Gatewood: Project Ethics Debate (Part I)

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The year is 2238. Kestral McBride and Ishida Caldwell have just watched their friends ship out to find one of the crew members, Mateo Matic’s wife on a planet called Varkas Reflex. They stand here with a man named Saxon Parker, who has arrived to aid them in their endeavor to map the whole galaxy. The Milky Way is one of the largest galaxies in the observable universe. It spans over a hundred fifty thousand light years across, and contains anywhere between two hundred and four hundred billion stars. Those wildly inaccurate numbers are why the three of them are here. Situated nearly six light years from Earth, Barnard’s Star is the perfect location to build unfathomably large hyperstructures. Kestral and Ishida were first dispatched here to restart the construction of centrifugal cylinders. The initial intention was to allow colonists from Sol to cross the void, and settle around a new star, but these plans were abandoned in favor of diverting resources to other stellar neighbors. It came to serve a new function, as a refuge for the billions of people fleeing an oncoming war with an alien species in another universe.

Team Keshida, as they were sometimes called, built the cylinders in preparation for them, but they did not know this at the time. They were receiving instructions through their dreams, by a then unknown entity, who they later learned to be an artificial intelligence from another reality named Mirage. This being exists in a dimension that observes time as a spatial dimension, and can therefore see how the future turns out, simply by looking further down the timeline. Now that the cylinders are complete, and the refugees have begun to stabilize a new body of government, Team Keshida has other responsibilities to handle. Three interconnected projects, and one semi-unrelated project, are on the schedule right now. First, gigantic telescopes must be sent out to the void between galaxies, to gather a better picture of what the Milky Way is composed of. As this is happening, even larger ships will depart to systematically reach every single star system. The journey will take many tens of thousands of years, while traveling at nearly—but still not quite—the speed of light.

All three members of the team, original and newly conscripted, are aware that temporal manipulation is possible. With enough innovation, and access to the right time travelers, every star in the galaxy could probably be reached within a century, or maybe even faster. As of yet, though, the vonearthans are not aware of such possibilities, and they are the ones for which the team is working. The ignorant are expecting the project to last for two hekamyres—which means two hundred thousand years—so that’s how long they’ve designed it to last. Of course, the entire project remains a secret for now, because ethical questions regarding outward expansion were never fully resolved. Certain members of Earthan leadership have given the go-ahead for Project Stargate, and all that goes with it, but not everyone would be happy to find out it had been approved. They would be especially upset if they learned about its side project, Operation Starseed.

There are plenty of ethical concerns when it comes to Project Stargate. The idea is to send billions of modules through interstellar space. At first, these are held together within two gargantuan quad carriers, but they continually break apart, and fan out in different directions, until reaching the smallest independent unit; the seed plate. Each plate contains historical data, sensors, nanites, and other instruments. Once it arrives in a star system, it will start gathering details about it, and in order to do that, it must start building new machines, using the resources orbiting the star, or stars. The Earthan government, and civilian researchers never really figured out whether it was okay to do that; to interrupt the natural development of the system, in even the smallest of ways. Theoretically, the tools on the seed plate could build quantum messengers, and consciousness focal tethers, which would allow an individual to cast their mind light years away, almost instantaneously, and operate a surrogate body while there. This might be immoral on its own. Operation Starseed takes this further, and not even all of the people involved with Stargate are aware of it. Instead of allowing people to travel to new worlds using the quantum network, people would be grown on the new worlds. The exact nature of their lives is up to any number of variables, which would probably have to be calculated by an artificial hyperintelligence, but they would be created using genetic samples from people back home, who have not been told that their samples are being used in this way. Saxon Parker arrived on Gatewood with these samples, and Team Keshida still hasn’t decided whether or not they’re going to use them.

“All right,” Kestral says to Ishida. “You played a good devil’s advocate when it came to terraformation ethics. I suppose it’s my turn to play D.A. for this dilemma.”

“When do I get to play devil’s advocate?” Saxon asks.

“You’re just the actual devil,” Ishida says to him. “Your position on Starseed is quite clear. The purpose of this exercise is to consider all perspectives, by forcing one’s self to take an opposition position.”

“You’re saying you don’t agree that we should move forward with it?” Saxon asks. “Or, sorry, you, rather.”

“You’re part of the team now,” Kestral assures him. “Your opinion matters just as much. You’re just not part of the argument right now. I’m completely convinced that we should do this, which is why I’ll be fiercely arguing against it.”

“Okay,” Saxon says. “I’ll go back to the audience.” There is no audience but him, since the three people here right now are the only ones in the solar system who can be trusted with this information.

Ishida takes a deep breath. “Wait, which one am I again?” She likes to play dumb. She and Kestral get along so well because they’re both modest, and never want to be the smartest one in the room. The only time either of them is not the smartest one in the room, however, is when they’re both in the same room.

“You believe in Starseed,” Kestral reminds her. “Now. Try to get me on board too.”

