The Pryce of Heaven: Hacking Heaven (Part III)

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The three of them sit against the wall. They wish they could save Jupiter, but none of them had the power to do so. Tetra couldn’t summon him to her location, and if she had tried to jump to his location, she would have immediately started dying too, because she has no idea how to survive in the vacuum of space. Missy could have tried to slow time for him, but then what? How would they have gotten him out? Téa doesn’t have any powers to speak of, so she feels even more useless. They just were never the right team to deal with a contingency like that, and now it’s up to them to continue his vision. That won’t be easy, because even though they’re in the matrioshka body now, they have no clue how to find whatever they need to get to, or what they’re going to do when they get there. Missy is still a brilliant engineer, but they just don’t have enough information about this place, or how it works.

“Does anyone know that we’re here?” Téa asks. The reality is that none of them knew Jupiter very well, and as sad as it is, the biggest issue they face is the fact that he had some kind of plan, not that they’ve been traumatized directly.

Missy takes a tablet out of her bag, and starts doing what she can. “I doubt I can hack into this place. For all intents and purposes, we might as well be trying remotely, even though we’re technically in the building. I could do more with a hardline, but if I were to design a matrioshka body, I would compartmentalize the systems to an extreme degree. We would probably not be able to do more than turn the lights on and off in this section.”

“How long would it take if we were to walk from here to where the main system most likely is?” Tetra asks. “I understand we can’t do that, but what would it look like? I’m just having trouble fathoming the size of this thing.”

Missy chuckles. “How long would it take to walk to Jupiter? How long would it take you to drive? Hell, how long would it take you to fly? From head to heel, it’s about the distance from the sun to the orbit of Neptune. We’re in the ass.”

“There has to be some form of faster than light travel,” Téa figures. “You don’t build something this big unless you can get clear to the other side of it in a reasonable amount of time, should you need to.”

“It wasn’t really built for humans,” Missy explains. “Mechs can just transfer their consciousnesses somewhere else instantaneously, and start operating a new body. Like I was saying before, this is not a solid structure. It’s a bunch of gravitationally bound parts, which move in concert. A moon could probably fit within the space between a finger and its hand.”

They sit in silence for a moment while Missy keeps working.

“We’re still in the bubble, right?” Téa inquires.

“Yeah,” Missy confirms. “The rooms around us are frozen in time.”

“I guess that’s good at least.”

They sit for another moment until a voice comes through their cuffs. “Hello? Do you read me?”

“Jupiter?” Tetra asks. “Jupiter, is that you?”

“It is,” he replies.

“Jupiter, how are you al—”

Missy interrupts Téa’s question by cupping her hand around her mouth.

“You guys still there?” Jupiter asks. “If you’re avoiding asking me about my death, don’t worry. There’s no risk of a paradox, or anything. I’m not from the past. I am a quantum duplication of myself. I made a copy just as we were jumping, in case we needed someone to stay with the ship. I don’t really know why I didn’t tell you, but it looks like I made the right call. It’s taken me this long to establish a secure connection with you.”

“So you don’t have to die?” Missy makes sure.

“No, already happened. The good news is that this gives us an opportunity. Is my body there?”

Tetra slides her back up the wall, and stands to look out the viewport. “It’s...it’s close, but...” While his other body is on the other side of the hull, it’s still inside of Missy’s temporal bubble, but that doesn’t matter much, because there’s no way to get to it. They would need an airlock, and a vacuum suit. It might as well be on another planet.

“That’s fine,” Jupiter said. “There’s a teleportation feature built into them. It won’t let you go wherever you want, but it will allow two cuff-wearers to jump directly to one another. The problem is it’s designed as an outgoing feature. You can’t use it to summon someone towards you. Missy, I’m going to need you to hack into them. Shouldn’t be too hard for you, Leona and Sanaa did it all the time. Maybe you could reverse the polarity?”

Missy bursts out laughing. “If that was a joke, it was a good one, if not, it’s probably even funnier. But okay, I’ll see what I can do.” She gets to work on her cuff interface, trying to find a way to make it so they can bring Jupiter’s body into the room. No one bothers asking him why this is even a thing. They can’t fully trust him, but they can probably trust that he isn’t asking them to use his corpse to recreate Weekend at Bernie’s. Within a half hour, Missy has finished what she needs to do. Once she activates the apporter, the body appears on the floor before them.

“Okay,” the living Jupiter says. “Now it’s time to move on to the hard part.”

