Extremus: Year 101

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

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

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

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

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

Audrey is tearing up. “Dougnanimous Brintantalus.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A few years.”

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

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

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

“That sums it up,” Audrey confirms.

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

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

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

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

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How’s that?”

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

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

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

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Extremus: Year 97

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Admiral Tinaya Leithe. That’s what it says on her name plate. She has one more job to do before she can rest in peace, and if what her son from the future told her is true, it’s going to be her longest job yet. That’s exciting—she wants to be alive, of course—but it’s also pretty stressful and scary. She’s already so old, and so tired. She’s really gonna be leaning on Lataran to take the brunt of the work here. Which should be okay. She’s still youngish, and is showing no signs of slowing down. It might not matter anyway. Captain Oceanus Jennings hasn’t sought either of their counsels. Still, day in and day out, they come to their giant joint office, and make themselves available.

Tinaya sighs. “What am I doing here?”

“Hold your fingers up like this.”

“Okay.” She mimics Lataran’s gesture. “Then what are you gonna do?”

“Try to flick the football between your thumbs.”

Before Lataran could do what she proposed, Tinaya drops her hands, and reaches over to her docked tablet. She puts in her search parameters. “Uhh...is this meant to be association football, or North American football? Or foosball. Are you sure it’s not foosball?”

“It’s none of those things. It’s paper football.”

“That explains why it’s a triangle, and it’s not a triangle in any of these reference photos.”

“Do you wanna play or not?”

“Not,” Tinaya answers. “You’re the one who asked, not me.”

“Well, I’m tired of RPS 101 Plus. I was just trying to change things up.”

“You could always get into Quantum Colony, like everyone else.”

“No, that game gives me the willies.” Lataran shivers. “There’s something too real about it.

“Yeah.” Tinaya stands up. “I’m gonna take a walk on the trails.”

“You do that,” Lataran replies. “You’re welcome, by the way!” she calls up after Tinaya is some distance away. She never lets her friend forget that she’s the one who built their little corner of paradise as a gift.

“Thank you!”

Just as Tinaya is reaching the entrance to the path, the doorbell rings. “Thistle, who’s that?”

A floating hologram displaying the doorbell cam appears right in front of her. “Audrey Husk. She does have Admiral Hall clearance, so she didn’t break in.”

“She’s a little young to have clearance for anywhere on this ship besides home and school.”

“I can’t explain it. Her authorization didn’t come through me. It’s just there,” Thistle replies. That’s weird. He’s meant to know everything that happens on this ship.

While Lataran has seniority here, they treat it as a democracy. She’s standing by the door, waiting for Tinaya’s go ahead. When she gets it, she opens it up, and greets their visitor.

The little girl, Audrey takes one step over the threshold. “Admirals Keen and Leithe, my name is Audrey Husk, and I’m here to speak to you regarding Silveon Grieves and Waldemar Kristiansen.”

“Oh, are you their new little friend?” Leithe asks, gesturing to her to come on in.

Audrey accepts the invitation. “Little is the right word, because I’m shorter than I will be.”

“Uhh...”

“That is, I’m shorter than I’m used to being...”

Tinaya widens her eyes, and looks over at Lataran in fear.

“She needs to know what’s going on anyway,” Audrey claims dismissively. “So go ahead and give her the deets.” She crosses her arms like she’s going to wait for it. But it’s not her call. It’s not even Tinaya’s.

“I’m afraid that I would need to consult both Arqut and Silveon, as well as maybe Zefbiri.

“I don’t have time for this,” Audrey says. “Admiral Keen, Silveon is a time traveler who sent his consciousness into his younger self’s body so he could fulfill a mission to protect the future from a violent dictator.”

Lataran absorbs the information for all of four seconds. “Got it.” To be fair, she’s a time traveler too, and it was this whole thing.

“I’m guessing something went wrong, and you’re here to give the timeline a third chance,” Tinaya says. She’s not happy about this kid spilling the beans, but she knows that they can trust Lataran, so everything will be okay.

“Oh, no, I’m not from a different timeline,” Audrey begins to explain. “Silvy and I were contemporaries. He chose to send himself back alone, believing it to be a solo mission. The others and I disagreed. I secretly sent my own mind back at the exact same moment. I’ve been watching over him without him even noticing.”

“How is that even possible?” Tinaya questions. “If he knows you in the future, wouldn’t he notice you acting weird in the past? Surely you’re making choices now that he wouldn’t predict, unless you’re a really good actor.”

Audrey chuckles. “He is a singular man of singular focus. That is precisely why we decided to do this behind his back. He misses things sometimes. He needs others more than he will admit.” She smiles, presumably remembering something from their future. “But yes, I am a good actor. I recently successfully inserted myself as the third leg of their friendship tripod, but things immediately got complicated.”

That sounds gross. “Don’t tell me there’s something going on between you three in a...romantic sense.”

