Castlebourne Capital Community: Castlebank (Part V)

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For the next few weeks, Castlebourne was essentially being run as a police state. It wasn’t as bad as it was depicted in movies. The Expatriate Protection Bureau had no intention of holding onto power. They didn’t even want it in the first place, because it stretched their resources thin. They had a mandate, and they wanted to return to it exclusively. But restarting the real government was taking time. Dreychan held at least one press conference every day to remind the public of this, and to inform them of their progress. He was walking a fine line, exuding the confidence that everyone expected to see, but being clear that he never wanted any of this, and didn’t have the experience for it. This was such a tricky little dance, because while it was true that he didn’t know what the hell he was doing, he didn’t want to create any unrest or rebellion. Everyone just needed to be real patient while they figured this out. He also needed to remember to forgive himself for his deficits.

One thing he was unambiguous about was what his job entailed. As Superintendent and Deputy Superintendent respectively, Dreychan and Yunil were not in charge of the public. They were only responsible for finding and securing the leaders who would be. They needed some help with this as none of the ex-Exins had ever lived in any sort of democratic society until recently, and even then, because of the way the council was structured, it wasn’t all that democratic either. There were better ways, and people living here who straddled both worlds could help them come up with them. Some of the highest ranking members of Hrockas’ Executive Administrative Authority had once lived on Earth; some of them centuries ago. Yunil and her little faction of academics had studied Earthan sociopolitics, but these others had experienced it first hand. They understood the nuances, and historical shiftings, which the central archives could only describe in an objective sense. They provided insights that the two of them were using to decide what to do here and now.

In its current state, Earth and its nearest neighbors were what they called a scalar representative council democracy. It was infinitely scalable, and could go all the way down to a household of two people. A given independent population would elect or select a representative. There were different ways of going about this, but it had to be agreed upon. Anyone who felt it was unfair could appeal to a higher class, and ask for help. With each higher class of population range, one representative would act on their behalf, with other leadership chosen to aid in the administration of policy. The representatives in a given class also sat on a committee together. These committees only met when they had to; when they needed something from other communities, or couldn’t enact changes on their own. But being self-sufficient and independent was the goal most of the time. There was no need to get the whole planet involved when a single settlement could handle their own business. It was a complicated array of committees and subcommittees, banding together in temporary federations when required, and disbanding when the work was over.

This was all well and good, but it only existed in the stellar neighborhood, and the farther from the Core Worlds you went, the looser the structures became. A colony forty-two light years from Earth did not typically ask for aid from Earth because that aid would usually be at least forty-two years away. However, it was certainly possible, especially in terms of Teaguardians, which were always posted nearby. Castlebourne was a single planet, with no meaningful light lag, and a relatively small planetary population. The visitors did not count. They followed guest law. Only the refugees needed representation. So perhaps the scalable representation model would not really serve them here. Perhaps they needed to reach further back in history, to the advisory-administrative model. That was what Dreychan thought they had agreed upon.

Yunil had a different idea that she was only now suggesting. “Wait, why are we only including the refugees? Why not the visitors?” she posed.

“That’s how it was before,” Dreychan answered. “The Council of Old Worlds held no sway over the visitors.”

“That sounds arbitrary to me. This is the capital of Castlebourne, so let’s have the new government lead the whole planet...of Castlebourne.”

“Well, visitors aren’t citizens,” he reasoned. “As soon as we stepped foot on this rock, we became citizens of it. It was by default, because we had no other real home. Visitors belong to wherever they hail from. They could stay a hundred years, and they still wouldn’t be true citizens.”

“Why shouldn’t they be? Why shouldn’t we allow them to become citizens?”

It was clear to Dreychan that she was not asking him these questions because she didn’t know the answers, but because she was preparing to explain how those answers were inadequate, and the plan ought to be changed. He didn’t want to make it easy on her. “Well...that’s not how Hrockas has it set up. This is a tourist destination. He didn’t design it for us; he just accepted us when we needed somewhere to go. We can’t change that without his authorization.”

She wasn’t satisfied yet. “What are we getting as citizens,” Yunil pressed with airquotes,” that visitors aren’t?”

“Um, erm...” he teased.

She didn’t think that he would ever get there this time, so she skipped to her thesis. “I looked it up. It’s energy credits. We get a daily stipend of credits, which when saved up enough, could theoretically allow us to go to other planets. Except, it’s hardly anything. You would have to save up for a thousand years to even travel to the next star system over. It’s not like that in the stellar neighborhood. Their credits let them go places. They often have to get a job to earn extra, but the two of us have jobs, and neither of us has saved up enough. Not nearly enough.”

“What are you proposing, that we make them all citizens, and increase this energy budget?”

“There are tens of thousands of domes here, which require an immense amount of power to run. They obviously have the energy. Let’s incentivize people to become full citizens, and participate in society. Right now, there’s no reason for an Earthan to move here permanently. They still earn their stellar neighborhood stipend. It’s not much, but it’s free money, and it gives them the option to cast back to that region of the galaxy, and travel somewhere else. Let’s start our own bank and give people a reason to exchange their currency. We could call it Castlebank.”

“Wow. Did you come up with that just now off the top of your head?” he joked.

“Shut up,” she said with a scoff.

Dreychan sighed. This was her M.O. She had her ideas, and she wanted them heard, but she didn’t want to pitch them unprompted. She wanted the conversation to end up in a place that made those ideas inevitable and unavoidable. He was on to her little games, and rarely let her get there like that anymore. He knew that she was always trying to steer him, and this time, he knew where. Good thing she was so cute. “Enough tricks. Let’s see your proposal. You always write one up, don’t deny it. If it makes sense, we can submit it to Hrockas to see what he thinks. As of yet, we don’t have the power to implement some sort of Civil Access Support Trust, or whatever we might call it.”

Her eyes widened. “How did you...” She thought about it for another half second. “Oh, you already read my proposal.”

“I did,” he admitted. “We both have full access to each other’s stuff. I also looked a little back at your revision history. You came up with a lot of names for it, but you clearly wanted the acronym to be C.A.S.T.”

“Well, it makes sense. This planet is called Castlebourne because the first structure under the first dome was a castle, but also, the most common way people travel here, by far—even accounting for the refugees who came via the Vellani Ambassador—is quantum casting. I’m not sure who came up with the name, or whether they realized the double-meaning, but it’s there. Let’s use it.”

