Microstory 2758: Headwater

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Microstory 2757: Point of No Return

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Jolanda tries to walk out the door into the empty city, but Rage warns her off, saying that something is still wrong. They must have assembled the puzzle incorrectly. Perhaps it poisoned them and caused them all to lose time, or there’s just something weird going on that none of them can explain.

“I can explain it,” Miracle says as she walks right outside. “We are in a Facsimile.”

“I don’t know what that means.” Rage is in the doorway to protect everyone else.

Miracle rolls her eyes, and waves her arms like she’s parting the Red Sea. “Would you please? I need everyone to see and hear me.” She sighs. “I didn’t know we would encounter time travel on this journey. I thought it was possible, but I guess I gave Hrockas too much credit. I don’t have the time or bandwidth to explain everything, so let’s just go over the basics. Has anyone seen an old show called Stranger Things?”

A few people raise their hands, including Colley.

“There’s an evil world in that show that looks just like ours, except there aren’t any people in it, and it’s horrific. There are all sorts of vines and mold covering everything, and toxic particles float around all the time. Spoiler alert, what they eventually discover is that this copy of the world was created on a particular day in the past, like a snapshot of a single moment. That is basically what this is, but without the horror overtones. Well...there was that one time when zombies and other monsters were fabricated here in secret so they could be let loose on the populace—”

“I remember that,” Zelda jumps in. “I was trying to relax in Mildome when a serial killer from Bloodbourne suddenly attacked. They weren’t too hard to kill, though.”

They all look at her like she’s crazy.

“What? I don’t only spend my time in Adrenadome. I like bees and butterflies.”

“Well,” Miracle continues, “now you know, this is where they came from. I can’t tell you not to worry about lingering monsters, but let’s hope not. The person who controlled them no longer has control over this place. He was sent away. We actually fought alongside each other against a bigger threat, but he never returned. I’m just trying to give you an idea of where we are, and what we’ll find. Any questions so far?”

“Yeah.” Rage raises her hand. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Miracle sighs again. “Hrockas can force me into any substrate he wants, but he can’t stop me from using my powers. Those are based on my neurology, so he would have to kill me to get rid of them.” She squares her shoulders and makes sure that everyone is watching. She disappears, simultaneously reappearing on the ground a few meters away. She screams in agony as she holds her head. “Ah, you son of a bitch, what did you do?” More screaming.

A gargantuan holographic screen resolves in the sky. It’s Hrockas again. “Nuh-uh-uh. No time powers. You think I didn’t plan for that? This world is littered with temporal suppression fields. Good luck turning them all off.” He blinks away.

Elise helps Miracle back to her feet. “Don’t do that again. We get the idea.”

“I’m still not sure I believe it,” Rage reasons. “I can think of four major explanations off the top of my head for what she just did.”

“I have seen people do what she just did before,” Jolanda admits. “I was born on Proxima Doma. Before you ask, I wasn’t on the surface or in low-orbit when it was destroyed, but I did become a refugee. They ferried us to Gatewood where we could choose our final destinations for free. I ultimately opted to transmit my consciousness here, but not before I witnessed a riot that had to be quelled by a bunch of teleporting cops. I don’t think they were faking it. What would have been the point?”

“I’m sorry you went through that.” Minotaur gives Jolanda a hug from the side.

Miracle nods. “The faster-than-light technology some ships use now? Researchers didn’t simply finally figure it out. People like me gave it to them. They had this big meeting in the year 2400 with the, uhh...sort of council. I had nothing to do with it because I’m not on the Shortlist, but there’s a very low chance that your life has not been impacted directly by a time traveler one way or the other, for good or bad.

“Miss Shin, if you were a refugee, you probably spent some time on The Tangent, or at least you saw it. Their artificial gravity was a gift from that council. Hrockas has a number of friends with powers and patterns. A team of them was instrumental in making Castlebourne what it is today, and he continues to employ others. For the most part, they try to keep the tech more conventional, but there are some things normal physics can’t handle.” She gestures at the world around them. “This is proof of that. I’m betting they keep it up and running just in case they ever need it, for times like these.”

“So, what are we facing?” Zelda asks Miracle. “How dangerous is this tech?”

“You’re not actually listening to her,” Rage complains. “We can’t trust her.”

“I’m not trying to be your leader,” Miracle defends. “I’m only giving you the facts. What are we facing? No way to know, but throw your rule book out the window, because it no longer applies. Time travel is a very loose term, and a misnomer. Many who can manipulate spacetime don’t simply move forwards or backwards. Some can turn invisible by basically showing you what’s behind them instead of them. Some can duplicate themselves by pulling from microrealities. Hrockas may only be using this dimension to separate us from gen pop, but he also might be planning to throw temporal obstacles at us. Rage, you can listen to me or not, but if it’s that second option, I have an incredibly unfair advantage, because I’ve seen this stuff before.”

