Hands on hips, I surveyed my domain. At a surface level, it looked fantastic—a penthouse styled with modern furniture, excessively oversized windows, and an out-of-this world view. Below me, there was the lounge: a half-meter pit that was edged with comfortable sofas and spotted with beanbag chairs and other sitting implements. Among those beanbags Beta was lounging with a guitar—or at least some sort of stringed instrument—gently strumming to music that only she could see. Her appearance and surroundings reflected the embodiment of relaxation and leisure—she even had (completely unnecessary) snacks within easy reach!

Panning my gaze further across the expansive space, I found Alpha, hard at work. Her area was, by contrast, the complete opposite, as it gave off an air of focus, concentration, and controlled chaos. Instead of plush seating options, thick worktables were positively stacked with evidence and multiple hovering boards contained a mosaic of photos, documents, and other multimedia all strung together with a massive web of rainbow-colored strings. Alpha, in the center of the conglomeration like an insidious spider, plucked strings, tied new ones, and occasionally grabbed the whole net, rearranging it how she saw fit.

I was, of course, in Virtual. Nevertheless, building all this had taken several weeks. First, of course, there’d been finding an apartment that was just right—somewhere that that didn’t ask to many questions and didn’t go looking for too many answers about its residents while still being reasonably safe and not too expensive or cheap. Just like I didn’t want to deal with the local gangs, I didn’t want to show up on any Governmental or Church radars—yet. The complex I’d settled in was precisely that: middle of the road. It had good but not excellent building security, law-abiding but not hawkish neighbors, and a location where I wouldn’t be shaken down for protection by gangs nor somewhere where I’d be fending off proselytizing parishioners daily. Obviously, I’d subverted the buildings security and bent it to my will within a couple of days of moving in, and just like my research had predicted.

Most importantly though, this building was big enough to disguise me. With over a dozen stories, each housing hundreds of units, I was able to hide almost all my somewhat suspicious activities—with help from the subverted security system of course. Notably, this was my server farm. Now, back at the old Emerald Ones HQ, this hadn’t been too big a problem as the building we’d used had been zoned commercially. This meant a large power draw was expected, but if a 50sqm apartment with one person living in it started drawing orders of magnitude more power than average, AIs and eventually people somewhere would start asking questions I didn’t want to answer.

Similarly, while it was expected for new residents to make use of the local printers heavily shortly after moving in to print things like furniture, they certainly weren’t expecting people to fill 80% of their space with racks upon racks of server equipment. Fortunately, though, my siphoning was subtle. Instead of my unit requesting all that extra power and feedstock, I simply used my access to the buildings billing system to redistribute that extra power and matter draw through all the other resident’s bills by constantly randomizing percentages. Yes, they’d be paying fractions of a percent more on their bills, but it wasn’t anything I lost sleep about, and unless someone went looking specifically for why Generic Apartment Complex number-whatever had suddenly started using 0.02% more power than its historical average, nobody would notice.

Unfortunately, filling over 80% of your apartment with server equipment and cooling equipment to pump away the generated heat left me with a paltry 10sqm containing nothing but a small bed, exercise station, and kitchenette. Still, I dealt. It wasn’t too bad: when I was in my apartment I was usually plugged into the Virtual anyways, and there I had the luxurious digital suite I shared with all my copies.

Getting all this setup though had been a chore, to put it lightly. Some stuff wasn’t too difficult. For example, what I’d seen as my greatest hurdle—unlaundered currency—hadn’t disappeared but I’d been able to push a large chunk of my stored capitol through one of the “Laundromats” that hadn’t gotten the memo that my old gang had undergone a color-change yet. Of course, that’d only worked once, but I’d been able to transform enough currency to afford this apartment. From there though, things had gotten trickier, in particular, the with the CPUs.