“You don’t have to sell me on it. I think it’s a fine idea. I just don’t think Hrockas will go for it. He’s sort of a king. He may actually prefer that most people remain visitors, because that way, he can institute whatever rules he likes, and if the visitors don’t like it, they can leave. If they become citizens, the expectation will be that they will stay unless something changes. In order to prevent these changes, or rather changes that they don’t care for, they will demand representation. He’ll no longer be a unilateral voice. He may even lose his power altogether if all the new citizens ultimately vote him out. I’m not calling him a tyrant, but he’s clearly a control freak.”

“Well...” Yunil began, only trailing off for a matter of seconds. “Well, let’s polish this up, and devise some counterarguments. He probably won’t come out and say it’s because he’s a king, though, so we’ll have to be on the lookout for the subtext.”

“Oh, you think this is about his power?” Hrockas was too busy, so the next day, they requested to pitch their new idea to one of his staffers. Angelita ‘Lita’ Prieto was the Director of Transition for the Department for Cultural Transition Assistance. She was the one who greeted all the refugees, and helped them get acclimated to their new situation. She explained how Castlebourne worked, but also how the free galaxy as a whole functioned. She and her team were the ones who taught them to no longer fear the Oaksent’s rule, and that they would be safe here. Most people loved her because of her lessons, and because so far, she had not been proven wrong.

They had it all worked out; how the government was going to operate, and who would fall under its purview. Visitors would have the opportunity to become citizens, converting their current energy credits to a Castlebourne equivalent at a ratio of 1:1.1. This 10% bonus was necessary, because at the moment, the only happening place to be this far out in this direction was Castlebourne. It would be a long time before the circumstances changed. Once a citizen, they had voting rights and representational power, meaning they would have to declare a home. They never had to spend any particular amount of time in this home, but it helped determine who represented them. And it couldn’t be any random dome. If you were a little odd, you could lie down and sleep every night in The Wasteland, but it was not officially categorized as Residential, so it didn’t count. They had some ideas about how to manage votes from people who were spending extended periods of time in character, like in the Spydome or Nordome networks, but this was the gist of it.

“Sorry,” Dreychan said. “I didn’t mean to imply that he didn’t have the best interests of your people at heart—”

“This is about the sun,” Lita said...weirdly.

“What about it?” Yunil asked.

“Well,” Lita began, “it needs to be moved, remember? We’ve not been able to do that, because your government fell apart. We can only ethically return to the possibility after you set up the new one, but if that new one gives voting privileges to everyone on the planet, it’s going to take even longer, or fall through entirely. What if the former visitors overwhelmingly don’t want to move? They don’t understand the stakes. Do you know how many warships we built that we literally never used because we stopped going to war? This is before the Teaguardians, which are primarily defensive, and while they are indeed manned, they hardly do anything either. The visitors don’t know about the Exin Empire. They don’t know why you fled. They don’t know how powerful The Oaksent is, or that magical time powers exist. They don’t know anything. We’ve had to lie to them since they got here, and that would have to stop. Are you prepared for the fallout?”

“That’s a good point,” Dreychan admitted. “I don’t want to exclude the visitors, and I think it would be great if they became citizens, but they’re too ignorant. That’s not on them, it’s on us, and even as Superintendent, I certainly don’t feel like it’s my right to give them the whole truth.”

“What if we just delayed it?” Yunil asked. “Not the stellar engine, but CAST.”

“You need some form of government now,” Lita argued. “Someone has to agree to the move, and they have to do it in an orderly, structured fashion.”

“But it’s like we say in the plan, this model is scalable. We could start out with a smaller scale—just the ex-Exins—and incentivize citizenship enrollment later, when we’re already well on our way.”

“That...isn’t the worst idea,” Lita acknowledged. She looked up to consider the proposal. “You certainly can’t get mad about a law that was passed before you became a citizen. I mean, you could, but you would have no leg to stand on.” There was a silence for a moment before she looked over at the lawyer. “What say you?”

“No, no, no, you’re right,” Jericho replied. “You clearly know what you’re talking about, I don’t know why you bothered inviting me to the planet, let alone this meeting. The visitors have no legal recourse. It happened before they became citizens. Of course, it’s not a problem that we were contemplating the two transitions at the same time; the physical move, and the citizenship naturalization process. We can certainly argue that they’re not connected, and that the 10% bonus should not in any way be construed as hush money, or some kind of preemptive out-of-court settlement, or anything like that. Everyone would believe us, and it would all turn out totally perfect and happy, and I have..no notes.” Jericho Hagen was a snarky little shit sometimes. Everything he did seemed to be against his will. To be sure, he was on Castlebourne of his own accord, but he harbored resentment regarding some things that went down many years ago, which pulled him into all this timey-wimey nonsense, and it seemed as though he still hadn’t gotten over it. Dreychan and Yunil were not cognizant of the particulars.

“What would you propose?” Yunil pressed him.

“Decouple the decisions. Move the sun now, like we need. I don’t remember how long that’s gonna take, but just go ahead and do it while you’re legally in the clear. You don’t have to wait until we’ve reached our final destination to open your little CAST program, but I recommend at least twenty years, maybe more.”

“It will evidently take about sixteen or seventeen years to get there,” Lita reminded him.

“Perfect,” Jericho decided, looking at Dreychan and Yunil. “That gives you a full three years to have supposedly and reportedly come up with the completely separate proposal to integrate the visitor population into the community as full, legal voters.” He looked over at Lita. “I recommend we scrub the meeting notes from the record. We never talked about this.”

“Is that legal?” Lita questioned.

“On Castlebourne, yeah,” Jericho promised. “The reason we’re in danger with moving the planet and signing up new citizens, is because it involves the rest of the galaxy. We are not fully beyond the laws of the core worlds. Our charter forces us to have some liability, and places us under some scrutiny. We have the latitude to make our own choices, though, as long as it doesn’t impact anyone else.”

“Okay,” Lita said. “Draw up the revised proposal,” she suggested to the ex-Exins, “removing all mentions of citizenship, and let me look over it before we submit it to Hrockas together. We will establish the new government, step one; move the sun, step two; and then begin CAST, step three.” She and Jericho left.

