Tangent Point: Pulling it Together (Part IV)

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Ajax immediately ran over to the second shuttle. Reed wasn’t sure if Vasily hadn’t noticed that there was another one in this bay, or didn’t think that they would have time to catch up. But as the true, legitimate captain of this vessel, Ajax had the authority to skip all pre-flight procedures, and just go. Reed tried to follow him and Shasta up the ramp. Ajax turned around, and held up a hand. “No. You don’t have a local back-up body. This could be a suicide mission.” He turned back around and started powering up systems.

“Why would you be concerned with that?”

Ajax just kept working. “Because I secretly agree with you. Don’t tell anyone. Just take this thing, and go save our neighbors. I’ll be on the ground. The Tangent is so new that I only had one local back-up.”

“Shasta,” Reed said simply as he was backing away on the ramp.

“I’ll be here to help the Captain if he needs it,” she replied. “Now go so we can close the hatch.”

Reed stepped all the way out, and let them launch without him. It was frustrating, sending people on missions, placing them in danger. But that was the burden of leadership, and it was a lot better in real life than in the space operas, where death was usually permanent. He watched the shuttle for as long as possible until it disappeared around the bend. Then he just kept staring through the transparent plasma barrier. Bungula was beginning to shrink as they were breaking orbit. He breathed a sigh of relief, and then opened his comms. “Ellis calling the bridge. Seal the bulkheads in this shuttle bay and shut off the plasma. We need to save power.”

“Belay that order,” Shasta’s voice came on. “I’ll be coming in with the elevator pod shortly.”

Reed switched to a private channel. “You survived? How did you stop Vasily?”

“I’ll explain when I get back, but Ajax is gone. It’s just me, so have a security team on standby to secure the VIP hostages.”

Reed went back to the main channel. “Send a security squad to Shuttle Bay Four. We got the pod.” He could hear them all cheering on the radio, but he couldn’t celebrate with them. There was still one more loose end to tie up. Vasily was about to be resurrected in the crazy new chrysalis thing, and had to be dealt with too. If he told his people what happened between them, it would cause some internal conflict. Some here would be okay with murdering a human, and might end up siding with Vasily on this matter. Reed could stick him in hock, but there was no guarantee that he would stay there for long. One ally would be all it took to set him free. This was a very delicate situation. He had a number of options, and each came with advantages and disadvantages. He could even just pardon the guy, or straight up keep it all a secret in order to maintain peace. Even if he found a way to transport him off-ship far enough to shift his consciousness stream from the Tangent to Bungula, he might become a martyr. Vasily was a permanent problem no matter what. “Also, send one team to the chrysalis room to escort someone who is about to respawn.”

“Aye, captain,” his Head of Security acknowledged. “Alpha-Gamma squad, go to the shuttle bay. Beta team to the chrysalis room.”

“Hey, Thistle. Report,” Reed asked his AI as he was starting the long trip back up to the bridge alone. The summary ran for as long as it took him to reach his destination. Everything was going all right. Auxiliary engineering was holding the platform together, the security sweep of the tether complex didn’t turn up any other traitors or spies, and the bridge crew was establishing themselves, and settling into their new roles. The biggest job was the cleanup. There were a lot of dead bodies scattered all over the place, which needed to be disposed of respectfully, according to the user’s own personal wishes. Some of these could be found in the database, while others might have to be contacted later. The mutineers responsible for this work knew who they were, and were doing it without being asked. That went for everyone. Nothing was being neglected. Nothing was falling apart. They might actually pull this off.

“Captain,” his pilot began, “we’ve started acceleration. We’ll be on our way in six minutes.”

“Thanks, that’s good to know.”

“Sir,” his comms officer said, taking her turn. “Mediator Fenwick is on hold for peaceful negotiations.” She used airquotes.

“You didn’t alert me right away?” Reed asked.

“We figured you would want to make him sweat,” she replied.

Reed smiled. “Good call.” He took a deep breath, then did a 180. “On screen.” The image appeared. “Kemper, how the hell are ya? Long time, no blackout hock.”

Mediator Fenwick was already frowning, but deepened it now. “You have the audacity to criticize our judgment after what you’ve just pulled? What I did when I ordered your consciousness frozen was an executive decision that I take responsibility for, but it only affected you. You killed dozens of people—”

“Wait, we didn’t kill anyone. We destroyed some people’s substrates. You’re the only one here who has conspired to murder anyone.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Fenwick contended. “Did someone die in the drone strike? That was only meant to disable propulsion.”

“Now, Kemper, we’ve known each other for decades. There’s no need to play coy with me. I know about your spy.”

“We do not have a spy. I will not stand for this projection. It is you who infected our ranks insidiously, and instituted a mutiny. Now, we all have empathy for the Proxima Domanians, and we recognize where you’re coming from, but making us out to be the villains is reckless, and the history books will not remember it that way.”

“Well, I don’t agree with your prediction, but I’m not talking about the kinetic drone, and I’m not talking about you fighting back against the mutiny. I don’t even blame you for that, your people had every right to defend their post. They will be treated with the utmost respect while they’re on board my new platform. No, I’m talking about Vasily.” Everyone within Reed’s field of vision winced at the accusation, and probably everyone he couldn’t see too. “Now, I don’t know how you got to him, but he placed the VIPs in the elevator pod in grave—”

“Executor Ellis,” Fenwick interrupted. “I do not appreciate being accused of something that I had nothing to do with. If you suffered a betrayal, then I would call that an internal matter. I’ve never even heard the name before, so unless you are not done fabricating tall tales, I would like to move on to the matter of the hostage crisis. For the safe return of all hostages, we are prepared to offer the Tangent passage to Proxima Doma without any interference from the Bungulan military, or the government. It is all you need, let those innocent people go.”

Reed chuckled. “Nice try, Kempy, but I caught your sneaky little semantic trick. The Bungulan military is symbolic at best, which is why you were woefully unprepared for our takeover. Teagarden, on the other hand, operates under an entirely different jurisdiction, and would be under absolutely no obligation to uphold any promise of amnesty that the Bungulan authority might offer. I doubt you’ve even mobilized your own forces. I’m sure your first call was to that Teaguardian I see matching our speed on the port side. Are we quite finished joking?”

Fenwick knew that he had been made. “Reed, you don’t wanna do this. Even if you make it out of Bungulan space—even if you make it all the way to Doma—how do you think you’re gonna pull this off? What, you’re gonna hover over one of the poles for weeks at the shortest, and then you’re gonna fly to the other pole and do it again? And throughout all of that, the Teaguardian isn’t gonna figure out a way to rescue the undigitized humans, and then blow everyone else out of the sky? You won’t survive that. You’ll be too far from any back-ups. You’ll just be dead. We’ll rebuild the Tangent, and the galaxy will move forward.”

