Microstory 2616: You Awaken in the Wreckage With No Choice but to Go On

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August 23, 2526. Breanna wakes up, still feeling the slight sting on her neck where her suit revitalized her. The IMS isn’t a full-on medical pod, but it does have waysof repairing a damaged body, from some trauma that might be caused despitethe presence of the suit in the first place. She’s not in too much pain, butit’s all over. Her suit won’t administer a painkiller automatically, because it requires the user’s permission. She could theoretically ask for an opioid, though she won’t. She sits up. “Thistle, Administer one dose of a comprehensive pain silencer. No, two doses. I need twenty-four hours at least.”

“Would you like an endorphin stimulator as well?”

“No. It’s fine.” She lies back down so the suit can flash its laser beams all over her skin. She groans as it’s happening, but is able to stop once it’s complete. She then stands up in the wreckage, finding herself on the ceiling of the vehicle. Her friends and the other passengers are strewn about. “Thistle, why weren’t we strapped in?”

“The safety straps were causing unwanted and unhealthy pressure on the users’ suits. They were only released upon landing. Everyone is alive and recovering. As leader, you were revived prematurely to make further decisions.”

“Wake everyone else up as appropriate. Tell me what’s going on, inside and out.”

“Location, unknown. Status of vehicle, irreparably damaged. Situation, dire. Medical prognoses, manageable.”

Breanna manages to find the back hatch, and open it. The surface of the planet is relatively calm, but the tornadoes could be lying in wait. “Options.”

“Walking.”

She chuckles. “Thanks. That’s great.” She takes a beat as she’s watching the wind blow the dust around. “Do you detect a methane deposit below us, or near us?”

“The vehicle’s sensor array is inoperable, and would be insufficient either way.”

“So, you can’t find the caravan either?”

“Negative.”

“Lifesigns detector,” Breanna continues. “Look for anyone or anything.”

“None found.”

There are no more questions to ask, and she can’t make any decisions without the passengers, so she commands her IMS to focus the padding to the back, then lies down to wait. A few hours later, Cash wakes her up, thinking that she’s the last one.

“We’re lost,” Cash explains.

“I know.”

“The rover can’t be fixed.”

“I know,” Breanna repeats, but louder. “I was up before you. I just took a nap.”

“Oh. Well, what now? Do we go out and look for Tertius and Aeterna’s bodies?”

“Aeterna? We lost Aeterna?”

“She’s not here,” Cash replies. “I thought you said you knew everything already.”

“I did a headcount. I thought she was one of these people.”

“Did you remember to count the guy who we rescued from the other rover?”

“Oh, I forgot. Shit. I guess father and daughter are both dead.” Breanna looks at all the passengers, who are apparently gathering supplies. “Good instincts, everybody. We’re gonna have to head out on foot. Carry what you can. Nothing in here is useless, but use your best judgment, and prioritize. Food and water are most important, but if you find any vacuum tents, those are great too.” She yawns as she’s trying to continue. “Don’t worry about power. Your suits will recharge in all that flurry out there. I’m not gonna try to explain fusion or ramscoop nodes to you, but just trust me.”

Most of them go to work, but one sits down on the ceiling. They look depressed, but it’s hard to tell without being able to see a face. “Are you him...the one from the other rover?”

“The asshole who got your friend killed? Yeah,” he answers.

Breanna sits down next to him, and taps on both of their wrist interfaces so they can have a one-on-one conversation through comms. “Tell me what happened.”

“I can’t, I don’t remember it.” He sighs. “That’s not entirely true, but it was like a dream. I knew where I was, and I knew that I was as safe as I was gonna get. I just felt so trapped. I started panicking, reaching out for anything that could change my circumstances. My hands landed on the door handle, so I opened it, and ran out. I don’t know what I thought I would find out there. I don’t know that I entirely understood that I even was outside. I just needed to be able to move around. I’m so sorry. Someone suggested they lock me to one of the seats, but the others argued against it, because there could have been a situation where we all needed to escape. But they should have done it. They should have stopped me. I know, that makes it sound like I’m blaming them. I just wish they had. I wish they had been unforgiving about it.”

“Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Breanna begins. “I mean that truthfully. Earth, in its history, has seen its fair share of refugees, but absolutely nothing at this scale. An entire planet has never been in this much trouble. Our ancestors colonized it despite the instability of our host star because they thought they understood it. They thought they knew the risks. They were wrong. I’m far angrier at them than I am at you. You didn’t sign up for this. You reacted in a very human way, and I’m sure, if Tertius or his daughter were here, they would forgive you. They risked their lives to save people like you, even though it sounds like they didn’t know anyone personally. They seemingly did sign up for this.”

The guy is still clearly down on himself, but she’s not a therapist, so all they can do is hope to find their way back to civilization, and get him some real help. As they’re finishing packing up to take what they can, Aeterna casually opens the back hatch, and climbs back in. She is wearing a respirator mask over her mouth, but has removed the parts that go over her eyes. She’s presumably only using it for comms.

“Where did you go?” Breanna questions.

“Sorry, I was just looking for my dad. I didn’t go too far, I figured once you guys woke up, I would start hearing you talking to each other.”

“Comms are down. Radio waves are very minimal right now,” Breanna explains.

Aeterna nods. “Well, I’m back. Hopefully we’ll come across him eventually.

“I’m sorry about him,” Breanna says softly.

“Eh, it’ll be okay,” Aeterna says, not the least bit perturbed. “He knows we’re going north, so either we’ll pick up his trail, or he’ll pick up ours.”

“You think he’s alive?” Cash asks.

“He has to be,” Aeterna answers with a chuckle. “We’ve been trying to explain that. We can’t die.”

Microstory 2615: If You Stay, There Will Be Trouble, But if You Go, It Will Be Double

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August 22, 2526. The caravan has been continuing on its way. They have started noticing tracks in the regolith which suggest that others have had to drive to escape. Their own trains might have also been damaged, or they just didn’t want to use them. There’s no way to communicate with people that far away, though. Radio signals can only reach a short distance with all this electromagnetic interference in the air now. Breanna has had to keep the vehicles closer together so they don’t lose track of one another. They obviously lost contact with the two dissenters right quick, so they don’t know what’s become of them, but it’s been more than a day. In all probability, they’re already dead. The truth is, it would be nice if they could confirm that just to be ultra confident that no one else will get the idea to do the same thing.