A deafening silence falls, making this city even more a liminal space than it was when they first set foot out here. Miracle could be wrong. The people they saw before might have been volumetric images. Or the dome they were in simply spun around to the other side, which was made to be a replica of this, but never populated. There are other explanations for what happened to them, but on the off-chance that Miracle isn’t mistaken or lying, they have to pay attention to her. Trust, but verify.

Elise stands over by her friend. “Rage is the leader. That’s not changing. Miracle, let’s call you the advisor.” She gestures to her main teammates. “We’ve been working together for weeks, and we know what each other has to offer. We’ve settled into our respective roles, so that can be yours. But until further notice, we must all be in an alliance together. Do you disagree, Miss Brighton?”

Miracle smiles. “I do not. Like I said, I don’t wanna lead. Advisor feels right.”

“Rage?” Elise asks, hoping that the tensions don’t escalate.

“Very well,” Rage decides. “I’ll listen to you, Miracle, but I promise nothing regarding my actions. If I want to make a different call, that’s what I’ll do.”

“Sounds good.” Miracle turns around. “Now. First thing we need to do is check for—” She takes a step forward, and suddenly disappears. A few seconds later, they hear her screaming from the heavens, right before she splats on the ground. “...Time mines.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 25, 2569

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Romana had gotten out of control. Her father, and everyone else, fully understood where she was coming from—she was lonely, and she needed companionship—but she was playing with fire. They blamed the progression and simplification of technology. A lot of what Ramses did involved temporal manipulation, which most researchers and users didn’t have access to, but a lot of the rest had become ubiquitous. Their advanced substrates were quite common these days, except for the bit about being able to teleport, and their attached pocket dimensions. The computing power and the detail of simulations; the whole galaxy had it, or at least it was available to them.

Downloading what began as a programmed intelligence into a mobile body was nothing new, but it had certainly become easier over the centuries. And that was what a lot of the development focused on now. All everyday problems had been solved, so the primary changed involved removing friction from the processes. You used to have to know how to program a dayfruit with the right ingredients. Now you just told it what you want, and it grew. It even did it faster than the original species could be produced. It used to be that if you wanted to give a digitized consciousness a body, you had to have the education and experience for it, and to account for all sorts of variables. Now you pushed a button. All Romana had to do was push a button, and Boyd 3.0 was just there.

But Boyd was not perfect. She wanted him to be just like them, which meant he had to skip a year at the end of every day. That was time tech, and not in the central archives, so she had to come up with a workaround. According to her, every day at midnight central, his brain went dormant, and didn’t come back online until midnight 365 days later. This was the only way she could do it. If she had asked, Ramses would not have helped her, so she probably made the smart call in that regard. That didn’t mean it wasn’t a problem, though. If his mind could be switched off like that, he could be switched back on. Where were the safeguards? What if someone else showed up during their interim year? What if Boyd got tired of skipping time, and turned himself back on in the middle of a cycle? Did he even want to skip at all, or did he want to leave this planet, and go find his way elsewhere? Romana still hadn’t thought this through.

“I have thought it through,” Romana insisted. “You are just not listening.”

“No, you’re not listening,” Ramses argued louder when Mateo tried to. “Sorry, Matt, but I’m gonna have to take this one. She’s old enough to make her own choices, and suffer the consequences beyond a scolding from her parents.” He looked back at her. “This is dangerous stuff. There was a reason I was quarantining him, and I know you knew that. This was reckless, childish, and stupid, and there will be consequences.”

“Oh, you’re just mad because you’ve become irrelevant,” Romana contended. “Now suddenly the great Ramses Abdulrashid isn’t the only one on the team who can create life. I’m sorry science caught up to your genius, but it was inevitable. Get over it.”

“No.” Ramses was generally a chill guy. He usually only had anxiety over his own insecurities, but he was livid today. “You may not have used my personal lab, but you used equipment that I fabricated.” He stopped her before she could interrupt, “don’t bring AI into this. Of course I didn’t program them character-by-character. They are still mine, and you abused my trust in you by doing this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to you and your parents, but there may be something seriously wrong with you, so you’re going in hock.”

“You can’t do that.” She laughed it off. No one else was laughing. “No, he can’t do that. I’m an equal member of this team!” No one said a word. “Dad! Moms! Stop him! Stop him!” They didn’t. The time bullet hit her, and sent her straight into lock-up.

