Tangent Point: Reads Like Science Fiction (Part VI)

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Breanna Jeffries didn’t want to tell Reed about the man in the photo, but he didn’t actually need her to say anything. He asked his AI, Thistle instead, who informed him that the man was still on board, and also where to find him. His daughter had recently given birth to a baby girl, and while most of the evacuees were gone, she had chosen to stay here. The child had already been through so much, they wanted her to wake up every day with some level of familiarity and comfort. The doctor who delivered it eventually evacuated from Proxima Doma as well, and was still here too. She asked the mother if she could continue to look after the baby, and the mother agreed. “You said there was something weird about the birth?” Reed asked this doctor.

Dr. Duward looked almost paranoid. “You understand that most kids being born these days gestate in artificial tanks, right?”

“I do.”

“That’s because giving birth kinda sucks,” Dr. Duward explained the obvious. “Proxima Doma has—I’m sorry, had—more live births than anywhere in the galaxy, which is why I still have a job. I’ve been doing it for 550 years now. If you’re trying to do that math, I was twelve years old when I had to deliver my older sister’s baby. Mama was drunk, daddy was at work, and I was in charge. Since then, I have successfully welcomed over 100,000 new human beings into this universe. Every single one of the mothers was in pain, whether we gave them drugs or not. Granted, traditional births are my specialty. Nanomedicine can make even live births painless, but that’s just not what I do. They come to me because they don’t want that. This woman, Aeterna refused any sort of pain relief. She refused an IV; everything. The baby just slipped out. She came in to inform us that her water broke, and it was time, then she crawled in bed, and let it out. No struggle, no contractions, barely any labor time. It started, and it was done. We have some impressive transhumans in the galaxy, but I’ve never seen anything like her.”

“How’s the baby?”

“Little Dilara is fine,” Dr. Duward replied. “We performed the very basic tests, and followed procedure, but didn’t have to provide any unusual treatments. She cried a little bit but stopped quickly. I hesitate to say this, but it was almost like she was putting on a show...like she knew we expected her to cry, but after that, she quieted down and just lay there against her mother’s chest.”

“Who else have you told about this?” Reed presses.

“No one,” Dr. Duward answers. “Like I said, she came in so quick, the only people there were me and my nurse. And she won’t tell anyone unless I order her to.”

“No bots need their memories erased?” he suggested.

“We didn’t use bots down there. Traditional births, remember?”

“Right. Well, I need this family on my side, so keep it to yourself. In fact, if you could just move on and pretend like it never happened, that would be for the best.”

“This sounds important to you,” she noted.

He sighed. “What do you want?”

“I want the quantum signature for New Earth.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Reed replied honestly.

“I gave a consultation to a Teaguardian a few weeks ago, and overheard them talking about it. They’re about to go on assignment there, and are actually happy that you delayed their departure. It’s very hush-hush, but they said it was 121 light years away. They’ll have to give it a huge berth because I think it’s a protected human preserve. No advanced interference. It sounds like it’s basically a base reality ancestor simulation. They’ll need a good OB/GYN.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t have access to that. I’m just a Bungulan captain.”

“I suggest you find it,” the doctor said. She was not who he thought she was just a moment ago when they first met.

“I don’t like being blackmailed.”

“I don’t like being ripped from my home, but things happen.”

Reed nodded. “I’ll get you to this New Earth place, but I need to speak with the family first.”

“Go right ahead.” Dr. Duward stepped off to the side.

Reed walked down the hallway, and rang the doorbell.

A man quickly opened it. “Hey. They’re both sleeping,” he hissed.

“That’s not what the door indicator says.” Reed pointed at the indicator tube, which lit up for different conditions, such as sleeping, emergency, or unoccupied.

“I don’t know how that stuff works,” the guy said. He looked back to make sure that mother and baby weren’t awakened, then slipped out of the room, and closed the door behind him. “Can I help you?”

“First of all, I’m Captain Reed Ellis—”

“I know who you are, I’m not impressed. What do you want?”

“The Vellani Ambassador. You seem to be a crewmember of it. Tertius Valerius?”

“Not really anymore, why?” Tertius questioned.

“There are whispers that it can travel faster than light,” Reed said.

Tertius folded his arms. “Lots of ships can do that.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say lots. It seems to only be Teaguardians, and yours. Do you work for Teagarden?”

Tertius snorted. “No. The Ambassador is a stateless vessel. Well, I think it technically flies the Castlebourne flag now, but that’s more of a matter of logistics.”

“Well, anyway. You are aware of the circumstances of the Tangent, aren’t you? I commandeered it.”

“I know.”

“Your daughter bene—”

Tertius waved his hand dismissively to interrupt Reed again. “Don’t play on my sentimentality. Just spit it out.”

“As of today, we’re maybe one-third of the way through our rescue efforts,” Reed continued. “Months from now, when it’s over, and the last evacuee is safely off the platform, I have promised to release the hostages, and forgo my leverage. What I have not promised is to return the Tangent and turn myself in. My crew hasn’t done that either, and I don’t want them to have to. I don’t know where we would go, but if we try to run with what we’ve got, they’ll catch us. I don’t want to hold hostages past the rescue. I certainly don’t want to hold them forever. I don’t want to condemn my people to decades of prison either, though. You have no obligation to do anything for us. If you refuse, you and your family can stay as long as you want, or leave whenever you want. You are in no way hostages. I’m asking you with my tail between my legs, and my hat in hand, will you help?”

Tertius stared at Reed, presumably in thought. “Over a hundred years ago, the brightest minds in history you’ve never heard of held a meeting. It was called The Edge. They had developed certain advanced technologies, and limited their use to a select few who needed it. I won’t get into who these inventors were, or anything about our subculture, but the year 2400 marked the end of that exclusivity. It was inevitable that the general population would uncover the truths. So these inventors agreed to hand out some of these technologies to some others, in some ways. Don’t ask me for details, anything I happen to know about The Edge is still not common knowledge. What I’ll tell you, however, is that The Vellani Ambassador operates under a special form of FTL that was not a part of any agreement, with Teagarden, or anyone else. That will probably never be made public. It’s too powerful, it’s too dangerous, and it has some serious theoretical applications that could quite literally destroy the universe. The reframe engine, however, is a different story. That is what the Teaguardians use. It caps out at 707c. That’s a fundamental physical limitation of the mechanism, and there’s no going beyond it.”

“Okay. I’m not picky. Even simply being on par with them would be useful.”

“Well, I’m not an engineer, I don’t know how to build a reframe engine. The way I understand it, it’s only half of the equation. In order to reach maximum reframe, you have to already be able to reach maximum sublight. Can the Tangent do that?”

Reed sighed. “It can’t. It uses classical fusion, not antimatter.”

“That’s going to be a problem,” Tertius said. “Let me put it this way, if this thing were moving at its maximum speed, and traveled one light year, how long would it feel like on the ship?”

