Microstory 1685: Earthbound Before Death

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After several decades of isolation—remaining physically separate from each other using small fusion-powered orbital ships—technology was approaching an inevitable step in Isoverse. When people have the ability to connect themselves to a virtual network to interact with each other, it only makes sense that many will eventually decide that they no longer require bodies in base reality. This alone would not necessarily allow a species to last and thrive. At an early enough point in technological advancement, if everyone did this, the population would stagnate. This is fine, if it’s what they want, but if they want to both do this, and propagate the species, they’re probably going to have to figure out how to make new people in the simulations. Yes, theoretically, enough of them could keep their physical substrates to accomplish this goal, but who do you ask to do that, and how long will it go on before they start feeling like nothing more than a baby-making subclass? The most sustainable model assuming no limitations in natural resources, like power and raw material, is by developing artificial intelligence. This AI will essentially replace the concept of birthing offspring, whether any given entity starts out as a blank slate, as babies once did, or is switched on with full capabilities. Such technology would allow people to upload their consciousnesses into VR permanently, and continue to live however they want there, without worrying about missing out on some basic human imperatives, like creating and raising new life. Still, not everyone in Isoverse was okay with this. Not everyone wanted to be immortal, or to only make AI children. These were the ones who would come to learn the cost of isolation, and consider the possibility that that cost was irreversible for them. When they tried to return to Earth, they found survival to be much harder than it was before.

Those who wanted to return to the surface of the planet actually weren’t returning anywhere. They were all young enough to have been born on the isolation ships, and had never once set foot outside. They were fed controlled food, and breathed filtered air. They had never gotten sick, and therefore, never developed antibodies. Experts attempted to explain this fact to them, but they would not hear of it. The government had never thought to make going back down to Earth illegal. It was only against the law to break isolation while on the ships, which wasn’t that much of a problem, because they were all too small to hold a party, or something, anyway. The best of friends have never met each other in person...ever. The reality of what would happen to their bodies by not exposing themselves to a natural environment was not lost on the Isoversals who first thought to launch themselves into space. They attempted to keep the people inoculated, but this was difficult, since a lot of research simply could not continue on the ships. They probably should have sent researchers back down on a regular basis in order to stay up to date on how to protect against the ongoing evolution of disease, but I imagine they didn’t want the public to think it was a good idea to return permanently. Not a single one of the Earth-bounders managed to survive for long in that environment. They had plenty of resources, and knew how to protect against the elements, but a single cut was pretty much all it took to get an infection that they couldn’t fight against. Had they gone right back up into space, they might have stood a chance, but their medicine reserves ran low faster than they thought, and the experiment was soon over.

Microstory 1684: The Squadron

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The last time I talked about this universe, I kind of made it seem like the war that the natives started against the Ochivari was simple and quick. They lured a ship back to their version of Earth, attacked it, won, and stole it. Of course, the process was a lot more complicated than that, and actually took quite a bit of time. The human confederates that the native Earthans captured were surprisingly resilient to interrogation. This was because they were conditioned not to fear pain, but to enjoy it. It was more than this, though. These ones were young enough to have received advanced medical treatments, which actually scrambled the pain and pleasure centers of their brains. The natives didn’t physically torture them, but they did try to make their stay uncomfortable, by keeping them in small cells, and forcing them to sleep on stone floors. They didn’t starve them, but they fed them very little, and they played loud music while they were trying to sleep. The confederates enjoyed much of this, though, so they realized they had to come up with a new strategy. They put each of them in deeper isolation. Soundproof rooms with no sources of light, and no human interaction, was worse than torture for these people, because it was boring. Still, they didn’t crack immediately. It took months for them to beg to be shown even one ray of sunshine. At this point, they would tell the natives anything they wanted to know. All this time, the world’s various governments were holding a sort of competition-recruitment program. Each nation was expected to supply one of the top experts in their fields. Some countries gave their best engineers, while others their best fighters, etc. They then trained what they called The Squadron to work together, and prepare to fight their common enemy.

