Microstory 2775: Course Correction

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The lab that Elise was in with Miracle and Reagan disappears, and is replaced with Elise’s own apartment in Abodome. The first thing she sees is the front door closing. Someone seemingly just left, so she needs to find out who. She sprints over to it and opens it back up. She looks down the hallway and sees herself. Well, she sees the back of her own head. She recognizes the outfit too. This is it. This is the day that she and her friends officially began their hunt under Treasure Hunting Dome. She has gone back in time, just as Rae and Mir said she would. The question is, though, what now?

They didn’t actually give her any instructions. They didn’t say what she was supposed to change. She doesn’t have any experience in this, and they know that. Or they will know that, because at this point in time, she hasn’t met either of them yet. What they did to her was isolate her from everyone she cares about. There is no one she can trust without risking the timeline, and even if there were, they wouldn’t be able to help her anyway. She’s going to have to figure this out on her own. First things first, treat this like any other challenge on the hunt. According to Rage’s explanation of how they typically go, the last challenge often involves memory. You have to keep track of where you went and what you did, and regurgitate that in some way.

Elise tries to sit down at her computer, but her chair isn’t designed with wings in mind. She has to use the kitchen stool, which isn’t comfortable either because she still can’t lean back, but at least she’s not leaning forward. She opens a new file and starts to retrace her steps. She starts more general, and becomes more specific, adding the minutest of details to get a full picture of what happened once the hunt began. She color-codes it by actions she took, actions others took, and actions done to them by the game. She then goes in and adds even more information, about things that she wasn’t there for. She lists things that other hunters did, and tries to guess what Hrockas and Azad were doing in the meantime. She makes it a full, comprehensive bible of the whole ordeal, from start to finish. She even goes back to include events leading up to minute one, even though some of it is already in the past from her current perspective.

There is one interesting development; a mystery which they never solved. When the hunters were circling the desert, looking for their next clue, Minotaur went missing. They said someone in robes grabbed them and they tried to get away and lost their jacket, but the attacker quickly caught up to them. Elise looks over at her bed where she laid the robe that Reagan hung over her at the very last second. She goes over to it and picks it up. “Could this be it? Was it me the whole time?” But if so, she’s not come back to change the past. She can’t; it’s inevitable. She’s merely following in her own footsteps. Nothing will go better this time, because this isn’t a different time. Unless there’s a third Elise around here somewhere. She suddenly starts to feel like she’s being watched.

Elise paces the room. “What was it Miracle said once about time travel? If you don’t have proof that something didn’t happen, there’s a chance it happened.” She stands there and ponders that for a moment. Then she goes right back to her timeline document and reads the part about the desert again. “If you don’t have proof it didn’t happen, it might have happened,” she whispers. She nods, a little excited and more determined. “Right there. That’s my shot. I don’t have to change it if I assume it’s already happened.” She grabs the robe, drapes it over her body again, and disappears.

Elise has spent weeks practicing teleportation and flying. She has worked out every day to build up her strength. She went to a biotailor to improve her substrate even more. They reinforced her wings and increased the density of her muscles while lowering the density of her bones. It’s a trade-off, but she needs to be both strong and light. Her mission doesn’t necessarily involve being better than she already was, but why waste this opportunity? She has to do something while the timeline catches up.

She learned a few things about her temporal abilities. She can teleport from the real world to the Facsimile at will. It takes an extra boost of energy, but not as much as she figured at first. She also learns how many jumps she can do before she runs out, and she learns that she can actually increase her numbers by being more efficient, and even processing more temporal energy from wherever it comes from. The time for training is now over, though. This is the show. She packs the essentials, some of which she had to...borrow from a secure location, throws her robe back on, and heads off to work.

She is in the desert now, and has been for a couple of days. She intentionally came a little early in case something went wrong, but she also isn’t entirely sure when her past self and her friends will show up. They didn’t have timepieces with them at the time. She knows where they’ll end up, however, so she’s on her belly, watching that spot with binoculars. The robe can shift colors, as most clothing can in the modern world, so she just looks like a crest in the sand dune. She has learned to be still and patient too. She didn’t set out to do that, but it came naturally with all of her other training.

