Spaghetti West: The Ark (Part III)

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The second black hole turned out to be far more than a coincidence, and far from an isolated event. They just kept coming after that. Now that Sugar’s sensors were tuned to look for them, they started popping up everywhere. They were appearing all over the system in no apparent pattern. Efforts on the development of the orbital defense grid were redoubled multiple times. All energy was going into building them as fast as possible, focusing almost exclusively on the ionic pulse canons, but she was also sharing her unique sensor suite to predict and detect subsequent intrusions. By the time they were finished, this was going to have to be the densest defense array in the stellar neighborhood—probably the galaxy, even though Castlebourne had that war.

Speaking of Castlebourne, through a chain of contacts, Sugar was able to confirm that these singulararities were Kugelblitz, meaning they were made artificially. She learned that they were not weapons, however, but a vital component of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. This was what solved the mystery of the surface gravity. The planet was a high-density, high-mass terrestrial. These numbers weren’t as high as they could possibly go while still being rocky worlds, but they were too high for baseline humans to survive on. Before even one person stepped foot on it, thirty-two transdimensional gravity generators were installed at even intervals across the globe. Sugar still wasn’t sure who was responsible for them, but they must have been incredibly powerful.

These generators were essentially portals that linked to a different region of space. Specifically, it was a kubelblitz black hole, also known as a KBH. They basically just ignored Bida’s real gravity, and stole the gravity from somewhere else. A couple of decades ago, the owner of Castlebourne resorted to moving their entire star system away from its original spot in the galaxy in order to conceal their location from a violent enemy. They just so happened to move it within spitting distance of the KBH, which disrupted gravity on Bida. They ultimately fixed it, but something was going wrong now. They either didn’t do it correctly, or this was inevitable. Sugar put a call in to the time traveler who solved the problem, but had yet to receive a response.

There were not dozens of KBHs threatening the lives of the Bidans. There was only one, and that one was somehow being duplicated over, and over, and, and over again. She had to believe this was an accident. It was probably how Mirage Matic chose to save Bida, but it had evidently triggered a runaway chain reaction. And Sugar had no idea how to stop it. Her only hope was to keep deflecting them. It had been going on for weeks now, and they were getting pretty good at it. Could they hypothetically do this forever? Probably. While they didn’t appear predictably, their appearances had plateaued. But that didn’t mean it would stay this way. What happened when the duplicate KBHs exceeded the number of lasers in too short a time? What if in all the chaos, they accidentally deflected one of them towards one of their neighbors? What could they do if—

The sensor alarms started to blare. They would go off pretty frequently, but they were particularly urgent this time. The system knew that something was unusually wrong; that it had changed, and she had to shift all focus to the latest problem. “Oh my God,” she whispered as she stared at the screen in disbelief.

“What is it?” Liselot asked. She spent a lot of time up here, having chosen to move her base operations to Sugar’s ship. They now had a crew of dozens.

“We should have been worried about this the whole time. The next KBH. It’s not going to be in space. It’s going to be in the atmosphere.” Sugar desperately started to turn part of the array. They weren’t designed to fire towards the planet, but it was technically possible, as long as the angle wasn’t too steep. The computer was still narrowing down the entry point to a smaller area. The KBH was only millimeters in diameter, so it was hard to know exactly where it would appear. That normally wasn’t so critical, but in this case, it was more important than ever. They only had a few minutes.

“Where?” Liselot began snapping at her people. They knew what she was saying.

“What is this region here?” Sugar asked, pointing at the map. “It looks pretty heavily populated, and unusually densely so for your intentionally minimalistic world.”

“That’s...Eyrenland,” Liselot answered. “It’s the hub for our primary export, eyren. I don’t have time to explain it, but that’s where your friends from Doma Tertia are currently being housed while they figure out exactly what kind of life they wanna lead.”

“It’s about to be destroyed,” Sugar said as she pivoted to something else after syncing the sensors with the canons. They could fire at the right spot if that was what it came too, but if it was as close to the surface as it looked like it was going to be, it wasn’t the right way to handle it. And either way, the people down there were gonna die unless someone did something about it...unless she rescued them first.

“Thousands of people live and visit there every day,” Liselot explained.

“The rest of the planet isn’t safe either,” Sugar warned. “This is going to cause bidaquakes and general tectonic instability all around the world. Send that emergency broadcast over the air. They only have a moment to prepare, at best.”

“Where are you taking us?” Liselot questioned.

Sugar was at the helm now. “We have to position ourselves just above the entry point. I have two things to do. I have to pull everyone down there up here, and then I have to force the KBH back to where it came from.” She flipped switches and tapped on the console.

“What are you talking about?” Liselot pressed. “How can you do that?”

Sugar programmed the route, and made the jump. They still didn’t know the exact altitude, but it would be somewhere around here. “It’s something I’ve been working on since we found out that the KBHs were coming here through portals, and not simply wandering through realspace.” She made a short-range teleport over to the transport workstation. “If this works, I can push it backwards, but as of yet, my ship is the only thing equipped with the right hardware, which...makes this next part tricky, and I need your authorization.”

“You have it,” Liselot replied. “Do what you need to do.”

Sugar shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. The only way to save those people down there is to teleport them all at once. The ship is already remodularizing to prepare for maximum capacity, but once they come up here, they won’t necessarily be safe, because this is also the gun. I’ve not had time to test it, so if I do this, and it literally backfires, it could kill everyone anyway. My emergency transporters can’t move people to anywhere else. It doesn’t have the data to make sure some of them don’t end up in the middle of rocks, or at the bottom of the ocean. They have to come here, but this could quickly end up the most dangerous place to be.”

“Besides the surface, where the black hole is about to show up?” Liselot pointed out. “They’re gonna die if they stay down there, so get them here, and hope for the best.”

“Okay.” Sugar looked over at the sensor readings. “They were now showing how high above the surface the marble-sized singularity was going to appear. It...wasn’t going to be high. She tapped on her comms. “Van! Open the pocket dimensions. Open them all! We can’t fit everyone in realspace!”