By the time the Squadron was ready, so were the confederates, to give up the information necessary to start this war. They contacted the Ochivari for rescue, requesting a whole ship to come for them, but when that ship came, the joint military was waiting for them. Now, this wasn’t the Squadron. Their job had not yet begun. Regular soldiers could handle this mission. All they needed to do first was to get that vessel, and figure out how to use it. They did their best to not damage the ship in the battle, and not kill too many of the Ochivari, but losses were suffered on both sides. To open a portal massive enough to accommodate the ship, a certain number of Ochivari had to be sacrificed, but when the homefront battle was over, that number was not high enough. They would have to breed more. But would such offspring not be innocent? This ethics debate only further delayed the realization of their hopes to start a war. It delayed it for years, all the while, the Squadron, and the rest of the military servicemen across the world, continued to train. They never knew whether the Ochivari would eventually send another ship to investigate what went wrong with the first one. Time travel was confusing. No more Ochivari came through, and by the time they figured out the ethics, the new Ochivari were all considered adults. Not all of them were bad, but enough of them were. These were sacrificed so that the Squadron could go off and attack the Ochivari staging area in Efilverse. The good ones, meanwhile, stayed behind, and were mostly successfully integrated into Earthan society, where they learned to value life, and reject their ancestors’ crusade against nearly all civilization. The Squadron didn’t win, but they never expected to. All they hoped to do was inspire a revolution. They did.

Microstory 1683: Death Introduced

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The battle was over, and the majority of the crew of The Crossover left Providenciaverse to get back to their mission of cataloging the bulkverse. Only 148 Maramon were left to settle on the planet, one of which was the original captain, who was mostly there out of a sense of obligation to them. Still, he did not complain. He continued to lead his people, so that they could thrive on their new world. His last order as captain was to erase all navigational data, so that no one else could return to this place. He didn’t want the leadership back on Ansutah to decide that the deserters needed to be punished in some way. If they ever, ever figured out where Providence was, then they would be able to arrive for extraction immediately. Hell, they could even come at some point earlier in the timeline if they wanted. So the settlers didn’t hold their breaths for long. After a week of no retaliation, they were confident that their location would forever remain a secret. They began to get to work, building infrastructure to make their lives easier, and forming a radical propagation plan to increase their numbers as quickly as possible. In ancient times on Ansutah, Maramon felt compelled to have many children. This powerful instinct had to be quelled once the people realized that their universe was not vast enough to accommodate infinite expansion. Such population control was no longer necessary—not here—and they had no intention of taking that for granted. Despite being left there with no advanced technology, the settlers developed fairly rapidly. However, their choice to stay was not without cost. They were born and bred to be immortal, but those rules did not apply in every universe. Here, they would age. Here, they would die.

It was a pretty hard thing to digest, the fact that a universe was capable of not only having different proper physics, but that it could somehow transform a lifeform on an organic level. Their ancient texts spoke of death in the early days of their homeworld, but for most of history, the idea was more academic. Only recently was it reintroduced to them in full force when they discovered the limited scope of their universe. Even then, they remained ageless, and really only died due to the resource wars. It broke their hearts to learn that this was just the way they would live from now on, just like the way humans evolved naturally. And if they were no better than humans, as they had been taught their entire lives, what other lies did they believe about life, the bulkverse, and everything? Fortunately, their new state of being did not cause them to resort to something irreversible, like war. Not long afterwards, the original settlers all died out anyway, leaving their descendants to move on without them, having never experienced the immortal lifestyles of their forebears. They continued to progress, just as any moderately peaceful civilization will, while always keeping the environment in mind. The settlers had dedicated themselves to not teaching their young ones too much about where they ultimately came from. If the species was going to survive, they would have to think that the way things were was the way things had always been. Some stories held on better than others, but overall, the society that formed over the centuries was normal. Some people were bad, some were good. They tried to do the right thing, and made mistakes. They explored the solar system, and sent probes and colonists to the nearest stars in the neighborhood. Their Maramon brethren never did come back, for any reason, but the Ochivari did come, and that’s when things got interesting.

Microstory 1682: Starcatcher

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After the wars began—precipitated by a debate about what to do with the people on this version of Earth who were already infected with the sterility virus—a group of scientists figured that there was no way out of this. Now that the virus existed on their planet, there was probably nothing stopping it from getting out eventually. They could bomb the quarantined nation, and they could send people to bunkers, but their fate would eventually catch up to them. They decided that the only way to save the human race was to take it off world. But they weren’t trying to save themselves. They did not have the resources or technology necessary to send a significant enough population to the stars. They would only be able to send frozen embryos, and one individual young adult in stasis. There was also no guarantee that revival from stasis would work, because even though they had tested the technology in the short-term, they didn’t know if it would be able to last for what was potentially thousands of years. There were no sufficiently habitable planets within a reasonable distance from Earth. Neighboring worlds were always too hot, or too massive, or not massive enough. A human outpost could probably survive on these worlds, but again, this was a long-term project, and the people who would grow up in the colony were not liable to be able to advance fast enough in a harsh environment. Thanks to a boost from the solar sails, the ship was capable of traveling at about ten percent the speed of light. It would slow down over time as it hunted for the right world to settle on. Since they didn’t know exactly where the ship would be going, they called it Starcatcher. It was designed to use solar power to jump from the current star to the next, and just keep doing that until the right orbiting body presented itself.

