Extremus: Year 36

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At first, it was obvious what Captain Leithe needed to do. Dr. Holmes lied to her, claiming that she was trying to help her fix her memory problem when really she was the cause of it, at least part of the time. She had to go. People had to know that she was bad news so the dismissal process could be completed. It was going to be neither easy, nor simple, but it simply had to be done. As Kaiora pondered the proceedings that would follow should she choose to put this on the agenda, however, she had to acknowledge a big issue. Nearly everything would come out about her practice. Every procedure she performed, every medication she prescribed; it would all be out in the open. This information would not be attached to any names, of course, but it had to become evidence, because while it wasn’t all relevant, any of it could be relevant, and it was going to take a specially formed committee time to sort through it. At the very least, this was needlessly humiliating to a well-respected medical professional whose motives Kaiora was not fully cognizant of, and at worst, it placed Olindse in more danger, which defeated the whole purpose.

As it turned out, Kaiora didn’t know that much about what happened to Admiral Olindse Belo. She circumvented a direct order from her Captain to jump into a portal to the future. That’s really all she knew. She didn’t know why she had to go, or when she would arrive. Best practices suggested the best way to handle the situation, since the memory wipe didn’t really take, was to ignore the topic as much as possible. Throwing Dr. Holmes under the bus was not ignoring it, and it was not discreet. Temporal theory states that doubt about the path to reach a known future is tantamount to an unknown future. That is, Kaiora doesn’t know what the timeline is like when Olindse shows up in it, which means she has to assume that every choice she and the people around her make will lead to that future, rather than some random alternative. She’s not free to make any decision she would like, but she’s pretty safe making the reasonable ones since she has no reason to believe they would go against her hypothetical fate.

Still, trying to get rid of Dr. Holmes was a risky move by any standard, so she decided to let it go. The two of them didn’t talk about it for almost three years after that. When they passed in the corridors, or sat across from each other in the executive crew meetings, they exchanged knowing glances, but they did not address the elephant in the room, which they could both see. It was in both of their best interests to pretend it never happened, so that’s what they did. Unfortunately, as the time since has illustrated, it has not been that easy. The tension between them has proved to be a lot more obvious to everyone else. Apparently, there have been two elephants in the same room all along, with neither being mutually visible. It’s affected their work. Surely without coordinating, they’ve both begun to delegate a lot more work that they would traditionally do themselves, worrying their fellow crew members and friends. They never staged an intervention, but independently of each other, the head of surgery spoke with Dr. Holmes, and the Second Lieutenant spoke with Kaiora. That’s when the latter knew she was at her lowest, because if Lars Callaghan thinks there’s something wrong with you, there’s something wrong with you.

Something has to change about this dynamic, and if Kaiora isn’t going to step away from the captain’s seat, there is only one other option. They’re in a meeting now to discuss the future of this crew, and their respective responsibilities on it.

“I’m not going to do it,” Dr. Holmes says before Kaiora has a chance to speak.

“You’re not going to do what?”

“I’m not going to retire.”

While Hock Watcher can effectively be a lifetime appointment, Chief Medical Officer actually is. Dr. Holmes would have to do something pretty bad to lose her job. Premature retirement is even harder. If Kaiora wants to do this, she has to be careful. She has to convince her to make this decision for herself. “I never said that.”

“You were going to suggest it.”

“And how would you know that?” Kaiora questions. “Are you aware of future events in the timeline to which the likes of me are not privy?”

“Oh, here we go again.”

“What do you mean, here we go again? We’ve never talked about this!”

“I see the way you look at me.”

“I see the way you look at me!”

“Are you just going to echo everything that I say?”

“Are you not going to explain yourself? I want to know why you did it. Why did you fuck with my memories?”

“Why did you not question me before?”

Kaiora takes a moment before responding. She sips her tea in the meantime. “Do you know what this room is?”

Dr. Holmes looks over at the walls. “I’ve never been here before. I stay mostly in the medical section.”

Kaiora nods. She places a headband over her forehead. Then she reaches over to a gadget on a table next to her, and flips a switch. Everything changes. They’re still in the same room, but they’re joined by infinite copies of it now, along with infinite copies of Dr. Holmes herself. Kaiora is safe as she’s wearing the headband, but the doctor can see her own duplicates, sitting around her, above her on the ceiling, and below her under the now transparent floor. They’re all looking around at each other too, equally as confused, but each reacting differently to an infinitesimal degree. As time goes on, they begin to pop out of existence, only to be replaced by new copies.

“What is this?” Dr. Holmes asks, and as she does so, an infinite number of others do the same, each in their own special way, at slightly different times, tones, and speeds. The sound echoes unbearably throughout the infinite cosmic expanse. They continue to disappear.

Kaiora clears her throat, and switches off the machine. “This. is the Infinitorium. It’s sometimes known as the quantum duplication room, but to some, that implies the ability to cross dimensional barriers where that function does not exist. You can see and hear your alternates, but only one of you will survive any given moment. The rest are constantly being destroyed. You are dying an infinite number of times every moment of your life. This is the fact of reality, and what this chamber does is show you that, whereas most of the time, you’re free to move on with your life, blissfully ignorant of all the versions of you that didn’t make it. This was an experiment of Old Man’s. He thought the criminals on this ship might find it unenjoyable to be tortured in. See, now you’ve seen. You’ve watched yourself be wiped from existence over and over again, but here’s the catch.” Kaiora leans in. “That’s not what you learned today. What you really saw...is that the next possible version of you to die...could be you.”