“You still think you’re the good guy here?” Reed questioned. “The people next door are dying. You really wanna do the right thing? Tell that Teaguardian to give us whatever magical engine they use to travel faster than light, so we can get this done, and get out! We will bring the Tangent back. Every single one of my people fully recognizes the consequences of our actions. No one is thinking they’re just gonna go back to their lives as if nothing happened. We’re doing it because no one else is. We’re doing it because you’re a bunch of self-obsessed, elitist nutsacks!”

Mediator Fenwick shook his head. “This is the last chance you will get to talk to me, Ellis. If you finish breaking orbit, it will be out of my hands. The Teaguardians will take over the case, and they won’t be as nice. They may not care about the VIPs. Their ancestors pioneered neural digitalization, and it’s been centuries. A lot of people think we should stop worrying about humans who willfully reject virtual immortality. I’m not one of those people, but you’re about a minute away from it being out of my hands. Abort the burn, come back down. I’m not asking for any hostages yet, or for you to surrender. Let’s just talk about this some more.”

“No more talking,” Reed decided. “I tried talking to you for a week. You offered airdrops—airdrops! A coward’s hollow gesture. I’m sick of looking at your face. Tell your Teagarden contact to bring it on!”

Without his order, his comms officer cut the call.

Reed took a breath, and looked over at his weapons officer, Aletha. “I already know the answer to this, but maybe there was some faulty intel. Does the Tangent have a weapons system?”

“No,” Aletha said. “It’s not a battleship. The only things keeping us from the next salvo of kinetic drones are in that elevator pod that we hooked.”

Reed nodded, then looked back over at comms. “Shipwide message.” He waited half a second. “New crew of the Tangent, Phase One is complete. Aletha will be coming around to collect your weapons from you, and check them back into the system. Only designated security personnel will be keeping their sidearms. Thank you for everything you’ve done. I hope you’re ready to keep going, because there’s no going back now.” He double checked the screen. “We are officially on our way to Proxima Doma.” He could hear more cheers over the radio, and out in the corridor.

“Congratulations, Captain,” Transdimensional Regulator Van Horn said.

“Thanks, Amulet,” he replied, “but I didn’t do it alone. In fact, I took a nap earlier today while everyone else was getting in place.”

Everyone giggled at that.

Reed breathed deeply, and sat down in the captain’s chair for the first time. That was when Shasta walked in, so he jumped back up. “Ajax?”

“He didn’t make it,” she replied.

“In here,” Reed decided, gesturing towards the captain’s bridge office. They went inside for a private conversation.

“It happened quite quickly,” Shasta began. “Vasily was able to send the shuttle forwards, but not particularly fast, so we were able to catch up before it could collide with the pod. I programmed our shuttle to match vector with the target, flying above it, while Ajax sealed the airlock. He wasn’t even wearing a suit. He tethered himself to the wall, and then swung down. I don’t know exactly what happened then, but he immediately broke the synchrony and altered course. He eventually burned up in the atmosphere. I think he killed himself so there would be no question who was in charge here. He did it to protect your authority.”

“No one can know,” Reed determined. “The official story is Vasily, delirious and dying, fought back, and the shuttle was lost. On the record, Ajax must be our enemy. Maybe we’ll be able to thank him one day.”

“I’ll fill out the report. And Vasily himself?” she asked

“He’ll be in hock alone. We need to minimize the amount he interacts with others so he doesn’t influence and infect my crew.”

“Understood.”

The doorbell. “Enter,” Reed offered.

The door opened. A security officer was standing next to—not only a VIP—but the most valuable hostage asset they had on board right now. “Sorry, sir. She insisted. She threatened to kill herself.”

“It’s all right, officer. Delegator Jodene Chariot, it’s an honor,” Reed said without a hint of sarcasm.

She sighed exasperatedly. “Report.”

“Six months. With only two operational fusion torches, it will take us six months to get to the Proxima Centauri system. Once we’re there, we’ll hover over the poles one at a time, and transport as many as we can off of the surface. Once the job is done, I will hand the reins over to you, and you can do whatever you want with me. We’ll negotiate specifics...in six months.”

“When I was in the elevator pod, we only saw one torch get hit by a drone,” Jodene said. “If you absolutely must do this, and no one can stop you, I would like it to get done faster.”

“You can thank the military for the delay. Without that fourth torch, propulsion is out of balance. We can only actually use the two opposing each other. The third one will just be sitting there, doing nothing.”

“Can the fourth one be fixed en route?” she pressed.

“Yeah,” Reed answered. “It’ll take about six months.”

“Why bother?” Jodene questioned.

“We’ll need it,” Shasta interjected. “When we get there to hover over the poles, we will need as much power as we can muster. The repairs will not be a waste of time.”

“Your crew is not equipped to handle such an undertaking.”

Reed smiled. “I’m not allowing anyone else on board. We will be releasing some hostages as a sign of good faith, but my people know what they’re doing. They can handle it. That’s why they’re here.”

“Still, you could use some extra manpower,” Jodene reasoned. “I just so happen to know of a bunch of people who were literally enrolled to work on the Tangent, and could expedite the work, as well as make sure it lives up to code.”

Reed nodded. “You’re just talking about the other hostages. You want some kind of work-release program? You just got on board, and you’re already negotiating?”

“No time like the present,” Jodene said. “Immediately acknowledging the value of the regular crew will go a long way to earning their trust.”

“It will be hard to trust them,” Reed admitted. “It would only take one person to sabotage a vital system function, and take us all down.”

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Jodene volunteered.

He gave her a funny face. “That doesn’t help. I would have to trust you too.”

“I can’t tell you what to think, but you should know that I have a neural suicide inducer. I can simply deliberately transfer my consciousness in full to a back-up without having to shoot myself in the head, or whatever. I don’t have to stay here.” Jodene pointed to the viewscreen on the wall that was showing the port side live feed. “That Teaguardian over there is fully ready to receive the digitized mind of anyone who dies. They don’t have to have a substrate waiting for them. They’ll just hang out in a virtual environment until a new body can be built.”

“All right, no need to make threats,” Reed contended. “We can make this work. Let’s head to hock right now, and address the crew together, so it’s clear that we’re on the same page.”

They did manage to make it work. It wasn’t easy, and there was plenty of friction, but the two separate crews fell into a routine, and eventually became one. It was difficult to remember which of them was part of the mutiny, and who belonged there legitimately. With the extra hands, they were able to rebuild the fourth fusion torch, negotiating for rare materials by releasing some non-essential crew to the Teaguardian escort, including a couple of VIPs who had almost nothing to offer. While some crewmembers were working on that, others were braiding tethers together. When you’re over the equator at geostationary orbit, the tethers can be fairly thin, but must be ultra-long. Over a pole, it’s the opposite. The strain causes a demand for extra strength, but they can hover closer, so the tethers don’t need to be as long.

