Microstory 1497: Evacuation Protocol

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In 2210, the people of Durus voted to begin exploring the Nexus replica network. This was after the decline in temporal energy, but before anyone knew about it. Following careful consideration, more discussions, and training, the first mission was dispatched in 2213. They chose to go to a planet millions of light years from the stellar neighborhood called Dardius, mostly because that was the only location available. They could see evidence that there were other Nexa to visit, but they were locked out of all but the one. They established diplomatic relations with the Dardieti, but both sides were very cautious about their interactions. Dardius was a sanctuary planet, designed to house people who had either survived close encounters with dangerous temporal manipulators, or were at risk of encounters, due to events occurring in alternate realities. These people’s descendants lived here as well, and though they used some time technology of their own, they were very wary of Durus. They also had a very delicate social structure, which relied on rescuing people in the past at very precise moments. They didn’t just extract them from the timeline at random. They developed highly sensitive models to make sure new citizens integrated safely into the system without disrupting it, or being disrupted by it. Durus was a new variable, which Dardius had not accounted for in their models. That didn’t mean they were xenophobic, or hateful, but this was going to be a slow process, which didn’t bother Durus, because they were in no hurry to make any drastic changes to their own system. Before anything of significance could happen, the relationship ended anyway. In 2217, Dardius began having major issues with one of their rescue groups. Their timeline extraction machine malfunctioned, and started quantum duplicating everyone who came through, over and over and over again. This threw off the social balance greatly, and sparked a war. Dardius had no time to deal with Durus, but this would stop being a problem two years later when the Durune realized their time power issues. They could no longer afford to waste energy on intergalactic travel either.

Flashforward several decades, and the time power problem had not been solved. Nor had the regular power problem. It was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the wind turbines on the surface, and they still had no way of powering the Nexus. Fortunately, the Dardieti did. Their war was long over by 2267, and Dardius was essentially under brand new management. The Einarssons wanted to reestablish relations with Durus, so they sent a recon team to find out how the Durune had been doing. They were soon able to provide them with a power source, so they could initiate outgoing transports, but that alone would do them no good. There were still hundreds of thousands of people in the stasis pods who could not exactly be evacuated using traditional means, even with the Nexus in play. It was only designed to accommodate thirty people at a time. There seemed to be a way, however. As Dardius’ best technicians were working with Durus’ best, they found something called an Evacuation Protocol. It was exactly what they were looking for. The machine could still only take thirty people at once, but it would just keep going and going, about once every minute. If they coordinated perfectly, they calculated they could evacuate every single person in a month and a half. Realistically, it would be closer to two months, but that was fine. They were lucky to have found the feature, because it wasn’t immediately apparent to them, and it wasn’t something people would need on a regular basis. Perhaps the machine was somewhat sentient, and knew that this was exactly what they needed to survive. Under the Einarssons, the Dardieti were now less concerned about predictive social harmony models, and more concerned with saving lives. They agreed to evacuate everyone who wanted to move to their planet, which had a stable sun, and abundant resources, without question. Nearly everyone happily agreed to abandon their dead world, because there was little hope of saving it from the void, and they felt that it was just time to let it go. Some did choose to stay behind, however, and they had their reasons.

Microstory 1496: Wayward

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It was 2245. For eleven years, Durus found itself hurtling through interplanetary space, though since there weren’t any other planets in the solar system, it was really just general 70 Ophiuchi space. Now the rogue planet was crossing a threshold, all the way into what experts considered interstellar space. They knew how far they had gone, because they knew how fast they were going, and how far they were from the edge when the sun was effectively destroyed, but they had lost most of their instruments since the catastrophe. Of course, everyone was living underground now. The atmosphere had long since been stripped away. Anyone who needed to go outside did so in vacuum suits that they had to plan, fully engineer, and test before use over the course of only a few months. The wind turbines above were still operational, powering their bunkers using the torrential storms still raging, but they required a hell of a lot more maintenance than they did before. The extremely cold temperatures made it much more difficult for these machines to keep going without constant tending. Fortunately, it wasn’t impossible to accomplish this, as long as they kept a team up there at all times. Children were now being taught almost exclusively only what they needed to know to take up the burden when it became their time. They didn’t learn much history or culture, but fortunately, they were at little risk of falling victim to their old ways. Every second here was now pretty much only about survival, and no one wanted to live past the destruction of the population, so they all made sure to remain inclusive and fair. Many crimes were punishable by a naked surface walk, so it was vanishingly rare. It wasn’t nonexistent, but the government made every attempt to give the people what they needed. There was no reason to steal a certain medication for one’s dying daughter, for instance, because if she wasn’t given the medication, it almost certainly meant it simply didn’t exist. As for that government, the Solar Democratic Republic was still intact. It was composed of the same number of leaders, in the same leadership positions, and they continued to have their rounds of elections every five years, just as it had been since the first Republic.

