Expelled: Exploited (Part III)

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Elder was able to rig up a holographic bathroom. At first, it was nothing more than a partition that gave the user some much-needed privacy. Over time, with little else to do, he added more and more to the program, including the highly requested feature of a noise-canceling system, as well as some scent-masking. Eventually, it looked like they were in one of those extremely fancy and expensive bathrooms that only the wealthiest of people used. It wasn’t like a holodeck, so they couldn’t touch the double basin sink, or the clawfoot tub, but it made them feel a little less confined. This tactic was quickly expanded to the entirety of the tent, allowing them to pretend that they had more space than they did. They could transition views between a number of different environments. It could look like they were sitting in the middle of a serene forest, against a backdrop of mountains, or even in the middle of outer space. That one wasn’t used very much, but it was there if they wanted it. They could also use this to make the tent appear to be transparent, allowing them to see what the real world outside looked like. The imagery was bleak, and a little depressing, but it was often better than the claustrophobia-inducing opaque walls.

In addition to these cosmetic changes, Elder had a lot of other work to do. In order to transmit objects from inside to the outside, and back again, there was a small built-in airlock. It had to be flexible, so it could collapse into the pack where it was stored, of course, but it was enough in a pinch. He was able to program a tube of starter nanites to head out onto the regolith, and begin building them a larger, and more permanent, living structure. Once it was finished being constructed, they would finally be able to stand up, and walk around. It was hard to get exercise in this thing, so they were desperate for more options, especially since this planet featured fairly low gravity. Bicycle crunches were probably saving their lives, but they were becoming increasingly sick of them.

Bronach Oaksent claimed to be only a few hundred meters away, but he was nowhere to be seen. There were a number of geological features nearby, which could easily conceal him, particularly well if he had built his own shelter mostly underground. He could also be in a very small dimensional generator, which would be incredibly easy to hide. Even before he built the nanofactory, Elder designed a pebble drone, based on the kind of rocks that were present on this planet. Tiny cilia that were invisible to the naked eye pressed against the surface, allowing it to roll along in search of Bronach’s hiding place. It was a very slow process, but it used very little power, and each one could operate autonomously. Indeed, a larger drone design would be easier to spot, so this was the best way to do it if they didn’t want to get caught.

True to his word—in this sense, at least—Bronach never reached out. Elder didn’t detect a single radio signal, so he wasn’t trying to communicate anywhere else either. Elder would even be able to tell if he were using some kind of quantum messenger, which would be difficult to transport with its relatively high mass, or maybe not if his dimensional generator theory were true. There was still so much that they didn’t know, and it still wasn’t priority. Their focus was on survival. What he really needed was a real lab so he could start working on that time machine. Debra had wanted to leave Extremus, but she made it quite clear that she would prefer it to this.

“Don’t worry about the time machine right now,” Debra argued. “Just get me a place to stand up, and then a place to sit down. You are building chairs, right?”

“Of course I am,” Elder replied, “and I’m not worried about the lab right now. I’m just talkin’. The nanites are busy on the structure; me discussing the future doesn’t slow that down.”

“You should have brought more nanites,” she tried to reason.

“The amount of time it takes for them to replicate is negligible compared to the time it takes to actually build what we need. Packing more would not have significantly sped up the process. In fact, it might have slowed it down, because it would have been more difficult to get them through the airlock pocket, and on its way to the worksite.”

“The worksite is right there.” Debra pointed. The tent was pseudotransparent on one side right now, so they could watch the construction progress. The other sides were showing the ocean surrounding an atoll.

“That’s miles away to a nanite. Scaled up, that would be like if you drove around the equator of the Earth,” Elder tried to explain for the upteenth time. He hadn’t had to say that specific thing to her before, but she was one of the least educated people he had ever met. She didn’t listen. She seemed to think that the nanites were magic. If she knew their breakdown rate, she would...well, she wouldn’t understand that number, but if she did, she would throw a fit.

“I’ve never been to Earth.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I really don’t.”

“Stop fighting,” Rita interjected. “This is a stupid conversation, and I’m over it. Elder, how long until we can teleport into the new structure?”

“We’re not teleporting into it,” Elder contended. “We have precious little temporal energy left in the teleporter gun, and we need to save it.”

“If we’re so low, how are we ever going to go back in time?” Debra questioned.

“I will be able to harvest more with greater resources,” Elder clarified. “It would sure help to have some stored to catalyze the process, though, which is why I’m having the nanites build a docking cone. That’s mostly what still needs to be finished. It’s right there.” He pointed to it. A metal cone was gradually materializing towards them.

“And the time until it’s complete?” Rita reiterated.

“Only a few more days,” he answered. “I know what you’re gonna say next, but bear in mind that solar is our only source of power at the moment. The shelter would take even longer if I had the nanites build a fusion reactor at the same time, even though having fusion would eventually make them go faster. Plus, the basalt and sedimentary rocks have to be pulverized and reformulated into a sort of concrete to create the airtight seal that we obviously need. There is not as much metal in the regolith as I would like. But as soon as they’re done, we’ll have nine square meters to spread out in. It will all be worth the wait, I promise you.”

“And a real bathroom?” Rita asked hopefully.