They’re here. Elise watches Azad transport them all before leaving with Hrockas and Telman. Now it’s just the hunters. She can’t hear, but she knows what they’re talking about. She waits until they spread out, triggering her window. She teleports directly to Minotaur, and after a brief struggle, relocates them to the rocket maze. Then she returns to her perch to wait for her next move. She sees them reunite and argue about what to do, and she sees Miracle teach her how to take control of her body. She watches as her past self gets trapped on the surface with Colley, where they both surrender to their budding romance, only to be caught by the others after they complete the underground maze. They all then go back down there to learn the truth about Rage.

This is it; it’s happening. Elise knew that she would be successful with Mino, because it already happened to her, but this is the real change. This is what she’s been actually training for. The ship blares as it begins to ascend. The ground shakes and gives way. Future!Elise has to start hovering to keep from slipping down the dune like an ant in an antlion’s pit. She slowly gets closer to get a better look, still worried about being spotted by someone. Past!Elise is now trying to hang on to both Colley and Zelda, but she’s not strong enough yet. Colley volunteers to let go, but Zelda beats him to it.

Future!Elise uses her friend-finding ability to teleport to exactly where Zelda is. She grabs her by the waist, and jumps them both back to the inside of the rising rocket.

“Whoa! How did you do that?” Zelda asks, trying to orient herself. “How did you do that? What are you wearing? How is your hair green now? Where’s Colley?”

“He’s fine.” Elise replies. She takes out two vacuum suit cartridges, placing one on Zelda’s chest, and the other on her own. The nanites emerge from the cartridge and wrap themselves around them to protect them from space exposure. She did it, they won. Didn’t they?

Microstory 2774: Look Both Ways Before You Cross

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It’s not everyone on Castlebourne who can get a private meeting with the one and only Hrockas Steward. Billions of people are visiting. They don’t technically live here permanently, because citizenship seems unnecessary, and isn’t an obvious process, but the population is growing. Many have been here for decades. The point is, Elise is special. She’s not the only transgenic person on the planet—not by a mile—but she’s one of the few people in history who can teleport.

Elise isn’t here simply for the sake of it, but the purpose of the meeting is very real, even if she has an ulterior motive. It’s her job to keep the man busy in a secure location so her friends can break into the castle. They didn’t have a whole lot of time to plan this, so it’s not as sophisticated of an attack as they would like, but they need that routing information. Within the hour, Zelda’s disappearance from the network will trigger a subroutine in the backup system, which will awaken an outdated version of her.

This is something that you have to set up ahead of time. People come and go from planets all the time, it doesn’t mean their backups automatically try to replace them, or the galaxy would be chock full of unwarranted duplicates. It’s a failsafe that Hrockas put in place on their behalf. The assumption is that the more recent Zelda is dead, which is true, but the program doesn’t know that Miracle has a way to get her back. While she’s preparing for that with newcomer Reagan, the rest of the team are trying to hack into the administrative database, or whatever. In fact, they should be in it by now.

“If you have somewhere to be,” Hrockas says, “we can do this another time.”

“No, sorry. Wait, what?” Elise asks, confused.

“You keep checking your watch,” he points out.

“Sorry, yes. I’m not in a hurry,” Elise replies while she tries to come up with an explanation. “I’m trying to get a feel for my temporal energy. I would like to find a way to gauge it. Like, I jumped us all three here, per your instructions, so how much did that take out of me? Thirty percent? Fifty percent? More? How would I know unless I just try again, and hope for the best? Do other teleporters deal with this kind of uncertainty?”

Hrockas nods. “That’s why I suggested connecting you with a friend of a friend. They’re also a teleporter, so they would know more about it. It’s not exactly my specialty. I can’t even do it myself; not biologically, anyway. I deliberately avoid it because I think it grants me too much power. I might be deluding myself, it’s just, when you own an entire planet...never mind, you don’t wanna hear about my problems.”

“No, I do,” Elise insists. She’s not lying either. The man is pretty well-liked all around. He set up a paradise, and he doesn’t seem to be asking for anything in return. His laws are reasonable, and he mostly stays out of people’s way. Not much is known about him personally, or exactly how he came to own this colony. There is usually a story, but the visitors rely mostly on rumors to make it make sense, because by all accounts, he was not the very first person to settle here. He has even hinted that Castlebourne is named after a person, but who? “I’m very curious about what it’s like.”

“What it’s like to be me?” Hrockas guesses. “I don’t think either of us has time to get into that, but it’s not as hard as it sounds. Everything’s automated. You don’t need a giant government making decisions anymore. The past has done that for us, the laws are self-evident. You wanted to discuss and learn about your powers, though.”

