Thankfully, I didn't have to spend too much time in the wreckage of our place, because the very next morning I had to catch a scramjet to French Guiana.

Sadly, dear reader, I must inform you that for all the technological marvels I've seen in my short life, in-flight food has remained just as dreary as it once was.

I experimentally disabled my taste buds, and was pleased to discover that it made the mulch taste better.

At least the view was great, while there were no actual windows due to the plasma sheath that formed once we crossed Mach 10, at certain points the shielded cameras would open their apertures, providing a frankly stunning overview of what lay below.

I noticed a massive backlog at Panama, there was some kind of dispute regarding a sea-steading micronation, caught in transit as a hurricane had broken out.

French Guiana was some of the most protected airspace on the planet, so we spent a while loitering outside the controlled zone, and I caught up with some of my fellow passengers.

There was Novikov, an acquaintance from our sister agency UNHEARD, my lace informed me that he'd been working on some interesting project on overcoming the interference between standard transhumanist augmentation and Parahuman powers. I pinged him, asking for a copy.

He turned around on receiving my message, and waved from across the aisle. I grinned, noticing that he'd taken off both his prosthetic legs for the flight, and as I twisted and turned in my own cramped seat, wishing I could do the same.

There was no one else I knew on the flight, it was mostly a smattering of the rare kinds of businessmen who actually needed to fly over in person for their work, military types probably preparing for deployment offworld, and the odd jetlagged UN folk like me and Vlad.

On the topic of offworld deployment, I zoomed the cameras as far as they could go, and just barely made out a thin vertical line just poking over the horizon, almost lost in the shimmering heat haze.

There it was, Earth's one and only space elevator. Or part of one, with how difficult bulk graphene synthesis was even in orbit. I think they'd gotten to like a hundred kilometers so far, beating out most starscrapers, but still less than a percent of the total length once finished.

Instead, I was only passing by in transit, after disembarking at a frankly overloaded airport, I caught another shuttle, this one traveling far slower.

Or at least it started out far slower, a hundred or so odd kilometers into the sky, there was a subtle lurch, and I was pushed back into my seat as we latched onto the sky hook.

I watched Earth spin beneath my feet, and the black above gradually infiltrate the sky, until we'd picked up enough velocity to detach and be sent flying by the centrifugal force provided by the sky hook.

We soared away, to boost one more time to make it to the another transit hub doing double duty as a commercial space station.

Once again, I found myself rushing to catch my next ride, with hardly any time to take in the sights. But to be honest, my globetrotting had gotten quite stale, so when I finally did make it to the lunar orbiter, I was content to switch off and catch some more sleep during the twelve hour journey.

I woke up just as we started burning for touchdown at Armstrong, and thankfully they'd called ahead, because I only had to spend a couple hours being probed by the TSA on arrival before they cleared me to proceed further.

I bristled at the indignity, but my diplomatic immunity was no good here, anyone short of a head of state was going to get a proper scrub before entry, and for good reason.

Hopping along was always the most fun part of being on the Moon, sure, microgravity had its charms, but there was just something particularly funny about the ungainly motion you had to become accustomed to.

I managed to hit my head only twice on the shorter corridors before I arrived at the lift leading down into one of the larger craters in Mare Nectaris. It happened to coincide with a lava tube from the moon's primordial days, and went down several kilometers within the crust.

There, at the end of branching passageways, and well outside the biodome that covered most of Armstrong, was the most secure facility in the Solar System, making Atlas look like the DMV in comparison.

I sank past one of the sheltered bays where the World Trees grew, growing ridiculous large in the low gravity. Each pumped out enormous quantities of oxygen, and bore fruit the size of houses, I saw tethered tourists walking on the branches a hundred meters above the ground.

I shook my head at their antics, while the trees were certainly useful, unlike what the guidebooks claimed, they only made up a small part of the life support system, the rest being the mundane hydrolysis systems that formed the backbone of most colonies.