“You got it, boss!” Van replied.

While Sugar waited for the internal portals to be activated, she widened the capture radius. Thirty-one seconds from impact, regardless of what the unsuspecting inhabitants were doing on the ground, Sugar teleported every single one of them into the ship, mostly into the pocket dimensions. They would be confused, but they would be alive, and she would try to explain things later.

“Now that they’re clear, can you not just close the portal so the black hole doesn’t come here at all?” Liselot hoped.

Sugar shook her head as she went over and hovered her hand over the button. “If I tried, it would probably make things worse. Think of it like a swarm of biblical locusts trying to fly through a doorway. If you just close the door, they’ll congregate against it until it buckles. You have to slam the door shut so it expels them backwards.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Liselot argued. “A bunch of the locusts would get in anyway.”

Sugar sighed. “Exactly.” She watched the timer count down. Eleven, ten, nine, eight... “This hasn’t been tested. If it doesn’t work...that’s the end of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida.” Three, two, one—

The Kugelblitz black hole popped into existence in the sky. The planet, which up until this point always tried to pull everything towards the barycenter near the core, suddenly had a competing mass to contend with. The trees, the water, the mountains; everything was pulled up towards the singularity. The objects closest to the event horizon were being tugged on more, resulting in them being strung out like spaghetti. The rest of the world tried to implode like a deflating football. The black hole was the heaviest thing around now, so it didn’t stay in one place. It began to fall towards the barycenter. If Sugar allowed that to happen, the whole planet would collapse in a matter of hours, if not minutes.

Sugar fired her new machine, directly towards the black hole. It came from somewhere. They still hadn’t traced the source, but it had to form somewhere else in space, and she needed it to go back. As the energy wave reached critical mass, the biomass and geosphere continued to head towards a single moving point. It only took seconds for the KBH to disappear, but the devastation didn’t need long.

In this short amount of time, a land mass the size of a large country was reduced to a crater. All of the plant and animal life there was destroyed nearly instantly. The tremors continued to plague the surface all around as the gravitational disruption’s effects persisted beyond the initial shocking event.

“What did we just lose?” Sugar asked. “What did they use that settlement for?”

Liselot stared at the satellite images showing the barren landscape that once thrived. “Eggs. We lost the eggs.”

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Microstory 2775: Course Correction

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The lab that Elise was in with Miracle and Reagan disappears, and is replaced with Elise’s own apartment in Abodome. The first thing she sees is the front door closing. Someone seemingly just left, so she needs to find out who. She sprints over to it and opens it back up. She looks down the hallway and sees herself. Well, she sees the back of her own head. She recognizes the outfit too. This is it. This is the day that she and her friends officially began their hunt under Treasure Hunting Dome. She has gone back in time, just as Rae and Mir said she would. The question is, though, what now?

They didn’t actually give her any instructions. They didn’t say what she was supposed to change. She doesn’t have any experience in this, and they know that. Or they will know that, because at this point in time, she hasn’t met either of them yet. What they did to her was isolate her from everyone she cares about. There is no one she can trust without risking the timeline, and even if there were, they wouldn’t be able to help her anyway. She’s going to have to figure this out on her own. First things first, treat this like any other challenge on the hunt. According to Rage’s explanation of how they typically go, the last challenge often involves memory. You have to keep track of where you went and what you did, and regurgitate that in some way.

Elise tries to sit down at her computer, but her chair isn’t designed with wings in mind. She has to use the kitchen stool, which isn’t comfortable either because she still can’t lean back, but at least she’s not leaning forward. She opens a new file and starts to retrace her steps. She starts more general, and becomes more specific, adding the minutest of details to get a full picture of what happened once the hunt began. She color-codes it by actions she took, actions others took, and actions done to them by the game. She then goes in and adds even more information, about things that she wasn’t there for. She lists things that other hunters did, and tries to guess what Hrockas and Azad were doing in the meantime. She makes it a full, comprehensive bible of the whole ordeal, from start to finish. She even goes back to include events leading up to minute one, even though some of it is already in the past from her current perspective.

There is one interesting development; a mystery which they never solved. When the hunters were circling the desert, looking for their next clue, Minotaur went missing. They said someone in robes grabbed them and they tried to get away and lost their jacket, but the attacker quickly caught up to them. Elise looks over at her bed where she laid the robe that Reagan hung over her at the very last second. She goes over to it and picks it up. “Could this be it? Was it me the whole time?” But if so, she’s not come back to change the past. She can’t; it’s inevitable. She’s merely following in her own footsteps. Nothing will go better this time, because this isn’t a different time. Unless there’s a third Elise around here somewhere. She suddenly starts to feel like she’s being watched.

Elise paces the room. “What was it Miracle said once about time travel? If you don’t have proof that something didn’t happen, there’s a chance it happened.” She stands there and ponders that for a moment. Then she goes right back to her timeline document and reads the part about the desert again. “If you don’t have proof it didn’t happen, it might have happened,” she whispers. She nods, a little excited and more determined. “Right there. That’s my shot. I don’t have to change it if I assume it’s already happened.” She grabs the robe, drapes it over her body again, and disappears.

Elise has spent weeks practicing teleportation and flying. She has worked out every day to build up her strength. She went to a biotailor to improve her substrate even more. They reinforced her wings and increased the density of her muscles while lowering the density of her bones. It’s a trade-off, but she needs to be both strong and light. Her mission doesn’t necessarily involve being better than she already was, but why waste this opportunity? She has to do something while the timeline catches up.

She learned a few things about her temporal abilities. She can teleport from the real world to the Facsimile at will. It takes an extra boost of energy, but not as much as she figured at first. She also learns how many jumps she can do before she runs out, and she learns that she can actually increase her numbers by being more efficient, and even processing more temporal energy from wherever it comes from. The time for training is now over, though. This is the show. She packs the essentials, some of which she had to...borrow from a secure location, throws her robe back on, and heads off to work.