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Extremus: Year 143

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Weird things have been happening on the ship. Waldemar’s support system has been shrinking. People have turned up missing, while others have died under mysterious circumstances. His most loyal followers and sycophants are just going away, and life on Extremus has become bleaker than ever. Waldemar himself doesn’t seem fazed. He remains steadfast and ambitious. It’s become clear to all that he is planning to hold onto the captain’s chair through at least the next shift. After that, he might be too old to continue, unless he finds and unlocks immortality tech. It’s weird, really, that he doesn’t seem to be pursuing that. Is there something he knows that Silveon doesn’t? Well, obviously there is, because his people keep dying, and he doesn’t seem to care.

“He doesn’t care, because he thinks they betrayed him,” Sable starts to explain.

“What do you mean? A couple of these guys have been with him since the beginning,” Silveon points out. “I hardly think they would betray him now.”

“That’s because they didn’t,” she clarifies. “I just told him that they had.”

“Why is he listening to you? You’re his girlfriend, not the devil on his shoulder.”

“I may as well be,” Sable contends. “He asked me to use my time tech to spy on the entire ship. It’s completely untraceable and unhackable, because there aren’t any surveillance devices anywhere. All I have to do is remotely view wherever I want.”

“And you’re feeding him bad information from that illegal surveillance?”

“Oh, one hundred percent.” She walks over to her closet and opens the door. She presents her wardrobe flamboyantly as if it’s a prize on a gameshow. Then she closes it, performs some kind of maneuver which Silveon can’t see from his vantage point, then opens it again, but this time from the hinged side. Instead of clothes, there’s now some kind of fancy contraption. There are indicator lights and interface screens on it, but none of them is lit up. “I don’t even turn it on.”

Sable takes out her handheld device, which is a fairly rare thing in this culture, and tosses it to him. “I had the AI write me an algorithm to decide our next victims. I couldn’t go after the big fish on day one. I started with low level—but wildly enthusiastic—fans who Waldemar was already suspicious of. Each time he found a new enemy, it reinforced his paranoia that no one can be trusted, which told the algorithm who to pick next.” She plops down on her couch, pleased with herself. “Impressed?”

“I’m scared.” Silveon sighs. The logic is sound, but it’s still wrong. It’s an abuse of power, and exactly what Waldemar would do if he were in their shoes. He can’t stop her, though. She’s too powerful to go up against, and he doesn’t want to be on her bad side too. He may yet be able to reason with her, though. “You’ve become him. It’s not—” He stops and shakes his head, not knowing how he could possibly get through to her. “We were never worried about Waldemar Kristiansen himself. Waldemar Kristiansen is only a man. What Audrey and I were worried most about were tyranny and fascism. And anyone’s name can be attached to those concepts. I think you just attached yours.”

Sable stares at Silveon with cold, dead eyes. She turns her hand so her palm is facing up. A glass appears upon it, already filled with a brown liquid. “Do you know what this is? It’s bourbon.” She examines it like a scientist, and doesn’t drink. “Waldemar’s mother used to drink this stuff all the time. She was a telepath...worse than her son, because she could hear people’s coherent thoughts. There was one difference between her and Waldy, though: this brown junk. She internalized her dark thoughts, which protected the rest of us from her. But alcohol is illegal, and even though Waldemar obviously doesn’t care about the law, it never occurred to him to self-medicate.”

She chuckles. “This isn’t a replica. It was actually hers. It disappeared from her hand in the year 2354, because I stole it...just now. Don’t worry, I piggy-backed off of a different time travel event, so the sensors will dismiss it as a minority report.” She sets the glass down on the table. “She was so drunk, she won’t even notice. She’ll think she merely blacked out for a few seconds while she drank the whole thing, and threw it in the material reclamator. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Silveon questions, more scared than before.

Sable leans forward sinisterly. “Because if I took the glass the day before or the day after, I might have been caught. You have to pick and choose when you do what you do. It’s the same reason you didn’t murder Waldemar in his sleep when he was a kid, and why Mateo Matic only assassinated Adolf Hitler after the holocaust. It seems cruel. Why wait that long? Why let so many people die? Because believe it or not, in the void left behind when Hiter died as a teenager in an old timeline, a worse threat took power. He was the lesser of two evils. He saved the human race.”

“That is a despicable thing to say about history,” Silveon warns her.

Sable doesn’t flinch. She reaches down and picks the glass back up to take one little sip. Now her face contorts. “Now that is despicable, and disgusting.” She clears her throat. “I lied to you earlier. I turn that machine on all the time, but instead of spying on my brothers and sisters, I use it to wander the past and future. I’ve seen all of reality with that thing, and I’m the only one in the universe who can handle it.” She closes her eyes to correct herself, “besides, like, Lincoln Rutherford.”

“I’m having trouble following you. Are you Hitler, or are you the worse threat?”

