Microstory 2791: He’s Being Paranoid, No One is Coming

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Jande bolts. He does not wait to see who shows bloodthirst in their eyes. He does not ask questions, or hope to hear other people’s questions. He just takes off, needing to put as much distance between him and anyone who might want to see him dead. Van and the producers are truly sick, not only allowing deaths to occur, but actively encouraging murder. How are they getting away with this? Killing is illegal in the stellar neighborhood, and very illegal on the Core Worlds. It might be a clue that people aren’t really dying, or an old law is so ironclad that it’s a loophole no one can argue against. Either way, he just wants to survive. Even if it means he’ll never be Superintendent, he would rather at least keep living.

They’re still in the vector stadium, though it’s empty of its audience. Everyone is watching at home now. There is almost certainly plenty of smart dust tracking his every move. He doesn’t have the equipment to destroy it. It’s part of the competition, seeing him make it through...or not. He makes it out of the stadium, though. He isn’t looking back because it will only slow him down for precious fractions of a second. If someone catches up to him, there is no point in seeing it coming.

Jande is in the parking lot now. It’s pretty dead, but there are a few random ancient land vehicles scattered about. They may have placed them here strictly for ambiance, which could mean they’re non-functional. But they could also be the means of widening that gap between him and his opponents. But which one to choose? He doesn’t know much about obsolete Earthan tech, but some of these look nicer than others, which implies they would be faster. Is that a trap? Should he choose the boxy-looking one with peeling paint? Or did the producers guess that he would pick that, so they intentionally discharged the battery. Do these damn things even run on electricity?

Oh, it’s a crapshoot. Now he does turn around, but immediately feels a shiver down his spine. Since he didn’t stick around, he doesn’t know if Van provided the other candidates with weapons. They could have bows and arrows, guns, or even rocket launchers. He has no clue. His only hope has not changed since the moment Van said go. Jande has to let his instincts take over, and pick a car without thinking about it.

He runs over to a sweet cherry ride. The door is unlocked, which is either very good for him, or the trap he was worried about. Nope, it doesn’t matter. Always forward, never back. He slides inside. It feels so good, the seat wraps around him perfectly, like the designer knew he would be the one to drive it. Maybe they did. Who knows how long they have been planning? Even if this is a real model from the olden days, the producers could have commissioned a synthwright to modify it, knowing he would be right here, right now. Again, it doesn’t matter. He just needs to make it go. How do you do that?

Jande stares at the console before him. There aren’t any buttons or levers. It’s just a smooth, curved surface. He looks to his left. “Oh. That makes sense.”

Jande climbs back out of the car, takes another look towards the stadium, feels another shiver, then jogs over to get into the driver’s side of the vehicle.

“Welcome to your new Starburst,” the AI voice says in what he has heard described as an Australian accent. “Where would you like to navigate to? Or if you would like, you may browse Aevum’s comprehensive library of entertain—”

“Just get me out of here as fast as you can,” Jande interrupts.

“Posted speed limits require that I travel no faster than ten miles per—”

“Manual mode,” Jande demands.

“Sir, I really must discourage—”

“Manual mode!” Jande screams.

The engine engages. The steering wheel adjusts itself to Jande’s dimensions. A little graphic tutorial appears on the central screen, showing him the basics of how to operate it. It’s not all that different from the vehicles he uses on the farm. The pedals are new, but they look intuitive. And when he presses down on one of them with his right foot, it feels so intuitive too. It feels like this car has been waiting for him since it was invented. It doesn’t even lurch. It knows exactly what he wants from it, even though he’s quite inexperienced. He starts out by taking it a little slow, but he can’t afford to wait much longer. He takes one more look in the rearview mirror, and then he guns it.

He finds the parking lot exit to the main road, and then the highway. They don’t have much infrastructure like this anymore, but if you’re looking for it, the early colonies are the place to check, especially Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. They pride themselves in being low-key and low-tech when luxury is not necessary. Many worlds are building out their vactrain network, but it doesn’t really fit the naturistic vibe of this one. The highway doesn’t either, but it looks fresh and new. He still doesn’t know what continent they’re on, but this could be a closed course built specifically for the game.

Jande is smiling now, realizing how many miles he’s putting behind him. It slowly fades, though. There were other cars in that lot. Maybe none of them was a trap. Maybe they were there to even the playing field. He should have taken the time to disable them. Of course, he wouldn’t have known exactly how to do that, but he could have brute forced it by crashing one car into all of the others before absconding with the only good one. Then again, that would have taken a lot of time. Those people don’t likely know how to drive either. They live in the same time period. Even if they were alive when self-driving was more common, they probably lost those skills. Or he’s just kidding himself, because there are plenty of simulations—both physical and virtual—that will teach you legacy skills like this. The fact is, he is no better off than he was before. All he can do is keep going and hope to run the timer out. Except...the road abruptly ends.

It just stops. There are three little lozenge-shaped signs in a row, sticking out of the ground where the asphalt meets the grass. Jande stops the car and gets out. There was nowhere to turn off for miles and miles. If he tries to double back, he could wind up running into someone who is trying to kill him. The grass is tall, this thing won’t be able to make it through. One of the cars in the lot looked like it was some kind of off-roader, but what you get in versatility, you sometimes lose in speed, and he wanted to go fast. The producers knew this. They knew exactly what he would choose, and they designed the path so he would lose no matter what. There were a number of ways he could have gone, but they probably all end like this. It was inevitable.

Jande shakes his head, disappointed in how they rigged the game. He checks the trunk for supplies, but finds nothing, so he reties his shoes, prepares himself mentally, and walks into the woods. He doesn’t stop moving save for periodic five-minute breaks. He doesn’t want to lose any lead he might still have.