“Oh, God, no. It’s nothing like that. I was chosen for the supervisory mission specifically because there weren’t any feelings in the first timeline, and because I’m the right age. I came at this mission as a total professional, as did your son. Waldemar, however, knows nothing about what’s to become of him. To him, this is just life. I’m afraid that your son’s interference with Waldemar’s childhood development has had unforeseen consequences. As I believe you know, Waldemar is incapable of love. His brain isn’t wired for it. He is also a man of singular focus, and his drug of choice is ambition. But Silveon has been teaching him to assimilate better into society, allowing him to approximate—read: fake—emotional connection. I’m trying to tell you that Waldemar has found a love interest, and I don’t know what it means.”

“Why come to me?” Tinaya questions.

“I don’t wanna out myself to Silveon if I don’t have to, but I require advice. That is your job on this ship anyway, but I am well aware that Captain Jennings is not the type to ask for it, leaving you with a lot of...” She looks over at their desks, which are mostly there as decoration. “...free time.”

“Who is this love interest of Waldemar’s? Do they reciprocate?”

“Unfortunately, yes. He chose a female, I believe, to later set himself up as a nuclear family man with biological children. I know, that’s disturbing, but I knew Waldemar very well in the future. Everything good or normal about him was fake. I don’t think Silveon really sees it, but he’s falling into the same patterns, just with a faster timeline. He had a family before. It was inevitable that he would learn to fake human characteristics, like love and empathy. That’s what sociopaths do. I’m afraid that your son’s efforts may not be doing us any good.”

“He fears that as well,” Tinaya acknowledges. “I don’t know if there’s anything that we can do about it, though. Let’s imagine taking this girl out of the equation in whatever way, so she can never become his wife. He’ll just choose someone else, won’t he, even if it’s not for a few more years?”

“That’s why I rang your doorbell,” Audrey says. “I can’t see a solution.” She looks away, almost in shame. “And I don’t wanna go to Plan B.”

“What’s Plan B?”

Audrey takes a moment to respond. She turns her head back to face them with dignity. “Waldemar will be an adult in two years. Both Silveon and I have been given the greenlight to take care of the problem permanently any time following his eighteenth birthday. It’s a last resort, but it’s not out of the question.”

“Yes, it is,” Lataran insists.

“I told you, I don’t like it,” Audrey reminds her, “but we can’t go back to the way things were. One life to save thousands.”

“No, I mean, it won’t work. I assume you know of The Question?”

Audrey is surprised that she mentioned this. “I do. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Death is not the end on this ship. What you’ll be doing is making him mad, and if anyone can find a way to return to base reality with a new substrate, it’s a man dangerous enough to warrant two time traveling assassins in the first place. Killing him will not have the desired effect. We’re not that lucky.”

Audrey considers Lataran’s position. “You may be right about that. I just don’t know what to do. I’m not even sure if I should do anything at all. Maybe I’m wrong, and Silveon is skillfully leading Waldemar down the right path, just as we planned, but I can’t see it, because I’ve had to keep my distance to protect my own cover.”

Tinaya sighs. “This girl, is she being abused, or will she be?”

“That I don’t know,” Audrey admits. “I was relatively close to Future!Waldemar, but not family close. If there was abuse with his wife, it wasn’t made public, or even an open secret. It didn’t seem like his wife could ever tell that he didn’t love her, but this new girl might suspect, and that may place her in danger eventually. I can’t predict her actions, nor his reactions to her actions.”

“I have an idea,” Lataran says, “but it’s not pleasant.”

“What is it?” Audrey asks. “What is it?” she repeats herself when Lataran hesitates to elaborate.

“I’m still new to this whole situation, but you’re only about four years younger than him. At the moment, that’s disturbing. In the future, it won’t be that big of a deal. If you really wanted to stop some innocent person from getting caught up in his lies, you could...take the job for yourself. Again, you can’t do anything like that yet, but...”

Audrey stares into space. “No, that’s a good idea. In six years, I’ll be 18, and he’ll be 22. If I play my cards right—as long as he isn’t in too serious of a relationship with someone else—I can step in. I can be a shield for any other potential mate of his, because I know what I’m up against, and I know that I can handle it.”

“No,” Tinaya says, throwing up her hands. “No. I know you’re not really twelve, just like my son isn’t really eight, but I can’t listen to you talk about this. You’re planning to gaslight a human being into pretending to love you so no one knows that he has a social disorder. You’re saying it while looking like a twelve-year-old, with your twelve-year-old eyes and your twelve-year-old voice. Jesus. Did you not study ethics before you left the future?”

“No, I didn’t!” Audrey argues. “It was banned from the curriculum...by Waldemar. This is the sacrifice that we make. I promise, I won’t do anything until I’m legally an adult, and then it won’t be so weird for you. We don’t even have to speak to each other again until that day comes, or maybe ever. But I have to do something. The ship and its total population aren’t the only concerns. The girl he’s dating has a name, and if he’s not hurting her now, he might. I have to take that bullet, because I’m the only one who can. The alternative is ethically worse. We already agreed on that, didn’t we?”

Tinaya shakes her head. “Don’t make any plans yet. As you said, you have six years before it’s even remotely okay for you to start dating. I mean, goddammit. You look four years younger, but you are several decades older. That makes it even weirder, and gives you a level of power over any partner you may choose that I am not comfortable with.”

