Microstory 2766: Winner’s Circle

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It begins as a pinprick of consciousness as Elise becomes acutely aware of the passage of time, even though there are no external stimuli. She isn’t truly thinking about anything. She is only mindful of her own ability to think. At first, she believes there might be a tiny light before her, but it may simply be her imagination...but does she even have an imagination anymore? She tries to come up with other things to occupy her mind, but nothing comes. She can’t even articulate in her head an idea of what ideas she should be able to come up with. No categories of thoughts, no things, no things to do or have done. She is nothing more than a thinking thing. A thinking thing called Elise. So that’s something at least. She is someone. She is a someone with a name, and if she has a name it must mean there are other someones with their own names. But who?

Elise quietly screams at her own brain. Wake up. Think. Think about something, anything. It doesn’t have to be important, it doesn’t have to be major. Don’t just sit here in the silence like a moth in the dark. A moth? What is a moth? It must be something, or she wouldn’t have a word for it. What is a word? What are things? What is anything? Go back to the moth. A moth is...a moth is something that is. It’s something that...flies. It has wings. Flying wings. And hair and eyes. Elise should have eyes. She has seen things before. She has seen moths. She has smelled the hot and cold nights as the weather transitions from summer to autumn. There she goes thinking about more things again. This time, it’s the seasons. There are two others: winter and spring. Spring is her favorite. Tofu is her favorite food. She eats. She is a person. She has a mouth.

She is Elise Perkins and she is in a race. No, an expedition. A quest? No. It’s a hunt. It’s a treasure hunt. She is a treasure hunter. Her name is Elise Perkins, Treasure Hunter. She has a mouth, a nose, and lucky her, two eyes. Also two ears. She’s hearing something. She’s hearing something with her ears. It’s...it’s talking. Other people. Other people with names. She can hear them. She can hear, but she can’t see. Why? Eyelids. She opens. Still dark, but less dark. A hint of light. Light behind...a visor. Her mouth, it doesn’t only eat. It also speaks. It screams. “Help!”

The visor slides away.

“Elise?” someone asks. “Elise, can you hear me? Are you there? Elise!”

“She opens her mouth but the words won’t come. Who said that? It sounded like the way Elise sounded like when she could sound like something. But she doesn’t sound like anything because when she opens her mouth, the words won’t come out.”

“You can’t use your mouth,” a different person claims. “You don’t have an airway anymore. But the helmet can convert your thoughts into sounds. Just think what you want to say, and it will come out. Go ahead and try again,” they encourage.

“Rubber baby buggy bumpers,” the helmet says. “Gina Linetti Spaghetti Confetti.” A face. Elise’s famous two eyes have adjusted to the light and can see when there is something that isn’t light. “That is definitely a face. It’s a very pretty face. She used to know what to call it. Whatever the face’s name, Elise may be falling in love with it.”

The face smiles. “Thank you. My name is Rage. You are Elise Perkins.”

“I know that,” Elise replies. “I am Elise. I have a face. I have a head. Do I have anything else?” She tries to tilt her chin down, but it won’t move. She can’t move at all.

Another person sighs. “You don’t have anything else. You only have a head.”

“Mino? A little more tact?” someone says to the person who has no tact.

“It’s okay,” Elise insists. “I am Elise Perkins, Treasure Hunter, a.k.a Ladymoth. I don’t need anything more than a head, because my head is where I do all my thinking.”

“Do you remember what happened?” the Rage face asks.

“I remember...” Elise begins. “I remember ice.”

“There was ice on the track during the race,” Rage confirms. “You sacrificed yourself so that your friend, Jolanda could make it across the finish line. You managed to defeat the last automated racecar, so she didn’t have to get there quickly. She had time to get out of her car, find your head, and carry it across with her. Now we’re in the winner’s lounge. Only six of us could win. I’m not sure what that means for you yet.”

“We’re not sure what this means for any of us,” Zelda adds. Yes, that’s Zelda.

Elise’s memories are starting to come back to her now. She feels like she’s becoming herself again. They lounge there for about an hour. The normal humans eat while Elise focuses on her recovery. The Custodians are not letting them out of this room, or they would seek medical attention for her. For now, she’s sitting on a snack table. Watching her friends talk is helping a lot. After they’re done eating, she finds that she’s pretty much back to her old self. She is centuries old, so there are a ton of memories that have not yet resurfaced, but they’re not paramount to her core.

While they’re just sitting around doing nothing, the lights begin to flicker. It’s not like a lightbulb is burnt out, though. It’s clearly intentional, like the theatre warning the audience that intermission is over. Out of the corner of her eye, Elise can see the door open, though she’s not at the right angle to see who. She needs her legs back.

“Hello,” comes the voice of a man. She recognizes it, but can’t place it.

“Hello,” Colley says, intentionally positioning himself directly in front of Elise.

“Please, Mister Rochelle.” Hrockas, the owner of the planet. That’s who this is. “Do you honestly believe that I am not cognizant of the severed head you’re keeping on the table? If I didn’t want death survival to be an option, I would not have commissioned those helmets in the first place. The plan was to keep any heads in their comas while the winners moved on, then transfer their consciousnesses to their respective backups so they could recall as much of the hunt as they were here for.”

Colley steps off so Elise can see. “We can’t trust you. You’re not taking her.”

Hrockas nods. “Now that you have reinitialized her, taking her is no longer a decent option. The reason we left you in here for so long is the producers and I needed to figure out how to move forward. The truth is, not anywhere near this many was expected to survive. Some of the bots were easy, but some were hard. You destroyed them all, and through a loophole, managed to keep your entire group together on the other side. It’s impressive, I admit. But the challenge we had planned will no longer work. Funnily enough, however, the challenge reward is now more relevant than ever.”

“Whatever the reward,” Jolanda says, “it’s not worth it if Elise can’t compete.”

Hrockas smiles. “That’s the irony. The sudden death challenge is quite literal. Whoever wins, dies...and will be given a superior substrate. It would be cruel to force you to compete if the one person who genuinely needed it stood no chance. That’s what we had to change. Now it is no longer physical, but a contest of wits. Elise has a shot.”