He’s exhausted, but he never lets himself sleep. While he’s delirious and moving quite slowly, a drone descends from the sky right in front of his face. “Sudden Death contest is over. You won, Jande Ter Avest. All other candidates forfeited.”

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.

Microstory 2765: I Came in Like a Wrecking Ball

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Everyone chooses their own ghost to teach them how to drive these cars. Even Jolanda accepts the lesson. She’s not pretentious enough to think that she already knows everything, especially not about her specific car today. For all she knows, there might be a secret button behind the steering wheel that dispenses banana peels. Still, it seems rather pointless for the rest of them to even try, given her experience. Her only meaningful contender is Zelda, but Zelda is a risk-taker. She’s more likely to push it too far, and end up dying in the act, even if she was in the front until it happens. She hasn’t even driven that much in her life, because it places her in too much control, which isn’t thrilling enough.

Elise feels like she’s struggling with it the most, even though she technically has the secondmost amount of time behind the wheel. She’s listening to her ghost—as much as she can listen to a hologram that can only grunt and say a few single-syllable words—but she is not internalizing the lessons. She keeps looking over at the others, particularly when their stationary work is done, and they move on to the practical. She doesn’t want to start. She doesn’t wanna do this. It goes against how she learned it.

The rules were what drew her to learning antiquated skills in the first place. She almost wishes she had never tried driving at all. At least she would start at zero, but now she has much to unlearn. Not that she has any chance of winning anyway. Why risk it? Why place herself in danger when it’s hopeless? Can all seven of them move forward as long as they stay ahead of the other 17? Again, “what are the rules!”

Elise’s ghost frowns. “The rules are that the first six racers move to the sudden death challenge. The rest are killed, or in the case of the automated cars, deleted.”

“Wait, you can talk?” Elise questions. “Why have you not been talking until now?”

“You didn’t need me to talk before. Now you do,” the ghost explains.

“There are seven of us. That number was chosen so at least one person will be killed today. But then the subsequent sudden death challenge will kill everyone else.”

“Sudden death doesn’t mean what you think it means,” the ghost goes on. “I cannot elaborate, but if six players win the race, all six will continue on the hunt.”

Elise shakes her head. “That’s not good enough. We came into this together. Even Miracle is part of the team now. We all deserve to stay together.”

“It was never going to be fair,” he reasons. “That’s what makes it challenging.”

“Such a wise, dead pirate,” Elise muses.

The ghost nods. “I see you at the wheel. You’re more at ease than the others. Even the pro over there looks nervous. I know she has her reasons, but you could actually win this. You have a perspective that none of them does. You lived like the ancients. Don’t underestimate that. They still don’t understand the threat of death, but the skills which you dedicated your life to studying were all developed by fleeting creatures.”

“I’m still not faster than she is, nor braver than any of them,” Elise argues.

The ghost shakes his head. “Again, car racing was conceived by mortals. Anyone can push a button with their foot until it stops and leave it there. You know when to let up. You trained from resources made by people who would die if they didn’t know that.”

Elise sighs. “I don’t know if I wanna win. A part of me wants to gather everyone up and ask them to quit so we leave with our memories intact. I don’t wanna lose them.”

He smiles. “If your bonds are real, you can make new memories later.” Maybe.

Here endeth the lesson.

Elise decides not to do any practice driving before the race. She’s not confident in herself, and is not enthusiastic. Her friends look ready and determined. They may not know the restrictions on the results. She’s not gonna tell them. She’s a liar.

They’re at the starting line now, at the edge of the dome, pointed towards the wall. When those giant metal doors open, they have no idea what they’re gonna find. One thing they have going for them is that all seven of them are sharing the second row. Only two cars are in front of them, which gives them something to fight against without it feeling impossible from the start. It’s a huge track. Since the engineering bots weren’t limited by an audience, they were free to make it as wide as they wanted. They’re probably not even going to be driving in circles, or at least not one single circle.

Elise looks to her right at Minotaur, who doesn’t react. She looks to her left where Colley notices. He frowns at her kindly before refocusing on the road and gripping the wheel tighter. She has to protect these people. She doesn’t want to lose her memories of the ones she has grown to love, but she would rather it be her than any of them. They all committed more to this. They deserve to see it through. She’ll be fine.

The light is red, and has been for the last few minutes, but now it blinks. It blinks faster and faster and faster until it turns yellow. Two cars down, Miracle gives a false start, but she manages to roll back to where she was while it holds at yellow for a few more seconds. The two lead cars take off, and only then does the light turn green, which is either cheating, or one of the rules that Elise failed to hear when she was feeling down.

The six of her friends take off, but Elise throws her car in reverse, and punches it. She slams into the four cars behind her. They fight her, but she doesn’t let up. It would appear that the humans were given superior vehicles to race with. They go down relatively easy. Once the four of them have been sufficiently destroyed, her job is still not over. She still has thirteen more to take care of. So she puts it in drive.

She zips into the dark. It’s only lit enough for her to see where the walls are, and maybe other cars. She’s in the back, though, so she doesn’t have to worry about them anymore. At least she didn’t think so. There’s a small fire up ahead. One of the cars has already crashed without Elise’s help. She has to swerve around it, but immediately has to swerve again because of the second car involved in that crash. They’re both bots, though, so it’s fine. Two more down, eleven to go. She can do this. She can stop them all.

Elise flies out of the tunnel, and onto the road. They’re in a desert. The track is narrower here, so it’s a good thing she was already in the middle. The others aren’t as far ahead as she thought they would be, probably due to this bottleneck. She still can’t let up, though. She maintains her speed, and catches up to the rear car. She saw this maneuver in an educational video once about what not to do, but she thinks she can recreate it. She drives right up and wedges the front of her car into the back of the bot. Now it’s just spinning its wheels. She drives it over and slams it into the barrier. She ends up pointed in the wrong direction, but she doesn’t have time to get turned back around, so Elise just drives backwards for a bit while she catches up with the others.