“Okay.” Ishida takes another deep breath. “Egg Basket Theory,” she says simply.

“Go on,” Kestral encourages.

“Egg Basket Theory states that, if you rely too heavily on a single source of assets, when that source fails, all operations tied to it fail. Diversity is key.”

“You said, when it fails,” Kestral echoes. “Is that inevitable?”

“Umm...yes?”

“In all cases?”

Ishida thinks about her response. “Plus Murphy’s Law.”

“Explain.”

“Nothing lasts forever. Failure is indeed inevitable. Nothing is indefinitely sustainable. We know the ultimate fate of our home star, which is why scientists are already discussing Project Tipping Point.”

Kestral waves her hand dismissively. “I don’t wanna talk about Tipping Point. Life on Earth is doomed regardless. An argument for the preservation of life does not explain how that helps the life that does not survive.”

“Explain,” Ishida prompts.

“Operation Starseed functions on the idea that human life is unconditionally valuable, in any form it takes. The continuance of the species is considered to be good on its own. It doesn’t matter where the species lives, or what happened to its predecessors. Life simply must go on, even if individual specimens don’t survive long.”

“Well, should it not survive?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m questioning whether we should be focusing resources on creating life that has almost absolutely nothing to do with us, when we could be devoting those resources towards protecting the natural progression of life. Starseed basically grows genetically recombined clones of a handful of what are essentially randomly selected sample donors. But who cares? The life we seed on other planets are not our children, or our legacies. Right now, they’re just hypothetical, and there’s no logical reason we should manifest them. Egg Basket Theory is a good argument for why we should colonize our stellar neighbors, which is why we’re in the middle of doing that. Most of the civilizations we seed will never know where they’re from, or how they got there, if they even last long enough to form a civilization. We will never interact with them, and if all life in the galaxy dies in a blink except one given world, that one world doesn’t matter to us. Earth is where life began, but this survivor world has no connection to Earth, so why are we meant to care about that?”

“You don’t care about them because you’ll never meet them?”

“You’re twisting my words.”

“I’m practically repeating them.”

Kestral tries to figure out a different approach. “Let’s say Saxon and I have a child.”

“Okay.”

“Does that child have value?”

“Of course it does.”

“Let me rephrase. Does that child have value...” She emphasizes the punchline by pointing twice to the floor, “...right now?”

“I don’t understand.”

“The child does not exist. He and I have never had sex. I don’t even think I’ve physically touched him before. Maybe I shook his hand once. The child doesn’t have any value; it isn’t real. If it were to become real, sure. But we would have to complete that task first. We would have to, at the very least, initiate the creation of this life. We can’t, as rational people, assign value to it until we do.”

Ishida opens her mouth to speak, but is cut off.

“And if we were to do that, we would decide together, and we would raise that child in whatever way we see fit. Starseed, on the other hand, is asking us to shoot our gametes into space with nothing more than a smile and a salute. It’s one thing to become pregnant, and not be able to raise the child yourself. It’s a whole different thing to create life with the intention of not being around for it. Is that not unethical?”

“Ah, but we will be around. Not us personally, but the seed plates will hold the knowledge required to nurture that life. You’re only talking about the first generation. A hundred and forty-seven people. The second generation will have parents.”

“A hundred and forty-seven people per world,” Kestral corrects. “Upwards of billions total. That’s a lot of orphans.”

“Again, they’ll still have parents, per se. They’ll be robots, but...they won’t be alone. That’s more than evolved life on Earth can say. When you think about it, what we’re trying to do is more ethical than what God did.”

“Okay, now you’re bringing in religion, which is not what we’re doing here.”

“Kestral, you’re doing a really good job of sounding like you don’t think we should do this. We decided it was ethical to terraform certain worlds, as long as exhaustive life-potential surveys are conducted first. Would you have us scrap Starseed entirely?”

“I’m not going to break character until we understand this issue completely. I will, however, submit to a break.” She looks over to the audience of one. “I believe Saxon needs some time to process the hypothetical scenario where we parent a child together.”

“I’m fine,” Saxon promises. “This was...as impressive as it was intense.”

“We’re not done yet,” Kestral says. “I need to check for imperfections in the Project Topdown telescope lenses again, though, so we’ll sleep on it. Come ready for round two tomorrow.”

“Yes, captain.”

