Anyway... where was I. Uh... ah, yes. Firewatch. It's sort of sentient, in a way. Or at least, it has a central intelligence. Yeah... yes, I know... it's relevant, okay? Just bear with me.

You know how drones have neural cores? Well, Firewatch has one. What does it do? Why is it here? Who built the darn thing? All good questions that we don't have an exact answer for. It's significantly more advanced than anything humans have ever designed. Either whoever built it is long gone... or maybe wasn't here, to begin with.

Anyway. For the most part, cells seem to be controlled directly by Firewatch's neural core. That's why we call them Cells. Think of them like Firewatch's immune system. They don't seem to be partial to humans in any way; we can't even control most of them, actually.

We've identified four types. Well, there are thousands of varieties, but they all generally fall into four main groups. Sentinels, Guardians, Striders, and Stalkers. 

Of the four, we can only control Striders directly. Sentinels are receptive to our commands but are not bound to them in any way. Same with Guardians. Stalkers are completely outside our control and seem to operate within a different plane of existence. It's extremely rare even to see one, let alone capture one for study.

They are all specialized, but there are some common characteristics. All of them can teleport. Not that we can't teleport. But Cells seemed to have miniaturized teleportarium technology to an unprecedented degree. They're also really tough. Immune to small arms, for the most part. Striders are, for all intents and purposes, indestructible. SciLab lobbed nukes at one for a few hours, and when that didn't work, they threw antimatter at it until they ran out of antimatter. Didn't even scratch the damn paint.

Interestingly, the Striders aren't armed. Maybe that's why they're the only ones we can control. Bastards who designed 'em didn't trust us with world-ending doomsday weapons... I wonder why.

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Third Lieutenant Kathaleen Balliol was under no delusions about the magnitude of the situation. And she had done her research before her transfer. She certainly did not need Lieutenant-Magistrate Laminsky to lecture her on proper mannerisms.

"You're new," he had said. "And things work differently out here. Don't be surprised to see people shitting in buckets. Society can be pretty backward this far from the core."

So far, Laminsky could not be further from the truth. The people were amiable, and she had yet to see anyone shit in a bucket. Sure, they weren't as technologically advanced as people back home, but they were hardy and resourceful. Frankly, that was more important than teleportariums and flying cars when the very fabric of reality could come apart at any moment.

About the whole tearing-holes-into-reality thing. They were called worldholes; chasms in the very fabric of the universe. A portal to another dimension, typically. They were difficult to prevent but even more challenging to fix. The Ministry chose to deal with the former, and to this end, the reality anchor was born. Kathaleen had made it a point to read up on them before making the journey past the Median. They really were phenomenal, terrifying pieces of equipment. The science behind their operation was well beyond Kathaleen's comprehension, but with a healthy dose of esotericism, they did their job. Worldholes were incapable of forming inside of a realty anchor's radius. Ironically, a lot of people looked past the science and instead chose to worship reality anchors as divine constructs. 

The Empire of Far Harbor had three reality anchors. Northeast, Southwest, and Central, although cardinal directions were hard to define on Firewatch. Together they anchored an area roughly thrice the size of the kingdom itself, shielding a dozen lesser nations clustered around the kingdom's borders.

Southwest was the smallest of the three. The radiation shell was massive, and the entire complex was buried 3200 meters underground. Kathaleen was told in no uncertain terms that she was not to, under any circumstances, approach the maintenance tunnel that connected the shell to the rest of the facility. Entry into that tunnel meant an excruciating death. Even just standing on the operations deck, she would have to suffer through weeks of DNA reconstruction without heavy protective gear. No wonder people worshiped these things, Kathaleen had thought.

Should the anchor collapse, one hundred thousand square kilometers of land and anything standing on it would be instantly spaghettified and dragged helplessly through a worldhole into an alternate dimension. At that point, you would - mercifully - be dead. Unfortunately, alternate dimensions were not usually happy, friendly places.

"But don't worry," she had been told. "It's unlikely."

Of all the places on Firewatch where she could be headed, it had to be a reality anchor.

Alas, it was an important duty. She was new and of substantial-yet-mostly-disposable rank, and thus the duty was hers. 

The Ministry's sphere of influence was hard to define. Outside of the central 500 kilometers in radius of livable territory on Firewatch, the Ministry rarely ever exercised direct control over its subjects. There were simply too many people; not even the most eager bureaucrat could stomach the sheer amount of red tape. For the most part, as long as taxes were paid on time and a fundamental set of laws were upheld, the Ministry was content to allow local governments to rule however they saw fit.

But there were always exceptions. Local offices were present in every sector, of which there were many hundreds of thousands. They maintained what the Ministry called "primary station functions," which was bureaucrat talk for anything directly or indirectly controlled by Firewatch's neural core; this included realty anchors.

The Ministry tended to be more strongly disliked the further you went out from the core. When Striders started popping up in the Underdistrict, a lot of people had some... choice words. But considering the Lanilow Platform Ringreef disaster, it made sense. A hundred thousand souls were lost when that reality anchor failed. Dozens of breach-teams were sent after them, but they always returned empty-handed. Sometimes, they didn't return at all. It was a catastrophe of epic proportions and prompted the Ministry to exercise greater control.

More than one insurrection had to be put down as a result. Most disintegrated at the sight of auto-battleships on the horizon, quickly realizing that they had vastly overestimated their chances. She had vivid memories of those wars, bathed in a dull blue cast by fusion drive cones as the battle groups slipped their moorings, wondering if her brothers would come back home. They always did, of course. But her young mind hadn't quite grasped the concept of cloning at the time.

Ringreefs was another example of something that Kathaleen had to study before her transfer. She had learned about them in school and on the newsfeeds, but if she was being honest with herself, she never really paid much attention. They were unheard of coreward from the Median, which of course, meant that it ranked poorly on her list of important subjects.