Sable takes a deep breath. She takes another one, and another. “Waldemar is Hitler.” She pauses again. “You are the worse threat.” She snaps her fingers.

Waldemar appears in the room. He’s confused. “How did you summon me?”

“Don’t worry about it, babe. I brought you here to show you, I found the last dissenter. I figured you would want to handle it quietly.”

Waldemar looks down at Silveon. “I’ve always known about him. He was eight years younger than me—a baby—and we had playdates? It never made any sense.”

“Of course you knew.” Sable stands up and kisses the captain on the cheek. “You’re a genius. But I used that machine to see what would become of this ship if he were allowed to live even one day more. Now is the time to end it. You can’t put it off any longer, and I don’t think you want anyone else to know about it. Fortunately, he’s no longer in the public eye, so covering up his death shouldn’t be too hard.”

Waldemar looks back at the man he once called his friend. “Why? What is this all about? You have been trying to change me my whole life? What was the point?”

Silveon turns his chin up. “What does it matter? It didn’t work.”

“It did work, though,” Sable argues. “I used the machine, remember? I saw your timeline, and I see the future in this one. You thought you were trying to stop him, but you were actually helping him reach his full potential. And your job is done. It’s my turn now.” She looks at her boyfriend. “You should kill him here. One clean head shot. This is a dead zone. No sensors will log it, and then I’ll clean up for you.”

“You will make a good wife,” Waldemar tells her. He takes out his sidearm, trains it on Silveon, and squeezes the trigger.

Time stops. Silveon is staring at the explosion coming out of the gun, frozen in space and time. Silveon can’t even move, except for his eyeballs.

Sable gets down on her knees underneath the bullet, and frowns at Silveon. She leans forward and kisses him passionately on the lips before placing her mouth near his ear. She whispers, “meet me in Montauk.” She then puts her three middle fingers on his forehead and violently tips him backwards.

When Silveon opens his eyes, he finds himself lying on the floor of an unfamiliar room. He grasps at his head and winces with a hiss.

A woman is sitting at her desk. She turns around when she hears him. “Report.”

“Just tell me the date please,” Silveon requests.

“It’s August 15, 2311.”

“Can you turn off the light please?” He can barely open his eyes, it’s so bright.

“Do it,” the stranger commands the AI.

“August 15, 2311,” Silveon echoes. “Did I piggy-back off of a time travel event?”

“Probably,” she replies. “There was one only minutes ago, well within the margins of error for the ship’s sensors to ignore your arrival. If you wanna go back, though, you should do it quickly, though, or it will be detected.”

“I don’t know why I’m here. She told me to meet her in Montauk.”

The woman seems taken aback by this. “Here.” She helps him off the floor, and onto the bed. “Are you thirsty?” She hands him a glass of water. “I’ve not had any yet.”

Silveon accepts the water and drinks while she goes over to the opposite wall. She slides a cabinet door out of the way, revealing a huge collection of old media. He can’t remember whether they’re called cassette tapes or DVDs because they are so ancient. She scans the library with her finger before settling on one. She pulls it out, looks at the cover herself, and then kneels down in front of him, setting the item on the floor. She puts her hands on his knees, almost affectionately. “Either the person who sent you here really loves you...or really hates you.” She smiles sadly, and hands him the box.”

Silveon looks at it. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” He flips it over to read the description, but stops. “Is it supposed to jiggle like that?”

“No,” she says with a shake of her head. “Open it.”

He lets the big black thing slide out of the box. It doesn’t look right. It looks like part of the outer casing has been pried off. Inside of it is a ring. He picks it up and lets the media fall back to the floor. He takes the stranger by the hand and compares the ring that’s on her finger. “They’re the same.”

“Twins,” the woman says. “It’s fitting you should come here. I had to use mine to save my life during that time travel event, when someone tried to kill me.”

“Someone’s trying to kill me,” Silveon admits, “with a gun.”

She nods. “That can save you, but you don’t have enough time to learn how to use it. It creates temporary pockets of space, allowing you to adjust something’s trajectory.”

Silveon thinks about it. Then he gently places the extra ring in her hand. “Then it’s not for me. If I survive in my time, on that day, I’ll only be putting off the inevitable. My...frenemy wants me to do this, which means I don’t think I should. I should die.”

The woman drops the ring back in the box. “That’s your choice, and I respect it. I don’t know what you’re going through, but have you heard of The Question, by chance?”

“Yes,” Silveon replies.

“You’re meant to answer yes or no, but did you know there was a third answer?”

Silveon returns to his present, and lets himself get shot in the head.