Audrey nods. “That’s true. I don’t think that my consciousness is quite as old as you may suspect, but I see your point.”

“All right, this has been a very heated discussion,” Lataran points out. “You better get back to whatever life you have. I’ll scrub you from the logs so no one finds out that you were here.”

“Already done,” Audrey says as she spins around and heads back towards the door. “Thanks for your help!” She exits.

The two admirals look at each other, neither one entirely sure what to say after all this. “Welp. We’re not bored anymore, are we?”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 25, 2477

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Mateo couldn’t move as he was staring up at this young woman who was standing over him, claiming to be his daughter. She looked like a cross between himself and someone in the Nieman family, but he couldn’t run a DNA test just with his eyes. This could be anyone pretending to be a relative for some personal agenda. A cabal may have cast her for the role specifically because she resembled what Romana was expected to grow up to look like. Trust, but verify was the first thing running through his head.

She seemed to be figuring what he was thinking. “You don’t have to believe me. We’ll know soon enough, but first, warm up by the fire. I would like to spend some time alone with my father before we involve the rest of the team.”

Mateo stood up, walked a couple meters away, and sat back down on the rocks to let the heat begin to dry his clothes. He watched the waves splash against the shore, always just out of reach, even with the wind. He wanted to stand yet again, and take her into a big hug, but assuming she was telling the truth, she still didn’t know this man. He was a famous person to her, but more of an idea than a real person. Her impressions would have been built from anecdotes and rumors. Like all his other children, he never got the chance to raise her. Who would he father but fail next?

“You’re not a failure,” Romana assured him.

“Can you turn it off, the mind-reading?”

“Yes, I just...couldn’t help myself. I’ve been waiting for this day for a very long time.” She shakes her head. “So long.”

“Why wait? Were you stuck in a time bubble, or the past?”

“I was in the past,” she began to explain, “but I wasn’t stuck. We went there on purpose. Well, I didn’t have any say; I was only a baby. That’s just where I grew up.”

“Karla left us a message on the mirror,” Mateo said. “She told us to not contact her; to maintain radio silence until things were safe. We respected that. We didn’t even talk about it amongst ourselves. I don’t think I ever mentioned it to Marie.”

“It’s because we were unreachable,” Romana clarified. “Those mirrors couldn’t bridge two points in time, only space.”

“I’ve been at this for several years. If I hadn’t gotten stuck in those time bubbles, and fallen out of my pattern occasionally, it would not have even been two years. If you’ve grown up like this, just as Dubra did, you’ve been doing it for longer than me.”

“Thousands of real years,” Romana confirmed. I was there, in the cemetery. I saw your first jump. I even saw you come back a year later.”

“Wouldn’t we have jumped at the same time?” Mateo asked.

“I can adjust the departure time by a few minutes, like if I’m in the middle of a conversation, or if I’m ready to leave early.”

“How were you there at any rate? It was the wrong timeline.”

“I’ve mostly been living in the Third Rail, which allowed me to enter any timeline I wanted whenever I went back to the main sequence.”

“How is that possible? The Third Rail suppressed powers and patterns.”

“Not for me. I’m a lot like you, but not completely. My temporal metabolism is slightly different. Half of my genes are from the Niemans, and I was carried by many mothers. We call it a mutation.”

“Where’s your real mother, Karla?”

“I’m not ready to talk about her yet. I can tell you about my grandmother, though, Tyra. You met her when she was old. In a different cemetery?”

Mateo thought back to what she might have been talking about. If it was in the Third Rail, then she must be referring to the time when Mateo needed to get away from the group, and decided to take a drive back towards that reality’s version of Topeka. “She said her name was Tallulah, but it always seemed like a lie.”

Romana smiled. “Yeah, she didn’t want to mess with your future. She was visiting her husband, and had no clue that you would show up. Both of them took the serum to be on my pattern. Then they both died, and I left the reality to...visit my past; see where I came from. I’ve watched you a lot, from the shadows, across multiple timelines.”

“I’m not proud of everything I’ve done.”

“Neither am I,” she replied.

They were silent for a few moments, both watching the wrathful ocean crash into the distant cliffs. “I would love to know your intentions,” he finally mustered the courage to say. “Are you staying, or is this just...a gift that you’re about to take away so you can live your own life?”

“I thought about coming to you sooner, like right after you met Baby!Me. But there are people who don’t need to know what happened during my first year on Dardius. I decided to end up here a bit early, so I could make a home for us all. Here’s a hint, it’s not under Castledome. It’s much prettier, and it’s not on the map. I was hoping that...that you could—I know you’ve missed so much, and maybe you just wanna...”

“I don’t wanna let you go. We’ve never really had a home, especially not me after I accidentally erased myself from history. I just keep running around the multiverse. I did wonder if this could be a place where we could put down roots when I first saw these domes. I didn’t know what was going on, or who was in charge, but it felt like we belonged here. Now that we have the slingdrive, we can commute anywhere we want, but return home at the end of the day. I don’t know that I want you going out there, even though I’m sure you’ve seen some stuff already, but...”