There we go. Now she’s with a huge group of bots. The problem is, Rage is here too. Three of them have created a line, which she can’t pass. Every time she goes for a gap, they cover it, so she has to try again. She’s being too gentle and patient with them. Elise doesn’t have that issue. She crashes her rear bumper into two of the cars at once. Only one of them skids and hits the barriers, but it’s enough to let Rage pass. As she’s doing that, Elise goes after the other two, stopping them both before the next tunnel.

The track is narrower yet. Only two cars could potentially drive side by side. It’s also no longer always flush with the ground. They’re in a winter wonderland, driving on an elevated track as it snows. The road becomes ice. Fortunately everyone up ahead is smart enough to go slower here so they don’t just fly over the edge. Elise loves this opportunity. She’s literally knocking bots off left and right. Before, there was a chance for them to come back with a vengeance, but not here. Talk about sudden death.

All of the human cars are still going, but none of them is even close to the lead bot. It seems to have no problem with the ice at all. Someone has to put a stop to it. There are only two bots left. If she can stop them, the others don’t even have to drive fast anymore. They can coast to the finish line safely. Frustratingly, the penultimate bot is the smartest one. It knows what she’s trying to do, and out-maneuvers her every time. It’s also stronger than the other bots. She manages to get right next to it, but when she rams the side, it barely moves. Then Elise looks over. Another car has joined them.

It’s Jolanda. She has positioned her car on the other side of the bot. There’s so little space, they have it pinned. As difficult and counterintuitive as it is, and without being able to talk, the humans slow down to a complete stop. Still without talking, Elise lets go and drives on ahead several meters. Jolanda turns the wheel, and knocks the bot over the edge.

Elise backs up again. “Get back up to the front! Only six people can win!”

“I know!” Jolanda shouts back. “My ghost told me about that!”

“I’m sacrificing myself!” Elise shouts.

“I’m sacrificing myself!” Jolanda volleys.

“You’re the only one who can stop the final boss! Go do it!”

“I don’t think we have to worry about that!” Jolanda jerks her head forward.

Its the final bot. It’s pointed towards them at the top of the hill, where there’s another tunnel. It’s revving its engines menacingly, so they instinctively rev back.

“I’m gonna kill him!” Jolanda volunteers.

“No, I will!” Elise insists.

They both take off. The bot takes off too for a game of chicken. This is ridiculous. Only one of them has to die in order to make the math work. It just makes sense that it’s Elise. Jolanda can not go on with the knowledge of having lost this race. When they reunite on the other side of this hunt, someone will tell her, and she will be devastated. Elise will not care. She has to be the one to do this. She takes a deep breath. There hasn’t been much ice for a few hundred meters, but she knows something Jolanda probably doesn’t. Her teachers taught her about something called black ice, and how to spot it.

To Jolanda’s likely confusion, Elise slows down just enough to get behind Jolanda, then bullies her way back on the other side. At the right moment, she gently nudges Jolanda towards the barrier, not hard enough to hurt her, but it does stop her in her tracks. Elise’s car, meanwhile, hits the ice, and goes crazy. She starts spinning counterclockwise, utterly uncontrollably. She can’t even tell where anything is anymore, but she feels the powerful slam of the crash, and for a split second, the sharp twinge of the blade as her helmet cuts off her head.

Microstory 2764: Ghostriders

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In this post-scarcity economy, gold is not valueless. It’s actually quite useful. It has a number of applications in electronics, aerospace engineering, and even medicine. It’s used for all sorts of mundane things. And that’s because, in this day and age, destroying entire planets only to extract their raw material is on its way to becoming a matter of it being Tuesday.

Many treasure hunts end with a cache of precious metals and jewels. They’re not usually quite this extensive, but they signal the end of the challenge. The accomplishment of that challenge is the real prize. Hunters usually don’t even take the treasure, but leave it for the next batch, or if they do, they take only a small trinket to remind them of the good memories. No one needs this much, except major engineering operations. The disappointing part, however, is not the letdown of the prize itself, but that the hunt might be over. They went through a lot, but they still expected more.

They tie the boat off, and step out. They begin to walk around on the cave floor between the piles and piles of goblets, coins, bars, crowns, and other accessories. They’re going to spread out to look for clues. There has to be something, whether this is the end or not. Every hunt tells you when you’re done in no uncertain terms. It’s never simply implied. They don’t need fanfare, just undeniable proof.

“Don’t touch anything,” Minotaur warns. “It’s sometimes a literal booby trap, and sometimes a curse to teach of the dangers of greed, or whatever.”

“We might need to dig,” Jolanda points out. “A clue might be under the gold.”

“You’re right,” Minotaur admits. “Just don’t take anything.”

“Should we look for something special?” Elise asks them. “Like the only blue gemstone, or something anachronistic or out of place?”

“That’s a good idea,” Mino agrees. “Most everything is probably a distraction. The important thing will be simple or not valuable to the pirates we’re pretending to be.”

“Something out of place,” Zelda begins, “like this?” She’s standing beside what initially appeared to be the cave wall. But she’s opening it like a door. It’s heavy, so she and Miracle hold it open for everyone to walk through single-file.

They’re now standing in another locker room. The lights are flickering on for them. Their names are on their respective lockers again. Colley is the first to open his.

“What is that?” Rage asks. “What is that for?”

Jolanda is frowning. “Racing. That’s a racer’s uniform, including the helmet.”

