Microstory 2518: Daily Coordinator

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I am in charge of patient experience. The Appointment Coordinator is technically my superior, but she doesn’t have time to manage our department’s staff, so that falls to me. While the automated system is great for setting up appointment windows, what it can’t do is make sure that people actually show up for their appointment, or more importantly, don’t show up outside of their window. When your application is approved, you’re assigned a two-hour window on a particular day. If you can’t make it, you need to pull your application, and try again. It may sound like it helps us for people to show less urgency, but it overcomplicates the process. Just come when it’s your time. If you fail to show up, your name will be flagged, and your reapplication will be a lot more complicated. Don’t. Be. Late. That’s why we have the campground, and why nearby landowners literally built new hotels to help mitigate visitorship. I have to keep track of 2,000 people every day. The greeters will check you in, and tell you where to go, which sometimes means going right back out that door if you come before your window. I have it all set up real nice. Part of the first floor is dedicated to waiting rooms, where you wait with your group of 40 to 45 other people. Yeah, that’s right, we know how to break it down. Forty-five people per room with a total of eight rooms equals a maximum of 360 people in each two-hour window. While you’re sitting there, we may call you up individually to confirm some information, such as your financial situation. We got to keep things moving, so when your room is called, you’ll all proceed to the auditorium, where you’ll watch the orientation video. Don’t ask the host any questions. That’s what my guides and queuers are for. When the video is over, depending on the timeline, you’ll either go back to your waiting room, or go ahead and get in line. People have asked why the line is so long, and why they can’t just wait in the rooms. Well, it’s because Landis averages three patients per minute, but that doesn’t mean we record exactly three every time. Some people have mobility issues, and we experience other delays. If there’s a problem with your candidate profile, you may be bumped down to another group. That all takes time, and we don’t want to waste any of it. We don’t want Landis to be sitting there with no one to heal for an extended period of time. It’s gonna be hard, waiting through all of this, but it is absolutely worth it, because when you’re done, you’ll probably feel better than you ever have in your whole life. If everything goes smoothly, we might get the full 2,160 patients, but we usually don’t, and for that, we apologize. You will not miss out on your healing, though, so don’t fret. Any remainders at the end of the day will end up in Group One for the next day, and we might ask you to come in earlier than normal operating hours to make up for it. I know, I sound really blunt, and maybe a little aggressive, but this job is not easy, and if I take the time to be too polite and nice, we get behind schedule, and I can’t allow that.

Microstory 2517: Campground Manager

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Even though it’s not my department, I do receive daily updates from the hotel about how they’re faring in there. I know how many people got in line, and how many people were cured. Those numbers are usually quite close together, with only a handful of people who ever have to wait until the next day. They’re obviously marked as such, and prioritized in the morning. Delays are built into the schedule, but it’s never perfect. In fact, if it ever gets to be too much, Landis will work extra hours to make up for it. That’s just the kind of guy he is. I’ve never met him. We’re worlds apart. I’m one of the few staff members who does not have a room in the building, and in my case, it’s a necessity. I’m on the clock 24/7, and always have to be available to the guests. People come from far and wide to get their cure. They encourage visitors to check into nearby hotels (which are still hotels, and not healing foundations). For these places, that’s just about all they do. You’re gonna have a hard time finding a room if you just wanna take a tour of the area. They’ll ask you to find somewhere close to the city. While there’s no rule against it for these unrelated facilities, there is one for the campground. We will not assign you a plot if you aren’t scheduled for a healing in the next week at the most. We understand that some people want to come early, because they’re worried about travel delays, which is why the campground exists in the first place, but we can’t have people living here for weeks on end. We certainly can’t accommodate people who just want to be ready to go while they wait for their application to be processed. I promise you, once you’re accepted, you will have plenty of time to make arrangements for travel. There is no such thing as a same-day appointment here. I hear so many requests for that. Everybody wants to be bumped up the list. First of all, I don’t have that kind of pull. I just manage the plots, and the tents for people who can’t afford their own. Secondly, everyone in the world wants to get in on this, and Landis can only see about 2,000 people per day. There are no bribes here. There are no special accommodations. Everybody’s sick, we are not going to prioritize based on need. The only fair way to do it is on a first come, first serve basis. The amount of coordination that would go into quantifying patients for triage is an unreasonable expectation to have for any organization. You would be waiting for years, just like people have done for organ transplants through conventional medicine. Is that what you want? Trust me, it’s better if you sign up, and snag an appointment a few weeks out. Application control comes from the scope of the application itself. If you just have a boo-boo on your knee, or you’re unwilling to divulge your financial situation, it’s going to slow things down. Only people who are serious about this are going to get through, which is why the 2,000 patient per day figure isn’t too much lower than the applicant per day figure—whatever that is; I don’t have those numbers. I know, I’m talking a lot about things that don’t really have anything to do with me, but that’s because my job isn’t that hard. A lot of this is self-service. We don’t provide meals, we don’t offer travel to and from. I’m mostly here to make sure the only people who try to drive through that gate are authorized, and that we have enough space for everyone. I don’t even handle security. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a lot of work, and it gets tough in the winter, but it’s pretty straight-forward, and far less stressful than it is for some of my colleagues. They may get to work inside, but I wouldn’t want to field the kind of questions they get every day.

