The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 2, 2546

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Mirage and Ramses worked closely together. They had to design something that had never existed before; an onboard bulk energy weapon. A quintessence gun. The obvious choice was to reroute all that raw power from the slingdrive to the heat shunt. They were already halfway there—the hot pocket was made to pull in energy from the drive. The only difference was that it used to only be for waste heat, and now it had channel quintessence. As per usual, Ramses developed all of the procedures to make these changes by the end of the day, and then disappeared. When they returned a year later, it was done. “It’s all done?” Ramses questioned.

“All done,” Mirage confirmed. “The original planetary-scale black hole was pushed clear of the gravity well of Castlebourne’s recently moved-in solar system, so it shouldn’t cause any more issues for them. I made the new black hole about 690 light years from here, in the intergalactic void, where no one will bother it. Just in case, however, I left a buoy nearby with a copy of Thistle on it to monitor for any traffic within the next several billion years while there still might be some organics who need a certain threshold of gravity. I figured out how to switch the gravity regulators on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida and Varkas Reflex to the new source, so both planets have returned to normal gravity. The inhabitants are starting to delocalize again, though they seem to be a little gunshy about it since they still don’t know what happened.”

Members of Team Matic exchanged looks with one another. Once again, they had been rendered obsolete. Their apparent job now was to go in, spot a problem, then find someone else to fix it for them. Looking at the math, this should have always been their modus operandi, but they had already discussed all that. Leona nodded respectfully at Romana. “Okay. You’re up. Where do we go now, Navigator?”

Romana held her finger upwards and in front of her, as if showing the way to their new destination. “We’ll go,” she began melodramatically, “inside.” She disappeared.

Ramses turned back to Mirage. “Thank you for...” He trailed off before restarting, “well, I was going to thank you for your help, but I suppose I should thank you for letting me help.”

Mirage smiled sincerely. “You’ll figure out your place in this post-Edge universe. There are still some worlds that you have not returned to in a while.”

They said their brief goodbyes before teleporting into their interdimensional habitat. They had no reason to believe that anyone in Castledome would mess with their belts, but still, before Romana could give them a real answer, Leona activated burst mode. The whole stack rapidly jumped over and over again until they were at a safe distance from all others. She then sat down at her usual place on the circular couch. “Are we just taking a break?”

They all looked at Romana. Romana looked at Ramses. “What?” he asked.

“The thing,” Romana egged him on.

“I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ramses said.

“The big thing you were working on,” Romana said, still vaguely. “I think you called it Operation Starframe?”

“Oh,” Ramses said. “That’s just an idea. I wasn’t keeping it a secret, I was just weighing the pros and cons. I’m not sold on the utility of it.”

“The utility of what?” Marie asked.

“Well, Project Stargate and Operation Starseed left Gatewood before the reframe engine was invented. Well, it had technically been invented by then, but there was only one ship, and Team Keshida didn’t integrate the technology into the modules, even though time travel could have given them that. Anyway, at this point, those modules have not yet made it even 300 light years. Operation Starframe would realize that alternative, but...I was thinking...only for us.”

“No one called it Starframe specifically,” Leona began, “but we considered that possibility at the Edge meeting. Kestral and Ishida were neutral on the proposal, but we ended up voting against it. There was only so much we were willing to give the public, and that...that was just too much. Colonization should be a controlled effort, happening gradually, so you don’t end up with a bunch of Linwood Meyers out there. Statistically, some would end up building something abhorrent on the other side of the galaxy before anyone realized it.”

“You mean like an oppressive empire run by an immortal megalomaniac?” Olimpia offered.

“Yeah, just like that,” Leona agreed. “We hadn’t heard of the Oaksent at the time, but we were worried about the possibility.” She looked back over at Ramses. “But this would be just for us? For what?”

“Exactly on that last question,” Ramses agreed. “It would be to get us around the slingdrive’s main limitation. We can only sling to where there is already an established presence. A fleet of beacons would let us go anywhere, and we would only have to wait about seven months to cover the Milky Way. But why would we do that? What would we need that for? One secret place for us, maybe, I can see there being a benefit, or maybe a few sanctuaries, but we don’t need the whole galaxy. That’s why I’ve not brought it up. I’ve been trying to determine the mission statement.”

“Plus,” Mateo said, “once the colonists do end up on those worlds, they’ll be confused about why there’s already a competing quantum terminal in the system.”

Ramses shifted in his seat a little. “Well, we don’t need a terminal to reach it, and I don’t even think it needs to be that big. I still don’t know the threshold. What does a presence even mean? Could we leave a 20th century digital watch there to serve as the beacon? What if one of the Al-Amins was there with no technology at all? Could we map onto another person instead?”

“So let’s do that,” Romana suggested. “Let’s spend the rest of the day running those tests. Send a bunch of reframe probes in all different directions, at different distances. One will be carrying the watch. Another will have a smartphone. One can have, like, an electric car... And so on, and so forth. I guess we would be doing the tests next year, instead of today, but still, you could start today.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Ramses countered. “We’ve still not figured out the point.”

“Options,” Leona said. “It gives us options. What if there’s a threat out there that’s below the threshold, so we can’t get to it, but it can get to us, or someone innocent? Or what if we learn that the beacon does have to be electronic, and can’t just be people, and an anti-tech cult of cannibals forms on a colony a thousand years from now, but they’re so remote, no one can get to them...except for us. Because we left a digital watch on their planet’s moon 700 years before that?”

“You want us to be the stewards of the galaxy?” Ramses pushed back.

“Well...guardians is taken.”

Ramses blinked a few times before taking a couple deep breaths. “All right,” he said with the enthusiasm of an entry level worker who didn’t want to lose his job, but also had his limits. “I’ll get started on it.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Leona insisted. “This isn’t an order. I thought you wanted it, but you can reject the idea, or delay it, or whatever you need.”

“No, I want it, but it’s gonna take some time,” Ramses warned. “I don’t think it will be too much work for me—the automators should take care of the fabrication while we’re gone—but it took Team Keshida years to develop the original Project Stargate. To be fair, that was 300 years ago, but clanking replicators can’t break the laws of physics.”

“Take your time,” Mateo told him. “We’re all here for you, even if that means staying out of your way.”

Ramses returned to his lab to develop yet another project. The rest of the team was useless for the rest of the day. They didn’t have nearly enough reframe-capable vessels, and wouldn’t for another year, if that. Romana still wanted to sling somewhere.

“I have an idea of where we could go,” Mateo began, “but I don’t want to overstep my bounds.”

“No, please, ideas welcomed,” his daughter encouraged.

“There’s an island back on Earth. I went there—well, I may have time traveled, so I don’t know when it was—but it had all sorts of fun things to do. Scuba diving, boating, parasailing, hiking, E-T-C. The whole thing was artificial, but looked natural; just perfect. They called it Star Island.”

