Extremus: Year 14

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If they wanted to avoid a paradox, Omega and Valencia knew that they couldn’t just fly Old Man’s time machine back to Old Man’s time period, and find out what happened to him. They didn’t want to use any ship resources either. Those materials are cataloged in detail, and recorded carefully as they’re used. So they chose to dismantle the shuttle, and build a new one, of a different design. It would still be capable of everything the original was, but be programmed differently enough to prevent anyone from seeing a resemblance, should it ever come to that. It was a long process, but necessary, and almost finished. They didn’t melt any of the metal down, but they reworked it well enough. If they had, they never would have noticed something very small in a hidden compartment. No, it wasn’t even a compartment, but a ventilation pipe that would only find its use when the ship was within a breathable atmosphere.

“What is this?” Omega asks. “It looks important.” It looks like an ink pen, but the slight vibration coming from it suggests that it’s a powered device, probably from a fusion nanoreactor. It’s also somewhat cold; cooler than room temperature anyway. Lastly, taped to it is a note reading PROOF.

Valencia examines it. “Looks like more writing right there, but it’s too small. Can you zoom in?”

“You can’t?” Omega jokes. He takes it back, knowing she doesn’t have the technological upgrades that he does. He zooms into the text. “Model number Zealotry-Castaway-Plaintiff-00256.”

Valencia input the number into the database to see if they would get a hit. “It’s a prezygotic cryopen.”

“I’m not sure what that means.”

“Well, there are a number of ways to make a long journey to a distant world. You can be generational, like Extremus. You can be ageless, like the two of us. Or you can store people. That usually means stasis, but it can also mean early developmental cryopreservation.”

“That I am familiar with,” Omega says. He was originally cloned from Saxon Parker in order to stay posted on a modular transgalactic ship for Project Stargate, which would install an outpost in every star system in the galaxy. A secret secondary mission called Operation Starseed was created in order to create life on some of the planets. Omega’s mandate was to maintain one of these modules, making sure the power sources stayed in working order, and the seed plates were not damaged.

“No, yours were different. Yours contained genetic material, which could be configured to generate new life. This pen contains one egg, and one sperm sample. When thawed and activated, they should combine, and begin forming an embryo. As far as I am aware, we only keep fully fertilized embryos in the Bridger Section as a backup plan in case the rest of the ship fails the mission. I’m not sure where this pen came from, but Old Man probably didn’t create it himself. This model number places the patent in the year 2266. It probably came from here. We definitely need to talk to the Captain.”

After bringing this to Halan’s attention, the three of them head for the executive infirmary, where Dr. Holmes is sitting at her desk.

“Ima, what can you tell us about this?” Halan asks her.

She takes the cryopen, and looks over the information that Valencia has pulled from it already. She checks her own computer as well. “It’s one of ours. Why did you take it out?”

“How do you know it’s ours?” Halan asks.

“The serial number found a match. It’s in the Bridger Section with the others.”

“I thought we only had embryos down there,” Valencia repeats herself from earlier.

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” Dr. Holmes puns. “We don’t even have only one Bridger Section. We use cleaved embryos, zygotes, prezygotes, eggs, sperm, blood samples, and digital DNA. That’s in addition to our stasis volunteers, the Bridgers themselves, the generational passengers, and even non-breeders, like me.” She doesn’t mention this, but there’s also a probe, which houses a repository of knowledge from both vonearthan and Ansutahan legacies, should all life ultimately be extinguished, so maybe aliens a million years from now can learn about who they were.

“So Old Man took this from wherever it belongs,” Halan begins, “and takes it with him to the recall button destination.”

“I don’t think so,” Omega reasons. “He didn’t wanna go, remember? He probably spent all the time he could trying to figure out how to stop it from spiriting him away, and the rest of the short time available packing survival equipment.”

“Plus, that pen had the word proof taped to it,” Valencia adds. “Someone else took it, and Old Man was bringing it back to prove to us what they did.”

“Bronach Oaksent,” Halan realizes. “He’s the one responsible for the shadow group in our midst. We were operating on the assumption that he was working with Old Man, but maybe that’s not true. This evidence would seem to suggest that they were at odds. He was trying to get back to Extremus so he could show us what Oaksent had done.”

“What does he want, this Oaksent guy?” Dr. Holmes questions.

“An army,” Valencia guesses. She picks the cryopen back up. “If I’m right, this is not the only one missing. He probably took many more, and Old Man could only get one back, or only thought he would need the one. The people Oaksent has on this ship are probably only a fraction of the people at his disposal. With enough time, he could foster an entire race of followers to worship him. We know Old Man built a time machine, and installed it on the Elder Shuttle, but who’s to say that’s the only one.” She waves the pen around like an amateur orchestra conductor. “Get one hundred and forty-seven of these, and you have enough to support your plans for galactic domination. The entire Milky Way could be populated with his people, and we just haven’t met them yet, because they’re from the future, so they know where to hide.”

“This is all speculation,” Halan wants to make sure they know. “We don’t know if Oaksent took the pen, or how many.”

“There’s a way to find out,” Omega interrupts.

“I’m not letting you into the Bridger section,” Halan says. “Assuming he did take the pens, and any other samples, we don’t know what he did with them, or how much time he’s had to do it.”

“Which is why we need more information,” Omega says. “Now it’s more important than ever for Valencia and me to go on our mission.”

Halan was never really all that excited about them doing that. He stands there for a moment, hoping to come to some kind of epiphany. There must be a better way to get the information they need. Or maybe there’s not, because he can’t think of one. “Is the time shuttle ready?”

“That depends,” Valencia says. “Can we survive in it, and go back in time? Do we have enough power to pull that off? Absolutely. The cloak isn’t ready, though.”

“The what?”