Microstory 2516: First Coordinated Patient

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Everyone in my family calls me the guinea pig, or the first patient, but that is not entirely true. The reason Mr. Tipton was able to purchase the hotel was because of his very first patient. But even he probably wasn’t really his first. This wasn’t in the patient introduction video, but I bet Landis experimented a little bit with his abilities. You have to understand your limits, so he would have made a little burn mark on a friend’s shoulder, or had him fall from the second story. No, I dunno. I’m making stuff up. I just don’t want to go down in history as some special case. Back in the early days of this foundation, they weren’t yet a well-oiled machine. The way they have it set up now, a lot of the process is automated, and you get your little arm band, and you stand in a snaking line between the stanchions. It has to be. You got more people requesting healing per day than Landis can handle. There’s really no way to scale up this operation. When all the magic comes from one guy, you’re gonna hit a bottleneck. It wasn’t like that for me. They started out a little slow, partially because they had to figure out how they were going to organize the process, but also because people didn’t really believe it. Sure, you had one of the richest men in the country claim that he was cured, and many people believed it, but so many more figured it was a stunt. Maybe the original medical records were forged, or the post-healing ones were. Or maybe it was all a misunderstanding. There was no way to be sure. It took people like me to be brave enough to go for it without proof. I’ve always been like that, though. Life is meant to be lived; not scared of. The way it works is if you’re rich, you pay, if you’re middle-class, it’s free, and if you’re poor, they pay you. That was always the plan, but they didn’t yet have the infrastructure when I signed up. They didn’t yet have the relationships with the banks to verify a patient’s private financial situation. So for the first few months, it was all on the honor system. Of course, I am rich enough. I actually think I qualified for middle-class at the time, so I shouldn’t have paid anything, but it didn’t matter. If I wasn’t paying Breath of Life for the cure, I was paying the hospital for the treatment. At least Landis could actually fix me. There was no guarantee, since like I said, we only had evidence back then; not proof, but obviously it was worth it. Since then, I’ve been donating a little bit of money to them every month. A lot of people don’t know that. You can just support them without getting anything out of it as a secondary source of revenue for them. Everything they receive, they put back into the system to keep the place running. I won’t tell you what disease I had, because the way I look at it, it never happened. When you get breast cancer, you can go into remission, but you can’t be cured. It’s always there, and you’re always scared of it coming back. But what I had, it’s completely gone, and I was restored to perfect health, so it’s like it was never there. Naming it won’t do any good. Landis Tipton. From now on, that’s the only name you’ll ever need to remember when it comes to your health.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 8, 2521

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Leona was not happy when she found out that Miracle was going to stay in Romana’s original body. She argued that this naturally placed her on the team’s pattern, and gave her other temporal abilities that she was not really supposed to have. The problem was that it wasn’t really their choice. Body swap laws were complicated, but not too complicated. Basically, the only way they could force Miracle out of Romana’s body would be if Romana wanted it back. But even if Romana expressed such interest, she couldn’t then turn around and upgrade to her new substrate right away, just as a means to keep Miracle from the original. It would have to be a sincere wish. Since Miracle did not ask to be cast into the wrong body, her rights to that body were assumed unless someone else were to have a stronger claim to it, and a legitimate one at that. Since this was now simply where Miracle’s mind lived, it fell under my body, my choice laws, which predated even the most nascent consciousness transference technologies by decades.

After Ramses completed Romana’s upgrade, she immediately took herself off the pattern, so she could spend the next year helping Miracle control her own relationship to that pattern, and stay in real time semi-permanently. She could always decide to start time-skipping like the rest of them, but what would be the purpose of that? They didn’t know her; they weren’t friends. She didn’t seem to want to be part of the team, and they kind of had a full roster at this point. Ramses programmed his AI to look for ways to clear Miracle of her temporal manipulation properties altogether, but again, she would have to consent to any procedure that might make such changes.

During the interim year, an old frenemy reached out. Korali was aware of the team’s schedule, but timekeeping was different in the Goldilocks Corridor. It was hard to keep track of precisely when the team was available, and when they weren’t. So they spoke with Team Kadiar at first. “She wants a meeting?” Leona questioned.

“She and the other claimants, which is what they are calling each other, all want a meeting with us.”