There were some great things about life underground that could have been quite terrible without the proper planning. For example, food was not a problem, and would probably never be. They knew how to grow produce under less than ideal conditions. They also weren’t at much risk of losing their oxygen, because scientists had been perfecting carbon scrubbing technology since the Mage Protectorate. The real problem was available space. The bunkers were designed to accommodate little more than the population at the time of conception, and they were quickly approaching that limit. They still didn’t know where they were going, or how long it would take for them to get there, and more importantly, how getting there would even help their situation anyway. This world wandered the interstellar void for at least millions of years before humans stepped foot on it, and there was no reason to believe it couldn’t do that again. They needed to buy some time for the right people to come up with a solution, and halt nearly all population growth until then. The Nexus replica was the obvious answer, but could it transport everyone, and how would they power it? It would seem the turbines were not enough for it, because they had already tried connecting it to the grid, and came up short. Even the experts weren’t a hundred percent certain how these machines were powered in the first place, but theirs didn’t seem to be working right now. To give them the time they needed, the people elected to invest heavily in stasis technology, which wasn’t something they had needed until now. A team of researchers was already working on it, but they needed more resources to complete it. It could take decades to figure out fusion technology, just like it did on Earth, so it was worth it to use stasis as a temporary solution. By 2252, nearly everyone was placed in their pods. This had the added benefit of lowering their reliance on the turbines. Now the only people awake were tasked with cracking fusion, or with supporting those elite in various ways.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Thursday, July 14, 2129

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Leona was sitting in the visitor’s room. It looked just like a prison would in the real world, with people talking to their loved ones, some in hushed tones, others not so much. There were a few key differences. Touching was not allowed, and down on Earth, this would be enforced by correctional officers. That wasn’t necessary here, as prisoners were coded to become holographic under certain conditions. They were apparently allowed to touch each other if they wanted to high-five, or engage in a bit of athletic competition, but they would pass right through each other if they tried to fight. In this case, the principle held when it came to this particular section. That was fine for Leona; she didn’t know Angela well enough for human touch to mean anything, but it was heartbreaking to see everyone else make their fruitless attempts.

“Oh, hello.” Angela was being escorted into the room. She was completely chained up, from her ankles to her wrists, and all the way up to a collar around her neck.

“Is that necessary?” Leona asked the guard.

“Ma’am, I’m just an NPC, I can’t make decisions.” That was a strikingly unsettling thing to hear from a computer program.

“I can make decisions,” Leona said authoritatively. “Remove them.”

“Ma’am, like I said, I can only do what I’ve been programmed to do.”

“Then you need new programming.”

“That would be nice.” He was programmed to know that he was just a program, a.k.a. a slave, and Leona could not stand for it.

Leona started tapping on her simulated Cassidy cuff. Pryce had designed it to be exactly like the real ones, and the real ones...could be hacked. “I was saving my first exploit for something important, and I think this counts.” Once she was finished with the sequence, she slid her finger along the interface screen, and flicked it towards the NPC guard.

He blinked, and shook his head. “I feel...lighter. I’m...free.”

“Let’s test that theory,” Leona said. “Remove her chains.”

He took a second to check to make sure his simulated brain was even processing the command properly. Then he took out a key, and started undoing Angela’s chains.

Angela leaned forward as he was working on them, and whispered to Leona, “won’t you get in trouble for that.”

“Pryce wants to see how we survive with what we’ve been given,” Leona began to explain. “It’s a game to him, and he wants to follow his own rules. I’m capable of doing this. Therefore, I am allowed to do it.”

Angela started massaging her own wrists as they sat down together. “I much appreciate it. They’ve kept them on all the time.”

“You’re wearing cuffs too, though, so you’ve been skipping time.”

“Yes,” Angela confirmed. “The other inmates are none too pleased by it. I travel by isolation prints.”

“Isolation prints?”

“Footprints painted on the floor. If you walk on them, no one can harm you, but they’re hard to stay on. I do a lot of hopping and twisting.”

“I thought—I was told that fighting was impossible in here.”

“That’s what they tell the freemen, to make them feel okay about leaving us to rot. There’s a lot of fighting. You can earn sensory patches to stop it from hurting. There’s a woman in here who gets people creature comforts. She has some way to edit code, kind of like your cuff, I guess. Anyway, people pay her in their pain dampeners, so she can’t feel anything she doesn’t want to.”

“Can’t she just hack her own code to conjure pain dampeners anyway?”

“You’re right. Maybe she just wants her customers to give them up. You can’t steal a pain patch.”

