Microstory 2585: Renata Has Grown Bored as They Wait for the Next Assault

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Renata has grown bored as they wait for the next assault. She and her mother successfully forced the first group of attackers off the road, and then another one once they reached the log cabin, but there hasn’t been a peep since. They’re still here, having already buried the bodies in shallow graves. The worry is not that someone else will come, but that they won’t. They are the decoy team, while Quidel and Lycander are the ones in charge of the real package. There is a procedure for meeting back up later, but that’s following 24 hours of no activity at the safehouse. It involves switching cars, and traveling to a small town farther east.

“Hey,” she says, holding her cup of tea. “Are you the strong, silent type, or can you talk?”

“I can talk,” the driver replies. “I just don’t usually say much.”

“That’s basically the definition of the strong silent type. Can I sit?”

“Be my guest.”

She sits down on the swing, still wrapped in her quilt. It’s funny, sitting here with a stranger, but she’s sick of being inside, and there is no other seating on the porch. She takes a sip. “What about your name? Is it a secret? Does my mother just call you The Driver?”

He chuckles. “It’s Polykarpos. Polykarpos Goldd. Everyone just calls me Polly.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Polly. I’m Renata, by the way. I don’t know if I ever said that.”

“Madam Granger speaks of you often.”

“She does?”

“Yes. She’s quite proud of you.”

“Did she tell you to say that?”

“I work for her, but I have my own opinions. She tells me what to do, not how to think.”

She nods, and doesn’t speak for a moment as they just enjoy the sunrise. “How long have you worked for the NSD?”

“I technically don’t. I work for a company that contracts to the NSD. Many low-level jobs like mine are like that.”

“I wouldn’t call it low-level. That was some smooth driving while we were being shot at. You didn’t flinch at the bullets. You must have some tactical training.”

Polly smiles. “Well, I wasn’t always only a driver.”

That’s when Libera interrupts. “Ren, could you help me with something? We need some more firewood from the shed.”

“I can do that, sir,” Polly says as he’s standing up.

“No, I want my daughter,” Libera discourages.

Renata knows this tone well. Libera doesn’t actually need help with anything, but wants to speak privately. She downs the rest of her tea, which has already gotten cold out here in the winter woods, and sets it precariously on the window sill. A metaphor for her and her mother’s relationship?

They head out into the shed, and Libera just stands there, not even pretending that the request was genuine. “You don’t need to be talking to him too much.”

“I’m a big girl, and I actually think he’s younger than me.”

“That’s not the point,” Libera contends. “He’s...irrelevant.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean, that he’s expendable?”

“Look, some people in this world are simply more important than others. You could call them...exemplars. I’m an exemplar, you’re an exemplar. Polly is just...background. I have no plans for him.”

“Plans? What about Lycander, is he background too? I saw the way you looked at him, like you couldn’t trust him. Do you too have bad history?”

Libera smirks. “Lycander is something else.”

“And Quidel?”

“He’s very something else.”

Renata shakes her head, and consults her watch. “Let’s go find that small town where we’re supposed to meet up.”

“It hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet,” Libera says.

“We have to wait that long to make the call,” Renata reasons, “but we may as well get there. I would rather wait by a real bathroom.” She begins to leave.

“We have a nice bathroom here.”

“Get the car!” Renata shouts up to Polly as she’s walking back to the cabin. “I wanna get some real breakfast, instead of these MREs.”

“Yes, sir.” Polly hops down the steps, and heads towards the back, where they hid the car loosely under some brush.

Renata, meanwhile, picks her teacup up to prepare to wash it.

Libera starts walking up the steps as she’s watching Polly walk away. “He followed your orders.”

“What?”

“You told him to do something, and he didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even look over at me for guidance. He just went off to do it.”

“Yeah, we bonded a little. He trusts me. I’m sure I was nicer to him in those two minutes than you ever have been, if you think he’s only background,” Renata says with airquotes.

Libera scowls at her daughter. “Go make your bed. We should leave this place looking like we’re trying to make it look like no one has been here for months.”

“Yes, sir! Commander, sir!” Renata replies sarcastically. She goes back into the cabin even though her bed is already made because she’s no longer a child. While she’s finishing the dishes, she hears the sound of gunfire. She drops the cup into the sink, letting it shatter. She grabs the pistol from the counter, and heads outside.

It’s another group of attackers, hoping to get their hands on their special device, not knowing that it isn’t really here. She sees three men a few meters from the cabin, pointing their shotguns at Polly. He’s sitting in the dirt, holding the right side of his chest with one hand, and trying to drag himself away from the shooters with his other.

“One more step, and he dies!” one of the bad guys says in a Javelotian accent. Javelot is one of their closest allies. “Gun on the ground!”

Renata drops her gun.

“Wait!” Libera is walking through the door behind Renata, her hands up in supposed surrender. In one hand, she’s holding the decoy bag. “You came for this, you can have it!”

“Drop it down the steps,” the Javelotian guy demands.

“Does that sound wise and safe?” Libera asks rhetorically. She sets it down on the porch, and begins to back away from it, as does Renata in the opposite direction.

Two of the Javelotians creep up to it, pointing their weapons at the ladies, but of course, it doesn’t matter. The bomb in the bag explodes them both when one of them tries to open it, and the surprise is enough to push the remaining Javelotian off balance. Libera pulls her own pistol out of the back of her pants, and shoots him dead. It was a short-lived attack, but they’re not out of the woods yet.

Castlebourne Capital Community: Here by Default (Part I)

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The year was 2521. Dreychan didn’t agree that it should be, though. He had the idea to stop tying themselves to the Earthan calendar, and form their own identity. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that popular of an idea, and one of the reasons was that a lot of people living here didn’t have a very decent grasp of the passage of time anyway. On some homeworlds, it wasn’t necessary. They produced what they were indoctrinated to believe should be produced for the Empire, and that was just how things were. You didn’t need to know what day it was. The transport ships would come and grab what they demanded on their own schedule. As long as everyone kept up with quota, everything was fine. They weren’t living in the Goldilocks Corridor anymore, however, and were not subject to the Exin Empire’s rule. They needed to assimilate into this region of space while somehow forming a new, distinctive culture. That was no easy feat, and it wasn’t Dreychan’s job to do that. Perhaps in the future, when the war is over, they will be able to focus on their own self-fulfillment. For now, though, they just needed to survive.

Everyone was arguing over each other, and Dreychan was staying out of it. He didn’t have much choice. They never listened to him anyway. They called it the Council of Old Worlds. Everyone here represented the planet where they once lived, and were elected by their constituent refugees, according to whatever methods they chose. Of course, a ton of people didn’t even understand the concept of voting, so it took some time, and a lot of education, but they all figured it out. Dreychan was different. You might even call it special, but be careful who you say that to, or they’ll laugh you out of the room. He was the only person from his planet who agreed to come to safe harbor on Castlebourne.

Ex-777 was one of the few places where the residents didn’t suffer. They were the ones benefitting from all the labor that the slaves on the other planets performed. The only known world more desirable was Ex-999, or maybe Ex-69, depending on your priorities and proclivities. The rest of the Council hated Dreychan, which he thought was ridiculous. He was the one person who defected. If anything, they should revere him. They escaped to a better world, but for him, it was a lateral move, but not even that, because he was too busy to enjoy all the recreation that Castlebourne had to offer.