“I forfeit the challenge,” Colley volunteers immediately.

“That’s fine,” Hrockas says, “but it comes with a penalty for the next challenge.”

The others forfeit too. Elise is getting a new body.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 27, 2571

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When Mateo returned to the timeline the next year, his little ship was sitting on Earth’s moon. It was absolutely not unheard of for an unmanned vessel to show up like that, so no one questioned it. They would have scanned it for threats, then left it alone on the dock. It was particularly believable since it came from Varkas Reflex, where a lot of people no longer had physical bodies. Even if it was from elsewhere, some people lived exactly like that, in their ship’s core memory, with no physical body. He fit right in.

Mateo teleported out of the vessel, and to the middle of space, where he continued to teleport until he was back on Earth, hopefully having never been detected by any sensors. He was now where Topeka once stood. Through the dense canopy of the forest, the nearest arcology rose into the sky. Instead of teleporting there too, he decided to go the rest of the way on foot. Once he passed through the treeline, he saw that there was something different about it. It was much smaller than a normal megastructure. Giant cranebots were either assembling it or disassembling it. No, they were definitely disassembling it. He looked around for someone to query about this, but saw no one.

He jumped to Kansas City instead, where he found a normal tripod, still standing at full attention in the woods. It felt different, though. He couldn’t explain it. It was sort of quieter, maybe? He walked inside, and up to the information kiosk. “Hello. I was just in Topeka, but before that, I was off-world for centuries. They were taking one of the arcologies apart. What can you tell me about that?”

The man smiled, and it did look like an organic man, but there was no way to know these days without asking, which might have been rude. “The global population is decreasing. If you have returned to the homeworld for a permanent stay, you are in the minority. People are leaving. Many are going to Varkas Reflex, still more to Castlebourne. Others go to Gatewood to start their own colonies wherever.”

“And are we happy about this, or sad?” Mateo pressed.

“A bit of both, the informer replied. “It’s the end of an era. Earth was once all there was, of course. Are you old enough to remember that?”

“Vividly,” Mateo answered. “I was born in 1986.”

“Ah. I was born in 1985. Respect your elder, son,” he joked. “Well, it’s bittersweet, but many look back and see this as inevitable. Once we decided to rewild our lands, there was no stopping it. What relative few buildings are left take up space where wildlife cannot grow. The footprint is small, but not zero. Each one taken down adds a slight amount of life back into the world. Pushing those boundaries is an enticing proposition. What if we removed all human presence? What if we returned Earth to the way it was millions of years ago? We’re not specifically trying to go that extreme, but again, a lot of people think it’s trending towards that, whether we like it or not. We still boast the greatest population in the galaxy, but we may not be able to say that forever.”

Mateo looked around the atrium. “It will become a museum. Your population will never reach zero. The lower it goes, the more people will want to come here to see such a low-populated Earth. Which will defeat the purpose, so they’ll leave. Back and forth.”

The informer smiled again. “Like Gaia breathing.”

“Like Gaia breathing,” Mateo echoed in agreement.

“Matt!” he heard Leona’s voice call up to him from behind.

He turned around. “Hello, love. Sorry I had to go.”

Leona caught up to him. “It’s not just you. Romana is leaving too.”

Mateo nodded solemnly. “I thought she might. Is she here too?”

“I’m not even here. I projected my hologram from home. You need to come back.”

“I can’t go alone,” Mateo reasoned. “I only have one, uhh...” He realized the informer was listening to them, so he couldn’t finish that sentence.

Leona nodded. “Rambo had trouble tracking you, so we sent out a remote search party, which led us to VR, which led us to Loa, who told us where you went, so we started another search for you on Earth. Now here I am. Three of us will come get you.”

“Thanks. I love you, and I’m sorry.” He turned back. “Thank you too.”

The informer gently shut his eyes and nodded his head respectfully.

Mateo went outside to a secluded part of the woods. Marie, Olimpia, and Ramses appeared hours later, but not through a sling portal. They simply materialized, which suggested that they went somewhere else first. He chose not to ask about it, in case they were mad. He synced his slingdrive with theirs, and they all went back to Ramosus.

Romana had gathered everyone in the lab already, so they stepped out of the slingdrive chamber, and took a seat with the others. Well, Mateo stayed standing.

“I spoke with Loa,” Romana began. “I know where Boyd is.”

“Did you try to reconnect with him?” Mateo asked her.

“No. She would not have let me, and I probably shouldn’t,” Romana went on. “I’m not going to apologize or tell you that I regret what I did. Perhaps one day I will, but not today, and not here. I have to leave. There are too many hard feelings right now. Things spiraled quickly, and I definitely regret that at least. We were a team, and I put that all at risk. Don’t...interrupt, please. That’s how I feel, and I don’t think I can get better around you. If I try to stay and repair things now, I fear it will only be duct tape.

“The distance is what will bring us back. Distance in space, and in time. I will be back. I don’t know when, but I don’t wanna leave you forever, and I need you to believe that, because it’s true. I’m angry and hurt, but not bitter. Some of the blame belongs to you, some to our various opponents, and of course, I’m responsible for a great deal of it.”

“Where will you go?” Mateo asked. “Sorry if you’ve already answered that.”

“Earth, actually. When Ramses was there, he installed a forge core at an undisclosed location, which will generate a mirror slinglab for us. This will allow anyone to go back and forth without having to be in an array. But I won’t be sticking around the lab. I may not even stay on Earth for very long, and I don’t want any of you to follow. I don’t want you to try to convince me to come home, or even just look out for me. I want to be alone. I have to be alone. I hope you understand, especially you, dad.”

Mateo nodded. He obviously understood why she couldn’t stay here after all this. When she said she would be back, she probably meant it, but would she still feel the same way tomorrow? A week from now? Years into the future? Was this the last time they would see her? “I won’t argue or stop you, I really won’t. You can’t ghost us, though. We need to know that you’re okay. You don’t have to check in every single day—that would be way too much—but we do need proof of life, periodically. Can you do that?”

Romana smiled sadly and nodded. “I can do that. Maybe once a week.”

