Six Months Later…

The Marine squad took the hill encampment beautifully, right by the book, laying down covering fire and flanking the gnoll encampment, then advancing two by two to take down all combatants and plant the flag. [Victory!] the system proclaimed, and I climbed the hill to inspect.

The reality engine had given me a two-foot-long wooden stick, which allowed me to control various aspects of the simulation, freezing time, speeding things up, or in this case, giving a replay. I hated the thing. Made me feel like a sterotypical British officer from 1914. I gathered the men around me and began running through the fight, pulling up clips and running through them in slow motion.

"Jamison, you were disabled during that initial attack. Gunther, you were killed. What went wrong there?"

I listened to their explanations, nodding mad making suggestions. “All right. Overall, not a bad strategy. Michare and DeLane, what about you?”

“The briefing said the gnolls were unlikely to have a ranged attack. We weren't expecting the fireball on our position.”

“The intelligence is often wrong,” I reminded them. “You know that. It doesn't change just because we're in a simulation. In addition, Peters, you should have laid down a mobility debuff on the knoll encampment before the team went in. Remember your tanglefoot ability?"

He looked embarrassed. "Oh, yeah. Sorry, sir. I'm not used to all these abilities just yet."

I shook my head. "You've got standard unit tactics down pat. We've just got to teach you a few more gamer techniques."

One of the privates, a young woman with her hair up in a bun, frowned at me. "Excuse me, sir. Me and the boys spent a lot of time playing Call of Duty back in the barracks."

"Yeah," I said, "and if there's one game that does not prepare you for a reality engine, it's Call of Duty. You might as well have been playing Madden 2023." That got a little bit of a laugh.

"All right. Back to barracks and cleanup. We've got a session with your abilities trainer later. Pay attention to what she says. She's come up with a custom scheme for your team that I want you to run in our next simulation."

Allison was, like me, pinging back and forth between various trainee groups. I’d arranged for her to have a tutoring session right after this exercise, hoping they’d be ready to listen. My trainees disappeared, and I headed for Threshold thinking.

The problem with all of our recruits was that either they took this seriously, in which case they fell back on their training, relying on their guns and standard small unit tactics, or they thought this was a game, in which case they were throwing around fireballs willy-nilly and catching their allies in the blast. Or using cooldowns at all the wrong time. Allison was pulling her hair out, and so was I. She had spent hours looking over our teams of recruits, figuring out how to synthesize their abilities and giving them lectures. But when it came down to it, they were the ones who needed to do the work.

I stepped out of the training zone and into Threshold. The city seemed to change every time I left for more than an hour. The vast cavern full of portals was miles wide, and we were starting to survey the area beyond the portals for future expansion. Of course, that was going to mean we needed ground transportation. Dwight was working on automated carts that would follow designated pathways. I didn't really know all the details. I had enough on my plate to worry about.

I swung by the house. There was a change I could get behind. Grandpa, Sage, Juana, and I had been assigned a tiny little two-story house. It couldn’t be more than 1,200 square feet, but that was enough for private bedrooms for Grandpa and Sage, and a slightly larger one for Juana and me. We did all have to share one bathroom, which Sage complained loudly about. Personally, I think anyone who has to share a bathroom with a teenage girl deserves a medal of some sort, but we made do.

The downstairs had a family room and a small kitchen that we used more often to reheat leftovers from Mama Grace's restaurant than for our own cooking. None of us had the time. We were on our feet from morning till night. Not that there were either morning or night here. Just a steady glow around the clock.

I came in through the back door into the kitchen, and to my surprise, found Juana there making herself a cup of coffee. She turned and met me at the door with a kiss. Married life has some distinct perks. Going home to my wife at the end of the day was the best thing about my new gig.

"Grandpa and Sage around?" I asked.

Juana shook her head. "Sage isn't back from school yet."

I checked the time. Her school should be out hours ago. I hoped she wasn't getting into trouble, but I let it slide. If she'd found some friends her own age to hang out with, that was all the better. Sage had done really well for herself in the last two years, but she needed some semblance of a childhood.

"And Grandpa?"

"He said he'd be back late and to leave a plate in the fridge for him."

I grinned down at Juana. "So we've got the place to ourselves, do we?" My hands slid down to her waist.

She kissed me, but quickly and dismissively. "Sorry, Shad. I've got a meeting to go to."

I sighed and stepped back. "Of course you do. What now?"