“Yes, and I don’t want to speak with anyone else. I trust you,” Elise says.

“What about Telman?” Hrockas asks. “Do you trust Telman?”

Elise looks over at Telman who is standing over her with a scanner in one hand, and a syringe in the other. “Yeah, I trust Telman.” That’s not totally true.

Hrockas presses a button to lean Elise back in her chair.

Straps pop out from the arm and leg rests, and wrap themselves around her body.

Hrockas smiles. “Okay, well he’s going to show you a series of images. I don’t want you to try to teleport to them, which is what these straps are for. They keep you in one place. I only want you to reach out with your mind. Most teleporters have an innate sense of if their destination is safe to jump to, or if it’s a busy street, or inside of a wall. Not everyone can do this, though, so we need to know your limitations. If something goes wrong, he’s ready with a baseline cocktail. Just relax.”

Elise takes a breath and watches the images go by. They appear to actually be video feeds from Castlebourne. The entrance to 10,000 Emerald Pools, a wide shot of The Wasteland, a weird empty cardboard city, the Castledome castle, the Castledome castle interior, the Castledome castle admin wing, the Castledome castle admin wing server room, where most of her friends are trying to break into the mainframe. “Oh.”

Hrockas holds on the feed and nods. “Oh,” he echoes casually.

She looks over at him. “How long have you known?” She looks back at the video, where she sees Azad appear before the hunters, and begin to arrest them.

“Since before you even thought up the plan,” Hrockas explains. “You think this is the first timeline where you’ve lost someone, and the first time you’ve tried to get them back? I mean...it’s the first time you’ve personally been here, which is an interesting development, and a nice change of pace, but seriously, I have a lot of time traveler friends. Have you heard of the Infinity Suite? It’s not an optical illusion, it’s literally infinite. I’m protected from alterations to reality thanks to another friend of a friend. I’m not sure if that matters anymore, because some of this is unprecedented.”

“Oh, you mean like this?” Miracle’s voice asks from out of Elise’s view.

Elise turns her head to see Miracle is standing with Reagan, holding a parabolic dish. Before Hrockas or Telman can do anything, she blasts them with an energy wave.

The two of them collapse to the floor, and it’s unclear if their bodies are dead.

“What’s going on with Zelda?” Elise asks desperately. “Did we lose hope?”

“No, but we have a workaround. We needed them out of our way,” Mir answers.

Elise struggles to get out of the chair, but has to let Miracle set her free of the magic straps. “What are we gonna do? The whole team has been arrested.”

“We knew they would be,” Reagan explains. He sets some kind of contraption on a nearby table. “They were a distraction while Mir and I went for something else.” He shows her a vial of clear liquid. “I think there is only enough concentrated temporal energy for one person. We may be able to squeeze in another, but I don’t wanna risk it.”

“One person to what?” Elise massages her wrists and flexes her wings.

“To go back in time...not consciousness travel, though,” Miracle explains. “This would be physical. If we want to change things, we have to do it differently. We have to do something crazy. You won’t be detected. You’re the only one who can stay invisible to the sensors. You don’t follow the same rules. Those straps never would have worked.”

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?” Elise is more lost than ever.

“Hold still.” Reagan drapes her in a big black robe, and pushes a big red button.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 24, 2568

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The technology that Leona used to boost Kayetan’s merging ability was the same she used to get him back home. That way, they didn’t have to make yet another sling there. Once he did return to Earth, though, he would not be able to return. They were many light years away, and he couldn’t usually travel that far. Of course, he was at hers and Mateo’s wedding, where he managed to merge people from all over the bulk, so how was he able to accomplish that? She forgot to ask. They’ve changed realities and timelines so many times since then, though, so he might not have even ever done that.

As it turned out, the fire that burned down the crops was a total accident. There was technically an arsonist, but it was part of nature. The team didn’t have much time to study it, but there was a special type of alien beetloid which could start fires by rubbing its legs on stones. It must infuse the right kind of metal into its diet, and spark a reaction through some kind of chemical that it also produced. It might do this to clean, or mark its territory, or maybe as part of a mating ritual. Some of the endemic plant life could handle it by dispensing a natural fire suppressant. It appeared to be a symbiotic relationship, actually. The beetles cleared the brush for whatever reason they had, and the fire-resistant plants got to keep all of the soil’s nutrients for themselves, against the burnable competitors. The grapes would obviously not survive over in their territory.