Leona sighed. “We’re gonna take care of you. I can’t give you details, because obviously we’re always under surveillance, but you won’t wear orange forever.”

“I’m told that orange is the new black. People laugh when someone says that, but I’m afraid I don’t understand the meaning.”

“It’s a pop culture reference,” Leona told her, “a very old one.”

Angela nodded. “We have books and movies that they made on Earth, but I never spent much time catching up when I was on the outside. I was always just trying to improve my station in afterlife.” She looked around, so she could indicate the general environment. “I shouldn’t have been so obsessed. As soon as I got my indigo clothes, I should have left it at that, and tried to enjoy my life.

Leona shook her head. “This wasn’t you. This was us, and like I was saying, we’re gonna fix it.”

Angela wasn’t getting her hopes up, but she understood that arguing would only lead to Pryce figuring out their plan. He would have it already if Leona and her friends didn’t have a way of communicating with each other outside of his purview. Speaking of which, she ought to be getting back to it, so she could pass along all the details she learned about the prison section of this world. She said her goodbyes, hacked the code with her cuff one more time, so she could give Angela a proper hug, and left with apologies to everyone who just saw her do that.

Leona stepped through the back door of her apartment, and entered VioletSpace. Everyone else was already there, waiting for her, including the creator of this world. He was Level 10 Unrestricted; the highest and rarest level in the entire simulation. He never earned this spot, but was automatically awarded it by Pryce, simply by having had time powers in the real world. He liked to call himself the Purple Pirate, but Leona preferred to use his real name, Gilbert Boyce.

“How are we lookin’?” he prompted.

“It’s awful there,” Leona divulged, “we have to act now.”

“We can’t,” Sanaa said with a shake of her head. “We’re not ready. Boyce has one chance to do something big. Once Pryce figures him out, it’ll be over.”

“Pryce isn’t supposed to be able to demote someone from Level 10,” Ellie argued. “If he gave him the violet clothes, he can’t take them away. That’s how we designed it, so we couldn’t turn on each other.”

“You think he follows those same rules?” Sanaa questioned.

“He follows a set of rules,” Leona compromised. “We can’t be sure which ones he incorporated from before you left the group, and which ones he abandoned. But I will tell you this, I hacked an NPC today, and gave it a directive to go against Pryce’s wishes. The NPC complied, and I just spent an hour in that world with no retaliation.”

“He may be waiting for his moment,” Sanaa warned.

“Wait,” J.B. jumped in. “We don’t know what Mateo is doing on Earth. We can’t do anything until he reconnects, and can safely enter the secret world.” This world was located on a hidden partition of the simulation that siphoned very little power, and was built and run by Gilbert, using his unrestricted access. He was confident that Pryce would have no way of getting into it, at least not virtually. But that didn’t mean he would be shit out of luck, as Sanaa was about to point out.

“As soon as Mateo’s consciousness tries to enter the back door, Pryce is gonna see it, and he’s gonna find the partition, and he’s gonna destroy it. Maybe he can’t turn a Level 10 into a Level 1, but he can sure turn us into a Level 0. He’s physical, guys, don’t forget that. He has his own body, on whatever planet he built this thing on, and he walks around freely. He could destroy every one of the billions of people who live in here with a good, hearty bat.”

“I can get Mateo into this world,” Gilbert assured her. “I just need time. Nothing needs to happen immediately. I’m not saying we wait decades, but maybe Pryce is a little too on edge right now, and we would do better to let him let his guard down before we make our move?”

“Can’t we just get Angela out of prison right now, and hide her in your world before we do whatever it is we’re gonna do to stop Pryce?” Leona suggested.

“I think I could probably swing that,” Gilbert agreed with a nod, “but we have to make some decisions first. Either I go out there myself, and expose myself to the main code, or I convert one or more of you into Level 8, so that you’re powerful enough to break her out of prison. Either way, he sees it happen, and you’ll have to stay in VioletSpace with me and Miss Walton.”

“Madam Walton,” Sanaa corrected. “She married, but kept her original name.”

“Forgive me.”

“I’ll do it,” Leona volunteered.

“You can’t do it,” Ellie contended. “You have to stay in the main world for when Mateo contacts you again.”

“He can talk to you instead. This is important to me. I feel personally responsible for Angela’s situation.”

“We were all there,” Sanaa argued. “We all want her out, and we all want to get back to our lives. This isn’t all on your shoulders, Leona.”

“I have an idea.” None other than Nerakali Preston appeared out of the shadows, and approached their meeting table.

“Nerakali!” Leona exclaimed. “You’re here? When did you die?”

“Twenty-one-oh-seven,” Nerakali answered. “So it was written...so it shall have been done.”

“That’s right,” Leona realized. “You were hundemarked. How long were you able to stave off your inevitable death?”