By and large, despite their horrific circumstances, everything has been going relatively smoothly. Breanna is still the de facto leader since she is the most knowledgeable one here, and everyone seems to be respecting that. While she still says that she’s operating the lead car, it isn’t always the one in front. One or more of the others will periodically come across a nice, road-like surface, and gain some speed. This is fine, it’s not like they’re in a single-file line, so there is no way to serve as vanguard for all of them. Unfortunately, that may be precisely what they should have done.

“So.” Cash spins her seat around to face the rest of the passengers. “Does anyone know any driving ga—?”

The vehicle suddenly veers to the left. They can’t quite tell why at first, but they certainly feel the lurch, and a bright orange light overwhelms their eyes. Breanna reaches up instinctively to take manual control, but that is not the right thing to do in this situation, so she holds back. The autopilot changed directions for a reason, and while it may not be smarter, it does have greater awareness, and can react faster.

“Oh my God!” someone on the radio screams. “It just threw them into the air. Oh my God what is that? What is that!” They continue to hear voices, but it’s just an unintelligible cacophony.

“Zero-three-one is down!” Cash declares, looking at her terminal.

“Down how?” Breanna demands to know. “What happened?”

“This.” Cash flings the image on her screen to Breanna’s. A giant spinning vortex of fire is spiraling up into the air and widening. “I don’t know what any of this means. Weather and natural disasters science isn’t my bag.”

“It’s a pyrotornado. The methane levels just spiked off the charts. There’s probably a reservoir underneath us, which the CME destabilized, and it just went critical, possibly due to our presence.”

“Hello?” someone manages to radio clearly after a brief lull. “What do we do?”

Breanna grabs the mic. “Go radio silent and wait for my instructions. Don’t touch the controls.” She faces Cash. “The rovers haven’t stopped, so I assume it’s better to keep going. If we’re over the pocket, we need to try to get off of it.”

“Impossible to say,” Cash explains quickly. “We don’t have time to survey the land. The one behind us could be a baby. We could be driving towards the motherlode.”

“What’s that right there?” Aetrena asks, leaning forward over Cash’s shoulder, and pointing at her screen.

“The computer is calculating a 56% chance that it’s safer to hunker down than to bug out, but that’s too close to call, so it’s deferring to the operator. It maintains the status quo until you give it a new plan. So we should do that,” Cash urges.

Breanna glances back at the data and tries to make a snap decision. This really isn’t her forte. She likes computers. And that’s why she should trust it. Those are terrible odds, but 56 is higher than 44, so without any further information, the only logical response is to give yourself the best chance. “Do you think that zero-three-one triggered it by running over some kind of entrance? It literally lit a spark?”

“That would be my guess,” Cash concurs.

“Then I’m activating hunker mode for all vehicles.” She starts tapping her interface. “It looks like that thing is moving away or running out of gas. I don’t want what happened to three-one to happen to someone else.” Their rover comes to a complete stop, as do all of the others, spread out a little for safety. “We wait it out while we use our caravan sensor array to run that survey. We need to know where to go, and how to move safely.” She gets back on the radio to do her best to explain all that to everyone else. They have some questions, but Cash is going to have to field them...one at a time, in an orderly fashion. For now, they just aren’t going to move. The computer begins to lower their suspensions, and inject their anchor spikes.

“Boss? This is one-two-one,” someone radios in a panic shortly thereafter.

“Go ahead, one-twenty-one.”

“We lost someone,” Rover 121 says quickly. “He ran out, out of his mind. He doesn’t know anyone here, and has been a little crazy this whole time, but now he said he’s afraid of the small space, and just had to break free.”

“Is he wearing a suit?” Breanna asks.

“Not even a mask. He was scared of that too.”

“I see them, they’re not far,” Cash reports.

“Shit,” Breanna says, going back to the controls. “It will take some time to reverse hunker mode, but faster for us than anyone else, and we all have IMS units.”

Tertius is looking at the screens now. “No time. He’ll die out there. I’ll hoof it.”

“And then what?” Breanna questions.

Tertius grabs the door handle. “Then I’ll give him my suit. Lower your visors.”

They all seal up their suits, except for Aeterna. As soon as her father runs out, also without a vacuum seal, she casually closes the door. Who are these people?

“Come on, come on!” Breanna urges. She keeps one eye on the release progress, and the other on Tertius’ beacon. He’s moving fast, but they’ll be able to catch up if this blasted thing ever gets going. “Goddammit, let’s go!” She impatiently waits a little more, and a little more. “Finally!” She activates manual mode this time, peeling out, and spinning a doughnut.

Visibility is low, but they draw close enough to see Tertius open his suit in the back, grab the panicking guy by the wrists, and shove him into it in his place. Without even waiting for the vehicle to stop, Aeterna opens the door again just as a new explosion right underneath flings them all into the air. She grabs the man just in time, and pulls him in to safety. Her father, though...Breanna doesn’t care how enhanced he is, he’s not surviving a thermal cyclone out in the open like that wearing little more than shorts and a t-shirt. He’s just not. They might not even survive.

Microstory 2614: The Cooler Side is Not the Safer Side, Which They Will Learn Soon Enough

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August 21, 2526. The caravan has been roaming up through the Terminator Line at a decent pace. They have come across some pretty rough terrain, but these rovers were built for the harsh environment, so they either go around them or even right over. The lead car has the most trouble, but they still make it through. They’re combatting two different things here—besides the physical obstacles—and those are fear and boredom. It is not a clear split. Everyone seems to be feeling both emotions, as well as plenty others, simultaneously. The vactrains are incredibly fast. They would be in the safe zone by now had they been able to take them. It’s going to be several days before they reach it at this pace, and there is really nothing they can do to speed that up. It’s a trade-off, being able to traverse all of the rocks and crevices, but not being able to do it super fast.

There is also some ignorance. Even though the Levins have been advancing for 300 years, they don’t really understand concepts like the sun and tidal locking. This is the first time they’re even seeing outer space for real, and there are some misconceptions about how it works. “Is this thing working, can you hear me?” a voice comes in through the radio.