There was no way to know whether their plan would work, let alone how long it might take. They just had to send off the embryos, and hope that Starcatcher found a new home eventually. As aforementioned, this could take thousands of years. They could program the AI to gather the requisite data for every planet they encountered, synthesize it well, and extrapolate a survivability factor, but so many things could go wrong. Again, the scientists would never know how the mission turned out. Even if Starcatcher did manage to find a world just next door, the trip was still going to take decades, and none of them was young enough to still be around. This was all about faith. They were right to have it. Fifty-six thousand years later, Starcatcher found a decent planet that was about 5500 light years away. It had a nitrogen-rich environment with healthy levels of oxygen, 85% water on the surface, and fairly reliable climate patterns. Things went pretty smoothly, but not perfectly. The Governess, as she was called, woke up from stasis, obviously still alive, but she wasn’t intact. She had trouble remembering who she was, and what she was meant to do. Fortunately, she didn’t try to mess with any of the embryos until her mind was better. It just took some time for her to acclimate to the future, and remember her purpose here. You may be wondering how it’s possible for a single woman to raise the 147 babies needed for the initial population. She didn’t start with that number. Experts had developed a complicated development plan for her, which involved starting out slowly, having the older children help raise the younger ones, and patiently doing this over the course of three decades. Humanity was able to restart here, and they never had to worry about the Ochivari again.

Microstory 1681: Dark Studies

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An Efilversal survivor named Nils Nilson was the one who ultimately taught the Ochivari how to start their antinatalistic movement. It was he who believed most passionately that the only way to protect life was to destroy it. He saw no irony in this. “To prevent suffering, one must cut the threads of existence before they get too long,” he was once heard saying. He was insane. But he was an excellent orator, and a very moving teacher. In exchange for his words, he asked the Ochivari to transport him to a new universe. He didn’t specifically say that he was going to continue to spread his message, but that was definitely what he wanted to do. His people were becoming extinct, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. If he wanted to mould a civilization into his image, he had to find one still with a significant population. That was what he really wanted, to turn people to his side, and convince them to do whatever he wanted. It probably didn’t matter much what he convinced them to do, as long as he would go down in history as the most influential voice of all time. It worked. The world he ended up on was falling apart. Wars and unregulated technology were threatening everyone in some way. There weren’t really even rich people who could protect themselves against the consequences. It was just a huge mess, and from just about everyone’s perspective, a lost cause. Nilson saw potential in them, though. If he could condition them to despise technology beyond a certain level, he could have his notoriety. He got to work. He used his charm to gather a few followers, and with the power they gave him, he was able to gather more. And more, and more, and then after that...more. It was never enough.

No one could stop him, even if they wanted to. Any government still standing at this point in time was wholly ineffectual, so there was no one willing and able to oppose him. Anyone who had some kind of principled stance against his ideas didn’t give him much thought. The reality was that he was not only the loudest voice in the crowd, but one of few who had any interest in using that voice to enact change. With little resistance, he banished sufficiently advanced technology, and killed anyone who did actively operate against him. Most people were too scared of him to argue. Yes, he was violent, but he was ending wars, because people no longer had the suitable resources to try, and they were all coming together under one banner anyway. Eventually, no one was left to fight, because they were either dead, or on the same side. Now, the Ochivari promised never to enter the universe where they left Nilson to start a brand new life. They had every intention of keeping that promise. Unfortunately for all of us, that kind of attention to detail can get lost when you’re dealing with bulk travel. Nilson died not too long after he arrived, which only augmented the mystique surrounding his philosophy. When the Ochivari finally did arrive, it was nearly thirty years later, and no one on the mission who made the original promise to him was even still alive. Despite their ability to travel through time, a generation for the Ochivari goes by quickly. Each time an individual tries to make a jump, there’s about a fifty percent chance that they’ll die, and past successes hardly increase those odds. Anyway, since their outlook was transformed, these humans were happy to welcome the Ochivari to their home, and were more than willing to join their cause. The loop is complete. The Ochivari gave Nilson to these people, which made them the confederates they would end up becoming to the Ochivari.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 31, 1608

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“This was not a win for you,” The Cleanser argued. “My girl was the one who actually rescued all the people from the boat.”

“My team provided the cuff necessary to complete the task,” The Warrior volleyed. “Your girl would have failed without us.”

“Uh, without us,” Mateo jumped in.

The Cleanser and the Warrior looked at him like he was even more of an idiot than he was.

Mateo held firm. “More specifically, without Leona.”