Elder hesitated to answer. “Not quite yet. It’s coming, but think about it, how complicated the fixtures in a real bathroom are. There is a room walled off for it, but we’ll still be using our portable toilet, and rubbing ourselves down with dayfruit...” He trailed off, his mind scattered to a million pieces. Sometimes a keyword would switch his train of thought to the wrong track, even if he was the one who said the word. He went back to contemplating his latest project to solve one of their problems. Each of the five leaves of the dayfruit was packed with its own natural substance. They were using the sugar and salt leaf regularly, programming every other fruit to produce one, and every other fruit the other. The second leaf gave them an alcohol-based sanitizer, which could be used to disinfect wounds in a medical situation, as well as a body cleanser when water was scarce, as it was here. The third leaf was a soap for when water was plentiful enough. The fourth was basically a GMO super-eucalyptus, which had countless benefits, from toothpaste to a moisturizing topical ointment. The fifth and final leaf was a sort of user’s choice. If not programmed for something each time, it would just grow empty. Well, not empty, but layered, so it wasn’t completely useless, since it still functioned as toilet paper, but Elder wanted more out of it. He wanted to program it to produce a certain chemical compound.

Unfortunately, they were stuck with an inert fifth leaf. It was a heavily regulated trait, generationally encrypted by the institution that designed the dayfruit strain in question. In this case, that governing body was part of Extremus. No one here had the authentication factors, not even Lieutenant Suárez. When he had time, Elder had been trying to hack into it, but even geniuses had their limits. These seeds required a password for certain modifications, and if he wanted to subvert them, his only option might be to write his only version of the fruit from scratch. That was not out of the question, but they weren’t there yet. It would demand certain chemicals to even begin anyway. Digital DNA was useless without the organic material to begin the synthesization process. Nothing could come from nothing. Not even their world of temporal manipulators could this maxim be subverted.

“Old Man,” Rita shouted. “You’re in your head again.”

“No, you were telling us to rub dayfruit on our bodies,” Debra clarified.

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “I meant the sanitizer. We’ll have to keep using the sanitizer until we can find a source of oxidane.”

Rita nodded, but Debra was confused, as usual.

“Water. We need water. If we find a significant reservoir, we may be able to stop having to recycle our waste.” They added sugar to their drinking water to get rid of the urine taste, but...they could still taste it.

Rita shook her head. “When we go back in time, and get back on Extremus, I’m going to lobby for a change in policy. Earthan space explorers wear those standardized integrated multipurpose suits all the time. They debated doing that on the Extremus, but it was never our plan to ever go on spacewalks, so they ultimately decided against them. I think that was a mistake. We would be so much better off if we could go outside right now. I should be wearing an IMS. From what I hear, they’re comfortable enough.”

Elder shook his head to mirror her. “I should have packed one in my emergency kit. I guess that’s not why they’re on the recommended list, because the people who need them the most are already wearing them to be prepared at all times.”

“Could you fabricate one now?” Debra asked. She was being genuine this time, not critical or argumentative.

“I don’t have the materials,” Elder replied. “And...I wouldn’t know how to make one. It’s not the library, I don’t think. Do you know how to harvest and contain monopoles? I’m not saying that to mean. It’s just so far above my paygrade.”

“Well, that’s one layer,” Rita began, “but a vacuum suit doesn’t have to have it. The other layers alone would work well enough on their own, unless you think you might get shot out there.”

Elder looked towards the horizon. When Bronach left them, this was the direction he walked, implying that that was where his own shelter was—which was why he was concentrating the pebbledrone search in that region—but that could literally have been a misdirect. “We don’t know that that man doesn’t have projectile weapons. And anyway, no,” he went on. “The nanites aren’t constructing the structure out of the best materials possible, just what they can find. We do not have what we would need for additional clothing of any kind. We never will, not here.”

They all three sighed at around the same time, and went back to watching the docking cone inch towards the tent entrance, one conical section at a time. It really was slow, though, so they eventually broke out of the group trance, and started focusing on their own things. Later that evening, they watched another episode of Sliders together. It was the one where they go to a world that is free from the war because of a virus that only kills Kromaggs. It made Elder uncomfortable, but he tried not to show it. The ladies still didn’t know that much about his past.

A couple of days later, the cone was finished, and they were in the new structure. Rita couldn’t stop breathing a sigh of relief, and Debra teared up a little. Elder sat down on one of the built-in benches against the wall, and didn’t stand up for almost three hours. They didn’t call him Old Man for nothin’. Lying down, sitting up, and crawling were not good for his back in the long-term. Now that they had more space to move around, he was able to get some real work done. Their new airlock still wasn’t big enough for a person to step through, but that wasn’t the point. His hands could move faster than the nanites. He was able to collect building material, and build some larger equipment in here. The progress of their shelter continued to get faster and faster. He cut out some windows, and forged silica glass to protect them. They hadn’t experienced any dust storms, or these might have been too dangerous to consider.

With more space and more time, he was able to build larger drones too, which were able to travel farther from their immediate vicinity, and perform more detailed surveys of the land. They found deposits of magnesium and aluminum, and trace amounts of others, like silver and copper, which were vital components of some desperately needed technology, like better solar panels, and a fusion reactor. It took months, but these drones also found subsurface ice only about forty centimeters under the regolith. For simplicity’s sake, they ignored the first site, and focused on one that was a little farther away, but on higher ground, so a basic aluminum pipe could transport water from the boiler structure, down to them via gravity.