“They haven’t killed each other yet?” Marie asked.

“They can’t really die,” Romana reasoned. “There have been a ton of loss on all sides, which the crew of the Vellani Ambassador have been trying to put a stop to, but...they don’t have any support.”

“They don’t have support from who?”

Dubravka stepped forward. “Let’s break this down. You got three claimants, which are the two versions of the Oaksent, and Korali. On the other side, you have the internal resistance, headed by the inhabitants of the penal colony, Ex-666, which they now call Revolumus. I know, not very clever, but they’re trying to tie themselves to the Extremus mission. That brings me to the fifth opposing faction, which is composed of allies from Verdemus, headed by the Anatol Klugman warship. The sixth and final faction are the refugees, and us on the Ambassador who try to rescue them. Revolumus and Verdemus don’t really support our efforts. They don’t exactly want war, but they don’t think there’s any choice.”

“That sounds like a lot,” Mateo admitted, “but what does it have to do with us? The whole reason I had you transport the old Bronach there was so he could deal with it, and we could wipe our hands clean. The situation is far too complicated for a small group of people who only exist one day out of the year to make any meaningful impact.”

“You are the only people they all like,” Kivi explained.

“Why would they like us?” Mateo questioned. “I mean, Korali, I guess. But we’ve grown apart. And the other guys? Sure, I saved one Oaksent from death, but he doesn’t seem like the grateful type. The other version of him definitely isn’t. He keeps trying to kill us, and we keep almost killing him.”

“He respects you,” Dubra clarified. “You never stop fighting to fix things, which speaks to him. Apparently, that’s how this whole thing started. That’s why he founded the Exin Empire in the first place, to fight for his rights.”

“We don’t fight for our rights,” Olimpia contended. “We fight for others. He doesn’t see the difference?”

“I don’t think he understands the concept of helping people,” Kivi replied.

“Look, if you don’t do this,” Dubra went on, “we’ll go back and let ‘em know to take care of their own shit. We’re just the messengers. Hrockas is already aware that the location of Castlebourne is out there, and is working on his own arrangements. Our refugees will be safe, and we will keep gathering more as long as there are more to gather. But. I would love it if the violence stopped. It would make my job easier.”

“Debatable,” Mirage interjected. She was noncorporeal, but visible to them via holographic projection. She was pretending to be sitting on the counter, one of her legs propped up on the backrest of an empty chair.

“What’s that?” Leona asked.

“Ignore her,” Dubra requested.

“Go on with what you were saying,” Leona encouraged Mirage.

“There’s no such thing as a peacetime refugee. They ask us to save them because there’s something to save them from. If you negotiate a ceasefire—which, let’s face it, is as close as you’re gonna get to peace—people won’t feel any impulse to escape anymore.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” Dubra spat.

“Yes,” Mirage said, raising her voice a little, and hopping off the counter. “The Exin Empire is corrupt. The body can’t be saved. You can’t even save the limbs. The best you can do is save the individual cells, and bring them here.”

“That metaphor doesn’t make any sense,” Dubra argued. “Shut up.”

“What does Alt!Ramses say about this?” Mateo asked. “Is he still in control of what Old!Bronach does?”

“He goes by Tok’ra now,” Kivi divulges.

“Like as a first name? It’s a person’s name?” Mateo asked.

“It’s his only name. It’s a mononym.”

“He does love that franchise,” Leona admitted. “He said that he appreciated how much Egyptian culture and history played into it.”

“Where is the other Ramses?” Marie asked, looking around.

“He’s working on what he calls the Miracle Cure,” Leona answered cryptically. It wasn’t really their place to tell the crew of the VA about the Miracle Brighton issue.

There was a pause in the conversation.

“So, what do you say? Will you come back with us?” Dubra offered. Mirage was technically the captain of the ship, but Dubravka had full decision-making power over the missions, and she was apparently really adamant about that.

“Does it have to be today?” Leona asked her.

“If you go today, you’ll be waiting until tomorrow,” Mirage jumped back in. “They’ll all wanna make you sweat.”

Leona looked back to Dubra, who closed her eyes, nodded slightly, and shrugged even slightlier. “That tactic is not really gonna work on us. My problem is that we don’t have enough information. We’ve received piecemeal updates from you, but if we go back there, we need a more comprehensive report.”

“I can write one up for you in minutes,” Mirage volunteered.

“No, you won’t, Dubra insisted. “You’ll add too much bias. We already have reports,” she said to Leona. “The resistance fighters have their own form of central archives, and the AK tracks everything it does, and everything it sees. I can have an unbiased AI compile the information into something more digestible.”

“I can do that.” Ramses was standing in the doorway. “I’ve been listening this whole time. I trust Thistle. Feed him all your information, and he’ll take it from there.”

“So are you all coming today, or waiting?” Dubra asked again.