She is in the desert now, and has been for a couple of days. She intentionally came a little early in case something went wrong, but she also isn’t entirely sure when her past self and her friends will show up. They didn’t have timepieces with them at the time. She knows where they’ll end up, however, so she’s on her belly, watching that spot with binoculars. The robe can shift colors, as most clothing can in the modern world, so she just looks like a crest in the sand dune. She has learned to be still and patient too. She didn’t set out to do that, but it came naturally with all of her other training.

They’re here. Elise watches Azad transport them all before leaving with Hrockas and Telman. Now it’s just the hunters. She can’t hear, but she knows what they’re talking about. She waits until they spread out, triggering her window. She teleports directly to Minotaur, and after a brief struggle, relocates them to the rocket maze. Then she returns to her perch to wait for her next move. She sees them reunite and argue about what to do, and she sees Miracle teach her how to take control of her body. She watches as her past self gets trapped on the surface with Colley, where they both surrender to their budding romance, only to be caught by the others after they complete the underground maze. They all then go back down there to learn the truth about Rage.

This is it; it’s happening. Elise knew that she would be successful with Mino, because it already happened to her, but this is the real change. This is what she’s been actually training for. The ship blares as it begins to ascend. The ground shakes and gives way. Future!Elise has to start hovering to keep from slipping down the dune like an ant in an antlion’s pit. She slowly gets closer to get a better look, still worried about being spotted by someone. Past!Elise is now trying to hang on to both Colley and Zelda, but she’s not strong enough yet. Colley volunteers to let go, but Zelda beats him to it.

Future!Elise uses her friend-finding ability to teleport to exactly where Zelda is. She grabs her by the waist, and jumps them both back to the inside of the rising rocket.

“Whoa! How did you do that?” Zelda asks, trying to orient herself. “How did you do that? What are you wearing? How is your hair green now? Where’s Colley?”

“He’s fine.” Elise replies. She takes out two vacuum suit cartridges, placing one on Zelda’s chest, and the other on her own. The nanites emerge from the cartridge and wrap themselves around them to protect them from space exposure. She did it, they won. Didn’t they?

Microstory 2774: Look Both Ways Before You Cross

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It’s not everyone on Castlebourne who can get a private meeting with the one and only Hrockas Steward. Billions of people are visiting. They don’t technically live here permanently, because citizenship seems unnecessary, and isn’t an obvious process, but the population is growing. Many have been here for decades. The point is, Elise is special. She’s not the only transgenic person on the planet—not by a mile—but she’s one of the few people in history who can teleport.

Elise isn’t here simply for the sake of it, but the purpose of the meeting is very real, even if she has an ulterior motive. It’s her job to keep the man busy in a secure location so her friends can break into the castle. They didn’t have a whole lot of time to plan this, so it’s not as sophisticated of an attack as they would like, but they need that routing information. Within the hour, Zelda’s disappearance from the network will trigger a subroutine in the backup system, which will awaken an outdated version of her.

This is something that you have to set up ahead of time. People come and go from planets all the time, it doesn’t mean their backups automatically try to replace them, or the galaxy would be chock full of unwarranted duplicates. It’s a failsafe that Hrockas put in place on their behalf. The assumption is that the more recent Zelda is dead, which is true, but the program doesn’t know that Miracle has a way to get her back. While she’s preparing for that with newcomer Reagan, the rest of the team are trying to hack into the administrative database, or whatever. In fact, they should be in it by now.

“If you have somewhere to be,” Hrockas says, “we can do this another time.”

“No, sorry. Wait, what?” Elise asks, confused.

“You keep checking your watch,” he points out.

“Sorry, yes. I’m not in a hurry,” Elise replies while she tries to come up with an explanation. “I’m trying to get a feel for my temporal energy. I would like to find a way to gauge it. Like, I jumped us all three here, per your instructions, so how much did that take out of me? Thirty percent? Fifty percent? More? How would I know unless I just try again, and hope for the best? Do other teleporters deal with this kind of uncertainty?”

Hrockas nods. “That’s why I suggested connecting you with a friend of a friend. They’re also a teleporter, so they would know more about it. It’s not exactly my specialty. I can’t even do it myself; not biologically, anyway. I deliberately avoid it because I think it grants me too much power. I might be deluding myself, it’s just, when you own an entire planet...never mind, you don’t wanna hear about my problems.”

“No, I do,” Elise insists. She’s not lying either. The man is pretty well-liked all around. He set up a paradise, and he doesn’t seem to be asking for anything in return. His laws are reasonable, and he mostly stays out of people’s way. Not much is known about him personally, or exactly how he came to own this colony. There is usually a story, but the visitors rely mostly on rumors to make it make sense, because by all accounts, he was not the very first person to settle here. He has even hinted that Castlebourne is named after a person, but who? “I’m very curious about what it’s like.”

“What it’s like to be me?” Hrockas guesses. “I don’t think either of us has time to get into that, but it’s not as hard as it sounds. Everything’s automated. You don’t need a giant government making decisions anymore. The past has done that for us, the laws are self-evident. You wanted to discuss and learn about your powers, though.”

“Yes, and I don’t want to speak with anyone else. I trust you,” Elise says.

“What about Telman?” Hrockas asks. “Do you trust Telman?”

Elise looks over at Telman who is standing over her with a scanner in one hand, and a syringe in the other. “Yeah, I trust Telman.” That’s not totally true.

Hrockas presses a button to lean Elise back in her chair.

Straps pop out from the arm and leg rests, and wrap themselves around her body.

Hrockas smiles. “Okay, well he’s going to show you a series of images. I don’t want you to try to teleport to them, which is what these straps are for. They keep you in one place. I only want you to reach out with your mind. Most teleporters have an innate sense of if their destination is safe to jump to, or if it’s a busy street, or inside of a wall. Not everyone can do this, though, so we need to know your limitations. If something goes wrong, he’s ready with a baseline cocktail. Just relax.”