It was starting to feel a little like home, but only a little. They remained firmly in favor of finding a way back to the ship in the past. Debra talked a lot about their ultimate goal of traveling to Bronach’s location, but the other two were hoping to avoid it altogether. Rita was anyway. Elder still had plans for the fifth leaf, though if he never figured it out, he might be able to find a way to synthesize everything he needed in the normal way, especially with this silica for lab supplies. He was no chemist, though, that was the problem. He was counting on the dayfruit’s ability to formulate a programmed compound for him, rather than him having to mix it by hand. This plan wasn’t vital to their survival, but not having the weapon could prove fatal one day. He had relinquished his morals once; he could do it again if it was necessary.

They were on this dead planet for five whole months before Elder was even able to begin manufacturing the time machine, and it was shortly thereafter when he hit a snag. Harvesting temporal energy wasn’t as easy as he thought it would be. He might only have enough for one person for one trip with a smaller design.

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Microstory 2185: Hierarchy is Required

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To add to what I was saying yesterday, I feel that it is my responsibility to respect people’s time. I wouldn’t want to block out an entire day for a doctor’s appointment, or an interview, because I have no choice but to wait for someone else to manage their own schedule. The Golden Rule tells me that if I wouldn’t want it to happen to me, I shouldn’t do it to someone else. You have that rule here too, which is nice. It’s kind of cheesy, but it works most of the time. There are some general exceptions, like the fact that most people don’t want to be told what to do, but that’s the dynamic of a boss-employee relationship, or a parent-child relationship, or the like. Some hierarchy is required, which is why I can’t be expected to travel to my candidates’ locations, for instance. They all need to come to me, or procure the software that I use for video chat. I’m not saying any of this because I had some problem with any of our candidates; I just want to express it, so you can gauge how I’m trying to do things differently than how I’ve experienced it from the other side. Without sharing any confidential details, the interviews went great today. Everyone was suited enough for the job enough to be hired, so I will have some hard decisions coming up. Some of you seem to be a little confused, because from what you hear, an employer will only interview a few people for a position, and that’s mostly true here, though I am trying to keep my horizons broadened to make sure that I find the absolute best applicant possible. You have to remember that I’m trying to fill thirteen positions for my team. So when I tell you that I interviewed seven people in the office today, they were for all different jobs. It’s going to take us several days just to get through any reasonable number, and only then can I make a decision on which to choose for each one. Okay, I can practically feel the legal department shaking its head at me, so I should stop talking about the process before I say something privileged. As always, no blog post until Monday. Have a great weekend, everybody.

Microstory 2184: A Commodity to Them

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We’re in a holding pattern right now. I’ve scheduled three in-person interviews for tomorrow, and one video call, but I expect there to be more by the time I proverbially clock out. I say I scheduled them, but that’s my assistant’s job. I blocked out a few chunks of my day, such as a meeting with my boss, and a half hour for lunch, but the rest of the day is open. She’s free to add any candidate that I’ve approved to any other time. That’s another chunk, though; time for me to look through a batch of candidates. I’m not going to pack them all in a short period of time, though. Have you ever been to a doctor’s office first thing in the morning, and they’re already behind, and you’re like, how is this possible, I should be the first one here! Well, that’s because that doctor is overbooking their schedule. They wanna get through it as fast as possible, because each patient equals mondo dolla bills, so the more they can see, the more money they can make. You’re just a commodity to them. I would never allow that, even if the math worked out the same for us. It’s about respect. Each candidate gets a block of forty-five minutes, though I suspect we’ll only talk for thirty. There’s a buffer of fifteen minutes until the top of the next hour for me to organize my notes, use the restroom, etc. It’s also there if they’re a little late, or there’s an issue with the security procedures. Speaking of which, I need to have a quick chat with them before I leave. Until tomorrow...

Microstory 2183: Held My Fate in Their Hands

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I’ve been spending all day conducting phone interviews with the first wave of applicants. It wasn’t just me, though. Jasmine took part of the list, as did my colleague who has been helping me prepare for the in-person interviews that will come later. As I was about to make the first call today, I realized that I should have also taken some time to practice these, not only because they come before the face-to-face meetings, but because I don’t tend to be too great on the phone. I have trouble picking up on social cues, but at least when I’m in the same room with someone, I can do my best. It’s so much harder on the phone. They could be muting themselves, and giggling at how I stumble over my words, or gesturing their boredom with the blah, blah, blah hand gesture. These possibilities start swirling around in my brain, and I start to lose my train of thought, which only makes things worse. I sometimes hang up the phone having kind of blacked out, and being unsure whether anything I said made any sense whatsoever. That all being said, my colleague’s training helped with these too. I did okay, and I think the candidates were receiving me pretty well. I asked the right questions at the right time, and remembered that one major reason for phone interviews is to give candidates time to ask questions of me. Hiring managers might forget that it’s not just about us choosing them, but them choosing us too. This is meant to be a new business partnership, or in the case of internal candidates, a change in that relationship. Just because someone needs a job, doesn’t mean that they’re desperate for it, or that they ought to be desperate, or that they should be thankful that we’re even bothering to consider them, or that we have the right to exploit them for all we need.