“We’ll catch up with you,” Ramses told her.

“That’s a complication,” Dubra began. “You’re not allowed to come. Well, you are allowed to be nearby, but they won’t talk to anyone on Team Matic if you’re involved. They see it as an unfair advantage, since an alternate version of you is on Old!Bronach’s side.”

“I don’t talk to that guy,” Ramses explained. “Tok’ra, you say?”

“It doesn’t matter what the truth is,” Mirage said. “It’s what they think.”

“How’s your work coming along?” Leona asked Ramses.

“It can wait,” Ramses claimed.

“Why don’t you stay and keep working on it?” Leona suggested. It was probably the smart move anyway, to keep someone on the outside, protected. They couldn’t do it all the time, since they were supposed to be a team, but they would still have him there, just in a different form. They wondered what he was like now. Tok’ra had been without them for years now, but he surely wouldn’t have changed too terribly much.

“I’ll stay here too,” Olimpia proposed. “I don’t care to be around any version of the Oaksent. I tried to kill him once, so...”

“So did Ram,” Mateo reminded them. “This is the right call. ‘Kay, buddy?”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” Ramses didn’t like being sidelined, but he understood.

Marie hung back too. It was prudent to not leave one or two people stranded somewhere without a full tandem sling drive array. The rest of them accepted the Vellani Ambassador’s invitation to transport them to the Corridor, since it left their tandem slingdrives at full capacity. The VA had to go back there anyway.

They were now orbiting an Earth-like planet. From this viewpoint, there appeared to be more land and less water on the surface, but that was otherwise unremarkable. What they focused mostly on was the atmosphere, which shone brighter. An aurora wrapped itself all around the world, dancing with brilliant shades of turquoise and magenta.

“Don’t try to teleport down there,” Dubra warned. “This world is a fortress, which is why it’s a perfect neutral planet. Argon is extremely rich in the crust, and makes up about 60% of the atmosphere. It’s safe to breathe, especially you with your advanced substrates. The locals use breathing apparatuses to pull in oxygen, and raise the pitch of their voice to normal standards, but they don’t require them, so you will meet people who move slowly, and talk deeply.

“I don’t understand,” Mateo said.

“Argon is what we use in plasma shields,” Leona said. “They got domes down there?”

“They got domes,” Dubra confirmed. “Transparent ones, though, unlike Castlebourne. They have a real sky, so they never felt the need to fake it with holograms.”

“As it turns out, they’ve been in revolt and independent for a long time,” Kivi went on. “They never fought back, or tried to recruit. They just said, leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone. Let us develop and advance however we see fit, and we’ll continue to ship refined plasma to you, but at our discretion. Since the war began, they stopped shipping anything at all, but they did agree to not provide plasma to their enemies either, so there’s that.”

Leona chuckles quietly. “Argon is not a rare element. Sure, I bet it was convenient to have a single, highly concentrated source of the stuff, but they never needed this particular planet to satisfy their needs. I bet they harvest it from lots of other worlds, and that they weren’t too butthurt to let this one go.”

“How do we get down there?” Mateo asked.

“We’ll take The Puff!” Kivi replied excitedly. She ran off.

Dubra ran after her. “You’re not flying it!”

“Oh, yes, I am!” Kivi insisted.

The team followed them to the shuttle bay. They obviously knew this was here the whole time, but as teleporters, never had any use for it. The Puff looked mostly like a smaller version of the Vellani Ambassador. It was purple, sleek, and pretty. “Wait, where’s The Tammy?” Leona asked when she noticed the empty second docking bay.

“It’s...being borrowed,” Dubra replied, uncomfortably like it was a lie. Had it been stolen, or something?

Leona decided not to press for more answers. They climbed into the shuttle, and flew off down to the surface while Mirage stayed alone in orbit. Where was Tertius? They also decided to ask probing questions about that either. After receiving permission, they flew through the entry barrier of the visitor dome, and landed on the pad. The welcome party consisted of only one person. It was presumably this planet’s variation of Vitalie Crawville.

“She’s why they revolted,” Dubra explained without prompting. “They found her stasis pod, managed to break her out, and kind of elected her as their leader. Some may even worship her. I forgot to tell you,” she added in a more hushed voice, “they call this planet Vitalemus.”

“Will she see us as friends?” Angela asked. “I’m getting the impression that this secession happened quite a long time ago.”

“Oh, yes, it was centuries ago,” Dubra responded. “She is a little bit different than the other World Caretakers. A little bit more jaded, maybe? Serious. Hard to read. You should be fine, though.”

They stepped out of the shuttle, and approached Vitalie. She did look quite serious. Her face wasn’t sporting a frown, but it was still a little jarring when it suddenly turned into a smile. She reached out and took Leona in an embrace. “Oh, how I’ve missed you, old friend. Come quick, come quick.” She turned, and started walking away. “Let’s fuck some shit up.”

