After discovering the Navy's secret breeding program at the Bahamas resort, the thirty-seven members of Project Constellation confronted their handlers and demanded full autonomy. The Constellation Institute was formally established with international legal protections. Meanwhile, the peace treaty with the Adjacent Realm — negotiated during a collective dream state — remained unfulfilled. The permanent embassy in the In-Between has never been built. The interdimensional neighbors are still waiting. And the quantum processors that accidentally harmed their reality are still running. Now, with dimensional instability increasing worldwide, the call finally comes — not from the Navy, but from the White House.
The phone rings at 7:14 in the morning, which is rude. Priya is mid-pour on her first cup of coffee — the good stuff Ji-woo brought back from the Korean grocery store, dark roast with notes of chocolate and regret — when the ringtone cuts through the kitchen like a knife through silence.
Not the normal ringtone. The government ringtone. The one that sounds like a polite doorbell but carries the emotional weight of a subpoena.
Maeve is already awake, sitting cross-legged on the couch in her oversized Rutgers sweatshirt, her copper hair in a catastrophic bun, staring at her phone with an expression Priya has learned to recognize: she already knows.
Don't answer that yet.
Why not?
Because I need thirty seconds to figure out how to tell you that the President of the United States wants to meet us, and I want to phrase it in a way that doesn't make you drop that coffee. It's the good coffee.
Priya drops the coffee.
Ji-woo emerges from her bedroom in a silk sleep mask pushed up on her forehead and an expression of pure, targeted annoyance.
It is seven in the morning. Someone better be dying or getting married. Those are the only acceptable reasons for noise at this hour.
(on her knees, mopping coffee off the floor) The White House just called. The President wants a meeting.
(long pause) Do I have time to do my hair?
The phone rings again. Priya answers.
Ms. Sharma, this is the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Please hold for the National Security Advisor.
(mouthing to Maeve and Ji-woo) National. Security. Advisor.
A male voice comes on the line — clipped, professional, and underneath the calm, Priya can feel the razor edge of barely controlled panic radiating through the phone like heat from an oven.
Ms. Sharma, I'll be brief. We have a situation that requires Project Constellation's unique capabilities. The President is requesting an in-person briefing at the White House, tomorrow morning, with yourself and any members of your team you deem essential. Air Force transport will be arranged from your nearest facility. Is 0900 Eastern acceptable?
We'll be there. But I want to be clear about something — we're not military assets. We're independent contractors with autonomous status under international agreement. We take meetings. We don't take orders.
A pause. She can feel him grinding his teeth through the phone.
Understood. We look forward to a productive dialogue.
The Situation Room is smaller than it looks on television. Priya notices this immediately — the same way she notices that the coffee is better than anything she's ever had (and she's furious about it, because tax dollars), that the chairs are surprisingly uncomfortable for a room where people decide the fate of nations, and that every single person at the table is terrified.
Not nervous. Not concerned. Terrified.
She can hear all of them.
The three of them sit on one side of the table. Three twenty-year-olds in blazers — Priya in charcoal, Maeve in navy, Ji-woo in black — facing down the most powerful room in the world. Ji-woo had insisted they coordinate outfits. "If we're going to be underestimated," she'd said on the plane, "we might as well look incredible while it happens."
President Chen opens the meeting. She's composed, direct, her public face locked in place. But underneath—
Thank you for coming on short notice. I'll dispense with the pleasantries. Three days ago, NOAA detected a series of quantum fluctuations along the Pacific Rim that match the signature profile of the 2003 Incursion event. The fluctuations are increasing in frequency. Our scientific advisors believe the Adjacent Realm is attempting renewed contact — not an attack, based on your previous intelligence, but a sustained attempt at communication. We can no longer afford to leave the embassy provision of your treaty unfulfilled. We need that diplomatic channel open. Yesterday.
With respect, Madam President, we proposed opening the embassy six months ago. We were told to wait for "appropriate governmental frameworks." Now the frameworks are on fire and you need us to put them out.
General Webb's face darkens. Priya can hear exactly what he thinks of a twenty-year-old girl lecturing the President.
Ms. Sharma, the delay was necessary to establish proper security protocols. We're not in the habit of opening doorways to unknown dimensions without—
(calmly) General, I can see approximately three hundred possible outcomes of this meeting branching from this exact moment. In the ones where you finish that sentence, we spend forty-five minutes arguing about jurisdiction and control. In the ones where we skip ahead to the actual problem, we save the world by Thursday. Your call.