They arrived in the Proxima system within five months. By then, the Domanians had been suffering their own socio-political issues. Low resources and high waste heat led to raised tensions, and muted morale. Reed now faced the first actual dilemma to come out of this whole thing. Should they rescue the refugees from the southern pole first, or the northern pole? The people on the ground sure had their opinions about it.

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Microstory 2625: Have Your Baggage and Your Passports Ready and Follow the Green Line

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August 30, 2526. The girls have been looking for an alternate way across the four-kilometer wide chasm separating them from the northern pole. They didn’t find a rocket, a drone, or replacement IMS units, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist somewhere. In one of these apartments, a resident of this closest dome might have stuffed an IMS in their closet, and left it there. They can’t search every unit, so they’re just looking in the common areas, hoping to get lucky. They have either been picked clean, or nothing useful was ever there. The people who lived in this dome were already pretty far north when the planet went to hell. They would have had a lot more time to make their own evacuation while the equatorial settlements were rushing to reach even a modicum of safety.

They’re in the main control room now, trying to find some kind of master asset database. They aren’t finding any luck here either. Suddenly, they hear a beep that isn’t too irritating. “What’s that?” Cash asks.

“Proximity alarm. Non-emergency. Someone’s coming in for a visit.”

“There are still people on this side of the death chasm?”

“Apparently.” Cash opens a channel. “Unidentified extra-domal vehicle, please respond. Unidentified vehicle, this is the control room of Queen’s Egg Dome, are you reading me?” She waits a bit longer. “I don’t think the signal is punching through.”

“Do we definitely want to get their attention or maybe no?” Breanna poses.

“They might have what we need, I say it’s worth the risk.”

“All right.” Breanna turns back to her own workstation. She identifies the flare array, and shoots them all off. There is no reason to be conservative here.

They both watch on the viewscreen as the flares go up one by one, just outside the dome. Cash glances back down at the proximity map. “It’s turning. It sees the flares.”

Breanna grabs her helmet from the table in the corner. “Let’s go say hi.”

They cart down to a maintenance garage not too far from where the flares went off. They open it, and wave the rover down. The driver pulls into the airlock, then waits for Breanna to repressurize it before getting out. He’s not wearing a suit. He shakes their hands after Breanna and Cash take their helmets back off, and introduce themselves. “It’s very nice to meet you. My name is Sorel Arts, and I’m here to save your life.”

“How would you do that?” Breanna questions.

Sorel smirks. He gestures for them to follow him to the back of his rover. He opens the hatches to reveal a mind-uploading set-up. “This is how you’re gonna get out of this mess. I can send you anywhere in the known universe at the speed of thought. Ladies, let me ask you this, have you ever heard of a planet called Castlebourne?”

“We’re undigitized,” Cash points out, “otherwise we would have already left.”

“That’s okay,” Sorel says. He slaps the manifold like an ace salesman. “This baby can digitize you as well as transfer your mind. It’s an all-in-one.”

“No, what I mean is we don’t want to be digitized, or we already would be,” Cash clarifies. “We’re looking for a physical way to get to the other side of the chasm.”

“Chasm?” Sorel asks. “You mean over the equator?”

“No,” Breanna begins, pointing. “There’s one to the north of us. We’re cut off from the northern pole.”

“We think it goes around the entire circumference at that latitude,” Cash adds.

Sorel frowns. “I came this way to pick up stragglers. You two are the last I’ve found, but I wasn’t planning on quitting after this. Once I reached the northern domes, I was going to spread the good word there too. Resources will be spread thin, and rescue will be delayed at best, I’m sure. It is still the best way to escape this dying world.”

“Unless you have an IMS unit with a working parachute, you’re not getting across that chasm,” Breanna says. “Maybe you send your mind to a substrate on that side.”

“I don’t have a substrate there, and no one is answering me through my quantum terminal. I can get you across empty space, but I think there’s too much interference for ground-to-ground communication.”

“Then I guess we’re in the same boat,” Cash muses. “Unless...you have an actual boat...and it can float on lava?”

Sorel chuckles. Then he sighs and shakes his head, annoyed. “No. But there is something that you might be able to use.” He sighs again, and is maybe a little scared. “There’s an osmium mining operation towards the night side. It may technically be on the night side, which would be why it’s fully automated. The mining automators extract the raw materials, and shoot it towards the domes in a mass driver. We actually use a little bit of Os in our apparatuses, and I think it comes from there.” He pats his machine again.

“How far away is this mass driver?” Breanna asks him.

“From here? About a thousand kilometers,” he answers “It’s actually closer to the northern pole than we are. It’s right below the Chappa’ai Mountains, which I’m guessing is where this chasm has formed. If the mass driver is still intact, it can shoot you across the gap, because that’s exactly what it was designed to do. Well, it was designed to do it with rocks, but if you slow it down, you should be able to make it over safely.”

Breanna eyes the rover. “If we have to walk, it will take us a month to get there.”

“I dunno...” Sorel says.

“You have to get over there too,” Cash reasons. “We can take the rover with us. It will actually be safer to be strapped inside of it, inside of the payload pod. It is the only logical choice. Railgun or death.”

He nods. “Yeah, you’re right. There’s nothing left for me on this side. I have to go where the people are, and that’s at the pole. I’m just...nervous about it. I don’t relish the idea of being shot out of a railgun. I only live in base reality to facilitate others leaving it. I would prefer a virtual simulation, where it’s safe.”

“The rover has a computer, right?” Breanna figures. “You could always upload yourself into that, and leave your husk behind.”

“No, I’ll be all right. I have ten or eleven hours to psych myself up.” Sorel claps his hands. “Okay. Let’s go shoot ourselves out of a giant-ass cannon across a giant-ass canyon.” He opens the rover door. “Ladies first, but I’ll drive, and I get to pick the music. Fair warning, I like heavy metal.”

And so the three of them get back on the road, and head to the dark side. It feels a little awkward, remembering that they warned a faction of their caravan to not go this way, because it wasn’t safe. But to be fair, that was much farther south. As insanely dangerous as their new plan is, it’s their only hope.

Microstory 2624: You Have Been Going Up This Whole Time, Don’t Go Back Down Now

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August 29, 2526. Notus Konn and the small group of survivors that he fell in with are in the northern polar region, but not quite safe yet. They have been walking somberly for about a day now, but have not gotten very far since the terrain is so treacherous, and they have no idea how far they have to go. They stop to rest, but no longer have a vacuum tent to stretch out in, so they just lie down in their suits. They’ve grown rather used to the confinement, even Notus, who is only with this particular group because he got claustrophobic and freaked out while with his original group. The air is cleaner here, but still not breathable. It never was outside of the domes.