Ugh, he should stop feeling sorry for himself. Yes, he was only on the Council by default, and yes, he deserved to have his voice heard anyway, but it wasn’t irrational for them to ignore it. He wasn’t representing anyone, but that was exactly why they did need to listen, because this council shouldn’t exist. They shouldn’t be maintaining their old world connections. They should all become one peoples. How could he get through to them?

“What do you think?”

Dreychan just sat there, and yawned a little.

“Drey,” she urged.

“What? Are you talking to me?” They weren’t usually talking to Dreychan.

“We need your opinion.” What was her name? Ex-777ers were all born with names, but just about everyone else only had a number. It was a way for the Empire to dehumanize its subjects. Once they came here, they were told that they could start using names now, and there were various ways of choosing them. He just couldn’t recall hers right now, which was very bad of him. She was actually quite nice, and didn’t seem to hold the same grudge against Dreychan as the others.

“What was the question?” Dreychan asked awkwardly.

“Oh my God.” Now, Dreychan knew Maaseiah. There was no way he was gonna forget a name like that. The Corridor was 16,000 light years away, and actually predated Earth’s bible times due to time travel, so none of Earth’s religions existed there. This meant that Maaseiah had to do a ton of research to decide on the most obnoxious name he could possibly find. He seemingly wanted to put his delusions of grandeur on full display, and he freakin’ nailed it. “Do you want to be a part of this, or not?”

The lovely woman sighed—Lubiti! That was her name. He didn’t know why she chose it. He was remembering now that she was from Ex-883, which manufactured spaceship shielding plates, and really that was it. “Calm down, Masy.” She always called everyone by a nickname. It was exciting to learn that names could be unique and interesting, and even more exciting to learn that each one came with variations and alternate spellings. She turned to face Dreychan again. “We’re trying to decide whether we want to move Castlebourne closer towards the Core Worlds, or stay out here in the Charter Cloud.” This was a fascinating concept. The closest colonies to Earth were the most cohesive, and the farther out you went, the less familiar the culture and laws became. These were divided into three-dimensional bands. The Charter Cloud wasn’t the farthest, but it was beyond the stellar neighborhood, which meant they were afforded no protection from hostile forces. They had to protect themselves, and the decision was already made to simply leave the area entirely.

“Hrockas needs an answer,” Maaseiah explained. Hrockas literally owned this whole planet himself. He was the one who built the domes, and filled it with all the fun and interesting things to do. He graciously let the refugees live here when they had nowhere else to go. He was even more powerful than the Council. “He said he needed it yesterday, which I suspect was metaphorical, though he might be expecting us to send a message back in time, which we will need to look into. Teemo, write that down.”

Teemo wrote it down. He was from a world with very few refugees, so it was relatively easy for him to be elected the council representative, though unlike Dreychan’s case, the ones who chose to stay behind did so because they were too scared. They were right to be, given Castlebourne’s predicament now.

Dreychan had already thought of this, because he was good at being ahead of the game. He just didn’t have all the facts. “If we move closer in,” he begins, “will we join the neighborhood? Will our status amongst the other worlds change?”

“No,” Lubiti answered.

“So we’ll be...weird. There might be colonies farther out than us who are better protected due to us being an anomaly.”

“I don’t agree with that interpretation,” Maaseiah countered. “To get to one of the other colonies, they might have to pass by us. In fact, I propose we intentionally place our star close to another colony, so we can receive some ancillary protection from them. From what I gather, the Teaguardians volunteer their firepower to protect the colonies. Surely if we ask for help, they will just help us, even if we’re not technically entitled to it. It would be a lot easier if we were only a couple light years away when we ask, though.” Teaguardians were battleships that came from an outpost called Teagarden, which orbited Teegarden’s Star. They evidently didn’t stray far from the root word. They were only obligated to provide protection to the Core Worlds and the stellar neighborhood. Castlebourne didn’t qualify, and it was sounding like it never would, even if they moved themselves closer.

“The whole point of moving our host star is to not have to ask for protection,” Lubiti reasoned. “We’re trying to hide, which is why we should limit the number of people who know where we are. Our location has already been leaked. Let’s not let it leak again, because we don’t know if we’ll be able to move again. Hrockas never told us how it’s going to be accomplished in the first place. It may be a one time thing.” She was so right about that. “Do you agree?” she pressed Dreychan.

“I do,” he said, and not just because she was pretty, and he never did find someone to love on Ex-777. “We must stay in the Charter Cloud. Our anonymity is our greatest strength. We can swing quite far from here, and still stay a hundred and eight light years from Earth. Hell, we could go a little farther.”

“We can’t go farther,” someone else contended. Dreychan didn’t know his name, but he used to work out of Ex-741, which was a giant spaceship manufacturing plant, so he understood all this light year/special relativity stuff. “I mean, we technically could, but we shouldn’t. Castlebourne serves as a recreational hub for the entire colonial sphere. Everyone wants to come here, and the population is rising exponentially. Now, quantum communication allows them to make their connections without knowing our coordinates, but vast distances are more difficult than closer ones. It’s called coherence. Hrockas will not want to make the casting equipment work harder than it has to. If anything, we should get a little bit closer, but I agree that we ought to stay in the Charter Cloud, and mostly move laterally, relative to the Core.”

“We must remember that it is not our call exclusively,” Lubiti jumped back in. “Hrockas is asking for our input, not our decision. He probably will want to move a little closer, but stay in the Cloud, because that’s what gave him the freedom from the establishment. And don’t forget that we have our own defenses. We don’t need the Teaguardians. If the Oaksent finds us again, and we can’t get away, we can fight back. We will fight for our new home.”

“I agree with Biti,” Dreychan said.

“Of course you do,” Maaseiah spat.

Dreychan ignored that outburst. “If for no other reason than to stay in his good graces, we should give Hrockas the answer that he prefers. What is easier on him and whoever has this power to move a sun? What do they want to do?”

“Okay.” Council Chair Rezurah stood up. “I think it’s time for another vote. If we can secure the supermajority right here, I will be able to meet with Hrockas today to determine the particulars. Worst case, we will get back to you tomorrow morning for Council approval. If all goes well, we should be traveling at relativistic speeds by the end of the month. I urge you to vote wisely, as this decision could mean the difference between staying hidden, and being discovered by the enemy. Teemo, you’ll count this time, as you have not done it in a while.” They rotated this responsibility to make it fair, and to make sure that no one would have more than one opportunity to cheat.

The vote went in favor of Lubiti and Dreychan’s plan. Well, it wasn’t really theirs, and very much not his. Around half of the people agreed with it before they even started, and half of the rest had come around. Rezurah went off to her meeting with Hrockas, which she was already late for, and the Council meeting was closed. Dreychan was just going to return to his habitat, as he did every day, but Lubiti stopped him in the hallway. “Hey, a few of us were going to have some fun in 2.5Dome. You interested?”

“I don’t know what that is,” Dreychan responded, when he really should have just politely declined, since he didn’t like anyone who might be going besides her, and he wasn’t really the fun type. All his old peers were surprised that someone chose to give up paradise to become a refugee, but not surprised that it was him. He liked the boring life.

“It’s hard to explain. You just kinda have to see it. Come on!” she encouraged.

He did want to spend more time with her, to maybe see if his sudden feelings were just because she was the only person in the world who would give him the time of day, or if they were more substantial. “Okay. Sure. Why not?”