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Extremus: Year 142

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The plan did not work as well as Waldemar and Faramund hoped. Some thought Waldemar was faking being an idiot while others claimed they thought he was stupid the whole time. This experiment has mostly served to show him who his friends are, and who his enemies are. So that’s something. He’s afraid that some have fallen through the cracks, though. What if his true enemies are smarter than that, and know how to keep themselves hidden? They could be conspiring against him right now, and he would have no idea. He needs help. He needs someone he knows might be powerful enough to track everyone on this ship. And she just so happens to be his girlfriend.

He’s sitting on the couch with Sable now. He knows he can’t trust her fully, but they’ve been getting along, so he will take this risk. It’s the only way. “Do you love me?”

“Of course I do, Waldy,” Sable replies. “What is this about?”

“I need something from you, but you may not like it. You may not agree with it.” He sighs. If she blabs to anyone it could ruin him. He won’t be able to control an uprising. Even some of his loyalists will fight back. This ship needs stability. No one else can give them that. They wouldn’t even try, because they don’t have the stomach for it.

“What is it?” Sable presses. “You’re making me a little nervous. Just say it.”

“I have reason to believe that there are people on this ship who don’t like the way I’m running things. I believe that they are plotting against me. Finding every single one of them might not be possible. It might even be multiple parties who have nothing to do with each other. I could never truly know. Unless I track everyone. The ship’s privacy controls are unalterable. Believe me, I’ve tried. They’re hardcoded into the design.” Probably to prevent this very thing. “So I need a workaround. I know that you’re an expert in time tech. I think you can help me. Would you be interested in that?”

“You want to spy on everyone?” Sable presses. “Would anyone be exempt?”

“Besides you and me?” Waldemar asks rhetorically. “No. No one can be trusted.”

“How can you be sure you can trust me?” Sable questions. “I could be faking my relationship with you. You don’t know. You can’t read emotions, let alone thoughts.”

“I don’t know it,” he admits, “but I have to ask someone for help, and you’re the best. There’s a way to know what’s happening on Extremus by peering through spacetime. It subverts all cameras, all spatial locks, everything. It can’t be avoided.”

“Are you sure that this technology exists, or are you simply guessing?”

“I know the tech exists,” he says. “What I don’t know is if you have it. Don’t deny that you have abilities. I remember killing you once. I thought it was a dream, but now I’m certain that you traveled back in time to undo it. It’s fine, I’m not mad. I don’t actually have an inherent problem with secrets. I just don’t want people to use their secrets against me. I don’t have the time or bandwidth to get people in trouble for every little thing they do. The surveillance tech would only be used to find rebels, full stop.”

“Well, how do I know if I can trust you? You say that that’s all it would be for. You might even mean it at this very moment, but you could always change your mind.”

“You can always turn it off,” Waldemar says. “You will retain that power.”

Sable appears to think about it. “Hm. That’s not good enough. I would have to suspect that you’re abusing it and then turn it off. Besides, you’re in a tricky spot, being the captain. You should distance yourself from this anyway. I won’t give you the tech—which I admit, does exist, though I would have to make some modifications—but I would give you the intel. I retain full control over it. I surveil, and report my findings.”

Waldemar considers her proposition then offers her his hand. “Deal.”

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Microstory 2746: Undercover Boss

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They ran out of time there at the end. Pribadium initially set a very low differential for the time slowdown, which already made their decision dire, but it didn’t stop there. What she didn’t realize was that the time bubble was contracting at the same time, thanks to the pressure of the contraction of the universe itself. Their localized time was starting to catch up to realtime, and once that happened, they would either die in the vacuum or be crushed by the dimensional barrier. There was no happy ending if they didn’t leave. She didn’t have time to make the necessary calculations.

She couldn’t remember exactly how far back they needed to send their minds, and even if she did, that’s not how the timechairs work. You don’t just set a date and press return. It requires very precise parameters to both make sure her current neurostate maintains cohesion, and that her past mind gets overwritten entirely, instead of lingering. A lingering partial consciousness is torturous and unethical. If you’re going to overwrite your past self, do it all the way, like putting a dying animal out of its misery.

Pribadium hoped that she and Sora would wind up back on Doma Tertia a few days before the planet was blown up, or even earlier. Instead, they land in the interrogation room at the very moment when everything changed. In seconds, a Teaguardian is going to teleport herself into this room, trying to arrest Sora, while also trying to rescue Pribadium. Not long after that, the whole planet will be destroyed. They can’t let that happen. It will ruin her chances to annihilate it the right way, so it doesn’t eventually recoalesce. She has to put a stop to it. In the first timeline, she and Sora escaped into..the space. This time, they have to go into the belly of the beast.

Pribadium leaps over and takes Sora in her arms. She releases the nanites from her body, and wraps them around him. She is intending to jump them to the interior of the ship, but if it has an anti-boarding lock, they might bounce off the hull on the outside. As soon as the nanites finish generating a spacesuit for him, they disappear.