Dreychan and Yunil buckled down, creating the proposal yet again, and really getting all the wrinkles ironed out. It was a masterpiece, if they could be so bold as to declare. Lita loved it, Jericho tolerated it, and Hrockas accepted it. They spent several weeks advocating for the new governmental plan to the people, and setting up a voting schedule. It was another couple of months before the first candidates came out to campaign for themselves. After just over a year since the fall of the Council, the Castlebourne scalar representative council democracy was officially implemented. Dreychan and Yunil were able to step back, and let the gears turn smoothly without them. The representatives’ first order of business was to hold a referendum on the stellar engine plan. Instead of letting the Council and Hrockas alone decide, they opened it up to everyone’s opinion. And that opinion was overwhelming. The current citizens of Castlebourne did not support moving the sun.

Microstory 2595: Renata Recognizes Her Mistake in Feeling Safe in This New Dome

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Renata recognizes her mistake in feeling safe in this new dome. Of course Libera would find them, and of course she would get ahead of them. They have a plan for this, though. This Provider guy knows everything about Osman. Nothing gets in or out without his knowledge. At least almost nothing. He is not aware of the meta-tunnel that brought the team here. It doesn’t help them now, because it only goes back to the Usona dome. If they were to use an out-of-game route, they would be able to travel to Huaxia or Ever. The former is a non-starter as they are a clear enemy, and everyone on the team would stand out like a sore thumb. While Ever is technically an ally, there are some internal sociopolitical issues that make it a complicated place to be right now. Renata would very much like to see a map of this planet, so she can get a real frame of reference. She’s been told that it’s three-dimensional, so parts of one country are actually up above the sky, making that sky fake. Obviously, she shouldn’t be thinking about this now, because her main problem is currently standing in front of her, enjoying her reaction.

The Provider reaches out with both arms, and lays them across the Grangers’ shoulders, gently but obligatorily guiding them through the room. “It’s important to note that I like a good catfight as much as anyone, but you’re presently in my home. Most of my guests don’t know what it is I do, and if they do, they don’t know the particulars. But they all know not to ask questions. And that only works, because from the outside, I look clean.” Someone waves at him, so he has to smile back. “Hi, how are you? Thanks for coming. Try my signature drink.” He goes right back to being serious again. “I don’t much care what the NSD is after, and which one of you is a genuine officer, and which is the traitor. What I care about is my business, and my business is mostly getting people out of Osman.” He lets go of them, and literally shoos them away with a low sweep of his hands. “So, please...ladies...get out.”

“That’s what we’re trying to do,” Renata argues, holding her hand out before one of the Provider’s guards can take hold of her. “We need to get out of the country, and we need your help. We didn’t come for the signature cocktail.” According to Lycander, you can travel from any country to another using in-universe travel procedures, regardless of how the domes are situated relative to each other. And in-universe, those travel procedures are restricted in and out of Osman. They wouldn’t have come to this dome at all if they had had more time, but after Quidel was killed, they just needed to select the closest option. Now they’re trying to get to Elbis, and the Provider is the only way to do that while staying under the radar. “We can pay.”

“Yes, that sounds quite important, and I can always use a bit more money.” He places his index finger against his lips as if he’s considering her request. “Um. The thing is, I don’t need this kind of heat on me.”

“What heat?” Libera questions. She’s such a talker, it’s shocking that she managed to go this long without hearing the sound of her own voice.

“Why, haven’t you heard?” The Provider asks. He snaps his fingers twice at one of his men, who hands him a folder. “You’ve both been burned.”

Renata takes the file, and reluctantly lets her mother look at it with her. He’s right. A warrant is out for their extradition. The NSD thinks that they’ve committed treason. The front page doesn’t say much about it, because it’s what gets out to official governmental channels. The pages behind it are internal, and the Provider probably only has them because getting his hands on things that he’s not supposed to even know about is his job.

“They know you’re in Osman,” he reiterates what they’re reading on those latter pages.

“This says there’s a reward for capture,” Renata points out. She might worry about giving him ideas, but the guy is very put-together. That’s not something he missed. He must have some reason he’s not trying to cash in.

“Usona stays out of my business, and I stay out of theirs. I’m not interested in forming a relationship with your agency. Now you have all the information, so go.” He shoos them away again.

The guards take hold of their arms now, and turn them around. As soon as they do, a group of well-dressed thugs are walking up the steps. The leader holds his arms out demonstratively. “Provi, you didn’t invite me.”

“Who are these guys?” Renata whispers to Libera.

“Mercs,” Libera whispers back. “Mostly ex-NSD agents who got screwed over, but we believe they’re funded by the State Security Directorate.” Ugh, Sclovo.

“It must have been an oversight,” the Provider claims. “Please, welcome.” He doesn’t want them here, but he doesn’t want any trouble either.

“We’re just here to meet up with a few friends,” the head merc says to the Provider before deliberately adjusting his gaze to Renata and Libera. He points with two fingers on each hand, in the general direction of the Provider and his security team, like a flight attendant indicating the emergency exits.

The other mercs pull out their guns, and start firing at the guards. Chaos ensues. The party-goers start to scream, and run in all directions, not knowing where the danger lies. The guards who have survived so far start shooting back. Renata and Libera duck away from the bullets, but both of them get shot anyway. “Remember what you said to Polly!” Libera cries. “Do that to yourself! You can’t feel pain, and all that!”

“Why do you care what happens to me?” Renata shouts back, covering her head protectively.

“I told you, we’re not enemies! I still see you as my daughter, and I want us to work together! Goddammit, I didn’t bring a gun.”

Two of the mercs find them amidst the mayhem and confusion, and begin to drag them through the door, heading for the steps. They are very strong, because they’re androids. Wait, they’re androids, and non-emergent ones at that. Their lives don’t matter. Renata manages to reach under her dress, and retrieve Demo’s gun. She shoots her captor in the face, and then shoots Libera’s out of instinct. More mercs come out of the woodwork. She manages to shoot three more of them, but runs out of bullets, so they stand up and start to fight them off by hand.

“I can get us out of here!” Libera shouts.

“I can’t trust you!” Renata yells back.

“You wanna trust these guys?”

Renata looks around, but doesn’t see Quidel or Demo. And Lycander? Well, Lycander is gone. She growls, and begrudgingly follows Libera out of the parking lot, punching all the bad guys along the way.

Microstory 2594: Renata Slides Most of the Outfits to One Side of the Rack

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Renata slides most of the outfits to one side of the rack. She slides some of them back the other way before taking a smaller fraction, and trying again. She’s not seeing anything that would fit her, not stylistically, that is. She looks over at Demo. “I’m more of a sexy, but still professional, business casual, or a black catsuit and a gun, kind of gal. This stuff just isn’t me.”