"Threshold Governing Council. We've got a bunch of things on our agenda. It's going to be a long one." She rubbed her forehead. "Want to come along? I could probably use your insight once we're done."

I really did not want to use one of my rare free evenings to sit in a council meeting and listen to people discuss problems, but I fixed a smile on my face and tried to tell myself it would be like having a date with my wife. "Sure. Of course. We got time for food first?"

She shook her head. "I'm already running late, but I couldn't face this without more coffee. I've asked Mama to have some takeout ready for us when we're done."

"Great." I grabbed a snack from the tub of Mama Grace's latest offerings sitting in our fridge and swallowed it down in a couple of bites, then grabbed another one for the road. "Let's go."

The council meeting was held in the largest of the new Threshold buildings. It was still under construction. A three-story tall, blocky structure that would eventually have a nice stone facade. Right now it was just extruded plascrete over a support structure made of compressed Ganymene rock bricks, courtesy of Kronos Construction Supplies Inc.

The council room was nearly done, though, and it looked nice in that sort of generic American small town, official business sort of way. There were bland, gray folding tables up front for the councilors, with padded chairs behind them. Display screens all around the room, an industrial carpet in dark blue. The audience seats were uncomfortable benches with no padding and no back. I slipped into mine and reflected that if they were trying to make sure that no one attended these meetings, they were going about it the right way.

A small handful of other humans sat on the benches near me. I didn't recognize any of them, but that was hardly surprising. We got more people every day. The council had seven members, including Juana. Five of them had been elected by the surviving miners from the Reality Engine exploit. The other two were appointed to represent the perspectives of our flood of newcomers.

One was a Chinese woman, recently arrived from Earth. When I inspected her, I learned her name was Councilor Chen, and apparently she didn’t have a class. Many of the diplomatic arrivals had refused to accept integration with the Reality Engine. I knew why. As soon as anyone accepted a soul coin, Kronos remade them. After that, their bodies were dependent on Ethereum, which meant going back to Earth would require a steady supply of that most expensive galactic commodity. On the other hand, it meant the woman wouldn't be able to set foot inside any of the Reality Engine zones and was limited just to Threshold. It felt like going to an amusement park and refusing to leave the bathrooms. What was the point?

The other rep was a Canadian woman. Juana had introduced me to Marlies Fletcher before. I had assumed she was American, but she very quickly corrected me on that. The two sat at the left side of the table, with Juana beside them, and then the other four councilors.

Councilor Levi got to his feet.

"This meeting will come to order," he said. "On the agenda, addressing the increasingly pressing needs of Threshold's growing population, and a motion to request suspension of new inductees for the time being."

I pricked up my ears at that. Juana had not mentioned such a motion was being considered. I looked at her, and she gave me a "sit down and listen, Shad,” look in return. Maybe that was why she wanted me to come tonight.

"First of all, factors involved in the continued shortage of commodities,” Councilor Levi said. He flashed up a list on the screens around us. I studied it. Some of them I was familiar with, but the first item was new. Reality Engine Instability and its Pressures on Threshold's Growth.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Levi sat down, and the councilor at the end of the table, a middle-aged man whose eyes darted around the room without quite making contact with anyone else, spoke up. His name was Dinkins.

"I've completed my analysis of the anomalies and concluded that initial assessments were correct. The Reality Engine is unstable."

I really, really wanted to interject here, but held my cool and listened.

“This was not apparent during the Reality Engine exploit, because the zones were so chaotic that a few differences from day to day made very little difference.” Dinkins cleared his throat and went on.

“As most of you are aware, the council embarked on an experiment to provide housing for our newcomers inside a Reality Engine zone, similar to how the Lotus Eaters rode out much of the exploit in safety. It was discovered that without Kronos' direct intervention and attention, the zones tend to be unstable. The people we placed complained that they would wake up and find their bed was now on the opposite side of the room, or the walls were a different color, or their bathroom had been remodeled. The complaints when all sit toilets were replaced with squat toilets were particularly pointed.”

He looked around and attempted to grin, but the other councilors were merely nodding. Juana had her hands steeped together. Councilor Chen, I couldn't read at all.

“The residents all eventually returned to Threshold and refused to resume the experiment. I have a comment here from one man saying, ‘How am I going to explain it to my wife if I wake up one morning in bed with a different woman? Kronos did it? That's not very convincing, is it?’”

That did get a laugh, even from Councilor Chen, but I understood what he was complaining about. I was just starting to like having a stable home to come back to every night myself.