There was a lock, but Pribadium’s teleportation algorithm knows how to break through it since she was part of the group who invented the technology in the first place. They’re now in the firing bay of one of the ships. The two engineers don’t even notice Pribadium and Sora because they’re busy powering up the weapon. They shouldn’t be.

“Stop!” Pribadium tries to order. “I am Chief Asset Manager Pribadium Delgado, and that is my planet. I am ordering you to cease fire! I will speak with the Klavis, but I demand that you stand down this instant. You came here to rescue me, and that’s done.”

The engineers only stare at her. One of them reaches over to sound the alarm.

Pribadium sighs. “We don’t have time for this.” She teleports over to him, then teleports him away. She then comes back for the other one before returning to Sora.

“Where did you take them?” Sora asks her as he’s trying to collapse his suit.

Pribadium smiles, and pulls her nanites back in. “I put them in hock.”

“They’ll just send more people. They probably don’t even need the engineers. They can control it from the bridge, or elsewhere,” Sora reasons.

“Good point.” She taps on her wrist interface, then places her hand on his waist.

“Buy me dinner first,” he jokes as his new teleporter belt is formulating around him. “You always could have used this to escape me. Why stay, to humor me?”

Pribadium is still watching his belt form. “This will let you jump anywhere, even through suppression fields. We must throw everyone in hock, and not just in this ship, but all three.” She looks up at him. “I stayed because I believed in you...because I believed you could become the man that you are today. I’m glad I did.” She cups his cheeks and kisses him passionately on the lips. “Remember, everyone in hock.”

“You take this one, I’ll take the other two,” Sora volunteers.

Pribadium chuckles. “The other way around.” She teleports away.

Together, they throw every single Teaguardian in the cells, knowing that it’s going to get them in trouble. The thing is, though, there is really nothing anyone can do to her. She is singularly too powerful. She will get out of this. She has friends in high places. The Shortlist gave Teagarden the tech, and they can take it away. They put failsafes in place to prevent or undo abuse. She doesn’t even have to ask for help. Someone will simply show up. She could end up in one of these cells too, and there will always be someone to get her out. She has never taken her political power for granted before, but she has to save this planet, the people on it, and the future of the Gatewood project.

Once Pribadium confirms that everyone has been successfully locked up, she returns to the first ship to address the Klavis, who is in charge of all three of them. Actually, a klavis should be responsible for four ships, which is concerning. Strictly speaking, they don’t have to travel in a formation of four. In fact, they usually don’t. It’s just possible that an extra one is sneaking around here somewhere. “I’m sorry it had to come to this, but I couldn’t let you fire those weapons. It wasn’t right, or smart.”

“I understand,” the Klavis replies.

“You do?” Pribadium questions. That’s an odd reaction from a military man.

“Yeah, of course! Why don’t you unlock these cells, and we’ll talk about it?”

“Oh. I see.” Pribadium completes a short breathing exercise. “Gatewood is an independent division of the Core World Consortium. We provide more good to the galaxy than Teagarden could ever dream. That’s why we have so much latitude to run it ourselves. We do not need your protection, because I’m here. I had the situation well in hand before you swooped in and screwed everything up. I’m not going to dissolve the relationship that we have with Teagarden, but I am going to kick these three Teaguardians out of my star system for the duration of the obliteration project. You may return once the planets are destroyed, but you will be taking up a distant patrol pattern. Again, I don’t actually need you to do anything.”

“You don’t get it,” the Klavis responds. “That is not for you to decide. You are the Chief Asset Manager, not the emperor of the galaxy. I have my orders.”

Pribadium nods. “And I have mine. There’s plenty of food in the cell synthesizers. I’m going to sync your ships, and send them on a relativistic loop. By the time they get back, the job will be done. We can fight then, but I won’t let you interfere with Project Ross 154.” She leans in real close and taps on the glass like a kid with a new pet turtle. “We all answer to the Core, but the Core answers to people like me. We’re the drivers. If you take your complaints high enough up the chain of command, you end up with me. I’m like an undercover boss. So enjoy your vacation. We’ll be fine without you.”

Pribadium disappears, and jumps to the bridge where she left Sora. “What is it?”

He’s looking up through the main viewscreen where a ship has just come into view. “They don’t look like a Teaguardian. I don’t recognize the design at all. Do you?”

Pribadium watches it too. “Yes. It’s my design. But I never built it.”

Sugar’s face comes on screen. “Captain Delgado...permission to board?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 23, 2567

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For space colonization purposes, the galaxy was divided into regions. The closest regions had an obligation to maintain some semblance of cohesion with the other colonies, and Earth. Even a charter world couldn’t secure a charter if they wanted to go out there and do bad things. And you did have to have a charter, however small it might end up being. You couldn’t simply say, we found a star system that’s only fifty-six light years away, but we don’t need any help. But we’re gonna purge every year, okay?