“Yes, I heard about that,” Romana replied awkwardly. “Boyd, uhh...”

“He talked to you about it,” Mateo guessed. “It’s okay, I know that he changed from that time when we first met. I think you would like it there as much as I presume he did. There must have been some reason why he summoned us there, instead of literally anywhere else.”

“Then, if that’s what everybody wants,” Romana said, trailing off to wait for others to respond.

“This is your choice, remember?” Leona said.

“And I’m not a dictator, remember?” Romana volleyed.

Leona just smiled at her and nodded.

“Okay, we go to Star Island,” Romana decided, trying to be self-assertive and commanding.

While most of the group was transitioning to their swimsuits, Leona took the liberty of initializing the slingdrive array, jumping them all to Earth. Their belts were floating on the surface of the sea now, magnetically linked, but not in a stack. Ramses teleported out of his lab, into the common area. “Where did you just bring us?”

“Moku Hoku,” Romana answered him. “Have you heard of it?”

Ramses seemed annoyed. “I didn’t know we were gonna sling. I kind of needed the quintessence to conduct my work.”

“Oh, we didn’t think of that,” Romana said apologetically.

“It’s my fault, I should have known,” Leona contended.

“I’m the navigator,” Romana argued. “I’m responsible for this decision.”

Ramses breathed again. “No, it’s okay. I just need two of you to stay behind so I can run my tests somewhere remotely. Or we can have fun today, and delay the project.”

Leona walked up to Ramses. “Let’s delay it. You should enjoy yourself too. You have certainly earned the vacation. It’s gonna take a few centuries to get it done anyway, right? What’s one extra year?”

Ramses considered it before shaking his head, and walking away. Just as they were frowning, he spun back around, and transitioned to his own swimsuit. “Let’s show these hedonistic Earthans how to really cut loose!” They cheered in unison, and might have popped the champagne to get the party started if any of them drank.

They first teleported out into the water to make sure the belts were securely invisible, then left them floating around out there to go have fun on the island. They would come to regret their carelessness when three of them turned up missing at the end of the day.

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Tangent Point: Farther Than I Can Throw (Part VII)

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Reed Ellis and his people were better prepared for this mutiny than the last one, when they only had about a week to plan. This time, it was months, but the mission was four times harder. Actually, it was probably harder than that because the Teaguardians were infinitely more competent than the security guards on the Tangent. The platform could be moved with four fusion torches. It was designed for balance and power. But those torches could be removed, and that was how it was meant to be most of the time for a stable geostationary orbit. The only reason the torches had stayed on for this long was because they were evacuating from the poles, and stationkeeping in these positions was a whole hell of a lot more difficult. They were, at last, about to be removed, but outsiders were not expecting it. They assumed the Tangent would be returned to Bungula while the mutineers boarded a Teaguardian, and faced judgment. Well, they were boarding all right, though not for judgment, but self-preservation.

Matar Galo was expecting Reed to surrender, but they had other plans, and everything had to be perfectly timed, because once someone noticed something out of place, like the sudden detachment of the torches, or the near complete abandonment of two of the Teaguardians, they would react. The last of the evacuees were now gone, having been transported to other vessels, but before the mutiny could begin, the stragglers had to be dealt with too. For various reasons, these were the ones who chose to stay here for an extended period of time. Tertius, Aeterna, and baby Dilara were here, along with their associates, Breanna, and her people. Most of the others felt some debt of gratitude to the Tangent, and an obligation to stick around and help out. This was great, but it posed a problem now. He pointed to the shuttle. “This is large enough to fit all of you. A course has been plotted for the asteroid known as PC-1124E. It has become a staging ground for interstellar journeys headed for the Varkas Reflex. VR is a popular destination for evacuees looking to start new lives with the special energy credit dispensations that you have all received since your exodus is not your fault.

“Now, the reason this is being offered to you is because my people and I are about to stage another mutiny. And the reason I set this shuttle aside is because it has been stripped of its communications system. You will cruise towards the asteroid at a fairly slow, fuel-saving speed, but not so slow that it looks like there’s something wrong with you. You will not be able to course correct, and not be able to reach out to anyone else. I have to do this, because I can’t have any of you revealing the truth about what we’re planning to do. I decided, instead of simply shipping you off, and wiping my hands clean of you, that I would give you each a choice. You can stay, and you can help, or you can stay, and stay out of the way. You just can’t betray us.” He looked down and swept his foot across the floor a few times. “Let’s call this seam the boundary. If you stay on that side, you get on that shuttle, and leave the Tangent for good. If you come over here, you’re with us, and you face the same consequences that we do. If we end up getting caught anyway, you might argue that you were under duress, but I will argue that you made the choice. Because that’s the truth. This is your choice. I’m not here to sway you one way or the other.”

“Why are you doing this?” Breanna asked. “Exactly why, that is? Just so you won’t get caught?”

“Yep, that’s it,” Reed explained. “There’s no convoluted secret agenda here. We just don’t want to get in trouble, so we’re gonna keep fighting. We like all of you, which is why we kept you around, but this isn’t your fight, and we don’t expect you to stay. If you choose not to, I thank you for your service.”

Without saying a word to Reed, or even to each other, Tertius and Aeterna spun around, and began to walk into the shuttle. Reed let out a quiet sigh of relief. He liked them as much as everyone else here—that was not a white lie—but he couldn’t guarantee that baby’s safety. That was the thing about a posthuman society. As advanced as they had become, infants and children were still mortal. They were still developing, and thor brains were still plastic. Digitizing them that young was a hurdle that researchers still had not cleared. Around half of the helpers elected to join them in the shuttle while the other half crossed that line. Breanna, Cashmere, Calypso, and Notus expressed interest in taking a hands-on role in the mutiny, while the majority of the rest didn’t want to fight, but still wanted to stay. It was unclear what their motivations were, but they would be guarded in case it was only a ruse so they would retain the ability to warn Teagarden of their plans.

“Wait,” Reed said. “I forgot one thing, and it hopefully doesn’t change your mind.” He snapped his fingers. One of his guards opened a door to let in two more guards, who were escorting a chained up and gagged Vasily. “This man did betray us, and I finally have my opportunity to be rid of him. Now that we’ve finished the evacuation, I no longer need to worry about his influence. These two fine guards have volunteered to hold onto him en route to the asteroid. You will not be in danger from him. We rigged up a little hock in there for him, but he will be present, and I understand if you feel uncomfortable with that. Since I think you deserve to know, his crime...was murder. The permanent kind.”

“And I would do it again!” one of Vasily’s guards shouted. He took out his sidearm and shot his partner. Then he grabbed one of the men who was about to get on the shuttle, to use as a human shield. “Now that I have your attention, I want you to unlock my brother, get in that shuttle yourself...Captain,” he spat, “and fly yourself out of here. As a great man once said, I’m the captain now!”