It’s important to me that I never forget what it’s like for people in their situations. I don’t know everything that they’re all going through, and I shouldn’t be expected to, but I should try to empathize anyway. It wasn’t too long ago that I was in jail, and before that, I was on the run, and before that, I was unhoused. I didn’t get to where I am by being brilliant and hardworking. I relied on a lot of other people giving me a chance, and putting their trust in me, and not being judgmental. Long ago, in my home universe, I was in between jobs, but it hadn’t been too long yet. An interviewer asked me how long I had been on the search. I was afraid that she wouldn’t consider me if I told her the truth, because someone who had been searching for longer was in more need, all things being equal. What my mother told me later was that it was the opposite; that if you’ve been looking for too long, they’ll assume that something’s wrong with you. That’s bullshit, and I won’t tolerate it. So I’m not going to ask people how long they’ve been out of work, or why. It’s none of my goddamn business. I more than anyone know how hopeless it feels to be treated like everything bad that has ever happened to you is your own fault. People deserve better. They deserve the benefit of the doubt. Now, I’m mostly hiring highly experienced and specialized workers for my team, as we have no entry level positions available on the team, but I’m still going into it with this attitude, because I don’t want to become everything I’ve hated in people who held my fate in their hands. I want to take my personal experiences, and make them better for others. So if you applied, and you feel like you’re being mistreated, or if you have stories to tell about your issues with other employers, send me a message. I’m always looking to improve, even if I’m not the only one who should hear what you have to say.

Microstory 2182: Interview Completely Naked

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I had a couple of interviews today, with people who already work for the company. I don’t mind admitting that they did not go so great. I’ve been on the other side of the proverbial desk before, but not as often as you might guess based on how many places I’ve worked. I became a lifeguard after the guy who trained me just signed the paperwork. No interview necessary. I don’t recall interviewing for the maintenance work I did either. I think they just needed warm bodies. Most of the time when I was looking for work, I couldn’t even get past the application step, which I guess says something about my skills as an interviewee. I didn’t get them all, but looking back on it, my success rate is pretty high, as long as you ignore all the times my app just got thrown in the trash. It tended to go okay once a hiring manager actually bothered to give me a chance. Anyway, my dad worked in human resources, so I picked up a thing or two from him, along with my own personal experience. For instance, I know not to ask people for their greatest weakness, or what kind of animal they would be. These are stupid and pointless questions that have no business in a serious job interview. Even so, I didn’t do the best job. I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I was. They weren’t the worst ever, and the candidates themselves did fine, so it will be okay, but I really need to work on it before the next round begins. One girl worked in the same department as I did before, so I had heard of her, but we had never met, because we weren’t on the same team. She picked up on my inexperience issue, so she only applied to give me the practice, and I’m grateful for that. She’s offered to keep helping me with practice interviews, and her boss has approved to loan her out to me for that for just a couple of days. She’s been really getting into it. She started a video chat while not wearing pants, and that’s something that I may have to learn to deal with Apparently that’s a common problem in the telepresence community. My instinct tells me to not care, because personally, I don’t. They could show up to an in-person interview completely naked, and it wouldn’t bother me in the least, whether they were attractive, or not. But there are all these policies and laws that we have to follow, so I have to pretend to be a normal person, and react like a normal person would in some of these less typical situations. I’m curious to see what she comes up with our next dry run. I’m sure she’ll be fully clothed, but she may be dressed as a clone, or insist that she already has the job, which is also a thing.

Microstory 2181: Occupy the Same Space

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I’m pretty much caught up on everything. All of the job postings have gone out to the career boards, and I can’t start in on any of them until human resources filters through them first. I didn’t even go into the office. I just stayed home, and remoted in using my personal computer. I think the warden doesn’t really want me doing that; believing that personal devices should only be used for personal business. So my boss is currently requisitioning a work laptop for home use, which they’ll ship to me this week. It will just serve as a portal, connecting me to my employer’s and clients’ respective servers. I’ve rearranged my apartment a bit, which I should have done before. For tax reasons, it’s important that I designate a particular area as my home office. That doesn’t mean I can’t use it for other things, but it needs to primarily be for this purpose. My new assistant, Jasmine helped me move furniture around, and we went out to buy an extra desk, so she can work across from me. Yeah, she could work in her own apartment, since she would just be right down the hall, but we both feel like it makes sense to occupy the same space. We did the same for my private office in the jail administrative section. I think that’s pretty much all I have to tell you today. I now give you permission to return to your regular lives, but be back here tomorrow morning at 8:15 sharp for my social post.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 2, 2454

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Ramses’ new bulk portal detection device was not ready by the time the team’s day ran out. He was able to program his AI to do some things during their interim year, but there was still some work left when they returned in 2454. While he was focused on that, the Primus asked Leona to exercise her diplomacy muscles for them.

“I don’t have any significant diplomacy experience,” Leona tried to explain.

“Is that not what your ship is for? It’s called the Ambassador,” Primus Mihajlović pointed out.

“That was how it was designed,” Leona went on, “and that’s how it was used recently, but my team and I aren’t on it because that’s our job. We just sort of lucked into possession of it. Whoever you’ve been using for your diplomacy with the Ochivari prisoners of war are better equipped than I.”