“This is lead actual, I hear you four by two, who is this?” Breanna asks.

“Uh, my name’s Langer.”

“No, I mean your callsign. You should see it on the light field display in the corner of the radio. I just need the last three numbers.”

“Zero-one-zero.”

“Go ahead, zero-ten,” Breanna encourages.

“Where are we going?” 010 asks.

“North,” Breanna replies plainly.

“Yeah, but where exactly?” 010 presses.

Breanna rolls her eyes. “The safe zone.”

“How do you know that it’s safe?” 010 goes on.

“That’s the science. The poles are the only safe regions in the world right now. The closer you get, the safer you are. We are already better off here and now than we were ten minutes ago back behind us.”

“Wait, we’re in the back!” a girl cries. “We are where you were ten minutes ago!”

Breanna sighs. “You are not ten minutes behind us, and the logic stands. You are still better off than you were before. We just need to keep going to reach our destination. Please stay off this channel unless you’re actually facing trouble.”

“Oh, we’re all in trouble,” 010 argues. “Because it’s the sun, isn’t it? The sun is what caused this whole thing.”

“Yes,” Breanna agrees. “We don’t have all the information yet, but it’s looking like our host star, Proxima Centauri underwent a sudden, violent polar reversal. This caused a snap, which released something called a coronal mass ejection. It’s important to note that the gravitational instability was going on for some time leading up to the event, and is still wreaking havoc on the surface, subsurface, and atmosphere. As I said, the poles are the only safe regions.”

“Our ancestors came to this planet on ships,” 010 begins. “Why can’t we just get back on those ships and fly away?”

“Because the infrastructure has been destroyed,” Breanna explains. “There is no way to get to the ships. They are not designed to land, and even if they were, they could not land on this terrain. We are doing the right thing, and moving as fast as possible.”

“Why would the poles be safer?” This Langer guy is not letting up. She’s holding back the urge to warn him that his ignorance is showing, staying silent as he continues. “The poles are still in the sun. We have been driving in the sunlight this whole time.”

“Yes, this is called the Terminator Line. Proxima Doma is tidally locked, so one side always faces the sun, and one side always faces away from it.” She has spent her whole life around people who learned this stuff as babies. It’s frustrating, having to go over it to a bunch of adults, even though she fully understands why they don’t already know it. “Right in the middle, all along this longitude, it’s temperate enough for habitation. They still had to build domes, because the atmosphere is too thin, but it would have been impractical on the night side, and nigh impossible on the day side.”

They hear him sighing. “If the sun is over there!” He’s probably pointing. “Then why wouldn’t we go..over there!” He’s probably pointing in the opposite direction now.

“The stellar activity still has an impact on the night side. The heat passes from the day side, to the night side. As it does, it creates its own turmoil on the night side. Ice sublimates, the ground becomes unstable. It’s still freezing, but now it’s unpredictable, and non-uniform. Believe me, you don’t want any part of that.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” 010 shouts. “We’re in between them! If what you’re saying is true, we should be dead, or at least worse off here than over there!”

“I don’t have the time or patience to explain tidal heating and basic atmospheric science to you! My father died dedicating his life to protecting people like you, and you didn’t even know he existed! So trust me, we have to stay in the Terminator Line! It’s shrinking, and will eventually disappear too, but we still have time...if we don’t stop!”

There is some silence for a few moments, but the eerie kind, not peaceful. Finally, 010 returns. “We just took a vote. We’re going to head into the dark. The way we see it, it’s getting too hot. The air conditioning is at maximum, and we’re still burning up. Anyone who wants to may join us. We can teach you how to take manual control.”

“Shut out controls right now, Cash,” Breanna orders.

“It is too hot,” the woman in the back agrees. “I’m barely wearing anything.”

“You should be wearing IMS units,” Breanna instructs.

“We don’t have those here,” 010 claims. “We only have respirator masks.” She didn’t realize that. That was poor planning. The 010 car veers off in the wrong direction.

“I can block future override,” Cash divulges as she’s operating the console, “but I can’t reverse it for anyone who has already switched to local control.”

“Don’t do this!” Breanna urges. “It is not simply more dangerous. It is uninhabitable. You are not maybe going to die. If you leave us, death is a guarantee.”

“We’ll take our chances, thank you very much. Zero-one-zero, over and out.”

“You don’t have to—never mind.” She hopes to appeal to anyone who managed to gain control of their own destiny before Cash locked them out. “No one follow them. Please. Even if you don’t get hit by a geyser or thermal cyclone, or fall into a hidden chasm in the dark, there is nothing for you out there. They didn’t build anything.”

That rear unit complaining about being hot, naked, and in the back decides to go with Langer, but fortunately, no one else does.

Microstory 2613: The Irony That if They Had Opened the Gates, They Would Have Found Their Salvation

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August 20, 2526. Breanna, Cash, Tertius, and Aeterna made it out of the soup, and onto solid ground. They escaped Leviss, and walked through the tunnel that led to Breckenridge. After taking a perimeter railtrain to the next exit, they walked downstairs to the vactrain station, which could take them anywhere in the colonized world. Breanna turned out to have credentials, which allowed her to look through the logs to determine that the Levins and Breckenridgers had gotten on train pods to travel northwards. They apparently stopped before reaching the northern polar region, however.

“Something must have gone wrong,” Tertius says. “The northern pole might have denied them entry. Aeterna, we’ll have to stop where they did to investigate.”

“We’re on the same page,” she agrees.

Tertius sighs, and looks back over at the empty vactrain. “You two get on this one and go as far north as possible. We’ll take the next one.”

“No, we’ll go with you,” Cash volunteers. “We lived on a sentinel. Our entire job was to watch over these people. We’re certainly not gonna stop doing that now.”

“We might encounter more toxic air, though,” Breanna warns. “I know you two are pretty hardy, but if you could put on your own suits, it would help us communicate. I prefer to keep my filter fully on, in case my carbon scrubbers stop working.”

“We don’t have suits,” Tertius says apologetically.