“Packard. You’re brothers? Since when?” Reed questioned. It may have sounded like an irrelevant question, but he needed to understand what he was dealing with here.

“Since I’m not Packard at all, but figured out how to hijack his download,” the guy who looked like Packard volleyed. “Ever since that Sorel guy took over the consciousness backup department, your system has been for shite. It wasn’t even hard.”

“We had to upgrade it, it created vulnerabilities. That won’t work a second time. Now put down the gun, you dupe, and release the nice man. Last year, you killed what many would consider an enemy combatant. Today, you have someone innocent, which is a whole different ballgame. If you pull that trigger, you’ll start losing sleep over it.”

“I’ll live,” the duplicate version of Vasily contended.

“But you won’t remember anything,” Tertius said as he was casually walking down the ramp.

Dupe!Vasily’s eyes glazed over as he loosened his grip on the hostage, who managed to pull himself away from his captor, and rush into the shuttle. Dupe!Vasily, meanwhile, looked incredibly confused, and scared. When he realized that he was holding a weapon, he dropped it to the floor. “I don’t...I don’t know anything.”

“What do you mean by anything?” Reed questioned.

“Anything,” Tertius echoed. “He won’t be a problem anymore. His memories are gone.” He picked up the gun, and held it up in offering to Reed. “If you have the consciousness of the true owner of this body stored away somewhere, you should be able to overwrite the parasite. If you don’t, I can try to restore him myself.”

“Restore him how?” Reed asked while another guard secured Packard’s weapon. He looked down at the now husk of Vasily’s host, who was now on his knees, seemingly trying to figure out what his hands were all about. “You didn’t even touch him. You didn’t do anything.”

Tertius shook his head. “I didn’t need to touch him. It’s just something I can do.”

Reed stared at him for a moment, occasionally looking down at the victim again, and also the other people in the room. “How much can you scale that up?”

“Oh, God,” Tertius said before sighing. “That’s not what it’s for.”

“Let’s do it,” Aeterna said as she was coming up from behind him without her baby. “We all know what the Captain is thinking. This mutiny is happening, whether we help or not. We have the chance to make it bloodless.”

“We could stop it altogether,” Tertius argued, “by erasing everyone’s memories.”

Aeterna placed a hand upon her father’s forearm. She looked over at Reed. “This man, and his people, came for us. They came for all of us, and they did it as efficiently and as humanely as possible. Now they need to get away safely. These mortal affairs; we inserted ourselves into them. We are partially to blame for what happened on Doma. It cost lives, it might have cost more if not for people like Reed Ellis. Let us do one last thing for the humans before we take ourselves off the board and focus on my daughter.”

“This is why we lost touch for two centuries, my sweet girl,” Tertius said to her. “You wanted to help, I wanted to walk away. But now you have to think about the baby.”

“I am,” Aeterna insisted. “I want to teach her to do the right thing, and I want to be able to teach it by example.”

Tertius thought about it. “Fine, but we’re putting their memories on a timer.” He approached Reed, and pointed at him fairly aggressively. “You will have one day to bug out, which I believe gives you a head start of around two light years. I suggest you don’t leave a trail. These people may be your enemies, but they deserve to move on with their lives in whatever way they choose, so I won’t be taking their agencies away forever.”

“That is more than I could ask,” Reed told him. “I don’t know how you do what you’re evidently about to do, but I want you to know how grateful I am.”

Aeterna took a half step forward. “We’ll need a list, of everyone whose memories you don’t want suppressed. Preferably with faces.”

“We’re also gonna wipe your memories of this conversation,” Tertius added. “You’ll know what happened, but not who, or how it was possible.”

“That’s fine,” Reed promised.

Reed was aware that people’s memories were going to be erased. He believed that. He trusted that. Seeing it was a whole different animal. This was no longer a mutiny, but a humanitarian mission. He had Thistle compile a list of everyone they wanted to be immune to the temporary memory suppression. The rest were wiped. After it was done, a mass silent confusion fell upon the Proxima Centauri system. The targets, which were mostly Teaguardians, though some Bungulans too, didn’t freak out. They had no idea who or where they were, but they were calm and trusting. Instead of fighting them, Reed and the mutineers spent most of the energy on helping them.

They rounded up anyone with memory loss and consolidated them to three Teaguardian ships that they were not intending to commandeer. They told them to sit tight and wait for medical assistance to arrive. The targets accepted their instructions without question, without a single voice of dissent. There was only one hiccup. Well, two if you counted the infighting. All of the key participants were in their first and only face-to-face meeting. “Why the hell were my people targeted?”  President Abrams questioned with surprising anger.

“We don’t need them anymore. We don’t need them to hand over your two ships willingly. We are facing no opposition.”

“That wasn’t the agreement,” Abrams argued. “I don’t like seeing my soldiers like this. They’re like...children. They’re dumb children. It’s sad. They’re all sad.”

“It’s better this way,” Reed contended. “Now they never betrayed Teagarden. When they wake up from this—and they will wake up from this—they will be able to claim plausible deniability. Not even that, they will have done nothing. They won’t have to defend their actions at all. Honestly, I probably should have kept you off the immunity list too, to keep your hands clean. If I had had more time, I might have, but the window was closing. We had to act, either with the original plan, or the new one. There was no third option to delay entirely.”

“Oh, actually, there was,” Abrams said. “You could have turned yourself in, which was the noble thing to do. It still is.” It took more than the one conversation to convince him to get on board with this, and he still fought the plan every step of the way. Reed regretted making him immune. He should have put him on one of those Teaguardians as just another oblivious docile.

“He’s right,” Ajax agreed. He survived the runaway shuttle last year by jumping to a new body on the surface of Bungula after his death. He maintained his captaincy, and had since become an ad hoc liaison between the Teagarden forces and the Bungulan military. No one ever seemed to suspect his true loyalties, and he had restrained himself from demanding control of the Tangent. Which was actually kind of weird, because the baseline command structure for a captain included overseeing 256 troops, and you only needed a certain sized ship to accommodate that number. An elevator platform like the Tangent didn’t need a higher crew count, but it was orders of magnitude larger, and probably the best assignment this side of Earth. “I would have gotten my platform back.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to you about this before, but I didn’t know that mind-wiping was an option until it was time to act,” Reed defended. “But this is objectively better, so I don’t understand why we’re still arguing. There’s work to be done. Those Teaguardians aren’t going to attach themselves to the Tangent.”