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Microstory 1170: Jarrett Grier

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Jarrett Grier was born into the Grier family curse, but it didn’t seem to impact him as much as it did for others. For one thing, he didn’t much care what other people thought of him, so their time-displaced animosity just rolled off his back. When he accidentally killed Annora Ubiña in the microponics bay of The Elizabeth Warren, and placed the whole ship into a state of panic, he knew it was over for him. Though he had access to another spatial dimension, he was still stuck on a vessel in outer space, and there was nowhere to run. He managed to stay hidden for years, but the crew eventually found him, and once the ship landed on Earth, they had to decide what to do with him. The adjudicative system on Earth had changed much since the last information his history teachers on his home planet of Durus had on the subject. No longer were accused judged by a randomly selected board of their peers, nor on the flipside, a bullshit selection of jurors, chosen by a team of experts who specialize in corrupting the process. Each of two arbitration panels consisted of three arbiters, drawn from the civilian pool, but were supplemented by two educated arbitrators, who fully understand how the law worked. Advocates and adherents worked together to find the truth, rather than fighting over technicalities, and were monitored by a highly trained adjudicator, who managed the ethics of all other parties. Each panel deliberated separately, so as to lessen personal bias, and to arrive at a more reliable consensus. These changes, according to scholars, drastically diminished unfair sentences, and dramatically quickened the process, but at the same time, it was becoming less and less relevant. Crime continued to decline over the years. Ubiquitous surveillance, sophisticated crime scene synthesis, and less ambiguous investigative procedures made for a safer world. Plus, there just weren’t as many justifications to commit crime anymore. Historically, there have been but a handful of reasons to kill, and the obsolescence of money has eradicated greedful murder. For other motives, it’s just too hard to get away with it anyway, so the judicial system wasn’t prepared for Jarrett. That, combined with the fact that the court proceedings would have exposed time travel to the greater vonearthan population, meant that trying him officially just was not possible. Traditionally, Beaver Haven Penitentiary was designated for people with time powers who risked such exposure, though certain exceptions had been made. Following his confession, and due to a lack of variety in sentencing, Jarrett was summarily sent to Beaver Haven without a trial. He died here of age-related illness, and nobody cared.

Microstory 1169: Ambrosios

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Thousands of years ago, there lived a man named Ambrosios. Not much is known about who he was when he was first born, or even whether he had time powers. If so, he had long since forgotten them, in favor of the only thing he seemed to care about. Some people are born with slowed aging, or don’t age at all once they reach some arbitrary ceiling. Others can reverse their own aging, or otherwise renew themselves. Full immortality, however, is so rare that only one person is known for sure to have it naturally. Meliora Rutherford Delaney-Reaver has pretty much every power, and there’s no reason to believe that anything can kill her. In order for anyone else to reach this level of immortality, however, they must drink the immortality waters. This sounds easy enough, but of course, the drinking is only the final task. First, you must procure the ingredients. You must find them in the right order, and you must do so quickly enough for them to do you any good. Like regular water, immortality water goes stale after a certain period of time, and loses its power to grant whatever component of the recipe that it was meant to when it was still good. Unless contaminated, it will most likely still be good enough to drink, but it will no longer help in your quest to never die, and if you still wish for the cure to death, you will have to start this quest all over again. The ingredients can be found all across time and space. Each one is easy enough to get to, but getting to all of them in the right amount of time, and drinking them in the right order, is harder than you might think. There are ways to preserve the water before it loses potency, and this can give you more time, but few people have access to the right resources. After all, the first trick is knowing exactly where each water source is, which ingredient it is, and how much to mix. Ambrosios managed to complete every task; an impressive feat for someone born so early in the timeline. People who had powers back then struggled with it, because their grasp of the concept of a timeline itself was difficult for them to manage. His efforts were not without their consequences, however. His success changed him in ways he never could have foretold. If he was being honest with himself, his immortality wasn’t what made him so misanthropic. He always kind of had an issue caring about other people. What it did do to him, however, was make him incredibly paranoid. And that would only get worse. He alienated all of his friends in the obsession with discovering the water, and hurt what few remained by his side in his final triumph. He then became convinced that there was a way to undo his immortality, and that people would be seeking it. To him, everyone was an enemy, so he isolated himself completely. Whenever there was even a hint that anyone else was around, he would pack up his belongings, and quickly escape somewhere else, even if it was really just a false alarm. He lost touch with reality, and started making up stories about the universe. By the time he was finally killed—by his own irrational actions, by the way—nothing he said made any sense, and he died alone.