She placed a hand on his. “We can make up for lost time. We don’t have to make any decisions right away. I don’t need to join the team if you don’t want me to. I just want a family. I haven’t been alone my whole life, but it’s been lonely in recent days.”

“I’m sorry, I left. I don’t know what they told you—”

“I don’t blame you for that. I know that you had to protect me...from yourselves. That was the bravest choice I’ve ever heard of anyone making. I don’t know that I could have done it. I waited this long because I wanted you to be able to take me seriously. I would have waited longer, until I was an actual adult, but paradoxically, I also want you to still see me as a child. Does that make sense?”

“It makes perfect sense,” he promised. He spread his arms open, letting the blanket fall down behind him as he pulled her into a bear hug. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I thought we would have more time. I thought the threats would have disappeared in a few hundred years, and you would still be a wee baby girl.”

“It’s okay. It’s no one’s fault,” she said as she was gently separating herself. “Except for Oaksent. He started to look for me. He dismantled the LIR Towers piece by piece during our interim year so my mother, Auntie Constance, and I wouldn’t have a safe place to land.”

Mateo stopped himself from getting too worked up about that. “What of Silenus?”

“Silenus made the same sacrifice that you did. He drew them away.”

Mateo nodded reverently, but didn’t press the issue. He instead changed the subject. “Well, could I see this dome that you apparently built for us?”

“It’s not quite ready yet,” she answered, equal parts embarrassed and excited. “The automators are still putting on the finishing touches. I was going to wait a year to introduce myself, but then you teleported to the North Pole Ocean, and I felt like I needed to help. You could have called for anyone, but they’re busy, and...”

“I appreciate it,” he said. “I’m glad for this extra time.”

“Matt, where are you?” Leona asked through comms.

“I’m alone for the day. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he responded to her.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I’m in Ancient Rome,” he lied. “All these white pillars and shit.”

Leona took a beat. “Fair enough.”

Romana smiled, then placed her hand on his shoulder. They were suddenly sitting on a stone staircase. All around them looked like Ancient Rome, with all these white pillars and shit. “Now you’re not lying.”

“You can teleport? Is that innate, or was your substrate upgraded?”

Her smile grew twice as big. “I didn’t teleport. I just made you do it.”

“So you’re a metachooser.”

“No. I’m just Romana.” She stood up, and stole his hand from him before running down the steps. “Come on!”

They ran down to the street, and between the buildings. They winded through the alleyways, Mateo having no clue where they were going, until he saw it. It was a replica of the Colosseum, just like the one Saga and Vearden were forced to build on Tribulation Island. Romana led him through the entrance, and onto the main grounds. “Maybe you could do it here. For the symmetry.”

“Do what here?” he asked.

“Get remarried?”

“To who?” He was offended.

“To Leona, silly. You were forced to do it last time. You should do it again, but for yourselves.”

“If we ever renew our vows,” Mateo began, “this is the last place we would do it.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

She teleported them away, or rather she made him do it. They were now standing on Ayers Rock, or this world’s version of it, anyway. Could every geographical and cultural location on Earth be found here somewhere? “What about here?” she offered.

“Do you know my personal history with this place?”

“Good point again,” Romana said. She took him to several other domes, each one either designed to resemble an important spot from Mateo’s past, or which incidentally reminded him of somewhere important. They settled on a desert, which boasted the most magical of starry holograms above. They slept out under the stars that night, and jumped forward together come midnight central. Only then was she ready to meet the rest of the group.

“Who’s this?” Leona asked upon seeing her.

Mateo could not read his wife’s mind, but he did feel a hint of jealousy from her, and it triggered painful flashbacks to his history with Cassidy Long. He met her in much a similar way, alone and on a world that everyone believed to be otherwise uninhabited, yet ready for a population. He needed to clarify the truth right away. “Gang, please allow me to introduce you to my daughter, Romana Nieman.”

Leona’s eyes lit up at the revelation. “Oh. Oh, dear.” She reached over and wrapped her arms around Romana’s shoulders. “I am so happy to meet you.”

“They grow up so fast,” Ramses joked.

The rest of the team began to exchange hugs with her as well, and welcome her to the party. She caught them up on her life between being a baby on Dardius, and her arrival to Castledome, but she left out some of the less fun developments, such as the deaths and sacrifices. Mateo still didn’t know everything himself, but now they had time to get to know each other. Once the pleasantries were dying down, Ramses clapped his hands together. “Well, I was going to announce that we were ready to establish our spatio-temporal tethers, but the machine will need to be recalibrated for the additional member. I wouldn’t exactly call this a one time thing, but if someone new needs to be added later, we would have to sever the original links, and start all over again. Which is fine, so if, Romana, you’re not quite ready to commit...”

“I’m ready. What does it entail, though? Can we never be apart from each other?”

“No, we can,” Ramses clarified. “Here are the properties. We will always know two things about each other. We will always be aware of where we are at this very moment, and we will know where we are according to our shared time gaps. To put it another way, if one of us uses the slingdrive to travel to the Andromeda Galaxy, we’ll all be aware that they’re there right now. If someone instead jumps back to the year 1845, we’ll sense them there based on how long it’s been for us, and for them. So if they stay in 1845 for three days, and then travel to, say, 2024, we’ll know that, but it will take us three of our own days to find out, even though both are in the past anyway. Make sense?”