Servers, including cases, motherboards, power supplies, etc. were all printable on the in-wall unit that was tied into the building’s feedstock lines. Unfortunately, computers of the caliber that I needed to host virtual copies of myself weren’t printable. Yes, simple stuff could be printed, but the nanoelectronics in the cores were too complex for consumer printers and copyrighted to high heavens anyways meaning that they had to be physically purchased. This, in turn, had required some subterfuge: I’d needed to invent a false company along with websites and forged documentation just to be able to order from a bulk supplier’s catalog, and even then, the CPUs that I got weren’t top of the line. The computational power back at the old lair had been housed in a half-dozen compact rack towers, but here, my apartment was lined with rows of monolithic, floor-to-ceiling machines just to be able to eke out similar performance levels.

It still made me wince, thinking back to how I’d blown up those computers. Had I been thinking, I could’ve quickly grabbed a couple of the high-performance cores and stuffed them into my bag with only negligible additional bulk. Instead, I’d simply destroyed them out of spite or something. Really, I had no conception on how difficult it could be to get regulated, semi-exotic components without the infrastructure, power, and connections that the gang had. I’d naively just taken it for granted that I’d be able to buy another computer, completely forgetting the fact that chips of the computational power I’d been casually using typically required inspectors to physically visit and stamp the damn things’ certificates bi-annually.

The main struggle was over now though. I could casually launder enough money to afford rent and all the other simple necessities that I couldn’t simply print or pirate and the computational cluster I’d built was powerful enough to host five copies of myself at real-time simulation rates plus the Virtual environment. Right now, we were only using four of those slots, and none of them long-term.

I walked over to Alpha, phasing trough the floating notes and strings, and observed her as she shuffled the large net of data around. This was our current main project, and while Beta relaxed and the Gamma/Delta duo attended university, Alpha and labored. A minute or two later, she seemed to reach a breaking-off point and looked at me curiously.

“I’ve found some interesting stuff, Prime. Merge?”

“Sure.” I nodded easily.

A minutes later, I returned to full awareness having assimilated the past couple hours of work that she’d done. Then, I immediately created another copy. Sure, it was a bit unnecessary as she was, essentially, me, but while it didn’t solve my real problem, talking to someone—even if they were technically me—and bouncing ideas off them was better than nothing.

“So, what do we think?”

“Not a lot of options…”

“I know, I might have to resort to drastic measures.”

“Yeah, let’s wait for Gamma and Delta, merge, and then having some downtime before a general meeting.”

“Sounds good.”

Six hours later, I was sitting at a meeting table in Virtual with a full contingent of five circa three-hour old copies. Planning in time for us to diverge from each other was one of those things that I’d learned was critical in my new lifestyle. If I didn’t—if I just copied myself directly prior to the meeting, the meeting devolved into a pointless echo chamber where everyone always agreed on everything. Sure, it was hilarious the first time we tried, but having everyone always agree on everything is antithetical to brainstorming and critical thought. Giving myself three hours to diverge wasn’t that much time in a big-picture sense, but it did make meeting as a team productive.

I, for example, had spent the last three hours paging through historical documentation. This wouldn’t make too much of a difference, but it would prime my thought patterns and idea-generating processes to follow different paths than the others. This way, while we still generally agreed on everything, but brainstorming as a group or making collective decisions made sense because everyone would bring a slightly different viewpoint to the table. That said though, it wasn’t ideal. I wasn’t naïve enough to assume I didn’t have any blind spots and the ones I did have wouldn’t be covered by the other copies of myself.

Epsilon, who’d decided to lead this meeting and seeing that we were all seated, clapped her hands together to get our attention.

“Attention Issas,” she shouted in a pompous voice, “the meeting will come to order!”

Collectively, we groaned. It must be a new low to have in-jokes with oneself, I thought.

Not pausing though, Epsilon projected an infographic, depicting the planet we were on, Nohebus, with the Emperor’s seal covering it. Then, the image pinched, and the rest of the local solar system was revealed, each colonized planet and individual moon labeled with a smaller logo of the Emperor and the local Duke’s emblem. This was nothing new, it was an image every subject of the Emperor was well-acquainted with. This was the core sector of the “Nohibian Imperial Solidarity”.

Pinching the visualization again, a new layer of abstraction was revealed—a star chart. On this, the Imperial Solidarity was depicted as a misshapen, blue, blob. The center was our system which was labeled as “imperial capital”. This blob, which represented territory, stretched oddly in multiple directions to encapsulate nearby stars. In total, twelve-ish stars were contained.