“Invisibility cloak,” Omega continues. “It will never be ready. It’s impossible.”

“We’ve seen it done,” Valencia argues. “Historical records show...”

Omega dismissed her future words. “They show that individuals can render themselves invisible by manipulating spacetime, which superimposes everything in the background into the foreground. That does not help us against advanced sensors, which Old Man and Oaksent would definitely have.”

“I can make it work,” Valencia contends. “I just need time to find a way to fool the sensors too, by warping their signals around the shuttle.”

“You don’t think someone on The Shortlist would have figured that out by the time we departed?” The Shortlist is a special council of people who have proven themselves capable of inventing extremely advanced time technology. Whenever someone reaches a certain level of understanding of temporal physics, they’re recruited into the council, so they can join in all decisions about what they’re going to do with said technology. The internal systems of the Extremus are powered by fusion reactors, and propulsion is powered by a matter-antimatter reaction. Both of these are Earthan inventions, and the design of the ship itself is Ansutahan, but just about everything else they use here was sourced from someone on the Shortlist. The reframe engine, anti-gravity, local teleportation, even the life support system, are all major examples.

Valencia shakes her head. “No one has ever tried to work on that, because Earth doesn’t have any space enemies!”

“It’s not just for enemies. Such a cloak would allow time travelers to move about freely without fear of being caught, and disrupting the spacetime continuum. Where have I heard of that before? Oh, that’s right, that’s what we’re trying to do! You think we’re the first people who want to go back in time without anyone being able to see us?”

She’s still shaking her head. “With a shuttle like the one we have, against people who are paranoid about something like that happening? Maybe we are the first.”

“It can’t be done,” Omega insists. “There is no stealth in space. There never has been, and there never will be. Everything gives off heat, and you have to do something with that heat.”

“Why don’t you just shunt it to another dimension?” Dr. Holmes offers.

“That’s what I said,” Valencia agrees.

“Okay,” Omega begins to admit. “I’ll concede that that is a viable option for regular time travelers. But like I said, Old Man knows about parallel dimensions. We can’t be sure he hasn’t built them a dimensional energy detector. It’s not that hard. I saw whispers of the idea in his notes. At least that’s the conclusion I came to when I translated certain parts of his notes.”

“If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work,” Valencia says. “We’re better off trying.”

Now Omega shakes his head. “An invisibility cloak detector would sense our proximity if it’s on, even if we’re also hiding behind an asteroid. It’s much safer to assume they can see us, and use traditional methods of avoiding detection.”

“Wait,” Captain Yenant finally interjects. “I just realized something.”

“What?”

“The shuttle is a time machine, right?” Halan states the obvious.

Omega squints, suspicious of him. “Where are you going with this?”

“If you left in a year, you could still go back to 2272, and the power requirements will increase negligibly, correct?”

“Of course,” Omega says, “but the longer we wait to embark on the mission, the probability that something will interfere with our ability to finally get around to it goes up. You might decide to wait until next week to buy yourself a bike helmet, knowing that the cycling store will still exist when the day comes, but what if you get hit by a bus the next day? You will wish you had gone to the store today.”

“I’m willing to risk it,” Halan determines. “Keep working on the space cloak. You have one year. If you haven’t succeeded by then, you’ll do without it. I don’t want to take away your chance of keeping this a secret.” He turns away.

“This is a mistake,” Omega complains.

“Then we’ll go back in time and undo it,” he sort of jokes.

“Where are you going?” Omega asks.

“To the Bridger section. I’m going to count the cryopens myself.”

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Microstory 1735: Foals

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There once was a man named Albany Foals, who came from a distant land in search of someone to love. He was a charming and nice man, who everyone liked to be around. Women from his country would come to him every day, hoping to give him their hand in marriage. People loving him was not the problem. He didn’t love them back, and he was beginning to believe he was never going to. After exhausting the list of potential soulmates, he decided to leave, hoping to find someone worthy of his affection elsewhere. He traveled many miles, across rivers, around mountains, and through prairies. The more he walked, the happier he became, but it wasn’t the walking; it was the distance. He was farther from people he had ever been before, and this was providing him with relief. Excited at the prospect of living like this forever, Albany settled down in a field, and began to build a magnificent shelter to call his own. He would live off the land from now on, and not worry about finding someone to love. Before he was finished, though, he grew lonely. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps he really did need to find someone to love, and his contentment at being alone was more about being away from the people he had grown to despise. Still, he couldn’t be sure, so he finished the shelter, and lived there for a short while. Once the loneliness overwhelmed him, he walked away, leaving behind a note for any other travelers that the house was free for their use. He continued in the same direction as before, eventually ending up in a new country. They welcomed him warmly, and he started to regain his confidence. This might actually work out. Surely there was someone here who could make him feel as joyful as he saw others who had found their own husbands and wives.

Unfortunately, Albany experienced the same thing in this country as he had in his own. No one was evil, nor repulsive, nor even all that incompatible. There was just no spark. His heart didn’t beat faster upon approach. He did not dream about spending the rest of their lives together. Many women would have been a fine choice, but none of them would have been perfect, and this saddened him greatly. Disappointed in his perceived failure, he turned around, and set out on the path towards the house he had built for himself. Hopefully no one would have taken it by now. It had been years, but it was remote, and moderately hard to find, so he could get lucky. As he walked, however, he started to get an idea. Wouldn’t it be great if someone did turn out to have taken the house, and that she was his one true love? Maybe that was the story here. Maybe he was destined to go through all this turmoil so he could find what he was looking for only after giving up on it. She would be kind and quiet. She would be able to take care of herself, but like to be doted upon anyway. Ah, no, this wouldn’t happen. Marauders took his house, and picked it clean. Vandals dirtied the walls, and ripped up the floorboards. This was not a love story, he figured. He wasn’t that lucky. He arrived to find someone was indeed living in the house, and it wasn’t who he expected. It wasn’t a human at all, but a horse. He was short and young, with thin legs, and fearful eyes. He didn’t run from Albany, but he was clearly apprehensive and concerned. Albany named his new little horse Griseo, and began to take care of him. They lived together in that house, never bothering to interact with any other humans again. Albany did find love. It wasn’t the kind he was looking for. But it was exactly the kind he needed.