Calypso notices Notus away from the group during one of their breaks, tapping on his interface, and sometimes pointing it towards the beetloid, which they have named Heracles. “I couldn’t help but notice that you’re pretty handy with that thing. Most of the Breckenridgers have to ask for help just turning the screen back on.”

“I’m from Leviss,” Notus explains.

“Wait, that’s not what you said before,” Calypso contends. “You said you weren’t used to confined space because Breckenridge is so open. That’s why you, uhh...”

“Had a mental breakdown in the rover? That’s because Leviss doesn’t have any cars, and I already am claustrophobic. I was born there, and then my family moved to Breckenridge when I was eleven. I’m not familiar with this tech, but it’s not so different from what I originally grew up with.”

“Truthfully, I didn’t know that anyone did that.”

“It’s rare,” Notus admits. “Most Levins are too used to technology to give it up, and most Breckenridgers are afraid of it. But my family lived in a more rural area of our dome, so while we had computers, we had a lot more experience with manual labor, and a more physical lifestyle. Breckenridge wasn’t a hard sell.”

“I’m not afraid of technology,” Calypso argues.

“Fear is a strong word,” Notus decides. “How about unaccustomed and wary?”

“I’ll take it,” Calypso determines. She waits a moment. “So, what exactly are you doing with that thing?”

He smiles at her. “This.” After one more tap, Heracles jumps into the air, and flies way above their heads. The others sitting on the rocks watch it go.

“What’s it doing up there?” Shimizu asks.

Notus switches his comms to address the whole group. “It’s getting us to where we’re going.” He monitors the progress on his screen until it beeps. He pivots on the ground and points. “On the other side of that mountain is a canyon. The first stable dome we’ve seen in days is at the bottom of that canyon. I believe there is some means of getting down there quickly too. Heracles is picking up a much closer signal too.”

“Are there people there?” Calypso asks him.

“It seems to be picking up chatter, but it doesn’t have authorization to listen in. So yeah, I think so, but we won’t be able to talk to them until we get closer.”

Shimizu stands back up, and slaps his knees. “Then let’s get on with it. For Breanna and Cash.” He takes lead down the natural trail, towards the mountain.

Notus holds back for a moment, looking up at Heracles who is coming back down to the ground. He pats it on the head, echoing Cash from the other day. “Good boy.”

Mountain might be a strong word, and probably canyon too. It’s not long before they reach the edge. Inside the canyon is a much smaller dome than the kind that they’re used to. It can still probably fit thousands of people, but it had to be made compact to fit within the walls. Not too far from where they come out, they see the manmade structure that Heracles was detecting. “Does anybody know what this is?” Shimizu asks.

“It’s called a gondola,” Notus answers, looking at his HUD. “Also known as a cable car, it was invented in 1616 by Fausto Veranzio—”

“Yeah, no one cares about that,” Shimizu interrupts. “If it can get us down to the dome where I can finally take this blasted thing off forever, that’s all I need to know.”

“Let’s ask this person,” Calypso suggests.

A suited individual is coming out of a small habitat at the top of the gondola. They’re still really far away, but they send out a communication request, which everyone in the group accepts. “There is nothing for you here. Please keep moving along.”

“Please—” Notus begins, only to be interrupted by Shimizu again.

“We demand sanctuary. The world is dying, and we all need to do our part to save the human race from extinction.”

“The human race is not going to go extinct because less than ten people can’t get into our dome, which is at full capacity.” The gatekeeper points. “If you just keep walking that way, you will reach the next dome over. I’m sure it has plenty of room. Well, I don’t know that, but I know that we definitely don’t, so keep walkin’.”

Shimizu shakes his head. “We’re not leaving her until you let us in, you—”

Now Notus is the one to interrupt. “We thank you for your graciousness sir, and only ask that you allow us to take rest in your habitat. We have been wearing these suits for so long, and had to leave our vacuum tent behind. Please, if you could grant us this one favor, as well as facilitate contact with one of your leaders on the ground, we would much appreciate it. I’m sure we can work something out.”

The stranger says nothing for a moment, and as they are nowhere near him, the survivors can’t read his face to see which way he might be leaning. “What is that thing you have with you? The robot thing.”

“Heracles, our beetloid,” Notus answers.

“He saved my life,” Calypso interjects.

“I’ll tell you what, you let me have Heracles—which is a dumb name, by the way, so I’ll be changing it—and I’ll think about letting you take a break in here.”

When Shimizu lunges, Notus holds him back, even though the gap between the two parties remains significant. “We’re not going to do that. You have just made us a bad faith offer, which tells us that there is nothing we can do to convince you to help. But you should know that I am the grandson of the Leviss Magistrate, and she has heavy pull in the greater Proxima Domanian government. I will be reporting your actions to the administration. I’ll also be recommending that they evacuate your dome immediately.”

“Ooo, I’m so scared,” the gatekeeper says sarcastically, holding his hands. “Not the Magistrate of some dumb community that I’ve never even heard of. Keep it movin’, pal. If you ain’t got a robot bug for me, I ain’t got a pressurized habitat for you.”

Shimizu switches comms back to the group-only channel. “Way to go, asshole.”

“Trust me,” Notus says as he’s poring through the data that he siphoned from the local network. “We don’t want nothing to do with that dome. It’s below sea level.”

Microstory 2623: Move it to the Exits, I Hope You Have Found a Friend

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August 28, 2526. It’s been another day, but the survivors have made it to the top of the hill, which was harder than they believed, but it will give them their best chance of getting out of this alive, so no one is complaining. During the walk, Breanna and Cash taught everyone how to use their parachutes. The Levins were in awe of how the chutes were able to expand and retract with the push of a button. Base jumping was a not unpopular sport under their dome, but they never developed anything this sophisticated. The Breckenridgers were just in awe of the concept in general as they had not even dreamed of such technology. Everyone has done well, so Breanna thinks they’re ready to make the jump. She and Cash will not be able to help them if something goes wrong, but they’ll have the beetloid, which is evidently inclined to help people.

One by one, they help the other survivors launch. They get a running start, deploy their chute, jump off the cliff, and activate hang gliding mode. An electrical current is sent through the canopy to stiffen it up. This is the only way they’ll be able to cross over four kilometers without plunging into the depths. In fact, they might be able to go a lot farther, depending on the temperature and pressure on the other side. The gases would actually kind of be the holy grail for this sort of thing if the price for failure wasn’t death. If they remember Breanna and Cash’s instructions, they’ll stay aloft for long enough to reach the other side. From there, they will be able to continue northwards. They have beacons and comms, so if they end up separated—which they probably will, because it’s safer to let that happen than to try to stick together, and risk losing altitude—they will be able to reunite somewhere. They were all good students. They’re gonna be okay. Breanna couldn’t have asked for a better group, and while she won’t be around to get them all the way there, she got to see them through most of the journey.