Nerakali had become a much nicer and better person since they first met her in the 21st century. They didn’t become friends with her until after the date of her death, but like Gilbert Boyce, once they did, they couldn’t think of many they felt they trusted more. The Warrior was utilizing the hundemarke when he killed her in 2107, so nothing could be done to undo it, but that didn’t mean she had to die right away. She literally walked up to her death from the sidewalk, and though she would eventually have to take every single step to meet her destiny, she was always able to time travel somewhere else before each one. Whenever her life was in danger, time itself would send her back to take one more step, because letting her die anywhere other than that house on Tribulation Island would cause a paradox. This version of Nerakali here had already experienced every step, and there was no telling how much she had been through until now. “Every longs,” she joked. “All the long.”

“Well, we can save you,” Gilbert explained. “There’s a way out; a way to be resurrected, and it doesn’t violate hundemarke rules.”

She smiled at him like he was a child who didn’t understand why he couldn’t eat chocolate for every meal. “Not for me. I have a...second destiny.”

“What do you mean?” Leona questioned.

Nerakali reached down and pulled the hundemarke from between her breasts. Of course those were fake breasts, and it was a fake hundemarke, because this was a simulation, and none of it was real. Nothing in here worked unless someone programmed it, and even then, it still could not be considered real.

“So what? That’s just a few bytes of code.”

“I know,” Nerakali agreed. “I wear it as a symbol. I have done everything I wanted to do in the real world, and one day, that will be true of this world. I am going to die. My consciousness will be destroyed permanently. This is how I want it, and helping you save your friend is the next step I take towards that end.”

“No.” Leona couldn’t accept that. “You don’t have to die. Nobody has to die. Tamerlane Pryce may be an asshole, but we have to give him credit for this. He did save everyone in history for thousands of years, and there is no reason to change that. All we’re trying to do is remove him from power, not take down the system.”

“I’m not trying to do that either,” Nerakali promised. “This is a personal decision. Now, let me do this for you.”

“Do what?” Sanaa asked. “Are you going to break Angela out of prison?”

“No, Leona’s going to do that,” Nerakali answered. “It’s what she wants, and I will honor that. It’s the least I could do. I will be burning my own identity in the process, so she doesn’t have to burn hers. Mr. Rogue, recode her avatar. Make her look like me.”

“That won’t be easy,” Gilbert explained. “I mean, I can make her look like anything you want—a taco that poops ice cream—but that will only disguise her against the other residents. She will not be invisible to Pryce, because he doesn’t just see the avatars; he sees their code. Everyone has a unique base code, and messing with that would be tantamount to murder. If you’re not who you’ve become over time, up to this moment, then you’re someone else, and that former you is dead.”

“There’s a way, though,” Nerakali pressed, “without altering her base code. You can engineer something that makes her look like me, even when scrutinized by Pryce himself.”

Gilbert sighed, and took a few beats. “Yeah, it’s possible. Like I said, it won’t be easy, and I can’t just snap my fingers. It will take time, and the fact that you’re skipping interim years makes that more complicated.”

“Then you better get on it,” Nerakali told him. “The longer we wait, the more time The Genius, Mateo Matic has to barge in here and screw everything up.”

It was a little mean, and a little more like the old Nerakali, but it wasn’t entirely accurate, or unfair.

“I will begin immediately,” Gilbert began, “after a vote.”

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Glisnia: The Last Gate (Part XI)

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To practice using her time power, Hogarth first took Jupiter back to where he belonged in the 21st century. She didn’t have to be extremely accurate with her temporal navigation, because he was flexible, but she managed to land on the target moment anyway. This gave her a better understanding of how to do it, and when it came time to deliver Ambrose Richardson to his home universe, she was up to the task. While the team didn’t need either of them to complete the matrioshka body, had they not shown up, Hogarth would never have found the solution she was looking for. With this new plan, she would be able to take a little bit of matter from quadrillions and quadrillions of different places, all over the universe. Each time she connected with something, or someone, it would act as a relay point, so she wouldn’t have very far to go before reaching the next point. The more things she connected with, the stronger she would become, and the farther out she would be able to reach through the voids. She could take thousands of molecules from smaller objects, and billions from others, without causing even the least bit of disturbance in what she left behind. The structural integrity of these objects would remain perfectly fine, but once combined, these molecules would be invaluable towards their goals. She could do this, as long as she had help.