Silence. President Chen almost smiles.
Let's skip ahead, then. What do you need from us?
Official authorization for Constellation to establish and operate the interdimensional embassy as outlined in the Treaty of Two Realms. Diplomatic credentials recognized by the State Department. And one thing that's going to be hard for everyone in this room: trust. You have to let us do this our way. You can't send Marines into the In-Between. You can't wire us with surveillance equipment. Your monitoring devices don't work there — physics is optional in that space. You send us, or you send no one.
You're asking us to send three twenty-year-old girls into an alien dimension with zero oversight.
(without looking up from the briefing folder) Women. Three twenty-year-old women. And we've already been there. We negotiated a peace treaty in our pajamas. I think we can handle it in blazers.
Secretary Okonkwo leans forward. He's the youngest cabinet member, and unlike the military brass, his mind is racing with possibilities rather than threats. Priya can hear it — a cascade of ideas tumbling over each other like a waterfall.
If I may — the trade implications alone justify this mission. The Adjacent Realm beings described technologies that operate on principles we haven't discovered yet. Dimensional mechanics, energy systems, materials science. The first nation to establish trade relations with an interdimensional civilization gains an economic advantage that makes the Industrial Revolution look like a bake sale.
Which raises the compensation question. Ms. Sharma, your team will be functioning as ambassadors — effectively, the highest-ranking diplomatic representatives in human history. The current ambassador pay scale tops out at Level IV of the Executive Schedule. One hundred and eighty-three thousand dollars annually. Given the extraordinary nature of this assignment, I'm prepared to recommend a special pay grade, plus hazard differentials, plus a percentage of any trade revenue generated through the embassy.
Secretary Alderman, I appreciate that. But I want to make something clear — we're not doing this for money. We're doing this because if someone doesn't establish communication with the Adjacent Realm soon, the dimensional instability will keep getting worse. People will get hurt. On both sides.
(pause) That said, we're not stupid. Yes, we accept the pay grade. We live in a mobile home and eat pizza four nights a week. We could use the money.
Maeve coughs to hide a laugh. Ji-woo doesn't bother hiding hers.
(leaning back in her chair) I'm going to be honest with you three. I have two dozen advisors who've spent their careers in diplomacy, intelligence, and military strategy. Every single one of them told me this meeting was a mistake. That I should send experienced professionals to manage this situation and keep your team in a support role.
And?
And I looked at the data. You negotiated a peace treaty that prevented an interdimensional conflict. You rescued seventeen kidnapped children in forty-eight hours. You located three stealth submarines the Navy itself couldn't find. You did all of this before your twentieth birthday. My advisors are experienced. You're something else entirely.
You have authorization. Full diplomatic credentials, effective immediately. General Winters will serve as military liaison, but operational decisions are yours. How soon can you be ready?
We've been ready for six months. The question is how soon can you handle what comes back through the door we open.
(quiet, honest) I don't know. But we'll figure it out. I assume that's what your treaty calls "hope."
They've been given rooms at Blair House, the President's guest residence across from the White House. The suite is absurdly nice — oil paintings, antique furniture, a bathroom bigger than Ji-woo's bedroom back home. The three of them are sprawled across one king-size bed in pajamas, ignoring the two other bedrooms entirely, because some habits are sacred.
This pillow costs more than my car.
You don't have a car.
Exactly. This pillow costs more than my nonexistent car. That's how expensive it is.
(staring at the ceiling) We're going to be ambassadors. Actual ambassadors. With credentials and everything. We're going to represent the entire human race to beings from another dimension. Is anyone else freaking out or is it just me?
I've been freaking out since the phone rang yesterday. I just hide it behind precognition and good posture.
I'm freaking out that I'm not freaking out. Does that count?
The average age of a U.S. ambassador is fifty-three. The youngest ambassador in American history was twenty-eight. We're about to shatter that record by eight years.
We also can't legally rent a car in most states. Diplomatic immunity probably doesn't cover Hertz.
(rolling over to face them) Okay, real talk. Tomorrow we reach out to the Adjacent Realm and start building the embassy. This is the biggest thing humanity has ever done. Bigger than the moon landing, bigger than splitting the atom. First contact. Permanent contact. We need to decide right now: what kind of ambassadors are we going to be?