Cash is operating her handheld device. “The dome where they had to stop is a lot more advanced than these two. It will have IMS units for you to check out. Let’s get over there before the roof collapses.” They all file into the pod, but have to come right back out. This station was disconnected from the network due to the hazardous conditions. The tubes aren’t safe enough anymore. They spend the next two days traveling through the spines, and along the perimeters of the next several domes, sometimes using railtrains, sometimes electric carts, and sometimes on foot.

August 21, 2526. Finally, they have reached the dome where the Levins and Breckenridgers went, but no one is here. It’s totally empty according to the life signs detector. So they start to walk down the next connecting spine. Near the end, they find a ton of people, which Aeterna says could plausibly make up the entire population of Leviss and Breckenridge combined. She recognizes someone from Leviss, who doesn’t act like he recognizes her back. “What’s going on here?” she asks.

“There were a lot of people living in this dome before, but some of them died in an explosion, or something. Now, the people who are still here won’t let us through the gate. They say it’s for our safety, but we’ve been trying to negotiate with them this whole time. We know that we can’t go back, so we’ve been camping out here. ”

“It’s not safe in there?” Tertius presses.

“The dome itself is evidently safe enough, but they’re afraid if we all come in, we’ll try to get to the train station, but if they say we shouldn’t, we’ll listen to them. We’re fine with just walking.”

“That’s not the problem,” a young woman says. “One of the negotiators is my sister, so I heard that the Summerspringers are so afraid of the train now that they’re looking for land vehicles. They don’t want to share, because they don’t know how many there are. They’re not even sure if there are any left. They found a bunch, but there weren’t enough for everyone. It was apparently quite dramatic, the chaos of deciding who got to leave, and who had to stay behind to look for other alternatives.”

Breanna steps over as she’s working her wrist interface. “I think it’s right here.”

“You think what is here?” Tertius asks.

Breanna chuckles lightly. “I have credentials for this too.” She makes one more tap, and the giant door starts to slide open. The Levins and Breckenridgers back away nervously as they watch it open. Lights begin to flicker on inside the big open space. It’s a garage. It’s a garage full of cars. Real big ones.

Tertius takes his daughter by the hand, and guides her in front of the entrance. He kneels down. “Get on my shoulders and address the people. You know what to say.”

Aeterna climbs on, and has no trouble balancing when he stands all the way up so she’s towering over the crowd. “People of Breckenridge and Leviss, this is your way out. These vehicles are automated, and syncable.” She leans over. “They are, aren’t they?”

Breanna nods.

“We will drive the lead vehicle, and tell yours where to go,” Aeterna continues. “All you have to do is sit there, and enjoy the ride. Is anyone too nervous to try?”

Many people raise their hands, presumably all from the less advanced Breckenridge.

“Is anyone both too nervous to try and ready to die?”

They nervously lower their hands.

“It might be scary, but you will get through this!” she cries. “If the Summerspringers aren’t going to let you through, this is the only way! We’re not gonna force you, but if you stay, things will not be getting better. What you were running from is going to catch up to you, sooner or later.” She pauses for effect. “If you wanna live, follow us inside.” She hops off of her father’s shoulders, and they begin to walk in.

They don’t really pay attention to who chooses to stay in the main corridor, if anyone. There are more than enough vehicles for everyone here, but since they do not belong to them, they decide to not be greedy. Once these evacuees are secure, they will send a message to Summerspring, informing them that this garage is what they have been looking for. Until then, they’re going to prioritize the people who did not actively decline to help their neighbors. The vehicles are completely vacuum sealed, so they are in no danger from the inhospitable environment outside the domes, as long as they remember to actually stay inside.

The four outsiders initially lock out nearly all of the controls, so the intentionally technologically illiterate can’t accidentally push any wrong buttons. The Levins are more advanced, but they have never operated anything like this before. The domes are relatively small, so they had no reason to invent the car. Still, they will be able to figure things out after some studying the operator’s manual, so every vehicle is about three-quarters Levins and one-quarter Breckenridgers. They will be able to override controls if they so choose later, but that will be up to them.

Breanna, Cash, Aeterna, and Tertius select a smaller vehicle for themselves. The giant rovers can hold a few dozen people, but this one only maybe a dozen. Several other people ask to join them, seemingly out of pure curiosity. Finally, amidst all of this death and destruction, there might actually be hope. They open the exterior doors, send that quick message to the Summerspringer authority, and then head off into the unknown.

Microstory 2591: Renata Follows Quidel and Lycander Through the Hatch

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Renata follows Quidel and Lycander through the hatch. The walls are pure white, and the tubular corridor they’re walking through is increasing in diameter, like a cone. They’re heading for what appears to be a military jet, with its giant rear entrance open. Notably, it doesn’t have any wings. There are no cars in the cargo hold, but several of them would certainly fit. The three of them walk up the ramp, but Renata and Quidel stop to sit down as Lycander continues on towards the cockpit. She carefully stores the case under the seat next to her, and snaps the netting to make sure it’s secure. The hatch closes up.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Quidel says.

Renata stares at the opposite wall for a moment before turning her head. “Lycander says that he can’t come back, like you obviously did.”

“He was an Ambient,” Quidel starts to explain. “There is no reason for them to be backed up. Anyone could step in and fulfill the role of Exemplar-one’s driver.”

“That’s how you see us, as just...replaceable?”

“I know it’s hard for you to accept, and I don’t expect you to. Researchers agonized over the ethics of roboticism for centuries before it was even possible to imitate consciousness, let alone synthesize it. The world out there, it’s not as exciting as this. We created this world to have something interesting to do. So I’m not sure if the way we treat AI is correct, but frankly, it has built a paradise for us. We’re so well-taken care of that we contrive adventure to stay stimulated. So we assume that our ethics are sound, because if they weren’t, we should see it cause problems.”

“Maybe there are problems that you’re just not seeing,” Renata suggests.

“Such a truth would be difficult to suppress,” Quidel contends. “We number in the tens of billions, possibly into the hundreds by now. Conspiracy theories don’t hold up mostly because of how difficult it would be to enforce secrecy across the multitudes who would have to be in on the truth. Our population explosion only makes that more difficult. There are so many groups that advocate for the ethical treatment of individual persons. They look into discrepancies, and they would find them. I know you don’t wanna hear this, but the Ambient—”

“Polly,” she interrupts.