“Why do you look so upset?” Rage questions. “This is right up your alley.”

“Because I know I’m gonna win, and I might have to hurt you to do it.”

“I don’t understand,” Elise says. “Don’t listen to Hrockas when he says only one person can win. We don’t have to follow his rules all throughout. We’re in charge here.” She said it, but she doesn’t mean it. They’re really not. She’s just trying to be positive.

“This is a headless racing uniform,” Jolanda begins to clarify. “It’s a niche race that kind of went obsolete. The helmet gives it away. You see, they didn’t just suddenly come up with mind-transference and uploading technology. It was a grind. There was a time when updates were periodic, rather than continuous. It was metaphysically scary. But not as scary as this. No updates, but a local chip implanted in your head. You see, unless you’re an octopus, the head is the only place where your brains are stored. And it’s a lot easier to protect that above all else.

“Some astronauts were given these kinds of helmets. If something went wrong—if all else failed—your spinal column is severed, and your head is preserved. You lose consciousness, so someone has to retrieve you, and give you a new body. This tech came out of the private sector, so while they had government contracts, they also had private ones. This gave rise to the deadliest format of racecar driving. The ancillary tech wasn’t that reliable. Racers occasionally died because sometimes, their heads were destroyed as well, because of-freaking-course they were. Or sometimes the reintegration process simply didn’t work. They signed waivers, but it was a dark time in our history. Now, with consciousness streaming, the races can technically be deadlier, but reliably temporary.”

“This,” Zelda says. “This is why Hrockas gave us an out. It wasn’t all the storms.”

“Can’t we all pile into a car together?” Elise reasons. “Even compact cars can fit seven if you’re creative and willing to get really familiar with each other’s bodies.”

“The cars are too small. You wouldn’t be able to fit two people,” Jolanda clarifies.

“Now, let’s all calm down,” Rage tells them when she notices everyone growing more stressed out about this. “All we see are the uniforms and helmets. We have no idea what’s waiting for us on the other side of those doors. We might have a choice of challenges. Those helmets might just be manufactured to look like decappers. Let’s first get changed, but keep the helmets off, and go outside. Sound okay?”

The seven of them gladly remove their tattered, disgusting tunics, shower down, and suit up. They walk through the set of doors beyond the showers holding their helmets. They expected to find seven cars waiting for them, but there are instead two dozen. It’s tempting to believe that they will have their pick of the litter, but they know they’re not that lucky. They’re going to be racing against some other team, or other individuals. This obviously raises the stakes. Now it’s plausible that none of them will win. Jolanda is the best driver in their group, but she’s not invulnerable.

What’s interesting about it is that seven cars are sitting separately from the other 17, so they don’t know what that’s about. While they’re examining the vehicles, and debating whether they should get in, or try something else, seven zombie ghosts appear before them. It’s the same ones from the sea before, and they know that, because they grew to be quite familiar with their distinctive looks, despite them all being undead. They’re on the other side of the cars, and end up walking straight through them as they approach the humans. They move much less menacingly than they did before. Once they are a couple of meters from the hunters, they stand there and wait.

“Oh,” Rage finally says. “I think we’re each meant to choose one. That happens on the regular hunts all the time. They don’t expect you to magically know how to complete a task. If it’s a skill, an expert will train you on it. I think they’re our driving instructors.”

“Them?” Miracle questions. “They don’t exactly look the part.”

“Maybe they’re shortstaffed,” Zelda jokes. She steps forward, and points at one.

The ghost reaches out and pantomimes taking her hand. As he’s leading her to a car, he growls but more in a grumpy way, rather than violent. The one-footed captain isn’t here, which would have been awkward since they seem to have personalities now.

Rage sighs and gives the other line of cars the side-eye. “I suppose we have no choice if we want to keep going. Pick your partner. The competition may be pretty fierce. We won’t know until we learn, and hopefully there’s no time limit, because we practiced driving, but we didn’t train for this.”

Microstory 2761: Into the Drink

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This boat isn’t very big, so the crew isn’t a legion of men, but they’re still outnumbered. In the chaos of the initial attack, it’s hard to tell by how much, but fortunately, they have some fighters on their side. They trained as much as they could in each other’s fields, but Zelda and Jolanda are still the best, and have to take the brunt of the combat. Elise has done some martial arts in her day, but doesn’t have any experience fighting moving opponents. Colley is a pacifist, but can defend himself, or someone else. He hides in a corner with Laise, who has absolutely no fighting experience whatsoever.

Meanwhile, the only means of making any headway in this fight is getting the zombie pirates over the edge, and keeping them at bay. They don’t drown, they don’t die, but it does take effort for them to try to climb back aboard. So once they’re over, the living humans end up with the upperhand. The zombies are relentless, however. They also don’t get tired. Their only hope is that this is a nighttime problem. After all, why did they only attack at nightfall on the day they finally lifted the boat? Once the sunrise comes, they’ll cower back to the depths, and the hunters will finally be able to rest.

There it is, that reddish-orange glow over the horizon. Elise can’t stop glancing at it even though she knows she’s meant to be keeping an eye on her sector. She’s holding an oar from the rowboat, and has to keep swatting pirates away. Any second now, there should be enough light. They’re like vampires. In some franchises, it just takes a little more time. The sun has to be a little higher. It often depends on the dialogue.

Three hours later, they’re still at it. Funny enough, despite their collective fatigue, they’ve all kind of grown used to the job. They fight in shifts. Five of them man their sectors of the boat while the other two sleep or rest below deck. They started out with a sixth person down there on high alert, but the zombies never tried to somehow break through, so they categorized it as a non-threat. It’s almost time for Elise’s break. Her eyelids are low as she almost carelessly bonks the zombie on the head again. It’s not scary anymore. Part of it is the sunlight, but part of it is the sheer tedium of it all.