They sat alone together in a vactrain pod. The others had evidently either already left, or would be meeting up with them later. Despite Lubiti’s mild protests, Dreychan ended up looking through the prospectus for this adventure dome. There was reportedly a time when video games on Earth were so unsophisticated that they were two-dimensional. The player could move up or down or side to side, but no other direction. In fact, a lot of them apparently wouldn’t even let you move your character backwards, if there was something you missed before. The other half dimension was because the playspace was in base reality, so it was still technically 3D. Still, they would be in a very narrow field of play, and had to make it through the level without falling, or being killed by something. Both the prospectus and Lubiti assured him that the dome came with a number of different varieties. Most of this world’s visitors could die and come back to life in new bodies, so they could actually fall into a river of lava and be fine. For people like them, who only had one life to live, the levels were a lot safer, though the reviews promised that they were still fun. Good for her, not great for him.

The train stopped. They stepped off, and approached the counter for registration. “Froenoe, party of three. We already filled out our info, and signed consent forms.”

They did? That was news to Dreychan. He certainly didn’t sign anything. Whatever, he trusted her. But hold on, party of three?

Lubiti sensed his confusion. “It’s better in small groups. The others will be running their own game nearby.”

“Yes, I have you here,” the registration bot said to Lubiti. “Your third is already at the entrance.” He set two green bracelets on the counter between them. “These are your security bands. If you ever run into issues, squeeze that button, and a door will open up on the side wall, where you can step out onto a platform that follows you around the whole time.” Scary, but at least there was a theoretical way out.

“Thanks,” Lubiti said. She took the bands, and then they listened to a little more about how safe it was, that no one has ever been permanently hurt, and all that stuff.

They then took another train to their playspace, where they found none other than Maaseiah waiting for them. That was the most surprising development today. He and Lubiti didn’t seem to like each other, and he really didn’t like Dreychan. “Is he ready?”

“No. That’s the point,” Lubiti replied. Something had changed in her voice. She was no longer smiley and light, but overserious, and maybe a little angry? It was so confusing, Dreychan didn’t understand what was happening.

The three of them stepped through the entrance, and onto the first platform. It was very narrow. They would be able to pass each other, but only if they squeezed by, facing the restrictive walls, one way or another. After the door closed, a third wall slid across in front of it, and then began to make its way towards them. Yes, this was one of the ones that didn’t let you go backwards. Lubiti and Maaseiah walked a few meters forward. There weren’t any obstacles yet. They must have wanted you to get acclimated to the environment first. Shockingly, they exchanged a nod, then pressed their emergency buttons at the same time. Two doors opened up next to them.

“What’s going on?” Dreychan questioned, laughing, trying to sound friendly.

“We can’t trust you,” Maaseiah contended. “We can’t trust you to know where Castlebourne will move to. For all we know, you’re the one who leaked our location in the first place.”

“I didn’t,” Dreychan insisted for the umpteenth time.

“And now you never will.” Lubiti took one step through her special exit.

“You know I have one of those too,” Dreychan reminded them, shaking his green bracelet for them to see. It glowed a little in the dim lighting.

“Press it all you want,” Lubiti replied with a shrug. “I broke it.” She left, as did Maaseiah.

Dreychan pressed his button. He pressed again and again, but she wasn’t lying. There was no escape. The moving wall hit him in the ass, forcing him to move forward. He just stood there, letting it slide him down the path, ready to fall into the next foam pit or water tank. But it wasn’t foam, or water. It was lava. He could actually die here.

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Microstory 2575: Renata Emerges from the Train, and Approaches the Confident Stranger

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Renata emerges from the train, and approaches the confident stranger. She looks him over, and then around the platform as the train races away to pick up new travelers. It looks just like any other station, except the stairs that should lead up to the surface are missing. Instead, a half-flight leads to what looks like a fairly open area. It’s lit by a soft green light. She can hear the activity of other workers, but it’s fairly quiet. “You hijacked my train.”

“No,” the man contends, “you stepped onto my train.”

“A hundred and eighth and Deliverer?”

“That’s just to get you on the right train. But enough about that.” He gestures for her to follow him up the steps. “I will not be telling you my name unless and until you pass the first test. Whether you expected it or not, your entry into this program is determined by a practical test, which you could not have studied for, unlike the written exam that got you here in the first place. We are a secretive organization, obviously, and we’re not going to trust you with those secrets until we find out what you’re made of. In the old days, we would have our candidates sit in a waiting room, where a contrived disaster would strike, and they would have to solve the problem in whatever way they thought was best. They were in no real danger, but they thought they were, so they acted accordingly. Of course, some failed, and some excelled. We’ve since changed tactics.”

“Changed tactics to what?” she asks him.

He holds his hand up in front of the open door, offering her to walk in first, to a room where two other people are waiting. “We decided that it’s okay to warn you that it’s coming.” He places his hand on the handle, and prepares to close it with him still on the outside. “The danger is real, Miss Granger. If you fail, you could die. Good luck, you three.” He shuts the door.

Renata spins back around, and begins to assess the room. The other two were sitting, but now stand and tense up. So many potential threats here. The floor is a metal grate, which could be housing hidden flame-throwers underneath. The vents could release a noxious gas into the air. The sprinkler system on the ceiling could drop caustic acid onto their skin. Or the pipes are just holding water, and that loose wiring hanging from the broken outlet is primed to electrocute them. There’s a cot, a table, two chairs, and a small dresser or nightstand. There’s also a sink, but she doesn’t know if it’s functional yet. They have no idea what’s coming, but protecting themselves from as many things as possible is paramount right now. The other two look like lost little puppies, so she’s gonna have to take charge. “Strip the bed. It looks like we have a fitted sheet, a top sheet, and a pillow case.” She steps over to the sink to test it. Water comes out. It smells fine. It doesn’t sting the back of her hand. It’s room temperature. “Hand them to me.”

The two others do exactly what she says without question.

She runs the sheets under the water, and hands two of them back while she keeps the pillow case. “Drape them over yourselves. Breathe through them in case there’s smoke.”

They comply again.

“Get on the table.” As they’re doing that, Renata checks for poisonous creatures underneath the mattress, then climbs onto the bed. “Okay. Any minute now.” It turns out to be that very minute. They start to hear the screeching of metal. The pipes on the opposite wall begin to shake. A scent wafts over from them, which assaults her senses. She can’t place the smell, though. It reminds her of rotten eggs. What is that? What smells like rotten eggs. The other two begin breathing through the fabric. Whatever the poison is, these sheets are probably not going to do them any good. She drops her pillow case to the floor while she jumps over to one of the chairs. The floor could still be dangerous, so she best not risk it.

Renata hops like a bunny over to the broken outlet. She takes out the gum that her mother gave her, and smirks. They didn’t expect her to have this on her person. She unwraps one stick, and lets it fall, because she only cares about the wrapper. She forms it into a bow-tie shape, and prepares to place it between the wires.  “Stay covered,” she orders. Just as some kind of powdery something or other bursts out of the pipe, she completes the circuit. Electricity surges through the wrapper, and sets it on fire. Knowing that it’s going to burn out before she can use it, she uses it like a match to set the rest of the pack of gum aflame. It’s not going to last long either, but just long enough. She hops off the chair, and onto the nightstand. She holds it up to the sprinkler system, and before the flame can burn out, the water is released. It’s not acid, so that’s good.