Elise takes a breath and watches the images go by. They appear to actually be video feeds from Castlebourne. The entrance to 10,000 Emerald Pools, a wide shot of The Wasteland, a weird empty cardboard city, the Castledome castle, the Castledome castle interior, the Castledome castle admin wing, the Castledome castle admin wing server room, where most of her friends are trying to break into the mainframe. “Oh.”

Hrockas holds on the feed and nods. “Oh,” he echoes casually.

She looks over at him. “How long have you known?” She looks back at the video, where she sees Azad appear before the hunters, and begin to arrest them.

“Since before you even thought up the plan,” Hrockas explains. “You think this is the first timeline where you’ve lost someone, and the first time you’ve tried to get them back? I mean...it’s the first time you’ve personally been here, which is an interesting development, and a nice change of pace, but seriously, I have a lot of time traveler friends. Have you heard of the Infinity Suite? It’s not an optical illusion, it’s literally infinite. I’m protected from alterations to reality thanks to another friend of a friend. I’m not sure if that matters anymore, because some of this is unprecedented.”

“Oh, you mean like this?” Miracle’s voice asks from out of Elise’s view.

Elise turns her head to see Miracle is standing with Reagan, holding a parabolic dish. Before Hrockas or Telman can do anything, she blasts them with an energy wave.

The two of them collapse to the floor, and it’s unclear if their bodies are dead.

“What’s going on with Zelda?” Elise asks desperately. “Did we lose hope?”

“No, but we have a workaround. We needed them out of our way,” Mir answers.

Elise struggles to get out of the chair, but has to let Miracle set her free of the magic straps. “What are we gonna do? The whole team has been arrested.”

“We knew they would be,” Reagan explains. He sets some kind of contraption on a nearby table. “They were a distraction while Mir and I went for something else.” He shows her a vial of clear liquid. “I think there is only enough concentrated temporal energy for one person. We may be able to squeeze in another, but I don’t wanna risk it.”

“One person to what?” Elise massages her wrists and flexes her wings.

“To go back in time...not consciousness travel, though,” Miracle explains. “This would be physical. If we want to change things, we have to do it differently. We have to do something crazy. You won’t be detected. You’re the only one who can stay invisible to the sensors. You don’t follow the same rules. Those straps never would have worked.”

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?” Elise is more lost than ever.

“Hold still.” Reagan drapes her in a big black robe, and pushes a big red button.

Microstory 2773: Proceed With Caution

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Elise follows Miracle through the rows and rows of casting chambers. They’re here to recruit an old friend of the latter’s, though she won’t say exactly who it is, or why they would be here. The Terminal is just where you come out of when you cast your consciousness from somewhere else, and presumably where you come back to when you want to leave. Elise has never actually heard of anyone leaving Castlebourne, but it probably happens every once in a while. Either way, it’s not residential, so no one should be living here. They seem to be in a rather remote part of it too, which is ominous.

Miracle stops and looks around like she’s worried they’ve been followed, but it’s still just the two of them. She pulls the brainscanner out of its pocket on the side and lowers it over her head. The chamber door unlocks and opens for her. She almost roughly takes Elise by the arm, and shoves her inside with her.

“What is the deal?” Elise looks around. “Is there a trap door, or something?”

Miracle opens the casting pod hatch, but instead of the normal chair, it’s some kind of computer. She extends the keyboard, and starts typing on it. The ambient lights shift colors in a pattern. Miracle periodically looks up, apparently when one of the colors stays on too long. “Blasted thing.” She smacks the side of the machine, which triggers the color to change again. “Okay. I’ve recalibrated it for two people. This should work.”

“What will work?” Elise questions. “You’ve still not said what we’re doing here.”

“I told you, we’re here to meet a friend,” Miracle answers as if that’s enough.

“I don’t see anyone else here, so where exactly are they?” Elise presses.

Miracle points to the screen, which is showing an image of the stars. “This is where we’re going. You don’t need any more detailed information than that. Just focus on transporting there. We just need to aim close enough for the relay to detect us.”

“I don’t know much about this teleportation stuff,” Elise begins, “but I can’t imagine that I can jump that far. I won’t even be able to breathe.”

Miracle shakes her head. “We’ll end up in a ship. You’re right, you probably don’t have that wide a range, but don’t worry, the machine is boosting your power.”

“All right,” Elise agrees. “I’m trusting you.”

Miracle turns it on, Elise focuses on her destination, and they both jump.

They appear in a luxurious stateroom. Massive viewscreens are showing them that same image of the stars. A shirtless man, having likely heard them, runs out of the bathroom. He reaches out and presumably magnetically summons his sidearm, which was sitting on the bed. He points it at the two of them. “Report.”

“Relax, Reagan, it’s me, Small Miracle,” she claims.

“You changed your face.” The man doesn’t relax. He still might shoot them.

“It was getting confusing for people,” Miracle explains, “looking like Romana.”

“I’ll need to verify,” Reagan insists. “Stay still, don’t try anything...either of you.”

The two of them gently press their foreheads together for several seconds.

“Neural handshake complete; identity confirmed.” Reagan tosses his gun back on the bed. “Are you someone I should know as well, or have we never met?”

“I’m new, I’m Elise.” She offers her hand so they can do a normal handshake.

Reagan nods and looks back over at Miracle. “I’m preparing for battle, I don’t have time to go on another one of your little side missions. I barely have time for tea.”

“I need you,” Miracle contends. “This one won’t take long. Our friend is at risk of being replaced by an out-of-date version of herself. We need to know where her body is so we can halt the reactivation protocol. That will give me the time I need to fix it.”

“Like I said, I’m preparing for battle,” Reagan insists. “I can’t abandon ship.”

“If we don’t do this in the next couple of hours,” Miracle tries to clarify, “it won’t matter anyway. You can delay your battle. You’re the frickin’ admiral.”

“Yeah, and I earned that by being a good leader, and being present,” Reagan argues. He shakes his head. “You saved my life, and I appreciate that, but that was in Underbelly, and I’m in the Outer System program now. I don’t know if you remember, but I don’t do these simulations for fun. I am this close to feeling ready.”