“Thank you,” Mateo said graciously. “If you need a ship, I left one on the moon.” He handed her his dock token. “I love you. If you can’t say that back right—”

“I love you,” Romana interrupted. “I love all of you. We’ll get through this. I promise.” After hugging them one by one, she stepped into the slingdrive chamber and nodded at Ramses. Once he finished tapping on his console, she disappeared.

“Did you tag her as we discussed,” Leona asked, “so we can always find her?”

Ramses took a very long time to respond. “No.”

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Spaghetti West: Moonfall (Part I)

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Decades ago, a star called Proxima Centauri underwent a cataclysmic magnetic shift, which created a coronal mass ejection that decimated the orbiting planet of Proxima Doma. Proxima Doma was tidally locked, which meant one side always faced the sun, and one side always faced away. Only a narrow band was ever habitable, but as it turned out, not for long. What researchers now believed was that this event was the culmination of a centuries-long cycle. Over time, the habitable zone along the terminator line will stabilize, and become survivable once more. It had already begun to do that. There was still no atmosphere, so it required intelligent intervention, and for some, this was enough, but not for most. They wanted something permanently safe.

While the cycle was meaningfully long for a baseline human, it was a flash in the pan for an immortal, and unsustainable for a community. Why put down roots when you knew they were going to be destroyed eventually? People died in that tragedy. Many stayed in the poles, which were the only permanently safe regions, but this made space commutes unreasonably costly. So the majority of the survivors left.

They went all over the stellar neighborhood, but the primary destination was the Gatewood Collective. Gatewood was a materials depot, which was designated to provide colonists with the resources they needed to go wherever their final destination was. No one was meant to live there who didn’t work as the managers of the depot. One faction from Proxima Doma wasn’t happy with that. They wanted to stay, so they tried to lay claim to one of the extremely inhospitable planets. These were more stable and consistent than Doma, but still harsh. And anyway, they were about to be annihilated.

After some political turmoil, the captain of a transport vessel agreed to relocate these holdouts to another planet. They wanted one to call their own, but if they didn’t want to die, they would compromise for their own secluded region of a preexisting colony. This one orbited Tau Ceti, and was called Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. It wasn’t the only planet in the system, but it was the only habitable one, and that was thanks to a particularly uninhabited world called Qishra.

Sugar Delgado stood on the bridge of her ship with the Axiom of Astronomy, Liselot Olteanu. They were regarding a terrible sight through the viewscreen. “Magnify more,” Sugar instructs the computer.

That was definitely a moon, and it was definitely far too close to the planet.

“Not to blame or criticize,” Sugar went on, “but you didn’t see it coming?”

“Qishra orbits the star slowly, and the moon is moving fast. For the majority of the time, the moon was behind the planet. Even if we had seen it coming, there still isn’t anything we could have done about it. Some researchers think that it’ll be a near-miss.”

“You don’t,” Sugar stated.

Liselot held both of her fists up and presented a crude demonstration. “If Qisha were the eightball, and the moon was the cueball, yes, the geometry says it would miss.”

Sugar nodded. “But the Roche limit.”

“The Roche limit,” Liselot echoed. “You have to account for the gravity. The two bodies are being drawn together, and they will crash into each other. Now, it’s not a Theia event, but it will be enough to cause chaos. We can’t model what will happen to the planet once the rogue moon strikes. The most widely accepted model has the majority of the moon being ejected from the system while Qishra begins to form a ring.”

“But it won’t stop there,” Sugar deduced.

“The collision will add mass to the planet, which will only help it do its job to protect us, but over time, the chaos will increase, and it could start to shoot us.”

“But you don’t know.” Sugar wasn’t arguing, Not knowing was the scary part, because, given their technology, there was nothing they could do to protect themselves besides leave. And that will be logistically difficult, even if the first impact took months.

This world was a haven for those who wanted to live on a planet, but still wanted the simple, isolated life. There was only one city, mainly for coming and going. Nearly everyone lived in villages or homesteads. Some areas had such perfect weather that they didn’t even have permanent structures. A nomad might walk around with their tech and a tent, and that was it. People moved here because they liked to be alone with nature.

“No, we don’t know. It could take years, or it could take decades, but either way, I would not want to live here if I were a Domanian refugee,” Liselot reasoned.

Sugar shook her head. “You don’t know these people. They were fully cognizant that their new planet, Doma Tertia, was going to intentionally be destroyed, but they refused to leave. We only finally got them off of it because they are fiercely loyal to their leader, so we only had to convince him to stop being stubborn and stupid.”

“Then tell him to tell the others to get right back on your ship and leave here too.”

Sugar sighed. “He’s not here. He persuaded them to leave, but had somewhere else to go. Now they can only operate on his most recent orders. It’s bizarre.”

“For a group of isolationists, they sure are dependent,” Liselot pointed out. “Sorry to be blunt about that.”

“No, you’re right. I don’t like them, I just got stuck with them,” Sugar explained.

“Some Bidans have packed up and left because of this threat,” Liselot added. “I mean, our population was already dwindling because people want to check out Castlebourne, or because they’re choosing Varkas Reflex over VR around nature. Some, however, report being afraid of Armageddon. It’s my job to give them the facts, and the fact is that we don’t have enough information yet, and once we do, it may be too late.”

“You called it a rogue moon,” Sugar pointed out. “Which planet is it from?”

Liselot smiled. She was actually rather excited about this. “We think it’s from Qishra. We think the planet ejected it millions of years ago, and it’s been rogue ever since, wandering the outer system this whole time. Which means it’s—”

“Coming home,” they said simultaneously. Then they were silent for a moment.

“I hope you weren’t thinking that we could help with evacuation efforts,” Sugar said, breaking the ice. This was a transport vessel, but it didn’t have unlimited capacity. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. With enough power, they could expand inward into pocket dimensions. But it could still not support the whole population of this planet, and none of them was authorized to know about that kind of tech in the first place.