Microstory 1734: Draco Total

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Ladies and gentleman, let me introduce to you the new Draco Total Surveillance Security System. Using the latest in artificial intelligence video analysis, and the best cameras this side of the central black hole of this galaxy, we have been able to create a tool that will help businesses keep track of everything that happens in their buildings. This is not just for nefarious agents, you see? It’s for everything. Let’s say you’re trying to figure out if your employees are slacking on the job. Now, you could send the managers to their workstations to check on them. But everyone knows how to quickly switch windows. You won’t catch anyone on social media, because they’ll smell you comin’ from a mile away. In recent years, it’s become trendy to use webcams, keystroke loggers, and remote mirroring to see exactly what they’re up to. But we have found that such intrusive prying actually lowers productivity, because workers get freaked out about the technology, and they start to protest, even if only in small ways. We’ve actually witnessed companies lose great talent, because they quit to look for an employer that doesn’t incidentally capture their personal email passwords. Besides, that’s not really what you’re worried about, are you? You don’t care that someone who works for you occasionally switches over to see what’s in the blogosphere, or watch a quick funny video that a coworker just sent them. You wanna make sure they’re not wandering the halls, or talkin’ trash about their supervisor by the watercooler. Can regular cameras take care of all of this for you? Well, sure, they’ve been doing it for years. But can they do it better than Draco? Absolutely not. We’re more than just cameras. We’re an experience. We can put you right in the middle of the action, and no one will even know that you’re there.

With the new DTSS system, you can immerse yourself in the footage with a 360° field of view. By combining the realtime feed from every camera in operation, plus detailed schematics of the building, our system will generate a perfect three-dimensional model. You will be able to step through a virtual recreation of any area that you have placed under surveillance. Install enough cameras—cover all potential blindspots—and you’ll feel like a ghost, walking through the hallways and rooms unseen...and unheard. The AI will even automatically update periodically with new information, such as a worker turning their desk to face a window, or a new potted plant in the corner by the bathrooms. After the camera network is set up, and connected to the central server, simply place goggles such as these on your face, and enter a secret dimension. From here, you can use the controllers to move your avatar around (or an omnidirectional haptic treadmill, if you sprang for it). You can view from a first person perspective, like this, or second person, where it’s more like you’re a butterfly on the ceiling, watching the goingson below. Third person, which I like to call God Mode lets you do so much more. You’ll fly all over the building quicker, passing through walls and floors with ease. You can delete impediments, like those walls and floors, to get a clearer picture of everything happening all at once. Watch what happens when I zoom all the way out. See? It’s like a cross-section of the whole building. This is in realtime, people. This is what’s happening at our HQ during this presentation. We’re still working out the price, but we expect to be ready for public use by the fourth quarter of next year. Thank you, and I know you’re all really excited, so I’ll open the floor for any questions, comments, or concerns.

Microstory 1733: The ESS Dorado

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When the first of the asteroid miners went up into space, they were looking to make some money. There were tons of resources up there that they hoped would make them rich. It was probably about to, but it wasn’t long before the economy shifted, and no more value was placed in things that once meant everything. Yes, the metals and minerals they mined and processed from the asteroids were still incredibly important for the future of the human race, but everything they could exchange them for was now readily available, and distributed freely. That material was now only useful for making spaceships, and other vacuum structures. Trying to take it all the way down into Earth’s gravity well was a waste of time and energy. Still, their lives weren’t purposeless. Someone would have to build those ships, so it might as well be them. They still weren’t making any money, because it didn’t exist anymore, but people were grateful for their efforts, and the species was quickly becoming a multiplanetary culture. They kept working, kept looking for more, and were surprised about how much gold there was up there. Back in the ancient days, gold was the standard for monetary value. Everything was based upon its worth according to scarcity, measure of work needed to refine the raw material, and an arbitrary love of all that was shiny. Even after gold stopped being the official standard, people placed value on it simply because of how pretty it looked. To this day, it’s used in a number of technological instruments, but in relatively small amounts. As it turns out, the solar system is chock full of the stuff. Scarcity was a component of man’s inability to reach beyond the atmosphere at the time, and that is no longer the case. Still, what are they going to do with all this gold? Sure, some of it can go to those devices, but there will be a lot left over. This gave one of them a crazy idea.

They decided to build a ship. This ship would be composed almost entirely of gold. Propulsion, of course, and wiring systems, required specific materials in order to function, but the basic idea was that if it could exist in gold form, it was to be manufactured out of pure gold. It was the dumbest thing that anyone on Earth had ever heard of, but they too realized they had plenty of gold to satisfy their needs, and they recognized that the asteroid miners earned rightful control over everything they found that wasn’t claimed by someone else. It took them years to gather all the gold they would need, and refine it, but they were essentially immortal now, and most of the business was automated, so what did they care? It wasn’t until they were just about finished when they noticed that no one had thought about what they were going to actually do with the darn thing. Even with their indefinite lifespans, it wasn’t a good way to get to other planets in the solar system, or to other stars. It was more a piece of art; a think piece, a proof of concept...a proof of strength. They didn’t know if there were any aliens flying around out there, but they figured that their big gold ship would be a pretty good message to send anyone looking to see if the Earthans were weak enough to attack. If humans were advanced enough—and bored enough—to construct a literal golden ship, they were probably nothing anyone should want to trifle with. So they placed it in a permanent stable orbit around Earth, and named it The ESS Dorado. People came to visit occasionally, but it was mostly there to be marveled and appreciated from a distance. Aliens never came, and eventually they let it burn up in the atmosphere.

