Everything had changed about Castlebourne when the team came back to the
timeline in 2490, and it was pretty much what Mateo had predicted years ago.
Team Kadiar started going on their rescue missions about three weeks after
Team Matic disappeared. They started out slowly and strategically. They
spoke with the people of New Welrios to see if they would be interested in
relocating yet again. While most of them didn’t want to leave as their new
home had since been established, they weren’t combative, and understood what
the crew of the Vellani Ambassador was trying to do. Some of them did ask to
leave, particularly the older ones who were more used to not getting
attached. A few asked to join the operation, and some of them were even
taken up on their offers, following some training that Darko, Mirage, and
others devised. The core five that made up the executive crew were still
running the show, but the new people had their own responsibilities. If
nothing else, being able to give their next prospects real evidence that
rescue was possible was more valuable than nothing.
Things started out slow as they struggled to convince enough people that
this was the right thing to do. One reason for this was that they didn’t
know if there was anything to fix. People living in the Goldilocks were
oppressed, but that didn’t mean they were unhappy. They were indoctrinated
from birth to believe that this was as good as life could get. The Exin
Empire didn’t even have to use force to gaslight them into thinking this
way. It was how their parents lived, and how their parents’ parents lived,
and so on. The whole of society, on each world, and across the worlds, was
built around Bronach Oaksent’s vision. Showing them a better way was no easy
feat. The pitch was by far the hardest part of each job. Loading them into
the ship wasn’t easy either, nor was Tertius’ work controlling everyone’s
memories, but they were simple and easy compared to the social aspect. The
new pocket dimension that Ramses designed could fit almost 500 without
untenable power drain, but they were only ever able to get about 300 to 400
people each time they tried to reach out to a new population. That still
added up to around 130,000 people over the course of the last year,
accounting for much-needed breaks, and other delays, but they wanted to do
more. They wanted to save more.
The pitch speeches and videos were constantly being refined and reworked,
however, and the data showed that these changes improved effectiveness. The
most recent missions returned with higher capacity than the first ones. By
the end of the 25th century, the total population of Castlebourne could
number in the millions, even before visitors from the stellar neighborhood
were brought in to enjoy the domes. Mateo was so very proud of his
daughters, and wished that he could see them in action. Unfortunately, he
was still a liability. His solid holograms were not yet powerful, nor
reliable, nor understood well enough. And the new nanosuit that Ramses
injected into his body added a new variable that Leona surely wouldn’t be
pleased with...once they were ready to tell her about it.
As far as those domes went, Hrockas seemed pleased when he walked into the
yearly briefing that he always had with Team Matic. “Is it safe to say that
gamma testing is going well?” Leona asked.
“Not as well as I had hoped, but I can’t make them do it, even if I wanted
to,” Hrockas replied.
“They’re not going to the recreational domes?” Leona pressed.
“They are, but a lot of domes remain untested. The South Pole is the most
popular attraction. Apparently, the despot who runs the empire didn’t make
oceans on very many of the worlds that he created. Honestly, I can’t blame
him for that; it was not easy for me. Still, I would like them to try out
some of the other domes, so I get some feedback on them too. I know what the
problem is, though. They don’t really have any sense of pop culture, so the
scenarios don’t mean much to them.” Hrockas dismissed his own remarks. “But
that’s my problem; not yours, and certainly not theirs. I didn’t
agree to host them for that. I just thought it would be a nice bonus.
They’re all welcome to stay, even if they never leave the residences. I
didn’t start this project a hundred years ago thinking that any of this
would be easy.”
Before Hrockas could continue on—if that was what he was planning on
doing—Aeolia placed a hand on his thigh. She leaned over, and whispered
something in his ear. After he nodded, she stood up, and left the room.
Before Aeolia’s past and future were erased from the timeline, she did
office work for a number of employers. She was using the skills she picked
up in those roles now as Hrockas’ personal assistant. Most of what he needed
done could be automated, because this was the late 25th century, but he
still liked to have another person there to bounce ideas off of. He couldn’t
be in two places at once, so she also often served as his eyes and ears.
“What about the central archives?” Mateo suggested. “Have they been granted
access to the vonearthan databases, particularly the grand repository of
entertainment?”