“Just so I can understand this,” Leona began, “are you two fighting over who manages to save the most people?”

Zeferino laughed. “Yeah, let’s go with that.”

“Ha, yeah,” Anatol agreed.

“Anyway, we agreed no mixing,” Zeferino said. “We’re supposed to be operating within different timelines.”

Anatol shrugged. “I’m still getting a handle on my new powers. I honestly didn’t realize this wasn’t a different reality. You normally do that for us.”

Zeferino seemed content with this response. “Then we’ll call it a draw, and move on to the next one.”

“Okay, but I don’t like your chances with this one,” Anatol said. “She seems...green.”

“I am green,” the young woman agreed.

“Well...” Zeferino began.

“You wanna split the teams again,” Anatol figured.

“I’ve already worked with some of these people,” Zeferino said. “It could be fun.”

“So, what? Three against three?”

“There are seven of them.”

Anatol shrugged again. “I don’t really know why this Olimpia person is here, or what she contributes.”

Olimpia didn’t seem bothered by this remark, and no one wanted to come to her defense, because all it would do was lead her to being just as much of a pawn in their chess game as the rest of them.

Leona cleared her throat pointedly. “There aren’t seven of us, there are six.” There had been this unspoken agreement that everyone would pretty much stay quiet while the gods fought with each other, but Leona hated bad math, and she couldn’t let it go.

Anatol looked around. “Wait, where is Dalton?”

“I didn’t use him for this one,” Zeferino explained. “These two haven’t met yet.”

“What are we doing with the numbers?” Anatol questioned. “Are you bringing him on, or what?”

“Let’s do boy versus girls,” Zeferino suggested. “I have a fourth man to bring on who could be on your team, and that will make them even.”

“Hold on,” Anatol said. “I have to take the guys? They’re all morons.”

“D.B. isn’t that dumb, Anatol.”

“You have Leona and Angela. That’s crazy.”

“You have the primary cuff,” Zeferino returned.

“Well, it doesn’t work without it, does it?”

“You do have two to spare, according to my maths.” Zeferino looked directly at Leona.

“I do. But you still have the dream team,” Anatol reasoned.

“I’ll tell you what, your team can have any powers you want them to have. My team can have none.”

They both thought over the proposal, to make sure there weren’t any issues on either side.

“Deal,” Anatol said.

“Deal,” Zeferino echoed.

They both looked over at the group. No one was preparing to argue or complain. Mateo was smiling.

“What are you thinking?” Anatol asked. “You believe this will give you some kind of advantage?”

Mateo’s smile widened. “Not as of yet, but it will present itself. That’s a major lesson that I don’t think I realized I learned until now. You see, you are so powerful that you can think ten steps ahead. But you always miss one thing.” He used hand gestures for emphasis.

“What’s that?” Zeferino asked.

“You always miss at least one forking path. We’ll play your game. We’ll let you break us up, and compete against each other across two timelines. While we’re doing that...we’ll wait. Despite your immortality, you both possess an obscene amount of impatience, and regularly demonstrate a high capacity for boredom. I give this...nine missions before it all falls apart.”

Zeferino and Anatol smirked, and simultaneously said, “deal.”

Leona, Angela, Olimpia, and newcomer Siria went their own way with the Cleanser. Mateo and Jeremy, meanwhile, went off with the Warrior to meet back up with Dalton, as well as meet some guy named D.B. Mateo was surprised to find out that they were talking about the D.B. Cooper; famed plane hijacker and folk hero. He reportedly made off with $200,000 in 1971, though according to Anatol’s introduction, this was just a ploy to get himself to altitude. His time traveling ability only worked when he was falling from a great height, and he was actually just trying to get home. The Cleanser apparently screwed with his attempt, and forced him so far in the past that this goal would be impossible. He recently spent some time working with Mateo’s once-mother, Laura Gardner, and her partner, Samwise Bellamy. Even though he was still centuries in the past, being in 1608 was sort of a break from that harsh life. There was a reason that most travelers didn’t spend too much time before the 20th century. Toilet paper was a pretty big factor.

“All right,” Anatol began. They were in some kind of salon, or meeting room for rich people, who didn’t want to spend too much time with the less fortunate. Everything was made of leather, or wood. “Now that everyone knows each other, it’s time to begin. Today is May 31, 1608. You are in Timeline One. The ladies are in Timeline Alpha. Most of the time, these timelines won’t be running concurrently, but access to The Parallel has given me the ability to keep one from collapsing under the weight of the other. For now. You’re in a competition. Not only do you have to complete the missions we set before you, but you have to do them better than the other team. Whichever team ends up with the best timeline will get to live on in their timeline. The losing team, on the other hand, will remain in the defunct timeline until such time that it finally does collapse.”