“Polly,” he goes on, “didn’t have thoughts or feelings. He was programmed to behave in certain ways. It’s an illusion.”

“And me? Am I an illusion? Don’t answer that, I know what you’re gonna say. So let’s go back in time several years, before Libera got her hands on my hardware to do whatever she did. Was my consciousness only an illusion?”

“To a lesser degree, yes,” he admits. “That’s why she had to go into your brain and change you. I don’t know what she did, but I know that she didn’t just flip a switch. As far as we can tell, there is only one thing that can transform a non-conscious intelligence into a conscious one.”

“What would that be?” she questions.

“Teaching it to, and not interfering with its development artificially. You might have gained agency on your own eventually, if they hadn’t erased your memories according to whatever schedule they were on. If you had simply lived a life, it might have happened anyway, because that’s how humans work. For hundreds of thousands of years, every homo sapien has grown up to be self-aware because they were given the latitude to do so. It might sound cruel that no one tried that with you until Libera, but not everyone should be uplifted. We’ve granted some animals intelligence as well. There’s an entire star system out there called Altair that’s populated by uplifted animals. But we didn’t do it for all of them. There are still regular cats, dogs, and birds. Your coffee maker has a chip in it, but I’m guessing you would never get mad that no one has taught it to feel loved. Before you argue, I’m not saying that Exemplars are coffee makers, but it’s a spectrum, and you have to draw boundaries somewhere. If you try to help everything, you’ll end up with a talking rock, and an amoeba that does calculus. A world where every cell and every circuit is taught to make its own choices would collapse in a nanosecond.”

Lycander returns. “We’re ready to go. We’ll start moving in a few minutes.”

Renata hears the sound of a motor, but not the roar of any engines. “I’m guessing this is only theatre. You’re supposed to think that you’re in a flying jet, but you’re just moving down this hallway?”

“I kept the holograms and haptics off,” Lycander explains. “Since you wouldn’t be fooled by the IMH experience anyway.”

“IMH?” Renata questions.

“Immersive Multisensory Haptics,” Quidel answers. “The plane would be tilting and bumping in a way that simulates flight. Instead, we’re just gonna let it glide along the track. We could walk too, but it’s far, so this is just a giant car.”

“If you were still pretending that this was real,” Renata begins as the fake plane starts moving, “what would the scenario be?”

“A contact of mine would let me tag along with a military aid operation headed for Barta, and I would parachute out over Osman airspace. I really would parachute, though. I would take an elevator up, and jump off of a ledge.”

“On the way here, Lycander said that Osman is like a country called Pakistan from your planet. What’s Barta?”

Quidel gives Lycander a look, who responds, “might as well answer any question she has. That’s what the ethics tell us to do with an emerging intelligence.”

Quidel sighs acceptingly, and looks back over at Renata. “Barta is like India. But they told us not to get hung up on the parallels. There are tens of thousands of domes on Castlebourne. It was easier to come up with the mythologies by basing it on preexisting ones, even for the primary AI who generated it. So Barta isn’t really India...it’s Barta. And Osman is Osman.”

Renata nods. “Will I ever see the world outside?”

“I hope so,” Quidel tells her. “We’re on our way to meet with an associate of mine who works for the Military Intelligence Service who may be able to sneak us out.”

“And Elbis is...”

Quidel smiles, knowing that he’ll have to relent. “It’s gone through many names. Perhaps the most modern, but still  territorially inclusive, version was called the British Federation. Though, if we recall that this dome network is supposed to be an analog to Earth around the 21st century, it was called the United Kingdom back then.”

“I prefer Elbis. I was hoping to go there one day.”

“You still might,” Lycander says. “It’s the closest one to Castledome.”

Microstory 2587: Renata Realizes That if Her Mother Wants the Device, She Shouldn’t Have It

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Renata realizes that if her mother wants the device, she shouldn’t have it. For a moment, they stand there awkwardly. Each Granger is trying to figure out what the other one is going to do without saying anything, which might give away their own respective plans. Polly shifts his eyes between them, making his own decisions, if he’s even capable of that. Renata helped him realize that he wasn’t going to die, but does that mean they’re the same? She has clearly been heading towards her own epiphany for a while now, but Libera must have done something to make that happen, and it doesn’t appear that she did the same for Polly. Still, he seems to have some sense of what should happen here. He reaches into his pocket, and tosses the car keys into the air, not even towards Renata. As he does so, he says, “go. I’ll hold her off for you.”

Renata starts running, catching the keys mid-bound. She can hear the two robots fighting each other as she’s getting into the car. She ignites it, and backs out. He already pulled off most of the brush, but the rest needs to fall off the hood. She starts driving towards the two of them. Just like Quidel before, even without them having to speak, Polly just knows what she’s thinking. After grappling with Libera this whole time, he changes tactics, and shoves her away from him, stepping back to get clear. Renata slams into her mother who isn’t really her mother, then stops. “Get in!”

“Just go!” Polly urges.

“Get in!” she repeats.

Polly reluctantly gets into the passenger seat, and lets Renata drive off. “I’m the driver here.”

“Not today, you’re not,” Renata claps back.

He looks over his shoulder. “She’s not there.”

“What?”

“She’s not behind us,” Polly clarifies. “She’s not on the ground, or even standing up. I don’t see her.”

Libera’s face suddenly appears at the driver’s side window. Despite never having thought she was strong enough to punch through a window before, Renata knows herself better now. She may not understand it, but just believing in her own power has to be enough. She smashes right through the glass, tipping Libera’s chin on the follow-through. Libera has to let go with her left hand, but manages to hold on with her right. She’s being dragged on the ground as Renata pulls the car onto the paved highway.

“I’m not going to hurt you!” Libera cries. “We’re not on opposite sides. Let me explain!”

“I can’t trust you!” Renata argues. “You’ve been lying to me my whole life!”

“I’ve not been your mother your whole life! I replaced a different model only a few years ago!”

“That makes it better?” Renata jerks the car to the left, and then the right as fast as she can, trying to shake Libera off. It doesn’t work.