Ethesh used his technical know-how to build her a machine, and together, they refined it. It was a chamber inside a room that was to be connected to every single system in the matrioshka brain. From here, they could control mirror angle, energy output, even the hallway lights; everything. It only took the team three weeks to convince the Glisnians to give them access to all of these things, which they didn’t have to do. Those separate systems were compartmentalized for a reason, because when together, they would be too easy to exploit. This put the entire population in danger. They had no reason to believe anyone would want to sabotage Glisnia, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Of course, very few people were allowed in the room, and the only reason Hilde was one of them was because she was, to be honest, too incompetent to be of any threat to them. Beyond the walls, the greatest security contingency ever protected the room from any external influence, and they used an interesting tactic.

Most security plans assumed one thing; that a given set of people would have a certain level of access to the inside, and as long as only those people were accepted, everything would be fine. The problem with that was time. The longer something existed, the more chances a nefarious entity had to interfere with it, and that interference often started through some weakness in the population. A receptionist, for example, might have an ill father, who needed certain expensive medicine to survive. All an intruder would have to do was pay for that medication, and the receptionist would let them past the badged area. There were no receptionists on Glisnia, but the analogy held. The best way, they figured, to prevent any weak spots in the security system, was for it to be in constant flux. Robot A will only be on the front lines for an hour, before it’s removed, and replaced by Robot B. Robot B will last a day and a half before Robot C comes along, and to keep would-be intruders on their toes, it will only be around for seven minutes, before it’s forced to make way for Robot D.

If someone wanted to hack one of these robots to let them in, they wouldn’t know how long they had before it became useless anyway, forcing them to start over with something else. Access codes, data transference, and other vulnerabilities followed the same model by constantly shifting. The most vital component of this was secrecy. The robots and mechs they used to guard the room had absolutely no clue what was in it, and the people of Glisnia predominantly didn’t even know this was happening at all. Some weren’t even cognizant of the fact that the matrioshka body was in the plans in the first place. To coordinate, they needed a single person with the brain capacity to handle the randomized decision gates. Mekiolenkidasola was that someone. Lenkida, Hogarth, Hilde, Ethesh, and Crimson would be the only people ever in the room. They would not leave, and literally no one else would be allowed in, until the job was done. Once it was, the room would be completely destroyed, and never rebuilt.

They lived there for a month, the mechs surviving on an isolated miniature fusion power source, and the humans on mostly nonperishable food. They didn’t want anyone to need any supplies or other resources from the outside. They had all the tools they required to make sure Ethesh’ machine operated correctly, and that Hogarth would be able to run it. After countless simulations, Hogarth was ready to take the penultimate step. She knew she had access to all the energy in the bulkverse, but she still needed to reach out to Aitchia once more, to make sure he was cool with it, and to help, if necessary.

Now that she was organic again, Hogarth couldn’t just scan the QR code on the back of the Book of Hogarth with her eyes. This was something they forgot to ask for before the room was sealed, but that was okay. Ethesh had everything he needed to build a scanner from scratch. After all this, that was probably the least difficult thing they had to do in here.

“You’re back.”

“Is that okay?”

“Of course,” Aitchai assured her. “The bulkverse belongs to everyone, I just keep it running.”

“I was gonna ask you for permission, or a favor, or...forgiveness, depending.”

He grinned. “What do you need?”

“Oh, not much,” Hogarth began, worried how he would react. “Just access to all the energy in the entire universe.”

“Done.”

“Really? You don’t even wanna know what it’s for?”

He shrugged. “It’s just one universe. It would be like if I asked you for one of your atoms.”

“That’s kind of what I’m trying to do.” Hogarth then went about telling him their plan to extract miniscule amounts of matter from everywhere, but not too much from any one place.

“Diversify!” Aitchai exclaimed. “My finance guy always recommends I do that,” he joked.

“So, you’re cool with this?”

“I don’t see any problem with it. You’re a bookmaker, you have all you need to do what you need to do. I wouldn’t go getting a big head about it, or anything, but I’m happy for ya.”

Hogarth thanked him, and prepared to leave, but stopped. “Just one more thing. It’s...I don’t know if it’s big or not. I’m not a hundred percent certain that my friends are a hundred percent certain that you exist.”

“You want proof,” he guessed.

“Have you ever needed to do that before?”

“Tell ya what, you go back to them, and tell ‘em to look out the window.”

“Which one?”

“Doesn’t matter, I’ll know. While they’re watchin’, clap your hands once. That’ll be my signal.”

“I appreciate this; the signal, and everything.”

“It is a joy.” He smiled like a loving father.

“He wants us to watch the window?” Hilde asked.

“The stars, I believe,” Hogarth assumed.

They didn’t budge.

“What’s the worst that can happen? You’re looking out a window. Or...a viewscreen.”

Crimson simulated a sigh, and switched on the screen.

“This is realtime, right?” Hogarth confirmed. Their silence answered the question, so she clapped her hands, as instructed. A beam of light shot out from one of the stars, and made its way down to another star. A second beam then came out of the first star, and made its way to a series of other stars, eventually forming a curve, which stopped back at the second star. The lines and curves continued from left to right, until a complete imperative formed, reading DON’T PANIC.