There has to be some way out of this. There’s always a way. There is always a loophole. They may have a random, bizarre weakness that is impossible to know unless you came across the lore earlier, or you have to fix something for them in order to break the curse. The hunters need time to figure it out. They can’t just keep fighting. Maybe Elise can call upon her research skills during her break to search the cabins for any clues. Maybe the zombies simply have unfinished business, and they can help finish it, symbolically or physically. Oh, but that bed down there looked so good. It was short and narrow, and probably not soft, but right now, it might be the best thing in the world. Maybe she’ll just lie down for a quick nap, and then get to work.

Thirty minutes pass, which is twenty minutes after she should have been relieved.

The zombies aren’t geniuses, but after they get knocked down, they realize that that’s where a hunter is, so they move to try a different spot. The hunters sometimes use that to their advantage if they need to get closer to one another. It takes time to control where the next intrusion will come from, but it’s possible. Rage has done that. Now she’s within better speaking distance of Elise. “Where the hell are Colley and Laise?”

“Iono.” Elise can’t even bring herself to say all the words separately. “Laise was s’pose ta take over my spot.” She stands there with a puzzled look on her face.

“What?” Rage questions. “What is it? Do you see something out there?”

Elise swats another zombie. “Her name is Laise. My name is Elise. Do you think we’re related?” The zombie has managed to take hold of the oar, and is trying to wrestle it from her, which they do from time to time when she gets too complacent and lazy. She mindlessly pulls and pushes on it while she waits for Rage’s answer.

Rage is only staring at her. “No, Elise, I don’t think you’re related.”

“Oh, okay. Fair question, though,” Elise decides.

“You’re tired,” Rage argues. “Go ahead and sleep. I’ll take care of two sectors.”

“That won’t be necessary!” Colley cried from the top of the steps. He and Laise have pulled a big sack up from below, and are starting to drag it across the deck. “I know you’re all tired, but we have a way to end this once and for all so we can all sleep!”

“What is that?” Rage questions. Then she has to turn around and fight because a zombie has made it over the bulwark. Laise runs up and provides assistance.

“A mouse trap,” Colley explains once the zombie is taken care of. “Everyone huddle up, and put your backs together! We need to get the zombies into one place!”

“You want us to let them onto the boat?” Jolanda questions from the stern.

“They’ll just keep coming unless we take control! I can say no more than that, because I think we all know that the zombies are smart enough to understand us ! Trust me, we’ve been quietly discussing, and secretly preparing, for this for hours!”

They decide to trust the two of them. As they’re huddled together, the zombies climb aboard. They’re moving slowly now. They might be tired too, or Colley is right and they understand the humans well enough to know that something is up. They’re still not too smart, though, because they naturally group into a single mass, presumably to prepare for the next onslaught.

“Rotate counter-clockwise a little bit.” Laise is in the middle of them. “Perfect,” she says once they’re done shuffling. “Rage, Minotaur, you’re the tallest. You feel what’s at your feet behind you?” After they both confirm, she adds, “you know what to do.”

“Ready...!” Colley begins. “Everyone, run to the closest side to get out of the way!”

After everyone else scatters, Rage and Minotaur run forward holding the corners of a huge heavy net. They raise it over the heads of the zombies and pass them as fast as they can, managing to snag all of them all at once. Colley and Laise take this opportunity to start punching and kicking the zombies so they end up on the floor. The others join in too, of course, even though they still don’t know what the endgame is.

Laise goes around and starts shackling the zombies’ ankles one by one. The chains are already tied to the net, so even if they escape, they’ll be dragging a whole lot of weight. It’s still not enough, though, which is where that sack comes into play. Per Colley’s direction, all seven of them work to hoist the heavy sack up and over the railing. Elise is in back, and not really helping that much, but the job gets done. She touches it enough to know that it’s filled with cannonballs. Once the sack falls over, the net drags all the zombies across the deck, and over the edge too. Now there’s no escape.

Oh, no, it’s not over. “Guys,” Elise says, looking behind them. “Guys!”

When they turn around, they too see what she’s looking at. One of the zombies—the captain, by the looks of it—is still standing there. He’s holding his ooey gooey sabre, and standing on one leg. He cut off his own foot! And he’s got a gun.

A hot blonde girl flies out of nowhere on angel wings. She snatches the evil dead captain up, soars back up in the air, and drops him in the ocean kilometers away.

Microstory 2756: Skull and Bones

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The conveyor belt is heading for another void. This game has had so many chances already to kill them. If this is another attempt, it would be difficult to avoid. There is no way off this ride. Still, there may be a non-lethal obstacle in the darkness, or on the other side of it. Elise gets on one knee, and plants her other foot firmly on the belt. She holds her hands up defensively, prepared for anything. Well, almost anything.

She passes through the darkness, and catches a glimpse of the opaque dome they’ve entered before the belt ends, and sends her over the edge. She falls a couple of meters before landing on her feet on a mound of human bones. The others are starting to help each other up from the piles of thousands and thousands. It’s maybe a hundred meters wide, dimly lit, and getting dimmer. It’s noticeably cold, but not deathly so.

Elise spins around and opens her arms so when Zelda falls too, she can catch her.

“My hero,” Zelda says in a breathy voice from Elise’s arms.

“Just doin’ my job, ma’am.” Elise is really coming out of her shell now.

“Are these the previous secret hunters?” Minotaur asks, picking up a skull. “Does everyone die in here? From what? More acid rain? A deluge? A furnace?”

“Hold up,” Colley says. “Here, help me push these bones out of the way.”

Jolanda and Rage pull the bones between their legs to give him some space.