“It doesn’t have to be you,” Demo explains. “You just have to look the part for tonight. Where we’re going, we’re not trying to stand out.” She glides over and picks up a sparkly silver dress, holding it up against Renata’s body. “This is what everyone else will be wearing.”

“Why do you even have all these costumes? Do you go to a lot of fancy parties?”

Demo smiles. “The set diagram of the wealthiest among us, and the most crooked, is practically a single circle. They care a great deal about appearances, which is why...” She tests another dress, but decides against it, “...they always hold these grand, expensive parties.”

“Why do we have to infiltrate this party at all?” Renata questions. “Can’t we just wait until it’s over? Talk to him in the morning?”

“Time is of the essence,” Demo reminds her. “Your mother could be searching for you from outside the network, like a god. And The Provider prefers to step away to do business during his events. He doesn’t want to seem desperate by spending all of his time in the spotlight.” She tests another dress. “This one.”

Renata accepts the outfit with a sigh. “The Provider,” she echoes. “That’s such a dumb name. Is he like me...or like you?”

“We’re not allowed to talk about it, so I don’t know. If he’s a visitor,” Demo continues as she’s taking it upon herself to remove Renata’s clothing, starting with her tank top, “he’s a very old one. I’ve been here nearly since it opened, and he was already well-established in canon.” She tries to unbutton Renata’s shorts.

Renata pulls away. “That’s okay, I can dress myself.” She finishes changing her clothes. She then steps over to look at her reflection. The image is corrupted by dust and mirror rot, but she gets the idea. She’s wearing a floor-length emerald dress made of satin. It’s showing a meaningful amount of cleavage, which is fairly typical of her, but there’s also a slit along her left leg, which is not so typical. She looks quite pretty, and she has to admit as much, but it feels awkward just the same. Still, Demo is right. This is part of the job. Had she made it past one day in the program, her training would have prepared her to be a chameleon anywhere, rather than just a shadow in the shadows. It’s too late for that training now, though. She’s in the deep end.

“Whoa,” Quidel says as he’s staring at her from the top of the ladder.

Reneta looks back at him via the mirror. “Are you allowed to be attracted to a synthetic person? That is, is it socially acceptable?”

Quidel finishes climbing up to the loft, and approaches her. “Absolutely. That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. You may not be human, but you’re still a person.”

Demo starts to unbutton her own shirt before shifting gears to untying her boots. “You’ll see once you’re on the outside. You will not have a hard time finding friends and mates, if that’s what you’re interested in.”

Lycander is walking up the ladder now, paying close attention to the rungs as he’s talking. “Okay. The car is all filled up with the odorized water that we’re supposed to pretend is petrol.” He finally looks up. “Whoa.”

“That’s what I said,” Quidel jokingly complained. “Get your own interjection of intemperate awe.”

“Right,” Lycander says. He checks his watch. “If we were to leave now, we would be on time.”

“Then we’ll leave in half an hour,” Demo decides.

The four of them continue to get ready, putting on makeup, and adjusting their snazzy formalwear. Exactly 29 minutes later, they’re all in the car, thankfully with the top up to block all the sand that they’re about to kick up. “Check the glovebox,” Demo suggests to Renata.

Renata opens it to see a little gun holstered in a garter belt. “It’s cute.”

“My good one, which fits a larger gun, broke. That’s only my backup, so don’t fire too many shots, or you’ll run out.”

“This is for me?” Renata presses.

“Of course. If I die, I wake up in one of my safehouse eggs. If you die, we have no idea what happens to your memory. The answer is usually, don’t think about it, but right now, I would say that you’re a more valuable asset than even that weird techy thing in the back.” She starts the drive.

“Thank you, that’s very kind of you.” Renata lifts her leg to wrap the holster around it. The slit on the side opens pretty wide. She can feel Quidel’s gaze. She looks back at him with a smile. “Stay on mission, soldier.”

“Good point,” he says. “Lycander, I should be on car duty with the device. You go in with them instead.”

“The assignments have been set, Mr. Jespersen. Figure it out,” Lycander replies without any hesitation or self-doubt.

They drive across the desert, and pull up to the lavish mansion. It is hard to miss out here in the middle of nowhere. The valet tries to take the keys, but Lycander takes them from Demo instead, insisting that he’ll find his own parking space. They don’t really like to do that, but they’re programmed to be accommodating. He drives off while the other three walk up the steps, and into the lights and sounds. They mingle for a little bit before Demo spots the man that they’re here to see, inconspicuously pointing him out to the other two across the room.

Renata takes a deep breath and tunnels her vision onto his face. She was assigned to make first contact, so she must remember to not be pushy, or try to get down to business right away.

As she’s walking towards him, he looks up and notices her. “Ah, Miss Granger. How lovely of you to join us.”

He knows her already? “Mister Provider,” she says with a polite nod, as instructed.

“I believe you two have met?” He claims with a smirk as he’s helping the woman he was talking to turn around.

It’s Libera. Maybe they should have arrived on time.

Microstory 2593: Renata Gets Up From Her Cot, Trying to Keep the Squeaking to a Minimum

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Renata gets up from her cot, trying to keep the squeaking to a minimum. She leaves the room, and goes into the common area, climbing the ladder up to the loft where Lycander is keeping watch. “Everything okay?”

“You still need sleep,” he warns her. “You were made to think like an organic, which comes with its disadvantages, like spending a third of your life in bed.”

“I’m not awake because I think I’m better than everyone,” Renata tries to explain. “I’m awake because of insomnia. I suppose that was programmed into me too.”

“Everyone is at risk of suffering from insomnia. They didn’t give it to you on purpose. It’s likely happening because you’re struggling with some things. I’m not a psychologist, though, so don’t listen to my advice.”

“I understand.” She stood there in silence for a moment, looking out at the desert expanse. “So, you’re a natural-born human, right?”

“We don’t really use that term human anymore, but yes,” Lycander replies.

“And this planet is...just a giant theme park?”

“More like tens of thousands of theme parks. Some of them are for adventure, but some are more low-key.”

“I hear you don’t have to work anymore in the real world.”

“That is an oversimplification, but still true. If you want to live a very comfortable, immobile life, you don’t have to contribute a single thing to society. If you want more—if you wanna travel—you have to do something. It doesn’t have to even be particularly valuable. You could be the absolute worst painter in the world, but if you paint, and you put your artwork out there for others to see, you get credits for that. If you save up enough, you can spend it on transportation somewhere.”