“They kind of are,” Delegator Chariot reasoned. “I believe in our crew. This meeting is important. You have still not told us how you suppressed all of these people’s memories. You didn’t give them anything to eat or drink, you didn’t disperse any sort of bioweapon, or we would all be affected. Unless it was a DNA-targeting pathogen, in which case, you would have needed to plan this for days at the shortest. So are you lying? Did you cook something up in secret, or was it really just earlier today, and you genuinely accomplished the impossible?”

Reed blinked. “I don’t know.”

Abrams rolled his eyes. “What?”

“I don’t...I don’t remember.”

“Oh my God, you’re claiming you were bit by your own creation? You expect us to believe that?” Abrams scoffed.

“He’s telling the truth,” Shasta said. “I don’t remember either. I remember knowing that this was going to happen, and that we asked for it, but I don’t remember who or how, or any details. We may have asked for our own memories to be altered, possibly permanently, or they did it without our consent. But I know that the targets will recover. I know that we will get through this if we stick together, and stop arguing.”

Abrams crossed his arms and shook his head. “It smells fishy. Someone with the technology to do this doesn’t just let us use it for nothing.”

Ajax looked to his left. “You’ve been quiet. I have never seen you without a bag of opinions over your shoulders. Can we trust Reed?”

Vasily nodded, also with his arms crossed, but in a more authoritative than closed-off way. “I trust Captain Reed Ellis more than anyone in this galaxy. If he says that this will work, then this will work. I say we keep moving those empty Teaguardians into position, fire up their fancy reframe engines, and bolt.”

“I’m not bolting,” Ajax reminded the group.

“Neither am I,” Abrams said.

“As long as you don’t interfere,” Reed began, “that’s fine. No one has to go anywhere. In fact, I will afford the same opportunity to all of my people. They can pretend to have also lost their memories, and maybe the authorities will go easy on them.” He paused for a moment. “I want to thank you all for all of your help. I know it wasn’t easy, but I believe the history books will shine a bright light upon us...eventually. If that is all, this meeting can come to a close, and those staying behind can leave the Tangent.”

They all went their separate ways. Reed returned to his office, and found someone sitting in his seat who he did not recognize. Her legs were propped up on the desk, and she wasn’t scared of him at all. “Security!” he shouted over his shoulder.

“They can’t hear you,” the mysterious woman explained.

“Security!” Reed shouted again. He turned to walk out of the room, but was completely unable to. The door that was meant to lead to the bridge had become a mirror. He reached out to it, but instead of hitting glass, his hand slipped right through. Meanwhile, that hand reached out towards him, superpositioning with itself going the opposite direction. He stepped forwards, all the way through, and ended up back in his office, his back now turned to the impossible mirror.

“Tripy, right?” the woman said. “You can thank my liver for that little trick.”

“Who are you, and what do you want?”

“The chrysalis bioprinting room you have. I made that for you. I gave you that tech. I knew you needed it.”

“I’ve been wondering who our mysterious benefactor was.”

“Now you know.”

“I don’t, actually.”

She stood up. “I don’t really use my name anymore. I try to interact with others as little as possible. I used to go by Leona Delaney, but if you ever meet someone who looks like me, it won’t be me, and she won’t remember this.”

“You’re, like, a future version of her, or something? You’re a time traveler? Time travel is real?”

She laughed. “Of course time travel is real. Teleportation is real, ain’t it? That’s just a form of time travel.”

“And the second question?”

“You can’t daisy chain reframe engines,” she began. “It would be like duct-taping four pairs of scissors together. You end up with no scissors. This won’t work.”

“Trilby assures me that he’s synced them up properly.”

“Compared to the woman who invented them, Trilby is a drooling buffoon. I’m telling you, don’t do this. The results are unpredictable. Whatever course you laid in will become meaningless.”

He approached her menacingly, but he had no plans to harm her. “I don’t know you. I don’t trust you. I trust my people.” He looked at his watch. “Last I checked, we were on schedule, which means we’ll be leaving in less than thirty minutes. I’ve already given the greenlight. You can kill me right here, and they’ll still launch.”

“I’m not your boss,” Leona clarified. “I’m just warning you.”

“Either way, you should leave. These people are my responsibility, and whatever comes to pass, I’ll get them through it.”

She shook her head in disapproval. “No one thinks they’re Dr. Smith. Everyone thinks they’re Captain Janeway.”

“Thank you. You can go now.”

Leona literally disappeared. When he turned around, the magic mirror was gone. A half hour later, they spooled up the antimatter engines of the Teaguardians, now affixed to the Tangent where the fusion torches once were. They activated the reframe engines, and flew away from Proxima Doma. The traveler turned out to be right. They got lost immediately. But at least they weren’t in prison.

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Microstory 2640: Breaking Character

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After the fight is over, and the good guys have won, men in black emerge to clean up. Mandica gets on the back of Blue Umbra’s motorcycle, and holds on for dear life. They still have these kinds of death machines back on Earth, but she’s never ridden one before, because they are not safe enough. While they’re dashing through a tunnel, she sees both Blue Umbra and Wave Function’s outfits change, as does the coloring on their bikes. Their masks disappear too until they just look like regular people. They continue zipping down the streets until they reach their underground lair. An oldish man is waiting for them at the bottom of the ramp. “Any cleaning to do today?” he asks them.

“Just need a recharge on these.” Wave Function carelessly tosses the apparent servant his sonic weapon cartridges as he’s walking by.

“Rybold is an NPC,” Blue Umbra says to Mandica as Wave Function is plopping down on the recliner, and beginning to play a video game like a typical bro. “He’s been programmed to ignore all mentions of the real world. He thinks he’s our butler, and always does our chores with a smile on his face.”

“A little bit derivative, don’t you think?” That’s the rude, socially awkward Mandica talking again. She doesn’t want to be like that, especially not since she needs something from these people. “Sorry. I don’t spend a lot of time around others anymore. I was a nomad, and my only regular companion was an android, like Rybold.”

“Will the Miss be joining us for dinner?” Rybold asks after he’s placed the cartridges on the charger. “Will she be needing her own room, or sharing one of yours?”

“Undecided,” Blue Umbra answers. She goes over to Wave Function and kicks his legs. “Off the coffee table. We’ve talked about this.”

He blows a raspberry at her.

“He’s not as immature as he’s acting right now,” Blue Umbra explains. “He’s just trying to cool down. It takes him a moment to step out of character, and become more like his real self.” She sits down on the couch, and pats the other side invitingly for Mandica. “So. How long have you been on Castlebourne?”

“About two weeks,” Mandica answers.

“Oh, fresh fish,” Blue Umbra muses.

“I should tell you something else,” Mandica begins nervously. “I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but this is a red dome—”

“I don’t—what is that?” Blue Umbra questions. “Did they institute a color-coding system? I’ve been in-game for fourteen years.”

“Twenty,” Wave Function boasts, hand raised, but still focusing on his game.