Dr. Holmes shifts uncomfortably. “What do you want?”

“I want the goddamn truth. What did you do to my memories? This has been a long time coming.”

Dr. Holmes takes a breath, and does everything to recover from her recent traumatic experience, recognizing that she’ll probably need therapy after this regardless. “I did it to protect the Admiral. You came to me, and told me what happened, and together, we pieced together what you were missing. The memory drops were perfectly fine when they were manufactured. They’re a prescription drug, and I don’t know where Olindse got them, but like any consumable, they go bad. It was expired, Captain Leithe, and you should not have taken it. I keep telling my patients, read the label. Analgesic doesn’t mean what you think it means! Anyway, what your videos don’t mention is that the drug was having a negative impact on other parts of your memory, not just episodic. They were interfering with your ability to walk, and to remember words. You were making yourself look like an idiot, and people were strongly considering recalling you as the captain.

“I found myself incapable of fixing you permanently. The best I could do was give you that nose spray. What it does is sort of consolidate the apparently reproductive memory solution in your system, so it does what it was supposed to do, and only erase your episodic memories. It was a temporary solution, obviously. I never meant to keep you like that. I was working on something that could flush all of it from your body, but that was proving to be more difficult than I thought it would. I delegated my duties, and focused solely on the permanent solution.”

“I didn’t need you to synthesize a system flush,” Kaiora argues. “All I needed to do was stop taking the nose spray.”

“Yeah, I see that now, but since we kept having the same conversation every other day, and the same other conversation every other day, that didn’t occur to me!”

Kaiora took another beat before responding. “Once you realized I was back to normal three years ago, why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because you didn’t say anything. Your past self was trying to protect the Admiral, and I wanted to do the same. Yeah, it sucked that you kept erasing the day you just lived, but I believed you would agree that to be the lesser of two evils. I still don’t know what you know; what you remember about it. You never came to me to run tests, and I didn’t want to...do any more damage to your psyche.”

Kaiora reaches up to massage her forehead, only now realizing that the control headband is still there. She pulls it off, and carelessly throws it across the room. “Shit,” she says loudly, but voicelessly.

“What was that a reaction to, the headband?”

“No,” Kaiora contends. “I messed up. I assumed the worst, and I didn’t talk to you about it.”

“I nearly retired because of what happened, Captain. I’ve never made a mistake like that. I’ve never been so reckless with someone’s neurology; someone’s life. I didn’t wanna say anything because...I was afraid to lose my job, and my reputation. As soon as they posted this position for the Extremus mission, I dreamed of dying at my desk. I wanted to outlast everybody, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned as a doctor it’s that patients benefit from continuity. What I did to you...and what I didn’t do, it threatened all of that. It threatened my legacy, and I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” Kaiora echoes. “I jumped to conclusions, and that’s not the sign of a good leader. Halan Yenant would never have done that.”

“Yenant is not without his faults. I mean, he’s the one in hock.”

“He shouldn’t be.”

“Yes, he should, and not because he broke the law—his actions saved the lives of thousands on board, and tens of thousands of our ship’s descendants, and countless generations beyond the realization of our mission. But the next guy won’t have such good intentions, and we can’t let that guy think that we’ll just forgive and forget. That was Halan’s true sacrifice, and we can’t rob him of it. I know you and Olindse have always wanted to get him out, but it can’t be done. He’ll die in there, just like I’ll die at my desk...assuming you aren’t still trying to get me out.”

“No, doctor. I was wrong.”

“Welcome to the club.”

While they’re sitting in silence, the doorbell rings. It’s excruciatingly annoying, and needlessly echoey. Kaiora stands up, and looks at the screen. It’s Lieutenant Seelen. “What is it, Corinna?”

“If you’re done with, uh..whatever it is you’re doing in there, the resupply team found something.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Thanks, Captain, for understanding.”

“Thanks for protecting the timeline. That’s what I was trying to do too.”

They both teleport out of the room, but go to different places. Kaiora lands in the cargo bay. Nearly three decades ago, this team’s predecessors sent the first drones out to nearby planets in the past to mine precious resources, and return them to the Extremus. They’ve continued to do this on an as-needed basis, but the process has become more difficult since Halan sent them into the intergalactic void. There are worlds out here, but they’re incredibly dispersed, and hard to find, which makes every mission that much more important than before. If they run out, the mission will be a bust, and they will probably all die.

“I was told you found something.”

“Yes, Captain,” the cargomaster tells her. He escorts her over to a stack of raw materials that were in the middle of being sorted. He points down at a block of metallic hydrogen. On top of it is a clear box, not larger than a tall man’s fist. There is a life inside of it, which Kaiora has to lean in and squint to make out.

“Oh my God.”

“That’s what we were thinking.”

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Microstory 1845: Home

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When I was a young lady, a group of mostly white people came to my village to tell us about their religion. We did not understand why they felt the need to do this, and we did not understand their words, but we listened to them patiently, and then went back to our business. A boy around my age caught my eye, and seemingly I his. He was quiet, and did not speak, and he was not white, but he was from the West. It appeared that he did not want to be there, doing this. Now, I’m not saying that these missionaries were bad, but they were not wanted, and we were happy when they moved on to the next village. The following night, the boy snuck out, and crossed the bridge to see me again. It was hard for us to communicate, but we figured it out. I was able to piece together that he was from Africa. I could not tell back then which country, but I know now that it was Gambia. The missionaries had once come to his home too, speaking their words. While they were there, a warlord came through, and tried to recruit all of the young boys to fight in a war that they did not believe in. His parents did not want him to fight, so they asked the missionaries to take him away. That sacrifice possibly saved his life, but he never found out what happened to his family. Back then, you could not simply look someone up on the internet. He always assumed the fighters found out what they did, and killed them for it. Two of the white missionaries raised them from then on, and he had felt indebted to them ever since. But he did not believe in their religion, and he did want to try to convince others to either. He could see that there was a difference between his group and the warlord, but he could not help but also see the parallels. They weren’t being violent, but they were being intrusive, and he did not want to do it anymore.