That being said, they really were quite fascinating. As you went farther rimward, the worldholes progressively worsened until eventually nothing was left. Just open space. Humans had fired probes at near-lightspeed in every direction for tens of thousands of years, hoping with fanatical desperation that something else was out there. Most had traveled for millennia, but nothing came back through the scopes.

Straddling the border of the station proper and the void were the tracts of land known as Ringreefs. They were the offspring of worldholes and small pockets of Firewatch protected by local realty anchors - or were just lucky. The result was extensive chains of islands, some little more than large chunks of metal drifting in space, others large enough to be considered distinct sectors. Some were so remote that it took months to reach them, even at near-lightspeed. The variety was endless, as were the people who called them home. There were likely trillions of these islands, though the Ministry never devoted the manpower to catalog all of them.

Imperial Far Harbor was on the border of what was officially considered the Ringreefs. It controlled a fiefdom covering two central islands and dozens of minor outliers. Alongside the neighboring Kingdom of Laria, the two superpowers easily topped the charts for the most powerful nation-states and exercised a considerable amount of influence. Neither of them was particularly full of love for the Ministry.

She glanced at her notepad, where the official title of her Imperial liaison had been scribbled. Doctor Elliot Wyatt, Chancellor of the Interior, had invited her to meet at a commercial center in the heart of the Empire called Pavillion. He was a decrepit man of substantial influence, having celebrated four centuries of life just a week prior on top of a millennium of service from two clones on his record. His genetic template had deteriorated beyond repair, so he was finally on the way out, permanently this time. Though Kathaleen did not doubt that his memory would be celebrated within the Empire. His service to Far Harbor was second to none.

<>-----<>-----<>-----<>-----<>

Pavillion really was quite a sight to behold, Kathaleen thought. The primary structure was a terraced pyramid, skinned with dazzling reflective panels and suspended a dozen kilometers above the ground on two pairs of enormous antigravity generators. A broad quay ran along the length of the perimeter, dotted with thousands of jetties and slipways of various sizes and purposes. Water features spilled off the sides, funneling into massive teleportariums on the ground to be recycled.

It was the brand-new shining jewel of the Harbor. A commercial hub for a dozen lesser nations, with penthouse estates for the ultra-wealthy and enough fine dining for even the most discerning gourmand. Complete with all the trappings and frills usually found much further coreward. And in typical Imperial fashion, a cruiser squadron was moored at the Kroalin Anchorage - also a new construction - far enough away to be mostly unnoticeable but well within range to flatten it all if anything got out of hand.

Kathaleen made a note of a couple of things in particular. Four fusion thrusters were built into every corner, bigger individually than some skipships, tucked away behind waterfalls and industrial equipment. The Ministry had been assured they could be sparked at a moment's notice and that they provided enough combined thrust to compensate for any failure in the antigrav system. 

Well, the Ministry disagreed. The safety margins were not high enough. So the engineers included a redundancy for the redundancy; one-billion-liter polymer balloons hidden in blow-out compartments throughout Pavillion. In the event of a total catastrophic failure, they could - in theory - give the populace enough time to escape. If you weren't looking for them, they were all but invisible.

It was impossible, however, to miss the security towers that dotted the otherwise-pristine skin of Pavilion. They were cleverly disguised, but the bulky laser emitters were not retractable, which rendered the attempt fairly moot. They probed into the cloudless sky, tracking incoming ships, ready and waiting to zap any that made a wrong move.

A security ship latched onto Kathaleen's podcraft, inching the small vessel through a swamp of other podcraft, skipships, and even a few destroyers. Despite first appearances, it was well organized. Ships were docked according to size, with the largest berths closer to the interior: that's where the destroyers were. At least two squadrons of them, Kathaleen noted. Probably a permanent security fleet. They were small, triangular designs, with a bulkier hexagonal rear that held the fuel cells and primary drive cone.

There was no discernable sway that usually came standard with floating structures. Typically, the antigravity generators had to compensate for air currents and shifting loads, which propelled the entire construct into a gentle rocking motion. But Pavillion was so massive that it didn't matter. It was like stepping onto solid ground.

Everything was skinned in a smooth white ceramic, inlaid with bluish metal accents. A low wall was made in a similar fashion that ran along the length of the quay and, when combined with a nearly invisible shield, ensured an excellent view and patron safety. Lamp posts were erected a moderate distance apart in opposing pairs and cast a warm, slightly dim light, which gave the extravagant docks a strangely homey presence.

A valet met Kathaleen and her escort. He was a young, handsome man, quite dapper in a set of fine silks. And he was armed, of course. Beneath the folds of his coat, a weapon, probably a sidearm. They doubled as port security, Kathaleen guessed.

"Welcome to Pavillion." He flashed a disarming smile. "My name is Myles. I'm your escort."

Kathaleen extended her hand warmly. "Hello. Kathaleen Balliol. Nice to meet you."

"The pleasure is all mine. First time?"

Kathaleen nodded. "Yes. Quite impressive, I must say."

"Yes, yes. There's a lot to see. Should we have the time, I'm sure Doctor Wyatt would love to give you a tour."

"I'd like that," Kathaleen said.

"I'll have it arranged. Not many people get to visit Pavillion on the house. It's quite the opportunity."

"So I've heard. What's the average docking fee?"

"Well, space is limited, so most patrons use the public teleportariums. But a small berth for one day will run you somewhere in the range of 1,000 splinters." Myles smiled again. "So not cheap. It's the jewel of our kingdom, after all."

"A heavily-armed jewel," Kathaleen noted, glancing up. The security towers were a lot bigger up close.

Myles chuckled. "Yes. Well, one can never be too prepared."