Miracle nods. “Rae, you’ve been ready for decades, but you will never go through with it, because you’re afraid of what it will do to you. Killing NPCs and backed up people is a far cry from permanent murder.”

“Hey!” he interrupts. “Your moth friend doesn’t need to know anything about it.”

“I don’t know what you’ve been through, man,” Elise says, “but Mir has been extremely helpful, especially to me in understanding my new powers. If you need to kill someone, that’s none of my business. I just want my friend back, with her memories.”

Reagan looks at Elise sadly. “I’m sorry. You should have come this morning.”

“Well, just give me the neurospoofing device, and I’ll handle it myself,” Miracle compromises.

Reagan chuckles. “I can’t trust you with that. We may have been on the same—”

“I will give you teleportation,” Miracle interrupts. “You always wanted it.”

Reagan narrows his eyes on Miracle. “You always said I was too reckless for it; that a big, bad prison was gonna come and lock me up for risking their secrets.”

“Eh,” Miracle replies. “I just don’t like to give everybody powers. It’s...too easy.”

Reagan takes a breath and puts on a poker face. “I also want access to the afterlife simulation. You give me that, I’ll resign my post right now, and help you in person.”

“Rae, that’s asking too much. I mean, the afterlife is Fort Knox on steroids.”

He frowns. “Killing the Oaksent won’t do a damn bit of good if he can just come back. We still don’t know if the decoherence gun destroys all quantum connections, or if he’ll still survive it. I at least need to study the specs so I can know for sure what will happen when I try. I will only get one shot at this. I need this more than I need teleportation. I came up with a workaround for being in multiple places at once.”

Miracle sighs, and looks over at Elise, who looks back, trying to convey the importance of this situation while trying to look past all of this talk about assassination and afterlife simulations. “Okay, I’ll get you into the sim,” Miracle says. “I don’t wanna know who your test subject is, though, and you won’t also get teleportation.”

Reagan shrugs. “Fine. You have a deal. Let’s do another handshake on it.”

They tap their foreheads together, then Reagan asks to do the same with Elise. That way, if they ever run into each other later with different substrates, they will be able to confirm each other’s identities based on their respective neural patterns.

“So,” Reagan says. “I’ll need to know whose neural patterns to spoof, and what part of Castlebourne you’ll need access to. I designed other gadgets which may help.”

“We need access to Castledome,” Miracle answers before pausing, either to build suspense, or to work up the courage. “And we need to impersonate Hrockas Steward.”

Microstory 2772: Dasshutsu

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There is a natural atmosphere on Castlebourne, but it doesn’t have the right composition for human lungs. That’s why the owner built tens of thousands of domes, so each could contain its own atmosphere. The hunters knew the risks going into this plan, but they didn’t talk about it, because it was the only one they had. As soon as Elise clears the dome opening, she turns and follows the curve back down towards the surface.

They already picked out a rendezvous point. The desert where the rocket was buried is not on any map they’ve ever seen. It’s much smaller than a regular dome, which has a diameter of 83 kilometers. It’s situated between Bloodbourne and Tokyo 2077, and was supposedly built exclusively for this hunt. For whatever reason, the single escape pod always transports the designated survivor to Tokyo 2077, where they find themselves having to navigate their way back home using directions found hidden in the pod. Rage once tried to ignore them, and exit herself, but the target exit is the only way to reenter the normal dimension, instead of this Facsimile thing.

Elise and Colley fly through the airlock, where they inject themselves with an emergency baseline cocktail, which brings their body back to equilibrium after exposure. They walk through the tunnel where they catch up with the rest of the group, who have already found Rage sitting on the edge of the pod’s hatch, reading the instructions.

“Don’t you just remember where to go?” Jolanda asks her.

“The exit is in a different place every time,” Rage explains.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Minotaur presses. “If you’re going back in time, why would it move, unless Hrockas is aware that you’re doing it?”

“He may be,” Miracle explains, “but even if he’s not, Rage makes different decisions in different time loops, which affect how the hunt progresses, if only due to the butterfly effect. I don’t have to go over the butterfly effect, do I?”

When Rage shakes her head, she notices something. “We’re missing someone.”

“Zelda didn’t make it,” Elise answers solemnly. “I couldn’t carry both.”

Colley hangs his head low. “It should have been me.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Elise argues. “There were no good options.”

“There might be a way,” Miracle claims, “to get her back.”

“How?” Rage asks. “Is death just a form of time travel?”

Miracle chuckles. “No. But you have to understand that, in the world of time travel, if something ever exists, it always exists. We can get her mind back by stealing it from the past, and pulling it up to the present. We have to find Zelda’s body before it wakes up, though, because the Zelda we meet there will begin to be her own person, and blending their minds together is ethically tricky the longer we wait.”

“Well, I can’t read this,” Rage complains. “I’m starting to think that Hrockas is aware of my time travel. It’s always, always, always in Japanese, which is why I uploaded the language into my neural net, but now it’s in something else.”

Colley takes the paper from her, and studies it. “It is Japanese. It’s an old style called Kuzushiji; basically their form of cursive. They stopped using it nearly 700 years ago specifically because it was hard to read, and they wanted something standardized.”

“So we have to find someone to translate it,” Rage decides, snatching the document back. “It takes forever because people are assholes. I think that’s why this is Tokyo 2077, rather than 2050 or 2100. It was a complex time in Japan’s history. And the NPCs are just as modern as me, so now we need a scholar who studied this ancient form of writing, which will make it even harder. Zelda doesn’t have time for this!”

“It might actually be easier,” Colley reasons. “Scholars love history. If we go to the nearest university’s language department, they’ll probably be excited to see this.”

He was right. The Head of Linguistics is ecstatic to see the directions because he was programmed with a passion for dead languages. He agrees to transcribe it for them, but only into modern Japanese hiragana, and only if he gets to keep the document. That is absolutely fine. Once they know where to go, they won’t need anything else from it. Elise suggests that he start with the last step in case it’s the only one they need, and that turns out to be the right call. It saves them a ton of time. Rage has familiarized herself with the city enough to navigate. The problem was, the exit is in a bad neighborhood.