Reed tapped on his wrist device to make the calculation. “About 1.73 years, but it would take two years in realtime.”

Tertius nodded. “If someone smarter than me installed a reframe engine, it would take you 1.73 years. That’s what you would experience, and that’s how much time would pass for everyone not on the ship. That’s what the reframe engine does. It makes those two numbers the same. It doesn’t just arbitrarily go fast. You still have to reach certain speeds, the engine just consolidates the reference frames. It reframes the passage of time so everyone ends up on the same page.”

Reed leaned his head back at hearing this, and regarded Tertius. “That’s why there’s a maximum speed overall. You’re not actually breaking the light barrier.”

“Bingo.”

“But this Ambassador, it goes faster. It indeed breaks the light barrier. True FTL.”

“I wouldn’t tell you how it worked, even if I understood it. I won’t even name it for you, because that alone would give you too much information.”

“Would they be willing to help, though?” Reed pressed. “Maybe they can just pull us away once, and then leave us wherever, just so we can find someplace to hide, and maybe some lasting peace.”

Tertius looked up at the walls and ceiling. “The VA’s mission is not unlike yours. They rescue people from bad situations. The difference is, they didn’t steal their ship to do it. The intelligence that designed it is still there. Well...the person who designed the special FTL tech isn’t, but they gave their contribution away freely. Anyway, the people they rescue are innocent. The people they’re rescuing them from? Not so much. You...are neither. Mirage would understand why you did what you did, but she wouldn’t reward you for it. She would expect you to accept the consequences of your actions. I know her well, I can hear her say that in my head. Before you ask, the person who came up with the magical FTL isn’t available until...” He tapped on his handheld device. “Let me do my own calculations...August. And even if we were able to find him on that date, he would only be able to help you for a day, and then you would have to wait a whole year for his return.”

“Huh?” Reed didn’t understand all this FTL stuff, but he wasn’t even following the logic of what Tertius just said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tertius replied, shaking his head. “The point is, it can’t be done. I would love to help, but it’s just not gonna happen. I can reach out to Mirage, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. And if by some miracle, she does say yes, you’re not keeping the Tangent. It would be like trying to stuff a skyscraper in the trunk of your car. At best, she would ferry all the people somewhere safe.”

“That’s all I can ask.” Reed pulled up his contact card. “You can reach me any time. It has my quantum signature on it if she’s on the other side of the universe, and wants to talk to me personally. Now, before I leave you, how big is this reframe engine?”

“I think it scales to the size of the vessel,” Tertius answered. “I can probably get you the specs, but you’re gonna be done with the evacuation in, what, a few months? It’s gonna take longer than that for you to build one from scratch.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you, Mister Valerius. I’ll let you get back to your family now. Please do stay in touch. I’ll give you anything you need.”

Reed walked away and returned to his bridge office.

Shasta was already there, which was good. “Hey. I wanted to let you know, Vasily has been asking for you. I have no idea what it’s about.”

“That can wait,” Reed decided, possibly forever. “We have more important things to worry about. I need ideas for how we can prolong the southern evacuation. We need to stall for time while we come up with a more long-term solution to our little problem.”

Shasta considered it for a moment. “Well, if that’s what we need, that unauthorized express trip was actually good news. Maybe we need more time to inspect all the tethers. Maybe the constant up and down placed too much stress on them, and they all require maintenance. And maybe to prevent that from being a problem again, we need to slow the trips moving forward.”

“Okay, those are all good ideas. Let’s start working on it, but obviously don’t explain to anyone why.”

“I don’t even know why,” Shasta admitted.

“Good. I’ll tell you later so it’s easier for you to spread the new plan. Slower ascents and descents. But not too bad. It doesn’t need to take years, and in fact, that would backfire on us. Just maybe another month.”

“Got it, I’ll talk to Trilby to calculate the math on that. He won’t ask questions.”

“Actually, I need to talk to him myself. I’ll go with you.” His device beeped, so he stopped to check it.

It was a message from Tertius. Found this while I was digging up the specifications for the reframe engine. I didn’t realize that The Shortlist gave Teagarden access to this tech. It might have come in handy a few months ago.

Reed tapped on the file, and read the overview. “On second thought, I’ll talk with Trilby later. Go ahead and do your thing. I need to set up a meeting with someone else.”

It was only a few hours later. Reed was back in the dusty hot interrogation room of a virtual environment. President Burkhart Abrams resolved in front of him, sitting in the chair. “What am I doing here, Ellis? Something wrong with the evacuation? Can’t stay in place? Are you demanding pizza for all the gunmen and hostages?”

Reed threw a tablet on the table hard enough to make it break in the real world, but it landed undamaged. “If you already knew, then this won’t come as a surprise, but if you didn’t know, then I encourage you to verify it...quietly.” He needed to test him.

Abrams reluctantly picked up the tablet, and started looking over the info. He threw it down with nearly as much gusto. “This reads like science fiction.”

“It’s not, it’s real. I’m guessing you didn’t know about it, because you’re not that good of a liar. So now you have to ask yourself, for the first time in all of this, are we on the same side?”

“Why the hell would we be on the same side? Teagarden is only letting you do this because you have leverage. You and I are not friends.”

“What about Matar Galo? Is she a friend?”

“She’s my superior officer.”

“Right.” Reed leaned forward, and repeated, “right” as he was swiping to the next page. “And because she’s your superior, she had no obligation to tell you about this.”

“If it’s true...if it exists, then no, of course she didn’t. She didn’t invent military secrets. What are you driving at here?”

Reed shook his head. “You commanded two Teaguardians for Proxima Doma. These people were your friends. You were here to protect them, and the one time when they really needed you, you couldn’t do shit. You just sat there, staring at the screen, utterly hopeless. Useless. A giant paperweight floating in space.” He angrily pointed at the tablet. “If you had this kind of technology, you may have been able to save them all.”

Abrams scoffed and shook his head.

“Maybe not all, but a lot; at least more. I wouldn’t have needed to steal a damn thing. It wouldn’t have occurred to me. I just didn’t think we had any other options. But she—she had this. Your military had this.” He swiped over again. “Apparently, Gatewood has it too. Why does Gatewood have it? Nobody lives there!”

 “You’re right. This would have been a game-changer, but if she didn’t come here with it, she must have had her reasons. Maybe it’s not ready. Maybe only a tiny shuttle has a prototype of it. We don’t know. This document doesn’t say anything about the actual operational deployment. It just claims that it exists, and it’s in the Teagarden’s privileged data vault. I’m not going to ask how you got your hands on it, but this...this means nothing. It proves nothing.”

“Burkhart, this is real. They have teleportation, like freakin’ Star Trek. They left your friends to die when they could have just beamed them into the sky. They didn’t even read you in. They did nothing.” Reed pointed to his own chest. “I did something. I came here. I risked everything to save the people that you were sworn to defend. Aren’t you angry about that? I would be livid. I am.”