“No,” Liselot assured her. “We may prefer nature, but the reason the city exists, and why my job exists, is because we understand that the universe is a dangerous place. Most who do want to leave are transferring their consciousnesses through the quantum network. We’re building deep underground shelters for those who want to stay, and constructing exodus ships for those who wanna leave in their own bodies with their own possessions. What we were hoping was that you could prevent the chaotic ejections that will follow. New ring systems are violent and unpredictable. With your weapons—”

“I don’t have any weapons,” Sugar argued.

“Forgive me, captain,” Liselot said. “Our sensors clearly indicate one.”

Sugar painted a puzzled look on her face. “Oh, that’s a hot pocket purge.”

“I’m sorry?” Now Liselot was the one who was confused.

“It’s a stealth feature,” Sugar began to explain. “You store your waste heat in a special contained environment, then you can purge it all at once when you’re, say, on the other side of a star, or something. You’re practically invisible in between purges.”

“That sounds like it could be used as a weapon,” Liselot contended.

“Yeah, but not for what you’re asking,” Sugar insisted. “It’s not anywhere near as powerful as the kind of nuclear bombs you would require. It can’t hold enough energy to accomplish that. I’m sorry. If I had realized your intentions, I wouldn’t have wasted—”

“No, it’s my fault. I listened to what my experts said they detected on your ship.” Liselot frowns and breathes through her nose. “Thank you. I’ll leave now.”

“Hold on,” Sugar said. “It will take months for the ring to form and become a real threat. Just because I don’t have what you need, doesn’t mean I can’t build it. At the very least, you need to construct orbital defense platforms with ablation lasers. Earth has been using those for centuries, and it’s worked out for them.”

“Earth has never faced the kind of onslaught we could have on our hands,” Liselot said. “Jupiter has always been stronger than Qishra. That’s why intelligent life was able to evolve on it in the first place. And their monitoring infrastructure is leagues beyond ours simply by its age. We knew what we were getting into when we colonized. Tau Ceti is a volatile system. This should come as no surprise. We were foolish.”

“Still,” Sugar urged, “you need ablation lasers, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I just don’t know that we have time.”

Sugar smirked. “Well...we store time in the stern.”

“Huh?” Liselot questioned.

Sugar had already said too much. “I have the design for an excellent defense platform in my privilege vault. It’s got a lot of bells and whistles that you don’t need right now, so I’ll take a day to modify it. All I’ll need are the raw materials.”

Liselot held a minute to think about it. “We’ll accept anything we can get.”

“Great.” Sugar tapped behind her ear. “Van. Come to the bridge please.”

Van teleported there instantly.

“Whoa. How did you do that?” Liselot asked him.

“Uh, he’s only a hologram,” Sugar lied. “Van, I need you to be able to make physical contact, so please turn off your imager and come back in person.”

“Sorry, boss,” Vantu apologized.

“I could have sworn that I could feel his physical presence,” Liselot claimed. “Maybe even the warmth of his core.”

“Magnets!” Sugar joked.

Liselot breathed deeply and looked back over at the impending collision. “You really think we can do this? I know we don’t have to worry about something happening tomorrow, but we’re intentionally obsolete. We should have made the city bigger.”

Sugar watched the event too. “I can do this. Trust me, it’s no big deal.”

It was a big deal. The moon itself was nothing, but it turned out to be hiding something much, much worse. No laser could stop a black hole.

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Microstory 2765: I Came in Like a Wrecking Ball

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Everyone chooses their own ghost to teach them how to drive these cars. Even Jolanda accepts the lesson. She’s not pretentious enough to think that she already knows everything, especially not about her specific car today. For all she knows, there might be a secret button behind the steering wheel that dispenses banana peels. Still, it seems rather pointless for the rest of them to even try, given her experience. Her only meaningful contender is Zelda, but Zelda is a risk-taker. She’s more likely to push it too far, and end up dying in the act, even if she was in the front until it happens. She hasn’t even driven that much in her life, because it places her in too much control, which isn’t thrilling enough.

Elise feels like she’s struggling with it the most, even though she technically has the secondmost amount of time behind the wheel. She’s listening to her ghost—as much as she can listen to a hologram that can only grunt and say a few single-syllable words—but she is not internalizing the lessons. She keeps looking over at the others, particularly when their stationary work is done, and they move on to the practical. She doesn’t want to start. She doesn’t wanna do this. It goes against how she learned it.

The rules were what drew her to learning antiquated skills in the first place. She almost wishes she had never tried driving at all. At least she would start at zero, but now she has much to unlearn. Not that she has any chance of winning anyway. Why risk it? Why place herself in danger when it’s hopeless? Can all seven of them move forward as long as they stay ahead of the other 17? Again, “what are the rules!”

Elise’s ghost frowns. “The rules are that the first six racers move to the sudden death challenge. The rest are killed, or in the case of the automated cars, deleted.”

“Wait, you can talk?” Elise questions. “Why have you not been talking until now?”

“You didn’t need me to talk before. Now you do,” the ghost explains.

“There are seven of us. That number was chosen so at least one person will be killed today. But then the subsequent sudden death challenge will kill everyone else.”

“Sudden death doesn’t mean what you think it means,” the ghost goes on. “I cannot elaborate, but if six players win the race, all six will continue on the hunt.”

Elise shakes her head. “That’s not good enough. We came into this together. Even Miracle is part of the team now. We all deserve to stay together.”

“It was never going to be fair,” he reasons. “That’s what makes it challenging.”

“Such a wise, dead pirate,” Elise muses.

The ghost nods. “I see you at the wheel. You’re more at ease than the others. Even the pro over there looks nervous. I know she has her reasons, but you could actually win this. You have a perspective that none of them does. You lived like the ancients. Don’t underestimate that. They still don’t understand the threat of death, but the skills which you dedicated your life to studying were all developed by fleeting creatures.”

“I’m still not faster than she is, nor braver than any of them,” Elise argues.

The ghost shakes his head. “Again, car racing was conceived by mortals. Anyone can push a button with their foot until it stops and leave it there. You know when to let up. You trained from resources made by people who would die if they didn’t know that.”

Elise sighs. “I don’t know if I wanna win. A part of me wants to gather everyone up and ask them to quit so we leave with our memories intact. I don’t wanna lose them.”