Honest ones. We tell the Adjacent Realm the truth — that our government is scared, that our people don't know about them yet, that we're figuring this out as we go. No lies. No diplomatic double-speak. They can sense deception anyway.
Practical ones. The In-Between isn't a conference room — it's a space where reality is negotiable. We need protocols. Safe entry and exit procedures. Communication systems that work across dimensional boundaries. I've been sketching spatial maps of what I remember from the night school visit. The geometry is non-Euclidean, which means normal navigation is useless. But I can feel the structure. I can find paths.
And brave ones. Because here's the thing nobody said in that meeting today: we don't really know what's going to happen. My precognition shows possibilities, not certainties. We could walk into the In-Between tomorrow and everything goes perfectly. Or we could discover something that changes everything we think we know. I can't see past certain branch points. There are... blind spots.
Blind spots?
(quiet) Points where all timelines converge. Where every possible future passes through a single moment. I can't see what's in those moments. They're too important. Too dense with possibility.
Well, that's terrifying. On that note, can we order room service? I want to eat my feelings and these people definitely have the good chocolate cake.
They order room service at Blair House at midnight — the most expensive chocolate cake the U.S. government has ever funded — and fall asleep in a pile, three sisters bracing for tomorrow.
The facility is sixty feet underground, somewhere in Virginia. The room they've been given is circular, white-walled, and empty except for thirty-seven chairs arranged in concentric rings. The full Constellation has been assembled — flown in overnight from campuses and homes across the country.
The air hums with collective anxiety and excitement. Thirty-seven enhanced minds in one room, all broadcasting, all trying to stay calm. For Priya, it's like standing inside a beehive made of emotions.
(to the group) Here's the plan. The inner ring — that's Vanguard. Me, Maeve, Ji-woo, Alex, Sophia, Kai, Elena. We go through first. We establish contact, open the space, and make sure it's safe. The rest of you anchor us from this side. Your resonance keeps the connection stable. If anything goes wrong, you pull us back.
Define "wrong."
If Maeve says run, we run. If Ji-woo loses spatial orientation, we pull back. If I stop transmitting, you pull us back immediately. My telepathic signal is your lifeline. If it goes silent, assume the worst.
(the healer, quietly) I'll be ready. For whatever comes back.
General Winters watches from behind a reinforced observation window alongside a team of scientists and a very pale-looking Presidential aide who keeps checking her phone as if hoping for a cancellation order.
(over intercom) Constellation, you have authorization to proceed. For what it's worth — I believe in you. All of you.
The thirty-seven take their positions. The inner ring of seven join hands. The outer rings connect, forming a web of psychic energy that hums like a tuning fork. The resonance builds slowly, deliberately — they've learned control since their first chaotic cascade.
✧ INITIATING FULL CONSTELLATION RESONANCE ✧
37 consciousnesses linked
Inner ring: VANGUARD — proceeding to the In-Between
Outer ring: ANCHOR — maintaining dimensional stability
Status: GREEN
The transition is nothing like the dream state of night school. That was gentle — falling asleep and waking somewhere else. This is deliberate. Intentional. Like stepping through a doorway that exists only because thirty-seven minds agree it should.
Ji-woo feels it first — the spatial shift, reality folding like origami around them. Then Priya hears the change — the background noise of the physical world fading, replaced by a silence so deep it has texture. Finally, Maeve sees the timelines collapse into a single bright line, and they're through.
The In-Between is not a place. Priya understood this intellectually from the night school visit, but experiencing it fully conscious, fully present, with all her senses engaged, is something else entirely.
It's a space defined by intention. The geometry responds to thought — corridors form when you need them, rooms expand when you imagine them, light comes from everywhere and nowhere. The colors don't have names in any human language. The closest Priya can describe it is like standing inside music that you can see.
(eyes wide, turning slowly) I can map this. The whole thing. Give me ten minutes and I can identify the stable zones, the transition corridors, the anchor points. This space wants to be organized. It's like a house that's been waiting for furniture.
Timelines are clearer here. I can see further, with more precision. It's like the In-Between removes interference. Priya, can you reach the Adjacent Realm from here?
Priya extends her telepathic sense outward, past the boundaries of the In-Between, toward the Adjacent Realm. The membrane between dimensions is thin here — thinner than anywhere she's ever sensed. And on the other side, she feels them. Waiting. Patient. Hopeful.
(voice catching) They're here. They've been waiting. This whole time, they've been right on the other side, waiting for us to come back.