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Extremus: Year 109

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It’s the Halfway Celebration Extravaganza! Today is July 17, 2378. It’s been exactly 108 years since the TGS Extremus left port in the Gatewood Collective. Since then, while traveling at reframe speeds, they have covered 76,367 light years. Due to their unscheduled detour into the void, they’re not quite that far away from their starting point, but it doesn’t matter. They’re still well on their way to their new home. There is currently no one left on this ship who was alive when it launched, and no one here will likely still be around when it lands, but this day isn’t about the departers, or the arrivers, it’s about the middlers. This day is about everyone here right now. It’s a grand accomplishment, and they should all be proud of themselves. It hasn’t been easy. Politics, external threats, cabin fever. Time travel, spies, betrayals. Uncertainty, purposelessness, loss, and love. They’ve been through a lot, but they pushed through it, and this hunk of metal is still hurling through space. Not once have they stopped. Not once have they tried to turn around. They’re flying farther and further than ever, into the unknown. And everything they just did, they have to do one more time. Say it louder.

Tinaya lands on the bed. She’s still conscious, but her eyes are closed, and she’s not feeling well. She lies there for a moment, focusing on her breathing. “Thistle, how did I get here?”

“You were about to collapse to the floor,” Thistle replies. “I spirited you away before you could break a hip.”

“Did anyone see?” she asks.

“No. They didn’t even see you disappear. Perfect timing.”

“No need to boast about it.”

“I meant you. You passed out right when no one was looking. Of course, they would have realized it if you had hit the floor, so I suppose my timing was pretty spectacular too, thanks for noticing.”

“Well, thank you. I think I’m fine to go back.” She stands and tries to activate her teleporter, but it doesn’t work. “Thistle.”

“You’re grounded, missy. You’re lucky I didn’t take you right to the infirmary.”

While all the corrupted medical personnel who were a part of the forced pregnancy scandal have long been replaced, Tinaya has become gun-shy to visit the infirmary. She knows that she’s gonna need it. She’s an old woman. But not tonight. Any night but tonight. “I have to get back to the party. They’re expecting me.”

“I’ve taken care of that.”

“How?”

“I’ve written an algorithm, which projects a hologram of you at strategic locations for strategic people at strategic times. Everyone who sees you will think you’re busy talking to someone else.”

“That sounds like a recipe for disaster. What happens when someone tries to walk up and interrupt us, or pat me on my back?”

“Impossible,” he claims. “You’re not a single hologram that everyone looking in the right direction can see. Each person who sees it sees it separately, as an image that is projected directly onto their eyeballs. I control when they see it, and how far away they are when they do, as well as how your avatar moves.”

Tinaya is vexed. She’s never heard of that before. It’s not some futuristic thing that she can’t comprehend, but she just hasn’t heard of it. “What?”

“Individualized holograms.”

“Who would install such a thing, and why? It seems like the only use for it would be to deceive people, like you’re doing right now.”

“It has other use cases. You can receive personalized alerts, and sensitive information. It can help you train to perform maintenance, or other tasks, without interfering with other people seeing their own AR.”

“Well, why have I never seen anything like that before? Or have I, and I didn’t know it.”

“You people really took to your watches and armbands, the protocols were just never implemented. The tech is there, though. Every hologram you see is coming from those projectors, but widened for general viewing.”

She lies back down on the bed. “Okay.” She doesn’t know how she feels about this. She was really tired before she collapsed. It’s not like it was a sudden fainting with no warning. It’s getting harder to keep up with everyone these days. Even Lataran is too active for her sometimes, but Tinaya has been hiding the struggle. “What about sound?”

“They can’t hear you in the crowd anyway, but the projectors include photoacoustic emitters too, if they’re ever needed.”

“How come you never show up as a hologram?”

“I do. Some people ask for it. They ask me to look like some contrived image of myself, or a cat, or even themselves. You’ve simply never requested it.”

Tinaya sits up quickly. “Wait. Silveon and Arqut.”

“I used those photoacoustic emitters I was just talking about, and informed them of the situation. They’re sticking around to make sure the holos are working, and then I believe they’ll slip out to check on you. I might make holos of them as well.”

“I’ve decided that this was helpful, Thistle, but I would really like you not to do this often. I say it like that, because I don’t want to make a blanket statement that you shouldn’t do it ever, but it should only be for extreme circumstances. I can’t divulge my health problems until I know who I can trust, but this isn’t gonna be a regular thing.”

“I understand.”