The solution? Plant the grapes on the other side of the river. This caused some uproar in the population, but they agreed to it, because it was the only answer that made any sense. And it would probably help in the long run. Since they now had no choice, this was where they were going to live. Everything Ramses’ computer was afraid of, with two factions growing apart from each other, was no longer an issue. Well, it could still happen, but it would not be because of grapes. They would survive this crucible at least.

When they finally reunited on Ramosus in 2568, they found themselves trapped in the in-house slingdrive. Romana was on the other side of the plasma barrier, holding her hands up defensively. “Now, I know that you’re mad, but don’t you feel fulfilled? You completed your tasks. That’s all we’ve been wanting, right? You’re not here to seek out new life and new civilizations. You’re volunteer fixers. I just gave you a little nudge. I know you didn’t want to do it like this, but I’m hoping you’ll forgive me one day, if not outright thank me. I just...I wanted you to stop worrying about me, and to move on.”

Mateo tried to push his hands through the plasma. It gave, but it didn’t break. “Why are we locked up in here? Did you think we were gonna hurt you?”

“No, I didn’t think my parents, aunts, and uncle were going to physically cause me harm, but I thought you would punish me. I wanted to see Boyd again, and you wouldn’t let me. I figured I would feed two birds with one worm. You six get the satisfaction of saving two colonies from themselves, and I get to spend time with the one person who is only for me. The barrier is just so I could gauge your reaction upon returning.”

Leona placed her hand on the barrier too, but to try to reach out to Romana, not to escape. “Our reaction is that we love you, and that the Boyd program is dangerous until Ramses makes sure it’s safe from the dark particle corruption. It was never permanent.”

“Well...” Romana seemed bashful now. “That wasn’t all I wanted to do with Boyd.”

“What did you want to do with him? Meet him in immersive VR?” Mateo pressed.

“No.” She opened her arm to present a young man who was walking into the lab. “Ladies and gentleman, may I present to you, Boyd Nieman...literally in the flesh.”

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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?”

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.”

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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Extremus: Year 137

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Sable knows that she needs to get back into the mix, and try to figure out how to get Waldemar to marry her. It’s time to fix what he’s broken, and the only way to do that apparently is to act like a friend. She’s just still in a funk, though, due to what happened last year. She has been free from her time loop for months, but it’s still a part of her. She spent entirely too long willingly reliving the same day over and over again. The truth is that she was tired of it long before she put an end to it, but it became part of her routine. It gave her a sick sense of comfort, always knowing exactly what was going to happen, even though it was bad. But she eventually ended it anyway. It was time.

“Thank you for confiding in me,” Silveon says after refilling her tea.

“Well, you were honest about your time travel adventures, I figured it was only right that I do the same,” Sable responds.

“What of the woman—the one who can see across timelines—is she still dead?”

“She’s alive,” Sable explains. “Had I broken the loop after killing her, that would have been it, but I kept going, so she’s fine.”

“Are you sure that she’s fine? Have you talked to her since? She might be traumatized by the experience,” Silveon explains, in the same voice that he uses to condescend to Waldemar. Is that what he thinks? Does he think she’s a psychopath too?

“I saw her a few times in the loops, and a few times since I ended it. During the loops, she remembered that I was going to kill her, but she didn’t remember the death itself. Now she doesn’t even remember most of the loops, and definitely not her death. She only remembers the last one. We have not talked about it, though.”

“Do you think what you did was okay?” he presses. “Do you feel good about it?

“Look, I know you have your moral high ground, and I respect that, but I was going through something while my mother was dying, and acting out. I knew that the timeline woman would survive. You think I tested it on an innocent person first? I was angry and grieving. And don’t start talking about your own parents, and how you never did anything like this. You and I wired differently. I’m wired to push boundaries, and experiment. You are solely focused on the mission. Which I think means we complement each other. Don’t you forget that I helped you. I took you to Verdemus, and let you be present at Audrey Husk’s memorial. So I don’t need your judg—”

“I’m not trying to judge you, Sable, but I do want you to try to learn from your mistakes. I have. I have flaws. I try to look for them, and fix them. You seem to treat life as the warm-up to something else. Even before you could rewind time, you always acted like there weren’t any consequences. Do you regret anything? Anything at all?”