“We would be grateful,” Kineret began, “if you would at least try. We’re getting nowhere with the prisoners. We’ve passed laws in recent years that forbid us from detaining extraterrestrial POWs for longer than four months. We actually watched a lot of Ochivari die after we placed them in a communal area of the facility to let them attempt to return home on their own. Fortunately, Carlin has been here to prevent the bloodshed, but we’re running out of time. We’ve not been able to capture anyone recently, so this could be our last chance to get answers for  a while.”

Leona nodded respectfully. “I’ll have Angela or Marie see what they can do.” She turned around to look for the Walton sisters when she saw her husband. “What is it?”

“Nothing, I’m just standing here,” he replied.

“I know all your faces, Matt. You’re yearning for something. Do you think you should run this interrogation instead?”

“Absolutely not. It has nothing to do with that. We’ll talk later, in private.”

“If there’s something I need to know...” the Primus said.

“It really has nothing to do with it,” he assured her. “It’s personal. My mind is distracted. Go do your thing,” he said to Leona. “I’ll see ya tonight.”

They shared a couple pecks on the cheek, then went their separate ways. Leona and Angela teleported a few thousand kilometers away to a particularly cold region of the planet, which they would have referred to as the Northwest Territories. There was no name for it here. It was just the Subarctic North. This was where all of the Ochivari prisoners were being held, as far from civilization as possible, to protect the humans from them. They also discovered that Ochivari didn’t like the cold. They didn’t wither and die from it like a movie monster, but they were very uncomfortable anywhere outside of their climate controlled cells, so there was less danger of them trying to escape. Of course, they had to keep each prisoner separately, or they would be able to transport each other to a different universe. This would always result in some fraction of the travelers dying, but this was a risk that they were used to taking, so the humans had to take measures to stop it. Unless the time limit was reached. They had passed similar laws when it was just themselves on this Earth over the centuries, and as angry as they were about the alien invasion, the populace felt obligated to maintain some sense of their own integrity, and to treat their prisoners of war with care and dignity. The Ochivari still had rights, even if they would not extend the same courtesy to the humans.

Primus Mihajlović, who asked the team to call her Naraschone in person, but her title in the company of others, called ahead to let the prison know that two consultants would be arriving to speak with the prisoners. The guards let them in, and directed them to the underground cells. This place was powered by a thermonuclear generator, so it was self-sustainable, and mostly cut off from the rest of the world, for security purposes. The people who worked here lived in a nearby once-abandoned, but now revitalized, formerly indigenous village. For the most part, the only travel that occurred to this location was to drop off new prisoners, or to fly away from having just dropped off prisoners. They even grew their own food in aquaponic towers, further cementing themselves as a stable isolate. So they were very excited to see the new faces. Some of them were a little too excited, but Angela and Leona didn’t let it bother them, because it was understandable given their circumstances.

“I’ll just be right outside,” the guard said, closing the door behind them.

A polycarbonate window was installed in the middle of the room. On the other side was an Ochivar who was already sitting at his table up against the window, ready to talk. He was reportedly just as closed off about their motivations, and other details regarding their culture, but he was less nasty to the humans than his compatriots were. “Who the hell are you?”

“You don’t already know who we are?” Leona asked, pulling Angela’s seat out, and then sitting down next to her.

“No. Should I?”

They were famous in some circles, but not his, unless he was just playing it close to the vest. “We are not from this world. We hail from Salmonverse.”

Ochivari looked different, so their microexpressions would be hard to read without more exposure, yet it was apparent that he recognized the name. He tried not to let this on. “Okay.”

Angela met Leona’s eyes, and nodded. She would begin to lead the conversation. “What’s your name?”

“Nilstedd,” he answered courteously.

“What was the name of the man you killed when crossing over into this world?”

He hesitated with this one, likely surprised that she would show interest in such information. “Kuhsakego.”

“Were you two close?”

He hesitated here too, but less so, wanting to maintain what little power he had left here. “We trained up together. We always knew that we would be wing-locked one day. They discouraged us from becoming friendly for this reason.”

“Were you in love?” Angela asked.

“It wasn’t like that,” Nilstedd answered.

She believed him. “But you did care for him, and you regret his passing.”

“It is our way.” He averted his gaze, suggesting that he did not agree with his own statement. “It is the only way.”

That wasn’t true, but Angela wasn’t there yet. “We’ve noticed something. Well, others have noticed it, and relayed it to us. We have not met enough Ochivari to have any impression in this regard, but it’s become known that you are all men. Are you a single sex species?”

“Of course not. Our mating rituals are more complex than you could ever understand.”

“Where are all the women?”

He scoffed.

“They must be weak,” Angela said dismissively, trying to get a rise out of him.

“They are not weak. They are just too important!” he argued.

“So it’s just about propagating the species,” Angela guessed. “They stay out of the fight, so they can make more fighters.”

“I shall say nothing more of it.” He turned away even more.

“Have you heard of the Krekel?” she asked him.

He appeared determined to stop revealing information to them, but he couldn’t help but react to this. He spit on the far end of his table, as close to Angela’s as he could without phase-shifting it through the barrier.

“They’re like the Tok’ra, who are technically also Goa’uld, but not evil. That’s all they are; those who made different choices.” She shrugged. “You’re Krekel.”