Colley gets on his hands and knees and examines the floor below. He then grabs a random femur, and snaps it in half. He puts on his loupe specs to examine the inside.

“Wait, how do you still have those?” Elise questions. “Isn’t this a new body?”

“They were in my locker,” Colley explains as he’s changing lenses. “They’re not my regular ones. They upgraded me.” He looks carefully. “Fake. They probably all are.”

“Plastic, or something else?” Rage picks up another bone and breaks it.

“No, they’re organic,” Colley answers. “The layering is asymmetrical, which is how the best machines do it, but it’s definitely bioprinted. They forgot to include the tendon entheses, and there’s no remaining viscera on the floor, or even residue.”

Elise wades through the bones to get to the wall, not grossed out anymore. “Look for an exit, or signs of Miracle’s friends. They may have already escaped.”

“Those bozos?” Miracle questions. “Not a chance.”

“I found a door!” Jolanda shouts. She’s on the far side of the dome.

“Don’t open it until we’re all over there!” Rage commands. “Elise, take safety.”

Because any door has just as much chance of being a trap as being their salvation, one player is always chosen to stay behind as the designated survivor. It’s also possible that they’ve been doomed, if the door has a time limit, and can’t be reopened, so the role is risky, rather than necessarily safe. Rage has a plan to cycle through the roster fairly.

Elise climbs up to a particularly high bone hill to have a better vantage point, and give her more time to survive if opening the door, say, also opens a drain in the floor.

Once everyone is in place, including Miracle and the strangers, Jolanda waves her hand in front of the entry panel. The door slides into its pocket, revealing...a second door. This one is different, though. Even from here, Elise can see that there are indentations on the door face that are vaguely in the shape of a human body.

“It’s a puzzle,” Colley decides. “We have to fill in the gaps with a full skeleton.”

“Rule number three,” Rage begins. “Don’t try to unlock a door that’s already unlocked.” She nods at Jolanda. “Go ahead, Jo.”

Jolanda takes hold of the knob, turns it successfully, and opens the door.

On the other side is what looks like a city square. Elise climbs down to get a better look. People are milling about, preoccupied with their own lives. They’re dressed in traditional early 21st century garb. Only two things look out of place. A man and a woman wearing the same blue shirt are balancing two bananas each on their head while they sing a song quite poorly. Two other women wearing the same purple shirts are running past them, and opening a mailbox that is conspicuously sitting out in the open.

“Other hunters,” Elise determines as she draws nearer. “This isn’t right.”

“This is obviously our way out,” one of Miracle’s people says.

“Hrockas Steward said that we wouldn’t be hunting around other people,” Minotaur reminds him. “Why break one of his few rules right at the beginning?”

“Who cares?” he asks. “I’m exiting and checking that mailbox for our next clue.”

“I don’t think we have clues,” Colley postulates. “We’re not racing, we’re not being eliminated per leg. I think we only have one goal, and we’re supposed to go straight to that. No, Elise is right. This is a red herring, or some kind of trick.”

“It’s a choice,” Miracle corrects. “If we walk out this door without solving the skeleton puzzle, we’re forfeiting the game. That’s probably where those two assholes ended up. They don’t know what they’re missing. Don’t follow in their footsteps.”

The guy sighs. “Okay, boss. We solve the puzzle.” He steps back in.

Jolanda closes the door back up, and everyone spreads out.

The puzzle is harder than it looks. They’re not just looking for a single copy of every bone. They’re all slightly different sizes, just like they would be if these once belonged to living beings. Each puzzle bone can hold in place on its own on the board, even if the one below it hasn’t been found yet, but only if it’s the correct one. Otherwise, it just falls out. Elise deduces that they used magnets. She turns out to be right.

Like Colley with his spectacles or Zelda with her parachutes, Minotaur never goes anywhere without their multitool. They found it in their locker too, and it includes a very small magnet. It’s not powerful enough to sweep the area for the right bones, but it’s easy enough to test one quickly and toss it aside before moving on to the next.

They created an open space kind of near the door, where they carefully stack the duds. That way, they don’t accidentally test the same ones multiple times. It’s Elise and Jolanda’s job to keep the used stack away from the untested piles by pushing bones around, and maintaining enough space between them at all times.

It starts getting dark in here, and no one has a light, so they open the door just so the natural light comes in for them. Unrelated hunters periodically come up, thinking that it’s important for their race. It’s Rage’s job to back them off by simply saying, “parallel play”. This is a known phrase that warns players that their games are intersecting, and that if they try to find a clue here, they will end up on the wrong track.

After several hours, they finally have the last piece. Fittingly, it’s the skull. It’s a good thing they’re done. The streets are still bustling, but it’s now dark outside too.

“Colley, you do the honors,” Jolanda offers since he served as their puzzle master. She closes the door again, allowing him to ceremoniously place the skull in the last slot. The whole skeleton glows, and they hear a whirring sound. Once Jolanda reopens it, they see the same street again, but now, even though it has only been a few seconds...it’s completely empty.

Microstory 2755: Please Don’t Hold the Handrail

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Two of Miracle’s guys don’t hesitate for a second. As soon as that door cracks, they’re running right for it. They evidently have no loyalty to their teams. Elise doesn’t know how long they’ve been training together, but she’s not finding it so easy to leave them behind. She didn’t even always want to do this. The only reason she agreed is because of the team. If they’re going to take that from her, what reason does she have to go on? She’ll have to think about this first, and ignore that door in the meantime.

Minotaur jumps out of their seat too. They only manage to intercept the second guy, body-checking him against the wall as the first one slips over the edge right on the other side of the door and plummets to his death. Minotaur stands up and catches their breath. They’re not used to an analog body either. “You’re welcome.”

