Standing in the computing lab aboard new Tannhauser Station, Rusty stared at the floating box in the quantum isolation tank, dodging the security drone as it made another pass. "So...how did Hiro get in the box, again?"
Justine answered without looking up from her data padd, sidestepping nimbly out of the path of the drone, "So...you remember the clone?"
"Yes...no."
"OK. The Duke went missing on the Gray Area. We didn't know where. After a pre-set amount of time, STANs security protocols decanted the last saved upload of the Duke's consciousness into a clone so the Duchy would not be without its leader, and maybe we could find out where Hiro...who we call Hiro Prime...went, and why"
Rusty nodded, moving out of the way of the drone again.
"But something went wrong with the clone. There was...the attack. Remember that?" Seeing him nod, she continued. “The drone was...terminated," carefully using the passive voice and trying not to think too hard about that day. "We couldn’t grow another one. Not enough axolotls."
"Axolotls," he repeated, afraid to ask.
"Mmhmm," she replied, too distracted by the task at hand to hear the question in his voice. "STAN went kind of nuts, put Tannhäuser Station on lockdown and then initiated full destruct protocols for all Duchy holdings. All of them. STAN wouldn't let me stand us down, we needed passcodes only the Duke had access to. So I came up with a plan to decant the stored digital Duke and tissue from the dead clone into a Quantum Entanglement Cube in hopes that would establish quantum communication with our lost Hiro enough to get the codes and cancel the destruct sequence." She paused, completing the final connection and testing communication with the consciousness in the isolation chamber, staring at the face on the box within. "It was more complicated than that, but it worked and we're still here. Well, a different 'here' but whatever. We're in it."
"And why was the box in Caledon II?"
"Oh. Yeah. Remember the tentacle monster attacks? Well, it turns out that, because of the...the um, 'nature' of the Duke, having more than one instance of him in a single physical/temporal reality causes disruption to the local fabric of space-time. That's what opened the inter-dimensional rifts that let the monsters in, after Hiro Prime came back on the severely damaged Gray Area. So we removed the box to the Caledon II reality, to prevent further rifts opening." She paused, thoughtful. "Thank goodness we had Zack and Lina with us through all that. Don't know if we could have handled it all ourselves."
"So wait," he said, picking himself up from where the drone had bowled him over, "you’'re saying that having two Hiro's in the same reality causes rifts in space-time and tentacle monster attacks, but...we've just brought Hiro-in-a-box back here, and Hiro Prime is down on Gearhaven recovering on the Gray Area?" He looked nervously behind him, as if expecting a rift to open up right there.
Justine tapped the tank, "That’s what this is for. I hope. Right now, Hiro-in-the-box is, theoretically at least, not 'in' this reality. The tank is a 'bubble' of another reality, stabilised here in our own. I mean, if I got the calculations right. But we need to start reintegrating Hiro's splintered consciousnesses. I don’t think he'll fully recover and return to us until we do. And, according to Beta-El, there are three more out there, in addition to the one she's holding." She paused, growing pensive. "We need to find them. Before his enemies do. And we need to get him reintegrated. The Duchy needs its Duke," adding in a barely audible whisper, eyes glistening, "I need my Duke."
The drone came up behind her and pushed forward. Lights flashed, and Justine quickly checked it for damage. None, thankfully. She turned with difficulty and finally turned the drone off, as it was still trying to pin her against the tube.
"Stupid thing," she muttered.
Later...
Some time after Rusty and Justine left the lab, there was the faintest hiss from the tube. The lights flashed again, and a faint, fine mist escaped through a tiny crack. Beta-El stepped into the lab, walking to the crack, leaning forward and running a sparking fingertip along the glass. Soon, it was smooth again.
"Not yet," she whispered, laying a robotic hand against the tube. "It's not time yet."
She left the lab, but the small leak of chronoton particles spun through the current reality, flashing it back to the recent past...
A message fired through the comm system...
(Continued in part XCIV.)
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