“Well, they’re all NPCs, right?” Elise asks. “One restriction when it comes to fighting is holding back so you don’t accidentally murder someone. But here, that doesn’t matter. We can go full force with anyone who attacks, and not feel bad.”

“It’s not that easy,” Colley contends. “Ambients are programmed to be reactive. If you fight harder, they fight harder. That’s why conventional wisdom says to use diversion combat methods, like aikido, or maybe judo. Try to deescalate the situation.”

“Again, Zelda doesn’t have time for that,” Rage argues, “and she didn’t teach us either of those things. I’m guessing you only know them academically.”

“Let’s just try not to make trouble, okay?” Minotaur suggests. “This isn’t a video game. A confrontation is not guaranteed to pass the level. We might be okay.”

Minotaur’s advice was sound but unfortunately inaccurate for their situation. They aren’t only in a dangerous part of town. They have to walk into a den of thieves, surrounded by people open-carrying firearms and underneath nude video billboards. While it’s true, they didn’t study the gentler martial arts, they do have an intuition for similar tactics, based on what they did practice with Zelda and Jolanda. The latter still being alive obviously takes point, but she isn’t able to handle all attackers on her own. Everyone has to participate, including kinder Colley. They keep moving as fast as possible to reach their exit. Luckily, there’s no final boss to destroy.

By the time they reach the door, they are all bloodied and bruised, but still breathing, and once they do open it, all the fighting ceases. The NPC criminals instantly begin to ignore them, and go on with their fake lives. So it is a little like a video game. Meanwhile, the hunters cross the threshold, through the magical dimensional portal, and back into the real world. They end up in the same basement, but it’s the polar opposite as it was before. It appears to be a school, or a childcare facility. They’re attacked again, but this time by a bunch of children gawking at the unusual strangers, who are mostly dressed in racing uniforms, and also one of them is a green moth.

Amidst all of this, they make their way back to the outer walls of the real Tokyo 2077 dome, get on the vactrain, and travel clear to the other side of the planet to The Terminal. This is where everyone who comes to this planet by casting their consciousness through the quantum network shows up. Every dome has its own highly secure vault of primary and backup substrates, and people have their own pods in their private residences. They don’t know where Zelda will end up, so this is the only place they can go to find out since it should store routing priority procedures in its database. This is the hard part, though. It’s time for a good old fashioned high-tech heist.

Microstory 2771: Three-Two-One Liftoff, Jetpack, Shoot Into Space

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Elise and Colley learn that the maze the other team members were making their way through is a rocket buried in the ground narratively from crashing. It’s heavily damaged, and not likely spaceworthy, so they’re pretty sure that their goal was never to learn how to pilot it. It is of apparent alien design, based on the mysterious writings and glyphs all over the place. One particular room off of what they believe to be the bridge is calling out to them, like path funneling in a video game. It just looks important. This is partially because it sits opposite the exit that led them back to their friends on the surface. This hunt is all about movement. It must be the next step in their journey.

They came across other locked doors, but they served mainly as dead ends for the maze portion of the challenge, because if the ship were real, it probably wouldn’t have actually been designed as a maze on purpose. This room is different, and they think Colley may be able to figure out how to unlock it. Their best guess is that it’s a puzzle.

Colley is standing at the door now, looking at the symbols carved into it, having already examined the writing on the consoles. Elise stands a little to the side. She has no idea what the symbols mean, but she’s watching Colley’s facial expressions closely. He doesn’t look like he’s studying them. His face is solemn and reflective. At times, it’s unclear if he’s looking at anything at all, or simply staring into space. After a moment, he pivots 45 degrees to look over at Rage. “You’ve always known.”

“What?” Rage questions. “I’ve always known what?”

Colley quietly looks back at the door. “You’ve always known we would end up here. Or maybe you thought this time would be different...that you could change it.” He looks back over at her again. “Which is it? Hope, or inevitability.”

Rage looks as confused as before, but then her face falls into cold understanding. “I did what I had to do. We’re so close. Next time, we’ll make it all the way, I know it.”

“What is going on?” Jolanda questions. “What are you two talking about?”

Colley begins to look around. “The door is dead. We got here too late.”

“There’s power,” Zelda reasons. “We can figure out how to reroute it to the door.”

“No,” Colley contends, shaking his head. “It’s not that kind of door. It’s powered by time, and the clock ran out before we even stepped foot in the maze.” He faces Minotaur. “Do you have any idea who brought you down here? Did you catch a glimpse? Any clue whatsoever?”

“No, why? I assumed it was Azad, or a programmed Ambient, like those pirates.”

“I don’t think they were supposed to grab you,” Colley begins. “I think someone was trying to help us get down here faster. It turned out to not be enough because of the other delays we faced, like Elise’s death, and Miracle’s surprise return. Rage knows more about it. She’s been here before. Haven’t you, Rage? You’ve been through all of this.”

“It’s not like that,” Rage says. “They give us different challenges every time. Even this last one is different. It’s the same crashed ship, but the path is always changed. That’s why I started recruiting Mino, so they would help us get through it faster. But like the man said, it wasn’t enough. The countdown has already begun.”

“Explain,” Minotaur presses. “What do you mean you started recruiting me?”

Rage sighs. “I don’t have the whole history, because I’m not always the designated survivor, but—you have to understand that at first, a part of me thought they were just dreams. When I could remember past attempts, I thought my brain was just making it up, because the memories don’t really feel like mine. The more time passes, the more I realize that they’re real, and I start actively trying to change things.”

“Ah,” Miracle says. “You don’t store all of your thoughts in the network. You learned how to keep them in another dimension. I probably taught you how. Though, if I did, why would I not have those memories?”