Light blooms in the space before them — not the harsh fluorescence of the underground facility, but the warm, honey-gold radiance they remember from night school. The Being of Light materializes first, serving as bridge and translator, followed by two presences they recognize: Harmony-Keeper and Pattern-Singer.
Welcome back, beloved children. We have waited with great patience and greater hope. You come now not as dreamers but as builders. This brings us joy.
The communication is not in words — it's in pure knowing, concepts that arrive fully formed in the mind like memories you've always had. But Priya translates for the recording devices she knows aren't working (physics is optional here, and electronics chose to opt out) and for the thirty outer-ring members receiving her telepathic broadcast back in the physical world.
We come as ambassadors. Officially recognized by our government. We're here to fulfill Article Three of the treaty — to build the permanent embassy where our peoples can meet safely.
We sense the fear of your leaders. It radiates through the membrane like heat. They send you because they cannot come themselves, and this makes them feel small. Tell them: fear of the unknown is wisdom. It becomes foolishness only when it prevents action. They have chosen action. This is courage.
We have prepared a gift. A contribution to the embassy's foundation. In our realm, structures are built from shared intention — consensus made tangible. We offer the framework. You provide the purpose. Together, we create a space that belongs to neither dimension and both.
Pattern-Singer extends what might be called a gesture, and the In-Between responds. The formless space around them begins to crystallize — not into rigid architecture, but into something organic, alive. Walls that breathe. Corridors that adjust to the traveler. Rooms that reshape themselves based on the needs of their occupants.
(gasping) The geometry — it's stabilizing around the anchor points I identified. They're building along the same lines I mapped. We're thinking the same spatial thoughts. That's... that's incredible.
I can see the timelines converging. In almost every future, this embassy stands. It works. It becomes the foundation of everything that comes after.
(to Harmony-Keeper) Before we go further — I need to be honest with you. Our government's interest in this embassy isn't purely diplomatic. Our Secretary of Commerce is already thinking about trade opportunities. Our Treasury Secretary is calculating economic frameworks. Some of our leaders see this as a business opportunity first and a relationship second. I won't hide that from you. You deserve honesty.
A pause. Then, from Harmony-Keeper, something Priya doesn't expect: amusement. Warm, genuine, ancient amusement.
Young ambassador, trade is not shameful. Exchange is how civilizations learn each other's values. When you trade with someone, you discover what they treasure, what they need, what they create. Commerce is a form of conversation. We welcome it — so long as the conversation is honest. And you, Priya Sharma, have just proven that it will be. You told us the truth about your people's motives before we asked. This is more valuable than any technology we could exchange.
We also have commercial interests. There are materials and concepts in your dimension that do not exist in ours. Your art, in particular, fascinates us. The way you encode emotion into pigment and sound and word — we have nothing like it. A painting by one of your artists would be studied in our realm for generations. You create beauty from suffering. We find this extraordinary.
(whispering to Maeve) We're going to sell them paintings. The first interdimensional trade good is going to be art. Secretary Okonkwo is going to lose his mind.
(whispering back) I can see that timeline. He literally falls out of his chair.
Time moves differently in the In-Between. Three hours pass in the physical world while what feels like a full day unfolds in the embassy space. The Vanguard team works alongside the Adjacent Realm beings, combining human intention with interdimensional architecture.
Ji-woo is in her element — she moves through the forming structure like a conductor leading an orchestra, her spatial sense guiding the geometry into stable configurations. She creates a map in her mind that she shares through the resonance network: entry corridors for humans, arrival spaces for Adjacent Realm visitors, meeting halls that exist in both dimensional frequencies simultaneously, and — her personal touch — a garden space where the light shifts through every color the In-Between can produce.
The main chamber is stabilized. Twelve anchor points, redundant pathways, emergency exit corridors that route back to any point in physical space within a fifty-mile radius of the facility. If anyone gets lost, I can find them. If anything collapses, I can reroute. This is the most beautiful thing I've ever built and I need everyone to acknowledge that.
Acknowledged. It's stunning. Now stop fishing for compliments and help me set up the communication array.
The "communication array" is unlike anything human engineers would recognize. It's a psychic amplification structure — a series of resonance nodes that allow telepathic communication between the embassy and the physical world. Priya designs it based on the filtering techniques she learned from Mabel and the amplification principles from Constellation training. When it's active, anyone in the embassy can transmit thoughts directly to the anchor team on the other side.