He was about to turn eighteen years of age, and in their culture, that meant he was a man. Together, we came up with a plan. It was clear that my village and our neighbors were not going to have anything to do with the white man’s God. The missionaries were respectful of this, but they did not like to give up if they did not have to. They had intentions to travel on, and continue spreading their words, but the boy told them that he wanted to stay. He thought my people only needed more time to learn the language, and see the light. This was his special way of getting out of his responsibilities without letting the group know the truth. It took him some time to persuade them, but they eventually saw it as a sort of rite of passage. He was ready to go off on his own, and this was the perfect opportunity for him. When they left, the boy was glad for a moment, but then he realized he had nowhere to go. He was in the middle of a strange country, and he did not know anyone but me. He wanted to go back to Usonia, to start his new life, free from the burden of proselytization, but he had no means of accomplishing this. He had no money, and no connections. I was able to explain to him that it was perfectly fine if he stayed with us. He could work in the fields, and build his own dwelling. One day, he might be able to return to North America, or anywhere else he wanted to go. He never did end up doing that, but not because he was unable to. We eventually fell in love, and after he finished constructing that dwelling, we lived in it together. We had three beautiful children, and seven grandchildren so far. He died a few years ago, and I have missed him dearly. I do not know what happens after death, if anything. Were his adoptive parents right, or are we? I do not care, as long as he is there waiting for me.

Microstory 1844: Extra

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People often ask me what made me want to be an actor, but I can’t point to anything. There wasn’t a moment when I was enthralled with a character on screen. There wasn’t an emotion I had never felt before. I don’t remember the first three years of my life, but it was that version of me who made the decision for the both of us. As far as I know, I have always been an actor, and I never could have been anything else. I begged my parents to move to Los Angeles, but they refused. I honestly believe they would have agreed to it if we had lived in, I dunno, Tennessee, or something. They were so supportive of my dreams, but we were in New York, so I guess they looked at it as a lateral move. “If you want to act, you can do it here,” my mom would tell me. I didn’t want to do stagework, though. I wanted to be on the screen. I wanted to shoot something once, and have anybody in the world be able to see it again forever and ever. As the years went by, I didn’t let my living situation get in my way. I went to auditions for things that were shooting in the area, and while I didn’t get any roles, I think I gained a lot of great experience. That’s how I saw it. Every failure was just a step towards success. Then I got the audition that changed my life. I can’t remember what the role was exactly. I think I was a little too old for it, but the casting director was handing out little flyers calling for extras. There were going to be huge crowds in the movie, so they were trying to fill out the streets. It was an alien invasion, so we had to run from spaceships flying down to kill us. I thought, all right, it’s just more experience, right? It was so great, being on set around all those people. We were all there for the same thing; to support the main cast, and we all understood our jobs.

I had to join a talent agency to get more parts like that, and I found myself preferring it. I suddenly realized that I no longer wanted to be an actor. Yeah, that’s how I got started, but I ended up enjoying staying in the background. I wasn’t getting noticed, but I met a lot of really cool people, including celebrities, and it was always fun. It was pretty steady work too. Film crews always needed people like me to make it look like their story took place in the real world, instead of a snowglobe, like Waiting For Godot. Then my career changed again. I was in a movie about a demon who could possess recently deceased bodies. In one scene, he was having a menacing conversation with the hero on the battlefield, so there were plenty of fresh bodies to possess. Several of the extras were elevated a little bit to actually say a few lines before crumpling to the ground, and making way for the next possession. Luck of the draw, mine was the last body used before the protagonist realized how to kill the demon permanently. So instead of just falling down like the others, I had to pretend to die. I was given no direction for this, I had to figure it out myself. Everyone on set was extremely pleased with my performance. We nailed that thing in one take, and the audience received it well. People were talking about it online, trying to figure out who I was, because I wasn’t credited for it. This was my big break, and I didn’t even see it coming. Talent agencies started reaching out to me, hoping to book me auditions for speaking parts, and I ended up choosing one out of L.A. By then, I had enough money to get out there on my own, and get back to what I originally wanted. I die today with 56 titles on my résumé, the last of which will have to be released posthumously. My agent says she’ll get me a dedication credit.

Microstory 1843: Granddaughter

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I don’t want to talk about my life, nor my death. I would rather gush about my granddaughter. That is a grandmother’s job. Thack Natalie Collins was born in 1988 in Tāmaki Makaurau, as was her mother, as was I, and as was my mother. We didn’t know about the voldisil back then, but we all felt it that day in the maternity ward. The whole hospital, in fact, felt something change. When she came into this world, she brought with her a light that no one had ever seen before. Most kept to themselves about it, but people reported gaining new perspective on the universe, and their place in it. They could sense how we were all connected, and how everything mattered. There was no purpose to our reality, but there was an order, and it all fit together. As she grew older, she proved herself to be quite the storyteller. Before she could write, she was telling us about a young man fighting for peace on a chain of islands, and a pair of dolphins who tried to help humans survive a pandemic. We were so enamored with her, we didn’t understand where she was coming up with these stories. If pressed, she could answer nearly any question we threw at her. Where was this character born, and what was their middle name? What was their favorite school subject? She responded immediately, not like she knew we would ask it, but like she already knew everything about this person, so it didn’t matter what we asked. Occasionally, a follow up question would give her pause, but she didn’t look like she was trying to come up with an answer. You know what I mean, that look that people have when they’re contemplating something. No, her eyes looked more like she had to find the information from a book laid before her, except there was no book. She was getting the answers from somewhere, though, and we realized later how literal this was. All of her stories were actually true.