The councilor looked back at his notes and then up again. "That's it, basically. Until the stability issue is resolved, we cannot move our surplus population into the Reality Engine itself, and we'll have to continue expanding Threshold." He sat down.

"Disappointing but not a surprise," Juana said. "All right, what's next?"

"We have a complaint about food quality," Councilor Nguyen said. She didn't bother to rise, instead putting up a chart on the screens around the room. "As we've been relying more and more on reality engine-generated food, complaints are increasing. People don't like how it tastes, they don't like the selections, and they're complaining about it doing weird things to their digestion."

I hadn't noticed that myself. The reality engine was perfectly capable of putting on a feast.

Juana frowned. "Is this about the standard meal rations?”

The other woman nodded. "Yes, and as you can see here," she put up another chart, "we can't afford custom meals with the Ethereum budget we've got. Kronos is willing to provide standard meal rations or raw materials. Most of the raw materials are being requisitioned by established chefs with clientele. Even with giving the newcomers passes to each of the restaurants, they're still having to rely on the standard meal rations for two-thirds of their calories."

So, we were feeding newcomers MREs and they were complaining about it. I made a note to check whether my trainee soldiers complaining, and if so, just how bad these standard meal rations actually were. Between cooking for ourselves or eating at Mama Grace's, my family had been well taken care of. Now I wondered just how out of touch with Threshold's problems I really was.

"Finally, there's the question of just how to handle so many new arrivals. Hence the request to temporarily suspend immigration, while we get a handle on the logistics issues.”

“Unacceptable.” That was the Chinese counselor, Chen. She stood up. "We cannot cap the number of people allowed to migrate to this reality engine. The clamor on Earth for slots is already threatening to destabilize multiple governments. If we cut off immigration entirely, we will be facing revolts, not to mention pushback from my government, among many others."

Councilor Fletcher nodded agreement. "We've already got the next three months of slots allocated. We can't just tell all those people they're not allowed to come."

"We have nowhere to put them," Councilor Jones said, spreading her hands in dismay. "We have nothing to feed them."

"Then we need to increase the allocations that the reality engine is giving us," Chen snapped. "This computer is supposed to be able to make stuff from nothing. So why the rationing? As to the rest, we put the newcomers to work building quarters for those who come behind."

"And how do you suggest we enforce that?" Juana asked quietly. "I have a complaint here from one of the intake managers running the Second Hope Intake Home. That's the one who is helping most of the recent inductees who are suffering from substance abuse or mental health trauma. Kronos is able to cure their physical addictions and adjust their brain chemistry, but it hasn't been an easy adjustment for most of them. Many of them still have psychological cravings for the substances to which they were previously addicted, not to mention trauma from years or even decades of mental illness that needs to be worked through. The counselor is complaining that they are refusing to participate in any of the group building activities or the work afternoons that she's been setting up. We can't force people to work."

"Why not?" asked Counselor Nguyen. "The aliens made us do it. Why are we feeding people if they're not pulling their weight?"

"They don't work because we put food into Threshold's charter as a basic human right. They don't need shelter either. Any of them are free to venture inside levels and find housing there if they're willing to put up with the little idiosyncrasies," Juana pointed out. "Besides, it's not like there's inclement weather; these are people who have spent years living under bridges. You think they care about whether their beds are in the same place every night? We’re offering them help, and many of them are taking it, but others aren't willing or able to help themselves yet. It's a more complicated problem than we hoped. On the other hand,” she looked down at her clipboard, "the hospice graduates we've brought in have embraced their new chance at life. Over 80% of them are currently enrolled in a training program of some sort. Most of them have chosen farmer or crafter focused classes.”

“So what do you suggest?" Councilor Fletcher asked.

"I agree that we cannot shut down immigration entirely. It's not in our interest anyway," Juana said. “Forget about the food and shelter issues. We have only two real resources scarcities. Ethereum is one of them. We expected to have a greater influx of aliens seeking to attain advanced classes. That hasn't materialized as we'd hoped." She bit her lip as she flipped over pages on her clipboard. "We're getting a few, but not at the level we had budgeted. I'm working with my sources now to determine exactly why."

"So that's one resource," Councilor Chen said. "What about the other?"

Juana looked up and spread her hands. With a smile, she said, "People."

I understood what she meant. Some of the other councilors looked confused.

"What's that mean?" Councilor Nguyen asked.