“The intelligences in this dome built something that was never made before, because it’s not legal! I didn’t come here for it, though! I came here for you! I’m trying to help you! I’m trying to free you all! Let me show you. All I need to do is hold my left hand up to Polly’s face!”

“You’ll do no such thing!” Renata sees that Libera has been holding on to the door, instead of some other part of the car. That is a weak spot. Hoping that it doesn’t go beyond the limits of her strength, she lifts her left foot, and slams it against the door. It snaps off of its hinges, and falls down on the road, taking Libera with it.

“I can’t believe you just literally kicked your mother out of the car,” Polly muses.

“Renata looks in the rearview mirror, watching as Libera stands up and starts to dust herself off. “She’ll be fine.”

“She knows where we’re going. She knows the protocol.”

“There’s another town not too far from it, which will probably have a payphone too. We don’t have to call from a specific one.”

Polly nods. “I don’t really, um...get what’s going on. With the whole, you know...”

“I don’t either,” Renata assures him. “But that well has run dry. Quidel wants to tell me the truth. He tried to explain at the bank, but he knew that I wasn’t ready to hear it. I need to speak with him without my fake mother breathing down our necks.”

Polly nods again, and waits for his next question. “She said something about us being in a dome?”

Renata looks in her rearview mirror again. There is no telling how powerful Libera is. She could be as fast as a car. She depresses the accelerator more out of fear. “Yeah, I don’t know what that means, but it sounds really apocalypty, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. It does.”

They continue to drive down the highway, not running into any more trouble. They turn left instead of right. The other town is sixteen kilometers away, instead of nine, but it’s not the one they agreed on going to, so it’s safer. Unless Libera realizes that they might do that, and is expecting them to show up there. But if she can’t run as fast as a car, she’s going to need to find some mode of transportation. Oh, shit. The Javelotians. They were obviously not stupid enough to drive right up to the cabin in a loud vehicle, but it’s probably not far away, and if Libera has had half the kind of training Renata expected to have from the NSD, it would not be hard for her to find it.

They come to another fork in the road. The next big city is a hundred kilometers away. That’s where Renata would have taken the device had she been on the other team. If anyone started to suspect that one of them was a decoy, they would probably postulate that the real one was moving in the opposite direction. That just makes sense. So a good strategy might be to just take it farther down the road from where the decoy is heading. It’s the last place they would look. Maybe. If she’s wrong, and she drives a hundred kilometers out of the way, it will delay their reunion. But then again, that might be a good thing. If Libera gets her hands on a phone, they won’t respond to her. There’s a reason they put her on the decoy team. McWilliams doesn’t trust her either, so she doesn’t have a passphrase. Only Renata does. Only she can make contact. “Strap in, Polly. It’s gonna be a long trip.” She turns left again.

Microstory 2584: Renata Rushes up to Match her Mother’s Stride as They Escape the Bank

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Renata rushes up to match her mother’s stride as they escape the bank. To be fair, she’s the one lugging this heavy thing around. They slip out the backdoor, and head for a black sedan. It’s not the car that Libera drove up with, and it has its own driver, which suggests that she was planning to make off with the device the whole time. But Renata is not going to confront her about this, because right now, they have a job to do. “How are you moving this fast?” she questions.

“You can move just as fast, dear, if not faster,” Libera replies as she ducks into the backseat, and uses hand gestures to urge her daughter to join her quickly. The car speeds off.

“Because I’m a robot?” Renata questions.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ren. You’re not a robot.”

“Where to, Madam?” the driver asked.

“Lightwood Safehouse,” Libera answers. A codename, no doubt.

They sit in silence for a moment.

“Don’t you have questions?” Libera poses.

“Did dad know?” Renata responds.

“No.”

“Did you get me into the NSD in the first place, or did you just get me the job at the bank?”

Libera doesn’t speak right away. “I never wanted this life for you, until you grew up. Well, I still didn’t necessarily want it, but I could see that it would be a great fit for you. You’re resourceful, intelligent, and you learn fast.”

“A little too fast,” Renata mumbles under her breath.

“What was that?”

“You thought my job would be safe? You really didn’t know about this thingamajig, and all the other stuff there?”

“I knew there were other things there, but they were supposed to be outdated, outmoded, obsolete, legacy innovations,” she says, almost amusingly repetitively.

“Why does the NSD keep an offsite bank for asset storage? Why aren’t they just stored somewhere in the basement of one of their own facilities.”

“It is an NSD facility. You’re asking why they use it as a front. It’s simple, really. The kind of activity you see at a dark storage site is the same as you’ll see at a normal bank. Strong locks, high security, enhanced surveillance, regular armored vehicles, loading and unloading. It’s unremarkable. You see that kind of thing at a bank, you shrug it off. You see it at a pet store, or a non-descript office building, you start asking questions. It’s not hard to track suspicious activity when you have enough data. That’s what NSD analysts do. They look through footage of our competing nations, and find clues based on atypical or unanticipated behavioral patterns at the city scale.”

“That’s why we’re doing this,” Renata says, making the connection. “We’re generating a narrative by exhibiting a pattern that our enemies are expecting. They were looking for people to walk out of that bank with purpose, carefully carrying a black duffel bag like this one. That’s why that truck has been following us since we left.”

“Nice spot, and that’s exactly right. They were predicting that we would try to sneak out the back with the asset to be as discreet as possible. We’re putting on a show, and clearly they’re watching on the edge of their seats.”

Renata sighs, and looks through the driver’s side window again at the truck that has been tailing them. “I wonder how the boys are doing.”

“We can’t know. Communicating with them would compromise the gambit.”

“I know.”

“You don’t have any more questions for me about my experience with the Division?”

“I don’t think I need your answers,” Renata starts to explain. “You can’t give me the specifics about your missions, and I’m already putting the pieces together in my head. A missed dance recital here, a hidden safe in your home office there. It all makes sense now. There’s not much I need to know that I can’t figure out on my own.”

Libera smiles. “This is why I got you the job at the bank, and why my superiors agreed to it. They wanted to keep an eye on you, yes. I wanted you to be fulfilled, yes. But the most important point is that, if I didn’t help you stay with us, you might go lend your services to someone else. It would be annoying if you wasted your time on the Domestic Affairs Bureau, or the local police, but truthfully, they were worried about you defecting to another country, or something. The bank was supposed to be fairly uneventful, but still engaging, since safety and security would be at the top of your priorities at all times. So while you weren’t expected to get into any fist fights or standoffs, it would still feel like work that matters. And it did matter. All banks serve a purpose. You’re not supposed to know what’s in the deposit boxes, whether you work at a front, or not.”