“You’re not coming, are you?” The guy who Tertius saved from the cyclone is the last one, and the only one to see the writing on the wall.

“You should go. We’ll be right behind you, I promise,” Breanna lies.

He’s not buying it. “Why can’t you come with us?”

Breanna sighs. “We don’t have our parachutes. Well, we do, but not the kind that can be switched to hang glider mode.”

“I was born in Leviss. They had this thing called tandem diving. I never got a chance to do it myself before my family left, but...” He trails off, having said enough to get his point across.

Breanna nods. “We’re not equipped for that. Your suits are a different model, and don’t have the straps that we would need. We have some straps, but they’re worn out and too short.”

“We could rig something up,” he reasons. “Calypso is still in comms range. Let’s call her back, and figure this out.”

“It wouldn’t be safe. We didn’t want to lower your chances of making it across. If we were just base jumping together, I would go for it, but you need all the luck you can get to go as far horizontally as possible. It’s not worth the risk. We’ll be fine, we have education and experience in this sort of thing, so we’ll figure it out.”

“No, you won’t. You’re just getting ready to die. I was wondering what those looks of calm on your faces were about. Now I know. Now I understand.” He crosses his arms like a petulant child.

“That is not your concern,” Cash argues. “Tertius saved your life, and then it looks like he lost his. Don’t waste that gift. Get over there with the others, tell them we’re proud of them, and then keep moving until you find safety.”

Now he sighs. “Okay. Thank you...for everything.” He steps back, leans forward, but stops again. “Wait, the beetle.”

“Cash already suggested that,” Breanna says. “It can only hold one person, and before you ask, it can’t make two trips. It’s not designed to fly around. It’s just meant to hop from one part of a dome to another one nearby. It barely got Calypso back to us.”

“I took a look at its diagnostics,” Cash continues. “It’s running low on fuel, and the toxins are damaging its components almost as much as it would our bodies. Honestly, it might not make it across itself, and I certainly don’t want it trying to make it back up to higher ground. We can’t rely on it for another trip.”

“Over here, she and I stand a chance of finding another way,” Breanna finishes. “Now go on, git!”

“Very well,” he gets back into his stance, then runs off and flies away from them.

By the time he makes his jump, the first survivor has landed on the other side. They can’t see her from this distance through all the fumes, but the augmented reality is showing everyone as little dots on their huds.

The two of them stand on the cliff’s edge, watching those dots get farther and farther away. In under five minutes, everyone else has landed, including Notus. Breanna tries to make contact with them, but there’s too much interference. They’re on their own now, but she’s confident that they will do what needs to be done. The worst is behind them already. If they encounter any dangers up ahead like the ones they’ve already faced, then it means the whole planet is unsafe, and nothing would matter anyway. They continue to watch as the dots reconvene back on the ground. They’re surely close enough to communicate with each other by now, so everyone knows the deal. Even though it’s getting quite hot up here, Breanna and Cash don’t want to leave in case they see someone try to glide back to them. It might be possible, but more likely for an expert, which none of them is. There is just too much verticality to cover.

“We best be heading back down, eh?” Cash offers, feeling it safe to let them go.

“We best,” Breanna agrees. “Where exactly are we gonna go, though?”

“I suggest we head back for the nearest dome. There might be something there we can use. Hell, they might have left a rocket behind for all we know. This close to the safety zone, it would have been impractical for them to take it, but for us, it could be our only shot.”

“That would be cool, but I would settle for a couple new IMS units with working hang gliders.”

The two of them climb back down the hill, and walk back eastward along the edge of the chasm. They become tired, so they initiate the vacuum tent, which was too heavy to risk sending with the others. They climb inside and remove their suits to a great deal of relief. Then they look at each other. They’re alone together for the first time in a long time. Something has been brewing, but they have not had any opportunity to explore exactly what that might be until now. So they clamber to remove the rest of their clothing, frantically trying to help each other. And then, at last, at the very end of the only world they have ever known, they consummate their love.

Microstory 2622: Sometimes You’re the Windshield, Sometimes You’re the Bug

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August 27, 2526. The ragtag group of survivors have almost made it. They can see the Chappa’ai Mountains up ahead. They will still want to get as far north as they possibly can, but according to the science, crossing that threshold will allow them to breathe a sigh of relief. The ground is more stable and solid. After all this, salvation is within their grasp. So of course something else has to get in the way. And it’s huge.

“Brake!” Breanna orders. “Brake, brake, brake!” she repeats.

“I see it!” Cash responds, matching her energy. She can’t brake any harder than this, though. It’s just a button, and it does what it does as fast as physics allows.

“Hold on!” Breanna shouts. Even though she’s magnetized to the floor, she reaches up and takes hold of the overhead oscilight for balance. They certainly don’t need it to see, and if anyone is on the tracks, the oncoming railcart is the least of their concerns. Before them, the ground is opening up. The mountains are sliding apart from each other. They can see the red glimmer of the vengeful lava below, even as the day side begins to overtake the shrinking breadth of the Terminator Line. “Be prepared to jump if I say so! It may be our only hope! Once we do, you’ll wanna start running in the opposite direction! But not yet! We’re still moving too fast!”

“Can we just parachute off!” someone asks.

“Too much turbulence!” Breanna cries back. “Just wait for my instructions!” 

They all scream into the comms. Even Tertius and Aeterna look worried, though that may be more from empathy than fear. The chasm is pulling the tracks ahead of them down now, along with the spine that led others up to the safety of the pole. Hopefully, no one is in them right now. The train stations have all become non-operational, but that doesn’t mean no one is trying to walk it. Breanna isn’t so sure about her instructions anymore. There may be nothing they can do. Even if they manage to stop, the ground is falling away, and they don’t know when that’s gonna stop. The fact is, they started this evacuation late, and got held up too many times. Survival was never guaranteed. They did their best.

“Okay, bad news!” Cash says seconds later. “The brake broke! I’ve lost control!”

Suddenly, as if in response to Cash’s problem, a large object flies in from the side, and slams into the front of the railcart. There is no time to figure out what it is. Two people are catapulted forward, one of them being Aeterna, and the other unknown with their IMS fully on. They arch over the object, and down into the bowels of the planet. Having finished saving the cart, the beetloid drone reopens its elytra, and reengages its rotowings. It dives down into the abyss. They hold their breaths and wait, too afraid to move on this precarious cart. It could tip over too at any second, and they want the beetloid free to rescue them again, so they’re gonna let it finish its latest mission. After a minute or two, it darts back into view, and lands safely on the tracks behind them.