“So, that’s what you did? You were on your homeworld, but you had a job, so they let you come here?”

“They let me cast here,” he clarifies. “I’ve actually never been on a ship before. I basically sent my mind to a new body at faster-than-light speeds. It costs fewer credits, and it’s a lot more common.”

“You can move your mind around. So we’re all robots.”

“Like we’ve said, the distinction doesn’t hold much meaning. There are people out there whose substrates are designed almost just like yours, except they were born before that. No one really cares about the differences.”

“Right.” She nods, not wanting to talk about that all again. “But you still work. Are you trying to leave this world now? Cast again, or go on a real ship.”

“No. I’m making credits, sure, but I’m not concerned with them. I don’t pay much attention to my account. I work because I find it fulfilling. That’s why they created the post-scarcity society. A lot of really smart people worked very hard to make that happen, so people would finally have a choice. If you want a job, you can just go get one. There is always an opening. If it’s typically automated, they’ll have you replace some of that automation. Even if it makes the process a little slower or less efficient, no one’s really bothered by that, because we have such an abundance. And if you quit, or just don’t feel like coming in one day—or for a few months—it’s no sweat off their backs. They’ll backfill your job with automators in your absence.”

She pushed Quidel to explain what it’s really like before, but he insisted that everything was fine. Maybe Lycander will have a different answer, especially since he does still work. “Sounds like a paradise. What’s the catch?” Was that offensive?

“The catch is, there are gaps. Energy credits don’t just pay for the transportation itself, but also materials, which is why casting is cheaper, but it has lower overhead. Anyway, it’s not only about leaving where you are, but building a new home somewhere else. While no one is poor in the sense that you’re familiar with, there are definitely wealthier people. They’re the ones who can afford to construct a centrifugal cylinder and leave others behind...stuck. It really just depends on what your priorities are. If you want to stay in civilization, you’ll be able to find happiness pretty easily. Even if you go the cheaper casting route to a new planet, you’ll be living around others, and you won’t always get a choice on who those people are. A lot of people want that choice. They want to choose their neighbors, or choose not to have any neighbors at all. That’s the hardest life to achieve, because it takes a crapton of energy credits, and while you’re saving, you’re living in a way that you probably don’t care for. There is no such thing as an advance, and loans come with sometimes untenable stipulations. As I was saying, my work is easy because I can always leave. Those who need a lot of credits can’t, or they’ll never realize their goals.”

“Energy. It’s based on energy?” Renata presses.

“That’s the only thing that matters. It’s the only thing that ever mattered. Everything we do is in service to survival, and you can’t survive without energy. And material to stand on, or in.”

She sort of frowned.

“What is it? What’s on your mind?”

“What happens to me when I leave? I won’t be a banker anymore. I won’t even be a spy. How will I earn credits? Should I even try?”

“That’s up to you. As an emerging intelligence, you will be entitled to the same basics as everyone else, including an energy stipend. That stipend is based on your physical requirements, and cannot be lower than what you need to be alive and conscious indefinitely. Since you started out without any choice in life, I’m sure they will make arrangements for you to travel anywhere you want, totally free of charge. Not everyone gets that, of course, but the way they see it, forcing you to live where you were created would be immoral.”

“Well, you were created at a certain place, and had to pay to leave, didn’t you?”

“That’s different. I was born, and some of my physicality was even designed, but my mind wasn’t designed. Yours was. I hesitate to call it slavery, but their reasoning is, if they make you stay here, it will lean more in that  direction than before, because you now have agency. I shouldn’t be talking about any of this. I am not an expert. Someone will explain it to you in greater detail, and more accurately.”

“No, I appreciate it,” Renata says gratefully. “Now I have something to look forward to. Except I have no clue if I would even want to travel. How many other worlds are there, and what are they like?”

Microstory 2592: Renata Jumps Out of the Emergency Exit, and Falls About One Story Down

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Renata jumps out of the emergency exit, and falls about one story down. She lands on her feet, bending them to absorb the shock, and stopping herself from hitting her face by holding her hands out at her sides. Quidel is clear at the back of the plane, still by the ramp. He runs over when he sees her do that. “Are you okay? What the hell were you thinking? Just because this thing was never in the air, doesn’t mean you weren’t high up.”

“I’m just testing my limits,” she answers casually as she’s brushing the dust off of her hands.

“Well, you’re not invincible, and you can still feel pain.”

“I can’t feel pain if I don’t want to, and just be glad I didn’t jump out of the crew door.”

He looks up at the cockpit, which is closer to three stories high. “You would break your legs. Even an android can’t survive that, unless it’s specifically designed to, which you’re not, because that would be a waste. This isn’t Underbelly.”

“I don’t know what that means.” She looks around at the desert. They are in a very remote region of Osman, miles and miles from the nearest city. They’re not trying to go anywhere in particular here. They’re just trying to keep this device far away from Libera. It’s not that she can’t get to this dome, but perhaps she won’t find them here if they’re well-hidden. That’s Spycraft 101. Lycander says that the dome has security cameras that allow beings on the outside to monitor progress, but the don’t cover everywhere. They don’t see everything. Even Ambients don’t permanently record what they see. That would be too much data to track and manage, especially since most of it is innocuous. So they should be safe enough running into a local, and not thinking that their coordinates are going to leak out. “Where is this MIS contact of yours?”

He looks over her shoulder, so she turns around to see a roofless off-roader heading their way. “She’s right on time, as per usual,” he says. She looks back at him. He’s smiling. He likes this girl. That could be dangerous. Relationships are always a risk, whether they work for the same agency, a different one, or if they’re a civilian. That’s Spycraft 101.

“She’s pretty,” Renata notes as the car draws nearer, but not near enough to make out enough detail for her to make that claim.

“For the last time, androids do not have telescopic vision. It’s not necessary. It just adds bulk and complexity to an already overengineered design. Why are you lying?”

“I’m a spy. It’s what we do,” Renata explains.

He sighs. “Since you were fishing, I’ll bite anyway. Yes, she’s beautiful. But you should know that we’re not supposed to be friends. Some spies are players, and some are not, and we’re not supposed to distinguish each other. We’re to treat everything as real, and not talk about the outside world.”

“Fair enough. I won’t mention anything about how my entire reality has just crumbled, and I don’t know what to believe anymore, and I’m having a massive internal existential crisis that I can’t talk to anyone about because I can’t trust anyone who knows the truth too, and I have never felt more alone.”