“I’m not mad. I understand your position. Like I was saying, this explains everything. I’m actually kind of relieved. You weren’t a bad mother...” She can’t believe she’s saying this. “...you’re a hero. If I could think of one decent reason to neglect your child, it would be to protect the whole country. How can I argue with that?”

Libera is smiling even wider now. “You continue to surprise me.”

Renata chuckles, then clocks the truck again. It’s getting closer, which means it might make a move soon. Their driver knows what he’s doing, so she’s not worried. More silence for a few minutes. “Did they really think I would defect?”

“Well, they didn’t think you would run off to Sclovo, or something, but maybe one of our strong allies, like Elbis or Pindor.”

“Well...I should be flattered.”

“I would.”

“They’re getting closer, ma’am,” the driver interjects.

“I see that. Scooch over,” she says to Renata. Once the space between them is clear, she turns the armrest down, and places her hand on the panel behind it. It glows in the shape of a hand as it checks her biometrics. The panel slides away so Libera can pull a rifle out. “Are you ready?”

“No.” Renata takes out a gun for herself. “But that hasn’t stopped me yet.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 9, 2522

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Mateo and Angela stood before three of the launch pads. Two claimant shuttles had already arrived, and the last one was landing now. No one had exited yet, per the Vitalemusian instructions. A few minutes after all shuttles were down, the hatches opened at about the same time. Korali, Bronach, and Old!Oaksent began to walk down their respective ramps. They were each accompanied by six others. Also per instructions, they were allowed to bring one lieutenant, one assistant, and four personal bodyguards. They were also allowed to leave one or two pilots in their vehicles, to be protected by no more than two security officers. They took full advantage of their limitations, which suggested that they would have rather had even more people backing them up. That told them something about how this was probably gonna go.

As the claimants approached, medical professionals first handed them their breathing apparatuses, which only Korali refused. “Team Matic,” Bronach said to them. “You’re looking...partial.”

Korali looked around. “Where are the other parties?” Her voice sounded normal, and it didn’t seem like she was having an issue pulling in oxygen. She must also have an enhanced substrate of some kind. Interesting that the two Oaksents apparently did not, despite being nigh impossible to kill.

“The Anatol Klugman and the Revolumusians are landing in a different dome, next to the Vellani Ambassador,” Angela replied. “We are here to escort you to a neutral third dome, where discussions will begin.”

“We would like to rest first,” Old!Oaksent all but demanded. Tok’ra was not with him. He was supposed to be, but they received word earlier today that he had business to take care of elsewhere. Mirage expressed that everything was okay, and that she would join him as soon as she dropped off her crew.

“That’s not happening,” Mateo informed them. “Your journey on your ship was not taxing. You would have plenty of time to sleep. If you want Team Matic here...we’re here. And we’re only here today. You know that.”

Korali scoffs. “He’s weak, and he’s losing. He knows we can’t harm him here. He doesn’t want a few hours to rest. He wants a year.”

“He’s not getting it,” Mateo reiterated. “Follow me.” He began to walk away while Anglea shooed them forward, and took up the rear. Vitalemusian guards surrounded them on either side. They were not taking any chances in this very delicate situation. He led them to the land vehicle that they were going to take to get to the diplomacy dome. It was gigantic, and should be quite comfortable for them all.

When the claimants realized this, they pretty much all stopped at the same time. “I’m not getting in that thing,” Old!Oaksent insisted.

Mateo was confused. “We can’t walk,” Mateo tried to explain. “It’s, like, 50 kilometers.”

“Don’t they have trains here?” Bronach asked. “I thought that was the go-to way to get around a paraterraformed planet.” He winked, reminding them that he was well aware of Castlebourne, and its location.

Angela looked up at the shimmering dome above them. “This world isn’t paraterraformed. It’s naturally habitable enough. The plasma domes are here for defensive purposes only. You can’t build permanent structures on the surface as there is too much seismic activity. Land vehicles are the only way. They live in them.”

“How do you not already know this?” Mateo questioned. “Didn’t you found all these planets?” Bronach probably knew all this entirely, and was just trying to get a rise out of them.

“I didn’t give this one very much thought,” Bronach replied. “I’m only one man.”

“Two, actually,” Old!Oaksent corrected.

“Shut it, grandpa.”

“You’re both old,” Korali argued.

“Get in the car!” Mateo urged.

They relented, and let the guards help them climb in. They found their couches, and settled in. Yes, they were couches, instead of seats. This particular vehicle was designed to transport VIPs. They weren’t really VIPs now, though. It sometimes felt like the driver was running them over boulders on purpose, instead of choosing the smoother path.

About two hours later, they were at their destination, having had to drive slowly because of the instability of the ground, as Angela had explained. This was actually a little faster than the locals would normally go, but they were tracking the progress of the other parties, and wanted to arrive at the same time. The claimants tried to engage her and Mateo in conversation, but the latter two realized that there was no reason why they all had to occupy the same space. It was more than big enough for each party to have their own compartment, so he made the executive decision to separate everyone.

The other vehicle pulled up next to theirs, and everyone started getting out. The Vitalemusian guards tensed up into high alert, prepared to stop any violence. There was very little obvious hostility among the enemies, though. If Mateo had to guess, none of them wanted to appear to see the others as any significant threat. In order to maintain a façade of confidence and dominance, they had to make it look like their opponents meant very little to them. Interesting again, and it too said something about everyone’s strategy going into this. They were going for the same one, which how would that turn out? The non-claimants had one clear advantage, however, in that the Revolumusians only came as a primary diplomat and a lieutenant. They didn’t feel the need to bring their own security guards at all, which really showed how self-assertive they were, and how safe they felt. One point to the allies already, and talks hadn’t even begun.