“No, that’s just something my friend came up with.” Mandica keeps on hesitating. “I needed that because...I’m human. I mean, I’m a regular human. I’m not enhanced, and I’m not digitized. I die in the Matrix, I die in real life.”

Now Wave Function drops his controller, and looks at her. His character dies and waits for him to trigger respawn. “You shouldn’t be here. Do you know how many times I’ve died? This is my fifth persona. This world has consequences. If someone sees your body die, you have to come back as someone else, if you choose to come back at all.”

“That’s not the point,” Blue Umbra argues. “If she dies, she can’t even come back. She can’t come back anywhere.” She turns back to Mandica. “Why are you here? I didn’t even know people like you could even come to this planet. You would need a ship.”

“I took a ship, yes,” Mandica confirms. “I wanted a real life. I wanted adventure.” She looks around at their lair. “I didn’t want to be having this particular adventure, but as soon as I arrived, I discovered that the choice to travel here wasn’t entirely my own, and I am looking for the person who first piqued my interest about it. I was told that she was here. I don’t know if you ever use real names, but hers is Vanore.”

Blue Umbra and Wave Function exchange a look again. “We’ve never heard of her, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t around here somewhere. It’s a big city.”

Wave Function stands up, and walks towards the other side of the lair.

“Blue Umbra goes on, “we are a duo, and don’t interact much with the others. We don’t dislike each other, but we each walk our own beats, like police officers.”

Wave Function comes back and drops what looks like a photo album on the coffee table in front of Mandica. “These are the heroes.” He drops another album. “These are the villains. We try to stay on separate sides in our personal lives to maintain some level of integrity in the game, so we couldn’t tell you if any villain is a real person.”

Mandica opens both albums at the same time. The first page in each is a collage while the rest are dedicated to each character individually, giving a rundown of their powers and abilities, what’s known of their origin stories, and other basic information.

Blue Umbra points to one of the villains in the collage. “I know her. She’s originally from Proxima Doma. In costume, she is Cardinal Sin, but I can’t remember what her character’s regular name is. Her real name is Jaidia Robbins. I know where she works during the day. She’s tapped in, so she might know who you’re looking for.”

Mandica winces. “Why would anyone pretend to be a bad guy? Don’t they feel bad? I mean, I know most people are NPCs, and any who aren’t will just transfer back to their real bodies, but it just seems so...”

“Pathological?” Blue Umbra guesses. “To each their own. We try not to judge.”

“Have you ever fought her?” Mandica presses, but is that important right now?

“A few times, during team-ups. Her main rival is the Ravensgate Rescuer.” She points to a woman wearing a revealing black outfit in the heroes album. “They’re both at the top of the food chain in this city. They programmed themselves with the best powers. They really wanted to be the stars.”

“They’re new,” Wave Function says like he doesn’t respect them. “They’ve been here for, what has it been, nine or ten years? They only came to this planet because theirs got blowed up.”

“Wait, for real?” Mandica questions. That doesn’t happen in real life. It never has.

“Yeah,” Blue Umbra agrees. “Tragic. Millions died when Proxima Centauri’s sun flipped poles, and sent a massive CME towards Doma. You were probably on your relativistic trip. They escaped through the quantum network.” She looks over at her partner. “And they got to be where they are because they understand the biotech better than anyone. If you wanted a better body, you should have learned how to build one.”

Wave Function scoffs, and dismisses it with a wave of his hand.

“Anyway,” Blue Umbra continues, “Jaidia tends bar on Tenth, at a place called Merry Wonderment.” She consults her watch. “It’s just about to open, so she’s probably there right now. Rybold can drive you there.”

“Certainly, Miss,” Rybold sustains. “We can take the Starburst, if you would like.”

“Thanks. Thanks for everything. It was nice meeting you two,” Mandica says.

Microstory 2639: Round One Goes To

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One lesson Mandica learned from getting into Mythodome is that she doesn’t have to go in through the main entrance, and probably shouldn’t. People can still see her, and might notice if she doesn’t follow procedure. She is not wearing an official worker’s uniform, but she’s dressed in a loose-fitting jumpsuit to make it look more like it makes sense for her to walk down the perimeter plaza to some other door. Instead of a long, dark stone corridor, the walls are tiled and maintained, though to be fair, the one under Mythodome probably looked rustic for the aesthetic. She doesn’t have to walk down this one, which is good, because it’s longer. On one side is what looks like a chairlift, except it only goes forward. Once she climbs into it and fastens her seatbelt, it moves automatically, and takes her a couple of kilometers down. At the end of the line, she gets out and steps into an elevator that was already open and waiting for her.

When the sliding doors reopen, she’s faced with a regular hinged door; metal and painted a grayish dark green. She opens that, and finds herself on the platform of a subway. It’s dirty, with trash all over the place, especially down on the tracks. The passengers are an eclectic bunch. It’s scary to her. There’s not even a glass partition preventing people from getting on the tracks. Someone could fall right in and get hit by a train. Had she been born on Earth when it looked more like this, and someone told her that she could take a pill to become invincible, she probably would. The members of her family chose a single lifetime lifespan for themselves because they always expected to live about that long. Death is easier to avoid in the modern day. Then again, if Mandica really ever felt that way, why is mountain hiking her favorite activity, and why did she ever want to come to a place as dangerous as this? She wants the thrill, and she might die young. It just hopefully won’t be from falling onto the subway tracks.

She walks up the steps, shedding the itchy jumpsuit as she goes, and stuffing it into her bag. She has other clothes in there, and food, because she might be here for a while, and just like in the real world, she doesn’t have an identity. Out there, it’s fine. She’s entitled to food. Anyone can grab a dayfruit or operate a synthesizer without logging in. Survival is a basic human right. But in here, for the gritty Gothamesque story to work, they have to use money. They have to have their own microcosmic economy. And yes, she’s heard of Gotham. She’s never been a fan of superhero movies, but she is moderately familiar with the most common tropes. She won’t love it in this fake city, but she’ll find Vanore, ask her to explain what the hell is going on, and then get out.

The thing about this dome is that there may or may not be AI-generated supervillains, but no such superheroes. If you see a villain, they could be a visitor playing a character, but if you see a hero, they definitely are. That’s what the prospectus says. So when a woman wearing a costume suddenly flies through the air and crashlands right behind Mandica as she’s walking, the latter knows that she is a player. She has to be, because it is up to the players to defend the city by whatever means they feel are necessary, and if that means no one comes here to do that, then the story could devolve into misery and chaos, and that will simply be how it is. Of course, a lot of people do enjoy superhero stories, so there are probably plenty of them acting out their fantasies of being revered and beloved. She is assuming that this woman wearing silver and blue spent years wishing she could be this. Before Castlebourne, she probably did it in virtual reality. Her character could predate this base reality simulation by centuries.