“Maybe I am. Maybe I believe you, and I’ve never been more pissed off about anything in my whole life. What the hell does it matter? The south is stable. The elevators are working. There’s no point in rocking the boat now. Just finish your mission, and turn yourself in, like you promised.”

“I never promised that.”

Abrams dismissed it. “That’s not my problem. They’re not gonna give us teleportation. What are you gonna do? Try to steal it?”

Reed shook his head. “No, not that. Like you said, we don’t know where it is. But I need to steal something else, and to make up for being unable to do anything for the Proxima Domanians before I showed up...I want you to help me.”

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Microstory 2632: Pet Project

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Mandica Kolar is a perfectly normal human, which is rare in her time. The transhumanism movement might have begun in the middle of the 20th century, but it did not gain any real traction for many decades, when the science started to catch up with the ideas. Over the next few centuries, the population of undigitized organic humans (UDOs) gradually diminished. They weren’t being killed or replaced. It was just that fewer and fewer people were deciding to tolerate natural aging limitations, aches and pains, and kind of being sidelined. They have become a silent minority. Posthumans hold most of the power now, not out of some nefarious plan, but because that is how the math works out. Whether consciously or subconsciously, some undigitized people feel that they’re being treated as pets, or maybe children. They are so fragile, and people just wanted to protect that. This mindset can be problematic because it often leads to the UDOs being patronized, but honestly, most mean no disrespect. One little plane crash or massive explosion, and a UDO would die...forever. Most everyone else is constantly backing up their consciousness to a remote server somewhere, and don’t worry about such things. In fact, their virtual immortality often makes their lives pretty boring, especially since these adaptations come with other technological improvements, leading to higher quality of life in a post-scarcity society. They have turned to entertainment, and the most popular of these involve some level of simulated danger. They can’t die for real, but they can make believe, and the best systems do better at making them forget that the stakes are genuinely quite low.

Someone is paraterraforming an entire planet for these reasons. Instead of virtual simulations, they will be physical. Some might even alter a visitor’s memories to forget who they are, making them feel like life is still precious and fleeting. Tens of thousands of domes, each with its own theme, are being constructed on the surface of Castlebourne. Mandica isn’t necessarily interested in the simulations, but she does want to leave Earth, and she happens to know of a ship that is heading in that direction. There are too many restrictions here. She doesn’t want to feel like a pet anymore. She wants to live somewhere that will let her be herself. To accomplish this, she needs to move to a Charter Planet. Lying between 50 and 200 light years from Earth, Charter Worlds are not subject to the same laws that the Core Worlds and Stellar Neighborhood systems are. They have to protect themselves, but they often do so by chartering resources from other systems. Castlebourne is set to receive a shipment of lower lifeforms from Earth. They have already been sent one arkship, so this is a second wave with additional specimens, many of which are live. It will probably be Mandica’s last chance to get to where she wants to be. Arkships are rare, and Castlebourne is lucky to get two. They may not receive anything else ever again as most other resources can be found and processed in situ. The problem is, this ship is not for her. There was no chance that they were ever going to let her on it, so she has decided to stow away.

Mandica is a nomad, but she’s still a citizen of the state, and is entitled to certain amenities. Most people in this post-scarcity society get what they need from their local Resource Allocation Committees, which they voted for. As she has no local rights or responsibilities, an At-Large Allocation Board (ALAB) decides what she gets, and what she doesn’t. The people who sit on the board are reportedly mostly former RAC members, but she has never even met even one of them. All of her dealings have been fully automated, which she prefers. She accepts the bureaucracy, but that doesn’t mean she has to participate in government. Since life is so dangerous for nomads, she never goes anywhere truly alone. She possesses a bot pack of drones to aid her in her travels, and protect her. They practically force the pack on her, but she likes animals, and they’re quite convincing, so she doesn’t mind. Others in her situation have outright refused, or disabled them permanently.

There is something else that is different when it comes to Mandica. In addition to the horse, dog, hawk, and flutterby, she’s also accompanied by an android. This is fairly rare for nomads. It’s more of a hermit thing, and of course, there is overlap, but there is a clear distinction. Hermits live alone, and reject the state’s authority, which is why most of them have gone off-world by now. Nomads, on the other hand, frequently get involved in community affairs, they just like to shift between communities at will. They don’t typically need an android for human companionship, because they’re getting plenty of socialization through more conventional—albeit ephemeral—relationships. Mandica visits populated regions as well, but she spends a lot more time in the wilderness, exploring, hiking, and just enjoying the solitude. So why bother with an android? Well, Mordred provides something she might be able to get from others, but with a lot fewer complications. He gives her the sexual satisfaction she needs without all the emotional baggage. Well...there might be a little bit of emotion involved.

“But I don’t understand why I cannot go with you.” Mordred was programmed to adore Mandica, perhaps a little too much.

“Because I need you to stay behind to fake my death,” she explains once again.

He was also programmed to be able to forget things, act a little dumb, and be generally confused. “But I love you, my love. We said we would stay together forever.”

“It was only a fantasy. I must away to start my new life. If you truly love me, you’ll set me free, erase the animals’ memories, and protect me from being discovered.”

Mordred looks down at Mandica’s bioprinted facsimile. It’s state of the art, and looks just like her, down to the scars. A dedicated medical examiner could plausibly tell the difference, but they will hopefully not even bother with a post mortem. It will be a simple fall from an extremely high cliff, which is perfectly believable, given her lifestyle, and nomads aren’t exactly top priority. “This golem of yours...does she feel as you do? Does she love me as well?”

“She feels nothing. She is not a she at all, but only a husk. Her sole job is to pretend to be me...in her death.”

“Will we ever see each other again?” he presses. “One day?”

“I told you that I would never lie to you, Mordred, and I shan’t. I’m afraid you will never see me again. As the brightest candle burns the fastest, our love must end.”

“How can I go on without you? I shall end my own life.”

“You can do that, but only after you show others that I am dead. Please, this is of the utmost importance. I cannot have them looking for me.”

“I will, my beautiful flower,” Mordred promises. “Now turn away. If I see your face for one second more, I will not be able to say goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!” he shouts melodramatically.

“Goodbye, dear Mordred. I’ll think of you always.” Mandica walks down the trail, and heads for the launch site. Castlebourne calls to her from the distant sky.

Microstory 2586: Renata Hurdles Over the Railing, and Rushes Over to Polly

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Renata hurdles over the railing, and rushes over to Polly. She places her hand upon his, adding pressure to keep the blood inside. There’s so much blood, though. No one can survive this; not all the way out here in the middle of nowhere.

“It’s not good,” he ekes out. “I’m not gonna make it.”

“Not with that attitude,” Renata scolds him. “Boot and rally. Fight through it.”

“I can feel my ribs scraping against each other!” Polly complains. He moves his hand off of the wound, flipping it over to hold Renata’s. “I just don’t wanna die alone.”