Microstory 1168: Valda Ramsey

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Hilde Unger was the furthest along in her pregnancy when the town of Springfield, Kansas was forced through the Deathfall portal, and landed on what would come to be known as Durus. Shortly after arriving, she realized the monsters that were attacking the townsfolk were leaving her completely alone. It was as if something was protecting her. A cursory glance made it likely that all sufficiently pregnant women were safe from the monsters. At first, Springfield concluded that these monsters somehow had ethical limits, or at least an instinct to preserve young life. Perhaps they were like the practical fisherman, who throws back the small fish, so he can catch it later once it’s grown. They would come to understand that the children born within the next several months after the event were special. They possessed time powers that provided the town with a means of fighting back. But Hilde was not around for these developments. Following the very first monster attack, she and her new friend, Hogarth separated themselves from the group. Hogarth was the one responsible for shielding Springfield from the portal that, without her intervention, destroyed nearly everything that fell into it. Her job was not over, for she still needed to find a way to send everyone back home. After a brief, but harrowing journey, they found themselves in the company of a man named Paul Harken (a.k.a. Hark), who had survived the trip long ago, and was already living on Durus. He attempted to transport them back to the town, so Hogarth could complete her new machine, but something went wrong, and they ended up about five years in the future. A new society had formed since they were gone, and it was not a good one. It was led by a tyrannical psychopath nicknamed Smith. He saw how special the newborn children were, and manipulated their parents to make sure he was part of their lives. Valda Ramsey, having not yet been born, was able to skip all his manipulations. Though she was now the youngest, she was vital in deprogramming her peers. The more they aged, the clearer it became that they were destined to be the leaders of tomorrow, whether they were qualified for the responsibility, or not. Valda needed to ensure that they would be qualified, and would make ethical decisions. She became a leader of leaders, who kept constant watch over the other source mages, in case they got any bright ideas about returning to the kind of world they were living in during the Smithtatorship. Unfortunately, her legacy would not be a positive one. She would many years later break one of her own people’s cardinal rules. Though her actions would come to be crucial to the survival of the human population on Durus, history would only remember the negative, and she would be blamed for the sacrifices that came with it.

Microstory 1167: The Overseer

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Magnolia Quintana belonged to a special class of salmon called shapers, which existed to help create a desirable future on a more long-term basis. They weren’t generally dispatched to save someone from a burning building, or change someone’s mind about an unfortunate choice. Theirs was a slow process; so slow that they often weren’t aware of how they were changing the future. In this way, they were most like humans, except that they experienced nonlinear time. Even amongst these, Magnolia was special. Most were pulled from their lives, and moved to wherever it was the powers that be wanted them to be. Magnolia was provided with a list of missions, full of details, and had the privilege to decide which she acted upon first, and how she handled each one. This list was in constant flux, as much of her work altered the needs of her later work. She sometimes even negated her own actions at one point in time, because it was related to work she later completed in an earlier point in time. People started calling her The Overseer, which was a designation she eventually just had to get used to. Her nickname made her sound like a dictator, when really her job was more about coordination and cooperation. These skills she possessed naturally, which was why she was chosen, instead of any random salmon capable of surviving time travel. Salmon generally work alone, or maybe in teams of one, two, or three. There are a few moments in history, however, when large numbers of them are required to come together, which is where The Overseer comes in. Magnolia was given more information about what needed to be done than most other salmon. Sometimes she was given a list of people she needed to recruit, while other times, the powers that be would merely transport the necessary personnel to the right place. She also acted as a go-between for the choosing ones. Though the choosers technically did not have any obligation to help, the powers were generally pretty good about knowing who they could trust, and who would just ruin it. After a few missions, the powers that be realized that her ability to travel through time was not good enough on its own. She needed to understand who around her possessed the skills she needed to get the job done, so they imbued her with a second power. She could reach across time and space to find someone with a given power, and could find absolutely anyone in the world who existed in her present day. Not all of Magnolia’s missions were military in nature, but they were all huge endeavors that would go unappreciated by the greater human population, yet have profound impacts on all of time.

Microstory 1166: The Officiant

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The Hundemarke is a special temporal object capable of creating a fixed moment in time. While active, it will prevent any time travel that could interfere with the events as they occur around it. Humans, in their incessant drive for violence, generally use this device to kill someone completely dead, so they can never return in some other reality. They fail to see its other applications, such as the protection of life. In the year 1829, a seer predicted the birth of a woman who would come to be known as The Officiant, and went by no other name. She had the strange ability to detect love; more specifically, love between soulmates. Now, for the most part, emotion is not a characteristic of time or space. It’s important, and it’s definitely real, but it bears no impact on the way things work on the quantum level. The Officiant’s proverbial sixth sense did not appear to be a time power, except that she could sense this love across time, and draw herself towards it at will. It was something different; something special, and perhaps even unique in any universe. The seer realized how vital the Officiant could be, and he didn’t want to see anything interfere with that. She wasn’t at more risk of being erased from history than anyone else, but if that were to happen, it would have worse consequences than it would for someone else. He sought out, and ultimately found, the Hundemarke, and used it to hold the Officiant’s birth and early life in place. She needed to live long enough to understand her own power, and mature enough to use it wisely. Once that development was complete, she was free to live her life as she pleased, though of course, he knew what she would do with her gift.