She witnesses events across time, space, and dimensional barriers. She can see the entire multiverse. I don’t claim to know how her ability works, or how she came to possess it. The way she tells it, she has three parents. My daughter and her husband share her with a third entity, who keeps themselves hidden from the rest of us. Thack’s father felt violated by this, but sex seems to have nothing to do with it. Evidently, a human being is normally given their soul by their god, but for some reason, voldisil receive theirs from someone living on a lower plane of existence; one that is closer to ours. Thack doesn’t know much more than that, but she knows just about everything else. Except about our universe. That appears to be rather hazy for her, which is probably for the best. Knowing what’s going to happen in the future for people around you would be an incredible burden that I can’t fathom. It’s much safer to stay distant from them, and just let them do their thing. Thack doesn’t live like that, however. She injects herself into the stories, guiding the right people to the right decisions to make the cosmic puzzle look the best that it can. She doesn’t interfere too much, bolstering herself up to be a god herself, or anything. She just communicates with those who need her the most, and she knows who these particular people are, because they stand out, and their paths aren’t completely clear to her. When I was young, our teacher asked us to write a paper about a person who we admire the most. Most chose historical figures; scientists and leaders. I think I did mine on a protester who died in prison. If I could start that all over again, I would choose my granddaughter, because she’s that amazing.

Microstory 1842: A Human Being Dies

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I used to wish I were a hero. When I was a very young girl, my grandfather took me to the town square. When I say he took me, I mean he stopped by the butcher shop, and let me run off on my own to throw a coin in the fountain. That was pretty normal back then, letting a child go somewhere alone. They knew about bad guys with bad ideas, but it just hadn’t happened often enough to warrant constant monitoring. Have you seen the kids with actual leashes? I mean, there’s being protective, and then there’s whatever that is. I guess I don’t really know their situation. Those kids could have developmental issues that make it impossible to teach them to stay close. Anyway, there I was at the fountain. I remember feeling like there were a lot of people going about their business, or enjoying the park, but when I think back to that day, I think I was completely alone. I must have been, right? Otherwise, someone would have helped me. I threw the coin in the water, closed my eyes, and wished to be a superhero. Thinking that not only would it work, but that it would work immediately, I turned around and began to run. I didn’t even get the chance to jump up and try to fly. I tripped on something pretty quickly, and slammed my face against the cement. I could feel the blood all over me, and the most excruciating pain I ever experienced—before then, and until today. I lay there like that for a moment before flipping over, and getting to my back, which provided just a little bit of relief. I looked up and watched the birds flying overhead, completely oblivious to the fact that a human was in mortal danger down here, and not even trying to teach me how to do what they do. I don’t know how long I was there before my grandfather ran over and scooped me up. “Don’t tell your mother,” he said to me. “We’ll get you cleaned up, and you’ll be okay.” I was indeed okay. But I was changed. I no longer hoped to be any kind of hero. Fact: heroes don’t fall on their faces. Even if they do, they always get up on their own.

That was decades ago, and now I kind of look at it as my origin story. That’s just another delusion, though, and I know that. I’m no hero, I’m just a regular person who saw people in trouble, and felt compelled to help. People do that, and that’s a lesson I learned over the years, though I wasn’t exactly conscious of it; I’m just realizing it in my final moments. Heroes don’t really exist, and they don’t need to. If you see a man get hit by a car while you’re walking to work, you stop and call for emergency services. Our species is ruthless, but we’re also compassionate and cooperative. We would not have survived this long without the instinct to help others. I didn’t think very hard when I saw the bricks fly out of the building they once formed like water from the tap. I didn’t know what it was, and still don’t; perhaps a missile of some kind. The war is supposed to be over, but some just can’t let go. It doesn’t matter why it started falling apart, just that there were innocent lives at stake, and I happened to be walking by. I ran in, and ran up the stairs. I started going through every room, clearing everyone out, and searching for anyone incapable of escaping on their own. I wasn’t the only one, I can tell you that. I saw a few others from the street who had the same idea, and I bet there were more. Fathers escorted sons through windows. Neighbors lifted debris off of neighbors. Everyone who could help was helping. Because that is what we do. When one of us hurts, we’re all worse off for it. No, I don’t die here under this rubble as a hero. I die as a human being capable of empathy, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Microstory 1841: Prank Wars

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I was one of the first people to sign up for a certain video sharing website. At that point, most people were just watching, but I was a content creator. I built my name as a prankster before anybody really knew what the industry would grow into. Of course, secret camera television shows predated my debut, but none of them generated the kind of hits I would end up having. People could watch them over and over again, and they did, because they were hilarious. When copycats started trying to recreate the magic, people would ask me whether that bothered me, and I would tell them honestly that absolutely not! That’s the whole point of the internet, that there’s room for everyone! Yes, they were competition, but you have to understand that, back then, nobody was making money off of the site. Even once they started splitting ad sales with us, it wasn’t much, and it was impossible to tell who was taking your audience. No, I had no problem with my rivals, but trouble came for me anyway. A few years after the beginning, one of those regular old TV shows premiered. They would lure victims to highly controlled environments under false pretenses, let them think something great was going to happen, and then pull the rug out from under them. One time, that was literal. They convinced someone they were going to get a free very expensive rug, coupled with a very expensive remodel of their home, and then actually pulled on the rug they were standing on. It was disgusting. My pranks were never like that. They weren’t mean-spirited. My guests were never victims, and they always walked away with a smile. I hated this show on principle, and I acknowledged as much in a non-prank video on my channel. This caught their attention, and my life was never the same after what they did to me.