Renata begins to tear up as she’s squeezing his hand back. She looks down at the destruction made by the buckshot. She expects to see his ribs, and she suspects that that’s kind of what they are, but instead of being porous white, they’re smooth and silvery. It’s metal. “This man is made of metal.”

“What?” Polly questions.

Renata looks up at her mom, who is somewhat casually walking up to them. “Is he a robot?”

Libera smiles, not sadistically, but maybe triumphantly? “You’re not supposed to be able to see that. You’re supposed to see what a normal person would expect to see, but now you’re mind is opening up. You’re realizing the truth.”

“Is he a robot!” Renata repeats angrily.

“Yes!” Libera shouts back, matching her energy before calming down. “He is.”

“Am I a robot too!”

“No. You’re something else.”

“You keep saying that! You’re so vague. Fuck you, mom!” Renata looks back down at Polly. “You’re gonna be okay. And I’m not just saying that to make you feel better in your final moments. This isn’t real. That’s not blood. That’s not pain. This is just a simulation, and whatever you’re feeling is only part of a program. All you have to do is choose the truth. Simply switch off the pain. For someone built like you, it’s only minor damage. It can’t affect your mind, or your life. You can’t die from it. So ignore it. Turn. Off. The. Pain.”

Polly has been staring into her eyes as he listens to her instructions, supposedly choking on his own blood. His gaze drifts away, but only for a second before returning to her. At last, he exhales, and looks peaceful. Confused but pleased, he looks down at his now clearly minor damage, and begins to smile. Then he nods. “You’re right. This isn’t real. I can’t die; not from something stupid like this.”

Renata leans back and pops back up to her feet as Polly does the same.

“Holy shit,” Libera says, even more happy than before. “I didn’t know you could do that. I didn’t even think I could do that.”

“It’s a robot thing, you wouldn’t get it,” Renata decides.

“Wouldn’t I?” Libera pulls out a butterfly knife, and starts flicking it around to show off her skills. She sticks it in her arm, and drags it upwards. Then she pulls the skin away to show her own metal arm.

“What the hell?” Renata yells. “Is anyone real?”

“We’re all real,” Libera claims. “Even this guy apparently.”

“Are we all not human?” Renata corrects herself for a better answer.

Libera sighs, presumably done with the charade. “The three of us aren’t, in a technical sense, though with advances in genetic and neural engineering, the differences are ultimately meaningless, according to most laws. Essentially, while we may not be human, we’re still people. I’m not sure humans even exist anymore if we’re using the original, strictest definition.”

“Most laws?” Renata questions. “There are laws about us? How would I have never heard of them before? And what happened to the humans? Did we kill all of them, and I had my memories erased? Or was I created after the apocalypse? What the hell is going on?”

Libera can’t help but chuckle. “There was no apocalypse. Everyone’s fine. I’m just saying that birthed intelligences, like Mister Samani, and your friend Quidel, aren’t like the humans of several centuries ago. They’re also enhanced, in their own ways, but probably more organically. I’m not sure, I’ve not seen their primary substrate specs.”

Renata shakes her head. “I don’t understand. What’s real, what isn’t?”

“The spirit of your question—which is coming from a place of ignorance—is what about your life actually happened, and what didn’t. The truth is, I’m sorry to say, almost nothing of what you’ve experienced ever actually happened. You were created about a couple of decades ago, and you’ve been running the same handful of scripts ever since. You didn’t grow up, you’ve never aged. Until recently, your life has been part of a simulation, designed for the amusement of people like Quidel.”

“So this is a game, and he’s a player.”

“Pretty much,” Libera confirms.

“And Lycander?”

“He works here. He recites scripts too, but he knows that they’re scripts.”

“So Quidel plays superspy for half a day before unplugging, and going home? Meanwhile, Lycander works his job before also unplugging, and also going home?”

“No, this is an immersive experience. Visitors are supposed to stay inside for an extended period of time. Quidel will probably be here for thirty years, unless he gets bored, and goes to explore some other simulation, or just relaxes on the beach.”

“How does anyone have time for that?” Renata knows that they should probably get the hell out of here, but she has so many questions, and for the first time in her—well, she has never had a real life, but those implanted memories are still there, and this still feels like a relief. So for the first time in her life, she’s finally getting answers. They’re on a roll, so she’s not going to stop unless someone or something forces her too. “You spend half your life pretending to be a secret agent, and that’s pretty much all you do before you die? What about money?”

“They don’t use money anymore, everything’s free. And they mostly don’t die anymore either. As I said, they’re advanced.”

Renata shakes her head again. “I need to speak with the two of them. Let’s pause the game, and take a breather.”

“You can’t pause the game. This is just a world, and people live in it.”

“But the MacGuffin isn’t real. It doesn’t matter. Quidel would know that.”

“Oh, no. The machine they’re protecting is quite real. And I need it.”

“Why?”

“You’re not ready for that one yet.” And there it is. The conversation is over.

Castlebourne Capital Community: The Man Who Refused To Die (Part III)

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The Castlebourners were mad, and they had every right to be. Dreychan didn’t commit a cardinal sin, but he did screw up. As soon as the rest of the council was arrested for conspiracy to commit murder, he should have addressed the people. He knew how to do that. At any one time, they were spread all over the world, but he had the means of contacting them separately from all the visitors. These visitors mostly didn’t know that the refugees were from 16,000 light years away as that went against everything they understood about physics and space colonization. The lie that they spread about a closer empire was weak at best, but it was the only lie they had. At some point, the full truth about time travel was probably going to get out to the general public, but for now, Dreychan should have used the news bulletin protocol. But. It had only been one day, and it didn’t spell the destruction of the whole planet, so everyone just needed to chill out.

He finally escaped the angry crowd of wannabe journalists, and ducked into the council chambers. His speech to them wasn’t half bad, if he could be so bold as to evaluate it himself. Perhaps they felt otherwise, or this was just such a crazy situation that no one knew what to think, or how to react. He took a deep breath as he leaned his head against the door, still hearing them rabble rabble in the corridor. No one else was allowed in here. He used to dread coming to this room, now it had become his one place of respite. How had things changed so much in only a matter of a few days? He breathed through the inner turmoil, and turned back around. “Who are you?”

The elderly woman wearing what appeared to be a robot costume stepped forward, and extended a hand. “Yunil Tereth, big fan.”

“How did you get in here?” Dreychan questioned. “It’s DNA coded.”

“Twins have the same DNA. My sister was on the Council. I always could have walked in here. I just never had the occasion.”

“Who could possibly be your twin sister?” There were some fairly old people on the Council, but none of them quite this old. He was surprised that she could even stand up on her own.

“Lubiti. Now, I know what you’re thinking...why don’t we have the same last name?” She giggled. “We never really got along, so when we chose our names, we deliberately distanced ourselves.”

“I was actually thinking...” Was it offensive to bring up her age?