“Holy shit,” Ethesh exhaled.

“Is this authentic?” Crimson questioned.

Lenkida walked over to a nondescript panel on the wall. He opened it up, and took out what looked like a red landline phone. He held it to his ear. “Did others just see that?” He waited for a response. “Has it been authenticated?” He eyed Hogarth as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the line. “Well, it was proof, in case anyone doubted that we could do what we said we would do. I know we had a protocol for beginning the procedure, but I believe this will suffice? Please open the last gate.” He stayed on the phone for another moment before hanging up, and casually punching the phone with his fist so hard that it shattered. He looked over at the team. “We’re a go.”

After completing the launch sequence, Hogarth closed her eyes, and said a prayer, not to god, but to Aitchai, who could make or break this whole project. When she was ready, she nodded to Ethesh, who activated the machine, and gave her access to the whole matrioshka brain. She didn’t need it to build a body, but things could go awry if the brain and body weren’t perfectly compatible. Having every qubit of data that the network was storing—about itself, about everything—was vital in completing this mission properly. It would allow her to find the right matter from the right places, and install them at the right spots, to create a seamless transition from head, to shoulders, to knees, and toes. She could see it all, it was glorious, and it was exactly what she needed.

She took a chunk out of her own body to start, then moved on to stealing a little bit from Hilde, and then from everyone else in the room. Then she continued with every independent entity on the shells, and a little extraneous matter from the shells themselves. She took some from the star, and the nearest stars, and their orbitals, and then from Sol, and the rest of the stellar neighborhood. And still, it was impossible to detect that the matrioshka was any larger than it was before. She needed more, she needed a shit ton more. No, she needed a shit ton of a shit ton more, and then she needed to take that to the power of a shit ton. Every star in the galaxy, every planet, every moon, every asteroid, every meteor, every comet, Andromeda, Triangulum, beyond; she took from all of them, and only then did they notice any progress. She reached out farther, to the rest of the cluster, and the supercluster, and the hypercluster, and the great wall; all across the observable universe, and then the rest. Before a man in Tokyo could finish his morning coffee, it was done. It was all done. The matrioshka body was complete. It had arms, legs, a torso, a behind, and even protrusions that resembled breasts. That’s right, the matrioshka was a woman, which made the most sense since the word meant mother.

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Microstory 1495: Time Rocks

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There was only one person left with powers in 2234. Everyone else had completely lost any ability to manipulate time in any way. Had Durus the medical technology necessary to study these former paramounts, they might have learned whether their powers were gone forever, or if they just didn’t have the temporal energy necessary to use them. The world was emotionally troubled. Fearing the worst, engineers expanded the bunker clusters, and moved everyone underground. Though the sun was still shining, and the wind turbines still turning, trying to remain on the surface was just not worth the risk. Only a few technicians went out daily to make sure these perfectly normal power generators were still fully operational. And only they were left outside when the sun blinked out of existence. Calluna—named after Missy Calluna Atterberry, who was a historical figure from the interstellar ship, The Elizabeth Warren—didn’t disappear completely, but it was no longer useful to the people of Durus. The old woman who still possessed a modicum of temporal energy used it one last time to explain what had happened. It was the Time Crevice. When a group of apporters banished a kilometer wide patch of land from the surface of the planet to get rid of the crevice, they didn’t give much thought to what was going to happen to it. It didn’t seem like it was their problem anymore, and they didn’t think they would have to deal with it ever again. The instantaneous journey from Durus to outer space took a toll on the land, and broke it apart. These parts were still on the same trajectory, however, so they stuck pretty close to each other. Most of it didn’t have any special temporal properties at all; they just wanted to make sure they got the whole thing. They ended up calling the central structure the Time Rocks, for they were the ones responsible for messing with the passage of time inside the crevice. Evidently, even as a bunch of rocks, they were powerful enough to place the whole sun into a temporal bubble, and since it was stuck in this bubble, light could not escape fast enough to shine on Durus anymore. They were smart to move underground, because they would not have survived for long above.