He smiles. “If your bonds are real, you can make new memories later.” Maybe.

Here endeth the lesson.

Elise decides not to do any practice driving before the race. She’s not confident in herself, and is not enthusiastic. Her friends look ready and determined. They may not know the restrictions on the results. She’s not gonna tell them. She’s a liar.

They’re at the starting line now, at the edge of the dome, pointed towards the wall. When those giant metal doors open, they have no idea what they’re gonna find. One thing they have going for them is that all seven of them are sharing the second row. Only two cars are in front of them, which gives them something to fight against without it feeling impossible from the start. It’s a huge track. Since the engineering bots weren’t limited by an audience, they were free to make it as wide as they wanted. They’re probably not even going to be driving in circles, or at least not one single circle.

Elise looks to her right at Minotaur, who doesn’t react. She looks to her left where Colley notices. He frowns at her kindly before refocusing on the road and gripping the wheel tighter. She has to protect these people. She doesn’t want to lose her memories of the ones she has grown to love, but she would rather it be her than any of them. They all committed more to this. They deserve to see it through. She’ll be fine.

The light is red, and has been for the last few minutes, but now it blinks. It blinks faster and faster and faster until it turns yellow. Two cars down, Miracle gives a false start, but she manages to roll back to where she was while it holds at yellow for a few more seconds. The two lead cars take off, and only then does the light turn green, which is either cheating, or one of the rules that Elise failed to hear when she was feeling down.

The six of her friends take off, but Elise throws her car in reverse, and punches it. She slams into the four cars behind her. They fight her, but she doesn’t let up. It would appear that the humans were given superior vehicles to race with. They go down relatively easy. Once the four of them have been sufficiently destroyed, her job is still not over. She still has thirteen more to take care of. So she puts it in drive.

She zips into the dark. It’s only lit enough for her to see where the walls are, and maybe other cars. She’s in the back, though, so she doesn’t have to worry about them anymore. At least she didn’t think so. There’s a small fire up ahead. One of the cars has already crashed without Elise’s help. She has to swerve around it, but immediately has to swerve again because of the second car involved in that crash. They’re both bots, though, so it’s fine. Two more down, eleven to go. She can do this. She can stop them all.

Elise flies out of the tunnel, and onto the road. They’re in a desert. The track is narrower here, so it’s a good thing she was already in the middle. The others aren’t as far ahead as she thought they would be, probably due to this bottleneck. She still can’t let up, though. She maintains her speed, and catches up to the rear car. She saw this maneuver in an educational video once about what not to do, but she thinks she can recreate it. She drives right up and wedges the front of her car into the back of the bot. Now it’s just spinning its wheels. She drives it over and slams it into the barrier. She ends up pointed in the wrong direction, but she doesn’t have time to get turned back around, so Elise just drives backwards for a bit while she catches up with the others.

There we go. Now she’s with a huge group of bots. The problem is, Rage is here too. Three of them have created a line, which she can’t pass. Every time she goes for a gap, they cover it, so she has to try again. She’s being too gentle and patient with them. Elise doesn’t have that issue. She crashes her rear bumper into two of the cars at once. Only one of them skids and hits the barriers, but it’s enough to let Rage pass. As she’s doing that, Elise goes after the other two, stopping them both before the next tunnel.

The track is narrower yet. Only two cars could potentially drive side by side. It’s also no longer always flush with the ground. They’re in a winter wonderland, driving on an elevated track as it snows. The road becomes ice. Fortunately everyone up ahead is smart enough to go slower here so they don’t just fly over the edge. Elise loves this opportunity. She’s literally knocking bots off left and right. Before, there was a chance for them to come back with a vengeance, but not here. Talk about sudden death.

All of the human cars are still going, but none of them is even close to the lead bot. It seems to have no problem with the ice at all. Someone has to put a stop to it. There are only two bots left. If she can stop them, the others don’t even have to drive fast anymore. They can coast to the finish line safely. Frustratingly, the penultimate bot is the smartest one. It knows what she’s trying to do, and out-maneuvers her every time. It’s also stronger than the other bots. She manages to get right next to it, but when she rams the side, it barely moves. Then Elise looks over. Another car has joined them.

It’s Jolanda. She has positioned her car on the other side of the bot. There’s so little space, they have it pinned. As difficult and counterintuitive as it is, and without being able to talk, the humans slow down to a complete stop. Still without talking, Elise lets go and drives on ahead several meters. Jolanda turns the wheel, and knocks the bot over the edge.

Elise backs up again. “Get back up to the front! Only six people can win!”

“I know!” Jolanda shouts back. “My ghost told me about that!”

“I’m sacrificing myself!” Elise shouts.

“I’m sacrificing myself!” Jolanda volleys.

“You’re the only one who can stop the final boss! Go do it!”

“I don’t think we have to worry about that!” Jolanda jerks her head forward.

Its the final bot. It’s pointed towards them at the top of the hill, where there’s another tunnel. It’s revving its engines menacingly, so they instinctively rev back.

“I’m gonna kill him!” Jolanda volunteers.

“No, I will!” Elise insists.

They both take off. The bot takes off too for a game of chicken. This is ridiculous. Only one of them has to die in order to make the math work. It just makes sense that it’s Elise. Jolanda can not go on with the knowledge of having lost this race. When they reunite on the other side of this hunt, someone will tell her, and she will be devastated. Elise will not care. She has to be the one to do this. She takes a deep breath. There hasn’t been much ice for a few hundred meters, but she knows something Jolanda probably doesn’t. Her teachers taught her about something called black ice, and how to spot it.

To Jolanda’s likely confusion, Elise slows down just enough to get behind Jolanda, then bullies her way back on the other side. At the right moment, she gently nudges Jolanda towards the barrier, not hard enough to hurt her, but it does stop her in her tracks. Elise’s car, meanwhile, hits the ice, and goes crazy. She starts spinning counterclockwise, utterly uncontrollably. She can’t even tell where anything is anymore, but she feels the powerful slam of the crash, and for a split second, the sharp twinge of the blade as her helmet cuts off her head.