She smiles as she watches the water make contact with the powder, assuming that it’s neutralizing it. It doesn’t seem to quite be doing that, though, or at least not good enough. She’s now seeing a gas begin to fill the room. Was it always there, or was the water somehow creating it? Then she starts to cough, as do the other two candidates. It gets worse and worse as she starts to feel like she’s going to die. Then she falls off the nightstand, and lands hard on the floor.

Microstory 2286: Cathartic to Go Out Alone

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I did a bad thing yesterday; I escaped. I left a note, and my phone was on my person at all times, but everyone was still worried about me. I knew they would be, but I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I know it’s not the same thing, but my life has felt so stifling these days, like I’m on house arrest. I wanted to be free, so I took the car for a drive. I found a small cemetery pretty far outside of town, and just sat there on one of the stone benches in the freezing cold. I’ve always felt rather comfortable in cemeteries, probably because there usually aren’t very many other people around. They make most people sad at best, and uncomfortable at worst. I go there to think, but also to peruse the headstones. I like to see all the different designs that they carve into them, and to note how many are grouped in families. I have an obsession with time, as you know, so I also look for the oldest grave, and do mental math on people’s lifetimes. Sometimes it really is sad, like when the year of death is the same as the year of birth. It was cathartic to go out alone, even though I really wasn’t supposed to. I was feeling so trapped, but it was still wrong of me, and I received a proper scolding from my security firm. I’m just still not used to being so attached and dependent on others. I mean, that’s not really true, is it? My life has always been a mess. I’ve always relied on others. Too much, truthfully. Money was meant to change that about me, but it’s only made it worse. Man, if I can’t ever go back home, it might be worth it just to escape this world, and start over fresh somewhere else. What’s that, you say? My writing? How’s my writing going? Does it help? No. It’s a nothing burger, as the saying goes. I’m feeling very unmotivated to write anything; fact or fiction. I think I’m probably gonna give up again.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: The Rock – Part 3

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The Rock diplomatic discussions were over. Of course, the various representatives for the five former realities currently living side-by-side in the Sixth Key were going to stay in contact with each other, and diplomacy was never over. Even if they managed to integrate into a single unified peoples, internal conflicts would require constant care and consideration. Everyone was happy and unhappy at the same time, and that was all anyone could ask for when it came to something like this, especially at this incredibly unprecedented scale. The two major issues that they needed to cover were how to distribute resources, and how to organize some sort of joint form of governance. Things could always take any number of steps backwards, but they were ready to deal with that on their own, without any help from Pryce Tree, Team Matic, or the Vellani Ambassador. They found suitable locations in their own universe to handle anything new that came up.

There was only one thing left to do before the team could finally get back to their mission in the Goldilocks Corridor. As soon as the meeting was officially adjourned, Pryce Tree and Princess Honeypea disappeared, as did the delegates from the true main sequence. Everyone else still needed to get back to present day, and to the Sixth Key, or to its membrane twin, Fort Underhill. This other universe was attached to Salmonverse, but it could only be accessed at one location, for security reasons. Even a bulk traveler could not realistically enter the brane from a different spot, as the walls of the membrane were hyperdimensionally thicker than natural ones. For now, there wasn’t much traffic between the two conjoined universes, but that could change in the future, so Hogarth Pudeyonavic was currently erecting a checkpoint station to facilitate border crossings. Until that was finished, they just had to drop their own names to the little guard vessel, and go on through the breach.

Theirs was not the only biverse in the bulk. A few others were linked, like two stars orbiting each other. There were even rumors of a triverse somewhere out there. And when this happened, for whatever reason, the region of equilibrium between them was given a special name. They were now in the kasma. No one on the Ambassador was aware of the difference between the kasma, and any other part of the outer bulk. Perhaps it was an otherwise meaningless distinction, there only to designate its proximity to the connected branes. There was a bit of a lurch as their ship’s inertial dampener array began to recalibrate itself for the difference in environment. In a vacuum, you would be in a constant state of freefall, drawn towards the strongest source of gravity. In an equilibrium, gravity operated at an even distribution, which made it feel like every atom in your body was being pulled in every direction all at once. The strength of this pull wasn’t enough to spaghettify you, but it took some getting used to. That was why the internal dampeners were so necessary. They were taking longer to recalibrate. Hopefully, this would not be a problem on the way back.

“I would think that we would not feel such a thing from our little pocket dimension,” Carlin noted as he was stepping onto the bridge. Everyone else was either in the visitor’s pocket, or sitting around Delegation Hall.

“I wasn’t sure either,” Ramses replied. “I don’t know that much about it. I wish we were spending more time here, so I could take some more thorough readings.”

Olimpia shivered. “We’re spending long enough.” She hadn’t technically been in the kasma before, but was trapped between the two halves of the daughter universe. It too existed outside of the membranes, so it probably operated under the same physics. Her feeling of unease was not out of nowhere, and something that they should have been concerned about going into this final leg of the Rock mission. Fortunately, she lived there for untold time. This trip, however, would only take about an hour and a half.

Leona hugged her from the side with one arm. “We’re almost through.” The kasma was about three AU wide, at least here, which could have been incidental, or deliberate on the creator’s part. The reframe engine did not work inside, and in fact, they were unable to travel at high subfractional speeds. They were maxed out at about the quarter the speed of light. Their attempts to push it faster than that threatened to tear the ship apart at the seams.

They were watching on the viewscreen, but there wasn’t much to see. As they were too close to the nearest brane to view it in its full form, there was almost nothing but utter darkness. A pinprick of light marking their destination into Fort Underhill had appeared, now that they were only several hundred thousand kilometers away, but that was it. They were decelerating for safe entry, but they still would have covered the distance in a matter of minutes. Suddenly, a spacetrain appeared out of nowhere, roughly perpendicular to their vector. It was the Transit, of course.

Leona slammed her hand down onto the shipwide intercom. “Brace for gravity turbulence!” She pulled her hand away so she could slam it down again to the emergency stop button. There weren’t many physical controls on this thing, but that was an important one to include in the design, along with the touchscreens. “Full stop!”

The ship came to a complete stop, though Leona’s cry was her instinct to be safe rather than sorry. If anyone had an open glass of liquid, some of it would have splashed out, but they were otherwise okay. In normal space, a stop was a misnomer, as everything in the universe was in perpetual motion. But they were no longer in the universe, so it was extremely possible to be totally still. They just sat there in the equilibrium, and waited for the Transit to make its own stop in front of them. Everyone looked around. Someone was being recruited for the Transit Army. It could be any one of them, or hell, all of them. Usually, when the Transit appeared, time would stop for all but their target, but no one reported this happening. Everyone stayed in realtime, but perhaps that was a consequence of being in the kasma.

“Unidentified beautiful purple ship, this is Azura of the Transit, please respond.”

Leona opened a direct channel. “Transit, this is Leona Matic of the Vellani Ambassador. Who are you here for?”

A different voice came back after a mic bump, and some feedback. “Leona, this is Saga, but I go by Freya now. I’m looking for my daughter.”

“Does the Transit have anti-teleportation tech?” Leona asked.

“No, it does not,” Azura replied.

“Prepare to be boarded.” Leona switched off comms to address the team. “Olimpia and Angela, please stay with the delegates. Ramses, man the bridge. Mateo and Marie, you’re with me.”