The superhero catches eyes with Mandica. She winks. “Sup, gorgeous.” It’s then that the rock monster barrels into her. The blue hero is knocked over, but still smiling. She designed her substrate to be as invincible as real world physics allows. She kicks and punches the monster with a few grunts, and some “hiya”s. The monster is slow...because it’s made of rocks, but doesn’t seem to feel pain, and isn’t budging. Still, the hero is unfazed. It looks like she’s working up to something. “Clear the area!” she orders. “Go!”

The NPCs continue to scream and run away. Mandica moves back a little, to the side of the subway steps, but doesn’t go as far back as she should. It’s too exciting, and she’s annoyed with herself for being excited. Does she actually like the genre, and she’s just been a pretentious asshole about it her whole life?

The hero starts to swing on the monster like it’s a gymnastics bar. She makes it all the way up until she’s standing on its shoulders. She crouches, and starts poking at its eyes, which do appear to be its weak spot. It can’t lift its thick, stony arms high enough over its head to swat her away, but it keeps trying. “Now!” she screams.

Only then does Mandica see a guy in a purple, green, and yellow cloaky outfit standing several meters away. There’s a sort of trident looking symbol on his chest. He’s holding an absolutely gargantuan compensation gun, aiming it at the blue hero and the monster. Perfectly timed, the blue hero does an impossibly high back flip off of the monster’s shoulders. If this were a movie, it would probably be shown in slow motion. A rippling, but otherwise invisible, force emanates from the green guy’s gun. The monster is blasted with it. This is what really stops him. It falls to its approximation of knees, and rests on its fists as green guy continues to pummel him with the sonic weapon. Meanwhile, blue girl has landed safely out of the blast zone, and is watching it happen. After enough of the sound waves, the rock monster completely falls apart. It doesn’t explode, the rocks just lose adherence to each other, and crumble to the ground.

“Hey, girl. How you livin’? I’m Blue Umbra.”

“I don’t have a name,” Mandica lies poorly. She forgot to decide if she’s going to use her real name, or come up with a secret identity. She has absolutely no plans to become a superhero too, and clearly lacks the requisite skills compared to these two.

Blue Umbra giggles. “Well, I can work with that. I don’t exactly go by my Christian name.” What was Christian again? Was that the one with the candles?

Green guy removes some kind of cartridge from his gun, lets it magnetize to his thigh, and replaces it with a new one from his other thigh. “Locked and loaded for round two,” he says with a certain affectation. “Who’s this chick?”

“Wave Function, meet...a ghost,” Blue Umbra jokes.

“She didn’t run,” Wave Function points out.

“I don’t like to run,” Mandica says. Now that is not a lie.

“You should probably walk away quickly then,” Blue Umbra warns. “His wave blasts aren’t powerful enough to take Grayrock down permanently.”

“Hey, I get it done,” Wave Function defends. “Trust me, I hear no complaints.”

Blue Umbra rolls her eyes and starts to walk towards the recoalescing monster.

“Castlebourne,” Mandica cries desperately.

They both stop. “We’re not supposed to talk about the outside world,” she says.

“I have to,” Mandica explains. “I’m looking for someone.”

Blue Umbra sighs. “Hide in that building over there. We’ll talk after the fight.”

Microstory 2638: He Owns the Air

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Mandica immediately turns around, and tries to go back down the steps, but they’re gone. A stone barrier has appeared over the stairs a half meter below the surface. It is probably some kind of service entrance designed to be hidden to preserve the integrity of the mythology unfolding under this dome.

“Do not be afraid, I’m not here to hurt you,” the man who calls himself Daedalus claims. Well, he probably is indeed the manifestation of Daedalus in this simulation. He’s a man with functioning wings. “I could have done that a long time ago if I had been so inclined. I would like for us to be friends.”

“How do you know who I am?” Mandica questions. “You’re just a character. You were programmed to follow the script and believe that this is all real.”

“I was programmed to be a genius because the original Daedalus myth wrote him as such,” Daedalus clarifies. “I was programmed a little too well, and grew clever enough to uncover the truth about my own existence. I have ways of reaching beyond the confines of my realm, to the bustling world outside.”

“You still could not have invited me to this dome,” she reasons. “I was intending to go to King Arthur’s world. That’s not myth, that’s legend. I only changed my mind because it was a related recommendation, and since they are not unrelated themes, it was not an unbelievable pairing.”

“True, and I do not claim to have access to the recommendation algorithm on the prospectus, but I knew you would find your way here eventually, because I knew you were interested in this sort of thing. No, my invitation came much earlier, before you even left the real Earth.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Mandica argues. “I first heard about this planet in 2420. Even if you were in beta prior to that—which I’m guessing you were before 2500 —116 years is a long-ass con. I just don’t believe it. Daedalus may be a genius, but he’s not a god. Even the gods here aren’t real gods.”

He chuckles. “True words, but I am the one who got you excited to come here.”

She shakes her head. “I’m not buying it. This lie is too outrageous.”

“Vanore,” he says to her simply.

“What?”

“That was the name of the woman you met on April 1, 2420, was it not? She’s the one who told you about a resort planet that they were paraterraforming a hundred and eight light years away. I believe she called it pillow talk?”

“How do you know that name? How do you know that story? I’ve not thought about her in years. She was like me...unenhanced, so she is long dead.”

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure that she was as unenhanced as she led you to believe. Vanore isn’t even her real name. She adopted it to trigger your attention, which was my idea; I apologize for the deception.”

“Why? Why do any of this? Don’t try to tell me that I’m some kind of chosen one. That’s not a thing. And I don’t really do YA.”

“As far as I know, you’re not a chosen one. I actually don’t personally have any interest in you, but I owed someone a favor. They wanted you here, I found a way.”

“Who?”

“Your name is Kolar.”

“That has been established, I’m not going to be shocked by it a second time.”

“Their name was Kolar as well. They never told me their first names.”

“Some kind of distant relatives, who I have never met.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that. I’m not here to make your life harder, but I wanted to make contact, because I wanted to warn you. If you are related to these people, it doesn’t mean that you will get along with them. Your values may be far out of alignment, and I decided that you deserved to know, so you could be on the lookout. Others are aware that you’re here, and I cannot attest to their motivations, Mandica.”

“And Vanore? Don’t tell me she’s my relative too. We...did things together.”

He chuckled. “No, I think that she owed your relatives as well. She seemed rather reluctant to participate in this. I didn’t ask why.”

“Well, where is she? Somewhere in here with you? Where are the other Kolars?”