Miracle stands from her own seat and casually walks towards the lethal exit. She stands before her former teammate as he’s catching his breath too. She slaps him hard.

“I’m sorry, boss. You just talked so much about the prize. He and I started coming up with what it could possibly be. We think it’s unlimited energy credits. We could go anywhere. We could do anything. You know what, I’m not sorry,” he goes on as Miracle spins around and places her back to him. “What did you expect, pulling me out of Bloodbourne like you did? Running for my survival is what I do best. That’s why you—”

Since she turned around, Miracle has been mocking him with her facial expressions, and by mimicking mouth movements with her hand. She suddenly donkey kicks him in the chest, sending him over the edge to fall to his death too. She takes a deep breath, and half a step forward. “Does anyone in this room need me to define the word alliance for you, or are you at least slightly smarter than a panda bear?”

Rage calmly stands now, in just the same way Miracle did before. She approaches her slowly before suddenly jamming her forearm against Miracle’s clavicle and pinning her to the monitor, cracking it. “I know what an alliance is, but I don’t work with killers. You stay out of our way, and we’ll leave you alone too, but if you ever treat any one of my people like you did your own friend, you will wish you had jumped out too. Savvy?”

“Savvy?” Miracle echoes in an accent. “Are ya lost, love? This isn’t Piratedome.”

“Do. You. Understand me?” Rage reiterates, squeezing her chest even harder.

“Ooo, buy me dinner first, and I’ll understand whatever you say, Mistress.”

Rage angrily lets go and turns away from Miracle. She has spoken about this with the team before. It is absolutely crucial for her to temper her anger so her nickname remains firmly ironic, rather than simply not technically accurate. She centers herself with her eyes closed for a moment. “Zel, you’re up. Remember, they know what we’ve done. The tricks you used last time probably won’t work in this place.”

Zelda gets out of her seat and picks the sconce that Elise used to free her up from the floor. “I need silence,” she announces before she drops it into the pit. “Fifty meters.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Elise determines. There was something wrong about the way the sconce sounded compared to the way the men did. Their shouts actually didn’t sound right from the start, but she initially shrugged it off because she doesn’t know the acoustics of this room, or the pit. Now she suspects they’re vastly different than they appear to be. The void before them might not exist at all.

Elise takes her shirt back off, and uses it as a glove to remove a shard from the monitor that Rage broke. She sets it on the floor, reflective side up. She then gently nudges it towards the blackness to get it in the right place. Once it’s partway into the dark, she pays especially close attention to the way the light bounces off of it at the threshold. She bends down and starts to retie her shoes while she speaks. “A few years ago, I took a course on volumetric emitter placement. These days, an AI will decide where to place them for optimal image projection, so it’s become a lost art, but designers, architects, and engineers used to have to plan it carefully.

“Which of you has seen the movie Thunderbolts*?” Elise asks the whole group.

Colley raises his hand. “It’s a perfect example of combatting historical superhero fatigue in the early to mid-21st century media by actually lowering stakes.”

“Remember the elevator scene?” Elise presses.

“You don’t mean...” Colley begins.

“I need you,” Elise encourages. “You’re the only one who doesn’t need me to say it out loud, which might skew the results for us. Get over here, we’ll be fine.”

Colley walks over to join Elise. “Up or down?” he asks, sighing.

“Sideways,” Elise answers him. She turns him around then turns around too so they’re back to back. “Leading foot is one, trailing foot is two. Ready...one.”

Colley plants his left foot against the wall while Elise plants her right one.

“Now two.” They both step fully off the ground, holding themselves up by applying pressure to the walls with their feet, and each other’s backs. They begin to chimney walk through the darkness. One of them always makes sure their leading foot has something to press up against before the other tries their side. They could always end up with a wider hallway, or some sort of opening that completely destroys their plan, at which point they would have to go back. They can see nothing in this void.

They don’t end up having to go too terribly far, though. After only a couple of meters, they are out of the holographic void, and into the hallway on the other side. A people mover is running at incredible—and incredibly unsafe—speed below them. That’s what it was. The men who were sent over the edge merely fell on this, and they cried bloody murder because they were being suddenly dragged away into the unknown after believing that they were gonna fall to their deaths. This doesn’t explain the sconce, and it doesn’t explain why their friends aren’t responding to their shouts now.

“We’re gonna have to go back,” Colley determines when they give up.

He’s right. The belt is moving far too fast for their puny human legs to carry them the wrong direction to explain it to the others. If they don’t chimney walk back, their friends will assume that they fell to their deaths too. They prepare themselves mentally, call upon a second wind, and make the hard return journey to the chrysalis chamber.

Once they reappear from the void, Jolanda and Minotaur help them get off the walls safely so Elise and Colley can explain the situation. Rage then conceives the plan.

Elise should feel tired, but she’s wired, so she volunteers to be on carrying duty. She and Zelda hold each hunter by the shirt and pants, low to the ground. They toss them into the void from that position, allowing them to fall onto the belt with a far lower center of gravity. It isn’t painless, but those first two guys probably had it much worse.

Finally, only the two of them are left. “How do you wanna do this?” Elise asks.

“I’m strong enough.” Zelda picks Elise up and drops her onto the belt on her own.

As Elise is flying down the hallways on her ass, she looks back to see Zelda surfing on it like a pro. What a total badass. Elise may be falling in love.