They all nodded.

“Will we be able to reunite with each other in such a case?” Olimpia pressed.

“Possibly,” Ramses admitted. “The tether keeps us in lock-step, but it’s not powerful enough on its own to allow cross-travel. We would need some other way. We would need a second slingdrive, or a sufficiently powerful traveler. But would still be the navigators.”

“Got it,” Angela decided. “Anything else we should know?”

He waited an uncomfortably long time to respond. “There’s a chance that something will be screwy when the machine is activated. I’m confident that it will work, but in order to power the Livewire in the first place, I had to tap into our quintessence reserves. There’s a chance that we’ll be scattered to the winds, and our first mission will involve finding each other again. Someone will have to use the Ambassador to do that, and I might not be the one closest to it.”

“Why would anyone necessarily be close to it,” Marie questioned. “What if we all end up distant from it?”

“The ship is part of the link,” Ramses said. “At least one of us will experience a strong tether to it.” He presented some e-paper. “You’ll all need a copy of the operator’s manual. It’s obviously mostly automated, but you’ll still need to handle some things.”

They continued to discuss the dangers associated with the Livewire tether, but ultimately decided that it was worth the risk to never be truly parted from each other ever again. Ramses activated the linking machine. Nearly everyone managed to stay right on this ship; all except Romana. And for some reason, they couldn’t sense her.

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Microstory 2288: Lets Me Skip the Line

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I’ve made some decisions about what I’m going to focus my pursuits on moving forward. I’m still writing. In fact, I’m going harder than ever. But instead of trying to develop two different books at once, I’ve opted to combine them into one. I think I’ve told you how much I hate biographies, especially the auto kind, or memoirs; whatever the difference may be. Don’t @ me, I don’t care. The more I researched how to write an autobiography, the more I hated them, which I didn’t think was possible. They’re so boring. Here’s how they all go: this happened, then that happened, and before this other thing happened, some different thing occurred, and after all of that, we get to the part where something else went down. I can’t stand it, how can anyone? Biopics are okay. You can tell it nonlinearly, if you need to, without it being confusing, and the visuals can accent some of the more boring bits, as can montages. I know you have a lot of those in the world. I can’t watch them, because I’m not familiar with your world’s history, but whatever. The point is I’m not doing any of that. I’m going to tell my story, but in a fictional setting. Not only will names be changed to protect the innocent, but it will be framed as a narrative story, rather than just an overblown sequence of events. I’ll be taking liberties with some plot points, so don’t think that you’ll end up knowing everything about me if you ever get to read it one day, but I hope you find it interesting. It’s actually going pretty fast. Back when I was writing purely fictional stories, I had to start from scratch, and come up with the whole thing myself. Having a basis of my own life really lets me skip the line, and just type it up. Honestly, as long as I keep going at this pace, I should be finished with the first draft by the end of next week. Then I’ll probably revise it, then I’ll rewrite it, then I’ll revise that, and then I’ll send it to an editor. Boom, just wrote a mini-autobiography for you, except it’s about the future. I hope you enjoyed it. Anyway, I still need a title. I’m leaning toward finding an idiom with the word bulk in it, like Bulk Billing. But not that, because that sounds stupid. What do you think?

Extremus: Year 91

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It has not been easy, but Tinaya and Arqut have gotten through the loss of their son, and the sudden introduction of an alternate version of him. What he did cannot be undone, so the only choice is to move forward. They held a little funeral for their lost child, and then that night, they shed their last tear for him. A new tear might form itself later, but for now, they’re okay. Though Silveon may now be older than them, for all they know, it’s still their job to protect him. Even if he’s smart enough to navigate the complexities of adulthood, he’s still just a little guy, so if nothing else, he needs them to open cabinet doors, and stuff. Plus, he has to act like a baby around most people.

Tinaya has the day off today, so she’s the one taking him to his playdate. Niobe would normally do it, but she has the day off too as far as her designated guardian duties go. The door opens. “Hello. Calla, I presume?”

A woman in her fifties is standing on the other side of the door in a pink floral robe that’s insufficiently covering up a nightie that is far too revealing. She’s holding something in her hand that Tinaya doesn’t recognize. It’s a small tube that’s glowing orange on one end. She smirks at Tinaya and lifts the tube up to place it between her lips. “It’s called a cigarette. People used to smoke ‘em on Earth. Like this.” She inhales, inducing the glow to brighten just a bit. She then contorts her mouth as she removes the cigarette, and blows the smoke out away from Tinaya and Silveon’s faces.

“I don’t smell it. If it’s smoke...”

“It’s not real.” Calla takes another puff, but covers the tip of the cigarette with her hand, which blocks the holographic light from spreading throughout the area.

“What’s the point?”

“It’s real on the other end,” Calla responds. “Still fucks up my lungs.”

That’s stupid, Tinaya thinks to herself.