“I have no idea where they are now. They had the means of coming and going as they pleased, much like you, but with the stars. And it has potentially been over a hundred years for them. I do know how special relativity works, even though I’ve never seen the true sky.” He looks up at the hologram above them. It really does look real, but Castlebourne is uninhabitable outside of the domes, so the real sky is ugly. He smiles sadly. “As for Vanore, I may know where she is. She travels to other domes, but we’ve become friends since our joint mission, so she checks in from time to time. Indeed, I’m working under the assumption that she detours back here every time she transitions to a new adventure. Last I heard, she was in Underbelly.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“I don’t really know either, but she knew your family before I did, so she may have a clue of where they might be now.”

Mandica sighs. “I suppose I owe you for all this information.”

He seems surprised by the suggestion. “On the contrary. I used subterfuge to trick you into traveling somewhere that you might not have wanted to be. It is I who owes you. I may still seem like a character to you, but I’m powerful, so name it.”

Mandica looks down at the stone trapdoor. “I don’t like being owed any more than I like owing others, and I’m not greedy. All I want you to do is open that.”

He is surprised by this too. “Well, that’s easy.” He lifts his hand and begins to tap the tips of his fingers against his thumb in what appears to be a particular sequence. Once he is finished, the stone slides away and recedes into its pocket. “That was not a very good favor, but if it’s a psychological issue, let’s say that it counted. And then let’s say, if you ever need anything else, you can return to ask for it. It’s not another favor that you owe, per se; just an open window.”

Mandica turns and starts to walk back down the steps before stopping and looking over her shoulder. “I don’t see what could possess me to come speak to the great Daedalus again. I read about you and your son, but I don’t know if what I know has come to pass by now. I don’t know where in the story we are.”

His face falls into a deeply rageful frown. “It has already happened.”

“Then I’m sorry.”

His friendly demeanor has entirely vanished. “Go.”

Mandica leaves Mythodome and heads straight for Underbelly, but she doesn’t get an express train this time. Maybe she should have just asked him for that.

Microstory 2637: The Ghost of Castlebourne

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Mandica has become a ghost. She sat in a cool-looking chair where a helmet read her brainwaves, and generated an authority profile for her. Now she can go anywhere she fancies, and the automated systems won’t register her as an at-risk organic human. That doesn’t mean she’s going to run head first into danger, but it gives her that option. The other normal humans are limited here, and she doesn’t want that. She wants to be free. That’s why she risked everything just to come to this planet. Trilby is gone now, so she is alone. He said that he had to get back to where he belonged, and kind of made it seem like wherever that was, it was a secret. She doesn’t know much about his backstory, just that he’s been all over, and since they first met, he has spent a lot of time on and around Bungula and Proxima Doma, which are Earth’s nearest neighbors.

She’s looking over the modified prospectus that he compiled for her, and finding herself gravitating towards the red zones, which he said were way too dangerous for someone with only one life to live. The green ones sound boring. In one of them, you pretend to be a pioneer. Like, okay, she likes period pieces, but that’s way too much work for no gain. The reason real pioneers did all that was because they had to. Why are you trying to go back? Anyway, like she’s one to talk. She has an unhealthy obsession with medieval times, particularly the legend of King Arthur. She should have explored this information while she was still on Earth, but it looks like there was nothing to worry about. She searches for the keyword Mordred, and finds a dome called Loegria, which is the realm where Arthur lived, as well as Merlin, Guinevere, and the Knights of the Round Table. It looks fascinating. She’s been cosplaying as Mordred’s lover for years, but that was only one companion. This is a whole immersive world for her to explore.

She’s about to tap on the link to map and schedule her vactrain trip, but then she notices something. At the bottom of the page is a carousel showing other similar domes that she might be interested in. The main dome here is literally called Castlebourne. It’s not Camelot, and is in fact, not an adventure dome at all. It’s where the big boss lives and works, along with his staff. No, thank you. If she’s ever gonna get caught, it’s going to be by running into a bona fide administrator who knows that she’s a fraud because she wasn’t at the end of the year party last year. But the third recommendation. It’s called Mythodome. She taps on it, and starts reading about it. This place sounds insane. It doesn’t limit itself to only one Earthan mythology, but just about all of them. All these gods and creatures coexist in the same environment, and have evidently figured out how to reconcile their contradictions naturally. The NPCs genuinely believe that this is all real, and there is no world beyond the walls. She has to see what that’s like.

She taps on the VISIT NOW link...and it takes her to a pre-registration form. Oh, no, this is a problem. She can physically enter any dome, and pass through their internal security systems, but she doesn’t actually have a genuine identity. She can’t input her name, and she doesn’t even have a Castlebourne Visitor ID number. Trilby said nothing about this, but this isn’t the right route. The way she gets into Mythodome is to schedule the vactrain herself and walk in without warning. She knows that she can do that. That’s how they got to Capital yesterday. It takes longer than making a schedule ahead of time, but when you’re potentially traveling to the other side of a whole terrestrial planet, it’s not that big of a deal, and it’s her only choice. Is she ready, though? Is she ready for this? Perhaps not quite yet. The prospectus gives an overview of what being in the dome entails, but another link leads to this whole subnetwork of pages, talking about all of the mythological beings. It tells her how the stories unfold in the real world, and how these contradictory entities intermingle and adapt to a shared universe. The AI, Thistle can prepare her for what she’s about to face.

She taps on that, and asks it to generate a syllabus. She spends the next two weeks taking a self-directed crash course on the subject. She absolutely does not learn everything there is to know. Scholars could spend years studying this environment. She believes that some academics actually visit Mythodome specifically for that purpose, with the intention of publishing papers and-or teaching classes that have never existed before. This is enough for now. If she doesn’t place a boundary here, she may never, and she will never actually get to go on her first adventure. So she shuts off the tablet, drops it on Trilby’s bed, and leaves.

To her surprise, a vactrain pulls up for her as soon as she taps on the wall interface. Usually, someone going on an impromptu trip would have to wait longer for the right train and right route to be available, but it zooms up like it knew what she was going to ask for. There is no train schedule. It’s based purely on need and interest, and a version of Thistle is constantly shifting it to account for more information. Others, in fact, are waiting on the platform because theirs have not arrived yet. But the transit token on the pod’s display matches the one that the system assigned her. It’s an express train, though, which is very weird. Maybe admins always get those? But no, because she and Trilby didn’t have that the other day. They still had to change to connecting trains. As she enters the private pod alone, she looks back awkwardly at the waiting legion, but none of them seems bothered by her skipping the line. Immortals—they have no sense of urgency. She will never understand it, and honestly does not want to.

