eyes everywhere while still managing to protect your privacy. Internal institutional domes like this one don’t typically have a review section for obvious reasons, but my boss asked me to write something up after my audit in order to maintain at least some connection to the public. I don’t work in ISD, but in Castledome. An unattached intelligence will periodically be sent to any given dome at any given time to assess productivity and general soundness of the facilities in question. Of course, each dome handles its own internal audits, but it’s always good to have a second opinion. It’s not that we don’t trust our various branches and divisions. We’re not trying to catch them in any mistakes, but you know, things break down, and procedures start to drift. Or they can, rather. The system overall on this planet is quite robust, full of non-wasteful redundancies, and resource-efficient protocols. The security is good. I only suggested minor improvements, but that is to be expected. There are more people on this planet today than there were yesterday, and there will be more tomorrow. The number of people who visit far outweigh the number of people who leave. We have a very low turnover rate in general, and that makes security an ever-changing beast. It is not easy to keep up with it, but our security team manages to do it with flying colors. I kind of wish that I could keep auditing it myself, but as I’ve explained, that would defeat the purpose of it being impartial, and having fresh eyes. It’s the only one that gets these evaluations on a very strict basis, but now I have to move on to something else, and let one of my colleagues handle the next one here. I’m sure they’ll pass the test just as well next time. I have full faith in these intelligences.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 27, 2509

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Boyd managed to convince the group to stay one more day so he could shore things up with his people. It wasn’t that tall of an order, and they figured it was the least they could do. This was some kind of alternate version of Castlebourne, and once they were gone, what would become of it? Would Pacey make an effort to keep it running, or would these AI androids just start to degrade and wither away? Ethics demanded them to do what they could while they were still around to try.

Come midnight central, everyone jumped forward to the future, including Romana and Boyd. They immediately made their way back down to the vactrain, and navigated it to Castledome. Unlike last time, nothing went wrong, and they actually reached their intended destination. It wasn’t flooded or on fire. They just stepped out, and waited for Octavia to find what she was looking for. The way she was feeling around on the tiles of the train station made it seem like a platform nine and three-quarters type of situation. If there was a way to cross back and forth between these two versions of Castlebourne, it couldn’t be something that any rando could stumble upon accidentally. She couldn’t seem to find the right tile, though, so she started tapping on every one of them one by one. Perhaps the special sequence was different on either side.

While they were waiting, Mateo, Leona, and Olimpia wandered over to the other side of the ring, and fully into the dome. Mateo hoped to have a personal conversation about their relationship, but Leona tilted her head clear down to her shoulder, struck by something surprising. “What is it?” he asked.

She kept staring at the castle in the distance. Finally, she said, “it’s a mirror.”

“What’s a mirror, honey?” Olimpia asked.

“I can’t believe I didn’t notice it in any of the other domes. Look at the castle. It’s flipped.” Leona pointed. “That spire should be on the other side.”

“Oh yeah, you’re right.”

Leona’s eyes widened. She powerwalked right back through the ring, and into the station where Octavia was still trying to find the secret entrance. She went over to the opposite wall, and tapped the tiles in the same order that Octavia had when she made her first attempt.

The tube sealed up, and they heard the rush of wind indicating the train that they had taken here was now gone. Then the weird part happened. With more rushing wind, the two halves of the vacuum tube separated from each other, split down the middle where the doors once met. As a cloud of gas filled the space left behind, a second set of doors materialized, identical to the first. They then opened, triggering the rematerialization of the tube as well. Inside the pod—which was much smaller than the usual train car—was Pacey, standing there as cool as an autumn day.

“Can we go?” Mateo asked Pacey.

Pacey smirked. “I dunno. Can they?” he posed to Octavia.

She separated herself from the group, and stepped closer to Pacey, but did not step into the vacpod. “I think we’ve made our main point, but they’re not done learning.”

“Ah, crap. Really?” Mateo questioned. “Friends become enemies? What the hell did we ever do to you?”

Octavia smirked now too. “It’s not about friends becoming enemies, Matt. It’s about enemies becoming friends.” She nodded ever so slightly towards Boyd.

Mateo turned his head towards Boyd quite dramatically. “This whole thing has been about this guy?”

“You need him,” Pacey explained. “Bronach is too powerful to defeat without someone equally powerful.”

“But him?” Mateo pressed. “I mean...maybe Arcadia, or something.”

“Arcadia is not that big of a deal,” Octavia contended. “She gets most of her power by conscripting others, and keeping them behind the proverbial curtain, so it looks like it’s all her. Boyd operates on his own.”

“That’s the problem,” Leona countered. “He’s not a team player.”

“I know hundreds of homo floresiensis bots who would beg to differ,” Pacey reasoned.

“I was being tested too,” Boyd realized.

“Did it teach him to stop being such a pervert?” Mateo asked.

“Oh,” Octavia said dismissively. “Your daughter’s hot. Stop acting like everyone should pretend that they don’t see that. Plus, she’s well into adulthood. She just aged, like two years, right before your eyes. She makes her own choices.”

“Paige would never do this,” Leona said. “Who are you?”

“I am Paige,” Octavia insisted. “I’m just one who’s been through some shit. You’ve led multiple lives. You know what I’m talking about. I did this for you, so you could end it. Soon enough, the Exin Army is going to find their way to Castlebourne, and everything that Team Kadiar worked for will be wiped out in an afternoon, along with millions of totally unsuspecting visitors from Earth, and the rest of the stellar neighborhood. You can’t stop their advance, but you can end the Oaksent regime. The empire is a mess of factions, not because they disagree with each other, but because it’s designed to be compartmentalized. Use that to your advantage. Confuse them, and neutralize them.” She took a breath, and glanced around at the station. “This world is a playground. Some of the domes that we mirrored from the original are dumb, like Heavendome. Others are for relaxation, like Raindome, so you can take your breaks there. The rest are training facilities. That crystal goes both ways. Instead of putting someone else on your pattern, it can take you off. Stay here, keep practicing. Prepare yourselves for the Ex Wars. The train will still be waiting for you when you’re ready.”

“I don’t like to be tricked,” Ramses said to her.

“A necessary component of the lesson,” Octavia claimed.