Tinaya lay back down on the bed and fell asleep. This is sort of the unwritten, unofficial reason why admirals are only advisors, and no longer commanders. After 24 years of hard work as a captain, she’s mainly supposed to rest. Well, she didn’t work a full shift, but she was pretty busy before that. And she definitely needs to rest tonight. Tomorrow could be even worse. It’s all downhill from here. She isn’t sure if she’s going to live as long as her son claims that she will. His information is coming from a different timeline. Nothing is certain.

Arqut is sleeping next to her when she wakes up the next morning. She nudges him awake. “Report.”

He groans, only half awake. “We’re taking you to see a doctor on Verdemus tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, or today?” Tinaya questions. “It’s six o’clock on the eighteenth.”

“Today,” he clarifies while yawning.

“I have a better solution,” Thistle interjects. “One that doesn’t require any extensive travel, or placing trust in anyone besides me.”

There is not a whole lot of automation on this ship. When the ancestors left the stellar neighborhood, technology had advanced far past the need for any human crew. There was talk back then of not having any captains or engineers, or anything. Everyone would be a passenger, possibly as part of the internal government. In the end, of course, it was decided that it was more important to let people have purpose than to go the easy route. There are limits to this philosophy, however, and the line separating human labor from automation lies somewhere before waste management.

There are different kinds of waste. Some of it isn’t waste at all, but recyclable material, but whatever it is, if it was once used and has since been discarded, it ends up in this sector to be processed accordingly. No one comes down here. No one needs to be here, and no one wants to either. “Why doesn’t it smell?” Silveon asks. “I would expect it to smell.”

For the first time ever, Tinaya is seeing Thistle as a hologram. He’s leading them through a maze. This is a restricted travel area, or people might use it for nefarious or inappropriate dealings, so no teleportation. “I control for the smell,” he explains.

“Why bother?” Silveon presses. “If no one comes here, what does it matter?”

“I’m here,” Thistle says.

“Right.”

“I can smell,” Thistle goes on.

“Why would you be able to smell? Why would you need that?”

“There are many uses for smell, which is why humans and animals alike evolved their own olfaction. My artificial odor sensors can detect individual health issues, substance leaks, food spoilage. I mask the scent in this area, because I find it just as unpleasant as you, if not more.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I’m grateful for it now,” Silveon says.

“You’re here,” Thistle reveals. “I can give you the code for the door, but I can’t open it myself. It’s deliberately manual. They didn’t want anyone to stumble upon it. Just type in zero-nine-three-six-one-four-seven-five-two-eight-zero.”

Arqut handles the code.

“What is the significance of that number?” Silveon asks.

Thistle shrugs. “It’s long.”

Arqut pulls the door open. Lights flicker on, presumably responding to their motion, rather than a sophisticated AI sensor array. In the middle of the floor is something that is not supposed to be on this ship. It was banned because of how it could lead to extreme longevity. They call it a medpod, and it’s very common on Earth, and its neighbors. It can diagnose nearly anything, and treat it too. It has a distinct look against other types of pods due to its uncomparable dimensional specifications. “Who put this here?”

“Admiral Thatch did. He never used it. No one else has either. To tell you the truth, I think he forgot about it. He didn’t even write it down. I only found it because I needed to familiarize myself with the area. There aren’t even hologram projectors in there. You’ll have to go in and operate it on your own.”

“How did you know what was in there if you can’t physically open doors? How did you know the code if he never told anyone about it?” Tinaya struggles to ask him. Sleeping all night didn’t help much. She grew tired again as soon as she stepped out of bed. She would be sitting in a wheelchair right now if doing so wouldn’t be like holding a neon sign over her head, advertising how frail she’s become.

“He wrote down the code,” Thistle clarifies. “He didn’t say what it was for, so this was just a guess, but it was a good one given that all buttons on the keypad have oil fingerprints on them. I knew what was in here because I can hear it. When isolated from a grid, medpods are often powered by a fuel cell, and the type that fits this design hums at a unique frequency. It’s unambiguous to me.”

They all just stand there in the doorway. The boys don’t want to make this decision for Tinaya, but she doesn’t want to make a decision that they don’t agree with.

“I actually can’t see it from here,” Thistle continues. “My closest sensor doesn’t have the right angle. So I’m assuming that it is indeed a medpod. I don’t know exactly which model it is, but they’re all pretty user-friendly. One feature they have in common is that you have to be in it to use it. It doesn’t work from out here.”

“Yeah, okay, I got this,” Tinaya says, determined. She strides into the room, and taps on the interface screen to see what it does. “It wants me to get fully undressed,” she says after reading the initialization instructions.

“I’ll stay out here and keep watch,” Silveon volunteers. Obviously, Thistle is far better at keeping watch than a single human with only two eyes could ever be, but those two eyes don’t need to see what’s going on in this room.

“Let me help you, dear,” Arqut says.