“No, I am not.”

“You can be,” she reasoned. “You can escape your cell whenever you want. Krekel can travel alone.”

Nilstedd crossed his arms defiantly. “They’re lying.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you ever see them do it?” he questioned.

“My father was a slaveowner,” Angela suddenly said. “I grew up with massive trust issues. I had to work really hard to get over them. The Krekel told me that they can wingsing their way through portals. It’s not a trick, it’s not a lie. It’s true. I’ve been sent here to tease information from you, but if you escaped right here, right now, I wouldn’t stop you. I encourage it.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Music. Music is a language of love. For you to do what you do, and survive, you have to develop contempt from your partner, not because of its inherent value, but because of what you were saying. To lose someone you love; for him to die by your hands—or wings, as it were—would be a burden that you could not bear if you let yourself care about him. So you suppress all love, to protect yourself from disappointment, loss, and loneliness. Music brings us together. The way the Krekel I met described it, you can open a portal by focusing your energy on breaking free from the world that you’re on, while they open one by focusing on where they want to go. They seek connection, while you seek escape. That’s why it kills you.”

“I would sure like to read the scientific paper where you’re getting all this brilliant insight,” he volleyed.

She smiled. “I can’t. I briefly looked over the laws relevant to this war. The locals aren’t allowed to study how you operate. It’s illegal, because it’s unethical. They can’t encourage you to kill each other. So no, I don’t know that much about how your wing battle thing works, but I know that it’s not pleasant. If it were, Kuhsakego would be in the cell next to you.”

“What are you trying to do here,” Nilstedd demanded to know, “get me to turn on my own people?”

“No,” Angela answered sincerely. “I’m just trying to get you to tell me why you’re here at all. What’s so special about this world? It’s just another Earth. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want you to sterilize everyone, but why haven’t you yet? Why are you fighting in the first place?”

He appeared to laugh. “Look around, human. Do you know what the global temperature is? Do you see how much pollution there is in the air? The oceans? Do you know how many unevolved species have gone extinct? Does it have a stable ozone layer? Are these people barreling down a path towards their own self-destruction?”

“No,” Leona answered in Angela’s stead. “They’re fine. The environment is fine. So why are you here?”

Nilstedd was watching Angela during Leona’s response, but he turned his head now. “We’re not here to end the human race in this universe. We’re here to train.”

“To train for what?”

“For you,” he answered simply.

“Me specifically, errr...?”

“People like you, who travel the bulk, causing trouble for us. You can’t combat sterilization in kind. You fight us with guns, and other weapons. We need to know how to fight back, to protect our interests. So we found a universe that’s just advanced enough to give us a real challenge while being primitive enough to not absolutely decimate our forces.”

“These are field tests?” Leona questioned, horrified. “You don’t actually have anything against these people? By your own definition, they’re innocent, and you’re killing them anyway?”

He shrugged. “Orders are orders. Some were sent in ships, others were sent to test out various infiltration and subterfuge techniques. That’s why some of the people we dispatched are human.”

Leona had to actively hold Angela in place when she stood up to teleport away. “No. We can’t tell anyone what he just said.”

“Why not?”

“Come with me,” Leona ordered. She took Angela by the hand, and transported them both to the Gobi Desert.

“They have a right to know that some of the people they’re looking for will look human, and not Ochivari,” Angela argued.

“The right people have a right to know, but we have to be careful about this. Think about it, Ange. Right now, their enemy is obvious; unmistakable. If they have to be on the lookout for enemies who look just like them, they’ll find ‘em, whether they’re real or not. Neighbors will turn on neighbors. People will become suspicious of their children’s teachers. Constituents will lose trust in their leadership, and the entire civilization will crumble to dust. In my day, some conspiracy theorists believed that the government was run by lizard people. They once tried to attack a military base, convinced that aliens were being housed there. Imagine how bad it would get if this kind of stuff were true!”

Angela sighed. “You’re right. This situation requires finesse and tact. I don’t know if we’re up for the job. It puts us in an awkward situation too. We’re invaders, from another universe. What makes our team different? Why should they trust us?”

“There’s another option, but it will be neither safe nor easy. I got the idea just as Olimpia was rescuing us from the kasma. Perhaps the only way to protect this Earth is to seal it up tight. Now more than ever, we would have to return to where we came from.” If the answer was in Salmonverse or Fort Underhill, then they needed to get back to find it, not only because that was their home. Their enemy would want something in return—probably their deaths—but there was no reason to fret over it now. Priorities.

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Expelled: Explicated (Part II)

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At first, the three of them did nothing. They stopped working, and froze, not sure whether someone really was outside of the tent, or if they were hallucinating. This planet was uninhabitable to humans, but that might not be true of any native species. No, that shouldn’t matter. It wasn’t just that the composition of the air was incompatible to human lungs. The very thin atmosphere was almost exclusively composed of carbon dioxide. It wasn’t completely impossible for life to evolve on such a world, though it wasn’t probable. There was another knock. Even if aliens did evolve, there was something very human about the practice of knocking on a door to gain someone’s attention, which might not translate very well to an alien race. An evolved alien on a carbon dioxide world was even less likely at any rate.

The tent began to bulge inward. “Hello,” came a voice through the fabric. He sounded very curious, as if he wasn’t sure whether anyone was in here.