She became ordained as an administer of marriage. She did not do this through some religion, some human legal body, or any recognizable institution. She did not even have it done to her by some other individual. She simply declared to time itself that she was the Officiant, and had the authority to canonize a marital union. While time is not a conscious entity, it does enjoy more control over reality than anything else, including light and gravity. No one could dispute her power; not that anyone would want to. The danger the seer worried about didn’t have anything to do with some nefarious time traveler who purposely went back in time to try and erase the Officiant before she was born. The danger was in the butterfly effect; in minor or unrelated changes preceding her birth that could alter the course of events enough to as to incidentally change the outcome. The worst of the worst temporal manipulators had no problem with her. She never went up against them, or really even expressed distaste for them. She wasn’t exactly unbiased, but she was not concerned with their activity either. Her job was to oversee all marriages between people like her, and it was the only responsibility she had. It’s unclear how old she was before she died, but she did die. Anyone wishing to enter into a marriage would have to seek her out within her own personal timeline. They don’t always realize that they’re doing it. She sometimes just shows up, and doesn’t explain that she’s not just your average minister, or boat captain. Fortunately for her and her need to breaks, marriages involving time manipulators aren’t extremely common. It’s not that it doesn’t happen at all, but since so many of them spend so much of their time on the go, their chances of meeting someone, and settling down, are just that much lower than for a normal person. Still, she kept herself busy, and the work never felt tedious.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 6, 2244

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Before Leona disappeared from the timestream, they went back down to Hokusai’s lab, and read newcomer Pribadium Delgado into yet another situation. It was quite a bit to expect someone to take in all at once, but if she was feeling overwhelmed by it, she sure wasn’t showing it. Fortunately, she wasn’t all that familiar with Leona, so even before they explained to her that the other Leona was from the future, her brain just assumed they were twins. Leona had met a lot of smart people as she sped through the timeline. Hokusai, Hogarth, Holly Blue were just a few of the latest. Brooke and Sharice weren’t exactly humans, so interacting with them was kind of like talking to a computer. Even taking them into account, Pribadium, as an organic, might have been the most intelligent person she had ever met. She had hyperthymesia, and an eidetic memory. She was hyperobservant, critically thoughtful, and had excellent pattern recognition skills. If you rolled the smartest people from fiction, like Mycroft Holmes, Shawn Spencer, and Brian Finch into a ball, Pribadium would be smarter than whatever abomination oozed out of that ball.

She immediately understood the concept of dimensional gravity, which was a good thing, because they now needed her to figure out how to turn the reframe engine into a true time machine. The roller coaster facility could wait. Time was of the essence here, and even with their minds combined, there was not enough. Midnight central hit, and sent both Leonas to 2244. When they returned, the full-fledged anti-gravity generators were completely finished, and already supporting the Varkana resort. They were still beautifying the facilities, and working through the regulatory hurdles, so they would not open until 2247. Plus, visitors did not even want to start the long journey across the interstellar void until they were sure there was something to see when they got here.

“Did you see that?”

“See what?” Present!Leona asked. They had just this very moment returned to the timestream.

Future!Leona didn’t know what she was talking about either.

“I’m talking to Eight Point Seven,” Pribadium clarified.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Eight Point Seven said.

“Recalibrate your visual sensors, or rather your memories of them. Focus on temporal progression on the magnitude of milliseconds.”

Eight Point Seven tilted her head inquisitively, but seemed to be complying with the suggestion. “Holy shit.”

“So, I was right?” Pribadium asked for confirmation. “I could sense it, but I’m mostly human, so my perception is still limited.”

“Four milliseconds,” Eight Point Seven confirmed.

“What happened?” Present!Leona questioned. “Did she disappear before I did?”

“After,” Pribadium answered. She started pacing around the room. “That’s interesting. “Tell me, what time was it when you fell back in time?”

Future!Leona looked sideways at her alternate self.

“I know, you’re worried about creating a paradox. We’ll wipe her memory. Just tell me a number.”

“Fourteen-oh-nine, central standard.”

“What time was it when she arrived?”

“Twelve-twenty-seven,” Eight Point Seven replied.

“Hmm...” Pribadium went back into her own head. “That’s a much bigger discrepancy, yet you didn’t follow it.” She directed her attention to Future!Leona. “If that had any impact on your time jump, you would have done it an hour and forty-two minutes before her. So that’s not what happened. You gained some time in your life, which is interesting. Though, that could all be reversed when we figure out how to send you back.” She began to pace again. “So why did you not jump at the exact same time?”

Everyone else just waited patiently.

“Who’s Mateo?” Pribadium asked.

“My husband,” both Leonas answered simultaneously. They had already been over this, and Pribadium doesn’t forget things, so she was just asking to get her audience on the same logic path.

“He’s offworld right now,” Pribadium asked rhetorically. “Do you have any footage of one of their supposed simultaneous time jumps?”

“No,” Present!Leona said. “No such footage exists.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Eight Point Seven corrected.

“What?”

Eight Point Seven almost looks ashamed. “When my predecessors were trying to figure out who you were, they requested information from Proxima Doma, which apparently did create such a recording. Eight Point Three evidently asked them to delete it, and I’m the only other one with a copy, but I can’t be a hundred percent certain that they complied.”

The Leonas frowned. Hopefully that wouldn’t come back to bite them in the ass.

“Let’s call it luck,” Pribadium suggested. “Can we see it?”