It was absurd that something smaller than a house could have any impact on something as massive as a star. Experts hypothesized that there was more temporal energy stored in those rocks than anyone realized, or that it was channeling it from somewhere else. Then it dawned on them. They didn’t know how, or why, but that was finally the answer they were looking for to the question about their own time powers and time tech. Somehow, as the Time Rocks were hurtling through space, they were also absorbing temporal energy from all of Durus. The rocks were draining people of their powers, and stripping away everything that allowed the Durune to manipulate spacetime. All that energy, concentrated into one tiny spot, was like setting an armed nuclear bomb next to a lamp post. The lamp post never stood a chance. The energy exploded, overtook Calluna, and trapped it in time. Now remember that it was still giving off light, but it was doing it at an incredibly slow pace, and that just wasn’t enough to keep the planet warm. The world didn’t end, but even if Calluna escaped eventually, it would do the Durune no good. The resulting explosion sent a gravitational wave towards Durus, which was strong enough to knock it out of orbit, and cause durusquakes all over, but not enough to destroy the bunkers, which were designed to withstand heavy seismic activity. The remains of Aljabara above collapsed, though, as did most structures still standing after all this time. So now their relationship with 70 Ophiuchi was all but over. It would seem that Durus, or some other entity, did not want it to be anything more than a rogue planet. It would take them a long time to escape interplanetary space, but there was nothing they could do to stop it. They had no temporal energy, very little electricity in the reserves, and not a lot of time to repair the turbines. Fortunately, once they did make those repairs, they were up and running again. Through all this, Durus lived up to its name, and endured. Some suggested they change the government back from the Solar Democratic Republic, but most agreed it didn’t really matter right now. They had to focus on survival, and hope that something about their situation changed eventually.

Microstory 1494: Shutting the Stable Door

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The evidence was piling up that there was nothing the Durune could do to stave off their eventual total loss of temporal energy. By 2230, most people with powers had already lost them, and the rest could only use them sporadically and unpredictably. Time tech wasn’t reliable enough to be worth it either. There was no more teleportation, no more filter portaling, no more transdimensional living spaces. Aljabara was the only city on the planet that had built enough regular renewable energy to continue operating sans temporal manipulation. It was looking like a world without time powers was where they were headed, so everyone had to once again consolidate into one place. The outposts and distant settlements were entirely abandoned as everyone literally converged upon the Capital. They weren’t all crammed together, however. The most efficient living spaces available today were constructed underground. They were protected from the elements, easier to keep warm, and residents were able to spread out more without wasting energy, or taking as many resources as would be required for the same real estate above ground. Technology wasn’t nearly as advanced as it was on Earth right now, but engineers had learned enough to build these connected bunkers. They didn’t know what was going to happen to the world, but it was the best way to survive a number of disaster scenarios. Wind. Wind was their best friend, because without sun, without geothermal power, without fusion, without crazy temporal energy—wind would remain a constant. If they didn’t have wind anymore, it was because they didn’t have a planet, and there wasn’t really anything they could do about that anyway, because they weren’t anywhere near advanced enough to build exodus ships. They would just die, and that would be it. A normal fledgling world would be okay without any energy, but those all had host stars, and were at a quite minimal threat of losing them. At this point, there were one and a half million people, so the only way they were going to make it is if they fixed anything and everything that was wrong with their planet. People were still dying; their agelessness having long been stolen from them, presumably by the suns of 70 Ophiuchi. They still weren’t sure whether real sunlight was detrimental to their way of life, or if there was something particular about these stars. It didn’t really matter in the end, of course. They had no way of moving off to another star system, and even if they could, they weren’t confident about being able to survive the trip, even with their trusty wind turbines. A lot of things were capable of wiping them out while they were here, but it would be so much worse in interstellar space. At least they were still able to utilize solar panels while they were orbiting Ophiuchi A, which they had since named Calluna. Things were getting really rough, and everyone was making sacrifices. They would be nowhere, however, without the hard work of their ancestors, who fought for equality and justice. Without them, they would still probably be suffering the same problems, but they would not be armed with the tools necessary to combat them. They were a unified peoples now, and that was going to get them through this, even if it wouldn’t be very easy.

Microstory 1493: Just a Circle

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It is perfectly normal for a human being to be able to lift a fifty pound rock. They have the fingers and hands to grasp onto it, the arms to attach them to the body, the muscles to make it all move, and the brain to exert its will upon everything. Every time this person lifts that rock, however, it will require energy. That energy has to come from somewhere, and it does in this example through respiration, and nutritional consumption. As much work as one wants to get done must be completed with the exact amount of corresponding energy. There are different forms of energy, of course—some more efficient than others—but there is no such thing as magic. Temporal powers operate the same way; without magic. A paramount, or whathaveyou, will be capable of performing amazing feats by manipulating time and space, and they will do this by tapping into a kind of physics that most people don’t even know about. But these abilities only account for the talent, not for the energy required to complete any given task. Having the intelligence and skill to lift a rock is not the same thing as actually lifting it. Regular humans use adenosine triphosphate to do work, and empowered people use temporal energy...and also ATP, because they too are alive. No one knows where temporal energy comes from, but scientists assume that it replenishes itself by the passage of time. They don’t know why it would do this, or why certain people are able to harness it; it just always seems to be there, and available. For centuries, the people of Durus took temporal energy for granted, and allowed it to run their lives. It was the basis for their spiritual beliefs, their sociopolitical organization, and their technology. So when this energy stopped replenishing itself as it normally always did, people didn’t know what to do. They knew things needed to change, but how.