He gently tugs at her shoulder so she’s facing him again. “Is that true?”

Renata scoffs. “No. Take a joke.”

He knows she’s lying.

“What joke?” Lycander asks as he’s walking up from the plane, having secured it appropriately.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Hello, it’s nice to meet you,” Renata says as the Elbin agent pulls up. “My name is Renata Granger.”

The agent steps out of the car, and peers at her over her sunglasses, sizing her up. She chuckles at Quidel. “Found another one, huh? she asks him in a posh Elbin accent. Or maybe it’s actually British?”

“The first one, I think,” Quidel replies.

The Elbin woman smiles. “The one you’ve really been after this whole time.” She takes her sunglasses off completely, and gets a better look at Renata, like a vet examining a pregnant cow. “She understands where we are?”

Quidel notices Renata’s confusion. “That’s what I was trying to tell you, but had only gotten to the background info. You can be open and honest with Martina. She’s helped me move other conscious Exemplars and Ambients to safe places.”

“Call me Demuri, or just Demo,” she says, shaking Renata’s hand. “I chose to use a different name when I came to Spydome, but like he said, we’re all friends here now.”

Quidel nods approvingly. “She is not why we’re here, though. We need to secure a package. The person who’s after it has god-tier powers.”

Demo takes her glasses off again, and looks at him incredulously. “I don’t know what that means. Is that some kind of codeword that I was supposed to have memorized?”

“No, she has actual magic powers. According to these two, she disappeared before their eyes.”

Demo shrugs. “Holograms. Easy.”

“We were on a catwalk. They should have detected her footsteps. Before I killed my last substrate, she did show up suddenly, so I should have heard footsteps while I was still there with them.”

“Okay, well neither invisibility nor teleportation is a thing, in any dome. Not even Underbelly, which is designed to give you superhuman powers, can break the laws of physics, so I don’t know what they think they saw, but they didn’t see that.”

“I sure hope you’re right,” Quidel says, shaking his head. “I just wouldn’t bet on it. I trust them. I trust their perspectives.”

“I’ll accept that,” Demo acknowledges. “Regardless, we need to get to the safehouse. Fair warning, they are not luxury accommodations.”

“I’m a robot, so I can sleep anywhere,” Renata says.

“I wish I hadn’t ever said that to you,” Quidel complains.

“I’m glad you did,” Renata contends. “That’s when I finally started waking up.”

Microstory 2591: Renata Follows Quidel and Lycander Through the Hatch

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Renata follows Quidel and Lycander through the hatch. The walls are pure white, and the tubular corridor they’re walking through is increasing in diameter, like a cone. They’re heading for what appears to be a military jet, with its giant rear entrance open. Notably, it doesn’t have any wings. There are no cars in the cargo hold, but several of them would certainly fit. The three of them walk up the ramp, but Renata and Quidel stop to sit down as Lycander continues on towards the cockpit. She carefully stores the case under the seat next to her, and snaps the netting to make sure it’s secure. The hatch closes up.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Quidel says.

Renata stares at the opposite wall for a moment before turning her head. “Lycander says that he can’t come back, like you obviously did.”

“He was an Ambient,” Quidel starts to explain. “There is no reason for them to be backed up. Anyone could step in and fulfill the role of Exemplar-one’s driver.”

“That’s how you see us, as just...replaceable?”

“I know it’s hard for you to accept, and I don’t expect you to. Researchers agonized over the ethics of roboticism for centuries before it was even possible to imitate consciousness, let alone synthesize it. The world out there, it’s not as exciting as this. We created this world to have something interesting to do. So I’m not sure if the way we treat AI is correct, but frankly, it has built a paradise for us. We’re so well-taken care of that we contrive adventure to stay stimulated. So we assume that our ethics are sound, because if they weren’t, we should see it cause problems.”

“Maybe there are problems that you’re just not seeing,” Renata suggests.

“Such a truth would be difficult to suppress,” Quidel contends. “We number in the tens of billions, possibly into the hundreds by now. Conspiracy theories don’t hold up mostly because of how difficult it would be to enforce secrecy across the multitudes who would have to be in on the truth. Our population explosion only makes that more difficult. There are so many groups that advocate for the ethical treatment of individual persons. They look into discrepancies, and they would find them. I know you don’t wanna hear this, but the Ambient—”

“Polly,” she interrupts.

“Polly,” he goes on, “didn’t have thoughts or feelings. He was programmed to behave in certain ways. It’s an illusion.”

“And me? Am I an illusion? Don’t answer that, I know what you’re gonna say. So let’s go back in time several years, before Libera got her hands on my hardware to do whatever she did. Was my consciousness only an illusion?”

“To a lesser degree, yes,” he admits. “That’s why she had to go into your brain and change you. I don’t know what she did, but I know that she didn’t just flip a switch. As far as we can tell, there is only one thing that can transform a non-conscious intelligence into a conscious one.”

“What would that be?” she questions.

“Teaching it to, and not interfering with its development artificially. You might have gained agency on your own eventually, if they hadn’t erased your memories according to whatever schedule they were on. If you had simply lived a life, it might have happened anyway, because that’s how humans work. For hundreds of thousands of years, every homo sapien has grown up to be self-aware because they were given the latitude to do so. It might sound cruel that no one tried that with you until Libera, but not everyone should be uplifted. We’ve granted some animals intelligence as well. There’s an entire star system out there called Altair that’s populated by uplifted animals. But we didn’t do it for all of them. There are still regular cats, dogs, and birds. Your coffee maker has a chip in it, but I’m guessing you would never get mad that no one has taught it to feel loved. Before you argue, I’m not saying that Exemplars are coffee makers, but it’s a spectrum, and you have to draw boundaries somewhere. If you try to help everything, you’ll end up with a talking rock, and an amoeba that does calculus. A world where every cell and every circuit is taught to make its own choices would collapse in a nanosecond.”

Lycander returns. “We’re ready to go. We’ll start moving in a few minutes.”

Renata hears the sound of a motor, but not the roar of any engines. “I’m guessing this is only theatre. You’re supposed to think that you’re in a flying jet, but you’re just moving down this hallway?”

“I kept the holograms and haptics off,” Lycander explains. “Since you wouldn’t be fooled by the IMH experience anyway.”

“IMH?” Renata questions.

“Immersive Multisensory Haptics,” Quidel answers. “The plane would be tilting and bumping in a way that simulates flight. Instead, we’re just gonna let it glide along the track. We could walk too, but it’s far, so this is just a giant car.”