Microstory 2764: Ghostriders

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In this post-scarcity economy, gold is not valueless. It’s actually quite useful. It has a number of applications in electronics, aerospace engineering, and even medicine. It’s used for all sorts of mundane things. And that’s because, in this day and age, destroying entire planets only to extract their raw material is on its way to becoming a matter of it being Tuesday.

Many treasure hunts end with a cache of precious metals and jewels. They’re not usually quite this extensive, but they signal the end of the challenge. The accomplishment of that challenge is the real prize. Hunters usually don’t even take the treasure, but leave it for the next batch, or if they do, they take only a small trinket to remind them of the good memories. No one needs this much, except major engineering operations. The disappointing part, however, is not the letdown of the prize itself, but that the hunt might be over. They went through a lot, but they still expected more.

They tie the boat off, and step out. They begin to walk around on the cave floor between the piles and piles of goblets, coins, bars, crowns, and other accessories. They’re going to spread out to look for clues. There has to be something, whether this is the end or not. Every hunt tells you when you’re done in no uncertain terms. It’s never simply implied. They don’t need fanfare, just undeniable proof.

“Don’t touch anything,” Minotaur warns. “It’s sometimes a literal booby trap, and sometimes a curse to teach of the dangers of greed, or whatever.”

“We might need to dig,” Jolanda points out. “A clue might be under the gold.”

“You’re right,” Minotaur admits. “Just don’t take anything.”

“Should we look for something special?” Elise asks them. “Like the only blue gemstone, or something anachronistic or out of place?”

“That’s a good idea,” Mino agrees. “Most everything is probably a distraction. The important thing will be simple or not valuable to the pirates we’re pretending to be.”

“Something out of place,” Zelda begins, “like this?” She’s standing beside what initially appeared to be the cave wall. But she’s opening it like a door. It’s heavy, so she and Miracle hold it open for everyone to walk through single-file.

They’re now standing in another locker room. The lights are flickering on for them. Their names are on their respective lockers again. Colley is the first to open his.

“What is that?” Rage asks. “What is that for?”

Jolanda is frowning. “Racing. That’s a racer’s uniform, including the helmet.”

“Why do you look so upset?” Rage questions. “This is right up your alley.”

“Because I know I’m gonna win, and I might have to hurt you to do it.”

“I don’t understand,” Elise says. “Don’t listen to Hrockas when he says only one person can win. We don’t have to follow his rules all throughout. We’re in charge here.” She said it, but she doesn’t mean it. They’re really not. She’s just trying to be positive.

“This is a headless racing uniform,” Jolanda begins to clarify. “It’s a niche race that kind of went obsolete. The helmet gives it away. You see, they didn’t just suddenly come up with mind-transference and uploading technology. It was a grind. There was a time when updates were periodic, rather than continuous. It was metaphysically scary. But not as scary as this. No updates, but a local chip implanted in your head. You see, unless you’re an octopus, the head is the only place where your brains are stored. And it’s a lot easier to protect that above all else.

“Some astronauts were given these kinds of helmets. If something went wrong—if all else failed—your spinal column is severed, and your head is preserved. You lose consciousness, so someone has to retrieve you, and give you a new body. This tech came out of the private sector, so while they had government contracts, they also had private ones. This gave rise to the deadliest format of racecar driving. The ancillary tech wasn’t that reliable. Racers occasionally died because sometimes, their heads were destroyed as well, because of-freaking-course they were. Or sometimes the reintegration process simply didn’t work. They signed waivers, but it was a dark time in our history. Now, with consciousness streaming, the races can technically be deadlier, but reliably temporary.”

“This,” Zelda says. “This is why Hrockas gave us an out. It wasn’t all the storms.”

“Can’t we all pile into a car together?” Elise reasons. “Even compact cars can fit seven if you’re creative and willing to get really familiar with each other’s bodies.”

“The cars are too small. You wouldn’t be able to fit two people,” Jolanda clarifies.

“Now, let’s all calm down,” Rage tells them when she notices everyone growing more stressed out about this. “All we see are the uniforms and helmets. We have no idea what’s waiting for us on the other side of those doors. We might have a choice of challenges. Those helmets might just be manufactured to look like decappers. Let’s first get changed, but keep the helmets off, and go outside. Sound okay?”

The seven of them gladly remove their tattered, disgusting tunics, shower down, and suit up. They walk through the set of doors beyond the showers holding their helmets. They expected to find seven cars waiting for them, but there are instead two dozen. It’s tempting to believe that they will have their pick of the litter, but they know they’re not that lucky. They’re going to be racing against some other team, or other individuals. This obviously raises the stakes. Now it’s plausible that none of them will win. Jolanda is the best driver in their group, but she’s not invulnerable.

What’s interesting about it is that seven cars are sitting separately from the other 17, so they don’t know what that’s about. While they’re examining the vehicles, and debating whether they should get in, or try something else, seven zombie ghosts appear before them. It’s the same ones from the sea before, and they know that, because they grew to be quite familiar with their distinctive looks, despite them all being undead. They’re on the other side of the cars, and end up walking straight through them as they approach the humans. They move much less menacingly than they did before. Once they are a couple of meters from the hunters, they stand there and wait.

“Oh,” Rage finally says. “I think we’re each meant to choose one. That happens on the regular hunts all the time. They don’t expect you to magically know how to complete a task. If it’s a skill, an expert will train you on it. I think they’re our driving instructors.”

“Them?” Miracle questions. “They don’t exactly look the part.”

“Maybe they’re shortstaffed,” Zelda jokes. She steps forward, and points at one.

The ghost reaches out and pantomimes taking her hand. As he’s leading her to a car, he growls but more in a grumpy way, rather than violent. The one-footed captain isn’t here, which would have been awkward since they seem to have personalities now.

Rage sighs and gives the other line of cars the side-eye. “I suppose we have no choice if we want to keep going. Pick your partner. The competition may be pretty fierce. We won’t know until we learn, and hopefully there’s no time limit, because we practiced driving, but we didn’t train for this.”