“That wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” Missy points out.

“This isn’t going to be hard on a technical level,” Jupiter begins to clarify, “but a psychological one. If you could reach into my inside breast pocket, and retrieve a little black and white bag thing.”

Tetra does this. “Got it.”

“That is a bag of holding. The white side is a virtual inventory carousel. I need you to look for something called an oligodendroglian interceptor kit.”

“Found it,” Tetra says. She selects the item on the screen, which causes the real thing to appear on the floor. It’s larger than the bag it was in. “What does it do?”

“Open it up.”

Tetra opens the pack, and starts to lay out all the pieces on the provided sanitary cloth. They look like medical devices. No...surgical tools.

Téa is watching it happen. “You’re gonna make us cut into your brain?”

“The body’s already dead,” he reminds them. “You can’t hurt it. Just dig a hole, find a spot to stick the antenna, and connect to it with your tablet. It’s just like syncing your phone with a pair of wireless headphones.”

“It’s absolutely not like that,” Téa argues.

“Oligodendrocytes are all over the brain. You just have to stick it on and connect. I know it’s gross, but this will allow us to hack into the simulation.”

“They don’t do this in The Matrix,” Tetra notes.

“They probably could,” he retorts. “Look, this has to happen quickly. We’re finally at an advantage I never had, because the signal is extremely strong here, but it won’t be long before my copy’s body loses its link to its former consciousness. You have to do this now.”

“Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine,” Tetra says.

“No, I’ll do it,” Téa decides. I’m not a teleporter, or a tech genius, but I’ve cooked meat before, and I feel like I need to contribute something.”

No one argues with her.

Téa gracelessly uses the blade to cut into Jupiter’s head, all the way into the brain. She then drops this little pebble thing into her hole, and waits for Missy to find the connection on her tablet. It really is as easy as he claimed. Within seconds, she’s linked up to his neural signal. It’s fading fast, but it’s enough for her to establish a permanent connection to where the neural signal is going, which is directly into Pryce’s afterlife simulation. From here, they should be able to gain access to the virtual constructs.

“How much time do you need?” Tetra asks as Téa is getting herself cleaned up.

“Impossible to tell. I don’t know how complex this is, or even what language it’s written in. I’m from the 21st century, this is all pretty far beyond me. I hope there are a few cots in that bag, because it could take days, or honestly, even weeks. Sorry.”

Several hours later, Missy has pretty much full control of the simulation. She would be capable of switching it off, or altering its speed of time, or even giving people clone bodies to transfer their minds into. None of that really helps them, though. They don’t need control of the simulation, but the matrioshka body as a whole, and they need to use that control to detrone Pryce himself. Unfortunately, they’re separate systems by design, to prevent something like this very thing from happening.

“We need a distraction,” Tetra suggests as Missy is looking through the simulation specifications. “Someone is going to have to go in, and make a big stink, so the other two can get to the real controls.”

“I think we all know Missy can’t be the person who goes into the simulation,” Téa adds. She needs to stay out here, so it obviously has to be me.”

“It could be me,” Tetra contends. “I’m the one who thought of it.”

“And you also have superpowers, which I’ve already explained. I can make a stink. I made a lot of stinks when I was younger, I was an abolitionist. It has to be me, in case Missy needs you out here.”

The other two give her this look.

Téa continues, “I won’t be dead, so Pryce won’t be able to delete my code, or whatever. I’m just hacking in, and if anything goes wrong, I’ll come right back to my body.”

“I can’t promise that,” Missy says, shaking her head.

“I don’t know if my pattern is over or not,” Téa goes on. “If the powers that be still have a hold of me, then I will ultimately be here for three hundred years, at which point, who knows? But at least there’s a chance they’ll protect me. You two can’t say the same thing.” She lifts her cuff closer to her mouth. “Neither can you, Mister Fury. So jam that needle into the back of my head, give me a halo, stick electrodes on me, or do whatever it is you gotta do. Let’s stop wasting time.”

Jupiter informs them that there is indeed a VR cap in his bag. It isn’t all that difficult to interface it with Missy’s tablet, and the simulation signal. Tetra places the cap on Téa’s head, and Missy prepares to send her into the frametrix, as she calls it jokingly.

“I’m putting you in lurker mode,” Missy goes over. “No one will be able to see you if you don’t want them to. Take as much time as you need to get your bearings, and make a plan. Pryce will probably be able to see you right away, but he might not notice immediately; it just depends on how preoccupied he is already.”