“Wait, what?” Jeremy questioned. “You didn’t say anything about that before.

“Oh, it didn’t need to be said,” Anatol joked. “Zef and I knew that was part of the deal all along. Don’t worry, we’ll be all right. Only the four regular people on the team will die. He and I will get out and survive no matter what.”

“Yeah, we were worried about that,” Mateo said sarcastically. “I guess it’s okay now that we know you two will live.”

“Quite.” Anatol was just going to pretend they were all being genuine. He handed Jeremy a slip of paper. “This first one is pretty straight-forward, just to dip your toes in. They’ll get more complicated as you level up. That is the address of a young boy. Rescue him from his abusive uncle, who ultimately accidentally kills him today. I’m not even gonna give you access to my time power library, because I don’t think you’ll need it. In fact, I’ll be suppressing both Dalton and D.B.’s powers, in case you get any ideas about escape.”

“Thank you,” Mateo said. “You can go now.”

“Very well.” Anatol disappeared.

The four of them looked around at each other. Then they all sat down. “Obviously we can’t do this,” Jeremy decided.

“No, we can’t let them die,” Mateo concurred.

“I don’t understand how this works,” Dalton noted. “When it kills us, will we go to the afterlife simulation?”

“I don’t think so,” Mateo guessed. “The simulation is in whatever timeline wins out over the others. That is, it’s not like it exists outside of time. Every version of it that exists in a collapsing timeline should collapse along with it. Otherwise, everyone would have infinite alternate versions of themselves in there, and I don’t think that’s how it works. We won’t even really die, it will be more like we never existed.”

D.B. nodded understandingly. “What is the afterlife simulation?”

They explained it to him.

“So, if we don’t save the boy,” D.B. said afterwards, “we just have to hope your friends on the other team do? Our version of the boy will be erased from history regardless, but one of them will live on?”

“That’s the way I understand it,” Mateo said.

“I feel a little weird letting him die even though it won’t matter,” D.B. lamented with airquotes.

Mateo nodded. “He said you’re a time traveler. You’re not a time looper, though, right? You create an alternate reality every time.”

“Yes, I see where you’re going with this. I’ve killed an infinite number of people already. I suppose it’s just that I’ve never been asked to save a particular person. My God...” He reached over, and took the paper from Jeremy. “We know his name.”

“The answer is..don’t think about it,” Mateo instructed. “He will be saved. There’s no way Leona doesn’t figure out how to do it in the best way possible.”

Meanwhile, in Timeline Alpha, the girls were sitting around in their own salon, but it looked more island tropical than stuffy cigar club. They were getting to know their new member. Siria was like Angela in that she didn’t have powers, but she knew about it all. She worked at a special place that was simply called The Time Clinic. People with time illnesses were sent there to be treated, or just made comfortable. Her job was primarily that second part, as she didn’t have any medical training, but she also seemed to have a knack for coming up with permanent solutions that helped the patients lead semi-normal lives. Many of the illnesses were the result of the Cleanser’s petty retaliations, which was how she ended up on his shitlist.

They too had decided that they couldn’t let their friends die in the other timeline just to save themselves. Unlike them, though, they realized that the guys would come to the same conclusion, and that the boy would not be saved in any timeline. They sat there for about an hour before someone knocked on the door. When Leona opened it, she didn’t find a person, but there was a movie theatre on the other side. That was about three hundred years too early, so they all walked through, and took their seats. The guys came in from the other entrance shortly thereafter, and found their own seats.

“Did you win?” Mateo asked his wife.

“I didn’t play.”

“Me neither. I was hoping you would. Were you hoping we would?”

Leona shook her head. “No.” She didn’t elaborate.

The house lights dimmed, and the curtains moved. An image came on screen. It turned out to be a trailer for a movie that featured most of the people that were in the auditorium right now. It was about a team of time travelers who very specifically found themselves on a planet a hundred and eight light years from Earth. They had a ship that could only take them a light year at a time, so they had to have adventures with crazy alien cultures in the meantime. It sounded more like a TV show, but either way, the audience couldn’t tell if this was prescience, or a joke. Once it was over, the feature presentation began, but it was shorter than the trailer they just watched. A drunk man was beating a young boy in his room, and ended up taking it too far with a lamp. This was the boy they were meant to save, but didn’t. These were the consequences.

The house lights came back up, and Anatol and Zeferino climbed on stage. “As part of this sneak preview,” the former began, “my co-director and I are hosting a Q and A session. Ask us any questions about...oh, I dunno, why the hell you should agree to participate, and what’s going to happen if you don’t, and...how many innocent people are gonna die?”