“They absolutely have,” Lita answered. She was placed in charge of helping
the refugees figure out how to live outside of the Exin Empire, which was
all they had ever known up until this point. It was her husband, Mario who
came up with her title, Director of Transition, acting as head of the
Department for Cultural Transition Assistance. “I’m not—” She paused,
looking for the right words. “I’m not discouraging them from browsing
the repository, but I generally nudge them towards the aggregate records.
They’ve never heard of Earth, and I want them to know where they ultimately
come from, even if we don’t technically consider them vonearthans. I want
them to see that oppressive governments are wrong, and that they all
fall...eventually.”
“That’s understandable,” Leona said. “You know what they say about those who
cannot remember the past. They’ve been deliberately shielded from theirs as
a means of control. They need to see the truth, or they’ll never really be
free.”
They moved onto other business, discussing the general state of the planet.
The numbers had shifted since they were last here, as they always did. At
this point, roughly 30% of the domes were completely unused. They were
sealed up, but still nothing but desert. About 45% of the domes were themed
to some degree, but still working through alpha testing, which robots
performed due to the potential danger. Around 15% were in the beta testing
phase. Some of the more enthusiastic refugees signed all the necessary
paperwork, and were helping by exploring these recreational and leisure
spots. The remaining 10% of domes were currently being gamma tested by the
rest of the refugees, some of which were probably ready for delta testing by
the early adopters during and after the grand opening.
Aeolia came back in, and whispered something to Hrockas while Samsonite was
pitching his idea of a formal educational institution. “Sorry, Mr. Bellamy,
I’m gonna have to pause you for a moment. I’m afraid that Team Matic will
have to leave us.” He looked up at Aeolia. “You can handle it, right?”
Aeolia nodded.
“All right, go on,” he requested of Samsonite as most of the members of the
meeting were exiting.
“What’s goin’ on?” Leona asked.
“An unauthorized visitor appeared in one of the pods,” Aeolia began to
explain. “We don’t know how she broke through our firewalls, but she’s
asking to speak to you. Specifically, the...uh...”
“The smart ones?” Mateo suggested.
“Great,” Angela said. “I need to get back in there. This presentation is
important.” Without waiting for someone to give her permission, or argue,
she stepped back into the conference room, followed by her sister and
Olimpia.
Mateo shrugged when Aeolia looked at him. “I’m curious. I’m sure I’ll follow
the conversation well enough.”
Leona took Aeolia’s hand, and they all teleported to the only operational
acclimation room of The Terminal. Hogarth Pudeyonavic was sitting in an
armchair. Leona walked over to her. “Madam Pudeyonavic, it’s nice to see you
again.” They shook hands after Hogarth stood up.
“You got my message?” Ramses asked.
“I did, but I was not planning on answering. I’m only here now to get some
distance from my own problems before I tackle them.”
“What problems are these?” Leona asked with concern.
“Not yours,” Hogarth answered with kindness in her voice, not
dismissiveness.
Leona nodded respectfully, then looked back at her engineer. “You asked her
about our interference with the slingdrive?”
“I did,” he confirmed. “I can’t crack it. I know The Vellani Ambassador is
not our ship anymore. Another team has been using it for longer than we ever
did. But I still think it’s something that we should understand. It’s a
unique form of space travel, and I want to remain the foremost expert on it,
if possible.”
“Take me to it,” Hogarth asked.
They teleported again, right into the engineering section.
“Welcome,” Mirage’s voice said through the intercom.
Hogarth took a brief look around, narrowing in one component in particular.
She reached for the coherence gauge, and unscrewed it. After looking into
the data port, she said, “give me an hour. But I’ll need a couple of guinea
pigs.”
“That’s my job,” Mateo volunteered proudly.
“It would help if you could procure a human too,” Hogarth clarified.
“Jericho?” Ramses suggested.
“His body doesn’t metabolize temporal energy, but he was once exposed to
dark particles. Does that matter?” Leona asked.
“Shouldn’t,” Hogarth replied. “Those don’t travel through the qualium realm.
Bring him to me.”
“What’s the qualium realm?” Ramses questioned.
“I’ll explain in an hour.” Hogarth was frustrated with having to repeat
herself all of one time.
An hour on the dot after Jericho was brought here reluctantly, Hogarth was
ready to give her answer. She had extracted a little bit of blood from them,
but otherwise left the guinea pigs to just stand around and wait. She spent
most of the time taking the slingdrive apart, and putting it back together,
as if the task alone was enough to provide her with answers. She didn’t even
really seem to examine the parts, or anything. She only needed to go through
the motions. They were sitting around the table in Delegation Hall now.