“Because you have to be the one who survives,” Rage explains. She points at the mysterious door. “Once we open that, two things will happen. The ship will ascend, and bathe this whole dome in exhaust and radiation. The dome is smaller than it looks. A single-person pod will unlock, and allow one of us to survive. That person’s consciousness alone will continue, go back to the beginning, and recruit everyone to try again. It’s usually me. We vote and agree that it will be me since I’ve become the one with the most context. I think I sometimes just don’t make it this far so you have to pick someone else. I have been trying different ways of winning, but delays add up. Speeding through it won’t work either, because it usually just ends up getting everybody killed. I made one huge change this time which got us closer than ever.”

“What did you change?” Zelda asks.

Rage looks over at Elise. “I recruited a seventh hunter. She was the missing piece. If we go one more time, I know that we can make it. You just have to let me get in that pod one more time. Once I regain access to the right equipment, I will send my consciousness back in time, like I always do, and restart. Please, trust me.”

“How can we trust you?” Colley questions. “You have been lying this whole time. Did you ever think of reading us in, and maybe we would work through it better?”

“Of course I’ve tried that,” Rage contends. “Those iterations go worse than any. We get in our own heads, and we get in our own way. Placing my trust in you is what gets us far, as well as thinking outside the box, like when I found Elise.”

“Why can’t we just walk out here right now?” Elise asks. She dips her head a little. “I can still see light coming in through the executive exit. We’ll go back to the desert, armed with water this time, and make our way to the wall. We won’t win the hunt, but all of our memories will remain intact, rather than only yours.”

Rage shakes her head. “We’ve tried that too. As soon as one person steps over that threshold, the ship takes off and burns them alive before they cross the desert. Anyone who manages to hold on and stay inside when that happens asphyxiates once the ship reaches altitude.”

“Well, we could teleport,” Elise turns to face the person who knows the most about all this time travel stuff. “Miracle, I’m surely charged up by now, aren’t I?”

Miracle nods. “You probably are, but you can only take two people at a time.”

“Yeah,” Rage agrees. “Miracle managed to retain her own powers in one iteration but that didn’t work either, because the ship launched, and I guess triggered some kind of teleportation suppression field. That’s when she taught me how to send my consciousness into the past. We were hoping to subvert the challenge changes, but we later decided that we decide what challenges come up, based on our dynamic and capacity for teamwork, which changes constantly. That’s why I didn’t tell you. I was trying to keep everything as predictable as possible.”

“But you said that I’m new,” Elise reasons. “You made a change, but also tried to keep everything the same? Which is it?”

“It’s both,” Rage answers. “It’s complicated. I’m sorry. It’s gonna happen again.”

Elise shakes her head. “What if I flew people out of here?” Elise asks. She turns to Miracle again. “I think I’m strong enough. The ship has to escape the dome somehow, right? It is a spaceship, after all, and there’s no outer space inside the dome.”

When Miracle defers to Rage, the latter goes on. “I once climbed into the escape pod, but intentionally didn’t escape right away, to see what would happen. Yes, it does fly all the way into space. You’re not strong enough to carry six people, though.”

“She won’t have to carry all six,” Miracle claims. She begins to stretch and roll her neck. “There’s a reason I’ve been so subdued since Hrockas made me come back in a different body. I’ve been focusing on induced limb growth.” She tenses up like she’s having a baby, and hunches her back. Two beautiful white angel wings sprout from her shoulder blades, and unfold before their eyes. It looks a little painful, but once it’s over, she smiles and breathes. “Ahhh, loophole!”

“Oh my God,” Zelda says. “That’s bad ass. You have to teach me how to do that.”

“There’s a problem, though,” Miracle says as she’s flapping her new wings, presumably to get used to them. “I couldn’t will myself to have superstrength, and it doesn’t sound like Elise has it either. I reckon we can each only take two passengers.”

“Someone’s going to have to stay behind,” Zelda realizes. “There’s apparently usually only one survivor, but this time, there will be one death. How poetic.”

“I’ll do it,” Colley volunteers. “Before you say anything, I don’t have any special argument in favor of it, but the way I see it, I called it first, so I win. I shouldn’t have to explain myself. I don’t have this big speech about what I learned, and what will happen to my alternate self when he wakes up with no memories. This is just gonna be what happens. So go on and yell all you want, but I’m not budging.”

Rage looks at him like he’s an idiot. “There’s still an escape pod,” she reminds him. “It’s got my name on it. I’ll take that. You take the ride.”

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense,” Colley agrees. “But we have to time it right.”

Everyone gets into position. Rage prepares to open the door with the code while the flyers stand at the exit, their respective passengers on either side of them. On Rage’s mark, they fly out of the hatch as fast as they can. Miracle gets going quickly, which triggers the launch sequence. Elise is having more trouble. Her wings may not be as fragile as a real Luna moth’s, but they’re not made of carbon nanotubes either. They’re still organic, and she still has limitations.

They’re only a few meters over the surface, and Elise is fighting just to stay at that level. She just can’t reach elevation. As she’s flapping her wings as hard as possible, they look down and see the sand slipping away from them like an hourglass. She’s not getting higher; the ground is getting lower as the ship displaces it with its initial lift off. The boosters are just about to fire and burn them to death. They have to go now.

“I guess I am gonna sacrifice myself!” Colley yells, obviously preparing to let go.

“No!” Elise cries. “Just hold on! I can do this!”

“There’s no time!” Colley shouts. “Don’t argue with me! Save Zelda!”

“Save Zelda?” Zelda questions. “I was born for this.” She lets go and plummets towards her death. “Wooooo!” They lose her amidst the rain of sand below.

Now there’s really no time...no time to mourn, no time to dwell. Elise tightens her grip on Colley, and flies up towards the zenith as flames nip at their heels.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 28, 2572

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Their collective depression had not been alleviated by Romana’s departure, but had only grown darker. She did what she promised, or at least so far. When she made it through to the other side, she sent a message back through the persistent bulk connection, assuring them that she was fine. And just this morning, she sent another one, informing them that she would be leaving Earth today. Later messages would have to come through the quantum network, which took longer, and couldn’t be done in realtime at these distances; not with the equipment her little ship had. It was equipped with everything she needed, including a reframe engine, but it was nothing fancy.