“Yeah, it is stupid. But at least there’s no such thing as secondhand smoke on this ship, so you should be grateful. And by the way,” she goes on as she’s stepping aside for them to come in. “I’m not in my fifties.”

Tinaya takes a deep, epiphanic breath. “You’re a psychic.”

“Born and bred,” Calla agrees with a tight voice, which leads to a short coughing fit. “Can’t turn it off. Holo-smoking helps a little. The drinking...helps a lot.” She reaches for a glass of some kind of gross brownish liquid, and downs the rest of it.

“How are you getting away with these things? They’re illegal.”

Calla chuckles as she’s pouring another. “People got secrets. I know they’re secrets.” She offers the drink to Tinaya, then shrugs and downs that one too when Tinaya declines. She pours a third. “I can get away with pretty much anything.” She walks over, and points an accusing finger at Silveon. “As long as this little shit doesn’t fight me.”

“Excuse me?” Tinaya questions as she’s pulling her son away protectively.

“I can’t read his mind,” Calla explains as she’s shuffling away from the two of them. “He must be psychic too, and the best one I’ve ever heard of if he’s already mastered his barriers at his age.”

“What about your son?” Tinaya asks. “What’s he?”

Calla freezes up, and stays there for several seconds before dropping her glass down on the table. She then waits another several seconds. “A bigger shit. Come on. He’s taking a nap, but I can wake him up.”

Tinaya follows her down the hallway after Silveon shuts his eyes, and nods. This is apparently what he wants. But he must be crazy, because not only is this woman the biggest mess she’s ever seen, but the situation with her son is even crazier. “Is this a joke? This is Waldemar? Why, he must be at least eight years old!” The boy is sleeping on his side while a toy soldier operates on its own on his pillow right in front of his face, loudly shooting imaginary enemies.

“He’s ten,” Calla corrects.

“I assumed he was a baby, like Silvy.”

“You think this was my idea? Your niece, or whatever, is the one who brought him.” Niobe knows the truth about Silveon. If she did this, it’s because he asked her to.

Silveon suddenly giggles, and gently slaps Tinaya in her temple. It doesn’t hurt, but she does feel something surge throughout her head. It quickly dissipates.

Calla narrows her eyes, and peers at her. Then she shifts her gaze to Silveon, and back again. “He just put a psychic barrier in your mind.” She once more points at him accusingly, barely holding onto the glass with her remaining fingers. “What are you?”

“He’s my son,” Tinaya declares defiantly. “He’s my baby,” she adds in a softer tone. She adjusts her hold on him against her hip. “I don’t think this is going to work out. I’m sure Waldemar is a very lovely boy—”

“He’s not.”

“Then all the more reason...”

Silveon places his hands against her collarbone, and pushes his face away from her. Even though they’ve not come up with a code for how he can communicate with her while they’re in mixed company, she is absolutely sure that he’s trying to tell her that they need to stay.

“I think he wants to stay.” Calla is interpreting the move the same way apparently.

Tinaya looks at her child with concern on her face. This is obviously part of his mission, and if she holds him back from that, she’ll have lost the younger version of him for nothing. All three of them have sacrificed so much to make this work; four, if they’re counting Niobe. They can’t give up now. She may not know Silveon very well, but no son of hers would have sent his own consciousness back in time just for funsies. It has to be incredibly important that he make the changes to the timeline that he’s surely painstakingly planned out. She switches him to her other hip. “Okay. Well, we’ll be back in twenty minutes. I forgot his favorite stuffie.”

“Whatever.” Calla closes the door. “We’ll be here.”

Tinaya leaves the unit with Silveon, but then teleports back to their stateroom from the hallway. She carefully sets him down on the couch. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? Why didn’t you warn me?” She paces the room impatiently.

“I wanted you to see it for yourself,” Silveon replies. It’s still weird, hearing this little toddler articulate so well. “If Auntie Ni and I had tried to explain it, you would have just shaken your head, and forbade us from going. I need you to understand what we’re dealing with, so you’ll see why there’s no other choice.”

“I don’t know that. I didn’t see that. Nothing about that situation tells me why the hell—!” She stops herself. She shouldn’t be cursing in front of her son.

“It’s okay, mom. I’ve heard worse. I’m an adult.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that.” She takes one beat. “Are you psychic too? Have you been reading our minds this whole time?”

“No, I can’t read your mind,” he assures her. “Anyone can learn to put up a psychic barrier, and I learned from the best. I had to.”

“Who is Valdemar Kristiansen? Or rather, who does he become?”

“Hopefully nothing,” Silveon says.

“You’re here to assassinate him? Is this you trying to subvert the Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act?”

Silveon laughs. “No. I’m not here to hurt anybody, mother.”

She keeps pacing for a little while in silence. “Why you? He’s eight years older, and no one can take you seriously yet. Why did they choose you to do this?”

Silveon smiles kindly. “No one chose me. I didn’t even volunteer. I’m the one who realized what needed to be done. I came up with the idea, I made the plan, and I’m following it through. I had help, but this isn’t a large operation. I might have chosen someone else if I had thought that I could trust them. But if there’s one thing this ship has taught me, it’s that...you can only rely on yourself.”