“A faulty one,” Ramses argued. “We didn’t go looking for Boyd because we wanted him on our team. We went there because your boyfriend told us that we had to. So what’s the real lesson? That you’re the powerful ones here? If that’s true, then okay, but...I’m not sure how that would help us end a war.”

Octavia and Pacey seemed decidedly stumped. “However flawed our plan might have been,” Pacey said, “he’s here now, and I don’t see you ringing his neck.”

Ramses winced. “Well, we can be civil; we’re not savage animals.”

“That’s all it is?” Octavia asked. “You don’t see any good in him, even now?”

“I didn’t say that,” Ramses replied.

“All right, all right, all right. Your pitch is over,” Leona determined. She turned to address the team. “We’re gonna vote on what we wanna do. Will we stay here and train?” she asked with airquotes. “Or will we get our powers and patterns back, and go back out to do whatever we want in normal space?” She looked over her shoulder at Pacey. “Including everything we need to use our tandem slingdrives.”

Pacey shrugged his shoulders, closed his eyes, and nodded.

Leona went on, “all in favor of staying here for an indeterminate amount of time?”

No one raised their hands.

“All in favor of leaving this place behind with our respective toolboxes.”

Everyone raised their hands, except one.

“Boyd, are you abstaining?” Leona asked him.

He’s surprised that she even said his name. “I get a vote?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Yeah, I—I wanna go. I don’t need to stay any longer.”

“Okay, cool.” Leona clapped her hands. She bent over to take the crystal out of her bag, then held it out between herself and Pacey. “I don’t care how this thing works. Just undo what you did. Put us back the way we belong.”

Neither Pacey nor Octavia made a move.

“Are you still holding onto our agency?” Leona questioned.

“No,” Pacey said, disappointed. “But it can’t be done here. Turning off the crystal is fairly simple, though not necessarily obvious. It holds a tremendous amount of temporal energy. You need to block that energy. What do you know blocks that?”

“Lemons?” Olimpia suggested.

A few of them kind of laughed.

Pacey smiled. “She’s right. Dunking it in a bowl of citrus juice would do it. But if you want to exercise some control over what it does—and you don’t want an explosion—you need the harmonic equivalent to citrus.”

“The sound of lemons?” Olimpia pressed.

“Yeah, in a way. Boyd knows what I’m talkin’ ’bout.”

They all looked at Boyd who was a little awkward about it. “There was music involved in one scenario when I was trying to find a way to transport the Buddha’s hand citron to the future. It’s hard to explain, but they converted the genome sequence to sound, and that allowed it to be...it doesn’t matter. All DNA can be translated to music. You just need to pick a reasonable method, and be consistent with it. There are multiple methods, though. Dave had to find the right one for—Pacey, do you want us to use the same method, or what?”

“That’s up to you to decide,” Pacey answered.

“Does that mean that any method will do,” Angela pressed, “or is this another challenge?”

“That’s up to you to decide,” Pacey repeated.

“Great. Boyd, you’ll be our expert,” Leona said. “These two are no help.”

Boyd scoffed. “I wasn’t actually involved in generating the music,” Boyd started to clarify. “I was the boss. Making someone else figure it out for me was part of the thrill. I just heard the highlights afterwards. Which is how I know that playing the entire piece from start to finish will take something like two years.”

“You mean...two days?” Marie asked with a smile.

“Let’s just get back to the real world, and then we’ll make a plan,” Mateo suggested. “There’s nothing for us here.” He then looked directly at Pacey, and added, “if you wouldn’t mind...”

Pacey obliged, stepping out of the vacpod, and off to the side.

“Are you two, like, a thing?” Mateo went on while everyone else was stepping into the pod.

Pacey and Octavia exchanged a look. “Just because we work together, and have the same goals, doesn’t mean we’re hooking up.”

“That’s why I asked,” Mateo retorted. “Because I didn’t know the answer. Don’t be so defensive. You’re the antagonists in this situation, you know that, right? If someone were to write this tale down in a history textbook with any semblance of accuracy, the students would not be rooting for you. Whether the ends justify the means or not, most people don’t like dirty means.” Amidst their silence, he deftly stepped backwards into the pod too. “Just remember that the next time you come across someone you think needs to be taught a lesson.” The doors closed with perfect timing, sending them away and home. Hopefully, that is.

The pod stopped, and the doors reopened. A blackness came flooding in. Dark particles immediately swarmed all around them. Now that Octavia no longer needed Mateo’s protection, he redirected it. He wrapped his arms around Boyd’s body, and endowed him with his EmergentSuit nanites. Everyone else was able to just activate their own suits. They couldn’t talk, though—not in this world. They had to rely on their long histories with each other, and their empathic connections. The other six huddled around Mateo and Boyd. They engaged their tandem slingdrives, and dispatched them all to real, normal space.

Mateo fell straight to the floor, coughing uncontrollably. It felt like the dark particles had entered his body, which didn’t sound possible. According to Ramses, they were just neutrinos, which couldn’t interact with regular matter. Whatever was causing it, he couldn’t stop it, and neither could anyone else. He just kept coughing and coughing until he either passed out or died. He couldn’t tell which.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 26, 2508

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Romana was sitting on the floor, hovering over her father, when he woke up. He turned over to the side, and started to cough. The others were waking up at the same time, recovering in their own ways. Fortunately, no one was dead, not even Octavia. A robot was lifting her up, though, and carrying her away. “She’ll be all right,” Romana assured him. “There’s a medpod in that room.”

“You’ve been alone all year again?” Mateo asked her.

“I did it on purpose,” Romana explained. “Why would we waste time looking for this man one year at a time, when I could spend days and days on the search?”

“Did it work?” Mateo asked.

“It did,” she answered with a sigh. “He doesn’t wanna leave, so I’m hoping you’ll talk some sense into him. But...I don’t wanna lie to you. Something happened. I’m not especially proud of it, but even though I was pretending to be a sixteen-year-old in Underberg, I’m actually much older than that. I don’t know why Pacey aged me down, but you need to understand that I’m an adult, and I make my own choices.”

“You slept with him...” Mateo guessed. “With Buddy.”

“He’s very kind to me.”

“I bet he is.”