Microstory 1732: Delphinus

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I am not against science, though my detractors would certainly hope you believe that about me. I believe in medicine, vaccinations, surgical intervention. I even believe in a woman’s right to choose. But I’m not going to let researchers move forward with whatever technologies they dream up without any consideration of the ethical ramifications. A few years ago, a new startup was formed in the valley with one goal. They wanted to create an artificial womb system capable of not only supporting a transplanted fetus, but of fostering life from the very beginning. This would remove the need for a mother and a father. There are some great things about this. Same-sex couples would be able to have their own children, which I’m also not against—I’m not a conservative nutjob who doesn’t believe in the future. I’m an ethicist who focuses on precaution, and isn’t interested in developing everything scientifically possible in the name of supposed progress. It seemed pretty simple to me at first. God, evolution; whatever you wanna call it, decided that we would produce offspring a certain way. A biological male and female come together to conceive the child, and then that child gestates in an organic womb, inside of a human being, who is charged with protecting this new life. I’m all right with surrogate pregnancies. I’m even fine with the concept of an artificial womb. But I can also see how dangerous the technology is, and how many problems it can cause down the road. I have been fighting hard to prevent it from becoming legal, and letting Delphinus Obstetric Advancements win, but a friend recently pointed out an undeniable implication. Even though I am pro-choice, I don’t want anyone to have an abortion. Before focusing on this issue, I regularly went out and informed women about their options. Abortion is not the only way, and we should be working on ways to make it unnecessary. The artificial womb seems to accomplish that.

The problem with abortion is that it’s the destruction of life. However you define when a developing...entity transforms from a group of cells to an actual person is irrelevant. Abortion means death, that’s what it is. If a pregnant person does not want to have their child, that child can be transplanted from the carrier, to an artificial gestation pod. It can then develop in there, and be born in the lab. Of course, this comes with its own ethical problems. What happens to the baby when it’s finally born? Who takes care of it, raises it, teaches it? Who is responsible for finding that person, or those people? The lab? The egg provider? The state? More to the point, who has the right to make such decisions? Furthermore, this complicates the matter of the egg provider’s rights in the first place. Being unable, or unwilling, to raise a child, or even unwilling to birth a child, are not the only reasons to have an abortion. If a state can supersede one’s choice by simply saying “fine, if you don’t want it, we’ll take it, and we’ll do it right now,” then is that really fair to the original carrier? They weren’t necessarily choosing to simply have nothing to do with their offspring. They chose to have an abortion, and an artificial womb is not inherently synonymous with that choice. Ethics is a complicated subject, and I don’t have an answer to any of these questions. But it’s causing me to question my convictions, and stop thinking that I can understand the issues clearly. All I know is that we can’t let the government, or the corporations, take our rights. We must retain our humanity, or all the technology imaginable can’t save us.

Microstory 1731: The Cygness

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We don’t know where it came from, but the disturbing rumor is that someone in our town once lay with a swan. They’re calling it the cygness as a pun. It starts out with a white skin rash. According to reports, scratching it will cause it to grow worse, so family members have bound the arms of their loved ones, hoping to stop the process, but they always fail. It can be slowed, but it can’t be stopped. All succumb to the transformation sooner or later. Once the victim’s skin is completely white, bumps will begin to rise. Out of that, chutes will appear, like seedlings bursting from the ground. These chutes will spread out, and form something that the researchers call powder down. Over time, as this down fills in, the feathers will mature, and eventually become just as beautiful and full as a swan’s real feathers. The victim will not grow wings, nor a beak, nor flat feet, but their shoulders will lock their elbows behind them, limiting movement, their face will blacken, and their toes will become webbed. Lastly, and we still don’t understand how this works—well, we don’t understand any of it, but especially not this—the patient will lose their ability to produce vocal sound. Something about their vocal cords will change, preventing them from not only creating speech, but other sounds as well, like hums or whistles. They’ll still be able to breathe and cough, but that’s just about it. From start to finish, the transformation takes weeks. At times it’s painful, at times it’s uncomfortable. Once it’s complete, however, patients report feeling better than they ever have in their entire lives. Some wish it to never end, but it does. The last stage is death, and it follows the patient’s returned voice. If someone with the cygness begins to talk again, you know that their life is nearly over. I have been fairly lucky thus far, but the condition has recently fallen upon me, so I know that I need to make arrangements.

I experience the same symptoms as anyone else, in the same order, and according to the same timeframe. They place me with all the others who are in the same stage as me, I suppose so we can all die together. As our conditions worsen, I notice something strange about the others. They’re flapping their lips, and moving their laryngeal prominences up and down. It takes a moment for me to realize that they are all trying to speak. Evidently, even though they know that they have become physiologically mute, they cannot help themselves. They don’t even just forget their limitation every once in a while. They appear to be constantly attempting to communicate with each other, hoping that with enough hard work, it will suddenly start working again. I know better. I know that that is not how it works. I sit quietly, and mind my own business. No one else seems to notice that I’m unlike then. I guess I’ve had more practice being quiet, since I wasn’t one to talk much when I was a regular human. One by one, they fall. They make one last call to our people, and then their eyes shut for good. Finally, I’m the only one left. I stay in isolation for a few more weeks, knowing that people are watching me, trying to figure out what makes me different. I can feel that I have my voice back, but I dare not use it, for I remember what happens next. The researchers come in, and demand that I use my voice. They need more data, so they can come up with a treatment, and they don’t care if it kills me. I refuse, but they threaten the lives of my family, so I give in. I speak. Then I sing. And then I survive. I am the human swan.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 5, 2363

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Everything had to happen fast, or the team was going to lose everything. Mateo wasn’t raised to be a fighter. His parents taught him to try to reason with people, and understand where they were coming from. Ever since he became a time traveler, very rarely was he expected to use physical violence to solve his problems. Today was one of those times when it was absolutely necessary. Before this Milford asshole could try to shoot Angela again, Mateo reached back, and took one swing. He clocked him right in the jaw, knocking him out instantly. Angela, meanwhile, gracefully fell to her back as Jeremy collapsed on top of her. She instinctively wrapped her arms around his chest, and applied pressure to the bullet wound. Though Ramses was significantly less hurt, he too required medical attention. Olimpia sat him down to tend to him.

