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It’s 2532 now. Mandica doesn’t know the exact date. She won’t connect to the
local network until she’s off of the arkship. It has entered orbit around
the planet of Castlebourne, and is beginning to transport cargo down to the
surface using the primary space elevator. The rest of the trip went fine,
and she didn’t run into any more problems. There was a weird lurch about a
week ago, and she must have lost track of the relativity, because the whole
thing took slightly longer than she was told, but it’s obviously all right
now. The system didn’t tell her anything about another impact event, so
she’s not going to worry about it. The only issue now is sneaking down
without being detected. Every cargo container is being scanned and
inspected. They have to do that to make sure that all the plants and animals
are still alive. Unlike last time, when there was a certain level of trust
that they didn’t load dead specimens, they’re gonna notice if Mandica is
hiding amongst her timber wolf friends.
She didn’t join their pack, but they didn’t bother her while she was living
amongst them either. She didn’t know if they were engineered to be more
docile, evolved to be that way on their own, or if she just straight up
didn’t understand the wolf-human relationship. They were pretty cool. She
might even call some of them her friends. The bots never came by. Lab-grown
raw meat occasionally appeared from strategically placed feeding bins. The
wolves didn’t mind when she took a little bit for herself, and cooked it up.
She thought she would be fine with the dayfruit, but she failed to grab a
vital component for programming the flavor, so she was stuck with banana the
whole time. The craziest part is that the fire detection system didn’t ever
respond to her fires. She didn’t even think about that until her first one
was already built and burning. She was so used to doing this out in the
wild, it was second nature to her, so to speak.
Mandica has a plan now, and it’s time to execute it. She pats each one of
her friends on the head to say goodbye. It’s not all of the wolves, just the
ones she met when she first came here, but the other packs never paid any
attention to her, and don’t feel left out. She felt safe in the timber wolf
section, so she never ventured too far, but she did sneak out a time or two
to plan her escape route. She knows exactly where to go. This ship really is
apparently fully automated, but they could have commissioned a human crew,
and they would have had everything they needed, including trashcans. More
importantly, it’s equipped with trashbots. They’re meant to go around on
their own, cleaning up people’s refuse, but this universe is full of
redundancy. No high tier intelligence has to work unless they want the
energy credits to travel or develop impactful projects, but if anyone ever
does want a more conventional job, they can do just about anything
they want. The automated systems meant to do it in their absence will be
sidelined for them. The trashbot can be operated. Normally, the janitor
would stay outside of the can, but the remote interface works just as
well from the inside too.
Fortunately, since she appears to be the only living, breathing person here,
the trashbot has never been used before, and is totally clean. It’s cramped,
but she’ll only have to be in here for a few hours if she times it right.
Animals need an elevator ride that goes slow so their eyeballs don’t pop out
of their heads, but plants and equipment are a lot more forgiving. They
can’t drop at maximum speed, but they don’t have to wait the full fifteen
hours for a safer trip either. She’s watching the hallway on her remote,
using the trashbot’s cameras. She passes a few other bots on her way to the
gangway, and then also on the other side, on the elevator platform, but they
completely ignore her. She was worried that they would be thrown off by an
unscheduled trashbot wandering around on its own, but none of them was
programmed to see it as a threat. She rolls onto the elevator just in time
before the doors close.
The fall is rough because she is decidedly not a plant. But her suit is
equipped with the right cocktail of drugs to make it easier. She’s on a
sedative to keep her loose, a nociceptor inhibitor to chill her nerves, and
a few other things she can’t remember right now because she can’t even form
a complete sentence in her head. The sedative is precisely tailored to keep
her awake enough to react to something bad if it comes up, but she still
leans her head back and rests her eyes. It’s not the worst part. The drugs
only kept her alive while she was falling. Now that she’s down on the
surface, her body needs to be flushed of them so she can stay focused and
stay moving. But there have been consequences from the trip that are just
kicking in now. She’s dizzy, sluggish, and more than a little confused. She
doesn’t really know where she is. This is a planet of domes. Everything is
under a dome. There are literally tens of thousands of domes, and each one
is unique. This one must be dedicated exclusively to the space elevator.
But she doesn’t know where to go. Shit, she doesn’t know anything. The grand
opening was decades ago. People have been living here this whole time.
They’ve been oriented, they’ve made some kind of government probably. What
did she think, that she would land and immediately get a new life? What if
they don’t like how she came to be here? Charter planets aren’t lawless,
they’re just free to come up with their own laws, independent of the stellar
neighborhood. This could be an oppressive dystopia by now, she really
doesn’t know. She doesn’t know a goddamn thing. She’s so tired too. The suit
gave her something to reverse the acute effects of the cocktail, but it
doesn’t come with a stimulant. Does it have a stimulant? Where’s the
stimulant? “Hey, Suit? Give me a stimmy. Stimmy. Is it called a stimmy? Are
you called Suit? Answer me.”
Mandica wakes up in a bed, in her bra and panties. A man is sitting at a
desk, his back to her. She looks around and spots the only plausible weapon
within arms reach. It’s a pair of steampunk goggles. They’re...not going to
be very helpful.
He turns. It’s Trilby. He hasn’t aged a day. “Hey. Welcome to Castlebourne.”
“You came with me?” she questions. “You were on the ship this whole time?”
He chuckles. “No. That was 112 years ago. I sent my consciousness here four
years ago, looking to greet you. You have no idea what it took to figure out
when the arkship would actually arrive. So I went back home, and back to
work, and then took another vacation to return here a few months ago to make
preparations.”
“Wait, it was only supposed to be 108 years. Why are we so late?”
“They moved,” he replies enigmatically.
“They moved...what?”
“The solar system. They moved the whole solar system. Your arkship was on
the wrong vector, and had to be rerouted in the middle of the flight. I’m
sure you felt it.”
She realizes that she’s narrowed her eyes at him. “I suppose I did. So it’s
2536?”
“It is,” he confirms. “Again, welcome to Castlebourne.”
She finally decides to relax. She trusts him. He got her here. “What
preparations did you make?”
He smiles. “I can turn you invisible.”