“That’s not fair. I just told you, I’m an adult. He didn’t trick me. Don’t take away my agency.”

“I’m not, but Romana, he’s not a good guy. Being nice to you doesn’t absolve him of his past sins.”

“And what sins are these?” Romana questioned. “How many people has he killed?”

“That’s not the point.”

How many have you killed?”

Mateo didn’t respond to this.

Romana went on, “you two don’t see eye to eye, and I know he hasn’t been particularly pleasant to be around, but if you add up all the bad things he’s done, they’re really not all that bad. In the end, you two are enemies because you don’t get along. I’m sure before you became a time traveler, you interacted with plenty of people like that, and it didn’t make you believe that they didn’t deserve love.”

“Is that true?” Mateo sat up. “Are you in love?”

“No, of course not. I’m just saying...”

“That you’re acting like a rebellious teen,” Mateo interrupted as if that was what she was gonna say. “Are you sure you’re older than sixteen?”

“You are not my father. You didn’t raise me. Silenus did.”

“That’s comforting.”

She ignored that rude comment. “You don’t get to tell me what to do with my life. You never have. I know it’s not your fault that you weren’t around, but you can’t honestly expect me to listen to everything you say as if you have some kind of control over my choices. I’m being honest with you, because I don’t want to lie to someone I respect and care about. But don’t you sit there and belittle me as if I’m nothing more than an extension of your own personality. I will take you to Boyd, but you are not to harm him. You are not even allowed to yell at him. I am insisting on that, and I will keep us on this rock forever if you defy me in this regard.”

“That’s enough!” Leona interjected. “You don’t talk to your father like that. I don’t care how old you are, or who raised you. Boyd probably has ten years on you, and that’s assuming he hasn’t used time magicks to reyoungify himself, or he could be much older.”

“You were fifteen when you met your now-husband!” Romana shouted back.

“And he didn’t have any feelings for me until much later. Don’t turn this around on us. Boyd—if that’s what we’re calling him—is not good for you, full stop. When we first encountered him, he insisted that we call him Buddha. That’s incredibly offensive, and tells you everything you need to know about him. Just because he may not be as bad as some of the other antagonists we’ve met, like Zeferino, Arcadia, or even Pacey, doesn’t mean you made the right choice.”

“You’re friends with Arcadia now. You made friends with nearly everyone you’ve gone up against. What are we even talking about here? All I’m asking is that you give him a chance to improve himself, and prove himself; not just give up on him outright. Forgiveness doesn’t have a quota!”

“All right!” Olimpia interjects this time. “Mateo, Leona, you’re not going to attack Boyd when we find him. Romana, you may be older than you look, but you have a long ways to go. This situation is incredibly weird, what with our experiences in Underberg, and other domes. We can’t trust our own memories. Some of them are entirely fake, and their associated feelings may be a little less genuine than they seem. So I think we all need to take a beat, and focus on what matters. We are not living in a soap opera. We’re dealing with real problems here, trying to escape some weird, alternate universe. We can’t do that until we get what we came here for. The interpersonal relationship drama can wait.”

Mateo, Leona, and Romana quietly conceded. Ramses, Angela, and Marie silently agreed, having successfully stayed out of the fight.

“Okay,” Olimpia continued, proud of herself, and relieved that her argument worked. “It won’t take long for Octavia to recover. In the meantime, where is Boyd? Did he get hurt in the explosion?”

“He’s fine, he wasn’t even here,” Romana answered. “He’s in the Fostean sector at this point, living on a simulated jarl world.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Mateo said.

“Single-occupancy planet,” Leona explained. “A one-percenter in that culture will have so much money that they can afford to own an entire celestial body. They will live there alone, or with their family, supported by a small army of slaves called Arkeizen. These supposed subhumans will be known as thralls so long as they are in service to the elite. It’s not a heartwarming story.”

“Why would he be there?”

“To be clear, the thralls aren’t real slaves,” Romana said. “As I said, which you obviously already know, it’s a simulation, so they’re just robots.”

“It’s still gross,” Olimpia said to her. “I gotta admit, that’s a point against him.”

Romana smirked. “Just wait until you see it, okay?”

“Fine,” Leona decided. “Let’s take a vactrain this time. I don’t want this happening again, so we’ll stay out of canon as much as possible.”

“It’s not gonna happen again,” Romana contended. “Like the flooding of Atlantis, the destruction of this planet was canonical. It happened during the Sixth Shell.”

“Either way, let’s keep it real.” Leona led the way down the corridor.

Octavia was stepping out of the medical bay. She had missed a lot, and didn’t know where they were going, but she followed them anyway.

They got on the train, and had it deliver them to Jarldome. There were 200 levels here, most of which were 200 meters high, but with the holographic skies above each one, they felt endless. Boyd was on the topmost level, with a bunch of slaves. The team expected to find him lounging on a mountain of pillows, being fawned over and doted upon by these Arkeizen. It didn’t seem to be that way. The robots made to look like a hominid cousin were milling about an impressive little town. When they walked through, the Arkeizen smiled and waved. They didn’t look oppressed or abused. They were working, however, so no valid conclusion. On the far end of the main street, they finally found Boyd. A group of people were evidently in the middle of building a house, and he was helping. He was physically helping carry a wooden beam, and set it in place.

“Oh! I didn’t see you there. How long have you been watching us?”

“We just arrived,” Romana answered him.

“Well, welcome to Citrus City!” Boyd said. “Would you like the tour?”

“We’d like to get out of here,” Mateo responded.

Boyd frowned. “There’s so much work to do.”

“None of this is real,” Ramses told him. “It’s a simulation. You know that, right?”

“Of course I am,” Boyd said dismissively. “You think it’s that easy to erase my memories?”

“Either you’re delusional,” Mateo began. Romana gave him the stink eye, so he switched tactics. “I mean, if that’s true, then were you aware of our true histories while you were living in Underberg?”

“I guess not. But I broke out of it. I’m fine. I’m happy, living here, teaching these people how to fend for themselves.”

“They’re robots,” Ramses added.

“Shh!” Boyd whispered loudly. “They don’t know that.”