“Got it. Beam me up, Missy.”

Missy activates the sequence, and resolves Téa into the simulation.

She’s standing in a room. A room full of Jupiters. It looks like a party, except that every guest is the same person. They are all wearing different clothes, but all in the same style, and they all have dates and times on their shirts. No one else is around, and Téa wants answers, so she reveals herself to the world. Little by little, they notice her amongst them.

“Who is this?” one of them asks.

“She looks familiar,” observes another.

The Jupiter listed as December 14, 2134 approaches her. “Miss Stendahl, you’ve come. But you’re not dead, right?”

“Nope,” Téa replies. “We hacked into the sim.”

He nods. “That was a contingency, in case you couldn’t gain physical access to the servers.”

“I don’t know if Missy knows where they are, or what,” she explains. “It’s just my job to create a distraction.”

December 14, 2134 lets out a maniacal laugh, and looks around at his quantum duplicates. “We can do that, can’t we boys!”

Responses like, “hell yeah,” and “I’m great at that,” came out of the duplicates. They whoop and holler and smash their glasses on the floor. One of them conjures a baseball bat, and breaks a lamp with it.

“That’s right!” December 14, 2134 concurs. Still smiling, he looks back at Téa. “I knew there was a reason I kept letting my duplicates die.” He nods proudly as they begin rushing out of the party venue. “Let’s go raise some hell.”

< > Entire Story

Microstory 1520: Ruby Ekto, Simon Divto, Kara Trito, Luna Chato, Dana Panto, Tali Hasto, Gaby Sapto, Asher Ashto, Evren Navto, Manny Masto

< > Table of Contents

One is for Growth

For the beginning of the year

We celebrate each other, and our togetherness

It is about new beginnings

We eat desserts

Two is for Scion

For birth and early development

We learn about the circle of life

It is about nature, and all the animals around us

We drink water

Three is for Mask

For make believe and creativity

We dance and sing in the streets

It is about dressing up, and empathizing with others

We eat fruit

Four is for Athletics

For sports and sportsmanship

We compete in challenges, and support our elite

It is about agility and strength

We eat protein

Five is for Fields

For outdoor activities

We plant our seeds, and enjoy the wild

It is about farming and agriculture

We eat grains

Six is for Environment

For the world around us, which keeps us alive

We study our impact on the ecosystem

It is about respecting our planet, and protecting our future

We eat vegetables

Seven is for Community

For the workers in the workforce

We show appreciation for the laborers

It is about ethics, and being a positive contributing member of society

We eat and drink dairy

Eight is for war

For remembering those we’ve lost to our defense

We spread peace, and honor the sacrifices

It is about learning from our past mistakes

We fast

Nine is for Aerobics

For exercise and self-improvement

We promote healthy choices, and an active lifestyle

It is about getting enough sleep, and developing a reasonable schedule

We eat seeds

Ten is for Gratitude

For family and friends

We thank our parents, and our neighbors

It is about loving one’s enemy

We eat a balanced diet

Microstory 1519: The Talking Lamb Who is Talking to You

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I’m a talking lamb

I say little lamby things

If you hate the way I talk

Of course, I can always sing

If you’re too tired to run

And there’s nowhere left to hide

You can shear my mama’s coat

And then you can climb inside

It will make you look like us

And the danger, it will pass

It’s just about your perseverance;

How long you can last

If after a while, you find

Sheep life’s pretty great

You can stay with us forever

Hey, perhaps it’s even fate

If you’d rather go back home

And forget you ever met us

As sheep, we will not stop you

We’ll even help you, if you let us

I like just who I am

I believe you’d like it too

But that is your decision

Just make sure to think it through

Microstory 1518: I Was Born a Mother

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I was born a mother, and I know how crazy that sounds

But it’s completely true

It’s just not the whole story

My mother was also born pregnant

As was her mother

And her mother before that

I am not the result of the immaculate conceptions, though

None of us is

We have all become pregnant with the same child

We take hundreds of days to form

The Quantum Child takes hundreds of years

We just keep passing it down the line

In every generation, a young woman in the family is chosen

Chosen to take on the responsibility

We don’t know who exactly is making this choice

Perhaps the mysterious powers that be

Maybe God

It might even be time itself

But it’s never been a very hard job

Each woman is pregnant for one day out of the year

The earlier Quantum Mothers had it easy

They barely noticed any difference

It was just like getting a little sick once a year

And having to worship the porcelain deity

If that

The latter Quantum Mothers, like me

It’s a little harder

But it’s still easier than a regular pregnancy

Which we have to deal with as well

For the Quantum Child to survive

A new Mother must be born

A new Mother must be chosen

I am in the third trimester

One of my daughters will soon take my place

And she will be the one to deliver this baby

The Quantum Child will finally start its life

And no one knows what that looks like

At least I’ll still be alive to see it

I can’t wait

Microstory 1517: What a Nickel is Worth

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What is a nickel worth?