At the last second, Carlin took Mateo in a bear hug to tag along. They were now all four in the Transit, which none of them had ever seen from the inside before. “Not cool, dude,” Mateo complained.

“Sorry, I had to see this,” Carlin responded. “No regrets.”

Leona approached the woman who looked just like Saga, but something shifted in her brain, forcing her to be absolutely certain that she was actually called Freya. In fact, she wasn’t even an Einarsson anymore, but a Hawthorne. Still, they reunited with a hug. Leona then shook the hand of the woman standing next to her. “Azura, I presume?”

Mateo was searching through his handheld device as Azura was nodding. He found what he was searching for. “I thought I recognized the name. I’ve heard it before, and saw you briefly. You’re an agent of the Maramon.” Centuries ago, when Mateo and Leona were separated for a long time, he was trying to rescue billions of human refugees from the universe and planet of Ansutah. During this desperate act, a Maramon broke into the facility, and co-opted the portal machine towards his own ends. Azura was one of the people that he sent off to god knows where. There were other names in this section of his list, including Cain, Abel, Seth, Luluwa, Awan, and Lilith. They were named after characters in the bible, no doubt. Then again, this involved time travel, so which came first, those chickens, or their eggs?

Azura nodded again. “I’m a hybrid, human and Maramon. You’re right, I was sent to spy on Missy Atterberry in Universe Prime, but I abandoned my post immediately. Actually, I abandoned it long before that. I secretly swapped my destination to Universum Originalis, billions of years before Missy would ever show up. I was bred to despise humans, as were my brothers and sisters, but that did not work on most of us. We make our own choices.”

“My daughter trusts her,” Freya explained, “and if Treasure says she’s okay, then I choose to believe as much.”

“Your daughter is Treasure Hawthorne?” Mateo flipped through his list again. “She’s on here too.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Azura said, “but best not give us any information about it. There is little chance that she has yet experienced meeting you in her personal timeline.”

Leona nodded acceptingly, and moved on. “What made you think that Treasure was here?”

“Thack,” Freya answered. “She can witness events in other branes, but not outside of other branes. The last she saw her, Treasure was taking my former ship, the Cormanu out of Salmonverse, but they never exited. Well, they do show up eventually, but Treasure isn’t there, and the ship has been repaired, so that’s some other point in the ship’s timeline. Time, right?”

“So if Treasure left one universe, and never entered another, she has to be in the outer bulk somewhere, including possibly the kasma?”

“That’s right,” Azura confirmed. “We had no idea that you would be here, but we were hoping that you knew something. Have you encountered anything unusual here? Anything at all?”

“No,” Leona answered apologetically. “It’s been smooth sailing. No anomalies detected. Though, we’re not experts on the kasma,” she added per Ramses’ interjection through comms. Yet. He was loving the chance to spend more time here to gather data. They all suffered through an awkward silence for a moment. “Well, we would help you find her if we could, but we have no idea. We actually need to get over to the other side to drop off all of these deleg—” She stopped herself when saw the viewscreen. “Are those readings accurate and in realtime?” she asked.

“Of course they are,” Azura replied.

“Ramses, where’s the aperture? I don’t see it anymore. Are we drifting?”

“Hold, please,” Ramses said, leaving them holding their breaths for a minute. “No, the aperture is gone. They’re both gone actually. I’m only getting faint readings.”

“Don’t bother trying to make it the rest of the way,” came a familiar voice through the Transit’s communication array. It was that angry Fifth Divisioner who kept coming back to irritate them, like a latent disease. He was the herpes of the antagonists world. “My alt closed it on the other side. You’re trapped.”

Freya opened a channel. “This is Freya Hawthorne, Engineer of the Transit. You do realize that we can travel to other universe, right? We don’t need a permanent aperture to fly through.”

“We reinforced the membranes too,” A.F. clarified. “Your little toy train isn’t going anywhere. Some of you will die there. Others will be retrieved shortly.”

“Sir, there may be a chance if we try to breach the cleavage between the two universes, but we have to go now,” one of the Transit crew members claimed. “That’s the main difference between the kasma, and any other region of the outer bulk. It carries the same properties, but is cut off from everything else, as a pond could be just like any other body of water, but still isolated by vast swathes of land.”

“Before you escape,” Leona began, “can you take on some extra passengers?”

Freya turned to her engineer. “Get it ready.” She turned back to Leona. “Get your people over here. You’ll have to leave your ship, though.”

Leona laughed, “no, we won’t. Rambo, get ready to pack up the Ambassador. We’re taking it with us, but I want everyone on board the Transit first, so Waltons and Olimpia, start teleporting them over two by two.”

Mateo jumped back to help with those efforts without being asked.

“There’s plenty of room,” Azura said. “We’ve only recruited a couple of cars worth so far. The problem is, I don’t know where to go.”

“Just take us wherever. We’ll figure out how to at least get back into Salmonverse later, even if that means seeking help from whoever runs the Crossover. I assume they use better tech?”

“Does a smartphone use better tech than a flip phone?” Azura asked rhetorically. “The membrane for Fort Underhill is already too thick for us. That’s how Hogarth designed it. We actually would need that aperture, just as you do.”

Freya’s engineer reported that they were ready to go just as Ramses was reporting that the Ambassador was empty, and ready to be folded into its pocket dimension.

“Come on over!” Leona ordered Ramses.

A minute later, he appeared, grasping the model size of the Ambassador. He was on the floor and unconscious. It would seem that surviving in the equilibrium was not the same as surviving in a vacuum. Mateo scooped him up, and demanded to know where the medical car was. Azura told him, and he teleported away.

Freya pushed the button, and the Transit flew off at the speed of light. According to her engineer, the kasma was like a tube, about three astronomical units apart, but theoretically several dozen AU long. At one of these ends, they theorized that it tapered off so that the branes weren’t technically touching each other, but there might have been a passageway just large enough for them to squeeze through. “We were wrong!” she cried as they drew nearer. “There’s no cleavage! We’re just gonna crash into it!”

“If there’s no space for us to get through,” Olimpia said, pulling the Sangster Canopy out of her bag of holding, and opening it up. “Then I’ll make space.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 24, 2445

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They were still getting updates from their friends all over the Goldilocks Corridor. Things were changing. The Ex-666ers had formed a rebellion, and were at the beginning of a war against the establishment, particularly the military planet of Ex-182. It was pretty bad, and some will fault Team Matic for starting it, but this region of space was being ruled by an oppressive empire. Only a naïve fool would think that the end of such unjust violence would be caused by an abstract injection of peace. It was always going to end up like this. Things were going to get worse before they got better, but they were going to get better, and in order to keep going, everyone had to truly believe that.

After they left Korali with her people on Ex-18118—a designation which still bothered Ramses—they jumped back up to the Vellani Ambassador, and flew off to a random meteor to prepare for their next mission. They were finally going to Ex-42, which would hopefully give them the answers that they need to find Ex-69, which was their true goal. That was why the updates regarding the freedom fighters from Ex-666 were important, because it sort of gave them permission to skip all of the worlds in their original path. It was time to buckle down and focus. They didn’t have a plan, because they had yet to meet anyone who had ever been to Ex-42, except for Korali, who admitted to only having seen a very small part of it. Besides, while she was friendly with them, and promised not to rat them out, she remained loyal to the Empire, and refused to provide them knowledge that could dismantle a system that she still believed in.