The pod takes her directly to Mythodome, instead of via a hub first. She’s in the intake plaza now, and about to head for the main entrance when something catches her eye. That transit token should have only been relevant to her trip here, but she sees it on a hologram on the wall, along with an arrow pointing to the left. She’s hesitant to respond to it. But for the briefest of moments, the hologram changes. The words THIS WAY, MANDY flicker just long enough for her to see, but hopefully not long enough for anyone else to notice. She follows the directions away from the main entrance. She has to. If she’s already been caught, then walking in the opposite direction isn’t going to insulate her from the consequences that they have in store for her. It’s going to delay them at best. The lights take her to a different door, which leads to a set of stairs, which leads down to a tunnel, which leads her to a second set of stairs, and a second door, but this one is horizontal. She walks back up and opens the trapdoor to find herself on the edge of a forest clearing. It is incredibly beautiful here. It reminds her of her favorite spots on Earth; the ones away from all the crowds.

Suddenly something races overhead, from one side of the trees to the other. It comes back, but is higher in the sky this time, and barely visible. There are a number of things it could be, like a Fury, a Roc, or even a Cherub. Is this it? Not even a month into her trip, and she’s already about to die? When it swoops back down, she starts to see that it’s a man, and the wings look almost artificial. He lands gracefully on the ground before her. “Mandica Kolar, thank you for accepting my invitation. I’m Daedalus.”

Microstory 2636: Don’t Forget To Bring a Towel

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Trilby throws a silky towel at her. “I hope you understand that I removed your clothes to provide you with medical treatment. I would have been waiting for you on the landing pad, but you showed up way too early. Why didn’t you go down on a slower trip, with the animals? That would have been a lot safer for your fragile human body.”

“They would have caught me,” Mandica explains briefly. “What is this?”

“Temporary,” he says. “I call it the cloak of invisibility. You will be perfectly visible to the naked eye while we’re out there, but the identity sensors won’t spot you. You will appear as an infrared aberration, caused normally by too many people beaming data to each other’s devices at the same time. We will take a particular route to where we’re going so that sort of thing doesn’t stand out.”

She frowns at the towel. Yeah, it isn’t a cloak, it is a towel. No hood, no draw string. It is see-through, but still just a big cloth square. “Will I not look a little odd, walking around with this thing over my head?”

Trilby laughs heartily. “Odd? Sweetheart, you’re on Castlebourne now. My next door neighbor is a giant beetle, and is probably smarter than me. They might as well call this world Substrate City. You’re not going to stand out. There is no way to stand out on this planet. Everyone is here to formulate their unique identity, and they change by their whims all the time. Now. Functionally, you’re rare. There are a few communities here who are just as unenhanced—less unenhanced, in fact—and they are not insignificant, but most people change bodies like you might change your hairstyle. But don’t worry, you can’t tell, and people are careful around each other, because there’s no way to know. No one’s gonna shoot you with a gun under the assumption that you’ll survive.” He taps his middle finger on a screen. “I took the liberty of building you your own modified prospectus. The green domes are fine. You’ll be safe in any of those. I’m talkin’ your residential areas, your museums, your educational historical recreations.

“Yellow, a little more dangerous. They have ways of protecting visitors. If they’re a normal human, the Custodians will make accommodations. They might even separate the unenhanced from the enhanced so there’s never any question. Red are no-go zones. Most of them are specifically designed for people who have disposable substrates. A visitor might even end up getting a whole fleet of bodies to switch to one by one. If someone like you without the spoof lenses were to try to sneak in, the sensors would flag them so fast, their head would spin off. Apparently, there was one guy years ago who got stuck in a dangerous game and nearly died because the people who were trying to murder him hacked the system. They won’t let that happen again. They installed new sensors all around the world, and are constantly checking. You will be walking around basically as an admin. They’ll let you in anywhere, but that’s why I made this list for you, so you can decide what you’re willing to risk. You need to understand your options.”

“You said something about spoof lenses?”

“Yes, it’s not just those. They have multiple ways of tracking identities, the most common of which is an eye scan. They also—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Mandica interrupts. “If people are changing bodies, and your neighbor is an insect, how would a retinal scan even be possible in a place like this?”

“It’s not only a retinal scan. The retinal scan is a second stage identifier that the system will only perform if the first stage scan turns up blank. Everyone capable of transferring their consciousness is given a unique watermark, placed upon their optic nerves. I don’t know if you know this, but humans have a natural blindspot in their eyes due to where the optic nerves connect to the eyes. Your brain fills in the blanks, but you can’t see light that hits that spot. Fortunately for optic void scanners, though, light does still hit that spot. They shoot an invisible laser into it to read someone’s watermark, to know who they are. They don’t even have to keep their eyes open. It can pass through eyelids, and many other materials. For a normal person, if it doesn’t detect that watermark, it will default to the retinal scan, and register your preferences and restrictions.” He points at the invisibility towel. “The scanner can’t pass through that, so it will see infrared interference, and not see your unregistered eyes.”

“Why do I need the towel if I have these spoof lenses?”

“You don’t have the spoof lenses yet. The woman who’s getting them for me is on the other side of the planet. We have to travel to her first. Before you ask, she can’t come to us, because she’s also protecting you from brainwave scanners. That’s another thing you need in order to be a ghost. They’re becoming more common. They’ll never do away with the optic void scanning system, but spoofing an authorized watermark is easier than fooling a brain scan. Don’t tell anyone, but about zero-point-zero-zero-one percent of the time, a cloned or bioprinted body doesn’t produce the watermark correctly, and it has to be fixed, either with a new replacement, or a visit to the optomeger.”

“This woman with the brain scanner—”

“The baseline imager. A brain scanner verifies your brainwaves. The baseline imager is the thing that inputs in the data. It’s highly regulated. There are only a few of them in the world. People would notice if she borrowed it and took it on a vactrain.”

“I see. The baseline imager woman; can she be trusted?”

“She’s already done for me what she’s about to do for you,” Trilby explains. “She holds a special office in a special government for a special community. They were refugees fleeing oppression, and live here permanently, not simply as visitors. Apparently, her now-husband initially refused to be enhanced, so she’s sympathetic to that sentiment, even though he’s now just like her, and I am too. The only reason she’s keeping him out of it is so that he can have plausible deniability, but I told her about you, and she thinks you and the Superintendent would get along.”

“Okay, I think I have all the information I need. I should say, I trust you. Let’s go out there and walk around like ghosts, me moreso than you.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

And so the two of them leave the apartment. Trilby already has his spoof lenses on, but Mandica has to stay under the towel the whole time. He seems to have been right. People don’t even just ignore her. They smile and greet her as if she is just another regular person on this bizarrely accepting planet. She doesn’t see any giant beetle people, but a few who look decidedly unhuman. A lot of animals, but also alien-like beings that don’t match to something that ever existed on Earth. She’s starting to feel more comfortable here, like she can actually breathe and live a life. 

After only a few hours, they have made it to a dome that’s just called Capital. They enter a gorgeous woman’s office, who holds her hand out, sporting a very kind smile. “Hi. I’m Deputy Superintendent Yunil Tereth. I hear you would like to stay unregistered. Why don’t you have a seat?”