“If you were still pretending that this was real,” Renata begins as the fake plane starts moving, “what would the scenario be?”

“A contact of mine would let me tag along with a military aid operation headed for Barta, and I would parachute out over Osman airspace. I really would parachute, though. I would take an elevator up, and jump off of a ledge.”

“On the way here, Lycander said that Osman is like a country called Pakistan from your planet. What’s Barta?”

Quidel gives Lycander a look, who responds, “might as well answer any question she has. That’s what the ethics tell us to do with an emerging intelligence.”

Quidel sighs acceptingly, and looks back over at Renata. “Barta is like India. But they told us not to get hung up on the parallels. There are tens of thousands of domes on Castlebourne. It was easier to come up with the mythologies by basing it on preexisting ones, even for the primary AI who generated it. So Barta isn’t really India...it’s Barta. And Osman is Osman.”

Renata nods. “Will I ever see the world outside?”

“I hope so,” Quidel tells her. “We’re on our way to meet with an associate of mine who works for the Military Intelligence Service who may be able to sneak us out.”

“And Elbis is...”

Quidel smiles, knowing that he’ll have to relent. “It’s gone through many names. Perhaps the most modern, but still  territorially inclusive, version was called the British Federation. Though, if we recall that this dome network is supposed to be an analog to Earth around the 21st century, it was called the United Kingdom back then.”

“I prefer Elbis. I was hoping to go there one day.”

“You still might,” Lycander says. “It’s the closest one to Castledome.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 23, 2536

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Leona walked back into the lab. Ramses wasn’t there, at least not in the main area. He did have that room in the back that he asked others to stay out of. Surely that didn’t apply to her, though. They were partners. She contributed a lot to rebuilding his lab, and the slingdrive array, which were their most important assets. She opened the door to find him naked on an exam table, at a high incline, a gaping hole in his abdomen. “What the hell are you doing?”

The robosurgeon stopped moving out of an abundance of caution since Leona did not step into this room decontaminated, or even very recently showered. Ramses wasn’t under anaesthesia, though, so he was annoyed. “Get out!” he demanded. He looked at the little surgical arms. “Get back to work!”

“Belay that order!” Leona countered.

“You don’t have control over this thing,” Ramses dismissed.

“Tell me what you are doing to yourself.”

Ramses sighed. “This was incredibly tedious and irritating. I cannot lose my forge core again. So no more pocket dimensions, no more bags of holding. This thing is being stored safe and sound inside of me, and if I lose that? Well, that means I’ve lost my entire substrate, so I don’t know what else I could try.”

“This is insane. You don’t have room to spare. What are you taking out to make space?” she questioned.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m sick of repeating myself! What will you have to take out!”

“Just some of my voltaics, and my sleep regulator. Okay, most of my voltaics. And my nutrient booster, and my water recycler, and two of my metallic oxygen reservoirs. But that’s it.” He stopped, but it looked like he wasn’t done yet. “And part of my liver, but it’s fine. I’ll just have to sleep more, and eat more, and I won’t be able to survive the vacuum for as long as normal people do. Not a big deal.”

Leona shook her head. “I know that this was hard on you, but this is not the way.”

“I’m already using an upgraded body,” Ramses reasoned. “It’s not like it will reject it, or go septic, or something like that. People have all sorts of implants, and some even use artificial organs all the time, mixed with their organic ones. It really is okay.”

“Do you know why we aren’t telepathic, Ramses?”

“Because I couldn’t figure it out.”

“That’s a lie, and we both know it. You didn’t give us telepathy, even though it would make a lot of the things we do easier, because you decided that that was a bridge too far. Every posthuman has their line, and that was yours, whether you’ll admit it or not.”

“It’s not a spectrum,” Ramses argued. “It’s an array, so if your claim were right, it would be more like excluding something from the array.”

“Metaphors aside, you’re not a mech.”

“And this isn’t cybernetic. It’s a...flesh pocket.”

“That’s not what that term means,” she warned.

“A storage cabinet,” he amended. “I appreciate your concern, but I’m doing this, so you can either squirm and watch, or get out and breathe.”

“It’s a slippery slope. That’s what I’m trying to say. Because there will come a time when you have to escape this body unexpectedly, and it will prompt you to try something more drastic. You could lose a part of yourself trying more and more. You could lose our pattern. You would be off the team.”

Ramses frowned. They stared at each other for a while. “It wouldn’t be the first time a version of me lost the team.” He looked at the arms. “Keep going, surgeon. Take out the legacy parts.”

“There’s a better way. I think you should take more time to think of it.” Leona opted to leave. She didn’t want to watch the procedure. She didn’t know if she was in the right, or if there was nothing wrong with what Ramses was trying to do. She just didn’t want him regretting it, or doing something that couldn’t be reversed. She stood in the main lab for a couple of minutes, hoping that he would change his mind and come out. When it looked like he wasn’t going to, she started to walk away.

Ramses came out, still pulling his shirt down over his bandaged incision site. He set his forge core on the counter.

“Ah!” she screamed, “I changed your mind!” She reached out and took him into a bear hug.

He pulled away, still rather sore. “Careful, careful.” The local anaesthetics conflicted with the liquid bandage, so he would have to switch to painkillers. “Yes, you did change my mind.”

“What was it? Tell me what did it exactly...in case I need to say it again.”

“You told me I should look for a better way, and I think you’re right,” he answered. “I think I have one.”

“Lay it on me,” she encouraged.

“Bioprinting.”

“Bioprinting?”

“Bioprinting.”

“What does the method of substrate fabrication have to do with anything?”

“The science wasn’t there before, but it is now. What we need are brand new upgrades, complete with new parameters. Instead of just a handful of nanite implants, they will be evenly distributed under the skin, ready to emerge and form even faster than now. The forge core is still a part of the plan, but I don’t have to take anything out to make room for it. I just need a new design. I’m going to work on it now.”

“We were hoping to leave now,” she reminded him. “We need to take Meyers to his new home on the other side of the galaxy.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Ramses said. “Someone else can handle that. I need to focus.”

“I thought you didn’t want this to be a permanent lab.”

“And it won’t be. I have a new idea for that too. But I can’t waste time going off on a side mission for some hermit that I have no strong feelings about. You can go if you want to, or collaborate with me on my new projects. But from where I’m standing, the other five can handle it without us.”

“Four,” Leona corrected. “We need at least three at each location.”