In order to gain that level of freedom, the boundary lay 200 light years from Earth. They devised several other divisions wider than that, but the rules did not change, which was that there were no rules. If you made it that far, you could do whatever you wanted, and the state couldn’t and wouldn’t stop you, no matter how bad it was. That didn’t mean you were free from consequences. If necessary, you would have to defend your way of life. Because anyone who showed up was also in the Extended Bubble or beyond, meaning they didn’t answer to the Core Colonies or Earth either.

It was Team Matic’s intention to travel throughout these distant colonies, and help where needed. They were naïve. They didn’t think they would have to harm them. But as it turned out, the Exin Empire wasn’t a fluke. It was just the most blatant example of human nature because the creator used time travel to establish itself a long time ago. The people who colonized Tarantella had the same idea, just more recently.

Tarantella was barely over 200 light years away, but it didn’t start out that way. They were originally in the Charter Cloud, but two years ago, something changed. They had constructed a massive stellar engine, which pushed the star farther out. It was already moving pretty fast on its own, but they gave it a boost. Why did they do this? Well, because their charter gave them a huge inventory of donated embryos, as well as the resources needed for that stellar engine. Gatewood didn’t think anything of it, them being this close to the border. The exact distance was impossible to prove, but they had to come up with a number, and both parties agreed to it. Now the Core was regretting it, because it locked them in to a number that had since changed, and that could be proven.

The colonists told Gatewood that they were wanting to move their star system to a more hospitable region of space, but in reality, they wanted to cross that border. They wanted to use those embryos as a slave labor force. Ethics didn’t count out here. There were probably a lot of things happening this far from the neighborhood that the team wouldn’t like. These colonists didn’t have to follow any rules. Literally nothing was illegal. That was why they traveled this far. At last, they were free to make their own choices, and the Teaguardians could do nothing about it.

Team Matic could do something about it and had been working on it for two years.

Leona sighed. “I really wish Ramses were here to check my calculations for me.”

Olimpia hugged her wife from the side. “I’m sure you did everything perfectly.”

“He’s never done anything at this scale before,” Leona pointed out.

“He’s never had you before,” Olimpia argued. “Look at his face. He’s ecstatic.”

Kayetan noticed them looking at him. Without a smile, he gave them a thumbs up.

“You’re right.” After the ding, Leona reached over and pressed the comms button. “Power threshold achieved. Merge whenever you’re ready. Focus on the coordinates.”

He took a deep breath as he closed his eyes. He reached out to the other side of the border, within the Charter Cloud. It took over 100 years for the hopeful slavers to move the star two-tenths of a light year, and moments for Kayetan to force them back. Now they were committing a crime. Now the Teaguardian could step in and arrest them all.

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Microstory 2745: My Respect and My Friendship

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

“Can you freeze time?” he suggests.

“Freeze time?” she echoes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Microstory 2739: Nobody Exists on Purpose

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Pribadium’s friends once compared her to Rick Sanchez. She is not as cartoonish as he is, and she doesn’t break any laws of logic, like building a robot in a couple seconds with a screwdriver just to pass the butter. She does, however, frequently invent things just because the ideas are floating in her head, and she has to get them out. Or rather, she did. She has not developed anything significant in years, so she’s a little rusty.

Humanity is nowhere near the end of science, but they have pretty much solved every problem. Primary drivers are moderate performance improvements, scale, distribution and access, and most importantly, efficiency. The most pressing issue facing the universe right now is figuring out how to perform the most complex calculations using the least amount of energy. It’s profoundly important, and will only become more so further down the timeline as entropy progresses, but it’s certainly not fun, especially not for her. She pivoted to Administration and Operations because it was a challenge.

Now she has to go back to her old self to understand who this self-proclaimed embodiment of the population of this universe is. But if she’s gonna do it, she’s gonna do it her way, and her way...is not the normal way. Instead of trying to recall the procedural memory that she has lost over time, all she has to do is call forth a younger version of her who still has the required skills. She playfully calls it instantiating her panda.

“Why do you call it that?” Sora questions as he’s watching her prepare.

“Inside joke,” Pribadium explains as she checks the imaging chamber’s integrity.

“So you’re going to contact yourself from another time? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“It would be, if that were it,” Pribadium begins. “Any time travel risks irreparably throwing off our current conditional state. This is more like a revision history.”

Sora nods. “So you’re still trying to do the mobile command center thing.”