I was an awkward kid. Pranks were a way for me to come out of my shell, and express myself. Which was great, but it didn’t really help my real life. Perhaps if I were making them today, it would be different, but again, nascent industry. When a girl started talking to me at a party, I couldn’t believe it, but I wanted to, so I went along with it. She seemed very interested in who I was, and what I did, which was unusual, because for as many fans as I had, girls didn’t care much for it. They didn’t know how light-hearted and fun they were. They always figured I did the same twisted things the TV show did. She said she knew the owner of this house, and invited me to a sort of secret room in a finished attic. I had never done anything with a girl before, so I was nervous, but I didn’t want to waste an opportunity. You can see where this is going. We didn’t get very far before the host of that show ran upstairs, and started laughing at me. He was so ecstatic that I fell for it. How pathetic, how embarrassing. The party wasn’t even real. This whole thing was set up for me, and I could hear them all laughing downstairs. I blew up. I grabbed one of the cameras, and struggled with it for a second, telling the operator that I could either drop it to the floor, and break it, or I could drop both him and the camera. I smashed it, and punched the walls. A security guy tried to tase me, but he missed, so I punched him in the face. I don’t remember what I said, but threats were made, and while I don’t think anyone there took them seriously, the network’s lawyers sure did, because they sounded like money to them. The site banned me for life; my career was ruined, robbing me of the revenue that others now see. Bitter, I decided to finally make good on one of my threats today, but I wish I knew before that the host owns a gun.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 27, 2385

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By the end of the day, Leona piloted the AOC back to the team on the Suadona, leaving Xerian behind to reclaim his birthright on the Security Watchhouse Detachment. When they returned to the timestream a year later, the sky was full of several megastructures, none of which was a matrioshka brain, besides the SWD. The Dominion Defense and Offensive Contingency Detachments were simply gargantuan ships, about the breadth of Australia on three axes. The Warmaker Training Detachment resembled a skyscraper, reminding Mateo of those enemy ships on Firefly and Serenity. The Voidstar Seeker was a Shkadov thruster, or whatever it was they called them here. It was powered by a Stage Theta Ultragiant, though, which were fairly rare, and meant that it was a particularly massive object. The Technological Advancement Detachment was a discworld, which Mateo noted would delight the flat-earthers back home. The Civilian Residential Detachment was a shell world, evidently powered by some kind of black hole in its core. One detachment was reportedly still missing, but Xerian didn’t say what it was, or what form it was in.

“How do we feel about this?” Marie asked.

They were sitting in Ramses’ lab. It was in the safest part of the ship, and a ship module in its own right. The bridge was a great way to admire the megastructures using the viewports, but the holographic ceiling in this room looked just as real, and was backed by a protective hull.

“About what, this meeting?” Leona asked right back.

“Yeah, I mean...we don’t know if they’re the good guys, or not.”

“Oh, they’re not the good guys,” Olimpia explained. “They’re just not as bad as the real bad guys. Xerian promised to end the war, and that is our only concern as of now. What happens after that, we’ll have to deal with it.”

“How do we know that?” Marie pressed. “How do we know they’re the lesser of two evils? How do we know we can trust Xerian?”

Ramses exhaled in a way that implied he wanted to try for an answer. “We know that the supercluster isn’t doing well. The Milky Way is at war with Andromeda. Generally speaking, the worst leadership possible is what takes power in a time of strife. They’re the ones who want war, and benefit from it. The best leadership will seek peace. When we arrived in this reality, the war was raging, suggesting that the people in charge made that happen. If Xerian were worse than them, he probably wouldn’t have needed our help. Just look at us. We’re great and all, but we’re just six people. And when we started, there were only five of us. For the most part, the people who need your help are the underdogs.”

“He may have been an underdog while he was losing his crusade,” Marie reasoned. “Now that he’s gotten a win, though, you can’t call him that anymore, and you have to worry about what his true motives are.”

Ramses tossed a sort of analog to a baby carrot in the air, letting it pass through the image of the CRD, and fall back down into his mouth. While he was still chewing, he responded, “like the woman said, no one’s good. All you can do is hope that things improve, if only slowly. This is a dystopia, as far as we can see. I don’t know if you can get any lower.”

“You can always get lower,” Marie said.

Angela shook her head at this.

“What?” Marie asked her, noticing this.

“It’s just weird. You’re a few days younger than me. It’s not like we’ve spent a bunch of time gaining separate perspectives. Everything you’re saying, I feel like I would say if you didn’t get to it first.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to...”

“Don’t apologize,” Angela insisted. “We’re just going to need some time to figure out how to co-exist.”

“I could leave,” Marie suggested.

“And go where?” Angela wasn’t really asking, because she thought that it was a silly idea. Then again, if she were Marie, she probably would have offered it too.

“Anywhere, just let you live your life.”