Eight Point Seven simulated a deep breath, then activated a hologram. “Apparently, the Proxima Domanians heard Mateo’s outburst when he was...upset about some terrible news.” She was talking about when Leona had to tell him that their unborn children miscarried, and Mateo trashed the room they were in. “They sent a microdrone to investigate, and it ended up filming this.” She pushed the proverbial play button, so they could watch Mateo and Leona lying in bed, then disappearing at the same time.

“Analysis,” Pribadium prompted.

“Exact same time,” Eight Point Seven said. “I calibrated for nanoseconds. They left the timestream at the exact same time. We have to assume they always do so. What would cause two parallel versions of Leona to be slightly out of sync?”

“Does this matter?” Loa had been pretty quiet until now. She could not help them in any way, but she was a friend. Sanaa was testing the roller coaster at the moment, but was almost certainly spying on them remotely, which made it weird that she hadn’t jumped into the conversation yet.

I’m trying to respect your boundaries, Sanaa said psychically.

No one else was reacting to it, so this was a private telepathic conversation.

I can’t talk to Eight Point Seven, because she isn’t human. I don’t care about Loa’s thoughts. I don’t understand half the things Hokusai thinks about, and Pribadium’s brain is moving too fast for me to even tease one single thought. I can’t hear the other Leona either.

“What?” Leona accidentally asked out loud. “What do you mean, you can’t hear Future!Leona?”

I dunno, Sanaa answered. She’s inaccessible. Some people are like that. With Pribadium, it’s like watching a car race on fast forward, but there are those who can block me completely. Some even aren’t doing it on purpose; they’ve just built walls around their minds that I can’t penetrate. I tend to not even try, because I assume I don’t want to see what’s on the other side.

I didn’t know about any of this, Leona said, in her mind only. There’s no reason for Future!Me to be able to block your telepathy. I just...I wouldn’t do that. Unless...unless she’s keeping something from us, and knows you’re the only one with the power to detect it.

“What is it, Leona?” Hokusai asked, concerned. “What are you and Sanaa talking about?” She had gotten pretty good at knowing when they were in the middle of a conversation.

Present!Leona didn’t have time to answer Hokusai’s question. She was trying to work through it in her head. Something was wrong here.

I know what you’re thinking, Sanaa said. It’s not out of the realm of possibility.

Present!Leona narrowed her eyes, and stared into those of her supposed alternate self. She didn’t recognize the person staring back at her. Very erroneous. If her assumption was wrong, then no big deal; Future!Leona would be fine. But if she was right... “Who the fuck are you?”

“Leona,” Eight Point Seven scolded.

“No,” so-called Future!Leona said dismissively. “She’s right.” She jazzed her hands in front of her face, until pulling them apart, and revealing a different person. It was Arcadia Preston.

This made Pribadium step back. “Oh my God!”

The enemy held out her hand. “Hi. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Arcadia.”

“Don’t shake her hand,” Eight Point Seven warned Pribadium.

“Circuit Breaker,” Arcadia called Eight Point Seven. “You wound me.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” the only real Leona demanded to know. “Where are you in the timeline?”

“Exactly a hundred years ago,” Arcadia answered. “Well...a hundred years and about three months.”

Leona closed her eyes. She didn’t even have to do the math. “My wedding.”

“That’s right,” Arcadia said, her intense anger growing with each passing second. “It was a lovely service. You were there...twice!”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” Leona questioned.

“Oh, don’t act like you don’t know. You latched onto Sanaa’s invitation. Apparently, you finally become friends in this future, so when her letter comes in, you just..hold on tight! That was not for you, Dudley Dursley!”

“That never happened,” Leona argued.

Sanaa walked through the door, having finally come here in person. “She’s right. I haven’t gotten any invitation.”

Arcadia looked between Leona and Sanaa a couple times, then grimaced with embarrassment. “You’re not lying, are you?”

“No!”

She grimaced again. “I guess I got my dates wrong. Wull...it doesn’t matter. You’re gonna, and I didn’t authorize it.”

Leona widened her eyes, shocked at the insolence. “I don’t care! If I want to go back in time, and revisit my own wedding as an audience member, that’s exactly what I’m going to do! You’re a time traveler, and a pretty smart cookie; I think you always knew that your hold on me and my friends wasn’t going to last forever. The forty-plus years you were jacking with my reality might have been the most important of your life, but for me, it was Tuesday.”

“Fine,” Arcadia said. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

“Wait,” Leona stopped her from disappearing. “I’m going to see you again, whenever Sanaa’s invitation comes in. You, on the other hand, have seen the last of me. This is it, baby. If I ever see you again, wearing anybody’s face, I’m going to kill you.” She stepped forward, and got all up in Arcadia’s grill. “And if you think I can’t find a way to do it, just ask Ulinthra.”

“Who’s Ulinthra?” Arcadia asked sincerely.

“Exactly,” Leona whispered in a threatening tone.

“Very well,” Arcadia said, trying desperately to hide her legit fear. “We’ll call this; you..dealing with me—having your busy schedule interrupted—your punishment. So, I won’t punish you further. I have to make another stop anyway.”