A nickel is worth nothing

It’s less than nothing

Meeting a nickel is like spending some money, and then being robbed for the rest

A nickel will screech in your ears, and pinch you red

It will corner you, and skunk your face

It will keep you awake, or hold you in water

It won’t drown you, understand

But it won’t let you get out and get dry

The trick to beating a nickel is by getting it to think you’re fine with what it’s doing

Try to run, you will be found

When you think you’ve escaped a nickel, you haven’t

It’s waiting for you around the corner

You can hurt a nickel—even kill it

Nickels are not very strong

They’re just annoying

But even if you do manage to get rid of a nickel, another will come take its place

A nickel is worth nothing, but a group of nickel is worth everything

That is why Adversary created so many

They are expendable and pointless alone, but hellish together

What happens to a nickel when it dies?

Does it simply return to hell?

What if it dies in hell?

If I kill a nickel, could it come back to haunt me later?

There is no way to know

They never stop coming either way

I would pay a million nickels just to never see another nickel

And I would be richer than I have ever been

Microstory 1516: Catalysis Upon The Verge, And All its Cohorts

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The Verge

Why do you exist?

Why are you always pulling us towards you?

And pushing us away?

We cannot go around

We cannot move you

It is not the inconvenience of travel

When you can go anywhere in the universe in a matter of hours

Does it hurt much to double the time?

I say not, but that is not the problem

The problem is control

Whoever controls The Verge controls the universe

We must always pass through you first

Therefore we must always pass through them

They decide who goes where

They decide to accept or reject us

They approve or disapprove our wars

They regulate trade

They do not deserve this control more than anyone else

They are simply the ones powerful enough to have taken it

I do not want this control

I do not want to make the decisions

I say we let the people decide for themselves

No more control

We must have a Verge, that much is physically true

But we can do what we will with this limitation

Can’t we?

I propose we disassemble this regulation

I suggest we dismantle the force that chooses for us

Some will call it chaos

But I call it freedom

I call it justice

I say this is how it is meant to be

This is how we can find true happiness

This will bring peace

Because the protocols they have in place

Only encourage disunion

We can end that

We can end the control

This is the beginning

The beginning...of Catalysis

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Saturday, July 18, 2133

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They stayed in Ladytown for the rest of the day, and ate with the residents. The Ladytowners wanted Mateo to stay, so he could help repopulate their town, but that was an awkward request, and it wasn’t really up to him anyway. Come midnight central, they jumped forward to 2133, and hours later, they had still not yet received an assignment from Jupiter. It was becoming increasingly difficult to justify not sticking around when he could help them with their problem. The conversation continued. Their leader was named Hua. “You have to understand, Mister Matic, that we do not want to sleep with you. I mean, I’m sure plenty of us do, but that’s not the point. We’re not doing this for fun. We need to keep the town alive, or the government will win.”

“You can’t just recruit more rebels from the city?” Mateo suggested. It might have been a little ignorant and insensitive.

“We would love that,” Hua replied. “We would love it if the entire city turned against the Republic, but it’s more complicated than that. Their guard is up right now, and they are just waiting for our surviving fighters to make a move. After the men died from the haemophilia virus, they knew we would be angry, and galvanized. They figure we’ll attack them at any moment, and that we’ll sacrifice our lives just to kill as many of them as we can. We have to be smart, though. We have to rebuild. You can help us do that.”

That’s asking a lot, though,” Mateo said. “I already have a daughter I conceived in this reality who I never even got to meet before she went off to another universe. I have two children from a different reality who we’re not sure are still here, but we’ve never really met them either. I have another daughter who sometimes exists, and sometimes doesn’t, and I’m not entirely certain she even is my daughter, or if time just occasionally brings her into existence. I can’t keep having children I don’t raise. It’s not right. I’m not that kind of guy. If I weren’t a time traveler, I would be a real dad to those kids.”

“We don’t need you to be a dad,” Hua continued. “We just need your seed.”