I spotted Greenhouse from a distance, surrounded by a legion of adoring fans.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

She wore a slinky green dress, or to be more precise, one made of living moss woven together by her powers. Flowers bloomed before my eyes, entwined in her hair, and a flock of hummingbirds the size of dinner plates buzzed around her and gracefully dipped their beaks into the nectar. A laurel wreath encircled her brow, and ripe grapes dangled as her earrings. I could make more fruit comparisons for other parts of her anatomy, but I'm a married man, and decided to observe the gigantic superconducting cables that lead down into the main facility. Their sheer bulk gave a hint of the ridiculous amounts of power the facility drew, but I suppose that if anything racked up the bills, it would be a pocket universe.

The elevator halted halfway, and alert indicators lit up to announce a scan.

I felt the tingling and heat of mundane scanners at play, and then the feeling of someone walking over my grave that often accompanied a telepathic evaluation.

I tried not to think of Greenhouse's generous endowments just in case.

With a flicker, I felt the pressure inside the elevator fluctuate as two figures began manifesting in the middle. I backed off to clear more room, and then there were two men waiting with me.

Or perhaps men was inaccurate, the entities swirled and blurred at the edges, smoky gray humanoid figures that walked around me, blank faces piercing into my soul.

They were aspects of a super I wasn't familiar with, all I knew was that their creator was military, Korean, if I remembered correctly. I wasn't sure what exactly they were doing, but they seemed content to glower at me where they stood, and I gave them a wide berth and rearranged my documentation.

The elevator opened up into a massive atrium, and you'd think I'd tried to jump over the DMZ given the sheer firepower arrayed at me. Railguns, plasma, graviton beamers, antimatter shaped charges, you could throw a warship in here and expect it to lose the engagement.

The walls stretched up as high as I could see, vanishing into the thin fog that lay above. No, not fog, clouds, the chamber was big enough to have weather.

They'd made me take amnestics last time I was here, back when I held BLUE clearance, so I stood around waiting for someone to get to me, as people scurried off, the freight elevator unloaded massive construction robots, and bipedal mechs stomped about giving everything the stinkeye.

Sure enough, a young woman scurried through the fog over to me.

"Dr. Sen? My apologies for the wait, you were supposed to TP down, but we had a surprise inspection and had to reschedule the next civilian drop."

I shrugged, "No big deal. It's hardly a boring journey, I'll give you that. Do I need to do anything else?"

"Last time you were here, you said you didn't have any distributed aspects to your cognition or consciousness, is that still correct?" She asked, eyes glazing over in the manner associated with someone consulting their lace.

"Nothing new there." I confirmed.

"Any urgent messages you want me to convey? Keep in mind that it'll be 12 hours wall clock time before you can exit." She pointed at a gigantic display, steadily ticking down. There was 20 minutes left as we spoke.

"Not really, and besides, I wasn't expecting particularly good cellular reception in a pocket universe." I joked, handing over a few unhardened electronics that wouldn't enjoy the trip.

She nodded, and let me over to the seemingly featureless wall. Close up, it turned to have some texture to it, almost like a glass barrier holding back a choppy sea. Ripples ran up and down, and it seemed slightly moist. Nanite barriers then.

She presented her ID, and the wall tore itself a new one with an uncomfortably meaty sound. On the other side of the rent was a pod, identical in design to the lifeboats bedecking Atlas. I stepped over and inside, and strapped myself in, and the walls sealed shut.

It was an interminable wait, without any countdown, but I suddenly felt wrong. Moving felt jarring, like when you climb down the stairs in the dark and accidentally miss a step or your feet find one more than your brain expected. But the disorientation was gone almost as quickly as it occurred.

And there, in the midst of a gaping void, utterly black with no lights to be seen, for the basement universe had no stars, was a gigantic vessel.

Xibalba. Named after the Mayan underworld, you slept fitfully after learning of the things it was built to contain. Remember when I called the subterranean section of Armstrong the most secure place in the solar system? Well, Xibalba wasn't even in the Solar System, or our universe for the matter.

As my pod docked, I cracked my knuckles and prepared to do something that no amount of clinical experience helps with.

I was about to interrogate a living Centaur.