They waited. “No?” Zeferino asked. “No one wants to know those things?”

Leona stood up. “I don’t know what you thought you would accomplish by forcing us to become complicit in each other’s deaths, but good people don’t do that. We don’t choose to save ourselves. And if you can’t understand that, you shouldn’t be in charge of an outhouse, let alone all of reality. We’ve all asked you to help us save lives, and in exchange for that, you’re asking for us to kill each other. That’s not a thing, that’s not a thing! You can play it straight, or you can watch us sit here and do nothing. You have the power here, so either do the right thing, or perpetuate this macho psycho-killer bullshit reputation that you’re apparently so afraid to lose, you can’t see that all of your sadistic games are completely goddamn pointless!”

The two of them stood on stage for a moment. Then Anatol reached over, and placed his hand on Zeferino’s shoulder. They disappeared for a second, then returned in different positions. “All right, no games,” Anatol agreed. “One team, one timeline. Save the people we tell you, don’t ask questions, and we’ll let you know what the point of it all is in the end. This is our final offer. Either take it, or we’ll make you wish only half of you had been erased from existence.”

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Extremus: Year 3

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The original idea was to have the captain of the Extremus make the evening announcements every day, as a way for the crew to stay connected to the passengers. After months of this, Halan decided to change this by having a different crew member do it every day. They created a randomized schedule, which wasn’t periodic, but was still designed to be even, so that no one member was doing it too often. The young tech who was first assigned this responsibility was nervous about the prospect. It wasn’t what he signed up for, and it wasn’t in his wheelhouse, so to speak. He didn’t feel the same way forever, though. The more that Eckhart Mercer did the announcements, the more he fell in love with it, and the more the people fell in love with him. He was charismatic, funny, and entertaining. They became a larger affair, about more than just reporting the general status of the ship. People started thinking about what they could do to end up on the speakers, by inventing a new game, or coming up with a fabulous recipe. Eckhart Mercer became a celebrity, and in the end, the general consensus was that they would be better off with him as their permanent announcer. It was more than that, though. He was responsible for keeping up to date on the goingson of the ship, and knowing what news was important. The Captain was happy to adapt the schedule to accommodate this shift in popularity. The rest of the crew seemed fine with it too.

True to his word, Halan left Omega in hock for an entire year. He approved all necessary organic longevity treatments, however, because he kind of had to. Omega is a different subspecies of human; one that was originally designed to last for tens of thousands of years. Ethical conventions are pretty clear that, when in doubt, the standard procedure when dealing with a socially disruptive entity, is to maintain life expectancy. In other words, he deserves to live indefinitely, because anywhere else, he would. And anything short of that is tantamount to capital punishment, which is illegal. There was a debate amongst the executive crew, as well as the security team, whether they ought to place him in stasis. That was, after all, part of the intentions of Omega’s genetic engineer, Saxon. In the end, they determined that this too would be unethical, as Omega deliberately broke free from his nature to lead a different life. The feelings of the individual in question can’t dictate their fate, but they have to be taken into account no matter what. They cannot just be ignored. So he has remained in there with all the luxury of a normal cabin, but none of the luxuries of public spaces. He can’t even hear the announcements from down there.

Airlock Karen continues to be a headache for everyone. They manage to avoid tearing down a wall for her sake, and eventually get her out of there completely. She was more than willing to relocate back to her cabin once Halan gave up, and threatened to throw her in the hock too. Now that she’s in the general population, it’s become clear just how delusional she is. She is completely convinced that the crew is out to get her, and the passengers are generally on her side. The reality is that no one likes her, and they always try to stay away from her. She’ll latch onto a large group when it forms, and outwardly fantasize about being the center of it. People ignore her as best they can, but she is obviously getting on their nerves, and Halan knows he has to be rid of her soon.

“It’s ready,” Old Man says, “but like I’ve been saying, “there is no way to test this. Even if we give it to your two...victims...?”

“Let’s just call them Gatewood-bounders,” Halan corrects.

“Very well.” Old Man goes on, “even if we give it to your two Gatewood-bounders, and they press the button, we’ll have no way of knowing whether it worked.”

“We’re operating at maximum reframe, which means it’s near-equivalent to realtime. I can send a message back to Gatewood to see if it worked,” Halan points out.

“True. In fact, you could send that message right now, because if it will work, they’ve already been there for three years.”

“Let’s not screw with causality just yet. You’re sure you’ve done everything you can to adapt it, right? Pushing that button will send them, and only them, back to 2170?”