As for the rest of them, they didn’t want to do anything. They tried to sulk together, but they kept awkwardly locking eyes with each other. No one said anything out loud, they just gradually started to go their separate ways. Mateo didn’t know if they were occupying their minds with various activities, or like him, they were just sitting there, stewing. Not even Ramses was working, and he almost always had a project in his queue. Speaking of queues, there was an off-world mission that they could have taken, but no one was up for it, so they simply ignored it. It wasn’t the right thing to do, per se, but the way they saw it, they were a bonus addition for the galaxy. They were not officially responsible for helping anyone. They had committed to no one.

After a few hours of this, Olimpia paged their communicators, which was just a simple way to say, come here. It wasn’t the right protocol for an emergency, so no one rushed to her location in the main lounge. When they finally did show up one by one, she didn’t even look like she was waiting for them. She was resting her temple on her fist, and staring blankly at the floor. Only when the last of them, Angela arrived, did Olimpia perk up a little. “I’m leaving too.”

“Like Romana?” Leona asked, panic in her eyes, but also patient caution.

“Yes, but I don’t intend on going anywhere besides Earth. I think I want to revisit Sri Lanka; see what’s become of it. And...I wanna do it alone. I’m not asking for a divorce, or anything. I need to clear my head. This place reminds me of my...of Romy.”

“It’s okay,” Leona encouraged. “She saw you as a mother figure. You are inarguably her stepmother. You can call her your daughter. I do.”

“I think that’s maybe changed,” Olimpia decided. “We have been through a lot together, the seven of us. I used to think nothing could tear us apart. Now I don’t know if anything can bring us back together. It’s not the only reason I’m leaving, though.”

Leona stood and approached her wife. She leaned over and kissed her on the lips. It wasn’t a mere peck, but it wasn’t passionate either. It was soft and familiar; fitting for a goodbye. “I don’t want you to go, but I respect your decision.” She inhaled. “Matt, would you like to say goodbye to your wife?”

Mateo stood too. He exhaled. “I can’t respect this. When you break a pencil, it becomes harder to write with. You don’t solve that by breaking it again.” He walked out of the room. He couldn’t take another person leaving. Well, he wouldn’t be able to stop it, but he at least didn’t have to watch it happen. If he didn’t see her go through that slingportal, as far as he would know, Olimpia was always just in a different room.

He suspected that he would regret his actions later, but he was not living in the later. Now was now, and this was what he had to do to survive this.

As he was trying to sulk alone in his room, Leona walked in.

“Don’t say it,” he begged.

“You need to go fix this before you miss your chance,” Leona demanded.

“I meant what I said. When something is broken, don’t break it again,” he argued.

“If you don’t go back out there before she leaves, you’re going to have to repeat what you said to her to me. Do you understand me? This is a difficult situation, and we all have different feelings about it. This is her way of dealing with it.”

“Well, this is how I’m dealing with it,” Mateo reasoned. “Why should I apologize for my reaction to her reaction? She should respect me, and let me be.”

“She is,” Leona countered. “That’s why I’m in this room right now, and she’s not.”

“What if she doesn’t come back, Leona? What if Romana doesn’t either? What if this is the end of all of us?” He couldn’t even remember how long he had been doing this, or how long he had known the people he loved, but he couldn’t imagine an end to that. Not even death should have been able to collapse the team, but here they were.

“Exactly,” Leona agreed. “What if she never comes back, and what if the reason she never comes back is because you made her feel like it would be bad if she did?”

“We made vows to each other, Lee. She’s breaking them.” Mateo sighed.

“No.” Leona shook her head. “You are.”

He sighed again. “You’re right. Goddammit.” He still didn’t move from his bed.

“Get up. She’s packing light. She could leave at literally any second.”

Mateo went back out to the lounge, but Olimia wasn’t there, so he teleported to the slingdrive lab. He didn’t see her there either, so he started freaking out, but he knew what the machine looked like when it had recently been used, and it had not recently been used. That was when he remembered that they could locate each other.

Olimpia was with Ramses in the main hangar bay. They were just climbing down the steps as the latter was finishing up explaining how to shift AI models if something went wrong with the first. “The failsafes are foolproof, you’re gonna be fine. Oh.”

“Sorry. Can I talk to my wife alone?” Mateo requested sheepishly.

“I just want to make sure the ship collapses into the right pocket dimension,” Ramses said. “I have fixed the initial bugs by now, but I had some issues with the earlier iterations of this technology, so now I always quadruple check it.”

“I just tap right here?” Olimpia asked, mostly rhetorically. After receiving a nod from Ramses, she tapped her interface. Her personal shuttlecraft disappeared.

“Okay.” Ramses put on a special pair of glasses and sized Olimpia up like the best friend character in a ‘90s romcom who didn’t have as much restraint as the protagonist. “All right, it’s in there. You’re good to go.” He put his glasses away and opened his arms.

The two of them hugged before Ramses left. Now it was only Mateo and Olimpia.

“I made a huge mistake and reacted poorly. I’m sorry. I don’t want us to part on bad terms,” Mateo said. “Do you have time to forgive me before you step into that machine? And if not, can you delay departure, so we have more time to talk?”

“We’ll be okay,” Olimpia said to him. “There’s nothing to forgive. I sprang this on you. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I’ve not discussed it. I still have family alive who I’ve not seen in centuries. I don’t know where they are, but I’m gonna start there. The reason I didn’t bring it up before is because I didn’t know if I wanted you to come. I want you to meet them, but maybe we don’t overwhelm them? I will stay connected. I’m not going just because of what happened with Romana. It’s bad timing.”

Mateo nodded. “Okay. Don’t forget that I love you, though. Our marital bed will feel empty without you, even though Leona will be next to me too.”

“Well...keep it warm for me. I hope by the time I return, Romana has as well.”

By the time Olimpia was even close to returning, Ramosus had been deserted.

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