Microstory 2763: Steady as She Goes

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The storms return, which gives them the freshwater they need, but are hell to sail through for a ragtag group of non-sailors. They knew that there would be skills which none of them possessed, but they didn’t think it could be this. Regular domes aren’t big enough for these long-haul trips. Sailing seemed like such an unlikely challenge. They figured they would be literally separated from the rest of the hunters—as they indeed are—which would limit the amount of space they had to work with under Treasure Hunting Dome. It didn’t occur to them that they would end up in a place like this.

They’re making a lot of mistakes, but at least they’re not getting killed for it. They just need to find land. Even if it’s not where they’re meant to be, it would be nice to have a break from the water. Four days of this would be hard on anyone, even genuine sailors.

They do manage to fish during lulls, which is where Elise shines since that was one of her early skills. She has never fished in an ocean setting, but it’s not too hard to adapt. While these creatures are fully organic and edible, they are not real fish. They literally don’t have normal complex brains. They were very simply programmed to swim pseudorandomly and react to stimuli, such as each other and the light. It’s only the basics of cognitive function. They don’t even feel hunger or pain. Hopefully not.

Minotaur and Miracle find even that almost too far past vegetarianism but they’re too hungry for their pride, so they partake as well. One thing is they’re not entirely sure it’s true in this case. That was Elise’s experience, and how it works in most of the galaxy, but it’s entirely plausible that these are regular fish. That would not be illegal, whether on Castlebourne or in the stellar neighborhood. However, she doesn’t think they are because they don’t fight the catch as hard as something which evolved to survive would.

Finally, after the relentless struggle, they see something. It’s not land that they can stand on, but they rise above the surface. Tall rocks, looking almost like fingers, are scattered all over in their path. A fog rolls over the water, but not so thick that they can’t see how eerie the obstacles are, nor the means of avoiding them.

“It looks like we could go around,” Jolanda muses, looking at Minotaur.

Mino stands on the bulwark and holds themselves up via a rope. “That’s the question. If this were a movie, there would be some contrived reason why the characters have to go this way. That’s where the MacGuffin is. But the audience would be screaming at them to not be stupid. So far, this hunt has felt very movie-like. While the challenges have not been specific analogs to any story we’re familiar with, at times, it does feel like we’re meant to play into the tropes, rather than try to outsmart them.”

“Should we take another vote?” Jolanda offers. “Be safe, or follow a path?”

“I will warn you,” Minotaur goes on, “something bad will probably happen if we go in there. We’ll shipwreck, or someone will fall overboard. These early consequences are designed to show how high the stakes are, so the audience feels something for the survivors. How much loss there is after that depends on the subgenre and age targeting. I’m not saying we should vote against that, but we still don’t know what we’re looking for, so the motivation to go this way is a little bit lacking from my perspective.”

Their fearless leader stares at the horizon and at all the deadly, jagged rocks. It does look like an obstacle course that the gamemakers expect them to play straight. But the possibility that subverting those expectations actually gets them what they need is a tempting offer. Elise can see the debating raging in Rage’s eyes.

“What are ya thinkin’, boss?” Miracle didn’t seem like the type to defer to anyone else, let alone another person with a strong personality, but since she came back with a new face, she’s been a team player. She doesn’t have an ego anymore. Elise almost wonders if it’s not really her. While researchers tried in the early days of mind- transference development, they never figured out how to prove identity when anyone can look like anyone. It’s a risk you live with since the technology couldn’t be stopped.

“We came here for a goal,” Rage begins. “We each signed on not even knowing what that goal was. Not only is it possible that that’s exactly where it’s waiting, but if we take the safe route now, we’ll be defeating the entire purpose. We decided to go north, let’s not head east or west now. I’ll hear arguments against, but I don’t wanna vote.”

No one says anything. Colley doesn’t look like he agrees, but he’s also missing Laise, which may be making it hard for Elise to read his facial expressions.

They raise anchor once more while Zelda is climbing back up to her perch. She continues to direct them as they begin to navigate the deadly rocks. To the starboard side, Elise sees something moving in the fog. She moves over and squints. At first, she sees several heads bobbing around each other until she realizes that it’s a single monster with multiple heads in the distance. She has heard of this before. Colley once spoke of the famous story. She runs over to the port side where she sees the second monster, or part of it, anyway. A dark mass is swimming in circles just under the surface. Neither is making any attempt to attack the boat. For now, it appears they chose right.

“What?” Jolanda questions. “What is it? Do you see something?”

Elise looks up to Zelda, who is regarding the underwater monster with her spyglass. She lowers it and meets Elise’s eyes. Then she quietly returns to her work.

“Nothing,” Elise replies to Jolanda. “It’s just beautiful here.” Why did she choose not to tell anyone about it? What did it matter? If the monsters aren’t going to attack, why not prove that this was the right call? Maybe because they don’t know that yet, because straight ahead could end up much worse. After all, those monsters look pretty casual for having missed a meal. Or maybe she just liked keeping a secret with Zelda.

They continue sailing between the rocks. It isn’t easy, but they keep a close eye on that water at their respective posts, and don’t ever run aground. They go slowly so the fog never obscures something they can’t avoid. Gradually, they realize that it’s lightening up, and they can see better with each passing moment. Then comes the cave. The opening is more than large enough for them to sail right on through, which means that is exactly where they need to go, as scary as the darkness might look from out here.

“What are we thinking?” Miracle asks. “Is there a monster waiting for us?”

“No, there’s no third monster,” Elise slips up and says.

“What do you mean?” Rage questions, a puzzled look on her face.

“Nothing,” Elise answers. “Steady on, or...whatever you’re meant to say.”

“Steady on!” Rage shouts up to Minotaur, who has been steering lately.

They enter the cave. It becomes so dark, they have to navigate with lanterns. But then they see a glow up ahead. Is this it? It can’t be it. Hrockas wouldn’t have offered to get them out if there were only two more challenges ahead. It’s pretty significant, though. It’s a gargantuan pile of treasure. Real, physical, golden treasure.

What a disappointment.