Epsilon, now gesturing towards the part of the blob that were more unclear spoke up.

“This area, where it’s all fuzzy, is where our data gets fuzzy too. Due to the military’s obsession with secrecy, it’s hard to tell exactly how the war effort is going and exactly which stars are under Imperial control. Also, outside of this territory, the map mostly represents guesses. We don’t know exactly what other nations are out there in the void. The data we’ve been able to dig up is all at least decades old, and dates to before the Spacer Guild War. For example, we know that the current main target of the Nohibian war effort is the neighboring ‘York Confederation’ and that they’re, like, super evil according to the Emperor, but other than that we don’t know anything really.”

“The point is, to get out of Nohibian space, we’re going to need a shift-capable vessel that can punch through at least two layers of hyperspace if we don’t want to be void-bound for decades.”

At this, we all slumped a bit. Of course, It’s the conclusion I’d already reached, but hearing it said aloud was disheartening.

“This is bad, because while getting into space isn’t too difficult—as, for example, a tourist—getting on a ship that can do more than transition through to the first hyperspace layer for short interplanetary trips is difficult. The only ships that are equipped with drives that can punch through to the requisite second layer and thus do interstellar travel in a reasonable timeframe belong to the military and the government.”

“Of those, needless to say, I think the military’s right out” she said as I nodded in agreement.

“The military ships have tight security and allow only military personnel onboard—from what we’ve found this security is keyed to custom ‘ware that’s mandatory for soldiers and there’s no way that any of the military surgeons would miss our unique features when they’re installing their custom features into us. Also, there’s the problem that of all the technological capabilities that the Imperial Solidarity has, the newest and most modern stuff is doubtlessly in their Navy. We’re not naïve enough to assume that they don’t encounter people like us—spacers—occasionally so they’d have defenses and strategies in palace even if we tried some suicidal frontal electronic assault against a warship.”

“Then, there’s the government which offers more promising options. Not colonial transports obviously—they’re too big and well-protected, but there are plenty of smaller, interstellar-capable vessels that nobility like to cruise around on. Sure, most of ‘em can’t handle a L2 Hyperspace Jump without external assistance, but some of them—notably personal transports of very high-ranking officials—can.”

After that, the conversation basically devolved into wild speculation, and only more problems were discovered and catalogued. For example, even if we managed to somehow plop ourselves into the pilot’s seat of a ship, how would we ensure that all the remote tracking and control functions along with the self-destruct systems were offline? It would be rather anticlimactic if, just when I cross the border out of Nohibian space, my ship just suddenly detonates. Another point of concern was piloting the damn thing. Sure, I'd sunken many hours into various space-combat games, and by virtue of birthright and practice, had a rather good head for 6DOF navigation and visualization, but that wouldn’t translate well into the skills required to, say, press the buttons in the proper order to startup the ship’s reactor or plot a hyperspace transition.

That’s when Gamma, who’d dipped out of the conversation to review some university material suddenly stiffened and then sat up straight—at least as much as it’s possible to do so in a beanbag chair.

“I’ve got it.”

This proclamation got our attention, and Gamma elaborated.

“The Imperial Excellence Institute. More specifically, the unofficial-official ‘special’ career paths that they offer.”

We all got it within seconds of each other.

“Gamma, that’s brilliant.”

“Right, well, from the outside our academics are, put bluntly, rather extraordinary. We’re damn close to achieving a perfect grade in a difficult and in-demand major. Of course, from our perspective we’ve spent the last eight or nine subjective years working towards the Bachelor’s degree—”

Another Issa, seemingly more excited with the idea, seamlessly continued, “but to everyone else—the professors, the other students, etc.—we’re some kind of genius who’s managed the same feat in just two and a half years. We’re a prime candidate to be picked up into some sort of elite program, and the IEI...”

The rumors were ubiquitous of course. The IEI, located on this very planet and near the seat of the Nohibian Imperial authority was the place when it came to higher education, period. Only the best of the best got in, and it was a veritable factory for forging noble scions into governors, dukes, bishops, all the while generating a steady stream of officers who’d eventually become the future generals and admirals of Nohibian military might.