Angela stood up from her comfy chair, and approached her alternate self. She reached down, and scrunched up Marie’s face, like an overbearing great aunt. “You are not preventing me from living my life. You’re not a lesser version of me. You’re another one, for now, and soon you’ll just be yourself, and I’ll be myself.”

Marie struggled to turn her head towards the gestational pods. “One of us will be a little bit younger than the other.”

The clones were developing about three times faster than a normal person would. For the most part, slower processing was better, but Ramses didn’t know when they would want to transfer their consciousnesses into them, if ever, so he couldn’t program them to age in realtime. He figured it could take ten days for them to be convinced, which would put their new bodies in their thirties. At the moment, they only looked like three-year-olds.

“Have we all agreed to even do that?” Leona questioned.

“Raise your hand if I could never persuade you to accept the upgrade,” Ramses requested.

No one raised their hand.

“That’s what I like to see. They’re going to be beautiful when they’re finished. Better, faster, stronger. More resilient to damage and disease. You’ll be photosynthetic, and photovoltaic. You’ll be able to hold your breath for days, and survive the vacuum of space for hours. I couldn’t quite figure out telepathy, but we’ll be able to feel each other’s emotions. Plus, there’s a special temporal code that I came up with. If you have to cast your mind remotely, your new body will adjust to your genetic commands almost immediately, so we won’t have to run around as the same base model. You have time to decide, so I don’t wanna argue about it now.”

“I, for one, am here for it,” Mateo promised. “This isn’t my first body, so I have no particular attachment to it. I might as well get an improvement.”

“Did somebody say detachment?” Xerian was here as a hologram.

“Close enough,” Mateo answered.

“Hey, Xeri, how are things going?” Ramses asked.

“They’re surprisingly well,” he answered. “We’ve hit a bit of a wall, but we’ll get there. I really appreciate everything you all did to get us here. I fear it never would have happened without your intervention. Your presence in this reality has been invaluable.”

That seemed to give them all pause. Mateo began to wonder why they were bothering sticking around at all. Xerian was where he needed to be, and seemingly happy with it. They had completed their mission, so wasn’t it time for them to leave—if not to go home, at least to get out of the way? “That’s good to hear. We’re happy to help. If we could just—”

“I was hoping to get your help with something,” Xerian interrupted, trying to pretend that he didn’t hear Mateo begin to ask for help getting out of here. “As I told you in my message, most of the detachments have arrived for a summit. We’re still missing one little guy, though. He knows all of us, and he’s already proven to be unresponsive to our invitations. I think he would be really receptive to your group, though. You’re small, crafty, and clearly have no stake in this fight. Take whatever precautions you feel you need, but you won’t truly need them. He’s a pacifist, so he will do you no harm. The worst thing he’ll do if you try to approach is just run away. Or float, as it were.”

“Who is he?” Leona asked. “What detachment is he on?”

“He’s not on a detachment,” Xerian begins to clarify. “He is the detachment. He’s an artificial intelligence that the Fifth Division designed to calculate the absolutely most efficient path to win a war.”

“If he’s a fieldmarshal—” Angela tried to begin.

“How did you know he was the fieldmarshal?” Xerian interrupted again.

“I—what you’re describing is a fieldmarshal. That’s just the personality type who would be tailored for such a task.”

“Hmm,” Xerian said. “Well, yes, he’s the Rational Fieldmarshal Detachment, and we can’t do it without him.”

“If he’s a fieldmarshal designed to plot the most efficient war strategies, how is he a pacifist?” Angela tried again. “Did something go wrong with his programming?”

“No,” Xerian began, “it went too right. As it turns out, the most efficient way to win a war is to not fight it.”

“That makes sense,” Olimpia concluded. “I could point to any number of philosophers and spiritual leaders from our world who could have told you that. You basically just paraphrased Sun Tzu.”

“I don’t think that’s what Sun Tzu meant,” Leona volleyed. “The RFD doesn’t fight to win. He’s already won, not simply because he’s chosen not to fight, but because having an enemy in the first place automatically means failure.”

“That’s essentially what he argues,” Xerian confirms.

Leona stood up, and approached Xerian’s hologram. “What’s happening is you’re trying to end this war decisively. You’ll be doing it violently, if need be. That is not pacifism, and if what you say of this entity is accurate, it’s not something that he’s going to help you with. There is no point in us bringing him here, because you already know what he’s going to say.”

“That’s...why we need you,” Xerian admitted. “You have a way with words. We could use that on our side. I came for the team, but I really came for you. And Marie. Or Angela.”

“We’re not going to try to convince a pacifist to take up arms.”

“I wasn’t asking for that. We just need him to exercise his voting rights,” Xerian assured them. “We can’t move forward without them.”

Leona smiled at him out of pity.

“We’ll go to him,” Mateo volunteered before she could argue further.

“Matt,” Leona scolded.

“We won’t promise to bring him back, but we’ll go talk to him.”

“Thank you,” Xerian said. “I knew we could count on you. I’ll send you his coordinates. You can take the Suadona. He’s only about 60,000 light years away.”

“What are you doing?” Leona questioned Mateo once Xerian was gone.

“We were just talking about how we don’t know who to trust,” Mateo tried to explain. “It sounds like we just found ‘im.”

“We’ll see,” Marie reminded them.

They input the coordinates, and sped off to their new destination. They slept half the time, and still had eight hours to spare before the lightyear engine stopped at the RFD’s location. Leona and Mateo spent their free time discussing the plan, and were confident in it by the time they found what they were looking for. They couldn’t miss it. There were no stars around, nor planets that the ship detected. Before them was a vaguely spherical cloud of unidentifiable gas larger than Earth’s moon. Lightning arced from one particle to another, on a constant basis, reminiscent of a human brain’s neural synapses. That may have been what they were.