Mateo sighed angrily, and looked over at his daughter. “You did this. You told him to put on this show to make it look like he was freeing a whole peoples. You think that’s gonna work? You think I’m gonna start liking him now?”

“Sir,” Boyd jumped in. “Romana came to me two weeks ago. I’ve been working on this town for months. This isn’t just for show. I know that I have made mistakes in the past, but I don’t agree with slavery. Jesus. That’s the point of this dome, you know? It’s a test; will a visitor let their thralls do what they’ve been indoctrinated to do, or make changes that go against the history of the Fostean culture from the fictional stories? That’s the question, will you play into it, or do the right thing, even when it doesn’t matter? Because like you said, they’re robots.”

Mateo crossed his arms disapprovingly, but didn’t have anything more to say.

Leona pulled the magical technicolored crystal from her bag, and presented it to Boyd. She jerked it away when he reached for it. “This will place you on our pattern. Truthfully, Pacey did not reveal whether it was permanent or not. I believe that you will have less of a chance to get into trouble if you only exist for one day out of the year, though, so I’m hoping that you take the risk. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take for us to get back to where we belong, but I don’t want you running around on your own anymore.” She glanced over at Romana. “I certainly don’t want you to be doing that with my daughter. Frolicking on the jarl worlds, freeing slaves together.” She grimaced, and looked over at the Walton twins. She wasn’t trying to say that freeing slaves was bad. “You know what I mean.” She went on, “touching this crystal will go a long way to earning our trust, but it’s not a cure-all. And either way, it has to be your choice.”

Without hesitation, Boyd took hold of the crystal. The colors swirled around inside, presumably transferring Leona’s pattern into his qualium realm. “Thank you for the opportunity. I won’t let you down.”

Suddenly, they heard a noise in the sky. A flying craft of some kind was headed right for them, so far up in the air that it couldn’t be real. The holographic image grew larger and larger though until it was as large as it would be if it were right above the invisible ceiling. Something changed as the hologram gave way to a tangible object, presumably having been dropped down through a recess. This real, physical shuttle continued to fly towards them until it landed right in the street. A bunch of humans with guns filed out of it.

The leader of the newcomers looked around at the Arkeizen. It was unclear whether he could tell that they were free, and no longer enslaved thralls. He zeroed in on Boyd. “Sir, are you okay? Our sensors picked up unauthorized entry to your planet.”

“They’re friends,” Boyd said. “We need no help here.”

The leader stepped closer so he could lower his voice. “Listen, if you need help, you don’t have to be afraid of them anymore.”

“I’m not being coerced,” Boyd tried to say. “Everything’s fine. You can go.”

The leader nodded. He walked past Boyd, and as he was adjusting his pants, got a better look at the community. He turned back around to address Boyd again. “How are your thralls doin’? You’ve been here a while. Do you need a top-up?” A top-up of slaves?

“No. My numbers are steady.”

The guy was surprised. “Not one death?”

Boyd shook his head.

“Interesting. “Very interesting. Say, you wouldn’t be...treating them like people, would you?”

“And if I were, is that against the law?”

The man shrugged. “No, of course not. They’re your thralls, you can do whatever you want to them. It’s just a little unusual. I’d hate to think that they were influencing your behavior in some way. You know, we get a bad batch sometimes. One of them is sick in the head—starts thinkin’ that he’s special, or valuable—and that can infect the whole group. And sometimes...their owner gets infected too.”

“I’ve had enough of this,” Marie said. “Suits on!”

Mateo took Octavia in a hug again, and commanded his nanites to wrap themselves around her. Angela and Marie, meanwhile, started taking out their anger for their father out on these robo-slavers. They stole their guns from them, and shot each in the head. The slavers shot back, careful not to hit Boyd, but not caring about anyone else’s life. The Arkeizen ran and hid behind various structures while Leona, Ramses, Olimpia, and Romana protected the stragglers. It was over quickly. All of the bad robots were dead and on the ground.

“What happens when we leave?” Leona asked after the dust had settled, and the suits were no longer necessary. “Is another shuttle gonna be triggered later to come down and try to put a stop to all this antislavery wokeness?”

Boyd chuckled. “This isn’t my first single-occupancy planet. They always show up as a sort of final test, to see how you’ll react. I’ve always just talked my way out of it, but I guess this works too.”

“Great,” Leona decided. “Then pack up your shit. It’s time to go.”

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Microstory 2432: Infinity Suite

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Oh, I’ve just discovered that, not only can you review an entire dome, but also individual parts of that dome. So here I am, talking about the Infinity Suite in the Palacium Hotel. If there’s one thing this planet does well, it’s not worrying about how much space people take up. The Infinity Suite is the best example of this. I have no clue how it works, but that’s the right word for it. No matter how far I walk, or how many doors I step through, there’s always somewhere new to be. There’s always a new room to explore. Yet, I can’t get lost in it either. Each room, with no exception, has at least three doors. You can go back the way you came, press forward to explore more, or exit to the hallway. And when you do exit—again, no matter how deep you’ve gone—you’re back where you started. But here’s the thing. Your suite has two entrances from the main hallway. One goes back to the beginning, and the other returns to where you last were. So it’s not just some kind of trick of the mind, or an illusion. Or maybe it still is. It boggles my mind, I can’t figure out how the crazy Escher configurations work. Your last known location is somehow being stored in memory. And don’t you think that I’m just in a new hallway that was designed to look exactly like the original one. I’ve made changes, both inside and out, and tracked my progress. I’ve left little numbered pieces of paper on counters, chairs, and couches to create a map. I’ve matched each number with a photo of the room where I put it in. It matches afterwards. I can go back in through the second door, and retrace my steps, and nothing will have shifted. Those rooms are all in there where they’re supposed to be. That still doesn’t rule out some kind of advanced holographic illusion, but I suppose it doesn’t matter, does it? It’s still the craziest place I’ve ever been. They let me stay here for two nights, but then I had to give it up, so someone else could try it. There were presumably an infinite number of bedrooms, but I barely slept, because I was too busy trying to figure out how it works. If you manage to secure a booking, please write your own review, and provide any answers that you may have. Or, if you have any explanations, or ideas of what other tests that we could possibly run, comment below. I’m so confused and curious. I won’t ever stop thinking about it.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 18, 2500

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The ladies were gone. Leona, Olimpia, and Romana were on a trip together in the Pacific Northwest, predominantly the Portland area. Mateo could have taken time off of work to go with them, but he wasn’t invited. Instead, he was staying home. Ramses was spending a lot of time here too, hanging out to keep him company. They had planned on playing cards with a couple of driver friends, but both of them fell through, so now it was just the two of them. “You can play cards with just two people,” Mateo reasoned. “You can play with just yourself, if it’s the right game.”