“Do you remember Hammer’s pager number?” Mateo asked his wife.

“I shouldn’t need it. We forget, but Jeremy is salmon. Sarka should come. He has to. I know we were resurrected, but he has to.”

Everyone froze, waiting for a portal to open. They often did that, and were usually met with either disappointment, or relief, depending on what they were expecting. This time, the powers that be actually delivered. A portal did open up, and Dr. Baxter Sarka did appear to them. He too was salmon, which meant he didn’t have very much control over how he ran his practice. The PTB even decided what medical supplies would be available to him for any given case. He never knew what he was going to get until he opened his black bag. “Dammit!” he shouted.

“What the hell is this crap?” Leona questioned as she was examining the contents over his shoulder.

“What year is this?” Sarka asked.

“It’s 2341,” Leona replied.

Dr. Sarka shook his head as he was removing something that kind of looked like pliers from his bag. They may have actually been true pliers. “Nothing is sealed, nothing is sanitary. The nature of my tools is largely determined by the time period in which my patient happens to be at the time. These are not 24th century supplies. Do you have alcohol on this vessel?”

Mateo had already retrieved their own first aid kit, and immediately handed it to him. It wasn’t equipped with surgical instruments, but it did have rubbing alcohol. Sarka got to work, cutting Jeremy’s shirt, wiping the blood away, and disinfecting everything he could.

“It’s 1816,” Leona realized.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Sarka didn’t stop working.

“That man on the floor over there?” Leona tried to begin to figure this out. “He claimed he was trying to send Angela to 1816. He seemed to believe shooting her with his gun would do the trick.”

Mateo had retrieved that too. He knelt down, and presented it to Sarka, just in case he had ever seen anything like it before. It was a gun, absolutely, but it was of an unfamiliar design. It looked like modern tech was attached to an antique artifact. Steampunk was probably the best term for it.

“Never seen it before,” Sarka said. “If it was meant to send him through time, it didn’t do a very good job at it, and this certainly looks like a real bullet wound. As far as I’ve ever seen, transporter weapons begin to dissolve on impact, and only leave superficial wounds. This is a potentially fatal injury.”

“I think it’s working,” Leona continued. “I just think it’s slow. I think he’s supposed to die first, then be transported to the past, and somehow be revived? I don’t know why it would work like that, but it would explain your medical bag.”

“Yes, I would call this early 19th century medicine.”

“Can you fix him?” Angela begged.

“With what they gave me to work with?” Sarka presumed. “It’s a toss-up.” He was nothing if not honest.

Everyone’s cuffs began to beep, indicating that they were going to make their next pattern jump in five minutes. “Oh no,” Olimpia exclaimed. “Will he come with us?”

“The cuffs are linked to the AOC,” Leona answered. “Everyone inside should come with. We’ve seen it before.”

Making an executive decision, Mateo began to drag Milford’s unconscious body to the steps.

“What are you doing?” Leona questioned.

“He’s not coming with us.”

“Good idea,” Leona said. “But you’re never gonna get him all the way up to the airlock. Not alone, not in time.” What the others hadn’t noticed was that Leona had quickly inspected the transporter gun after Mateo set it down on the table in front of her. A dial specified a year. She grabbed it, spun it to a random new destination, and shot Milford in the forehead.

“Whoa,” Olimpia said

“Yeah,” Ramses agreed.

“If he wasn’t crazy, then he was just dispatched to...” She took a look at the dial. “Fifteen-sixteen. If he was crazy, then...I suppose I just murdered the man who shot two of my friends, and tried to shoot a third.” Leona surveyed the room. “Does anybody here think I should be butthurt about that?” No one vocalized a reply, but they didn’t seem to think she should feel butthurt. “How are we doing, Sarka?”

“He’s stable, for now. I don’t think I should be in the middle of a procedure when we jump to the future. I’ll resume in a few minutes. It’s not too terribly deep, so it shouldn’t be hard to pull it out.”

So they waited, and they jumped, and then Jeremy howled in pain. Sarka tried to find the source of the issue, but nothing about his chest wound had changed. Then Angela noticed something. “Doctor, his arm.”

Sarka lifted it up. The skin under and around the Cassidy cuff was glowing red, like it was burning. Jeremy never stopped crying out in pain, but he quieted down a bit.

“He must still be linked to 1816, and that jump did not do him any favors,” Sarka assumed.

“What do we do?” Leona asked.

“If you take off that cuff, and he dies, he’ll jump to the past, and end up in whatever condition this time bullet is designed to put him in.”

“What if we don’t take off the cuff?”

“He could still die, but you’ll jump with him,” Sarka warned. “Like I said, I’ve never seen this tech before. I don’t understand why it needs to be a real bullet. They usually aren’t, because there’s not generally any reason to spirit someone away when they’re just going to die anyway.”

Hoping to find some answers, Leona opened up the gun, and dropped the remaining three bullets on the table. “White. They’re white.”