Microstory 2753: Dropoffs Only

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The football match started right after this Miracle Brighton woman claimed that she and her team were interested in the same thing in Treasure Hunting Dome. Rage didn’t have a chance to talk to her afterwards, because they were separated into different locker rooms, and then she couldn’t locate her again. Rage says that she’s not entirely surprised. The possibility of an ultimate secret prize isn’t something that she randomly came up with on her own. The rumor has been around since Treasure Hunting Dome first opened. Over the decades, with no proof that anyone ever won it, however, most have lost interest. They assume now that it doesn’t exist. Perhaps the rumor was started by the planet owner, who wanted to build hype, or it started organically. The fact that nothing has ever come of it has only served to intrigue Rage more, and Miracle evidently had the same idea. They try to find her on the local network, but no luck.

They train with each other in the Sandbox warehouse for about another week, but they have to be careful, because their efforts are not being made in secret. If they wanted complete privacy, they would have needed to go to a different planet. No one has ever said anything, but it’s plausible that the Custodians who run the game will use the team’s experience against them. If they get really good, for instance, at driving on the right side of the road, they might end up with a task where they have to drive on the left. And if they practice both, they might not get any driving challenge at all, and it will have been a waste of time. There’s no way to know, which also means there’s no reason to keep doing this indefinitely. They all agree that it’s time to dive in head first.

Before the big day, they check into the Apex Suite at the Palacium Hotel for a good night’s rest. Minotaur was able to secure it for them on short notice because they know someone who knows someone who knows someone. They would have been—

Smoke. Smoke and fire. Elise wakes up to find her room ablaze. She checks her consciousness stream and finds that it’s been severed. Her last upload was three hours ago. If she doesn’t get it turned back on, and dies here, the person who boots up in her backup body won’t really be her. It will only be a copy who thinks she’s Elise. How can this place be on fire? Things don’t catch fire anymore. It just isn’t done.

The door bursts off its hinges, and falls to the floor. Jolanda scrambles back up. She scoops Elise off the bed, and carries her out to the common area. It’s on fire too.

“I’m not streaming!” Elise warns.

“None of us is!” Jolanda is still carrying her as she finds her way across the room.

Zelda is holding a chair, pounding the leg against the edges of the window.

“We’re two kilometers up and that’s security glass!” Elise warns. “It won’t break!”

“Not without some help!” Zelda says. “Stand by Mino, Jo!” She keeps pounding.

“I think you can put me down now,” Elise tells Jolanda.

“We agreed that I would be the one to take you out,” Jolanda replies.

“What?” Elise questions. “What do you mean, take me out?”

Rage appears to their left, holding Colley like he’s also a little baby.

Zelda stops striking the glass, and puts her steampunk goggles on. “Ready?”

“Do it,” Rage orders. She grips Colley tighter. “Everyone turn off your lungs!”

Zelda takes Minotaur in one arm, then reaches out with the other to grip the doorknob of what’s either a bathroom or a closet. She yanks it open. It explodes.

Fire rushes out of the room, and crashes into the window. It’s destroyed instantly, and in that same instant, all six of them are sucked out.

Jolanda never lets go, but now she looks more worried than ever. Even though she has less experience skydiving, she doesn’t have none. They wouldn’t have done this if they weren’t each packing the right equipment, like parachutes and/or wingsuits. Why does she look so scared? She holds Elise tighter with one arm while she maneuvers her other one, hovering her watch above Elise’s face.

It takes a second for Elise to realize what Jolanda is trying to show her. Their altitude is about 35,000 meters and falling. They should not be anywhere near that high. That’s damn near the apex of the whole freaking top. Despite its name, that’s not where the Apex Suite sits. It’s just at the top of the building. She turns her head enough to look back up, but whatever they just fell out of has now been covered by clouds. She can see the other two pairs, though. Wait, four—no, six. Other people are also falling alongside them, presumably from some nearby suite that was also on fire. What is happening?

They keep falling for about a minute before Elise gets her head turned enough to see land below. It’s coming up fast. If Jolanda doesn’t do something soon...

“You can turn your lungs back on!” Jolanda shouts. “Or don’t, you don’t need them! But you do need to hold on tighter, with your arms and legs! I need to pull!”

Elise tightens up and buries her face in Jolanda’s neck. She may be falling in love.

Jolanda pulls the ripcord. The parachute flies out of the back of her belt. Elise’s legs slip off, and begin to dangle, but Jolanda wraps her arm back around her to compensate. After a few seconds, the initial shock wears off, and now they’re just floating. They’re actually going to be okay. They’re going to survive this.

Elise gets another look around now, and starts to run attendance. Rage, Colley, Zelda, and Minotaur; everyone’s here. She looks in the other direction, at the strangers. They’re actually not strangers. She recognizes Miracle’s face. She’s holding the girl who did a backflip on the football pitch. Instead of a parachute, they’re staying aloft via Miracle’s white feathered wings. Which is all sorts of crazy, but it’s clearly working.

As they’re drifting towards the ground, Elise feels something bite at her arm. Some kind of bug? She can’t get a look at it to check. She’ll just have to tough it out. But then she feels another bite on her other arm. She also sees rain begin to fall all around them, which doesn’t feel like a coincidence. She looks up in horror to find holes forming on the parachute above them. The holes are growing as something begins to shred the material. Rain plus stinging plus tearing equals only one thing. Acid rain.

Either someone is trying to kill them, or they’re just having a little fun, and they don’t know that the team isn’t streaming properly. The fact that they were somehow moved to the very top of the dome leads her to believe that this is attempted murder. Hours from now, when the unscheduled data gap triggers emergency resuscitation procedures, her latest backup will wake up with no idea what went wrong. She will have no reason to suspect foul play, but at least some version of Elise will exist. With that, there is a modicum of hope for justice.

After only a few seconds, the parachute can’t take it anymore. It violently rips apart, sending Elise and Jolanda away from each other. Not that it matters. At this height, even their advanced substrates won’t survive it. Elise keeps falling and falling until she runs out of room and splats on the ground.