“That’s depressing,” Ramses pointed out. “Let’s just find someone else.”

“This last minute?”

“It’s not a big party; they’ll be able to leave whenever they want to. What about those twins next door?”

“Angela and Marie.” Mateo leaned over in his chair, but couldn’t quite see through the window, so he stood up. It still wasn’t enough, so he just stepped over. “Yeah, they’re out there in their garden. Seems as though that’s all they do.”

“Maybe they would like a break,” Ramses suggested. Maybe they’re always out there hoping a couple of cool guys will invite them to something better.”

“I’ll see.” Mateo walked out of the house, expecting to do this alone, but Ramses was trailing behind him. “Hello, Waltons. Are you free this evening? We got a poker game going, and there are some extra seats at the table.”

Marie and Angela exchanged a look. “Do you have RPS-101?” asked the former.

“Is...that a drink?” Mateo asked.

They laughed. “No,” Angela said. “It’s a game. We have a board, if you think you might like to learn.”

Mateo exchanged a look with Rames, and then shrugged. “Yeah, we’re up for something new. It’ll just be the four of us.”

“Great.” Marie stood up, and started to remove her gardening gloves. “Marie Walton, computer programmer.” She shook Ramses’ hand.

“Computer engineer,” Ramses replied.

“I know.” She smiled.

“I’m an addiction counselor.” Angela shook his hand too.

“There won’t be any drinking,” Mateo explained, worried that maybe she was worried about it.

“It would have been fine if there were,” Angela promised.

The twins wanted to shower first, which was fine, because the gaming table wasn’t set up yet. A half hour later, they showed up with their game board. It was a giant wheel with 101 objects written in the wedges. The entire game was pure chance, with absolutely no strategy involved. One player spun the wheel, and randomly landed on one of the objects. The other player spun next, and if it was better than the first one, they won. It was the most boring thing that Mateo had ever experienced, and he couldn’t understand why they liked it so much. They couldn’t explain it either. They just had this peculiar fascination with it, like there was a secret dimension to the game that they simply hadn’t reached yet. Mateo wasn’t so sure, but he did find himself mysteriously landing on Sponge a lot. Maybe there really was magic to it. Despite this inexplicable intrigue, everyone agreed after a while that it was literally played out. They switched to regular old poker. They had to explain the game to the Waltons first. Well, Ramses did. Mateo knew the hands, but he didn’t understand it on the level that Ramses did. That was why he served as the region’s engineer. Mateo certainly couldn’t do it without him.

After hours of this, they took a break to get up, use the restroom, and scavenge for food. Ramses and Marie ended up in a discussion about their jobs, and it was kind of looking like they were never going to start playing again.

“There’s something I’d like to show you,” Angela said to Mateo. She tilted her head towards the east. “Back at our place.”

“Okay,” he said. Hopefully she wasn’t coming onto him. Managing a three-person relationship was complicated enough. They didn’t need to add a fourth. He followed her back to her house, and into what she called their study.

“Did you know that there are more than two kinds of twins?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you can have identical or fraternal—or in the case of two girls, sororal. You’ve probably heard of this distinction, but there are other variations. Precisely when the egg splits, or whether it was fertilized before the split, or after, makes a difference. There are other factors. You can even have two twins with two separate fathers!”

“Is that what you are?” Mateo asked, not sure where she was going with this.

Angela giggled as she took a file folder out of the top drawer of a desk. “No.” She opened the folder, and folded it under itself before handing it to him. “We’re not sure what we are.”

Mateo looked down at the top piece of paper. “I don’t understand what any of this means. DNA methylation, telomeres...”

“Down at the bottom.” Angela just pointed at the sheet in general.

Mateo read it out loud, “biological markers inconclusively suggest an aging abnormality that places Subject B roughly four years ahead of Subject A. Yeah, I still don’t know what that means.”

“Marie is older than me,” Angela tried to explain, “by four years.”

“How is that possible?”

She shook her head. “We don’t know. It’s not the only weird thing about it. We understand that RPS-101 is stupid and boring, but we wanted to play it with you two to see what would happen. You keep landing on Sponge. I keep landing on Heart. And there’s also the matter of the hemlock.”

“Excuse me?”

“We all drank hemlock.”

“I don’t know much, but I know that that’s toxic.”

“Yeah, it should be. But are you even a little queasy?”

Mateo turned away. “You poisoned me as some sort of test?”

“Do you remember moving here, to your house, I mean?”

“Yeah, of course I do.”

“I don’t. Neither does Marie. We’re just been here forever. All we do is garden.”

“And play Rock, Paper, Scissors, and drink hemlock.”

“Do you feel stronger when you go out in the sun?”

“Lots of people like the sun.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Mateo sighed. “I guess so. Is that not normal?”

“No, it’s not.”

“What does it mean, when you put it all together, that we’re superheroes?”

“Well, we may be super, but we’re not heroes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure your job is very fulfilling, but it can be done by a computer.”

That was a bit of a sore subject. While it was true that RideSauce valued the human touch, his role was also under constant threat of being automated. The only reason they hadn’t pulled the trigger was because customer satisfaction was a reflection of staff satisfaction, which was reportedly tied to their ability to receive help from real humans. If the pendulum ever swung to the opposite direction, even for only a day, his job would be gone so fast, a new tenant would be in his office space by lunch.

Angela took her lab test back, and returned it to the drawer. “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but there’s something going on around here. I feel like nearly everyone around me is fake. There’s a reason we ran these tests on you two. You, your wife, your daughter; they all seem like real people. You seem like the only real people. Everyone else is just sort of...weird. Wouldn’t you say?”

“No,” Mateo argued. “My assistant feels real, as does one of my drivers, Boyd.”