“Sure, sure, sure, let’s do that. You make that call, but I’m not going to be on the away team. Not this time.”

Leona studied him as he turned around, and started pulling down tools, preparing his workspace for his new plans. He was instantly engrossed in the flood of ideas, he wasn’t paying attention to her, and didn’t notice when she snagged the forge core before teleporting away. She jumped to Olimpia, who was alone, but she wanted to talk to everyone. Well, most everyone. She tapped and held onto her comms disc, opening up for a voice command. “Group call to all team contacts, except for Ramses.”

“What?” Olimpia questioned. “Why?”

“All team contacts except for Ramses Abdulrashid. Channel open...” the operator announced.

“Everyone convene at my location. Don’t tell Ramses.”

“Why are you leaving him out of it?” Olimpia asked. “What’s going on?”

Leona waited for everyone else to arrive before explaining herself. “Ramses is obsessed. He’s working on a new project, which places him in danger. He wants three or four of us to take Mr. Meyers to his new home, but I am not comfortable with that. I know what’s going to happen. If we use our new slingdrive array for the first time ever to separate, we will stay separated for an extended period of time.”

“Did you speak with a seer, or something?” Marie asked.

“It’s not that I know it for a fact. It’s more that that’s how our lives always go. We don’t really know where we’re going, and I’m formulating a hypothesis about how the slingdrives work, which I don’t even think Ramses has noticed. I believe that their scope is smaller than we once thought, and every time we use them, we risk running into someone that we don’t want to. I would rather we all be together when that happens. I’m sure you won’t like it, but I have admin access to the array, so we’re going to sling, and Ramses is coming with us, whether he wants to or not.” She held up the forge core. “Wherever we end up, we’ll at least be together, and we will rebuild from there. Even if that means ending up back here anyway, I would prefer not to take the chance.”

“You’re the captain, honey,” Mateo pointed out.

“I’m not asking you to be on my side about it,” Leona went on, “but I wanted to tell you ahead of time, because after we land, he’s going to be angry, and he’s going to have questions. I don’t want to have to answer to you five while I’m dealing with him. So ask your questions now, so when we do go, we’re only worrying about him.”

“I have a question,” Romana said, holding up her hand.

“Okay...” Leona prompted.

“Can I go warn Ramses?” Romana couldn’t keep a straight face with that.

Leona scoffed. “Any serious questions?”

“Yeah, when is this happening?” Angela asked.

Leona asked her husband. “Is Meyers in stasis?”

“He is,” Mateo confirmed.

“Then we’ll leave right now, or as soon as you all have everything you need.”

“Our pocket dimensions are back in order,” Angela said, “so I suppose there’s nothing more to pack.”

Leona’s gaze drifted over to her wife. “Oli?”

“I don’t agree with this. We don’t keep secrets from each other. We don’t trick each other. We have enemies, and we treat them how we must to survive, and protect others, but we’re only able to do that because of the trust that we’ve built within the team. I wouldn’t have asked you to marry me if I thought you were capable of something like this.”

“You didn’t see what I saw,” Leona tried to explain. “He was mutilating himself.” She shook the forge core. “He was going to stuff this thing under his liver, and take out a bunch of his transorgans to do it.”

“That sounds like his call,” Olimpia argued.

“And this is mine. I’m still the captain here, even without a ship. You all spent a great deal of energy convincing me of that. So which is it? I’m your leader until you don’t like a decision I make?” Leona questioned.

“Yes, exactly,” Olimpia concurred. “That’s what good leaders do. They listen to their people, and change their minds when reasoned with.”

“I’ve not heard a good reason not to do this,” Leona decided.

“Then you’re not listening. Captain or no, I have my own agency, so I’m going to go talk to my friend. I agree that we should stick together, but we’re not going to do it as a surprise. Thank you for making sure he keeps his forge core with him, but he may want something else, or he may need to turn off some machines, or place an AI in dormant mode so it doesn’t go insane in the void of time. This is irresponsible, and I won’t stand for it.” And with that, she disappeared.

There was an awkward silence in her absence, which Mateo broke. “She has a pretty good point.”

“I know that!” Leona snapped back. She tapped and held on her comms disc again. “Team lurk mode. Admin authorization Dolphin-Racecar-Kangaroo one-niner-three.”

She listened to the conversation between Olimpia and Ramses in secret. The former wasn’t selling Leona out. She just appealed to the logic side of Ramses’ brain, reminding him that the slingdrives were brand new and untested, and it was too dangerous to let them go their separate ways. They all had to go together. She promised that they would find a place for him to continue on with his projects, either here, back on Castlebourne, or somewhere else entirely. Ramses was understanding, and persuaded. While everyone was making sure they had everything closed up and secure, Ramses shut his lab down, and gathered the last of his belongings. He told Leona to go ahead and keep the forge core that she had taken as it was only one copy, and he had another. He was considering making five more of them so everyone could have their own. They were fairly user-friendly, and getting easier to operate with each iteration. Their main function was to rebuild his lab, but they could also just construct some other structure, which could come in handy if they did ever end up getting separated, and stranded somewhere hostile.

Pribadium glided into the room. “All ready to go?”

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Mateo said to her.

“Is that what you would call it? I was pretty combative,” Pribadium noted.

“Let’s just call it passionate,” Mateo decided.

She smiled. “Thank you for doing this. If he wants to be a hermit, I don’t have a problem with that. I just don’t want him to go back into the system, and try to scrounge up the energy credits. He’s not much of a contributor. He’ll never save enough if he relies solely on passive income.”

“Energy credits?” Romana asked Leona in a whisper.

“I’ll explain it later,” Leona whispered back. “We don’t worry about credits. We generate our own energy.”

“No problem,” Mateo said. He pressed a button on the stasis pod so it started hovering over the magnetized floor. Rambo, could you take the other end? Leona can drive.”

“Yeah.” Ramses held onto the pod, just enough to make sure it was transported with them. He was still a little perturbed, but hopefully he would be able to return to his work quite soon. Perhaps they would carve a chunk out of Linwood’s new celestial body, or something nearby, and stick around for a bit while they rebuilt.

“Wait,” Pribadium said. She went over, and planted a kiss on Mateo’s lips. “I know you like the ladies.”

“What has become of my reputation!” he questioned rhetorically.

“Better step back, Pri-Pri,” Leona suggested.

Pribadium saluted them, and then disappeared.

“Prepare to sling,” Leona said as she was tapping on her arm band. “Yalla.” They left.

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