Team Matic reunited with each other, along with Vitalie and Kivi.  The 31 of them walked together to a third vehicle, still surrounded by about as many guards. The place was even bigger than the transporters, and resembled a gigantic clam. It did have wheels, but there were no tracks in the dirt, giving them the impression that it wasn’t designed to move regularly, but only when necessary. This might have been a particularly geologically stable region of the planet.

The diplomacy room looked like it was specifically tailored for this occasion, and it genuinely might have been. This meeting was on the books for an entire year, so they knew how many people were going to show up. It was a round table, much like the one in the VA, but this could specifically hold fourteen members. Well, it could technically hold more, but it was clearly divided up with concave sections around the edge, each one large enough to accommodate the primary and lieutenant. The rest of each party sat at a half circle table behind them, almost kind of like a VIP area in a nightclub. The entourage, who weren’t expected to speak.

While Mateo and Romana hung back in their little pod, Leona and Angela sat in their designated spot at the big table. They waited there silently until realizing that everyone was staring at them. Leona spoke, not with awkwardness or confusion, but calm, grade school teacheresque inquisitiveness. “Are you expecting us to run the show?”

“That’s why you’re here,” Bronach responded.

It hadn’t been entirely clear what her role here was supposed to be, but she was prepared for this. She glanced at the other members, whose facial expressions implied that they agreed with Bronach’s assertion. “Okay.” She looked over at Vitalie. “I need them to have compatible personal devices; tablets or handhelds, or something.”

Vitalie looked up at the nearest guard, who unlocked a cabinet on the wall with his biometrics. He distributed seven phablets accordingly.

Leona went on, “please take a few moments to write down your goals here. Only one each. Tell us all what you want. You can say, we demand a bouquet of flowers or I wanna destroy the entire universe. It’s up to you what you choose—however insane or unreasonable it may be—but it must be singular, and genuine. Go ahead.” She simply typed PEACE on her own device.

Once they were all complete, Vitalie used her master device to project holograms in front of each party to display their response. Bronach wrote total control over the entire Goldilocks Corridor, and the safe return of all Exin defectors and hostages. Okay. Korali and Old!Oaksent both basically said that they wanted control over their half of the Corridor, suggesting that they had already been working on a deal to divide territories in some fashion. It also clearly told everyone that Bronach should end up with nothing. The resistance fighters from Revolumus wanted the dissolution of the Exin Empire, and for a fair republic to be erected in its place. All three claimants would be barred from so much as thinking about taking any part in the new government. The Verdemusian warriors didn’t care what the people in this sector of the galaxy did, as long as they left everyone else alone. They were evidently fine with an oppressive government if the Exins—or anything which might take its place—remained isolationistic. They were particularly concerned with the secure and successful dispersal of the modular ships in the Stargate project. Team Kadiar asked for safe passage within the Corridor to ferry any refugee who would like to leave for Castlebourne. She quickly added not hostages in response to Bronach’s message. Vitalie abstained from a response.

“All right,” Leona said. “Now we know where we’re starting from, which means we know how far apart we are. Our goal here should be the move everyone as close to the center as possible. You all want power that you can’t have at the exclusion of each other. My job is to see what we can do to make everyone both unhappy, and happy. I’m actually already seeing a potential solution, and your goals are probably not as distant as you think. I’ll hold off on judgment for now, though. First, we all need to spend some time making clarifications and elaborations.” She literally rolled up her sleeves. “Let’s get to it.”

They talked all day, barely taking any breaks. It wasn’t as hard as they assumed for people to start recognizing Leona’s idea, even without her ever saying it out loud. She was right that they could reach an agreement without making too many sacrifices. The main thing that some of them would lose was absolute supremacy. Even Korali and Old!Oaksent’s plan to divide territories assumed that each planet in that territory would want to follow their new, singular leader. The easiest decision they made was to appease the Verdemusians to halt all aggression from the Anatol Klugman warship. Verdemus was sufficiently far outside of the Goldilocks Corridor, and Extremus was not even a blip on their radar anymore as it had long since reached its destination, or at least attempted to. As far as Project Stargate went, the Corridor was obviously wholly off-limits, but so was a sizable bubble beyond that, which should insulate them from interference from worlds that Stargate did manage to settle. It was hard for the Exins to agree to allow the module that would be responsible for colonization here, but that was kind of a non-starter. The Anglos needed to follow their pattern as planned. Even if that meant staying dormant forever, they couldn’t just send that module somewhere else. The algorithm didn’t work like that. That’s what they claimed anyway.

Next came the hard part, which was the question of who would control all of these stars. The claimants all had rational reason to believe that it should be them, but if they didn’t find a peaceful way to govern, the Revolumusians weren’t going to let them relax. The rebels were friends with the crew of the Vellani Ambassador, which was still the most powerful ship in the universe, even compared with the Jameela Jamil. If Team Kadiar ever decided to stop transporting refugees, and start using their vessel as a weapon instead, no one would be able to stop them. As small as it was, its speed was unmatched, and nobody wanted to antagonize them, especially not after Angela strongly suggested that Ramses was developing an entire armada of slingdrive-equipped battleships. That wasn’t actually true, but it was believable enough, and unequivocally within his capabilities.

They could not complete all of the negotiations in only one day, but they did have a framework for one. The three claimants could maintain control over the sector as a Triumvirate, but planetary and local governance would be completely democratic, as overseen by a team of Revolumusians. It wasn’t apparent how exactly this would all work, but they would spend Team Matic’s interim year hashing out the details. They still hadn’t figured out how to handle the refugee issue, but Kivi pointed out that there would likely be fewer applications for emigration if the citizens were treated well. They would be happy, and not interested in leaving, as wherever they were now were their homes. It was hard for the claimants to believe this, and it was true that there was no guarantee, but they seemed to be opening their minds. This might actually work out.

Team Matic disappeared at midnight, confident that all would be resolved by the time they returned. Of course, though, their faith was unfounded. When did anything ever work out that well for them? They finally found out why Tok’ra was not present as the equivalent of Old!Oaksent’s lieutenant. He decided that this meeting did not have the right to speak for the entire Goldilocks Corridor. He had been back on New Welrios, rousing a new rebellion. They too wanted a seat at the table, and nobody was having it. Surprisingly, not even the Revolumusians thought that they deserved a voice. After all this work, war was closer than ever.

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