Angela grabbed a notepad from the desk. “Boyd. And what’s your assistant’s name?”

“You’re not going to poison my friends too!”

“Understood, but you only listed two more people. Can you think of anyone besides them?”

“Yeah, my rival...Pacey.”

“Pacey, with an e?”

“You’re not—I mean, you can poison him if you want, I guess. But you stay the hell away from my wife and daughter, you hear me.”

“Well, your daughter wouldn’t be able to survive it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I dunno. Why did I say that?”

Mateo decided to sit down in one of the guest chairs. “If I’m being honest, there are some things I know or think about the world around me, and the people, which don’t seem true...but do?”

Angela flattened her skirt under her thighs and sat down in the other guest chair. “I think I know what you mean. Leona and I had tea the other day, and she made an off-handed comment about how I was once engaged to a man named Ed. That’s completely untrue, I’ve never been engaged, yet it still somehow felt right. I could picture him in my mind. He was dressed weird, like he lived in a different time.”

“Maybe it’s a past life.” He stood up and laughed as he put his face in his palm. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m even entertaining these scifi ideas. Past lives? That’s not a thing.”

“Aren’t they? We don’t know,” Angela pointed out.

“I designed a spaceship.” The two of them looked over to find Ramses standing in the doorway. “I thought it was just for fun, but...I think it works. I mean, it’s really detailed, right down to how the fuel is injected into the engine.”

“He showed it to me,” Marie said as they were both walking all the way into the room. “I can’t make heads or tails of it, but I can tell that he put a lot of thought into the design. If it wouldn’t work, it’s well-thought out at the very least.”

“We were talking,” Ramses went on. “I’ve never been sick. Neither has she, nor her sister. My memories seem...not fake, but too perfect, like they’ve been carefully curated for my mind.”

“Did she tell you about the poison?” Mateo asked him.

“Yeah,” Ramses said with a nod. “We took it a step further.” He bent over, and unplugged a surge protector from its wall, along with all of the appliances connected to it. “Do you care about this?” he asked Marie.

“No,” she said as she was taking it from him. She pulled it back like a baseball bat, and slammed it straight into Ramses’ face. He didn’t even move. It didn’t seem to hurt at all, and didn’t do any damage whatsoever.

Apparently inspired by the two of them, Angela grabbed a letter opener from the desk, and tried to jam it into Mateo’s neck. It didn’t hurt either, and didn’t break the skin. It did do damage to the opener, though, bending it into a slight curve.

“We are superheroes,” Mateo guessed.

“Or it’s the simulation hypothesis,” Ramses decided.

“Explain that one again?” Mateo asked, jokingly without laughing, because he hadn’t ever heard of it, though it did not sound humorous.

“We’re all living in a computer simulation,” Ramses began. “Usually, it’s used in an attempt to explain the nature of reality itself, and where we all are in general. But in this case, it could just be the explanation for where we are...the four of us.”

“Six,” Marie corrected. “We think Mateo’s family is part of this too.”

“More,” Angela corrected Marie’s correction. She lifted up the notepad. “Mateo came up with a few names of people he interacts with who also appear to be real.” She used airquotes around the last word.

“If we’re just in a computer,” Mateo asked, “how do we get out?”

“Typically?” Ramses asked. “You can’t. You can never really know what’s real, and what’s not. It’s not like the movies, where you can will yourself out of it, or where the developers hid secret powers that let you take control. If the simulation hypothesis is true, we have absolutely no free will. Not only can they shape our world to their liking, but they can adjust our minds as needed. We’re not necessarily real either.”

“So, what do we do?” Angel asked him.

“Our two main choices are to keep our heads down, and hope our creators see fit to at least keep us alive in whatever definition that should be for the simulation. Don’t make waves, don’t rock the boat; just play along.”

“Or we keep bashing each other with office equipment,” Marie offered.

“Or we try to talk to them,” Mateo suggested instead. “I told you, Angela, that my rival, Pacey seems real too. There’s more to it. He actually seems, somehow...more real.”

“You think he’s one of them? An avatar of one of the developers?” Angela figured.

“Might could be,” Mateo said. “But I don’t wanna do anything until my girls come back home. It’s not safe for them here, but it’s not like it’s safe wherever they are now. What if they’re on a different server, or whatever? At least if they come back, I can keep an eye on them.”

“Okay, then we wait to do anything,” Marie said. “They should have a say in whatever decision we make anyway.”

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Microstory 2407: Zombie Dome

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Zombies! Get your zombies here! We got fast zombies, slow zombies, zombies who are still a little bit intelligent, zombies who mindlessly continue on with the jobs that they supposedly had when they were still alive. You choose your environment, and you choose your level of difficulty, and then you just try to survive. They have some pretty crazy scenarios. I love zombies, so I’m biased, but I think you could have an entire planet just designated for this, and it would be great. Here’s what’s interesting about it, and the kind of unique thing about Castlebourne over all. They really lean into the fact that human bodies are completely expendable these days. They put a lot of work into building them for us. They have some fancy new technology that can grow a clone of you in a matter of minutes, I don’t understand it. Or you can choose your own creative avatar—like a bunny, or an iron giant—though that’s not really allowed in Zombie Dome. You’re supposed to be a human running from humanoid zombies. That’s the thing. But here’s a choice I never thought I would get to make. You can turn into a zombie in certain variations. When they bite you, if you don’t die, you continue as one of the undead. They’ll pump you full of drugs, and impair your brain processing. You’ll start walking around trying to bite other people. It’s a trip. I wanted to see what it was like, so I intentionally got bitten. Don’t worry, there are fail-safes in place. No matter how stunted your mind is, there’s always this part of you that is aware that none of this is real, and that you can break out of it if you need to. You can force your real consciousness back to the surface, and start being a normal person again. You’re dead, so you can’t keep playing like that, but you can make your way to an emergency exit, and quit playing. At that point, you can request a respawn into a normal body again, and start all over. I never felt unsafe in there even though that’s the point. It’s true, as I said, I love this stuff, so I kind of went into it really prepared. You might have a different level of preparation, but they’ll take care of you. They won’t let things go too far. Even when you’re still alive, you can put a stop to a zombie attack by uttering your safeword, which you will choose ahead of time. It can’t be too obvious, like, help, or no, stop! but I’ve seen it work. I had a bunch of buddies who were there specifically to test these systems. They chose different safewords at different times, and they always worked. We were there to test the boundaries, and make sure that the safeguards were sufficient, and never faltered. Highly recommended, but bear in mind this is not for everyone. It takes a certain kind of constitution, and most people should know whether it will be good for them or not, and again, if it’s not, you can just leave.