“I hate that lesson,” Tinaya laments.

“Me too,” he says comfortingly. “Which is why I’m trying to change it.”

“What’s wrong with that woman?” she asks.

“Just what you would think. She hears all the despicable things that people would prefer to keep to themselves. She tries to suffocate and drown them out, but they still leak through, and...”

Tinaya can guess where he’s going with this. “And she can hear her own son’s thoughts. That’s the real problem. He’s the real problem.”

“He doesn’t have to be. I can teach him.”

She has stopped pacing, but she’s looking away now, deep in thought. “Teach me first. Tell me what I need to know about him, and the future, and I will fix him for you. I’m an adult. I’m the Captain! This is no job for a baby.”

“It is, though,” he contends. “It’s not just about knowing what will happen if I don’t help him. It’s about who he’ll listen to. And I’m sorry, but the Captain? You are the last person he’ll listen to. Not everyone respects the chair. Some hate it. Some hate you. He’s the embodiment of all that hate. He absorbs it.” He pauses for a great deal of time. “Literally.”

“So, he is a psychic too?”

“Not in the way that you’re thinking. Look, I’ve already said too much. You really shouldn’t know all this. It’s not your problem. Just pretend to change my diapers, and sign me up for school when I’m older. I’ll handle the rest.”

“Did you have kids?”

“What?”

“Of your own. Did you grow up to have kids? Can you tell me that much?”

“No, I didn’t. I was too busy. I don’t think I could have done this if I had.”

“Then you couldn’t have known that what you’ve asked me to do is impossible. I can’t just let you handle it, no matter how old you are. I will always be your mother, and I will always need you to need me.”

He processes her words, then acknowledges them with a respectful nod.

Tinaya sighs, and looks over at the nursery door. “What’s your favorite stuffie? Or, what do you want it to be? We’ve come up with a cover story, so let’s make it real.”

Silveon smiles. “The fennec.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 22, 2474

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Mateo and Olimpia actually did lose a little bit of the temporal energy that their bodies would store for regular use, namely for teleportation. The Livewire was also tapped out of whatever reserves it had for itself, if any. They didn’t know how it worked. Having no interest in staying here, the two of them exited the apartment through the door, and walked down to the ground. They spent the rest of the day enjoying the island’s amenities, focusing predominantly on the water jetpacking sector. Neither of them had tried it before, and it appeared that they had no other way out of here. They periodically checked their own energy, and the Livewire’s, but nothing. It wasn’t until the next year when their bodies were replenished by the jump to the future. They now appeared to have the power they needed to activate the Livewire. They still didn’t know what the hell they were doing, but they hoped there was some kind of psychic control connection.

Having no better ideas, they borrowed a boat, and went out to the middle of nowhere. They each held one end of the wire, and stepped back to make it taut. They tried to focus on what they were trying to accomplish, returning to the Vellani Ambassador thousands of years ago, but the opposite happened instead. Their ship appeared over their heads a few meters in the air, and crash landed into the ocean. Fortunately, this was dozens of kilometers off-shore, so probably no one saw it happen. Mateo and Olimpia teleported into the Ambassador to reunite with their people.

“How did we get here?” Leona questioned. She and Ramses were on the bridge, making sure that all systems were still in working order. “Where are we?”

“That was us,” Mateo answered.

She spun around, and exhaled with relief. “Thank God. We were trying to figure out where you two had gone. You had us worried sick!”

“We thought you had gone down to Ex-01, but we couldn’t find you, and Oaksent seemed just as confused as we were,” Ramses added.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,” Olimpia interjected as they were hugging. “This doesn’t make any sense. Mateo, you did teleport down to the planet. You were detoured by the trip to the island, but you were only really gone for one second. You should have returned to that very moment three days ago to close your loop.”

“That’s not what happened,” Angela contended. “Mateo disappeared, and never reappeared. You did too, at the same time. We’ve been looking for you for the last three days. We were pretty mean to Bronach because of it.”

Olimpia and Mateo exchanged a look. “We’re in a different timeline,” she determined. “What changed it? This thing?” She held up the Livewire.

“I don’t think it has the power to shift timelines,” Ramses said, taking it from her, and examining it. “Something else changed history.”

“Did you guys notice that we’re still sinking?” Marie asked, looking at the viewscreens to see bubbles shooting their way upwards towards the surface.

Leona instinctively looked up to see it too. “Yeah, it’s fine,” she brushed off. “We need to make sure the timeline is okay. What are we missing? What didn’t happen that should have?”

“Well, Matt rescued Elder Caverness,” Olimpia replied. “That’s about it, I think. Well, he also punched the Oaksent.”

“We did that,” Angela said. “The Elder rescue, that is.” She reached up to switch the channel on the nearest screen. They were looking at the security feed for the guest room now. Elder was sitting up on the twin bed, leaning against the wall, perpendicular to the head and foot. If they didn’t know any better, they would think he was dead.

“He’ll just make more,” Olimpia explained. “He scanned and stores multiple copies of Elder’s consciousness.”

“I can fix that,” Ramses decided. “Just give me some time to build a consciousness nullifier.”