While they were gone, the ship parked itself in a hiding spot, and turned itself invisible, as per usual. This was a particularly risky mission, though. They would likely face profound opposition from whoever ran the archives. Being invisible was only good enough while they were stationary. When they were moving, even at only subfractional speeds, they still gave off a heat signature, just like any other vessel. They needed some way of being totally imperceptible, to the naked eye, and other sensors. This was where the Heat Shunt came into play. This was one of those projects that Ramses worked on when he wasn’t actively participating in missions. Though not completely finished, it was finally ready to at least be used once. It worked by shoving all waste heat into a totally uninhabitable pocket dimension. The space within this pocket was not infinite, so all that energy had to be released eventually, which they were intending to do at safe times, like when they were traveling at reframe speeds anyway, or near a star, whose intense radiation would mask the negligible signature of a heat dump.

This made them truly invisible, as long as they didn’t forget to purge it eventually. Ramses included safeguards, which would trigger a purge automatically as it approached critical mass, but this was not a perfect solution. What if they were, say, on the surface of a planet, or docked at a space station? He was contemplating a means to a telejettison subroutine, which would dispatch the dimensional generator to a safe distance, but it wasn’t only about distance. The specific vector mattered, and that was always different. The teleporter might have to calculate the destination on the fly. To address the constantly changing variables, it was probably better to make those calculations constantly as well. Hopefully, this was not anywhere near a problem yet, and they wouldn’t have to worry about it until another day. For now, it just had to work in the first place. “Hot pocket is live,” Ramses announced confidently.

“Is that what we’re calling it?” Leona asked.

“You got a problem with that?”

“I guess not, they don’t exist anymore.”

“What don’t exist anymore?”

Leona was done with the conversation. “Is everyone ready to go?”

They were all standing on the bridge. While their enhanced substrates would help them survive in many harsh environments, redundancy was a core principle of SCR&M, so they were also wearing Integrated Multipurpose Suits. These were not the result of one of Ramses’ projects. They were standard dress for spacefarers in the stellar neighborhood, and to varying degrees, average, everyday people, and Mirage had equipped the Ambassador with enough for the whole team, and more. They came in layers, each one designed to protect the wearer from projectiles, blades, concussive forces, or even radiation. Different models had a different mix of these layers. The ones that they were wearing right now had all of the layers, for ultimate protection. To be honest, they looked pretty badass, standing there in the same sleek black and gray outfits, their air packs and helmets affixed to the back with magnets. Though, they didn’t have to look the same. The outer layer could shift colors to match personal preferences. They nodded affirmatively at Leona’s question.

“All right. Yalla.”

Marie engaged the subfractional engines, and headed towards the inner solar system. Before they knew anything about this place, they expected to find another space station, like Ex-467, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t a planet either. According to Korali’s intel, it was the smallest possible coalesced asteroidal sphere. That was, it only had enough gravity to form into a sphere, as opposed to the usual oblong shape of some other subplanetary bodies. A moon. It was basically a moon, except that it orbited the host star directly, and had Earth-comparable surface gravity, which Korali figured was powered artificially by a microsingularity in the center, though no one ever specified to her while she was there, and she never bothered to question it.

They made it into orbit. Ramses had to stay with the Ambassador, so he could monitor the new hot pocket. He insisted that he do this alone, so the rest of the team could teleport into the facility, even though they had agreed to never let that happen. They were already down one person, and they still didn’t know what they might be up against in there. He promised to stay on comms, and request help if he needed it. To be fair, his would probably be the safest job. Theirs was not going to be easy. Stealth continued to be vital while on the ground, and there was a downside to that.

“Okay.” Olimpia huddled them up. “Invisibility is invisibility. There’s no magical way to let you see others who are also invisible. I suppose Ramses could try to work on that later, but until then, we need to lean heavily into our group empathy. Try to stay connected at all times. We don’t have a built-in homing device to locate each other, but we should be able to get a sense of distance and direction. I thought about having us hold hands, or tying a rope between us, but there are so many things that could go wrong with either of those options. Invisibility is hard to maintain; harder than other illusions. You have to constantly let the light pass around you, and I do mean to use the word let, because if you concentrate on doing it, you will probably only end up psyching yourself out. Just...go with the flow.” She loosened herself up to demonstrate extreme chill.

“Thank you, Pia,” Leona said. “If any of you feel like you’re losing it, jump back to the ship. It’s better to be safe than sorry. We don’t know what people look like there, or how well they recognize each other’s faces. We might be able to blend in with them with holographic illusions, but it’s impossible to say for sure, so this is our only hope. The situation may change when we get down there, but I can’t promise anything. We will resort to brute force if we have to. I want..that information. Is everyone cool with that?”

They nodded.

“Okay.” Leona nodded too, and then looked back over at Ramses. “You good?”

He was munching on a snack, so he just held up an a-okay sign.

Leona made sure to make eye contact with each member of the away team. With a shrug of her eyebrows, she decided to repeat, “yalla.” They turned themselves invisible, and jumped.

They were immediately assaulted by a sensory overload when they landed inside the archive facility. A siren was blaring, trying to deafen their ears. Lights were flashing all around them, making it impossible to get a good look at what was around them. They were immediately wet, and getting wetter. It felt like a room temperature mist was falling all over the place. When they could get a look at it, the water appeared to be a neon orange, rather than transparent. They found themselves on the floor pretty much immediately, or that’s what they assumed. It was also difficult to keep track of the passage of time as they were squirming around in...baby powder? Someone yelled that they should try to teleport back up to orbit, but they couldn’t. The rubber band snapped them right back to where they were whenever one of them tried. At least the teleportation dampener didn’t hurt, as it did on that one planet. It was just an unbreakable barrier.

“Korali gave us up!” Marie cried.

“I won’t believe it!” Mateo shouted back.

“Who else knew what we could do?” Leona questioned. “This is obviously a trap for us!”

“Who else knew?” Mateo echoed. “Anyone who noticed that we only ever show up once a year, like Santy Claus!”

They could sense Olimpia trying to send Ramses the feeling of escape that they agreed upon, which was marked by rapidly switching between regret and satisfaction, over and over and over again. He replied that he understood by sending it back. After a few times, he left his own feelings on regret, which was likely what he was truly feeling at the time, due to having to leave them behind. They didn’t make any sort of specific plan for what to do after the designated survivor escaped, but he would probably go seek help from Ex-666, or maybe one of the Caretakers.

The lights and sounds ceased, but the mist still fell, and they were still covered in the powder. Theoretically, all they would have to do was to incorporate the new outer coating on their bodies into the invisibility illusion, but they were not feeling well enough to do that. Mateo was particularly out of sorts since he was relentless with his attempts to teleport back to Ramses, and was extremely exhausted. They were only as strong as their weakest link, so they were stuck as the bad guy walked up to them.

“Sir, be careful,” someone said.

“I know what I’m doing.” They recognized that voice. It was Bronach Oaksent himself. Yay! They didn’t even have to figure out where Ex-69 was! Their enemy came right to them. How nice of him. Now he just needed to give them a few minutes to several hours to recover from this, and then they could put up their dukes. He crouched down in front of Leona. “How does it feel? How does it feel, knowing that nothing you do matters? You think you made any sort of impact in my empire? You think that was the first prison break I’ve ever seen? You think I can’t blow up all of the ships that they commandeered with a wave of my hand?” He held up a hand, and kept it aloft.