Why was the temporal energy disappearing? Were they using too much of it too quickly, or were they only ever allotted a certain amount, and they were now approaching that limit? Everyone hoped that the first hypothesis was the truth. If they never got their powers back, who knew how the world would end up. If they could lessen or stop their dependency on it, however, perhaps they would eventually get back to normal levels, and then they would start being smarter about how they used it. They had already started working on ways to lower their expenditure, by heavily regulating powers and tech, using them only in the most dire of circumstances. The biggest drain on this energy, however, came from their solar orbit. Keeping a planet on a very unnatural path through space, as you can imagine, takes a lot of work. Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy to just stop doing this. If they simply let go, they would be shot off into space, or worse, collide with another celestial object. No, they had to wait for the perfect time, and this came in the year 2226, as they were entering their third eleven-year full orbit. They needed to make one last push to alter their course. They would abandon their figure-eight, and begin a regular orbit around Ophiuchi A. It wasn’t beautiful, magical, or poetic, but there was nothing wrong with a circle. Every planet in the universe that orbits a host star or stars does so in a circular manner, be it highly elliptical, or otherwise. The job was the most difficult thing they had ever done, because the last time they entered an orbit, they had a lot more energy. Now, they not only had less, but they had to hold onto at least a little bit in order to maintain their atmosphere afterwards. That was one thing that they weren’t sure they would ever be able to fix without powers or time tech. They were victorious in their latest battle against annihilation, but that didn’t mean the war was over. It would turn out to be too little too late, and kind of like shutting the stable door after the horse had escaped, found a new home in a new city, foaled offspring, and died peacefully on a Tuesday.

Microstory 1492: Death of an Immortal

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Life on Durus only got worse after the realization that no more paramounts were being born. People’s time powers started becoming less intense, and less reliable. By 2224, they were in the middle of their second orbital pattern in the 70 Ophiuchi system, and people were beginning to feel like they ought to be setting off for a new home. Perhaps another star system would be kinder to them, or maybe it was best to just not be orbiting a host star at all, and survive on what temporal manipulation abilities they still had left. Unfortunately, this was proving to be nearly, if not completely, impossible. Even collectively, the Durune were not strong enough to alter the planet’s pattern. It was one thing to stay as they were, but to try to move off in some other direction just wasn’t in the cards for them anymore. They tried to contact someone from the past to help, but their powers weren’t strong enough for that either. Something had to be done to drastically change everything about their lives, and they would vote for these contingencies during the 2225 round of elections. The experts writing up these proposals needed time to work on them anyway. Until then, a worldwide mandate went out, limiting people’s ability to manipulate time and space. Teleportation would be used only in emergencies, spatial locks were replaced with regular physical locks, speed school and other time bubbles were outright banned. All temporal energy had to be conserved, in order to have enough to maintain their world’s homeostasis. If they flew back off into interstellar space now, they wouldn’t be able to protect themselves against cosmic radiation, and the vacuum. For some, that didn’t matter anymore, because there was one essential time power that stopped working, even without the government dictating it. Based on one case, it would seem that they were no longer ageless.

Agelessness was a right that every citizen of Durus enjoyed, whether they were rich, poor, smart, or not so smart. It didn’t matter whether they contributed positively to society, or not. If they were alive, they deserved to stay alive forever. By whatever interference the Ophiuchi stars were giving off, people started aging again, and this all came to its inevitable conclusion when one of their older immortals passed away from age-related diseases. Of course, no time power was capable of eradicating a disease—congenital, or otherwise—but their youth made it a lot easier to treat just about anything without worrying about old age making them more susceptible. Now that that was gone, nothing was stopping the Durune from being wiped out. Almost literally everyone attended the first funeral in decades. The only people not there had to maintain everyone’s survival in some way. It was a frightening day more than a sad one. This wasn’t to say that no one cared about this individual, or that no one was in mourning, but it was becoming clear that everyone was doomed. If death was back on the table, their whole society could collapse. If they wanted to survive, physically as well as socially, they were going to have to change a lot more about themselves than they ever thought they would, and they would have to do it very soon. While the right people were working on a way out of this mess, others were making laws and policies to adapt to the ever-changing present, and to prepare for every eventuality conceivable. Through this, things continued to get worse, but the Durune continued to endure at pace. It was going to take a lot more than a little wrinkly skin to get them down. Unfortunately, fate did indeed have more in store for them, and their success was not assured.