Juana continued, her voice rising as she warmed to the topic. I sat back and enjoyed watching my wife in her element. “What we have here is essentially a post-scarcity culture. It's a term that Earth thinkers came up with even before the aliens arrived. Basically, almost all resource limits have been removed. We don't have to worry about running out of fossil fuels, or food, or iron. The reality engine can create all of that for us, provided it has two things." She held up two fingers. "Ethereum is the reality engine’s power source. If it’s got power, it can transmute elements from raw materials.”

“What sort of materials? Where do they come from?” Councilor Fletcher demanded.

“The reality engine hasn't even touched most of Ganymede's mass. If we ever ran short on raw materials, we could capture a couple of asteroids and use them. But Ethereum fuels it, and that's the one thing we can't easily get our hands on right now. The Galactics manufacture it in collapsed dwarf stars, apparently. The point is, it's scarce, we can't get our hands on it right now, and we're working on that problem. Again, the solution is to bring in more people.”

“How is that?” Dinkins asked.

“Someone with a crafting class can take the output from the reality engine and make it into something spectacular. I don't know why the progenitors chose to set it up this way, but the aliens have the same system. Crafters earn patterns from a reality engine and use them to shape raw goods."

I had a theory about that personally. I thought the progenitors had designed it on purpose. It gave people a reason to stay involved, to create. If there were things that they couldn't just get from the reality engine itself, then they would be more inclined to actually get off their butts and do things.

“Cutting off our supply of migrants would be foolish, even if it was politically possible. I do think we need to slow the rate for a bit while we build our infrastructure. Not just houses and schools, but also the people to run them. I want to ask Earth to send us specific types of people. Builders, chefs, construction workers, teachers, nurses."

"Why not just get these classes from the reality engine?" Councilor Chen asked, frowning.

"Because the reality engine can grant skills, but not knowledge," Juana said. “From everything we've seen, the reality engine is more likely to grant someone with medical training a healing-based class, someone who's already a craftsman with crafting skills. I would suggest in addition to lowering our quota, we call for specific types of immigrants."

"Like an H-1B?" Councilor Nguyen asked.

"I've got details here." Juana sent the others a packet.

Councilor Fletcher immediately began to protest. "The reality engine can uplift the plight of people in poverty and sick. It would be a violation of human rights to deny them access while allowing the already privileged to join us."

Juana rubbed her face with her hands. "I've got an allocation in here for hospice cases. I don't want to cut down on that. Not when we can save lives that will otherwise be lost. But we’ve got to have some help if we want to scale up.”

"I agree with Councilor Lopez-Williams," Councilor Nguyen said. "I think we must make these changes."

Councilor Fletcher was looking up at the screen where Juana's numbers were showing. "You've entirely removed the quota for the rehabilitation of addicts."

"Just for a while," Juana said. "We need more skilled laborers. There's no two ways around it.”

“We need more from the reality engine," Councilor Chen snapped. "I am willing to tentatively agree to these quotas if we also receive a significant increase in the goods and services provided by this reality engine. My constituency is complaining of inadequate food, lack of housing, no public transportation of any sort. This is unacceptable. I move that we present Kronos with a petition listing our demands."

"Seconded," Councilor Fletcher said promptly.

"All in favor?"

The two on the end raised their hands, followed by one of the councilors I didn't know, and then Councilor Nguyen. Juana looked disgusted.

"The motion passes," Councilor Fletcher said smoothly.

"And the motion to establish a quota system?”

"I'll back it if it is re-evaluated in three months' time," Councilor Fletcher said promptly. "I feel that this is a motion which will have more weight back on Earth if it's unanimous."

Juana sighed. "Agreed. Three months." She glanced at the other Threshold councilors who nodded, then said, "I so move."

"Seconded," Councilor Chen said promptly.

All seven councilors raised their hands in agreement.

"In that case," Juana said, "let's work out the details of this petition. I am requesting the help of my husband, Captain Williams, in presenting this petition." She nailed me with a sharp look. I raised my hands in protest, shaking my head.

Councilor Fletcher raised a hand. "Objection. This would be crossing the military and civilian authorities' jurisdiction here in Threshold."

"Shad's not a military authority," Juana said wearily. "He's here in an advisory role, and he's helping run the training programs as requested by us. Besides, Kronos likes talking to him. I think this petition will go over better if he presents it."

I thought about objecting and stating that I didn't think this petition had any merit whatsoever. But the councilors nodded in agreement. And I knew what that look Juana was giving me meant. I had a feeling we'd be pulling a very late night. Not the good kind, either.