Also—and this was critical—it's also allegedly the primary recruiting pool for the Imperium’s more questionable and often deniable employees. Imperial Inquisitors didn’t just spontaneously pop into existence when a sufficient density of religious fervor was achieved, just like the ‘non-existent’ Imperial branch of problem solvers weren’t born with a dagger gripped in their teeth and blood replaced with combat stims. No, they were made. Specifically, they were made at IEI.

Obviously, IEI didn’t advertise the fact, but where else were they going to get people like Inquisitors? They needed to not only be intelligent, but also dedicated to the Imperium and the associated church with fanatical devotion, all presumably backed by connections, wealth, and power. Then there was the fact that those Inquisitors with publicized identities were all nobles and the fact that on the very few occasions where an Imperial “problem solver” had publicly and catastrophically failed a mission, they always resembled nobles who’d been “sent off to a distant planet in the imperium on permanent assignment”.

The key to this whole idea was the assumption that these organizations were the type just to have basically-limitless Imperial budgets and start salivating once words like “stealth ship”, “deniable asset”, or “covert infiltration” were bandied about. Hell, they probably have whole space docks filled to the brim with stealth ships.

Our path forwards was obvious. I, looking across the table the other similarly lost-in-thought Issas, cleared my throat, stood up, and with my best Imperial salute, shouted “THE INQUSITION NEEDS US”.

There was a beat of silence.

Then, simultaneously, we all broke into roaring and somewhat synchronized laughter, which was only slightly unnerving.

Catching her—virtual—breath, Beta spoke up when our laughter had died down to only sporadic giggles, “Seriously though, the Inquisitor route just isn’t open to us—as it stands, we can barely pretend to be religious, never mind fervently so. Our acting would never pass muster.”

“So, we’re going for ‘secret agent’ then?”

Hesitant nods from all around the table.

“Alright, the first step is obvious: gather intelligence. We’ve made a lot of assumptions, and we need some actual boots-on-the-ground info before we spend virtual year planning ourselves into the center of an impassable maze.”

Gamma, still paging through virtual brochures and pamphlets spoke up.

“Generally, the IEI is invitation only, but just off the top of my head I can think of a couple ways to easily increase the likelihood that we get scouted or invited to a tour.”

The discussion continued in a similar vein for a while, before an alarm popped up and I excused myself from the virtual meeting.

I closed my virtual eyes and re-opened them in physical space, transported away from my fantastical VR setting into the much grungier and all-too depressing apartment. Now, instead of floor-to-ceiling windows, only dark and blinking server racks stretched the height. I sighed. As safehouses went, it wasn’t bad, it was just so bluntly utilitarian.

Making my way over to my small storage stockpile of rations, I mindlessly picked one and started chewing on it while distracting myself by reading over reports. There shouldn’t be and there weren’t any major surprises. All the critical checks came up green and only a couple of the more obvious digital honeypots—edited camera footage of me at a distant train station—had been accessed in a manner I’d consider suspicious.

I checked the gang-feeds and the hacked channels I still had access to and… there! Apparently, one of the more technically inclined remaining members had done some rudimentary scanning of public or easy-to-access surveillance systems and had discovered the false leads that I’d planted. Let them chase those down, I scoffed.

The only place where I needed to be wary was the human-intelligence angle: I may be able to run digital loops around any virtual pursuit, but so much of what a gang did relied on interpersonal relationships: who knew whom, who owed whom a favor, etc. Now that the news had gotten out that I’d fallen out of favor and that there was even (potentially) a bounty on my head, even talking to the lowest of street-corner dealers two cities away could give away my location.

Fortunately, avoiding this human-intelligence angle was simple: avoid humans. Sure, it was something that I suspected wasn’t good for my already stretched-thin psyche, but what was I going to do? Radical cosmetic alterations were out—too much surgery—and wearing a mask or doing something similar to obviously disguise my identity would send all sorts of wrong messages and probably cause more problems in the future.

“No…” I sighed out loud.

I simply needed to deal with it; deal with the fact that I was accumulating weeks of experience in days with only myself for companionship.