“Of course I have regrets. But I don’t like to dwell on them, because you have to move forward, you know? What I was trying to get to, before we got off on this tangent, is that I’m going to marry him. You two have grown apart. We need someone back in his good graces. I was going to do this on my own, but since I’m the one who asked to be your partner, I figured I would bring you in first. Do you object to this move?”

“Not inherently, no. You’re a lot older than you were before. But again, you’re acting like if you want something to happen, it’s just going to happen. Have you asked him? Have you two discussed it? Have you considered the possibility that he’ll say no?”

“Not really. Have you seen my boobs?” Sable pulls her shirt down a bit.

“No, thank you, though I see where you’re coming from. But it’s no guarantee.”

“Well, what would you propose instead?” Sable asks.

“I think you should start over with him, forming essentially a new relationship.”

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Microstory 2725: When Branes Collide

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The time machine draws a lot of power. If you utilize it, that energy gets used up for the trip, but if you don’t, it builds as waste heat. There is no point in letting it run if they’re not going to be able to travel back in time in the foreseeable future. They have to first find out who this other Pribadium is, and what she wants. So Pribadium!One shuts down the machine while Pribadium!Two gets comfortable. She looks exhausted.

“I did what you were planning to do,” Pribadium!Two begins to explain. “I went back in time, and successfully saved Doma Tertia.” She gestures towards Sora. “We both did. He did most of the talking. But then things started to go wrong. The Teaguardians were asking a lot of questions. They showed us astronomical and astrophysical data that pointed to something being wrong. I don’t know what we thought when we decided what tech we would give them, and what we would hold back. But obviously the government started developing their own tech. They can evidently detect shifts in reality. It’s crude and unreliable, but I saw the data. They were right. So I went back to my lab, and spent time figuring it out. I barely made it here in time to stop you. If you had been allowed to go on, you would have created a runaway domino effect. Infinite realities, piled on top of each other, siphoning cosmic energy, withering away. The destruction of the universe.”

“Wait,” Pribadium!One says. “Are you telling me that you’re from a parallel reality? It’s concurrent with this one; not just a previous timeline?”

“That is correct,” Pribadium!Two confirms. “They finally got rid of all the other concurrents, and shunted the survivors into a new universe. Then I went and made a brand new parallel. There’s no name for it. I think I’m supposed to call it the Ninth Something, or other, but I don’t know what that would be, or if it’s my job.”

“How could this happen?” Pribadium!One asks. “We’ve traveled through time before, and it’s never caused this. Countless timelines are being collapsed and replaced every day, and it doesn’t happen. Why now? Why us?”

“It’s because we are different,” Pribadium!Two claims. “We don’t travel the same way. We access the bulk. And it was a one in a trillion coincidence that we did it today.”

Pribadium always knew that her method was different, but it has never resulted in this. How should she feel about it? As unsettling as it is that the timeline you leave behind collapses behind you, at least the changes you make definitely matter. “What is that coincidence?” she presses her alternate self. “And how long will it last?”

“How long will it last?” Pribadium!Two laughs. “Forever, I think. Had it happened on its own, no one would have noticed, but the proverbial stars aligned, and now we’re stuck. We’re literally stuck against the membrane of another universe. They were supposed to collide, cause a little chaos, then bounce off each other. But we linked them in a way that’s never been done before, and now we’re joined at the hip.”

“So, is that the parallel reality?” Sora asks. “This neighboring universe?”

“No, it’s different.” Pribadium!Two talks with her hands. “Our universe collided with another at the exact moment that you and I used this machine. The universes got stuck together, and in between them is an extra layer of reality. That’s where you are.”

“Wait, us?” Pribadium!One questions. “We’re the ones in the new reality?”

“That’s correct,” Pribadium!Two says.

“What does that mean?” Sora asks innocently.

“I don’t know,” both Pribadiums say at the same time.

Microstory 2722: People in Glass Houses

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“Go ahead and ask your questions,” Pribadium encourages. She’s a good liar, so he can ask whatever he wants, it doesn’t mean he will get the answers he expects.

“How many like you are there out there?” Sora asks as if it’s a complete thought.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pribadium says. “Asset managers, or Chief Asset Managers? I’m the only CAM. There are a few other asset managers below me. There are other chiefs. Would you like me to list them?”