Microstory 2402: Castledome

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I had the rare opportunity to visit Castledome. For those of you not in the know, this was the first dome ever built on the surface of this planet. They’re not even sure if the original colonist was intending to build more domes at the time, or if he just needed a breathable place to live. This is where the leadership and other sentient staff members of the whole planet live and work. Obviously, there’s a castle, but that’s not all. They’ve built up a whole village in the surrounding areas, giving it the real feel of a medieval settlement. Everything on the outside looks really archaic and simplistic. I’m not sure if the old-timey machines are functional, like the water mill, or the wagons that I see strewn about, but I’m sure they are. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time outside, or inside, for that matter. I was only granted a one night stay in one of the towers as a sort of treat. To be fair, this planet is still in its early stages. They’re still testing a lot of these hotspots, so I’m sure more people will have the chance to do what I did. It was interesting to be in all that stone architecture. I’m fairly young, so I just don’t have any experience with that sort of thing. But don’t fret, it wasn’t all rustic. They still have computers and a network connection. The bed might have looked old, but the mattress was still really comfortable, and came with all the adjustable settings and smart sensors. I was hoping to get a chance to meet the planet’s owner, but he was just too busy. I can imagine that running this place is not easy, even though he has a full staff of dedicated personnel. This may change in the future, but there aren’t any activities or adventures in this particular dome. It’s just for living and exploring, and again, it’s not available to everyone since that’s where all the people work. Check it out if you can, but don’t get your hopes up.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 14, 2496

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“Anything?” Mateo asked.

“Nothing,” Leona replied.

“Where could they possibly be?” he went on. “You need at least three people to make the new slingdrives work, if it even works at all.”

“Maybe he was wrong about it,” Olimpia offered. “Maybe it works with only two.”

“We should still be able to detect them,” Leona reasoned, “wherever and whenever they are.”

“Unless they’re shrouded in dark particles,” Mateo pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s my hypothesis,” Leona agreed, “but Ramses’ systems are being finicky with me. I technically have access, but it’s...argh!” She didn’t want to have to explain the complexities of it all, and she didn’t have to.

“If it is dark particles, you know who we can call,” Angela said.

“Won’t work,” Marie countered as she was walking back in from the other room. “Buddy was here. He disappeared with them.”

“How do you know?” Leona questioned. “The surveillance was garbled.”

“I didn’t look at the footage from the lab. I looked at the recordings from the drone in Dome 216.” She lifted her hands, and projected a hologram of the video recordings from Dome 216 last year. They could see Buddy standing there with Romana and Ramses. There was no sound, and it wasn’t detailed enough to read their lips, but their body language appeared nonconfrontational. None of the others remembered experiencing angry emotions from this moment, though there was some agitation leading up to it, if they were remembering correctly. As the three of them were standing there in the desert, the dark particle creature appeared out of nowhere, and seemingly tried to kill Buddy. It kind of looked like Romana was trying to save him, further reenforcing the idea that they were not at odds at this moment. Marie closed the hologram with a drop of her hands after the creature grabbed Romana and disappeared, and the other two left, presumably to rescue her.

“You gotta fix that machi—” Mateo began.

“I know,” Leona interrupted. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“I know that you love her too,” Mateo acknowledged. “I’m just sick of worrying about her.”

“I don’t think that ever goes away,” Olimpia said.

“There’s another possible way to find her,” Angela began. “Maybe we don’t need Buddy. Ramses has given us all we need.”

“You wanna use the tandem slingdrives, and hope that they take us where we’re trying to go, even though we don’t know where exactly that is,” Leona guessed.

“If it doesn’t work, we’ll try again,” Angela reasoned. “If we can’t navigate back here for another attempt, it probably means that it never mattered if we knew where they were, because they’re probably out of range, and the tandem slingdrives don’t work right.”

Leona sighed, and looked back over to the screen. The computer was trying to find them just as it had when Buddy abducted Romana years ago. “I don’t know if this thing is good enough. That seems to be an entire person made out of dark particles. It could be orders of magnitude more powerful than the stasis field that Buddy put Romana in before.”

“Is that a yes?” Angela asked.

“I would have preferred to test the tandem slingdrives in a more controlled situation, but you make a good point that that doesn’t really exist. The whole purpose of these things is to push the boundaries of intergalactic travel. If we get lost, that was always going to be the result, and we’ll be no further from locating Rambo and Romana than we are now.”

“The great thing about these suits he made for us, we’re never not ready to go.” Mateo mused.

Olimpia interlocked her arm with his. “As long as we have each other.”

“They could be in a harsh environment,” Leona warned. “Suit up.”

Mateo released his emergent nanites, and commanded them to turn mostly green. He now looked strikingly like Green Arrow. When Leona looked at him funny, he shrugged and said, “she loved this show.”

“She had time to watch it?” Leona questioned.

Marie looked at the time readout on her interface. “Eleven, ten, nine...”

Everyone shut themselves up safe in vacuum mode, though Mateo kept the superhero costume on over it to keep things light. If he didn’t laugh, he would cry. No one lost track of their children as many times as he had. Put a bell on her, he thought to himself. Well, she had a bell. A psychic bonding bell, which should always let them know where the other one was. These dark particles were incredibly frustrating, and how funny it should be that they would come into their lives around the time the quantum connection was too. Their fates were sealed, whether they were aware of it or not.

Marie finished counting down, and they all slung away, concentrating on nothing but Ramses and Romana’s location. It looked like they were still in the lab, but it was very different. It was a hell of a lot darker, and these flashlights that looked like forearm weapons weren’t doing them much good. They couldn’t make out any details in the room around them, it just had the vague shape of everything back home. The right angles of the tables, desks, and chairs; the curve of the gestational pods in the corner; the height of the ceiling. They were here, but not here, kind of like the Upside Down. Everything was just a shadow of its true self, nothing more than a slight hint of its presence. Shadows, really. They could call this a shadow realm. It was very much like that in more ways than one. This was seemingly where the dark particles lived. They were swarming all around them, not paying the humans much attention, but clearly aware of their sudden appearance, however complex their intelligence might be.