Only one person is sitting on its head. They slide off, and appear to be hyperventilating, but otherwise alive. Tertius looks over at Breanna. “I missed out on 200 years with my daughter. I just got her back. I can’t abandon her again.” He leans back and lets himself fall into the chasm. Okay, he may have survived the pyrotornado somehow, but they’re not surviving that!

“We need to go,” Cash says.

Breanna doesn’t move. She’s looking out at the impassable new obstacle, thinking about the Valerians, and in general how deep of shit they’re in.

“Bre! We have to go!” Cash urges.

Breanna nods, then follows the group off the cart. They all stop and look back when they hear the sound of metal scraping against metal. The cart has finally slipped over the edge itself. “Go into a light jog, but slow down if the tracks start to feel unstable. We wanna get as far from that thing as possible, but not if that means falling over the edge anyway. Even away from that chasm, we’re pretty high up.

They go a little under a kilometer back southwards before finding a ladder to climb down to the surface, where they start walking westwards, trying to see where the new chasm ends. A young woman named Calypso rushes up to Breanna. She’s the one who fell over with Aeterna. “Why did it save me? Why did it save me and not her?”

Breanna looks over at the beetloid, which is walking alongside them like a loyal dog. It’s a specialized service drone. She’s not exactly an expert on them, but she wouldn’t have thought they programmed it with any sense of duty to rescue humans. But maybe they did, or maybe someone modified it aftermarket, or maybe it’s learning. “I can’t say for sure, but my guess is it calculated the likelihood of survival. Had it not caught you, and brought you back up, you would have fried in the toxic gases before your body could have hit the bottom. Aeterna was practically naked. It probably figured that she was already dead. There was no point in trying to rescue both of you, and losing the one person who might still stand a chance.”

“Is she? Is she dead?”

“If she’s not, I don’t know how she would get out of that. You don’t really sink in lava, but that’s because your body would be incinerated on the surface. But if she’s a god, and can survive that, she might not be able to get out anyway. I can’t imagine we’ll be seeing either of those two ever again.” That’s what they assumed last time, however.

“There,” Cash says, pointing. “That hill takes us high enough.”

“High enough for what?” Breanna asks.

“To parachute. We’ll glide across the ravine, and land on the other side. The plumes of gas actually help us. It won’t be easy, but it’ll get us there.”

“Well, you remember that the two of us don’t—” Breanna tries to begin.

“It will get us there,” Cash interrupts.

Brenna shakes her head, and looks at her wrist interface. “It’s already quite hot. The day side is drawing closer. We shouldn’t go that far west.”

“We won’t be there long,” Cash justifies. “We’re just gonna jump off and go, and then we’ll scramble back to the Terminator Line, and continue northwards.”

“Fine. Let’s take a vote,” Breanna says. “Fair warning, your parachutes might not make it. Those fumes are dangerous. We’ll have to teach you how to control them, you might need to change directions midflight, and you still might come up short. I will say,  there’s nothing for you on this side. The northern pole is the only option.”

And so the group heads for the hill in the middle distance. Breanna and Cash choose not to tell the others that there’s a problem.

“Wait, what about that thing?” Cash suggests.

“That?” Breanna looks at the Beetloid again. “That can only hold one person.”

“We could play Rock, Paper, Scissors for it?”

Microstory 2621: We’ll Build That Bridge When We Come to It, and We’ll Do it in Style

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August 26, 2526. The cataclysm has escalated. The ring fault surrounding the southern pole has torn open. Rivers of lava flow through the chasms, threatening to incinerate any who would fall to their deaths below. People are cut off from each other. Some successfully made it across before the mountains pulled away from each other, or already lived in the safe zone. Others could not make it in time. Soon, the land beneath their feet will turn to soup, or some other hazard will end their lives. Something must be done to bring these people back together. A bridge must be built. No one has ever constructed anything like this before, and certainly not at scale, but they are not wholly unprepared. The southern polar region is more mountainous than the north. That is the primary reason why it has fewer domes at this point, and why it is less populated. It is more difficult to travel between domes, and traditional forms of engineering are both tedious and slow. That is why they have been experimenting with new forms of construction, including the fast-woven graphene lattice.

Instead of laying blocks of material on one end, and slowly adding farther and farther towards the other side, drones fly clear across the gap. Fewer refugees are seeking shelter in the southern pole. An entire quarter of the Terminator Line is even more mountainous than the cap. And one advantage they have compared to the north is a newly built dome that is recently sealed, presently uninhabited, and fully available for temporary housing. So instead of dealing with an untenable onslaught of people, the leadership was able to dedicate resources to researching the threats. They realized that the ground was about to break, and began to plan for that as an eventuality. They still have to hurry, but this will work, as long as they’re careful.

They chose a spot where the two edges of the chasm are particularly close together. It’s not quite in the center of the Terminator Line, but they have sent volunteers in both directions in parallel to the chasm, on the dangerous side, to direct refugees to the right spot to cross. They have been gathering in an emergency pressurized inflatable habitat, but it’s quickly reaching capacity, so it’s time to make this happen. Timing is everything.

The southern pole is a little different than the rest of the planet. It’s run by an advisory-administrative government. There are two delegator boards, which come to decisions independently, and compare notes before making a joint decision, which they then delegate to the administrators. Each delegation includes a skeptic. It’s unfair to call them uneducated, but they are definitely meant to be out-of-the-box thinkers who are meant to question everything that they’re told. If you say left, they say right. If you say right, they say wrong. If you say wrong, they say wrung. Their job is to fight you, even when you start agreeing with them. It’s the devil’s advocate for the secular world. That’s what Thadeus Hogan’s role is, and he was here to make sure that what they were doing made sense. He’s done that, so now he’s mostly just here to watch.

Thadeus stands on the edge of the cliff. His consciousness is backed-up, both on the ground, and in orbit, but he’s tethered to a safety anchor in case he slips over the edge, and doesn’t want to waste time in a respawn pod.

“Ready!” the ordnance foreman cries from the perch. “Ready!” he repeats. “Fire!”

The artillery engineers activate the railguns. The cryogenic warheads soar through the air, arch over the chasm, and then plummet into the depths.

“Can I get closer?” Thadeus asks. When his guide nods, he leans over. The bombs crash into the toxic lava below. He can’t actually see it, but he sees the change. The thermal updrafts change from a sickly reddish color to gray. It just looks like steam.

“Why did we do that again?”

“We just froze the topmost layer of that lava,” his guide explains again. She knows he’s like this. Asking the same question multiple times is his duty, because if your answer changes, how can you be confident in it? “The fumes were chaotic and unpredictable, and just too much for the drones to handle. They were designed to fly in the Proxima Doma’s thin atmosphere, but to make that work, they’re slow. By switching from fumes to vapor, they fly through much more manageable paths. They surf the air, and safely find purchase on the other side.”