“There should be a little compartment under the foot of the table,” Thistle says from the hallway, “where you can place her clothes. It will test for contamination, decontaminate them if possible, destroy them if not, or just clean them for you if they’re medically insignificant.”

“Found it,” Arqut called back.

“Oo, it’s cold,” Tinaya says after climbing in.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Thistle contends. “Activate the warming nozzles.”

“How do I do that?” Arqut asks.

“Try asking the computer with your voice. Again, I can’t see the model.”

Arqut taps on the microphone. “Activate warming nozzles.”

“Oh,” Tinaya says, shivering. “Thank you.”

“Beginning broad scope diagnosis,” a female voice from the pod says. They expect to have to wait a while as it processes the data, but it quickly comes to a conclusion. “Diagnosis: severe orthostatic hypotension.”

“Low blood pressure,” Thistle says. “That’s all it’s giving you? I knew that. I can see that myself. We wanna know why.”

“It has a little tree sort of icon,” Arqut begins to say.

“Next to the hypotension diagnosis? Yeah, tap that. It should start looking for causes.”

Longer wait this time. “Uhhhhhhhhhhh...” Arqut says as he’s looking at the screen again.

“What?” Thistle presses.

“Now it’s asking for a secondary profile? Preferably someone younger, or someone who has been living in the environment for a shorter period of time.”

“That’s interesting,” Thistle decides. “It wants a comparative assessment. It wants to see if there’s something different about how you live—if this is a chronic issue that’s only now had consequences.”

“So...we should do it?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m a few years younger,” Arqut says.

“You’ve actually been on this ship longer than her,” Thistle reminds them. “It obviously needs to be Silveon, who is barely an adult.”

Silveon waits while Arqut helps mama get her clothes back on, and carries her over to a couch against the wall. Silveon comes in and climbs into the pod for his own diagnosis. More waiting.

“Unusual neural activity detected.”

“Bypass that,” Thistle instructs. “It doesn’t understand that he’s a time traveler, but it sees the disconnect between an old mind in a young body, so it thinks there’s either an imaging error, or a mapping error.”

“Bypassing...” Arqut announces. Wait a little more. “Diagnosis: optimal condition. Primary profile...unstable gravity variations.”

“Oh my God, of course,” Thistle says, smacking his avatar in the forehead. “She was born here, but spent time on Verdemus before returning. She predominantly lives under human-optimal gravity, which is slightly lower than Earth’s, but Verdemus has a little bit higher surface gravity. Space-farers experience fluctuations all the time, but they have gravity gum, nanites, and other treatments, which are non-existent, or even banned, on Extremus.”

“Should I tap on prognosis?” Arqut asks him.

“I know the prognosis. She’ll live in pain the rest of her life unless she undergoes treatment, which is so easy. It’s just gravity therapy. We have everything we need here to help her.”

Thistle was right that gravity therapy helped Tinaya feel a lot better in her daily life. It didn’t make her young again, but it started to be a hell of a lot easier for her to stand. Unfortunately, her experience would prove to be a warning, rather than a fluke. It wasn’t just her time on Verdemus. Everyone on the ship turns out to be at risk. There’s something seriously wrong with the artificial gravity.

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Microstory 2515: Appointment Coordinator

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Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3

Hello. I have been the Appointment Coordinator here for about two years. Before that, I was the Assistant Appointment Coordinator, which is a position that is no longer offered at the Foundation. Don’t worry, no one was fired. My boss, who had this job before me, had to move with his family to a different part of the country. His son secured a job working at a prestigious university, and the family wanted to stay together, even though the son is obviously fully an adult now. We’re still friends, and stay in contact. There is a reason why my previous job wasn’t backfilled, and it’s because it’s no longer necessary. Over time, we’ve incorporated more and more technology—specifically artificial intelligence—into our operating procedures. We are nowhere near a place where the application process is automated, but I no longer get a look at most appointments. I predominantly handle what we call Appeals. When you apply to get a healing from Landis, the system goes through a number of checks. First, it needs to confirm your identity, which you do either with a credit card, or facial recognition. You have to upload your medical records to make sure that you legitimately have a condition that even qualifies for healing. The system has to handshake a number of various medical databases to confirm this legitimacy. If we’re not partnered with your provider, you will have to upload your documents to them instead. We don’t need your entire life’s story. We don’t need to know every time you went in for a broken arm. We just need to know what’s wrong with you now, and what—if anything—you’ve done for it in regards to treatment so far. Similarly, you are expected to provide your financial records, and we have partnered with many financial institutions for the handshakes on that side of things too. We need to know if you’re rich, not-so-rich, or very not rich. That determines whether you pay for the procedure, or qualify for additional charity. I coordinate with other departments, like Patient Experience and Finance, to make sure everything has gone through smoothly. If everything is processed correctly, and there are no errors, the AI will find a slot for the candidate, give the patient all the necessary information, and everything will be ready to go. I only need to step in when an applicant is not only rejected, but also appeals this decision. We have an automated system for them to log their appeal too, but a human has to see all of that, so they can make a decision on the matter. I am that human. I look through every single appeal, and reach out to the applicant as necessary, as well as their associated institutions. I am not at liberty to divulge what percentage of applications are rejected, but if you think about it, I’m only one person. There is only so much time in a day, and I can only do so much with that time. Most rejections come from fraudulent claims, which the computer almost always catches appropriately. If I’m looking at it, it’s probably because the fraudster is still hoping to complete whatever scam they’re going for. I also can’t tell you how many appeals overturn the original decision, but...it’s very rare. It’s really only when there’s some missing data in the application that the computer couldn’t catch, because it doesn’t know what it wasn’t told. When this happens, I submit a reapplication, and it goes back through the automated system, but it’s flagged for me so I can keep an eye on the progress. In case it runs into another issue, it holds priority, and doesn’t end up at the bottom of the appeals list again. That’s just a little bit about what I do here. It’s a lot, but I absolutely love it.