Hogarth was twirling some kind of plastic tube between her fingers.
“Is that the issue?” Ramses asked.
“Oh, this? Nah, this is just an erroneous part. I cut it out, because it was
slowing down the quintessence transmission function, and making the drive
less efficient. It didn’t have to be this long.”
“That was there to prevent bottlenecking,” Ramses tried to explain.
“You already have two redundant regulators in each intake valve. Trust me,
you don’t need this.” She carelessly dropped it on the table.
“Is that valuable?” Mateo asked.
“It’s only tubing,” Ramses assured him. “The containment comes from the
specialized pocket dimension, which can be housed in just about anything.
But it must be housed in something,” he reiterated to Hogarth, “not
nothing.”
Hogarth brushed off his claims. “I’m here to tell you that you were right.”
“About us being the problem?” Leona figured.
“There’s a workaround, but it comes with a limitation,” Hogarth went on.
“Earlier, you asked about the qualium realm. I’m honestly astonished you’ve
never heard of it, because based on the specifications of this ship, and the
upgraded substrates you built for yourself and your friends, you’ve been
working with it for years.”
“I know what qualia are,” Ramses said, “and I’ve heard of the
quantum realm, but I’ve never combined them.”
“You have. You just didn’t know it.” Hogarth threw a hologram into the space
over the table. It was a silhouette of a human being. There appeared to be
some kind of aura pulsating from it. Animations utilizing this diagram
changed by her narration. “Humans are composed of three major components:
mind, body, and soul. The body is the physical material that interacts with
reality in four dimensions. We’re all looking at each other’s right now.
Information is interpreted through the brain, which is of course, also a
physical entity, but that’s not where data is processed. That happens in the
quantum realm. This was part of a number of related, but competing,
hypotheses, regarding the nature of consciousness. It was only after we
figured it out that we were able to manipulate the properties of the quantum
mind, and allow for technologies such as mind uploading, and memory
retrieval. What present-day researchers still don’t understand is that there
is a third aspect. The soul, if you will, exists within the
qualium realm. It is how we process personal thoughts, emotions. It’s
where we come up with original ideas, and our worldviews. More to the point,
it’s also how time travelers metabolize temporal energy.
“We are connected to the universe in a way that normal people, like my new
friend, Jericho here, aren’t. This is how different flavors of time
travelers come about. The nature of an individual’s qualium realm—their
connection to the cosmos—dictates what they can do, and what they
can’t. You, Ramses, were not born with a qualium realm sufficient for time
travel. You replicated it using someone else’s connection. None of you could
teleport until you figured out how to adjust your qualia accordingly. I
could go on and on about the study of qualium realms, and how to change your
perceptions of time by accessing this special dimension, but that’s not what
this meeting is about. The issue is that your connection to the qualium
realm is indeed interacting with your slingdrive, which necessarily also has
access to this realm in order to function. There are two options here; you
can manipulate your own connection, and alter how this interdimensional
interaction occurs, or you can modify the machine to block it.”
“What’s the downside to the second one?” Leona asked her.
“No more time travel,” Hogarth answered. “The machine is shockingly
versatile, but it has its quirks. As it stands, it accesses all four
dimensions, and it is the fourth dimension that is getting screwy.
You’re interfering with it because of your inherent connection to time,
which is nonlinear. You can’t program it to travel through the fourth
dimension, but somehow ignore you, because people like us are an
extension of time, not simply living in it. You would still be able
to go anywhere you want in the universe, but you would have to stay in the
present.”
“We don’t really want to travel through time,” Leona determined. “But it’s
not our ship anymore. How hard would it be to adjust our qualia, for
those situations where we may need to use the ship?”
“Very hard,” Hogarth replied, “and unpredictable. There would be a lot of
trial and error, and you would probably end up as regular humans. I don’t
know if that’s what you want, or...”
“You mean we could control our own pattern?” Olimpia asked. “We would stop
jumping forwards every day?
“I guess,” Hogarth said. “I would have to study you more, and invasively,
but technically anything is impossible. With enough time and energy, I could
turn anyone into a traveler, or take it away.”
“Thank you, Madam P,” Leona said, standing up. “We will need to discuss our
options amongst ourselves. Can you stay a year?”
“I’ll tell you what,” Hogarth said, also standing up, “At the very least,
I’ll be back in a year.”
She ended up staying the year.