“I’m not talking about chiefs or asset managers!” Sora cries. “I want to know how many immortals there are! Stop dancing around the subject! I know what you are!”

Pribadium is confused. “How many immortals? Billions, I guess. I don’t have the numbers. Did you check the aggregate records? Those stats are probably in there.”

Sora shakes his head, growing even more frustrated. “Not people who became that way through life extension consciousness digitization. I’m talking about real, totally unkillable immortals who can survive being thrown into the air by a pyrotornado, and later falling several kilometers down a giant chasm in the planet.”

Pribadium stares at him. She has no clue what he’s going on about. “That’s not possible. No substrate is strong enough to survive what you’re describing.”

“Well, I saw it happen.” He sighs, seemingly working through a debate in his own head. “Tertius. Does the name Tertius mean anything to you, or Aeterna?”

“I have never heard of them. Are they bands, errr...?”

“Quit joking, and quit lying,” Sora whines. “They’re real immortals. They survived the impossible. I know you know them. I heard them whispering about you in the north dome. They said that survivors of Proxima Doma would end up here, and that you would be able to help. They acted like they knew you, and now here we are on Gatewood.”

She continues to stare. She isn’t lying. She genuinely doesn’t know who that is. The number of people in the timeline who have temporal abilities is a low fraction compared to the total population, but it’s still too many for everyone to know everyone. She has never cared to meet more. “Maybe they knew me, but I didn’t reciprocate.”

Sora buries his face in his palms. “You have to help us. You have to fix this.”

Before Pribadium can ask exactly what she wants him to fix, one of the other hostage-takers bursts into the room. “Shimizu. A Teaguardian is here.”

Sora’s eyes widen. He stands up, and paces frantically. “Shit. Get everyone to the tunnels. Hide. If they can’t find you, they can’t make you leave. I’ll watch the prisoner.”

A soldier suddenly teleports into the room. “Chief Asset Manager Pribadium Delgado? I’m here to rescue you.” She raises her gun when Sora moves a single muscle.

“Wait!” Pribadium orders. “I need him alive. He’s undigitized. In my domain, killing him would be a crime. We had a deal with Teagarden. You shouldn’t be here.”

“I just go where I’m told, CAM Delgado. We need to leave now.” They are about to glass this planet.

“That is not necessary,” Pribadium starts to explain. “We’re already doing it.”

“We know, but my superiors believe that there is not enough time for that. They’re going to do it the hard way. It will recoalesce, but that won’t help these people.”

Pribadium actively stops the soldier from teleporting her out of the room. “I’m sorry, but I’m not done here yet. And you gotta go.” She pushes the soldier into a portal, then turns back to Sora. “You can either come with me, or go with her. Your choice.”

Extremus: Year 136

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Sable finally feels like she’s in the club. She thought she had pretty much all of the pieces of the puzzle, but she had no idea how much she was missing. Now it all makes sense; why Silveon and Audrey act and acted the way they do and did, the kind of relationship Admiral Leithe had with Waldemar. She knows that she still doesn’t know everything. There would be too much to learn about the first timeline, and she doesn’t need it anyway. She knows what Waldemar is like now, and she can act on it.

She has decided to marry him. She knows that Audrey already tried that, but that was apparently more to protect innocent women from falling into his orbit. That was noble, but that’s not a problem anymore. Waldemar has gotten what he needed by being a family man. Good or bad, he maintains his popularity on his own merits. It sounds like Audrey was simply too passive. She evidently tried to coddle Waldemar, and long-con him into thinking that everything she wanted him to do was his idea. It seems to have helped, but it was clearly not enough. Sable has an advantage. She has real power, and she is willing to use it. It will have to wait, though. She is spending time with her mom.

The doorbell rings, which is weird, because it doesn’t normally do that at this time. In fact, it never has at all. She must have made some minor change to reality without realizing it. She is so focused on reliving these moments that she doesn’t always pay attention to the butterfly effect. She doesn’t bother with the camera. She just instructs the AI to open the door, only to find a complete stranger on the other side of it.

“Miss Keen.” The middle-aged woman walks in. “How are you doing?”

“I’m just watching my mother...wither away,” Sable replies. “Who are you?”