Leona spoke into the microphone on all channels, “Rational Fieldmarshal Detachment, we seek audience with you. Do you consent?”

“I consent to this meeting of minds. My name is Rátfrid. I dwell here in the void, available to provide advice to all who desire it. What is your question, my child?” 

“Are you cognizant of Xerian Oyana, leader of the Security Watchhouse Detachment?”

“I am aware of him,” Rátfrid replied.

“He has asked us to come here for your vote in a matter of war.”

“I abstain.”

“We thought as much,” Leona said. “Instead, could you do something else?”

“What might that be?” Rátfrid asked, intrigued.

“Could you end the war your own way, without a final battle against the Densiterium?”

“I am a seeker of peace, protector of peace, advocate for peace. I cannot force peace upon another...for that would not be peace.”

“How often would you say you give advice, and to how many?” Leona pressed on.

“One or two people come to me every few years,” Rátfrid answered.

“Do you believe your advice has helped the supercluster, or only those individuals?”

He thought he knew what she meant. “Again, I cannot force peace upon another.”

“Because that wouldn’t be peace; yeah, I get it. That’s not what I’m asking you to do. A war is raging across two or more galaxies, and yet you sit here, waiting for the enlightened to come to you. Is there not a better way? Can you not move? Can you not spread your words to those who do not know that they should hear them? Could you not be doing more?”

“Forcing others to hear my words is an act of aggression,” Rátfrid claimed.

“That is a weak interpretation. You’re out here in the middle of nowhere. It took us hours to arrive, and we were already relatively close. I propose a new tactic. I propose you go to the war, and you speak, and you let anyone who might need you stop and listen. You don’t have to force anyone to do anything. Just be more available.”

He waited a moment. “Interesting idea. Please. Tell me more. I consent to listen.”

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Extremus: Year 35

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Omega and Valencia decided that they needed some help. Fortunately, they potentially had that in the form of over a thousand of Omega’s clones. It’s their job to wake up in case something goes wrong with Project Stargate, and while they’re mostly expected to be responsible for things like transferring antimatter from a cracked pod to a replacement, this situation qualifies as a moment of need.

The modular quantum seeder ships were only made as large as they needed to be to get the job done. There are corridors, ventilation shafts, engine rooms, and a few interface consoles, but the majority of the space is taken up by three-meter tall seed capsules. There was simply not enough room for all current clones to convene for a meeting, and it was never the intention to hold such meetings at all anyway. To do this, they had to activate a special virtual construct. Anglo clones were meant to be asleep throughout their respective journeys, but the engineers wanted to be prepared for any eventuality. Bonus, they’ll get some time to wake up and stretch their legs.

Once their minds are all connected to the simulation, Omega and Valencia step on stage, and go over the bullet points.

“So, you think you’re, like, our leader, or something?” one of the Anglos asks.

“That’s not what I said,” Omega defends.

“You think you’re better than us because you have a name,” another guesses.

“No, he thinks he’s better than us because he has a life!” a third counters.

“Please, please,” Valencia says after taking the microphone. “This is not about what Omega did. You have lives, and you have purposes, and those are both under threat. We ask for your help with stopping this. The True Extremists are more powerful than we even know, and they’ve sent some kind of contingency to destroy you. We don’t even know what. We’re not saying he’s your leader. No one is. We have to fight against this together.”

“Are you a girl clone?” a fourth one questions.

“Don’t you worry about who I am.”

“That sounds suspicious.”

“I just mean...ugh.”

“Look,” Omega begins, “a lot has happened since I abandoned the program. Yes, I’ll admit that, I abandoned you. But I did a lot of growing up during all the happenings, and I’m back now to prevent catastrophe. Saxon made us for a reason, and we can’t let him down just because I was the weakest of the bunch.”

“Hey, he’s right!” one of them cries. “Why is this guy on stage! Saxon Parker is our creator! He’s our leader!”

Valencia takes the mic back again. ‘That’s enough with the interruptions! I understand that you’re confused, and I get that you’re mad. But Omega and I are the only ones who can explain to you what is going on, and why these people have to be stopped. I’m sure Saxon is a great guy, but he is not cognizant of the True Extremists. You’re here, and only you can end this.”

The crowd starts to murmur and argue. Who knew that a bunch of people with the same DNA, same basic neural makeup, and same purpose, would have so much to fight about? It’s hard to say what they’re so upset about, because they don’t have any life experience to draw upon, so they probably don’t know either. That must be what it is. They’re scared, because they don’t know what they’re doing. They’re not equipped to make such decisions. Valencia is wrong. As he listens, Omega realizes that this isn’t going to be good enough. These clones are clearly on the front lines, but it doesn’t only affect them. It affects the entire clone population, and they all have the right to decide what to do for themselves. He can’t say exactly why September directed them towards this particular voussoir, but this has to just be where it begins. “I propose a Town Hall.”

They all hush up as if they know what he’s referring to. Valencia wraps her hand around the microphone. “What is that?”

“What is that?” another one of the clones asks for all to hear.

“It’s like a...company-wide meeting. I’m suggesting we enter a joint virtual environment, where everyone can hear the problem, and contribute to the solution.”

“Will Saxon be there?”

“Yes, Saxon is in my pod, so he’ll be there,” Omega promises.