“I understand that, but that’s not what I need.”

“I see your perspective,” Hua went on, “and I can appreciate your reluctance. You hesitate for good reasons; not bad ones, and I don’t mean to downplay them. But there is more than one way to contribute positively to the worlds. You won’t raise these children either, but they will go on to do great things, and fight for democracy. We will all raise them in your stead. They will grow up to be amazing people, just like I’m sure your other children have.” Mateo tried to say something, but she interrupted before he got a sound out. “Tell me one thing, would those four children even exist if you weren’t a traveler; if you just lived in Kansas City from birth to death, in realtime?”

“Without time travel, no. I don’t know what happens in that scenario. I was twenty-eight years old when I made my first jump, and had not yet met anyone I thought I could have kids with. It may never have happened, or...I would have conceived other children.”

“Yes, reality is quite complex,” Hua agreed. “Few know what would have happened, but the fact is that those four people exist, or existed, because of you, and you should be proud of that, whether you were there or not. I’ll tell you this much, literally not being in control of your life is a good reason to be an absentee father. It’s probably the best reason, and it doesn’t make you a deadbeat. Or to put it more clearly, it makes you not a deadbeat. We will tell stories about you to your biological children here. We will make sure they understand who you are, and what you have done. And believe me when I tell you, Mister Matic, we already do know who you are. Your dealings are in historical, and future historical, records. You’re famous on every planet.”

“I don’t know.” There wasn’t much more he could say about it. He had expressed his position, and Hua had expressed hers. Neither one was right, and neither one was wrong. It was just a question of whether he was willing to sacrifice his own emotional health...or theirs. When looking at it from that angle, the answer became quite clear. His opinion wasn’t the only one that mattered, though, and it was then that he realized how quiet Leona had been this whole time. “I would like to hear your thoughts.”

“My thoughts are irrelevant. Your body, your choice.”

“It’s not that simple,” Mateo said to her, setting his hand on hers.

Hua nodded at her supportively.

“I...I don’t wanna sway your opinion. If you need to do this, then do it. If you can’t, then don’t.”

“Let’s call it a hypothetical,” Mateo began. “Let’s say you’re writing a story—the characters aren’t real, so it really doesn’t matter what they do, because no one will actually get hurt. If you’re writing that story, where would you take it? What would you have the Mateo character do?” He used airquotes.

Leona shut her trap.

“Please. This is important.”

“I know it’s important, that doesn’t mean I’m going to answer your question.”

“I’m your husband, and I need to know what I have to say about it.”

She was silent for a time, but thinking it over now, instead of just refusing to express her feelings outright. She didn’t look at either of them straight on, though. She stared at the wall in front of her, and made glances over at them, having to strain her eyes the most to see Mateo, who was sitting next to her. Sometimes she would look over to the corner on her other side, just to avoid giving anything away. Finally, she gave up holding out. “I think you should do it. I know I should say that I don’t—that it makes me a bad wife—but as a woman, I can’t sit here, and watch this phallocratic government oppress their people. If this is what they need to fight back—if they need future warriors—I...how can we deny them that? If I had...seed, I would give it away. I just don’t have time to donate my womb.”

Mateo reached over, and pulled Leona into a hug. He held on for a long time before releasing her. “I agree.”

Hua smiled softly, but was not overly excited about their decision. “Okay. Obviously, you have the right to back out at any time. This requires consent, just like any other encounter. We would take samples from you if were capable of preserving, or even effectively inseminating them. At the moment, our only real chance is real sex. I have already spoken with the group, and only a handful of them have rejected this plan, and of course, that’s also their right. Most of them are willing to do this. We know you can only do so much in one day anyway, so you’ll be able to pick whoever you want.”

“I don’t need to pick,” Mateo said, shaking his head. “This isn’t a game of kickball. Anyone will be fine. You did say you wanted children. I will do my physical best to...contribute as much as possible before I’m forced to leave.”

He was able to be with five women before they ran out of time. This new body’s refractory period was surprisingly long. He would have thought it would be pretty short, or even instantaneous. Perhaps Pryce didn’t design the clone bodies to want or need sex often. Come to think of it, Mateo’s sex drive was lower than it was with his original body. Culturally, it was less important in the future than it once was. Immortals tended to not feel the compulsion to procreate like their predecessors, or their younger, regular human selves. So it would make sense for Pryce to not put too much emphasis on it. Still, it wasn’t like Mateo’s libido was completely nonexistent. He was able to perform, and it was just as pleasurable as before, if not more. He tried not to enjoy it too much, because of his wife, but if they were completely cold and clinical, the pregnancies might not take. Passion and foreplay were scientifically known to be important components to conception, and could not reasonably be ignored.