Microstory 2514: Staff Supervisor

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Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3

I was one of the first people who Landis and the Director hired after all the contract work retrofitting the hotel was finished. He figured, if you’re going to start hiring people, you better find someone with experience doing that, so they can handle it for you. Prior to this job, I had eight years under my belt working in Staff Services at various organizations. I wouldn’t have called myself the best of the best, and that’s what Landis was looking for, I think. He was working with a tight budget, so he couldn’t waste all his seed money on someone who would demand mid-six figures. Don’t get me wrong, I knew what I was doing. He gave me a list of positions he thought that we would need to work the Foundation, I added to it, we collaborated, and I worked to fill out the staff. Unlike a lot of other startups, we kind of needed a full staff right away. We couldn’t just start with a few people, and grow our business gradually. As soon as the public even caught a wisp of a hint that there might be someone in Kansas who could possibly even plausibly come anywhere close to alleviating their conditions even just a little bit, we knew that they would arrive here in droves for help. We needed people to coordinate all the visitors, to manage all the finances, to care for the patients, to support Landis directly, to maintain the facilities, and to reach out to the community. We’ve added a few brand new positions since then, like the Research Liaison, and everyone in the Legacy Department, but for the most part, we had a solid idea of what today would look like. Yeah, I’m just looking at our old notes, and we were pretty spot on. We did the math, and determined how many people Landis could heal in one day, which gave us the number of workers we needed to keep track of them, and we’ve not had to go too far beyond that. This is the best job I’ve ever had, because I actually feel like I’m making a difference in the world. I count myself lucky to be on board, and I think pretty much everyone here would say the same thing. It’s my job to know these things. If someone were having a problem, I would know about it.

Microstory 2513: Original Hotel Owner

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Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3

I was the man who originally owned the hotel. I was told by a reputable source that the area was primed for rapid development in the coming years, and I wanted to get in on the ground floor. I spent a great deal of money on the construction, and in fact, too much. You see, in the construction game, cutting corners and handing out bribes are common practices. I had seen it in the industry before, and I wanted nothing to do with it. I did everything by the book. It cost me a lot more, and it took me a lot longer to complete the project, but it was something that I was proud of when it was done. I was proud of myself. Unfortunately, I was not the only one trying to make it big in the area, and they were all given false information too. I’m not sure who profited from the lie, but it was quite a believable one, for we all reinforced each other’s presumptions. If someone tells you there’s a great party in the house down the street, and they tell a hundred other people the same thing, and all those people go to the party expecting there to be a lot of people there, well...they found exactly what they expected, didn’t they? So I and the other developers took each other’s presence as proof that we were doing the right thing. The problem was, the interest really wasn’t there. It was the residential sector that didn’t support the vision. No one wanted to come this far out in the middle of nowhere Kansas. A few places survived, but most of us fell apart. I needed to at least make some of my money back, and I found it. Mr. Tipton paid me $11 million for my property. It was a hell of a lot less than I put into it, but a fair price for what the area had succumbed to. What came next, no one could have predicted. Landis Tipton had a monopoly on miracle cures that actually worked. Thousands a day flocked here to benefit. Too many came, in fact, and they all needed to eat, and shop for other things. The Foundation revitalized the area, and put some of my compatriots back in the black. He saved it, and from there, a brand new town was born. It is not mine anymore, which I find a little sad. Looking back, had I known what it would become, I might have asked to be Mr. Tipton’s landlord instead, so I could profit. But alas, the reason they raised so much capital in the beginning was because they wanted total control over their dream, and I would have been in the way of that regardless of my own prognostications. I played one small part in the journey that we have been on for the last five years, and have found a way to be satisfied with that. At least I did not stand in his way.