“How is he talking?” Airlock Karen questioned, more fearful than the others. Rita was a trained professional, and Elder knew who was out there.

“Conduction,” Elder explained vaguely. “Can you hear us?” he cried out.

“Oh, yes.” The blackmailer was still being creepily cheerful as if all this was very reasonable and to be expected.

“You got what you wanted...” Elder said, pausing for a moment. “We’re here. What do you want?”

“I want you,” the blackmailer replied.

“You want me for what?”

“Haha, sorry. I lifted my helmet from the tent, forgetting that you can’t hear me without it. I want you...to do whatever you must to survive. I’ll be doing the same a few hundred meters away. Once you adapt well enough to travel from your tent, come find me. We won’t speak again until then.”

“This is a game to you?” Rita figured.

“More like a test, Lieutenant. I need to know what you’re made of. How many of you will last? Which ones? I’m building something here. Well not here, and not now, but I will, or rather, I will have. You just have to decide how badly you want to be a part of that. Come talk to me when you know, and when you can.”

“What are the odds?” Elder asked him. “What are the odds that we pass your test, and make it all the way to your settlement?”

He laughed again, and waited to respond. “A hundred percent.” They could see the bulge from his helmet disappear as he began to walk away.

“Who the hell was that?” Karen asked.

“I still don’t know, but I intend to find out.” Elder looked at the ladies. “But not right now. Our priorities haven’t changed. Food and water. If you’ve ever cared about anything else in your life, pretend that they don’t exist. From now on, the only things that matter are the four majors: air, shelter, water, and food, in that order.”

They went on with their business. Airlock Karen—who requested to be called Debra instead—even pitched in, helping to assemble the dayfruit growers to double their productivity. Meanwhile, Elder programmed the genetic makeup of the fruit, optimizing for geoponics rather than hydroponics. The kit that he had curated wouldn’t have enough water for all three of them if they had to use too much of it for food production. There was another option that he was considering. The blackmailer obviously had his own plan for survival, and was probably sitting pretty in another dimension, or something. He knew that this was all going to happen, and wanted it to, so he was fully prepared. There was enough juice for Elder to teleport to the blackmailer’s location, but he needed to know exactly where that was, and what he was getting into. If there was any form of teleportation resistance technology, it could spell Elder’s death. So maybe there was a fifth priority in addition to the major four: information.

There would be a month’s worth of meal bars for one person, but even if there was enough for everyone, they wanted to save them for an emergency. A worse emergency, that was. They planned on rationing over the course of the next several days, but stop after that to focus on the dayfruit. They would only return to the bars if something went wrong, and they had no choice. They had to be so careful with every move they made. One little mistake could lead to their doom, and they wouldn’t even necessarily see it coming. Spilling a cup of water could be devastating, so everything sensitive like that would be going in the collapsible sink to protect it from their shuffling around. It may sound like a small gesture, but carelessness was a consequence of hunger, thirst, and isolation. They had to be extra afraid of mistakes.

Once the four majors were set or in motion, Elder was able to focus on that fifth priority. He had recorded the conversation with his blackmailer, and commanded his tablet to find a match from the Extremus manifest. Since the comparative sample was muffled through the tent, the AI came up with a couple dozen possible matches. But Elder had heard the man’s voice during their first and only face-to-face meeting in his lab. He would recognize it if he concentrated. He stuck the earbuds in, and prepared to narrow down the list when he noticed Debra saying something. He couldn’t hear a single thing with these things in, so he had to take them out again right away. “Sorry, what?”

“Do we get to listen to your music too, or not?” she repeated.

“It’s not music,” Elder explained.

“What is it?” Rita asked.

He didn’t want to tell them. “It’s an essay from an Earthan science journal about chromatin remodeling and epigenomic reprogramming for enhanced nutritional yield in solanum mirabilis with an emphasis on the optimization of the upregulation of nutrient preservation for extended unrefrigerated life terms in suboptimal conditions, vis-à-vis our current conditions in a hostile environment with little to no consumable resource replenishment options. Are you interested?”

They stared at him until Rita said, “oh. I already read that. It’s pretty good, albeit a bit rudimentary,” she joked.

Elder smirked, and took out his handheld device. He swiped it over to guest mode, and tossed it to them. “All the best music is on there, but only from the late 21st century, and earlier. I prefer the classics.” The masses appeased, he put his buds back in, and started to focus on the voice samples. He was a bit distracted when he noticed that the girls chose to watch something instead of listening, projecting the film on the wall. It was The Martian, of all movies. Their eyes did not betray an acknowledgement of the irony. Or maybe they were just studying it for good ideas.

Fifteen minutes later, Matt Damon was in the middle of recording his first message while stranded alone on Mars. Elder was pretty sure that he found the right voice from the eleventh sample, but he needed to listen to the others to eliminate them. “Bronach Oaksent,” he couldn’t help but say out loud after listening to the sample for the fourth time, as well as one more listen of the very similar eighteenth sample.”

“Is that a band, errr...?” Debra asked him.

The cat was out of the bag now, Elder had to come clean. “That’s who did this to us. That’s who’s outside the tent.”

“You’re telling me that’s the name of a human being?” Debra pressed.