Microstory 2762: Emergency Exit

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Once the deed is done, Miracle flies back over to the boat and lands on the deck. She sways her head side to side as her angel wings tuck back into her body like they presumably would for a real angel. She smiles at the group, particularly Laise.

“You upgraded,” Laise points out. “The wings are organic now.”

“They’re carbon-based, but they’re not organic,” Miracle explains. “They’re not from Daedalus, I don’t know why I was ever limiting myself to his antiquated work in the first place. I’m still getting used to the nanites. What did I miss?”

“How did you get here?” Rage asks. “You said we were in another dimension.”

“We are,” Miracle confirms. “Did you think Hrockas was the only one with the ability to traverse dimensional barriers? There’s really no way to lock the door on a parallel. That’s what pocket dimensions are for. Now, of course, he could always show up and kick me out, which I’m guessing he’ll do here in the next few minutes.”

A scary man wearing battle armor magically appears behind Miracle.

“He’s right behind me, isn’t it?” Miracle jokes. She smirks, and doesn’t turn around. “It’s nice to see you again, Dominus. Are you here to kill me?”

“Not yet,” the man replies. He brushes past Miracle and approaches the rest of the group. “Good morrow, folks. My name is Azad Petit of the Castlebourne Charter Contingency. As we are in peacetime, I currently operate under Mr. Steward directly.”

“Yeah, as his lackey,” Miracle points out, rolling her eyes.

Azad smirks much in the same way she did, but still doesn’t face her. He continues facing the group. “You have all survived a great deal, and I commend you on the current state of your success. Your friend is right, she will not be allowed to continue on this journey. She didn’t earn it. She failed one of the obstacles, and should not even have any memory of this, let alone the means of reëntering the program. So I will be pulling her out.

“I’m giving you this one opportunity to join her. If you leave as well, your respective mind streams will be reactivated, and you will move on with your lives at least with the memories of what has happened thus far. Of course, it will disqualify you from attaining whatever prize does or does not exist at the end of this hunt, but at least you won’t risk consciousness discontinuity.”

“She obviously didn’t suffer from discontinuity,” Elise points out.

Azad nods. “Miss Brighton does not store her consciousness, or her backups, in base reality, but in another dimension, much like this one. That will not work for you.”

“Thanks for speaking for me,” Miracle lambasts. “I’m just a girl in the world.”

Azad smirks again, and finally turns his head to face her. “Go wait in the car.”

Miracle rolls her eyes again.

Azad sighs. “We fought the Ochivari together. I respect the hell out of you. But these people deserve to win or lose on their own, not to have you cheat for them.”

“I won’t cheat,” Miracle insists.

“What’s behind your back?” Azad asks.

“Oh, these ol’ things? If you want, I’ll keep them tucked away the whole time.”

“Not good enough,” Azad reasons. “You can’t be trusted.”

“You just said you respected me,” Miracle argues. “It’s not exactly a contradiction, but it doesn’t make much sense either. I made one mistake, I’m back, deal with it.”

Azad tilts his head for a moment. He then steps back so he can address the whole group. “All right, Hrockas says you can stay, but you have to transfer into a substrate of his choosing. Before you ask, you won’t look like this anymore. He believes you have been coasting on Romana Nieman’s good will, walking around with her face. It’s time you look like someone unique, and you don’t get any input on what it looks like.”

Miracle contemplates the offer, then tries to respond, but gets cut off.

“Oh, and someone has to exit the hunt,” Azad adds. “A life for a life.”

“I’ll do it,” Laise says, so quickly that Elise wonders if she could see the future.

“You don’t have to do that for me.” It sounds like Miracle is being sincere.

“I want to quit,” Laise decides. “I suspected you might say something like that, Dominus, so I waited to speak up. I’ve been thinking a lot about my continuity. I don’t want a version of me to move on not knowing what I know. I did things I never thought I would, even in a simulation. Sure, I’ll be missing out on whatever comes next, and this fabled prize, but now I know what I’m capable of. Now maybe I’ll stop spending all of my time in historical domes, and actually have an adventure or two.”

Miracle notices Azad frowning. “You thought no one would take you up on the offer. You thought I wouldn’t have a shot, so you wouldn’t have to break any rules.”

“I admit that,” Azad acknowledges, “but we are following rules. We’re just changing them a little.” He turns to Laise. “Hrockas accepts the deal. Take my hand.”

“Wait!” Colley reaches out in an obvious request for a hug from Laise, which Laise gladly takes. Elise thinks that she’s the only one close enough to hear him whisper, “if I die, find me and tell me that my shoes in Elizabeth Victoria were anachronistic. I’ll know what it means.” He then kisses her on the check, right by her ear.

Laise kisses back, then lets go. She takes Azad’s hand, as Miracle takes the other.

Azad looks at the remaining six hunters. “I don’t think it’s cheating to tell you that you’re clearly expected to sail somewhere. I won’t tell you where, but I will say that the south is beautiful this time of year. It’s so relaxing. In a couple of hours, a stranger will appear. That will be Miracle in a new body. I’ll let her explain why.”

They disappear. Elise would very much love to know how they do that.

After a reverent moment, Rage claps her hands. “Okay, let’s figure out how to point this thing south and sail so we can search for our next clue.”

“No,” Minotaur counters. “We need to head north.”

“That’s not what the man said,” Rage contends. “You think he was lying?”

“He didn’t tell us to go south,” Minotaur reasons. “He told us that south was relaxing. We don’t want relaxing; we’re on an adventure. We want danger.”

“They have a point,” Zelda agrees. “Mentioning the wrong direction allows him to nudge us towards the right one without technically giving anything away.”

“Trust me on this,” Minotaur says to Rage. “I have experience with misdirection.”

“We vote,” Rage decides. “Raise your hands for Minotaur’s plan to go north.”

Everyone raises their hand, including Rage herself.

A few hours later, Miracle does return with a new face. The boat has not yet moved. Still none of them knows how to sail, so they need to study the vessel first. They would love a manual to read, but it’s safer to remain stationary until they have a better understanding of what they’re dealing with. At a certain point, however, they need practice, so they raise anchor, and head off. It certainly isn’t relaxing.