“That sounds bad...and difficult,” Mateo thought.

“It will just make it so that this Elder here will be the only one in existence,” Ramses clarified. “We’ll have to go back to that time period to use it, though, which means I’ll also have to figure out how to make the navigation systems work properly.”

“Maybe that thing will help,” Leona suggested, gesturing towards the Livewire.

“Yeah, I need to run some tests now that I have better resources than I did when we last saw this thing in the Third Rail.”

They felt a small shudder as the ship landed on the ocean floor when the internal inertial dampeners were briefly insufficient. Leona and Ramses casually looked over to receive the damage report, which was minimal. Escaping the situation was not urgent. Or maybe it was. There was a ping on the sensors. “Someone is headed right for us,” Marie pointed out.

“It’s probably Search and Rescue.”

“Unidentified sunken vessel, this is Search and Rescue. Please respond,” came a voice on the radio. She was right.

“Where are they coming from?” Leona asked.

“Star Island.”

“Turks and Caicos?”

“Closer to Hawaii.”

“Never heard of it,” Leona said. “But either way, we need to figure out how we’re going to get out of this mess. We could teleport, but they would see. We could turn invisible, but we would still be displacing the water.”

“It’s 2474,” Angela said. “Don’t these people have reframe engines by now?”

“They’re certainly aware of them,” Leona answered, “but they’re not commonplace yet, if our projections from The Edge meeting are at all accurate. We basically allowed them to tell the public that it was a thing, but it’s been their job to develop the tech on their own. There may be some prototypes here and there.”

“Then that’s what we are,” Angela decided. “We’re using a prototype reframe engine. We’ll surface, and launch right in front of them. No teleporter, no invisibility, nor any other kind of holographic camouflage.”

“There’s no such thing as a water launch,” Ramses countered. “I mean, it’s technically possible with fusion rockets—which we have, and wouldn’t have to explain away—but it’s not feasible. The question those rescuers will be asking is not can we launch from the surface of the ocean, but why the hell would we bother?”

“Unidentified sunken vessel, please respond. A submarine is en route.”

“I know the cover story,” Mateo jumped in. “We tried to launch from a floating platform, similar to the ones that Aldona constructed in the Third Rail. We tried to launch with our new reframe engine, but something went wrong. The platform sank, and we crashed here.”

“Where’s this imaginary platform now?” Leona questioned. “What we’re the coordinates of our launch position?”

Mateo just shrugged. That was true, they might try to look for the platform next to corroborate this complete fabrication.

“Computer, downshift the radio signal to five by two.” A ping indicated that it had made the change. Leona pressed the comms button. “Search and Rescue, this is unnamed reframe prototype one. We attempted to launch from a floating platform, maybe...uh, thirty kilometers away from here, due southwest. We, uh, ended up flying horizontally pretty early, and managed to crash into the water. We’re presently repairing our buoyancy systems, and should be resurfacing within the next hour with no help. We appreciate the concern.”

“Thank you for your response,” the voice came back. “We’re gonna go ahead and sit tight until the submarine arrives for a more thorough investigation. You have breached Moku Hoku territory, and we need to assess the situation ourselves. We hope that you understand, but your cooperation is not required.”

Leona made sure the outgoing signal was off while she shook her head. “This isn’t going to work. They’re gonna come down here, and they’re gonna look for that platform. Our story does not make any sense. How did we make it all the way here without satellites, or other cameras, seeing our arc across the sky?”

“Rambo,” Olimpia began. “When’s the last time you purged the hot pocket?”

“It’s been a while.” He pulled up the systems. “We’re about three-quarters full. Why? What are you thinking?”

“Leona, get ready to teleport on my mark,” Olimpia went on. “Maximum range, to the other side of the sun.”

“You’re gonna fake an explosion,” Marie realized.

“It won’t stop them from asking questions,” Olimpia believed, “but it’ll stop them from expecting answers.”

Leona considered the plan, weighing it against the risks. She looked over at Ramses. “Do it. Purge the energy upwards to conceal our disappearance. She’s right, we won’t leave any debris behind, here or where this supposed platform sunk, but we’ll be long gone before they realize that. It will just have to be a mystery that these people never solve.”

They carried out the new plan. Ramses purged the excess energy from the heat shunt. It only took a second before the explosion overwhelmed the water above them. At that moment, Leona teleported them away. They didn’t jump to the maximum range of 300 million kilometers, though, because then the L3 research station might see them. They were now relatively close to the sun, which was radiating so much interference that no one would be able to detect their arrival. Now that they were free from scrutiny, they could reenter reframe speeds, and be on their way. But the question was, where were they going to go? Ramses still wasn’t confident in the navigation for his new slingdrive. Then again, it didn’t matter where they went, as long as they didn’t try to stay here. Sol was the most dangerous star system to be in when you were trying to stay hidden. They needed a good place to practice and experiment discreetly.

The group decided to make a list of all the places they could go, in the stellar neighborhood, and beyond. Then they plugged the suggestions into a randomizer, and had the computer pick one out. They were headed for a little world called Castlebourne.

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