Once the job was complete, Mateo retired to their little temporary hunt with Leona, so they could end the night alone together. They started to talk about the experience, and ensure that no one was uncomfortable about it, or felt that their perspective wasn’t being respected. As midnight approached, Leona began to feel a little possessive and left out. She needed physical proof that he was still with her, even though she trusted him, and knew that it wasn’t going to spark some urge to step out. Fortunately, he was reaching the end of his last refractory period, and was up to the task one last time. Whereas before, he was having sex, now he was making love, with the human he loved. The deed was done just as midnight hit, and they were simultaneously swept through a transition window, back to The Parallel.

They were in a bed, but not the same one from Ladytown. It was as if someone in the Parallel was aware that they would be returning, and exactly where. They were in the middle of a lovely crop field of some kind now, though, rather than a building. They stood up, and put on their clothes, which were folded neatly on top of the nightstand. Yes, someone must have traveled to Ladytown during their interim year, and retrieved all of their belongings. Their go-bags were here too. Underneath the last shirt, they found a handwritten note. It was from Hua. Dear Mateo and Leona, I want to thank you for what you tried to do for us last year. It was a heroic act, and meant more to us than you could ever fathom. We will forever be grateful by your attempt, and for your understanding, Leona. I know it wasn’t easy, letting him help a group of strangers in such a way. Sadly, none of the women became pregnant as a result of the endeavor. It would seem that resurrected bodies are incapable of procreation, whether by design, or oversight. Or perhaps the virus the city sent our way had a greater impact on our biology than we realized. Again, we appreciate the effort, and we will not give up hope that our world can change. You have reminded us that there are still good people in the worlds, and that they must exist somewhere in Aljabara. We will find them, and things will get better. Thank you.

Yeah, they should have thought of that.

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The Pryce of Heaven: Blackbody (Part II)

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The beacon was live, but for only less than an hour. It went dormant after that, which suggests something happened to Lowell. Oh well, Jupiter figured. There was a reason they chose him for the task. If he was killed permanently, it would have no great impact on the timeline, and it’s not like he was ever a great person anyway. He did his job, and now it’s time to move on to the next phase. They’re standing at the Nexus annex on Earth, waiting for the technician to integrate the machine into their ship, which is too large to fit inside  the Nexus proper.

“Why are we in this other timeline?” Tetra asks.

“It’s not another timeline,” Téa explains. “It’s another reality. It runs parallel to our reality.”

“Yes,” Missy adds. “Other timelines technically take place in the past. When you go back in time, you don’t actually go backwards. What you do is bring the past conditions up to your present, and continue forward from there. You’re always moving forward.”

“Oh.”

“I brought you to the Parallel,” Jupiter begins, “because I have the power to do so, and it’s kind of our one advantage. We will travel to the point in the galaxy where I picked up Lowell’s beacon, and then send us through a transition window back to the main sequence, so he doesn’t see us coming.”

“We still don’t have much information,” Téa argues. “We may know where Lowell was, but we don’t know where he is, and we don’t know what kind of technology this Pryce fellow has, or what. We don’t even know that he doesn’t have access to the Parallel.”

“That we do know,” Jupiter argues back. “Parallel researchers assure me that we are completely separate. Their version of death is different than ours. If you were to die here, you would not go to Pryce’s simulation.”

“What would happen to us if we died here?” Missy questions. “That would be kind of nice to know.”

The technician stops her work for a moment, and gives Jupiter this look.

“I’ve already asked that. Death is a touchy subject for these people even more than it is in our reality. They won’t talk about it.” He takes a beat. “But you don’t have to worry about that. Not only am I going to keep you safe, but all three of you have things to do in the timeline that you have not yet experienced. You will find your way back. You have to.”

“Speaking of which,” the technician says, “you will not be able to come back. Your ship is not capable of near instantaneous interstellar travel. I can send you where you wanna go, but once you get there, the connection will be severed. You’ll have to find some other way.”

“We’re not worried about that right now,” Jupiter assures her. “We’ll be in the main sequence, so it won’t matter what we can and can’t do.”

“That’s not really true,” Téa points out, but they drop the subject, and decide to hope for the best.