As the ordnance foreman sits back down, the head drone operator stands to take his place. “Prepare the drones!” she orders. “You have two minutes!” This is just in case something has gone wrong. They are a well-oiled machine, and the drones have been ready for hours. They had to wait to begin constructing the bridge to make sure the ground was stable enough. There is no point in building a bridge if the gap is going to widen another kilometer by the time everyone manages to cross it. He’s keeping one eye on his launchers, and the other on the barometric technician.

The technician is tracking the shifting composition of the air, and waiting for that perfect moment. He lifts his hand in the air. The head drone operator takes one last look at the launchers, but then focuses right on the tech. “Hold! Hold!” No reason he can’t have a little fun with it. This is a momentous occasion. Finally, he slams his hand down.

“Launch!” the head drone operator orders.

The drones fire into the unprecedentedly thick atmosphere. Thadeus loses direct eyesight of them too, but watches their progress through augmented reality. And he can still see the graphene scaffolding that the drones are pulling, spindling out like a silkworm’s silk. The drones are flying in pretty close tandem, but the pressure gradient isn’t perfectly smooth, so some lose attitude, and have to regain formation. Once they’re on the other side, they drop anchor, slamming hard into the ground, and digging in. Volunteers on the other side drive over in their rovers, and lower their suspension into hunker mode to provide extra support. It’s not sophisticated, but every kilogram helps.

“Launch the weavers!” the head drone operator orders now. The smaller drones fly along the skeleton lines. They distribute themselves along them, and begin wrapping the webbing around, over the gaps between them, and around each other’s lines. Over and under, over and under. They build tensile strength in perfect synchrony, and what results looks like a fully stable, strong, and lifesaving bridge.

The convoy master is on the perch now, having ordered the test rovers to the end of the bridge. The drones have finished their jobs, and it’s time to make sure the bridge will hold, and not kill anyone who tries to drive on it. The foreman nods her head, all the drones are back. The convoy master simply points to the rovers, and doesn’t say a word. The operators let them go, at high speed for the ultimate stress test. They make it to the other side. They go a hundred kilometers an hour, and make it there in two minutes.

“Send the first wave!”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 29, 2542

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During the team’s interim year, the pocket dimension generator belts they left behind explored the galaxy on their own. They did so while holographically invisible, in case the next encounter was with someone less kind than Renata and Quidel. The belt stack was able to visit nearly one new spot a day, for a total of 360 slings. When the stack arrived somewhere new, it had to wait for the coherence gauges to return to the violet. In the meantime, it took that opportunity to scan the region, providing Ramses with the data that he needed to rule out Spiral Station. The majority of the dots on the map were crabitats, but not all. Obviously, they started with the most remote since those were most likely to be what they were looking for. Besides Extremus, there was Verdemus, which created its own outpost around nearby stars. Some people from the Sixth Key had established a presence in this reality, and it didn’t look like they were hurting anyone, so the team decided to leave them be.

Every day, the belts would chip away at the map, gathering enough information to check each dot off. Now that they were back in the timestream, they elected to give the belts a break since the chances of being present when they found their target were low, and they really didn’t feel like going on another adventure. Ramses built them such a nice multidimensional home to live in, they decided to simply relax. The search was probably going to take years, so what was the rush?

Romana slammed her palm on the couch. “Downbeat!”

Everyone giggled. They actually weren’t even playing Downbeat, but trying to contrive the rules to another fictional game called Hassle the Fishmonger.

“No? I didn’t just win?” Romana questioned.

“Not unless you’re holding Mateo’s hand,” Marie suggested.

“Oh, good idea. I’m writing that down as a new rule,” Mateo said before taking his daughter’s hand in his.

They looked at each other before saying, “downbeat!” simultaneously. And then, as if it had been the magic words, the proximity alarm went off. A security feed appeared in front of the doors that led to the simulated backyard. A giant object had appeared before them, the technicolor webbing still fading away.

“Spiral Station,” Leona said, standing up.

“They must have been looking for us while we were looking for them,” Olimpia figured.

Without doing or saying a single thing, the station wrapped itself in bulk energy, and slung away.

“What the hell was the point of that?” Mateo questioned.

“They left something behind.” Ramses was tapping on his tablet. “It could be a bomb. Executing emergency teleportation.”

For about thirty minutes, they waited thousands of kilometers away, but nothing happened. Ramses had dropped a sensor buoy near the gift. It needed time to assess the threat level, but he was quickly confident that it contained no explosive materials. His best guess was that it was some kind of communication device, so they pulled it inside. He set it on the table and pressed the blinking red button. A hologram of Franka appeared behind the table. The sphere itself turned invisible to declutter the image. “Greetings, Team Matic. Word around the membrane is that you’ve been looking for us.”

Mateo stepped forward. “We have.”

“To what end?” Franka asked.

“Our slingdrive system,” Ramses began. “Someone pointed out that it can’t take us absolutely anywhere. It can only travel to a technological establishment, however remote. We were hoping you could fix that.”

“So you used the limitation to build a map of the galaxy, which pinpointed our location, albeit in an unlabeled manner. That’s clever,” Franka acknowledged.

Ramses looked awkwardly at Romana. “I’m not the one who came up with that either.”

“We’re guessing that you don’t have the same restrictions,” Leona said.

“We do not,” Franka admitted.

Dutch suddenly appeared behind her. He waved at the camera. “Hi, guys!”

“Hi, Dutch,” a few of them replied.

“Hi,” Romana said too, but in a very different tone. Not again.

“Okay, I’m talking here,” Franka said to Dutch, shooing him away without too much anger. She looked back at the team. “I’m afraid that bulk tech was my brother’s responsibility. I don’t know if you heard, but he kind of died?”

“We could have mourned together,” Leona argued, “but you abandoned us in the middle of nowhere.”

“You threatened me!” Franka volleyed. “I don’t like to be threatened!”

“Well, I’m sorry, I regret it!” Leona explained. “Which I would have said earlier, but we couldn’t find you!”

“Well, I’m sorry too!” Franka shouted back. “When you have this much power, it’s hard to remember how much normal people matter!”

“Well, okay!” Leona caught her breath. “I’m done with this sphere. You need to come back so we can have a real conversation.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Franka argued. She then tried to continue.

“We’re busy,” Dutch interrupted again.

“Thanks, Dutch, I got this.” Franka rolled her eyes in a way that suggested she liked having him around to keep the mood light, but it could be a bit much at times. “I brought you this intergalactic communicator so we could stay in contact, but Dutch wasn’t lying. We really are busy. I promise, it’s nothing you wouldn’t approve of, but you have your own destinies to fulfill. You are more boots on the ground, hands-on, street level people. And you...ya know, don’t exist most of the time? We have to stay out of the Milky Way galaxy, because it might cause a severe shift in the balance of power. The people there need to develop as they are for the most part. Project Starseed can’t have—forgive me for using this word—gods saving them all the time. They need people like you...with your limitations, your restrictions...your rules. I bet you’ve been trying to decide where to go. My advice? Go anywhere. Someone there will need you.”