The stranger nods. “A fellow traveler. The difference is, I can’t control it. I’m here to ask you to move forward. I know it’s hard, which is why I’ve given you your space, but girl...it’s been months. This isn’t healthy. Now, I don’t want you to hurt me because I say that. I just want you to ask yourself whether she would want you to keep reliving this day over and over again, or live your life. I’m sincerely asking. I never met her.”

Sable frowns and looks down at her mom. This is the part of the day where she’s still alive, but has become unresponsive, so the conversation is over. She doesn’t know if Lataran can hear her, but she usually keeps talking anyway, even though no matter what, Lataran won’t remember it when time resets. She looks back at the woman. “How did you hijack my rewind? No one should remember the groundhog repeats.”

“I didn’t hijack anything. I’m a choosing one, like you. It’s just something that happens to me. I remember all timelines. As I was saying, you’re in control here. ”

Sable doesn’t say anything. She just sighs and looks back at her mom.

“They made a movie about this. Not the one you’re thinking of; it more closely resembles what you’re actually doing, but unlike that character, you can turn it off whenever you want, and...every time you refuse, you die.”

“That’s how this power works. I can only rewind upon death.”

“I know,” the woman says. “That wasn’t hard to parse. I have witnessed many of your suicides. You like to do them public so you can see the looks on people’s faces. That is not healthy either.” She holds out her hand as if Sable is meant to take it. “Come on. Let’s enjoy a nice walk in the Attic Forest, and wait for tomorrow to come.”

Sable stares at the intruder’s hand. “What happens if I kill you instead?”

“I wouldn’t know. I try to stay alive, as I always have,” she replies.

Sable stands, and steps forward menacingly. “I do like to learn new things.” She pulls out her knife. “Hold still. I’ll make it quick.”

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Extremus: Year 135

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Waldemar was different for about a year. At first, Silveon thought that maybe someone had supplanted his mind with their own, or was mind-controlling him. Or that it was just straight up a clone. But his doctor could find absolutely no evidence that he had been tampered with. The doctor used all sorts of lingo that Silveon didn’t understand, but the parts of the brain responsible for things like impulse control and empathy were lighting up, whereas they didn’t do that before. And then suddenly, it was gone again. It wasn’t entirely gone. He did not go back to the way he was before, but Silveon was present for another scan, and the parts of his brain he used during that year have returned to the way they were. It’s sad and frustrating. The hope was fleeting.

Silveon has been trying to figure out a way to get that back, but he still doesn’t understand what happened. He’s going to have to bite the bullet and reach out to Sable. He hasn’t cut her out of his life, but he has kept his distance. As much as she will tolerate. Maybe it’s time for him to try to gather some new allies. They won’t be like the originals, but no one possibly could be. That doesn’t mean they can’t help. She’s powerful, and while she denied being responsible for Waldemar’s change before, maybe she has some new insights. He’s at her cabin now, trying to work up the courage.

Before he can reach up to ring the bell, he suddenly finds himself teleporting to the other side of the door.

Sable is sitting on the couch, dressed in revealing clothing, looking at him with a smirk. She sets her tablet down. “My oh my, Steward. Aren’t we the hesitant one?”

“I didn’t come for whatever you think I’m here for,” Silveon explains.

Sable looks down at her attire like she forgot what she was wearing. “Oh, this? This isn’t for you. This is just comfortable. I change for no man, and I mean that both figuratively and literally. What do you want, Silveon? Help with your boy, the Captain?”

“You said you wanted to help, so here I am, reaching out.”

Sable dismissively picks her tablet back up and starts swiping through it. “That was a long time ago. I’m not sure if I’m interested anymore. You’ll have to convince me.”

“Well, what can I do in service to that?” Silveon asks.

Sable stops a moment and looks back up at him. “You can tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me everything,” Sable says, not really clarifying.

“Everything about what?”

“Everything,” she repeats. “Tell me how you knew Waldemar was going to be captain, and what kind, and what he was going to do. Tell me what you did to stop him, and why you didn’t do a very good job of it. Tell me what my mother knows, what Audrey knew, what your parents knew. Everything means everything..”

He has avoided this conversation so long, but she’s a lot older now, and as he was just contemplating how he needs people on his side, now that he has lost everyone else. So he sits down and takes a breath. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything. If you use it against me...well...then I guess that’s what happens. I’m an old man now, and I’m tired, and as you pointed out, it didn’t really work. I mean, I think it did a little. Things are better than they were in the previous timeline.”