Mateo approached, and looked for himself. “The color of resurrection.” He was quite familiar with it, as were half the people here.

“These things don’t just send you to the past,” Leona explained. “They send you to Pryce’s afterlife simulation. Either you wake up in the simulation itself with a whitecard attachment, or automatically in a new body.”

“I don’t think you killed that guy, Leona,” Mateo said, just in case she actually did feel butthurt. “Not permanently.”

Jeremy was still in pain, but he was whimpering now. He didn’t want to interrupt their conversation.

“Get that bullet out, doctor.”

Sarka got back to work. He reached into the hole with his pliers, and started feeling around for the metal. Something seemed to be wrong, though. “Shit.” He removed the pliers. There was no bullet on the other, but the tip was covered in a whitish-red fluid.

“Explain,” Leona demanded simply.

“It did dissolve,” Sarka began. “I don’t know if it was the time jump, or if it would have happened anyway, but I imagine instead of collapsing upon impact, it was designed to burrow itself into the target, and dissolve in the body, so someone like me couldn’t take it out. I am now almost sure that the reason he hasn’t jumped back yet is because of that cuff. and it’s connection to all of you.”

“Okay,” Leona said confidently. “All I have to do is modify the settings to make his primary, instead of mine. That should be enough to send us all back with him. We’ll deal with the repercussions later.”

“No,” Jeremy insisted. Without warning, he reached over with his good hand, and removed the cuff from his arm. He disappeared pretty much instantly.

They all just kind of sat there, regarding the space where Jeremy once was.

“That’s okay,” Leona said finally. “All we have to do is get back to 1816. We have friends, we can make that happen.”

“We have to help Ramses first,” Olimpia reminded them. “He was shot as well.”

“I think I’m fine,” he contended. “The bullet went through and through. I’m just glad it didn’t hit Angela after it came out.”

“Still, you need to be treated. I do at least have a sewing ki—” Before Dr. Sarka could finish his sentence, he disappeared as well. Being not salmon, Ramses apparently didn’t deserve the PTB’s medical assistance. Yet they had seen plenty of exceptions before.

“That’s also okay,” Leona said. “I can sew.”

“No,” Angela asked. “Let me do it. I’m the one at fault here.”

“You know that none of us blames you, right?” Mateo asked.

“You don’t have to,” she said.

“Let’s just say it was your turn,” Mateo told her. “We’ve all brought bad juju to the team. It’s like a rite of passage now. I can’t tell you how many bad guys I’ve unwittingly summoned.”

“All right,” Angela allowed, but she wasn’t completely convinced, or relieved. “I’m still going to be the one to sew him up.”

After Angela was finished, Olimpia agreed to stay with Ramses on the ship while he recovered. The other three then went off in search of someone who could send them back in time to 1816 so they could retrieve their lost comrade. If all went according to plan, he would spend less than a day there before being able to return to his rightful place on the team. They decided that their best option would be to go to Dardius, where everyone they met would know about time travel, and they could speak freely. To their surprise, they didn’t even need to find a specific person with time travel abilities. Scientists had long ago figured out how to use the Nexus for such purposes. They even had a pretty good idea of Jeremy’s arrival date. After putting on authentic blending-in clothes, they stepped down onto the platform, and waited for the tech to send them to a settlement in pre-union Missouri.

They spent a few hours searching for Jeremy by canvassing the area with an artificially antiquated photograph of him. They were able to find him working at a tailor. It seemed to be his job to roll up the cloth, and clean the equipment. He seemed to be trying to mind his own business, and not make any trouble. Mateo asked to go in alone while the ladies waited outside.

“Evenin’,” the tailor greeted him at the door.

“I’m lookin’ for a new suit,” Mateo said. He tried to lock eyes with Jeremy, who wasn’t paying any attention.

“What you’re wearing looks to be pretty nice. Get it in New York?”

“That’s right,” Mateo lied. Now he was just staring.

“Well, what were you thinking now?”

“Get me something out the back.”

“Nothing out here is of any interest to you?”

“I want something...different. You must have...patterns that most men don’t wear.” He tried to hit that word pretty hard, but Jeremy didn’t blink. “Perhaps something in salmon.”

“I’ll have my assistant look for you. Boy!”

Now Jeremy finally faced the right direction.

“No,” Mateo said. “I want your eyes. You are the artist, correct?”

“Very good, sir.” The tailor left to find something that Mateo didn’t care about.

Even as Mateo approached, Jeremy still didn’t seem to recognize him. “What’s your name?”

“Job, sir.” He was afraid to make eye contact.

“How long have you worked here?”

At this, Jeremy couldn’t help but chuckle. “All my life.”

“Really?”

“Just about as long as I can remember. I’m touched, you see. I can’t recall a single thing from my life past five weeks ago.”

“You must wonder,” Mateo guessed, “who you were before. You must have left someone you cared about behind.”

“If they cared about me,” Jeremy reasoned, “they could have found me. My story was in all the papers.”

“Perhaps...you come from a distant land.”

“Perhaps,” Jeremy conceded.

“Are you happy..with this life?”

“Happy is the life you make, sir. I believe God took my memories for a reason. The physicians can find no brain damage. As far as they can tell, my mind has chosen to forget. This is my life now.”

Mateo placed a hand on his good friend’s shoulder. Milford wanted to get his ex-wife back to this year, so they could restart their life together. She was never meant to remember anything about the future. In Jeremy’s case, he wasn’t originally in the 19th century, so all of his memories were taken. Philosophically speaking, this wasn’t really Jeremy Bearimy at all. It was a new man, and this new man, Job wanted to stay. Mateo could see it in his eyes. “I’ve been there, brother.”

Jeremy squinted for half a second before letting go.

“You take care, ya hear?”