“What about the Oaksent?” Mateo asked her.

“We’ve been monitoring the situation,” Franka told him. “It seems that you were...” She trailed off, and mumbled inaudibly.

“What was that?” Leona pressed. “We can’t hear you. There must be dark matter interference.”

“You were right!” Franka admitted. “The situation was a lot more nuanced than just the hypothetical assassination of one man. They are evidently fixing their own problems. A faction has broken off, and is on its way to go to war with Castlebourne, but it will take them long to get there and find it, and by the time they do, the balance of power will make their efforts fruitless. But instead of it being unfair and easy, the Castlebourners will have done it themselves. Thanks to people like you who made little changes, instead of sweeping decisions. The truth is, mom and dad, I admire you. And we can get to know each other better, but we can’t spend time. Our paths diverged before any of us were even born. One day, we might be able to team up again. I can see the Vellani Ambassador reuniting with the Iman Vellani. I see them working with The Jameela Jamil and Spiral Station. And I see Team Matic at the center of it. But for now, please stay in your corner. They need you, even if they don’t know it.”

“Wait,” Ramses said, worried that Franka was about to log off. “Is there anything you can do about my slingdrives? I know you didn’t design it, but surely Séarlas left behind operator’s manuals.”

“Why would you wanna go where there isn’t anyone else around?” Franka posed.

“I would like the option,” Ramses contended.

Franka sighed, and seemingly considered it. “When you return to the timestream next year, open your little map, and take note of a ping that you didn’t see before. That will be a beacon that I left in a remote region of the galaxy. You can go there for respite. But I’m not granting you access to all of time and space. This is the best I can do.”

“Well...thank you then,” Ramses said, having been hoping for a lot more.

“I better be going,” Franka said.

“Bye!” Dutch jumped back in. “You should go to Be—”

The call was disconnected.

“Well, that was weird,” Mateo said.

“We should try not to think of her as our daughter...because she isn’t,” Leona said to her husband. “She had different parents, who looked like us, and would make a lot of the same decisions as us, but were not us. We didn’t experience that, and we don’t have the right to treat her as family.”

There was an awkward silence, which Olimpia decided to break. “I think I’m gonna take a nap.”

“Yeah, me too,” Angela agreed. “Let’s all take an hour to do whatever we need to do, be that a nap, a talk, or a nice bath.”

Half an hour later, Mateo and Leona were in the former’s room, exhausted from having been talking about their feelings, when the slingdrives powered up. They ran out of their unit, and back into Marie’s. Most of their teammates were doing the same. Angela was fully naked, dripping wet from her shoulders down, and trying to dry herself off with a hand towel. Ramses came out last from his lab. “Who did that?”

“I did.” Romana was walking up the steps from Marie’s basement.

“Where did you bring us?” Leona questioned.

“The only logical place,” Romana answered enigmatically.

“Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida,” Ramses announced, looking at his device.

“Is this because of what Dutch said at the end of the call?” Mateo asked.

“This is obviously what he meant. Trust me, I looked through the colony catalogs, looking for an alternative, and this was the only place he could have possibly been trying to say before he was so rudely cut off.”

“Yeah, that’s probably true,” Leona agreed, “but that doesn’t mean we had to come here, or that you could make that decision without our input.”

Romana brushed it off. “Ugh, I’m so bored. I can’t take another game of Cones of Dunshire. It’s too thinky thinky.”

“The people who live here...” Leona began, trailing off, not knowing how to word it. “They’re not—oh my God. I don’t know how to put it. From the outside, they basically look like hermits, but instead of crabitats, they live in small pockets on the land and sea. Some do live in rotating cylinders, coins, and hammers, but up in orbit, because they don’t see their relative proximity to be any less isolating on a daily basis. No, that’s not right. They participate in community, but they technically live separately. They utilize technology efficiently, to make it so they don’t have to work. They otherwise worship nature, which makes sense given that this world is a miracle. I’m being really general here, but that’s to give you an idea of how they live. They don’t reject technology, and they don’t hate outsiders, but we probably shouldn’t meddle in their affairs.”

“Hold up,” Marie said. “Romy, you’re the one who sent us to Proxima Doma too. Is this the same thing? Did someone tell you to bring us here?”

“Yeah, Dutch,” Romana reminded them.

“I mean someone other than that. Did you meet a seer, or...?”

“It’s nothing like that,” Romana defended. “No more secrets. This is just our next stop. You don’t have to read anything into it. It’s just...we’re just...Doctor Who.”

“Doctor Who?” Leona asked. “How’s that now?”

“The Doctor doesn’t have to do anything,” Romana reasoned. “Everytime he goes somewhere, he pretty much always knows all the stuff. He’s not seeking out new life and new civilizations. He’s just flying around, and whenever he shows up, he helps whoever happens to be there. The writers gave up on contriving reasons for him to do that. It’s just the premise, and that’s enough. Let’s make that our premise. Let’s check out Bida for a little bit, and when we’re done, we’ll pick somewhere else to go. You don’t have to wait for someone to hand you a mission, should you choose to accept it. That’s what my sister was trying to tell us. She’s not my favorite sister, but it makes sense to me now, and I think I agree with her.”

Leona nodded. “It’s not a bad idea. The problem is that Bida has become almost entirely decentralized. That’s the consequence of extreme advancement in a post-scarcity economy. It’s why people like Linwood Meyers exist. Most aren’t misanthropic, but they lost their reasons to work together. Basically, everything that needed to be done is done. Some people will continue to look for new adventures, and new knowledge, but for a lot, a cabin in the woods is enough. They stand upon Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs alone because there is not much room at the top of a pyramid. So the people here probably don’t need us, and even if someone does, the chances of you landing us exactly at that settlement, instead of any of the other twenty million plots, are incredibly low.”

Romana held out her hand, but not in friendship. “I’ll take that bet.”

Leona smiled. “What are we betting?”

“If I win—if we’re where we’re supposed to be, helping the right person or people—you make me your navigator. As Captain, you reserve the right to veto, as I trust your judgment and wisdom, but as navigator, I initially choose our mission, every time.”

“And if I win?” Leona asked.

“If you win...you get infinite favors.” Romana seemed confident that she wouldn’t have to worry about the gravity of that offer.

Leona smiled wider now. “Okay.” She shook her daughter’s hand.

By the end of the day, Romana was the team’s navigator. It wasn’t even that hard. She cheated.

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