“I think that would be a good idea.” This clone is different. He walks with confidence and independence. Without asking, he climbs on stage, and approaches the duo. “Hi, I’m Anglo 83, and I believe that you stole my body.”

Yitro Moralez’ body is on fire, which is funny, because he’s entirely submerged in some kind of fluid. Oh yeah, it’s probably acid, and probably isn’t all that funny. It’s burning him, but not damaging or destroying his skin cells. It’s like it’s just bad enough to hurt, but not bad enough to call upon death’s comforting touch of painless oblivion. No, he can’t think like that. Death is not the answer to this problem. He just has to get out of this acid vat. He doesn’t know how long he’s been in here, screaming in agony. He can’t even tell which way is up. But even if he could, up doesn’t necessarily mean out.

What’s this in his mouth? Oh that likely helps him breathe. And this on his eyes? Goggles to breathe. And over there? That’s the framing of his pod. And that? Glass. Well, it’s clearness. Is there anything on the other side of the glassic clearness? Hazy figures meandering about, gawking at him, and monitoring his vitals. He doesn’t really know that, but there are definitely people out there, and they know he’s being tortured, whether they’re the ones in charge of the torturing, or not.

What if he pounds on the clearness? Pound. Nothing, it’s too strong. Okay, well what if he pounds again? Pound. No, it’s not gonna do him any good. He’s just wasting time and energy. What does he need energy for? He’s stuck in a vat of acid! The only thing he can do is try to get out of it. That’s true. Carry on. Pound, pound, pound. The figures on the other side of the clearness seem to be reacting to this now.  Yitro imagines that one is assuring the others that the clearness will hold, and can’t break, but after each pound, gulping, and wondering whether this is an accurate statement. He doesn’t want the others to see his doubt, but he wears his emotions on his sleeve, which is why the other guy is pissed off that he was promoted to Head Torturer when he clearly can’t handle his shit. Pound, pound, pound, pound, pound. They back up. The clearness may not be as strong as they originally thought. Maybe they should go run for help. But if they do that, all the other departments will know that the torture team is composed of incompetent people who skimped on the clearness budget so they could have a coffee maker in their breakroom, which they probably don’t even deserve a break room anyway, because they’re are only four people on the team, and they could have just shared with the bioweapon developers.

Pound. That one was weaker, and it took him a long time to try again. Yitro is losing his strength. He’ll have to give up eventually, even if the clearness was bound to break eventually. The acid is doing its job. He’s trapped and being tortured and he’ll never get out of it. Pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, pound, crack! They jump back in unison. Oh yeah, there it is! Now they’re scared, but they’re too scared to do anything about it. It’s time for Yitro to get out of here, if it’s the last thing he does before he passes out. Sure, they may just throw him in another vat of acid, but at least he will have proven himself. At least he’ll have gotten out, and they will never be able to take that away from him. Plus, he’ll just break out of the next one, and the next, and the next. Give him a million vats, and he’ll give you a million broken vats. Pound, crack, pound, crack. Pound, crack, pound, crack, crack. Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, shatter!

Yitro tumbles out with the acid. He isn’t able to watch the hazy figures in the chaos, but he imagines they finally did run away for their lives. The glassic clearness rips into his legs, and while he can feel it, nothing compares to the anguish from burning acid that covers his whole body, and from which there is no escape. Except there was an escape, and he’s just illustrated that.

He recognizes that he can’t just lie here, because then he’s lying on a floor covered in acid, and the whole point is to stop doing that. He gets up, and stumbles around. Jesus, someone should really put a wet floor sign down here. He doesn’t mean to literally be asking Jesus to do that, but as he’s hunting for the exit, he can’t help but imagine an actual man named Jesus tossing things around in his little janitor closet, desperately trying to find the wet floor sign so no one else gets hurt. It’s a funny image, and it’s the only thing keeping Yitro from throwing in the towel. A towel! There’s a towel there. He grabs it, and starts drying the acid off his body, as well as he possibly can. It’s not a towel, but a lab coat, so it’s not very absorbent, but it’s better than nothing.

Lab coat spent, and acid dried mostly from his skin, Yitro keeps on running. Out of the lab, down the corridor, and through the first door he sees. Now a light burns his eyes like a vat of acid. He’s outside, and that’s the sun. Well, it’s a sun. He’s never seen a sun before. Stars, sure, of course. The doppler glow of relativistic travel? Every single day; filtered, obviously. But he’s never stood on the surface of a planet, and looked up at the blue sunlit sky. This. Is. A...time to leave. He can’t afford to stop and admire the beauty of a spherical world with a natural oxygenated, nitrogen-rich atmosphere. Still, he does have a second or two to breathe it in and be thankful that, amidst the torture and threat of death, he still got to see this. No one on Extremus can say as much. The few still alive who could recall Ansutah lived mostly in caves to avoid detection.

“Stop!” A woman is standing several meters away, but closing in. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I just wanna make sure you’re okay. Are you on drugs? What did you take?”

“I didn’t take anything! I was tortured in a vat of acid!”

“Okay, okay. I believe you. What’s your name?” she asks.

“Yitro Moralez.”

“That’s an interesting name.”

“What planet am I on?” When she doesn’t answer, he repeats himself loudly.

“Earth. You’re on Earth, like everyone. Like always.”

“What year?” He sighs and has to repeat himself again, “please, what year?”

“It’s 2022. You’re in Kansas City. Well...Kansas City Metro. And you’re naked out in public, where a child could show up at any moment.”

Shit. Not about being naked, or being in Kansas City. That’s the one saving grace.

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