“Again, not sure, but there’s no point in me trying to improve it. It either works, or it doesn’t.”

“Give it to me. I need to discuss it with them.”

“You’re going to ask them for permission?”

“No, but I don’t want to just spring it on them last minute, or worse, not tell them anything at all. They have a right to prepare themselves emotionally. Karen has been begging us to send her back this whole time, but she doesn’t know about the button. It’s entirely possible she just wants to be difficult. When I show her that there’s hope for her actually getting what she wants, she may realize she doesn’t really want that. The more I pass by that service airlock, the harder it is for me to believe she went in there for any reason but to draw attention to herself.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying.” It’s Rita, having come into the lab at some point.

“Good, you’re here. Please have security escort her to the lower deck. Quietly,” Halan requests.

“She’ll be suspicious,” Rita volleys. “We don’t want her causing a scene.”

“Good point. I’ll...invite her to dinner,” Halan decides. “You can take the device down to the interrogation room. Have Omega sent there too, of course.”

“Uh, I think I would feel more comfortable if the Captain handled this by himself.” Old Man lifts the device with two hands, and tries to hand it to Halan.

“Why are you wearing gloves?” he questions.

“Scientists wear gloves,” Old Man replies with a casual shrug.

“So Rita doesn’t need to wear gloves herself?” Halan tries to confirm.

“I really would rather you take it instead. It’s very delicate, and we only have one.” Old Man is insistent.

“Take off your gloves, Old Man,” Halan orders.

“Sir, it’s just...”

“Take off your goddamn gloves,” Halan repeats.

Old Man sighs. He sets the device down, removes his gloves, then picks it back up. He again tries to hand it to Halan.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Halan says to Rita.

“My pleasure, sir,” Rita replies. She’s confused too, but everything has worked out. She takes the device, and heads down to the lower deck.

Halan, meanwhile, goes up to the passenger section, where Airlock Karen is trying to yet again regale her tale of woe to the random people who have accidentally found themselves within her blast radius. He’s going to need to be as charming as possible. “Would you please join me for dinner tonight, Madam.”

The crowd is noticeably uncomfortable, but Airlock Karen is ecstatic. She tries to hide it. “How can I deny my Captain? I will be there in two hours.”

Halan clears his throat suggestively, and makes his eyes wander, almost like he’s looking for someone else to invite instead.

“I suppose I could eat a tad bit early,” she says. “Give me ten minutes to freshen up?”

“Certainly,” Halan says. He points to the nearest security officer. “She’ll escort you when you’re ready.” He turns to leave.

“Thank you,” Airlock Karen says. “I have some great ideas about how to run this place that I think you’ll really respond to.”

He doesn’t turn back, but he retches a little in his mouth. “I’m always happy to listen to my passengers.” He walks away, and heads for the interrogation room. The security guard knows what they’re doing, and what to do with Airlock Karen, even though he didn’t specifically assign her this task.

It was always bound to take longer than ten minutes for her to show up, so the three of them sit in awkward silence while they wait.

“So, how about that local sports team, eh?” Omega asks, evidently trying to break the ice.

“The what?” Halan doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“It’s an Earthan thing that people say.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“You finally figured it out, didn’t you?” Omega guesses.

“Pardon?”

“You figured out how to send me back.”

How does he know about that? “Who’s been feeding you information?”

“No one,” Omega replies, seemingly honestly. “You run a tight ship. I figured out what you were doing, because I’m a genius.”

“I never wanted you here, and neither do you,” Halan reminds him.

“I dunno,” Omega says, looking around. “It’s nice being outside the hock. Maybe I could be useful. I’m not the same man who went in there a year ago. I promise to be better. You have to understand that I grew up in a sea of other versions of me. We were expendable. Many of us died, I don’t think you wanna hear the statistics. I had no control over my life until I took it. I suppose it’s just been hard for me to take orders since then...it’s never done me any good before.”

Halan leans over the table. “If you can follow orders now, then follow this one. Go back to Gatewood. If I only send the one person back, it will look personal. It will look like I attacked her. If you go with her, I think it will smooth over any disagreements that might arise when this gets out.”

Omega smiles. “Yes, sir.” If he’s trying to find an angle, Halan can’t tell what it is.

Rita shows up with Airlock Karen, who doesn’t understand what’s happening, but she’s become suspicious. Dinner should not be all the way down here by the hock, she presumes. This doesn’t make any sense. “Why don’t you have a seat?” Rita offers.

“I’m not sitting next to him,” Airlock Karen declares. “What is this?”

“I’ll explain, but if you don’t sit down right now,” Halan begins to warn, “you’re going into the cell with him.”