After a final system’s check, they climb into the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and prepare to launch. “Oh, by the way,” the technician says through the speaker. “You’re getting pretty close to Stellaris Collapsis Centralis. Things are gonna get slow for you.”

“What’s Stellaris Collapsis Centralis?” Téa questions just as the engine reaches critical mass.

“Oh God,” Jupiter says as he’s massaging the bridge of his nose. “The blackhole.”

They jump.

“Missy!” Jupiter cries. “No, I mean...computer, calculate temporal dilation with reference frame Earth.”

“Calculating,” the computer responds.

“What’s going on?” Tetra asks, frightened.

“The time dilation is—” the computer tries to say.

“On-screen!” Jupiter orders.

The time difference appears on the screens before them.

“Missy, can you read those figures, and come up with a temporal bubble to match?” Jupiter asks.

“Give me a second.”

“We don’t have much more than a second,” he replies.

Missy takes a breath, and forms a bubble between her fingers, which expands far from them at the speed of her exhale. “Bubble’s away.”

“Computer, how long has it been since departure, realtime?”

“Three years, four months, and twenty-nine days,” the computer answers.

“Ah, damn,” Jupiter says at a fairly low volume. “I didn’t want it to take this long.”

“Can someone please explain what happened?” Tetra asks.

Jupiter prepares to explain. “Gravity bends spacetime. The higher the gravity, the slower time moves. When you’re standing on the surface of Earth, time is actually moving slower for you than for someone floating on a space station in orbit—not by much, but not nothin’. Black holes have profoundly high gravity; higher than you’ve ever experienced before. We are extremely close to it, so while we were only here for a few seconds, almost three and a half years passed for everyone else. Well, I shouldn’t say everyone. Some people in this reality live relatively close to black holes. For them, maybe two years have passed, for others, only one. I asked Missy to generate a temporal bubble, to cancel out this gravitational time dilation. We’re now moving really fast compared to the region of space around us, but it’s matched up with the people on Earth.”

“Pryce must be using the time dilation to prevent people from finding the simulation,” Téa guesses.

“That would be my assumption,” Missy confirms. “If he’s this close to the event horizon, he hasn’t been here long.”

“How long?” Tetra asks.

“Well, when did Pryce first arrive here?” Missy asks in return.

“Let’s assume he’s been here the entire time,” Jupiter puts forth. Based on what I’ve gathered, he started collecting consciousnesses about twelve thousand years ago.”

Missy taps on her screen a few times, and her eyes widen. “A day.”

“Excuse me?”

“A day,” Missy repeats. “If Tamerlane Pryce arrived in this region of space—this close to Sagittarius A-Star—then from his perspective, he’s only been here...for a day.”

“He must have his own way of manipulating time then,” Téa determines. “Mateo was communicating with Leona from the real world, from Earth.”

“The simulation would be running at a highly accelerated rate. The entities monitoring the computers from the outside, would only experience minutes, but for the people inside the simulation, decades have passed.”

“How does this help us?” Tetra asks. “How does it hurt us?”

“Well,” Jupiter says with relief, “thank God Missy’s here. Honestly, I chose this team for poetic value. I didn’t give much thought to who would be useful for the mission. We lucked out that Sanaa is one of the people who need rescuing, and that I’m kind of a psycho who wants to see what happens when she finds out her mortal enemy has saved her life.”

Téa continues the interrogation, “what happens when we transition to the other reality? How close are we to Lowell’s beacon?”

“We are safely two light years from it, so when we transition, we’ll have to make the journey across, as soon as we gather some data. It’ll only take us a day.” He directs his attention to Missy, “Miss Atterberry, you think you can hold up your bubble during the transition?”

“I don’t see why not,” Missy decides. “It’s not like I have to concentrate on it. I create a bubble, and then I let it be.”

“Okay. Then I’m gonna send us through,” Jupiter says, waiting for anyone to protest. Mateo or Lowell would have been the ones to do that, but they’re not a problem anymore. “Here..we..go!”

They switch back over to the main sequence. Everything seems to be about the same as it always was, but then they looked out the right viewport. They are flabbergasted and lost.

“What the hell am I looking at here?” Tetra asks. “Is there someone standing outside the ship?”

“Like a robot?” Téa adds. “It looks like a robot, or a statue.”

“Oh my God,” Jupiter says breathily. “I think that’s the matrioshka body.”

“That’s crazy,” Missy says, staring at the screen. “I’ve heard of a brain, but...someone built this thing?”