Something was coming at them from the darkness. It was moving steadily, and maybe a little threateningly, but not too quickly. Before it reached them, it split in two. Shortly after that, they could be recognized as people; people wearing EmergentSuits. It was Ramses and Romana. Nice, it worked. Ramses took Mateo by the hand. He was already holding Romana’s. She took Marie’s, and together with everyone else, they completed the circle. With nothing more than a sense of homesickness, and no words exchanged, they reactivated the tandem slingdrives, and left this place as quickly as they had come. They were back in the lab; the real lab, complete with light and solid objects.

Ramses collapsed his helmet, and fell to his knees, sliding on the floor a few centimeters. At first, they thought he was hurt, but he was positively ecstatic. He was laughing and crying simultaneously, holding his arms up and to the side like he had just won Olympic gold, panting, both relieved and proud. No one had a clue what was going on. Romana was just as perplexed as the rest. “Oh my God. Yes! Yes! That’s it! I finally figured it out! I saw it! Me! Well, Romana and I, but I understand it. Whew!” he whooped.

“What happened in there?” Mateo asked his daughter.

“I don’t really know,” she replied. “We couldn’t talk, but he was super excited the whole time. He kept tapping on the interface modules of his suit. I’m guessing he was taking readings, but who knows?”

Ramses was still laughing. “Yeah. I was taking readings, all right.” He stood up, all giddy and cheerful. “I know what it is. I know what it all is.” He squealed. “I have to write it down.” He rushed to find the nearest device.

“Care to share with the class?” Leona asked.

“Yes, class first. Then the paper.” He clapped, then started gesturing with his hands as he prepared his remarks. “Neutrinos.”

“Neutrinos?” Leona echoed. “Are you saying that that’s what the dark particles are?” She didn’t seem to believe him. She was the only one who was following him even remotely.

“Yes.” Oh, Ramses was still so jazzed about this whole thing, whatever it was.

“That doesn’t make any sense. They’re subatomic particles. You can’t see them.”

“I was wrong,” Ramses went on. He kept talking with his hands. “I thought that they were lifeforms, which were replicating, but that’s not it. They don’t breed, they congregate. They form masses. They’re like...snowflakes; water adhering to a mote of dust, and clumping together until it becomes too heavy to stay up.”

“So, a dark particle isn’t a neutrino. It’s billions of neutrinos.”

“Exactly. But not like water forming on a mote of dust—”

“You literally just said that that’s what it’s like,” Angela reminded him.

“I know, but not really,” Ramses insisted. “It’s more like...a whole bunch of neutrinos who happen to be on the same trajectory as each other. They emit some kind of energy. Individually, it’s negligible, but combined, we can actually see it. We perceive it. It’s dark, because neutrinos don’t interact with photons very well either, but these bursts of energy, firing in rapid succession, do occasionally repel light like a solid object would. Again, it appears dark, because it’s a minuscule amount, but it is technically visible. For fractions of a second, but as I said, when they get close enough to each other, these bursts are happening all the time. Normally, you don’t see it, because we can’t see the neutrino dimension, but Buddy can...call them forth.” He pointed while adding, “and so can Romana.”

He was talking real fast, but no one bothered to ask him to slow down, because they didn’t understand him either way. Except for Leona. She knew what he was saying, she just  couldn’t believe it. She crossed her arms, but didn’t say anything else for now.

“So, they’re not alive?” Romana asked.

“No, as I said, I was wrong. They just seemed to be that way, because baryonic matter freaks them out. No, that’s personifying them again. They’re not used to baryonic matter, because they usually pass right through it, but in these clumps, and with some sort of weird charge that Buddy can artificially generate, they do find themselves running into us.”

“That doesn’t make any sense either,” Leona pointed out. “The particles move around people. That requires some level of sentience.”

“Yeah, I was thinking about that. I don’t think they’re diverting with any semblance of intent. I think as soon as this energy comes into contact with normal matter, they split off into different directions, ultimately colliding with other clusters, and forming new temporary trajectory masses. It only looks to us like they’re swarming, because we can’t effectively track one clump at a time. They don’t have to hit us directly, because a sufficiently concentrated layer of air is all around us at all times. To us, it’s meaningless, but it’s like a wall to them. I thought they were disappearing and reappearing, and I was sort of right. They don’t hold together for very long, but they do form clumps constantly during this charged condition. I would really love to get my hands on Buddy, and see how he does it. I may have learned all I can from Romana.”

“Where is Buddy, by the way?” Olimpia asked. “We saw you with him on the drone cam in Dome 216.”

Ramses brushed it off. “Oh, I dunno, we lost him in there. He could still be trapped for all I know, or he knew exactly how to escape. I’m sure he’ll show up again at some point.”

“Hold on,” Leona said, still unconvinced. “Where were we? What was that place? The neutrino dimension? That’s where they live? Why? Seems random.”

“It’s not,” Ramses continued his lesson. “Let’s say you have a vacuum-sealed room with two doors. There’s a screen door, and then the fully sealed door. When you open the sealing door, only the screen door remains, which allows the air to rush through the screen, and into the room. That’s because nature abhors a vacuum. As you know, neutrinos don’t interact with electromagnetism, or the strong nuclear force. The dimensional barrier is apparently made up of one or both of these, which is why the neutrinos pass into it. It’s just like entropy, where a state of order naturally flows into a state of disorder. It wasn’t made for neutrinos specifically, but those are the particles that go into it, because nothing can stop them. And they don’t usually come back out, because there’s so much space in there.”

Romana tapped on her arm interface. “Yeah, that was my interpretation too.” She lifted her arm up. “That’s what it says here, neutrino clumps.”

Mateo laughed. “You’re adorable. Like a young me.”

“Why are you dressed like Green Arrow?” she asked.

“Why aren’t you dressed like Speedy?”

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