“Sir.”

Before he left, Mateo placed his purse in Jeremy’s hands. In it were 20 half eagle coins, each worth five dollars. “For the conversation.”

The tailor returned before Mateo could exit the shop. When he asked his assistant where the potential customer was going, Job didn’t have an answer. He took a peek in the purse, and just said, “I quit.”

It was hard, leaving him behind, but Mateo was confident that it was the right thing to do. Could someone like Tertius Valerius, or a version of Nerakali, restore his memories? Probably. But was that ethical? He would never get the answer to that question. He would just have to move on, and hope that it wasn’t all a mistake. When Leona and Angela asked him what was going on, he simply repeated Job’s words, which were a mantra he often said himself, about their own lives. They made their way back to 2363, and never saw Jeremy again.

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Extremus: Year 13

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The election is over, and there is no going back now. Ovan is going to be smart about his takeover of the ship. He isn’t going to suddenly start trying to order the security team around. He drops a few hints here, makes a quippy remark there. Everything he says out loud says fine when you first hear it, but if you think about it too hard, you realize how some people could interpret it to mean that the passengers should become hostile towards the crew, probably without even realizing it. He’ll grow bolder as his plans begin to bear fruit, but right now, Halan has other things to worry about.

“How do we know he’s not one of them? He and Vesper could have been working together,” Omega suggests.

“We don’t, but I’m not getting the sense of that,” Halan says. “I feel like Ovan, and his drive to take over the ship, is completely separate from the people trying to kill me. Getting rid of one Captain is not going to do the passengers any good if they have a problem with the entire crew. I’ll just be backfilled by the Admiral, or maybe even the Bridgers. No, Ovan wants this to become a fully civilian operation. More to the point, he wants to be in charge.”

“Why didn’t he just get on the Captain’s track?” Omega questions.

“He’s not the right age. It’s a timing issue, you see. It’s the reason why the crew shifts in and out at different times. My shift lasts for 24 years, but if everyone was like that, everything would have to change hands all at once. That’s a logistical nightmare. By staggering them, we allow for people to apply for positions even when they come of age in the middle of a cycle. Still, on the individual level, this can potentially exclude a lot of people. There is no law that says a 32-year-old can’t become Captain, but it’s unlikely he would ever get the job, since he’ll be in his fifties by the time he’s done.

“That’s not that old,” Omega argues. “I’m 64 if you count my rapid aging as part of my lifespan, rather than just subtracting this year from the year I was manufactured.”

“True, it’s not,” Halan agrees, “but if there is a single worst character flaw that Ansutahan humans have, it’s probably ageism. Life expectancy used to be a lot lower for us, since medical science was stunted by a number of factors, all stemming from the fact that we were constrained to one continent. Younger people have always been better at securing leadership positions, and then they are strongly urged to step down when they get too old.”

“Why does that same unwritten rule not apply to Ovan’s position as Passenger Chair?” Omega asks.

“It’s a shorter term. Even the term limit is shorter than a captain’s shift. Anyway, he might not have known what he wanted until it was too late. Captain’s track starts in the single digits. There’s a decent chance that my successor was born here. Now let’s get back to Vesper’s co-conspirators.”

Omega nods, but still isn’t convinced that they should be focusing on this. Yes, the extremist group hiding in their midst is a greater threat, but they don’t know where to begin. At least the anti-crew movement has a face. And a punchable one, at that. Even so, he keeps his mouth shut, and concedes to the Captain’s decision. Most problems need to be solved either way. “Indeed,” he says simply.

“So,” Mercer begins after having been silent most of the time. “Omega’s right about one thing.”

Halan gets it. “We still don’t know how to find these true Extremusians.”

“First order of business, I believe, is we should try to come up with a new name,” Mercer decides.

“Agreed,” Halan replies. “We are true Extremusians. If anyone on this ship is under the impression that they are somehow special, and different from the lot of us, then this misunderstanding must be rectified. Henceforth, in all reports, they will be known as...” He trails off, not knowing what would be a better word to use.

It is then that Omega realizes that he already came up with a name for them in his own headcanon. “True Extremists,” he offers.

“Hm.” Halan considers this. “I imagine that could be quite insulting to them. It is close enough to what they apparently call themselves for us to pretend our words are an accident, but different enough for them to know in their hearts that we do not respect them.”

“Perfect,” Mercer says. “To begin again, how do we root out these True Extremists? We must get them to reveal themselves without realizing they’re doing it, and without alarming the rest of the ship.”

“Right,” Omega says. “And why exactly can’t we tell the ship that they’re out there?”

“For the moment,” Halan explains, “they appear to be rather contained. I do not think there are very many of them, and I do not think they are recruiting. Vesper strongly suggested he was from a planet that they consider to be Extremus. I don’t know exactly how they arrived there, but they take a strong disliking to everyone else. Still, we don’t need to turn anyone to their side, and the only way to do that is to prevent any would-be sympathizers from finding out they even exist.”

“Well, it’s not the only way, sir,” Mercer clarifies for him. “It may be the best, but honesty is always an option.”

“I am aware of that, Lieutenant, thank you.”

Mercer knows he’s being sarcastic, and to combat that, he closes his eyes and nods respectfully so as to make it look like he’s taking the response sincerely.

Halan moves on, “any ideas?”

“The Elder Shuttle,” Omega says cryptically.

“What about it?”

“Advanced, powerful, compact. Time travel-capable, self-sustaining...and coded to my DNA.”

“Where would you take it?” Halan questions.

“May 29, 2272,” Omega answers.

“We are nearly 7,000 light years from their position,” Halan argues, “and we still don’t know where they were teleported to. You would have to hunt for them, and who knows how long that could take?”