(testing the array) Anchor team, this is Vanguard. Can you hear me?
From the physical world, through thirty minds acting as relay stations, the response comes back clear as a bell:
Loud and clear, Priya. Also, General Winters is crying. She's pretending she's not, but she is. Just thought you should know.
Maeve stands at the center of the main chamber, where the dimensional frequencies overlap most strongly. She can see the future branching from this point — not just days or weeks, but years. Decades. Centuries.
(to the Being of Light) I can see the future of this place. It's beyond anything either of our peoples imagines right now. This is the beginning of something that outlasts all of us.
That is the nature of bridges, dear child. They outlast the builders. This is not tragedy. This is purpose fulfilled.
They come back to their bodies like divers surfacing from deep water. The transition is smoother this time — Ji-woo's exit corridors work perfectly, guiding their consciousness back along stable pathways. Priya opens her eyes to fluorescent lights and concerned faces and the most beautiful sound in the world: applause.
The observation room has filled while they were gone. General Winters, the scientific team, the Presidential aide (no longer checking her phone), and — Priya blinks — President Chen herself, watching through the reinforced window with tears on her cheeks.
(voice cracking slightly) Embassy is confirmed. Communication array operational. Our monitoring equipment couldn't follow you in, but the telepathic relay gave us a complete real-time feed through the anchor team. The data is... extraordinary.
(exhausted but triumphant) Madam President, the Embassy of Two Realms is open. The Adjacent Realm has accepted our credentials and our terms. They're ready for formal diplomatic relations whenever we are.
(over intercom, composing herself) And the trade provisions?
(deadpan) They want to buy our paintings. I recommend we start with the Impressionists. They're going to flip over Monet.
Somewhere in Washington, Secretary Okonkwo falls out of his chair. Maeve doesn't even bother looking smug.
They're back in the king-size bed. Same pajamas. Same pile. The chocolate cake has been reordered, because some things are non-negotiable after building an interdimensional embassy.
So we're ambassadors now. For real. With credentials and a pay grade and an embassy that exists between dimensions.
And a communication array that works through thirty-seven psychic relay nodes.
And an interdimensional art trade that's going to collapse the global art market within six months.
We should get business cards. "Priya Sharma, Ambassador to the Adjacent Realm." Underneath: "She can hear what you're thinking, so be nice."
(laughing) I want that on a coffee mug.
The laughter fades into comfortable silence. Outside, Washington sleeps — a city full of powerful people who just learned they're not the most powerful beings in the neighborhood. And in a mobile home park in the Midwest, thirty other young people are texting each other, processing the impossible thing they did today, becoming something no one planned for them to be.
(quiet, serious) There's something I haven't told you. About the blind spot.
The convergence point you mentioned. Where all timelines pass through a single moment.
It's closer than I thought. Something is coming — not from the Adjacent Realm, not from our government. From somewhere else. A third party. Someone or something that's been watching both dimensions and doesn't want this embassy to succeed.
Of course there is. Because things were going too well. When has anything in our lives gone smoothly for more than twelve hours?
Can you see what it is?
No. That's what scares me. I can see around it, past it, through every timeline that survives it. But the thing itself is invisible to precognition. Whatever it is, it exists outside the probability stream. Outside time, maybe.
(reaching for both their hands) Then we deal with it the same way we've dealt with everything else. Together. Whatever this is, whatever's happening — we figure it out together. Deal?
Deal.
(squeezing their hands) Deal.
Three hands linked. Three minds open. Three young women who were designed as weapons, chose to be bridges, and are now — officially, credentialed, and against all reasonable expectations — the first ambassadors between worlds.
The chocolate cake is excellent. The future is uncertain. And somewhere in the In-Between, the Embassy of Two Realms glows softly in colors that don't have names, waiting for tomorrow's visitors.
They were designed as weapons.
They chose to be bridges.
They became ambassadors.
They're still becoming.
END OF Constellation — The Embassy — Episode 15: May 5–9, 2026
Next: Constellation — Convergence — Episode 16
The blind spot has a name. And it's been watching.
Go To >>> Constellation - Convergence - Episode 10: March 3-5, 2026 <<<
The knock came at 7:47 PM, sharp and deliberate—three raps that seemed to carry their own weight. Maeve felt it before she heard it, a ripple in the immediate future that made her hand freeze over her calculus homework.
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