“Hogarth Pudeyonavic,” Jupiter answers. “It’s not supposed to exist for another two and a half centuries, and then some.”

“Can someone explain?”

“The matrioshka brain,” Missy starts to go over it. “What you do is build a bunch of structures around a star, which will absorb the light from that star, with what are basically gigantic hyperefficient solar panels. They don’t absorb all of it, though. Some light will get through, and those structures will radiate heat away. Notice how your phone gets hot when you use it too much? That’s just energy being wasted, and space is no exception. So what you do is build even more structures behind the first layer. They’ll catch that radiated heat, but will in turn radiate their own. So you build another layer. And another, and another, and another, until you’re no longer benefitting from the radiation. That’s a matrioshka brain. It’s not a solid sphere, but from far enough away, it looks like one. If we built one around Sol, the whole thing would extend farther than the orbit of Neptune. According to the computer, this brain is surrounding a red dwarf, so it’s smaller.”

“You call that small?” Téa can’t fathom anything larger than this.

“Yes, and it includes a full body. There’s not really any point in doing that, except that it’s badass, and I’ve never heard of it before, and I wish I had thought of it.”

“Someone stole it, and brought it to the past?” Tetra assumes.

“That would seem to be the case,” Jupiter agrees. “Pryce is more powerful than I imagined. Some argue you could build a sufficient simulation with a dyson sphere, which would just be one layer of structures, so this is extreme overkill.”

“How do we get over there?” Missy asks. “If he hasn’t detected us already, he will soon.”

“We’re quite close to darklurking,” Jupiter assures her. “That thing would probably just interpret us as a glitch in the system, we’re so small. That’s the benefit of a tiny ship. Everyone seems to think bigger is better, but that’s not always the case.”

“Computer, go ninety-nine percent dark,” Missy orders. “Life support, dim lighting, and HiBo grav only.” She sees Jupiter looking at her. “No point in testing our limits.” She starts tapping the computer screen. “There is no way we’re getting over there. He’ll spot us, and blow us out of the sky. I mean, one laser beam, and we won’t know what hit us.”

“Paige can get us there,” Jupiter says. “Or Tetra, rather.”

“Me?”

“All we need is a telescope,” he tells her. “It doesn’t take any power. I think they have one down in engineering, kind of for things like this.”

“Missy will help you find somewhere pressurized and oxygenated. Hell, I could do it. We all got our cuffs on. Everybody’s got everybody’s powers. You guys remember that? You need to learn to use them first, though; they’re not automatic.”

Tetra sighs. “You get me a clear shot inside a window, I’ll get us into that room.”

“Okay,” Missy says. “I’ll find something. It might take me awhile. I would really love to make sure there’s no one in that room when we get there.”

It really did take long for her to find a good entry point. The matrioshka body was predominantly designed to accommodate a species of people known as mechs. They don’t need air, and they don’t need gravity, and some don’t even need light. There are places regular organic humans could survive, but without the blueprints, or some foreknowledge of this place, they’re hard to see, especially since most of them are deeper in. Besides, for Tetra’s teleporting ability to work, she needs to see where she’s going. That can come in the form of a photograph, or straight line of sight, or—in this case—a telescopic view, but she can’t simply be cognizant of what’s on the other side.

“Wait,” Téa interrupts as they’re discussing the details of the jump. “When will we arrive in that room? I don’t know much about science, but I know that light moves at a certain speed. When we get there, will it be present day, or will it be two years ago?”

They look to Tetra.

“That’s the thing. I don’t know. Normally, it would be the past. I’m looking at a star that’s two light years away, which means the events unfolding before me happened two years ago. I’m not sure how to account for the black hole’s time dilation, or Missy’s time bubble. It’s kinda gonna be a crapshoot. Don’t misunderstand me when I say that I can’t recommend this course of action. I’ll do it if you want, but only if you want.”

Now they look to Jupiter.

“A lot of what I do is because I like the power...the control. I crave people doing what I say. I’ve grown a lot since I started doing this, though. Sending my teams into the Parallel, saving lives; it’s given me perspective, and changed me in ways I thought were hopeless since I was a child.” He shakes his head, and paces within a very small radius. “The old me would make you go, because I’m in charge. Now, though, I just want my people back. And I’m asking for your help.”

Now they all look to each other.

“Let’s do it.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m in.”

“Okay.”

Missy double checks her work, then presents the eyepiece to Tetra. They jump, and make it all the way there...but not everyone survives.

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