“The previous timeline?” She was intrigued.

“Yes,” Silveon says. “The reason I knew what Waldemar was going to become was because I already saw it. And I’ve been trying to stop it my whole life.”

Sable curls her legs in and leans towards him. “Finally. Let’s get into it.”

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Extremus: Year 131

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Silveon is depressed and missing his best friend. He doesn’t know what Audrey is doing, or even if she’s okay. They can’t communicate. Just opening up the mini-Nexus is a risk. It is the last thing that they want Captain Kristiansen knowing about. He doesn’t regret his decision, breaking her out of hock, and sending her away. It was the right thing to do. It’s still hard, feeling like he’s all alone now. His mother’s gone, his father’s gone, and now Audrey. They knew each other for over a hundred years, and fought side by side for more than half as long. That is what makes it sad, but also what makes it okay. A lot of people don’t get a partner nearly as fulfilling as Audrey. It was great; it’s over now. He has no choice but to move on, and keep himself occupied with the work.

He is still serving as the Captain’s personal steward, though their relationship has transformed into a more professional dynamic, rather than the friendship they started with. Silveon is losing his grip on Waldemar’s ankle, which allows Waldemar to run off and start making his own choices. Looking back, this was inevitable. He’s growing up and growing out of the way he was before. That’s what everyone does, to some degree. Silveon himself is no exception. He doesn’t want to give up, but there was only ever so much he could do. Since they made the conscious decision not to kill him, at some point, they have to accept the cards that they’ve been dealt. The thing about this timeline, as it was in the first one, is that no one man can take control over everything. The reason he was able to garner so much support from the populace was that they gave it to him. That hasn’t changed. He may be lying to them in a way, but they’re choosing to believe it.

If the crew and passengers don’t want things to fall apart, they have to take responsibility over that. This is something that Silveon and Audrey didn’t even think about. They thought it was all on them, but that’s too much pressure. Just contemplating all of this now, Silveon is wondering if sending Aud to go find her own happiness is exactly what he should do too. He has no plans to travel to Verdemus, but does he really need to be a steward, or Waldemar’s steward? Has he not done enough, in all this time? He’s so exhausted. A part of him thinks that anyone else would have walked away by now. Again, it was never all on them. There was another possible way to tackle this problem, by formulating a resistance early on, and being truthfully vocal about Waldemar’s destiny. They elected not to do it that way, and the opportunity has passed him by now, but it would have been a hell of a lot less work, in the end.

“Hey.” It’s Sable. They can’t trust her anymore. Or rather, he should say that he can’t, because now there’s no one left. Lataran is old, and like his parents before, genuinely does need to be able to take a step back. Sable is just weird, and she has her own agenda. “I just wanted to check on you. It’s been a long time since we’ve spoken.”

“Nothing to speak about,” he replies. He didn’t tell her where Audrey was. He opted to not even come up with a cover story. She just disappeared, and it’s an unsolved mystery. Waldemar came up with his own cover about her wanting to step out of the spotlight, so to anyone else on Extremus thinking about it, she’s somewhere around here at all times, just not where any given person happens to be looking at the moment.

She sighs. “I know that you and I were never really close, and we’ve lost a lot of trust, but I’m still on your side. I hope you know that. And to prove it, I’ll show you what I’ve been working on.” She acts like she’s going to access an auxiliary interface, but suddenly pulls a gun out of her pocket and shoots Silveon on the right side of his chest.

As he’s bleeding out, he sees Sable split in two. One version of her lifts her hands up, and gradually pulls them towards her shoulders. The bullet flies out of Silveon’s chest, and back into the gun as the wound seals itself up. The two versions of her then remerge into one. She has just somehow reversed time, and also entropy. He still remembers the pain, though. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“I couldn’t always,” Sable explains. “It’s not all I can do either. The rest of your support system is gone. Not only do I know that you sent Audrey to Verdemus, but I also know that she’s dead. I can take you to the funeral without anyone knowing. We can walk right up there, and then basically trim that whole span of time out of the ship’s collective knowledge, replacing it with something more mundane. But you have to trust me, and you have to let me in. This is the last time I ask you. I will never be on Waldemar’s side, but if you don’t agree to me being your new partner right now, I won’t be on yours anymore either. I am sorry it had to come to this.”

Silveon looks at her for a moment while he massages his chest. “Fine.”

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