She sits down right quick.

“Now,” Halan starts his speech. “Neither of you want to be here.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Omega interrupts.

“I’ve not,” Halan says. “I still don’t want you here...either of you.” He nods to Rita, who removes the device from her bag, and sets in on the table in front of him. “This will send you back to Gatewood at the exact moment that we left. You will watch from the observation deck with all the others who chose to leave. You don’t have to push it right now. I’ll give you a day to prepare yourselves.”

“Why didn’t you give me this before?” Airlock Karen scolds.

“It hadn’t been invented yet,” Halan answers. She doesn’t need to know the whole history about it being adapted from the undo button. “I don’t need Omega off my ship as much as I need you gone. With him, we would have figured something out, he’s at least useful. I had my best engineer working on the problem...for you. So instead of being nasty, for once in your life, could you just be grateful that anyone worked as hard as we have to get you what you asked for. Keep in mind that, in this case, just shutting the hell up is a good way to show that you’re grateful.”

She clears her throat submissively.

Halan goes on, “all you have to do is pull the string, and press the button. You’ll be doing it together, though, as we only get one shot at this. Like I said, you’ll have a day. We’ll retrieve you tomorrow for departure. Omega, you’ll be released until then.”

Just then, they hear banging on the door behind them. They look back to see Old Man through the window, desperately trying to get into the locked room. “I couldn’t wash my hands! It’s not good enough! Don’t push the button!” it sounds like he shouts through the door, but it’s a little muffled.

“What is he talking about?” Halan questions.

“I have no idea,” Rita notes.

“Don’t push the button!” Old Man repeats.

“Screw that,” Airlock Karen decides. She stands up, grabs the device from the table, and takes several steps back.

“Wait,” Halan tries to reason with her. “I think something’s wrong.”

“I don’t care!” Airlock Karen screams. She pulls on the string. “I’m getting the hell out of here!” She presses the button, and promptly disappears.

So does Old Man.

So does Rita.

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 1680: Those Who Stayed Awake

< > Table of Contents

While the majority of the population was uploading themselves into virtual reality constructs—powered by the abundant solar energy on the day side of their tidally-locked planet, and cooled by the night side—a few were choosing to go a different route. They had no problem with transferring their consciousnesses to other substrates, but they didn’t want to live in fantasy worlds where the laws of physics could be manipulated. They wanted to remain in base reality, and enjoy life here. Many moved themselves over to android bodies, while others stayed more or less organic. They built gargantuan cylinder ships, each with its own unique design. These were massive pieces of art that could orbit a celestial body, or propel themselves through interstellar space. The proper physics in this universe did not allow for any form of faster-than-light travel, so the ships traveled at sublight speeds. They went to worlds that their probes indicated were interesting, but since most of them were just as immortal as the brethren they left behind in the virtual constructs, they weren’t in too much of a hurry. This was just how they lived, and they were able to continue on like this for a very long time before changing their minds. Even though they were the people who wanted to explore the universe, they still didn’t feel any desire to consume more than was necessary to live safely and happily. They didn’t settle on any new worlds, because they wouldn’t get anything out of that. They just visited them, and enjoyed them, and lamented that they were apparently the only evolved species for at least the next several million light years. Once they confirmed that they were well and truly alone, they just let the probes continue to support the evidence, and then they followed their ancestors into VR.

Throughout all of this, it wasn’t like the base reality people had completely broken off from the VR people. They were still a single united civilization. Not only did they stay in contact with each other, but the people on the ships regularly entered the constructs remotely, and interacted with their friends and neighbors. Some even did land on lifeless celestials, and set up their own servers. Thanks to quantum communication, the virtual universe was as connected as the real one. Or rather, more so, because faster-than-light travel was possible within the bounds of the simulations. Over time, more and more people who had either originally chosen to board the exploration ships, or were descended from those, ended up living in the simulation permanently. Tens of millions of years later, they realized that no one was left in the real world anymore, except for the robots they needed to maintain the system’s hardware. They were spread out, but back together. As it turned out, without any alien species to develop diplomatic relations with—or, hell, even not-so-diplomatic relationships—the universe just wasn’t all that fun. They kept the real cosmic structure as the foundation, however. When someone jumped from one world to the next, it would either look exactly as it did for real, or was modified in a semi-realistic way. That is, they didn’t build new planets to their specifications. They found something close to what they were looking for, and altered it in the same way they would if they were still out there. They didn’t have to stick to the limitations of the physical laws completely, but they didn’t go too crazy most of the time. They reserved such things for the primary servers that were still operating on their homeworld. This lasted for trillions upon trillions of years, and then beyond.