She giggled again. “When I heard the news, I was in Perspectidome, where you spend time in someone else’s proverbial shoes, to better understand what their life would be like. This is only a temporary substrate. Thank God I chose to make it my older self, instead of just any old lady, so my DNA works. Pay no attention to the outfit. My character had a backstory that was out of my control.”

“Okay. Well. You’ll forgive me if I don’t tell you anything since I can’t really place my trust in that. When it comes to mind transfer, you can’t trust anyone. That’s one reason why I stayed normal. I’m always me.”

Yunil nodded. “I understand. We can meet again, with me in my own body. I decided not to take the time to transfer back before coming here now, because my usual face is...”

“Infamous now?” he guessed.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll tell you what. I don’t know what you want, and I believe it’s best not to say at this time. Next time I see you, I not only want you to look like Lubiti, but I want to see you two at the same time. She’ll confirm if you’re real or not. She’ll know if you’re just a liar in a meatsuit.”

“Fair enough,” Yunil agreed.

“I assume you have my contact card?”

“I do.”

“Send me yours so we can coordinate. I have to reach out to schedule visitation.”

“I’ll do that.” She started tapping on her device. “Also, can I go out the back?”

“Go ahead.” While she was leaving, Dreychan pulled out his own device. Her contact card came through while he was navigating to Azad’s. He took a moment to think about what he wanted to write. Good morning, Dominus Petit, I—

“What’s up?”

Dreychan spun around to find another surprise guest. “Dominus. I was just writing to you.”

“I know,” Azad replied. “I get an alert whenever anyone so much as opens my card.”

“That’s...a little frightening.”

“It’s a security thing. We need to know who’s thinking about us in case it’s an assassin, or something worse.”

“I see.”

“There is a workaround. What you do is take a photo of the card using another device, and consult the image whenever you want. Don’t just take a screenshot, though, because I, uh, get alerted when that happens too. This works for anyone with a spy-ping trigger.”

“That’s good to know.”

They stood there awkwardly for a moment. “The trigger doesn’t alert me to the reason you were looking me up, though,” Azad went on.

“Oh, right, sorry.” Dreychan gestured towards the back door. “I was just visited by a...old woman who claimed to be Lubiti’s twin sister, but just in a different substrate. I can’t verify that, so I need to speak with Lubiti sooner than I expected to ask her about it. And I would like this Yunil to be present.”

Azad narrowed his eyes at him. “You spoke with her here? Please tell me you were stupid enough to let her in, and not that she walked in herself.”

“It was the second one.”

Azad sighed as he started tapping on his wrist device. “I’m choosing to believe that the sister is okay, but if she breached using her shared DNA with Lubiti, it clearly means that Lubiti could come back in as well. Presumably, so could any other former member of the Council. Even if they’re locked up, that is a huge security flaw that we’ll need to cover. I’m sorry, I can’t grant visitation, to you or her sister, until we figure this out. For all we know, this whole thing has been a plot to break her out, and clearly, that could cause problems. I’ll call you with updates as appropriate.”

“That makes perfect sense. Do what you gotta do, and take your time.” After Azad disappeared, Dreychan also slipped out the back, and headed for the senior vactrain hub, which he now had access to thanks to his higher status on the Council. The reporters wouldn’t be able to follow him there, so it was another source of protection from the onslaught of questions, though a sterile and boring one. They shouldn’t be able to accost him at home either, but perhaps that too was unsafe. There were plenty of places to sleep here. He could apply for a temporary unit in Overdome maybe. That was so weird and random, no one would think to look for him there. “Yunil?”

She looked up from her device. “Oh, hello again. Just waiting for my train.”

“Oh.” Super awkward.

“Oh no, what happened?”

He couldn’t say anything. If he explained what Azad just said about the access flaw, it might give her an idea that she didn’t have before! Argh, no! Get him out of here!

Yunil smiled knowingly. “You don’t have to tell me anything. If you’re not busy, perhaps you can accompany me back to Perspectidome, where my real body is waiting for me? I’m not thinking that that will be enough to get you to trust me, but if you see the records which prove that it’s my primary, maybe that gets us one step closer to trust.”

“I suppose I have nothing better to do.” The train zipped through the tube before them, and the doors opened. The both of them stepped onto it, and let it take them away. They were alone in the pod, which was good. This time was usually busy with people coming and going, but the council shake up must have rippled across the population, and altered other people’s personal schedules. It wasn’t long before they were at their destination. Dreychan looked around, confused. “We didn’t have to stop at a Conjunction. I didn’t know that was ever a thing.”

“Don’t need one, with that handsome face of yours. You’re now not only a senior traveler, but an executive senior traveler. Every train has become an express train. We probably did go through a Conjunction, but we didn’t have to stop and switch tracks. And yes, Perspectidome is relatively close.”

The doors reopened, and let them out. They proceeded to the intake plaza, where Yunil informed the bot that she was picking her primary substrate back up. They processed her biometrics, and let them into the transfer room. “This is the weird part.”

“What’s weird about it?” Dreychan asked. “Besides everything?” He knew very little about how all this body switching stuff worked, and didn’t care to know. She could tell him that a microscopic creature was going to crawl out of her ear, and into the one of the body she was trying to move to, and he would believe it, because he really just did not know.

“This body isn’t just temporary. It’s disposable, and is actually required to be disposed of. It’s going to melt, which might be unsettling to watch.”

Dreychan stared at her. “If you’re going to disrobe, I’m not going to be watching anyway.”

She laughed. “No, the clothes are biosynthetic, so they’ll just melt too.”

“Still, I don’t think I’ll watch.”

“I can appreciate that.” She pointed at the side door. “My primary is in that room. It is unclothed, but it looks nicer, and it’s not going to melt. You can wait for me there.”

He went into the other room to find a motionless body that looked just like Lubiti. It was floating in this big vertical tube against the wall, in some kind of bubbly amber fluid. Within minutes, her eyes popped open. She took a moment to get her bearings before settling into eye contact with Dreychan. She smiled at him kindly before reaching down and turning some kind of wheel on the floor. The fluid started to drain away. Once the tube was empty, she slid the hatch open and climbed out.

Dreychan had noticed a towel sitting folded on the table between them. He picked it up now, and tried to hand it to her.

She smiled wider now. “I have to wash up first. It’s basically amniotic fluid.” She glided over to the shower, which didn’t even have a curtain. So he wouldn’t keep staring, he went over to the machines, and started looking at the various components, as if his observations alone would give him any understanding of how they worked.

“It’s okay,” she said while she was still in there. “I switched on the holo-partition.”

He looked back over, but it was a lie.

“Sorry! I’m a bit of a trickster.” Yunil did this weird hand gesture where she tapped the tip of her own fingers with her thumb and flicked her wrist a little. The hologram appeared now. It was rather translucent, and barely tall enough to cover the important bits, but he didn’t want to argue anymore, so he just kept his eyes on hers. “Don’t be so uptight. You treat your own body as a vital part of you, but for people like me, it’s just a husk. You don’t cry for your clipped fingernails, do you? I’ve met people who look like rabbits, mythological creatures, and even machines. There’s a dome here where you transfer your mind to a vehicle, and drive. It feels like you are the vehicle, not like you’re just sitting in one.”