“Don’t you do it,” Leona warned. “Don’t you dare.”

Arcadia cupped her hand over her mouth, and mimicked the sound of bad phone reception. Krsch-krsch—you’re breaking up—krsch!” And with that, she disappeared.

“Goddammit,” Leona lamented, shaking her head.

“Where did she go?” Pribadium asked.

Leona sighed. “She’s going to wherever Mateo is, so she can punish him instead. And I am helpless to stop it.”

“She’s probably going to punish him after you see him again at your wedding,” Loa suggested. “So you can warn him.”

“What makes you think he’ll be there too?” Pribadium asked.

“That’s how she operates,” Leona explained. “She doesn’t punish people for things they haven’t done yet. They have to understand why it is she’s upset with them. I’m going to see Mateo again, and probably soon. I can’t imagine she was off on her calculations by more than a few years.”

“I’ll go check the mail,” Sanaa joked, “and get myself a nice dress.”

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Bungula: Baby Sitters (Part VII)

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When the Sumbawa survivors arrived on Bungula, they knew something was wrong. The volcano in the center of their island looked pretty angry, but suddenly it was gone. All of their dwellings were gone too, and they weren’t standing in the exact same places they were before. No, they were from the year 1815, not 1815 BCE, so even though they had no clue what happened, they knew that they had been transported. Brooke and Sharice studied up on the Islamic religion, so they could better understand what the refugees were going through. A few appeared to believe this to be Janna, or The Garden, which was the Islamic analog to Heaven. Others weren’t so sure, because again, they were from the nineteenth century. They knew what volcanoes were, and had no reason to believe it was part of the end of days. Plus, this sure didn’t seem like paradise. It was great and all, but they still had to work and eat. They all attributed their salvation to Allah, however, which was a good thing. Their religious beliefs remained virtually unchanged, despite the inexplicable paradigm shift. They adjusted to their new lives better than anyone could have expected. Brooke and Sharice stayed close, but not too close. They watched the Tambora from afar, secretly placing listening devices in homes and common areas. They weren’t trying to gain state secrets, or even invade their privacy. They needed to learn the language, which was reportedly wiped out by the eruption They had no plans to interact with the people, but it was good to know, in case something came up.

Right now, they’re in the middle of an intense ethical debate about how to proceed.

“That’s murder,” Sharice points out.

“That is not true,” Brooke argues. “There’s a big distinction.”

“Tell me what it is.”

“One involves killing, and the other is just...not letting more life begin. Let me reiterate the more part. I’m not suggesting we get rid of the life that’s already here, but maybe we should consider preventing it from going beyond the current numbers.”

“Now you’re just talking semantics. You can’t sterilize ten thousand people.”

“It wouldn’t be ten thousand,” Brooke notes. “Some are already past their prime anyway.”

“Oh my God, you think that was my point?”

“No.” Brooke simulates a sigh. “I’m just trying to fix things before they become a problem.”

“Exactly what problem do you think will arise from this?”

“There are but a few thousand other people on this world. Or at least, there will be, once we migrate all the colonists back down on the other side of the planet. The Tambora will want to venture from their little island, and they’ll wonder where the hell everyone else is. They made a show about this, called The Society, and as you can imagine, it did not go well.”

“I don’t have to imagine. Those people weren’t on an actual island. The road literally stopped at the city limits, and was replaced by the woods. So right now, the Tambora don’t know they’re alone.”

“Exactly my point,” Brooke says.

“My point is that they’re not really trying to solve a mystery. They were pretty isolated already, so this isn’t such a huge difference. I know you’re concerned that the population is never going to stop growing, and eventually people will want to leave. Maybe they’ll eventually invent airplanes, and see that Singapore isn’t where it’s supposed to be, and neither is Perth. That may happen, but you still haven’t explained why you think that would be such a problem. They already know they’ve been moved. We’re not sure they have good frame of reference for the idea of an exoplanet, but I don’t think they think they’re on Earth.”

“I think they think they’re on Earth. I don’t know where you’re getting that. Are you talking about heaven? The belief that this is the Garden is gradually fading away.”

“I think we’re not giving them enough credit.”

“If it doesn’t matter, then what are we even doing here? Why did we bother building a whole new settlement in the Southern hemisphere if we don’t care whether the Tambora can see the drop ships?”

“I’m not talking about destroying their world view with spaceships, mother. I’m talking about letting them develop on their own. That’s the prime directive. Now, before you say anything, yes, we’ve already interfered with them. Well, technically Mirage was the one who interfered, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter what we do next. Just let them live. Let their population grow to whatever numbers it shall, and let them build seafaring boats, if they want. Our job is over.”

“So we do nothing? We just cut ties, and fly off into the black?”

Sharice shrugs. “Maybe. It’s like Mirage said. They’re living on borrowed time. They were meant to die. History thinks they died. We shouldn’t kill them, and we shouldn’t coddle them. Let’s just see what they do.”