Pribadium stops working for a moment. Though everything has changed about their circumstances, nothing has changed about their objectives. Well, at least not Pribadium’s goals. She still wants to separate this pocket of the universe, and she still wants to travel the bulk with it. “I can’t think of anything more important than that right now. Understanding that amalgam in the other room is only in service to that end.”

“I see,” Sora says. “Well, I’ll leave you to it, then.”

“Oh, you’re not going anywhere, mister.” Pribadium is still not looking at him, in favor of focusing on the work. “You stole my tech and abused it. Don’t think I forgot about that. I don’t know if it led to what happened with the Stonehenge model, but that’s exactly why you’ll have to be tested too.” Now she looks at him like a shushy librarian. “You placed this whole lab at risk, not to mention the universe. I forgive you on a personal level, but you may yet pose a risk, so you’re next on the list.”

“Okay,” Sora agrees with his tail between his legs. He sits down on the bench.

Pribadium is ready. She boots up the machine, and waits for a previously saved state to appear in the form of a hologram that both of them can see and hear.

Pribadium!Zero’s image slowly renders at first before completing in a blink. She looks around to orient herself before looking at Pribadium!One. “Whassuuuuuuup!!!!!!!”

“Aren’t they supposed to say, report in these situations?” Sora questions.

“I was an ornery little bitch.” Pribadium looks at her self. “Listen up, Egg. I got some work to do, and I need your brain to do it.”

“Fuck you, Chicken.”

Extremus: Year 139

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Sable has been playing a one-sided game here, which is to be expected, because for the longest time, Silveon was too. A few months ago, Waldemar revealed to her that he had been seeing and interacting with his late wife. Either he is sparse on the details, or Sable didn’t relay everything to Silveon when she told Silveon about it yesterday. He doesn’t know why she waited this long, but he can’t argue with her about it. They have a very fragile partnership, and it’s the only one he has, so he doesn’t want to lose it.

He asked Sable for more information, but she didn’t give it. He doesn’t know how this is changing Waldemar. Their relationship has grown more strained over time as the latter focuses on maintaining his power, and his relationship with Sable. They are probably more or less in a holding pattern, though. He is coming up on a crossroads in his career. In the original timeline, Waldemar threw the rule book out the airlock, and declared himself the One True Captain of Extremus, Eighth of Eight. His acolytes came up with the chant, “eight! Eight! Eight!” When spoken out loud, it sounded like they were saying hate, hate, hate, which in a way, they were very much saying exactly that.

Out of all of their goals, this is the big one. In five years, his and Audrey’s hard work will either pay off, or fail. Will Waldemar do what he did before, or will he follow procedure, and step to the side for a new captain? They were never trying to make him into a saint, but if they can end the tyranny, all of their sacrifices might prove worth it. The question for Silveon right now, though, is who or what is Audrey? He has a decent idea, but he doesn’t want to go digging around to confirm it, because it could mess with what’s happening. He needs to better understand what this Audrey ghost is telling Waldemar, so they know if she’s a threat to the plan, or a boon. It’s gonna be tricky.

“Hey, W,” Silveon says when the door opens for him. “What’s up?”

“What did you want, Sil?” Waldemar questions. He doesn’t sound happy, but he doesn’t sound mad either. He’s concentrating on whatever is on his table at the moment.

This is where Silveon has to be careful. If the Audrey who Waldemar is seeing isn’t the least bit real—like a temporal echo from the past, or a mental projection—and if Waldemar knows that it’s only in his head, Silveon’s next words will be an obvious lie. He might be able to save face, but it depends on the wording he chooses. “I wanted to talk to someone, and I think you’re the only one who may understand. You cared about her as much as I; or more, rather. I can’t trust anyone else.”

Waldemar freezes but stays on his tablet. “Cared about who?”

“Audrey,” Silveon answers. “I’ve been...seeing her. Kind of in the corner of my eye? She doesn’t talk. I thought it was only in my head, but it’s just too real. She’s older, ya know? She’s aged like us even though she’s been gone for so long already. I dunno, I mean, my brain could certainly conceive of that, but stranger things have happened too. Maybe...maybe it’s real. Do you think she could be real?”

Waldemar stares at the man who he once called a friend, and is now becoming a stranger by the day. He stares for a long time. “Of course not, Silveon. Audrey’s dead. Time travel is illegal. It’s the only set of laws I never touched. Go see a psychologist.”

Shit. Their trust is gone completely. Well, at least he’s not angry, or becoming violent. Still, he’s playing this close to the vest, which means that Sable remains the only hope they have of getting through to him, and averting his dark fate.

Silveon shakes his head, bids his farewell, then respectfully bows out of the room.

He returns to his own quarters, defeated. Life should have an undo button.

“Hey,” a voice says from behind him. It’s Audrey. “We need to talk.”

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