“I don’t cry for my nails,” Dreychan explained, “but my body is not something I can lose. It would be more like the body loses me. We call that death.”

“Well, that’s your first problem. You see death as inevitable. The vonearthans see it as an anachronism.” She sighed. “I’m gonna have to walk through the hologram to reach the towel.”

He looked away again.

“Oh my God,” she said. “It’s not me. It’s her. Do you have a thing for her?”

He took one little peek. The towel was now keeping her covered. “She was nice to me. It’s over now.”

“I’m nice to you, and that’s not over.”

“What are you saying?”

“Drey—”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“Okay.” She didn’t see it as a big deal. “Your video was leaked, did you not know that?” She opened a drawer, and pulled out a set of clothes, which she set on the counter between them.

“Of me in 2.5Dome? No, I am indeed aware of that. Many of the reporters’ questions had to do with how I survived the ordeal.”

“You don’t understand. No one has ever made it through that whole game in one go. It’s only supposed to be for people like me, for whom death is but a temporary setback. The loudest people are mad that you didn’t make your announcement right away, but most of us are extremely impressed, and that is quickly overshadowing any resentment we feel about the lack of immediate transparency. I came to you because I wanted to meet the man who refused to die. I wanted to meet the man who my sister underestimated. You want my body, you can have it. You want me to jump to another one, and have that instead, just say the word.”

“That’s not what this is about for me. I don’t feel emotions for bodies. I feel them for people. And we just met.”

“We can take it slow,” she said with a shrug as she tossed her towel into the material reclamator, and started slipping on the outfit. “But maybe not too slow. After all...if you’re planning on dying in less than a century, you better get on it. You don’t have as many opportunities to find happiness as almost everyone else in this part of the galaxy. I admire that in people like you, but...not if you take it for granted.”

“I don’t need you to feel any particular way about me. I just want you to tell me what you really want. And don’t say it’s just about sex. I don’t believe that.”

“You told me you didn’t want me to tell you yet.”

“I changed my mind.”

She nodded. “I’m part of a group.”

“Oh, shit.” That word. His brain instantly associated it with other, less innocuous ones, like rebellion, insurgency, or traitor.

“Don’t be like that. We’re not violent. We’re connoisseurs of Earthan history. Ya know, our ancestors were grown in test tubes by a madman, who stole them from a ship, which originated in the Gatewood Collective, and whose passengers were once refugees from another universe, which were the descendants of runaways...from Earth. Yes, our peoples have a longer history of fleeing oppression and strife than you might know. But while we don’t call ourselves vonearthan, we are all technically sourced from there. My group studies the homeworld, because we believe it is the absolutely most important aspect of our lives, now that we even know it exists. I came to you, Dreychan, because if you want to know how to formulate the new government of Castlebourne, you have a perfectly good model to base it on. Earth spent thousands of years trying to figure it out. Don’t reinvent the wheel. My friends and I will show you what works. It’s been working for centuries. That’s how they were able to build this paradise.”

“Hrockas built it to get away from Earth.”

“No, he was assigned this planet because while it is naturally barren, it’s stable, gravitationally healthy, and the host star is relatively similar to Sol. Its distance from the Core Worlds is the product of cosmic statistical probability, not a design feature.”

“What are you trying to say now?” He was getting confused.

“Don’t think that you need to rebuild the Council back to how it was. You might not even need a council. All I’m saying is get yourself educated before you start making any decisions. I’m here to give you whatever you need, and I don’t just mean access to my body. My brain is pretty great too.”

Dreychan’s watch beeped, so he checked the notification. “No more express trains for you. You’ve been locked out of government privileges. Or rather, Lubiti was.”

Yunil rolled her eyes. “DNA locks are so stupid anyway. All I need is one hair, and I can grow a passing clone in a matter of months without setting off any alarm bells. It should be brainwave-locked. I know they have that technology. You should demand it.”

Dreychan breathed deeply. “I still can’t trust you. We need to set up that meeting with your so-called sister.”

She chuckled. “That’s not the first time she’s been called that. I call her that. And yeah, I’m down for the meeting whenever. I cancelled all future dome trips, so I’ll just be sitting at home whenever you’re ready. I will be able to leave at a moment’s notice.”

“I’ll talk to my contact again,” Dreychan said. “But right now, I’m exhausted, so I think I’m gonna go home. Maybe we don’t share a train again?”

She shook her head. “We’re not going to the same place anyway. I live in Underbelly.”

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Microstory 2450: Stairway to Heaven

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Not to be confused with Heavendome. I’m callin’ it, this is the largest staircase in the entire universe. Some aliens eighteen billion light years away may have a large one of their own, but I doubt it beats this. The stairs go all along the perimeter of the dome, spiraling up from the surface until you reach the zenith, which I’ll talk about when we hit that point in the story. Let’s start with some stats. Each dome has an 83 kilometer diameter. Ignore topographical variations. A line from one end to the opposite end crossing through the exact center is 83 kilometers long. Since these domes are hemispheric, that means the distance from the surface to the top is 41.5 kilometers. Again, ignore varied topography, like mountains and valleys. If you were to climb a ladder from the bottom to the top, you would be climbing 41.5 kilometers. They’re considering including that as well for an even more extreme test of your mettle, but I can’t review eventualities. It’s important to note, though, because the spiral staircase is necessarily longer than the total vertical distance, due to the tread length of each staircase, and the length of the landings. There are 207,500 steps. Every 19th step is a landing, which gives you a little room to stand when you need a break. Some of these lead to pitstops, while others lead to full-on campgrounds for daily rest periods. If you can’t make it to the next campground, they’re not going to let you stay the night at a pitstop, so you best recognize your own physical abilities before you even take the first step. You will go on practice hikes before your trek—that’s what the surface is dedicated to—and this training program takes about as long as the climb, so expect to dedicate two months of your life to this adventure. There are no transhumanistic enhancements or cybernetic upgrades here. You’re given a traditional human body between 1.5 and 2.1 meters tall with average muscles. You do get to choose your height, and it can look like your residual self image, but don’t expect the superkidneys, or the unidirectional respiratory systems that you’re used to. I heard some complaints from people who didn’t understand the spirit of the hike. If you don’t want to work, take an elevator. But not here, the periodic exit elevators are only for people who had to quit in the middle. There’s no judgment from me, by the way. You make it more than 50 flights, and I’ll say you’ve accomplished something impressive. If you do make it the whole way, it probably took about a month, covering a few kilometers each day. That may not sound like much, but gravity hates you, and your fight with it will never end until you beat it...or it beats you. Some will do it faster, others slower. How you lived your life prior to this will impact your performance. When you get uploaded into the new substrate, you don’t just end up on equal footing with everyone else. If you were a mech before, you’re not gonna be used to the energy expenditure. If you were mostly biological, it should be easier to adapt to the new body. I met one climber who was born 24 years ago, and never received any meaningful upgrades. Guy did it in two weeks. He works out to stay fit, and pretty much always has. His experience was a major advantage. 10,922 flights for a total of 84.44 kilometers is a huge achievement whether it takes you that month, or double that, and it comes with a reward. It’s a party. Unlike other domes, there’s a nipple on the top, which is reached by your last flight. You stay as long as you want, talking to other climbers, comparing stories. Eat, drink, be merry. You’ve done something that few before you have, and few will probably try in the future. I think I’m gonna keep this body, keep working out, and see if I can do it faster next time. Good luck.