“So, this is a sociology experiment?” Brooke was really pushing it.

“I think you know that’s not what I meant. But know this too; I won’t let you sterilize a single human, you understand me? I wasn’t supposed to be alive either, and I heard a lot of conversations about limiting my capabilities; basically by giving me the machine equivalent to a lobotomy. I won’t tolerate such ambitions.”

“I didn’t know that,” Brooke says honestly.

“Yeah, ‘cause you weren’t there.”

“I thought you had forgiven me for that. I didn’t know you existed, let alone that I had anything to do with the birth of your consciousness.”

“I know,” Sharice comforts. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“I get your point,” Brooke decides. “We can’t do anything to them, any more than we can do things for them. This is their world now. Or at least, their corner of it.” She grows quiet.

“I think I know what this is about,” Sharice puts forth.

“Oh, yeah? And what would that be?”

“You’re bored.”

“What?”

“You’ve always been on some kind of mission. Even when you were stewing alone under the ice on Europa, you were on a mission to save humanity from you. You don’t like just sitting around for no reason. Ever since you were a kid, your life has been go-go-go, and now it’s like that’s over.”

“I don’t feel that way.” But Brooke couldn’t be so sure. “Do I?”

“It’s all right, mom. We can find you a new purpose, and when you’re done with that one, we’ll get another. We’ll keep going until they finish building the Milky Way, and then maybe we’ll jump to the next galaxy.”

Brooke laughs. “That will be millions of years.”

“Or thousands.” It’s Mirage. Last they saw her, she was organizing the drop ships.

“Well, yeah, if we were to go faster than the speed of light, we could essentially teleport to Andromeda, but I’m not capable of that. I don’t even think my umbilical cord necklace has enough power to sustain me through such a distance journey.”

“You might be able to do it without your necklace,” Mirage suggests vaguely. “You ever heard of a reframe engine?”

“No, what’s that?” Sharice asks.

“It exploits time dilation when approaching the speed of light. If you were to go that fast, Brooke, you could travel several light years, and it would only feel like a few days, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Brooke acknowledged. “But that’s just how time and speed work. That’s not really temporal manipulation. Even regular humans experience that.”

“Exactly my point,” Mirage says.

“But it would still take millions of years to get to Andromeda. It would just feel shorter. Everyone back home would be millions of years older, or millions of years dead.”

“That’s the exploitation part of the reframe engine,” Mirage explains, “and I believe it’s a loophole to your condition. It takes the span of time you spend in the ship, which is moving slower than the outside, and forces that span of time to exist on the outside. So you would still be going ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine-nine percent the speed of light, but it feels like a few thousand years have passed for you, and it makes everyone outside the ship feel the same way. It’s this whole thing.”

Brooke considers the possibility. “Basically a warp drive.”

“Yeah, kinda,” Mirage agrees. “It’s much slower, though. People on Star Trek could make an emergency landing on a survivable planet in the time it takes their damaged shuttlecraft to blow up. In the real world, it would be more like hours, or longer, unless you were already within the star system.”

“So, you invented this...reframe engine?” Sharice questions.

Mirage chortles. “No, not me. I knew it was gonna happen, though. I’ve been in contact with the good people on Varkas Reflex lately, and the inventor is this close to having it figured out. I just spent a great deal of time on the phone with her; had to drop your name, but she’s agreed to let us have the specifications once she’s finished a full working model. She says it won’t be long now. Maybe a year.”

“So, we know her?” Brooke asks. “Who is it?”

“Hokusai Gimura. She’s with Leona. I mean, Leona wasn’t there, since it’s not her time of the year, but Miss Gimura agreed to relay a message, if you were wanting to say hello, or whatever.”

Both Brooke and Sharice would love to say something to Leona, if not directly. That wasn’t what they were thinking about, though. They were really just wondering what they would do with the power of a reframe engine.

Mirage goes on, “I sense hesitation. We’ve already discussed how we should leave Bungula anyway. It belongs to the colonists and refugees now, and if you’re worried about the greater vonearthan population getting us to replicate our terraformation methods, our best option is to pretty much always be on the move.”

“She’s right,” Sharice notes. “We’re already getting calls about doing this on other exoplanets. In fact, we can’t really even wait for this reframe engine to be finished. A team of diplomats is set to arrive in less than a month.”

“I didn’t know they were already on their way,” Brooke laments. “Where can we go in the meantime? We’ll need a quantum messenger.”

“I had that covered a long time ago,” Mirage says with a smile. “I sent a nanofactory to a secret location, in case something like this happened, and I needed to escape.”

“Where?”

“Toliman,” she answers. “The humans have no interest in it. We can hide out there for as long as we need.”

Brooke frowns.

“We should go,” Sharice says to her. “They’ll be fine. Our baby sitting days are over.”

“Okay,” Brooke decides. “Let’s go to Alpha Centauri B.”

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