Leona blinked, struggling to see him better, as the mist cleared up, and her vision returned. She saw him smirking, and occasionally looking over at his own hand, as if he was anticipating that dreadful wave, and that he didn’t necessarily have any control over it. There was a chance that an actual wave of that hand could trigger the mass death that he was warning them about. “State your terms,” Leona responded, making herself fully visible again, and staring back at him with an expression of professionalism, but not letting herself appear weak, or submissive to him.

“Call your boy back. I wanna take a look at that pretty purple ship o’ yours.”

Leona tapped on her comms. “Ramses, come back. Open a channel, and ask for a place to dock.”

“I’m on my way, sweet girl,” Ramses replied.

Bronach dropped his hand and chuckled. “I admit, we can’t detect if that message went out, or if you’re bluffing, but you go ahead and send another one. He has ten minutes, or I’m killing one of you. Then it’s one person every...thirty minutes, I guess.”

“He heard,” Leona explained.

“I’ll be there in five.”

“He’ll be here in five. Tell him where to go.”

Bronach looked up at his man-servant, and nodded. The man-servant walked away with purpose. Bronach stood back up himself, and suggested that the team do the same. “No more tricks, please. I’m an honest man. We may disagree, but know that. I don’t like to lie, and I don’t like to fake it.”

Leona stood, and took a breath. “Even Donald Trump didn’t drink alcohol. Doesn’t make him a saint.” The rest of the team stood as well, now visible.

Bronach laughed. “I don’t know who that is.” He started to wander around the room, playing with the mist that continued to fall, though it was no longer neon. “Do you know why I called this place Ex-42?”

“Because it holds the answer to life, the universe, everything?” Olimpia figured.

“No,” Bronach contended. “Wrong reference. It’s because the information stored here keeps the island from blowing up. He placed airquotes around the words, implying a connection to the show LOST, though it was difficult to comprehend a reality where an alien had a frame of reference for that and Douglas Adams, but not Trump. He smiled. “And it does more than that. It does a lot more.”

“Remember the lining of your suit?” Ramses asked through comms. “You noticed how different it was from the standard model. Open your hands, and tap both of those seams twice fast with your pinkies. The hot pocket is about to explode, so on my mark...” He waited for a few seconds. “Now!”

The seams that he was talking about were around their crotches. The gesture that he was describing carried a crude meaning, which was surely the point. But still, they had to do it, and they did it in sync. Personal force fields formed around them just in time for the explosion that blasted into the room. The ship was not designed with a weapon, but that heat shunt could be purged safely...or not so safely. They were protected, but not unmoved, by the eruption. It threw them across the room, but they didn’t run into a wall. Instead, they landed in a river outside.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 12, 2433

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Leona peered at the viewscreen. “A shipyard, you say?”

“A shipyard, and a ship graveyard. A sizable portion of the surface is riddled with old ships, new ships,” Ramses explained. He looked more excited than a child on Christmas day. “All shapes and sizes.”

“You wanna take one?” she asked.

“Noooo,” he insisted. “I mean, if the shoe fits, I guess... But it has everything we need to build our own. The place looks abandoned.”

“You don’t have a life signs detector, though, so you don’t know that. All we can do is search for radio waves.”

“Yeah, but look at it down there, there’s no activity.”

“They could be lying in wait,” Mateo suggested. “This feels like a trap. We’re going in a straight line. They’ll always know where we’ll end up next.”

“They couldn’t have set all this up in just a few years,” Ramses contended. “Trust me, it’s fine. But...”

“But what?” Leona questioned.

“But we’ll need to land this little vessel down there to get to them. We can’t teleport to the surface without it.”

Leona was suspicious now. “Why not?”

Ramses breathed out through his nose, worried about how he’ll be received. “Okay, you know how most ships in our little underworld of time travelers have a teleportation field, right? Instead of just letting micrometeoroids hit the hull, we teleport the objects away as they pass through the field.”

“Right...” Leona encouraged.

“Well, the Exins apparently use that technology too, and...all of those ships down there are...passively active.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” She shook her head, getting kind of annoyed with him. “Passively active?”

“The fields are in standby mode. They’re not constantly using power, but if you try to make a jump anywhere down there, sufficiently close to the materials I need to build us a real ship, the generators will react, just as they would to any other celestial object. They’ll activate briefly, and then close back up again.”

“How do you know this?” Leona asked incredulously. “Have you seen this phenomenon before, a giant collection of ships with teleportation field generators?”

“No,” Ramses assured her, “I tested it with a probe.”

“What probe? We never talked about any probes.”

Ramses acted almost offended. “I built a probe. I thought it made sense to start using them to scout ahead. It’s designed to search for Vitalie too, so no one will ever need to go on that mission again. At least, not at first. As soon as it finds the pod, someone can jump there to wake her up, and greet her. And that will continue to work, just not here.”

Leona sighed. “Ramses, what happened to the probe? Was it sent back like a slingshot?”

He seemed afraid to answer, but he did. “There’s a game that you people used to play in the before-fore times? There’s a metal ball, and you hit it with these little things, and it bounces around...”

“Pinball,” Mateo realized.

“Yeah, it was like that.” Ramses nodded. He started pointing at the screen. “The probe was here, and then here, and then here, and then somewhere over there, and then I lost contact, because I think it was ripped apart by the tidal forces of overlapping teleportation fields.”

“Sounds like a wild ride,” Leona said sarcastically. “We could sell tickets.”

“Well, that’s why I want to land the ship, so that doesn’t happen!” Ramses argued.

Leona’s eyes widened in frustration. “The field isn’t teleporting teleporting objects, Ramses. It’s teleporting anything that falls into the field. Why would our ship survive that where the probe didn’t?”

Now he smiled. “Because our ship also has a teleportation field, which we can use to counteract the effects. We can force them to cancel each other out, and make it all the way through. I’m sure of it.”

“I assume we don’t have these fields ourselves?” Olimpia asked.

“No,” Ramses answered. “That’s not a bad idea—we would basically be bulletproof and punch-proof—but no.”

“I say we leave,” Leona voted. “It looks great down there. A real smorgasbord of amazing technology that we could salvage, but it’s not worth risking being ripped apart inside the Roche limit of two conflicting teleportation fields.”

“It’s usually more than two,” Ramses corrected.

“Oh, well, in that case...”

“Leona, I can do this. I’ve done the math already.”

“When did you do the math? We just freakin’ got here.”

Ramses put on a pompous face. “I’m fast, because I’m just that smart.” He reverted back to normal. “You can check it yourself, if you want. We have a little time, but I do want to get started. I’m sick of these cramped quarters. Pocket dimensions just don’t feel real to me. The AOC was designed to get you and your friends to the next planet over. It was never meant to house a full crew for the long-term. We made-do, but technology has progressed since then, and I want to create something better now. This world gives me that chance, and I don’t want to pass it up. We’ll survive, because we always do. That’s our job.”

Leona sighed again, but more patiently this time. “Okay, I’ll trust you, and won’t check the math. But I’m not making the decision for everyone. We vote, and it has to be unanimous.” She looked over at the rest of the team. “You all understand what’s at stake here if we do this?”

Everyone nodded, including the dummies, Mateo and Olimpia, because they were indeed able to follow the conversation. When Captain Matic called for an official vote, they all raised their hands, except for Vitalie, who seemed distracted by her thoughts.