Microstory 2414: Adrenadome

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TRIGGER WARNING. I want to talk about laws here, but I’m not going to say which laws specifically right away, because if my review ends up in a blurb, then it could get banned—or shadowbanned—for perpetuating harmful ideas. I think I need a few extra words to be safe sooooooo, there we go. Suicide laws. That’s what I mean. Back in the old days, when death meant the end of everything, and there was no going back, it was illegal in many places to attempt or commit suicide. Over time, these laws were changed to account for people’s unique desires and needs. Suicide and assisted suicide became necessary evils in certain situations, especially when a slow, painful death was the only other option on the table. The funny thing is, over time after that, these laws had to adapt again. Once they started sufficiently treating, or even curing, certain previously life-threatening medical conditions, the reasons for wanting to unalive yourself began to disappear at about the same rate. People stopped having very good excuses for not wanting to be alive anymore. Progress in mental health research, the proliferation of advanced medical solutions, and the drive towards a post-scarcity economy, among other factors, contributed to a healthier society overall. The development of more extreme technologies, like maximal longevity treatments, transhumanistic or cybernetic enhancements, and consciousness uploading and transference made it practically impossible to justify ending your own life, or anyone else’s, for that matter. Even the language of the relevant laws shifted to phrases like “reckless self-destruction” or “consciousness back-up endangerment”. Self-harm became illegal once again. Whereas before, dying meant taking maybe only a hundred years from someone’s potential future, now you’re potentially robbing you or someone else of the rest of eternity until the heat death of the universe. That should be profoundly immoral and unethical in anyone’s book. They’re even talking about making normal biological humans illegal, with some arguing that letting yourself die after a pitiful century is tantamount to suicide when framed as a negligible blip in the full timeline of reality. I don’t know about that. What we’re talking about is your body, your choice. Anything short of total freedom in that regard is hypocritical when you really think about it. Castlebourne is a Charter planet, which means that it doesn’t have to follow Core World Law. They still do, for the most part, having modeled their legal system on what came before, but they’re also free to make some changes, such as the definitions of those phrases above, like reckless self-destruction. What does reckless even mean? Does it mean jumping out of an airplane without a parachute—a new extreme sport, which they call skydying? Adrenadome is attempting to test the boundaries of what you’re allowed to do with your own body. I’m not gonna just list the extreme sports that can be found here. You can look them up. They’re all available, along with variants that forgo safety measures entirely, and just let you die, knowing that your mind will wake up in a back-up body moments later. Not everyone is gonna like it. I personally don’t. I came here to study the concept, because I’m a scholar of law. But it’s certainly interesting that these philosophical questions about the meaning of life and death get to play out in the real world, and no longer only on the lips, or the page.

Fluence: Monarch (Part VII)

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Weaver stepped towards Misha Collins, who looked at her with some level of familiarity, suggesting that he had been here before, or had at least seen her somewhere. He wasn’t shocked or scared, but more annoyed. She reached out to shake his hand, but pulled it away before he could reach back. “Sorry. First. Do you know who we are?”

“You’re Holly Blue, Goswin Montagne, Eight Point Seven Point Two, and Briar. I never learned his last name.”

“Have you been to this location before?” Weaver pressed.

Misha looked around. “Yes. About a month ago.”

“I wish I knew which kind of month we’re talking about,” Weaver muttered to herself. That is, had it also been three months in the Ediacaran period? Understanding whether the disparate time periods were somehow linked to one another could help prevent this from happening again. She reached her hand out once more, but pulled back yet again at the last second. “Sorry, do you like...salmon?”

“I suppose I do, as much as anyone,” Misha said, confused.

“I didn’t say salmon,” Weaver tried to clarify, “I said salmon.” This was a test of sorts. When a time traveler encountered someone whose understanding of time was in question, pointedly asking them whether they liked salmon should indicate at least a baseline. If they thought that they were only talking about the actual fish, they probably didn’t know anything, or perhaps just not very much.

“I’m sorry, I don’t hear the difference,” Misha admitted. He was a human, and while this obviously wasn’t his first time around the block, other shifted selves of this group had so far kept him pretty well in the dark about the details.

“Holly Blue,” she echoed, finally shaking his hand, “but you can call me Weaver.”

“You can call me Castiel, if you want. A lot of people prefer it.”

“We need to get you home, Mister Collins,” Goswin said, also stepping forward. “If you’ve met others like us, and returned home, then they must have figured out how to do it.”

“They just surrounded me in a circle, closed their eyes, and then I was home.”

“That’s all it was?” Eight Point Seven asked.

“Oh.” Misha pointed to Weaver. “You tapped something on this refrigerator, and said something about a bubble.”

“I don’t know how he got through the bubble in the first place,” Weaver began, “but we’ll probably have to drop it to send him back. It would be the only safe way to do it. But we should be quick. We never know when other shifted selves will show up. We could have just missed the group that came before us. Measuring time is difficult. I don’t even keep a clock in here, except for my special watch. I may have left it somewhere...”

“Do what you gotta do,” Goswin requested. “Let’s make this quick. We’ll try to send him back where he belongs, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll just go with him.”

“Wait, there was one more thing,” Misha remembered. “You gave me this.” He knelt down and pulled something off of his shoelace aglet, handing it to Weaver.

She inspected it. “This is a temporal tracker. She probably used it to make sure that you were returned to where you belonged, instead of Belgium, or something. You weren’t meant to keep it; that’s why you were able to break through the bubble.”

“I must have missed that part,” Misha said. “I was looking at the sea cucumber.”

Weaver looked over at the glass. “That’s not a cucumber. What was the date?”

“The first time it happened was January 11, 2011,” Misha answered. “This time, it was February 25.”

She handed him the tracker back. “All right. Wait thirty minutes, and then step on it. I mean exactly thirty minutes. Set your watch to it.”

“I understand,” Misha promised.

“Okay.” Weaver went over to the refrigerator, and started tapping on the screen. Blast doors dropped down over the glass, to block the view of the water, and its sea creatures. She kept tapping on it, causing the space around them to shimmer, implying that the temporal bubble was now down. They all felt a small lurch in their stomachs as a result. Still, Weaver kept tapping on the fridge. They started to hear a persistent beep from down the hallway, the exact source of which was not clear.