“Apparently, so.” Elder was still chilled from the voice sample itself, the words of which reiterated his belief that he had found the right suspect. I don’t care what happens to this ship in the end. Your definition of extreme is limited to space, when you should be more motivated by time. That’s where all the real power lies. Bronach wanted Elder to build that time machine, so he could go back and do something nefarious with it. Elder’s initial thought was to kill himself to prevent that from being possible, but in many years, he had come across multiple chances to sacrifice himself for the greater good, and he had never made that choice before. That was one reason he was in this mess in the first place.

“Who is he?” Rita asked. “I don’t recognize the name.”

Elder looked back down at the profile he had pulled up. “He’s no one. No family, no community ties, no job, low contribution score.”

“Maybe he altered his own records,” Debra offered. “He’s smart enough.”

“How would you know how smart he is?” Rita asked her.

“Well, he pulled this off, didn’t he?”

Elder regarded her with mild disgust, split evenly between Debra herself, and Bronach. “No higher education. He was homeschooled.”

Rita flinched. “Oh.”

“Oh? Oh, what?”

Now she was the one with a secret that she wanted to keep. But there were four people in the entire world. If she couldn’t tell them, she couldn’t tell anyone. “His records were probably erased, but not by him. The homeschool label is an old spycraft tactic. It’s to prevent anyone from looking deeper into someone’s past. When you’re homeschooled, there are no records, so snoopers won’t be surprised when they don’t find anything.”

“He’s a spy?” Debra asked.

“Not necessarily,” Rita answered. “Some people actually are indeed homeschooled. But given our present circumstances, it’s a safe bet that he’s been highly trained in espionage and manipulation techniques.”

“He talks in probabilities,” Elder revealed. “This suggests that he’s highly calculating.”

“So, I’m right,” Debra figured. “He’s smart.”

“You were right,” Elder admitted, not upset about validating her, but worried about what she was right about. What was Bronach planning, and what did these two have to do with it? A time machine on its own wasn’t too terribly dangerous all the way out here. They were over a thousand light years from the stellar neighborhood, which would limit his ability to alter the past. He would need other technologies, like a reframe engine, or maybe just stasis. If he wanted to change history, coming all the way out here was a hard way to go about it. There was a reason that he got on Extremus, and a reason that he got off when he did. None of this was random, and they couldn’t trust their intuitions. This profile didn’t give them enough information about who they were dealing with. Maybe Elder really should kill himself. But where would that leave Rita and Debra?

Rita shut the movie off, seemingly no longer in the mood. She tapped on the device until some classical music started to play for them all to hear. She carefully lowered the volume. “The carbon scrubber is functioning optimally, right?

“It is,” Elder replied.

“Air, check. The tent is sealed up properly, no leaks?”

“No leaks.”

“Shelter,” Debra jumped in.

“The toilet’s ready to go,” Rita went on.

“Yes. Water. Gross water.”

“Lastly, the dayfruit seeds are growing.”

“Slowly, yes,” Elder confirmed.

“Food,” they chanted roughly simultaneously.

“We’ve had a hard day. Turn your screen off. Let’s just go to sleep.”

“We’ve not even talked about that,” Elder said, realizing now that the lower priority issues were still issues. “The sleeping bag only fits one person. I mean, I guess two people could fit if they were willing to snuggle...”

Rita smiled. “I’m a Lieutenant, remember? I can sleep anywhere, anyhow. You too share the bag; sleep back to back, I would recommend. I’ll be fine.”

“I sleep in the buff,” Debra divulged. “I just don’t feel comfortable any other way.”

“Then use the clothes that you’re not wearing as a pillow,” Elder suggested. We’ll use the actual pillow as a barrier between us.”

“Okay.” She was a difficult person, but not without the capacity for humility. Even Karens had people who loved them, and those people weren’t insane.

“We should be conserving power anyway, so sleep is a good idea, and it’s healthier to do it when it’s cooler.” He reached over to the microfusion reactor to cycle down the isofeed. A reactor shouldn’t ever be turned off completely, but he could limit the amount of output, including the waste heat, which was their main source of warmth here. The lights dimmed, and Rita turned off the music. “No, as long as you two are fine with it, keep the music on. It’s good for you, and don’t worry about the power.”

“I’m fine with it,” Debra said.

They continued to listen to Clair de Lune as they quietly got ready for bed. Elder removed most of his clothes too, but not everything. He just needed his own shirt and pants for a pillow. Rita crawled over to the other side of the tent to curl up into the fetal position. Debra squirmed a lot, probably because she was used to having all the space of a full-sized bed, but she didn’t complain, so that was nice. He had extra melatonin sleep masks, but he didn’t want to offer her one, and have her be offended. It was time that they started to learn how to live together, because they were going to be stuck with each other for a long time. He made a mental note to offer one to the both of them tomorrow, framing it as if he were remembering that he should have worn one himself. Yeah, that should work. For now, they would all just have to figure it out on their own.

Over the course of the next week, they developed a routine. They had nothing better to do besides continue to survive, so they shared stories from their pasts. Elder didn’t tell them why he was on the run, but he did discuss his life on Earth centuries ago. They were receptive and nonjudgmental. But they were still going a little crazy. They needed to find a way to spend some time apart. The bathroom situation was uncomfortable at best.

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