“What is it?” Ramses asked.

“If she’s voting no, I won’t let you bully her,” Leona argued.

“You didn’t ask for nays yet,” Ramses reasoned. She’s not voted at all. She could be abstaining.”

“I’m not—” Vitalie was stammering. “It has nothing to with—” She huffed, and raised her hand. “Never mind, let’s go. I vote yea, or aye, or whatever.”

“Vitalie, you’re a part of us now,” Leona told her. “You have every right to express your opinion. We should have made this a blind vote,” she added when Vitalie didn’t respond.

“No, it’s not that,” Vitalie continued to stammer. “I agree, we should risk it. It’s just that I’ve realized that there is no hope for us finding Vitalie!741 down there. The only way we’ve ever done it is by triangulating it with your makeshift stasis pod communicator. If we can’t even teleport.”

“It’s not impossible,” Ramses began to explain to her. It would just take longer. When you get close enough to the pod with the locator, it will detect that there’s a pod somewhere nearby. When you jump again, if you get another ping, that tells you that you’re going in the right direction, or at least that you’re not farther from it. With enough jumps, you can eventually determine its position. But you don’t have to jump. You could take a car. You could even walk.”

“Then I’ll do that,” Vitalie decided. “I’ll walk.”

Ramses chuckled, a bit rudely. “I meant that you could technically, possibly do it. But not in practical terms. You could potentially have to walk across the entire surface. We can’t stay here that long.”

“You don’t have to stay here,” Vitalie said. “Just leave me with a locator, and I’ll work on it as long as it takes. Just promise me you’ll build another locator, and keep using it on the other planets, assuming this teleportation field mess doesn’t continue.”

“I already have multiple locators. That’s not the problem.”

“The problem is we can’t leave you here alone,” Leona said to her.

“And also that you still can’t be expected to walk the entire surface,” Marie added.

“Well, I could build her a car,” Ramses declared. “Hell, I’m sure one of those ships down there works well enough.”

“We’re not leaving her alone!” Leona insisted.

“It’s my choice,” Vitalie fought. “We voted on going down to the surface. But all of the sudden, you want to make an executive decision?”

“We could vote,” Leona began, “but it’s never gonna be unanimous, because I’ll always be a nay.”

Mateo placed a hand on her arm. “Lee-Lee. You’re the Captain; not the King.”

“Well, she—”

Mateo stopped her from continuing to argue with a simple jerk of his head. “Captain,” he whispered.

Leona looked back over at Vitalie with puppy dog eyes, hoping that she would change her mind, or maybe just show some sign of reluctance, but Vitalie was steadfast. Leona hung her head. “Okay. But we’re staying here for two days at least. Right, Ramses? You need that long to build something good?”

“It’s true,” Ramses confirmed. “I didn’t mention that before, but the construction will last beyond today. Vitalie, you’ll probably want to go into stasis, since we won’t be traveling at maximum fractional speeds. You don’t have to be awake for the locator to start trying to triangulate Vitalie!741’s pod. I can program it to wake you up if it finds her during that time. If it does, you’ll both be able to leave with us, no problem.”

They discussed the details a little more, and then made the jump. Instead of leaving their ship in orbit like they usually would, the whole thing dropped down. It was impossible for Ramses to predict what would happen with certainty, but they did survive the ordeal. They were sent teleporting all over the place before they found and island of stability, but once they did, everything was fine, and they were all in one piece, which was what they were really worried about. Their own teleportation field protected them without issue, or excessive power drain. They climbed out of their little ship manually one at a time, which made them feel like animals, but it worked. The industrial atmosphere wasn’t pleasant, but it was breathable. Vitalie wore a filter mask for added safety, but the rest of their substrates handled the task on their own. 

“All right,” Leona said, “get what you need. We’ll help with whatever, I guess.”

Ramses pulled out his tablet. “I have a list.”

“Do you guys hear that?” Angela asked. Their hearing was heightened, but they couldn’t hear everything on the entire planet, so they all tilted their respective heads to get a better angle on the soundwaves. Something was definitely sounding off in the distance, and it seemed to be getting closer. It was a sort of screaming noise. Angela took a couple steps forward. “What is that?”

Leona reached into her bag, and pulled out a pair of digital binoculars. She started to scan the sky. “Run.” She dropped her arms down, but kept looking in that direction. “Run!” she cried louder. She took off, and so did everyone else.

“Remember, you can’t teleport!” Ramses reminded them. “The field generators actually do react to each other! That’s why they’re kind of evenly spaced!”

They ran as fast as they could, the ones in front looking over their shoulders to make sure the ones in back were still coming. They could move pretty fast, but they were still within range of the blast when the missile crashed down, and exploded on impact. Mateo could see a piece of shrapnel flying towards him, but didn’t know what to do. Before he could try to escape, someone’s arms were wrapping themselves around his body. They teleported away, but they didn’t just make one jump. The teleportation field generators all around them started pinballing them every which way several times, until one of them managed to throw them clear of any other vessel. They fell from several meters up, and crashed onto the ground, just like the missile, but with no explosion.

Only then did Mateo see that it was Vitalie who had rescued him. “I’m sorry. I know we weren’t supposed to do that.”

“No, no, no, thank you. Leona, can you hear me?” Mateo half-expected the trauma to have fried his communicator, but it was still working.

“Yeah,” she replied. “We’re all fine. You and Vita?”

“We’re okay. I don’t know how far away we are.”

“We have locators, remember? You’re only a few kilometers away. You see that giant blue crane?”

“Yes.”

“Jog towards that. We’ll meet in the middle.”

“The ship? Our ship, that is?”

“Gone. You were right. It was a trap.”

Just as they were starting to run towards each other, the ground began to shake. It shook, and it shook, and it didn’t stop shaking. Gargantuan explosions began to rage in the distance. The blue crane that Mateo and Vitalie were using as a reference point suddenly sank below the horizon. Cracks were forming in the ground.

“A really good trap!” Marie shouted into the comms.

“Leona, everyone, jump.”

“We can’t!” Ramses complained.

“You can! Just come to our location. There’s a reason we finally stopped moving in this spot. This spot is safe!”

The group appeared in scattered formation around them. Mateo and Leona hugged and kissed each other. They all began to huddle together instinctively as the tremors and explosions intensified. “If there’s any antimatter in those ships, it will be devastating. Ramses, do you remember where the biggest open area was?”

“That might not be good enough either.” Ramses slipped Angela’s bag off of her shoulders. “Thanks for carrying this for me.” He reached in, and pulled out a dimensional generator, but it wasn’t the same one they used in the ship. That one would still have been in there when the missile struck. That one was destroyed. “This one is smaller, barely enough room to walk past each other, but it’s stocked with supplies, and it’s all we got.”

“Then what?” Marie asked.

“Once all of you are inside, I’ll jump into space, and join you,” Ramses explained.

“I’m the Captain, I’ll do it,” Leona volunteered.

“That’s why you shouldn’t.” Mateo stole the generator for himself. He pointed it at Vitalie first, because she was the only one not equipped to survive in space, so she absolutely had to be inside. Then he started to shoot everyone else as well. 

No one argued, except for the last one, Leona. “Stop!” She breathed deeply, and looked around at the planet as it was being ripped apart. She laid hands on the generator. “We’ll go together.”

“Were I you.”

“Were I you.”

They jumped.

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