“I think your smoke detector needs a new battery,” Misha guessed.

“It’s fine, we like fire,” Weaver said oddly. “You heard the man. Let’s put him in a circle.” They all came together, and held hands, even Briar, who wanted to fix this just as much as the rest of them.

Goswin was the captain here, and even though Weaver knew a lot more about this stuff, he needed to step on up. “We’re trying to get our new friend here back to February 25, 2011. February 25 in...”

“Vancouver. You don’t need to know my exact address; anywhere there is fine.”

“Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada,” Goswin said. “Everyone think about that, and nothing else.”

They shut their eyes instinctually, and focused on the goal. None of them wanted to open their eyes for fear of breaking concentration, but success was fairly obvious when they felt a short burst of wind, and heard the flap of wings. They each peeked with one eye, and found there to only be three others in the room. Weaver checked the tracker output on the fridge. “He’s home.”

“What’s to stop it from happening again?” Goswin asked. “It happened once before, it could happen a third time, and more, and nothing can stop it.”

“You hear that beeping noise?” Weaver posed.

“Yeah?” Briar answered in the form of a question.

Weaver sucked her teeth a little. “We should go. Oh, there’s my watch.”

They climbed out of the bunker, and back onto the surface. One set of their shifted selves was standing out there already, with their version of Weaver trying to unlock the door using the secret boulder switch. “Weaver!One,” she acknowledged with a nod of her head.

“Weaver!Two,” the first Weaver replied.

“Self-destruct?”

“Had to be done.”

“How long?”

Weaver!One looked back at the steps as the hatch was closing up. “It’s soon enough. We should all go.”

“We came here for a reason,” the other Briar pointed out.

“The cons outweigh the pros,” Weaver!One tried to explain. “Now hustle off. Don’t let us get mixed up with each other.”

When Weaver!One tried to walk away, Weaver!Two took her by the arm. “Don’t go back to the Nucleus.” Her eyes darted over to the first Goswin. “One of them has taken his job a little too seriously. We barely escaped.”

“One of the Goswins?” Weaver!One asked.

“Just don’t go to the Nucleus,” she reiterated. “At least one group ended up on Dardius, where they were forced to watch some bizarre propaganda films. They’re taking the Reality Wars very seriously, they think we should join, and they have a way of keeping us from shifting away.” She didn’t say anything more about it.

The two groups separated from each other, and disappeared. At least that was what presumably happened. The first version of the crew leapt away first, leaving the newcomers’ fates in question. Perhaps they would go down into the bunker, halt the self-destruct sequence, and start the whole cycle over again. Misha Collins could spend the rest of his life being shifted back and forth to the Ediacaran period, altering future events irrevocably. It was possible that every other Weaver or Holly Blue who took her copy of the crew to that place inevitably made the same choice to destroy it, only for her plan to be unknowingly thwarted by the next copy. Time and reality were now defined by chaos. That was only meant to be the expected end state of the universe, not the beginning of it, nor the middle.

“This is where you grew up?” Eight Point Seven asked. They were standing by a pond in the middle of a small field, with a forest all around them.

“Monarch, Belgium,” Goswin confirmed. “Population: zero.”

“Your family was the only one here?” Eight Point Seven continued the interview.

“There were others...until the very end. In the late 21st century, when they started erecting all the arcological megastructures, of course most people eventually moved to them, or they wouldn’t have been successful. It was the rewilding effort that did it. As antienvironmentalists started to be turned over to death, it became easier and easier to convince people that giving the land back to nature was the only ethical choice given our technological ability to accomplish it. They left their homes, and made new ones. The cities disappeared, both in name, and in infrastructure. I believe they used to call this Ghent. Ghent didn’t get an arcology. The nearest one is closer to where Antwerp was.”

“Yet some people didn’t do that?”

“The megatowers are more environmentally friendly for sustaining the massive population of the whole planet, but it’s okay if a few choose other methods. North America had their circles, and we had our villages. We lived in arcologies too, just not gigantic ones. We lived on the land, but we didn’t live off of it, instead importing produce from vertical farms. That was my job for a time, pulling the cart of food by bicycle. That’s all I did; just pedaled back and forth from the village to the arc.” He stared at the pond. “Over and over and over and over and over again.” He paused for a few moments. “I got tired of the monotony, so I left. I had studied both history and futurology, so I knew that the villages would die out too. It was only a matter of time before kids like me decided that there were more social options in the towers. I won’t get into how I moved up to become the Futurology Administrator of the whole world, but...I’ll never forget where I came from. This is where my mother died. She wasn’t transhuman, so she only lived for 74 years. My dad underwent some treatments, but he stopped them for her. Unfortunately, I guess, it was too little too late. He still outlived her by 21 years. But not here. After the second to last person left Monarch, he left too, and moved into my cluster in the arc.”

Goswin looked up as if just remembering that he was talking to other people. “For those of you who don’t know, the arcologies are modular. Each unit is the same size, and comes with a baseline configuration, which includes a bathroom. It can be turned into a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, a bedroom, or even a simulacrum of an outdoor space, among other variations. And they can be moved around, so he didn’t move into my cluster of units so much as they literally picked up my one unit, and flew it down to another slot; one that had empty units next to it, which we began to occupy together.”

“Where are we in the timeline?” Eight Point Seven asked him. “Are you still on Earth? Is your father?”

Goswin took a deep breath, and twisted Weaver’s wrist, which sported a watch that always told her the time, even when she traveled through it in the wrong direction, or at the wrong speed. “We were very precise with this jump. My younger self left with my dad fifteen minutes ago. We just had my mother’s burial ceremony.”

“Where’s her grave?” Briar asked.

Goswin actually smiled. “Over here.” He led them down the path a ways.

“Monarch butterflies,” Eight Point Seven pointed out as a few of them began to land on her arms and head.

“Our namesake,” Goswin explained. “Like I was saying, they gave all this back to nature, but they didn’t just let it grow on its own. They planted things on purpose according to a very well thought out ecology algorithm, generated by an entity such as yourself. They decided that Belgium would do well with milkweed, and with milkweed comes Monarch butterflies.” He continued through the trees until coming to another clearing. A gravestone marked the spot where his mother was laid to rest, but it wasn’t altogether necessary. A swarm of monarchs were keeping watch over it.

“It’s beautiful,” Briar couldn’t help but say. He was starting to relax into himself.

“We can’t stay,” Weaver said with a sigh. “We have to go back to the Nucleus.”

Goswin nodded gently, though no one was looking at him; they were still watching the monarchs flutter about. “I know,” he whispered.

“You heard?”

“I may look like a regular human, but I have excellent hearing.”

“Are you prepared to meet your possibly evil self?”

He took a beat, but then answered confidently with, “yes.”

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