“That’s the self-sustaining part. It was engineered with something that I haven’t mentioned yet, because it’s dangerous technology, and Veca and I agreed it would be best if no one else knew. But I suppose now is the right time.”

“What?” Halan prompts. “Some kind of highly destructive weapons system that would be capable of taking out our ship?”

“Nothing like that,” Omega assures him. “It has no weapons at all. It does, however, have—”

“A quantum replicator!” Valencia has since retired from her position as the temporal engineer. Unlike other jobs, however, it’s important that she remain available in case they need her for an emergency. Just about anyone can learn engineering, but people like her are rare, so while August Voll has taken over as head of the department, Valencia still helps out. She’s more like a consultant now.”

“How did you know?” Omega asks.

“How did you get in this room?” Mercer asks.

Valencia is the one who designed the teleportation systems on this ship, and all the ways they can control who has access to what sections, and when. If she wants to bypass a restriction, she will, and she’ll do it with her eyes closed while she’s composing a new sonata. Knowing this about her, Omega rolls his eyes, and emphasizes his own question. “Did Veca tell you?”

She smiles, and removes something from her ear to present them with it. “It’s a sangsterbud.”

“What the hell is that?” Halan doesn’t like people inventing things without him knowing about it.

“Simple tech,” she says. “All it does is transduce future soundwaves—in this case, from about five seconds—and plays them for me to hear.”

“Why are you wearing it?” Halan presses. “Knowing what people are going to say just before they say it isn’t that helpful unless you want to prevent them from saying it, or in this case, show off what you can do.”

“I’m just tryna figure out who I am now that I’m no longer Head Temporal Engineer,” Valencia says.

“I offered to extend your shift,” Halan reminds her. “Now that Vesper turned out to be a mole, we’re down one member of the already small team anyway.”

Valencia shakes her head. “August needed the job. She deserved it. I just underestimated how bored I would be. Now I see there’s more for me to do. I can go on this mission with Omega. Together, we can find out what happened to Rita, and those other three people who we don’t really care about personally.”

Omega shakes his head too. “No, the mission could take years. I can go, because I’m immortal. You don’t wanna die out there, in that tiny little ship, with dumb ol’ me.”

“I’m immortal too,” Valencia reveals.

“You are?” Halan asks. “Extremus is generational. We all agreed...”

“Yeah, I broke the rules,” Valencia confirms. “I guess you better kick me out, and force me on the Elder Shuttle.”

“Can we come up with a better name for that too?” Mercer poses.

“What kind of upgrades do you have?” Omega is pleased to finally be around someone else like him again. No one else on this ship understands him, and they never will.

“Cellular countersenescent.”

“How do you accomplish this?” Omega is even more interested now.

“Antintropic technology that I invented myself. I got the idea from my refrigerator.”

“Holy shit. Is it a constant process?”

“As we speak.”

“Holy shit,” he repeats.

“Could you dumb it down for the rest of us?” Halan requests.

Omega opens his mouth to explain, but realizes that Valencia should do it. He gives her the floor.

She begins. “When your cells lose the ability to replicate themselves, they become senescent. They are essentially dead, but they’re a problem, because they sort of just sit there in your body. On the whole, this is what causes you to degrade and age. It’s obviously a complex process, but the most important aspect of longevity treatments is our ability to reprogram the body, and command it to undergo a process called transdifferentiation, which basically means the organism reverts to a less mature state. That’s what allows the vonearthans to live incredibly long lifespans.”

“So that’s what you did to yourself,” Mercer figures.

“No. I’m not allowed to do that. I’m not even allowed to access the research that allows the vonearthans to do that. But I did do something similar. I’m a temporal engineer, so what I do is command my cells to become young again, but by essentially reversing the flow of time for them. This creates issues for the natural laws of entropy, but it’s fine on smaller scales, like my tiny little body. It wouldn’t be okay to do that to the whole universe. Anyway, when a cell of mine begins to deteriorate, it releases a chemical, which triggers something I’ve deemed a tempomere to activate the countersenescence. So you see, I’m perfect for this mission. I don’t belong here anymore, and I won’t age out there.”

“What does any of this have to do with that quantum regulator?” Mercer questions.

“Replicator,” Omega and Valencia correct in unison. She continues alone, “it’s exactly what it sounds like. Place one grape in there, push the button, and you’ll have two grapes. It’s technically the same grape, but one of them was stolen from an alternate reality. Now put those two back in the replicator, push the button, and you have four. Rinse, repeat, and eat as many grapes as you’d like. As long as you got power, and at least one copy of something that you need, you got as many of that thing for replacements.”

“This one has a fairly extensive database,” Omega adds. “We can spontaneously generate an object without ever actually bringing it on board. Evidently, Old Man spent a lot of time encoding everything he could get his hands on.”

“Great,” Valencia says. “Even better. Does it have ice cream?”

“Hold on, I haven’t agreed to anything,” Halan warns the both of them. “If we’re doing this, we have to be careful. We can’t let anyone else know about it, not even Old Man. If you show up in the past to meet him before he has a chance to invent the damn thing in the first place, it could cause a paradox. It could cause one even if he has already invented it.”

“So we’ll modify it,” Valencia promises. “It shouldn’t be too hard to make it look like something completely different, and alter its specifications. I already have some ideas on how I can improve power efficiency, and safety protocols. Old Man obviously didn’t give that sort of thing much thought. It’s a time machine, so it doesn’t matter how long it takes us.”

“I will...remember that when I’m making my decision. For now, we should all return to our duties. Now that you’re in the braintrust, Miss Raddle, I trust you understand not to tell anyone about any of this?”

Valencia zips her mouth shut, locks it up, and throws away the key. Then she leaves with Omega to begin making the modifications. But first, they have to find a way to get the thing out of the cargo bay, and into a secure area.

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