Stray (8 page)

There's no stilettos, either.  It was a funny thing to notice.  Nenna's wardrobe is full of platform boots, and sandals, and a couple of pairs of court shoes, and that's what they're wearing in the movies too.  Haven't seen anyone tottering about on pinpoint high heels.  Make-up and hair is pretty similar – other than the popularity of day-glo dyes – and there seems to be a complex tradition involving henna-coloured designs on your face.  Geometric patterns on guys, and curly tendrils for girls, usually on one cheek or the corner of the forehead or drifting up from the throat.  It seems to mainly be worn with really formal, dressed up outfits.

No printed-out books that I've seen.  That sucks.  I don't mind reading onscreen, and there's no glare or eyestrain problems if you're reading inside your head, but it's just not the same as a proper paperback.  Also, no meat in all the meals I've eaten so far, except for fish.  And that not very often.  At least, I think it's fish.  Maybe they cook up the monsters they hunt.

Though it's common not to change surnames when you get married on Tare, the tradition is for the husband to take the wife's name, so 'Lents' is Tsa Lents' wife's family name.  That's kind of cool.

Beyond the stars, rampant consumerism

I have money.  The allowance has an official name which is very long and vague, but boils down to "Lost Aliens Stipend".  Nenna and her mother are taking me shopping for clothes and to see some kind of sport called Tairo.

I keep swapping between excited interest and an unexpected urge to start yelling.  I far prefer shopping on Tare to starving on Muina, and yay relatively benign alien civilisation.  But the allowance gave me a loud, clear message that what happens now is I learn the language, find a job, build a life here.  Getting me home is just not a priority to these people.

Working on gratitude adjustment.

Making a display

Nenna finds my taste in clothes very boring, but otherwise it was a fun day.  It's hard not to enjoy shopping, and I found clothes I liked and managed not to have my head explode from all the layered interface displays everywhere, and didn't gawk too much at the occasional person who looked really outrageous – blue glowing patterns beneath skin, hair extensions that reach out and touch passers-by, clothing that constantly oozes and changes shape.  Nenna called these kind of people 'teba', which I think might be the equivalent of Goths.  Or avant garde experimental artists.  They were certainly an exciting reminder that I wasn't in just any old shopping centre.

Plus Tairo rocks.

Picture a big glass box, with the audience in rows all up against the outer walls.  There's a hole in each wall, painted a different colour, and a bunch of poles at different heights – a lot like canary perches.  Add four teams playing a kind of extreme handball with three balls at once.  Then make the players totally Spiderman Jr, able to bounce up the walls and off the poles and leap and twist and somersault – and fly.

Psychic powers, just like the blacksuits.  Psychic powers are connected to this Ena in some way, and apparently almost everyone on Tare can use the Ena to some mild degree, though things like flying is elite athlete stuff.

Or, possibly, the Ena or the interface enhances natural psychic abilities.  Nenna's explanation was way too confusing.

Anyway, the Tairo match was great fun to watch.  I could feel the players thud off the walls right in front of me, and they do things which would make Cirque d'Soleil green.  And we had a really nice meal, and Nenna's mother talked to me after about, well, girl-things and how it all works here.  The birth control means I won't have periods, for a start, which is a big bonus.  And she gave me a cream which is some kind of super hair remover.  Use it once or twice a year and no stubble.  Deodorant comes in waxy sticks.  She gave me a few tips on polite behaviour, and then made me cry because she reminded me so much of Mum, all dry and calm and comfortable, and she held me while I made an idiot of myself and told me I didn't have to pretend not to be homesick and frightened. 

January

Tuesday, January 1

Triple the New Years!

Happy New Year! I wish I was watching fireworks right now.  I wonder if New Year is half as big a thing here, since it happens every four months?  Nenna's older sister Liane is going to come over today and we're going to go to the Roof.  I can tell Nenna's not really comfortable with the excursion: the outside on this planet is basically cold and stormy or cold and windy, and most people simply never go outside.  I tried describing Australia to Nenna, and I think even Sydney Harbour would freak her out, let alone somewhere like the Outback.  Tarens are severe indoor types.  I'm not exactly bush savvy, but, wow, I hope Nenna never gets zapped to Muina. 

Whoosh

As Taren days go, I gather this was a good one.  Not raining, only lightly overcast, and winds that you could stand upright in.  The sea was seriously far down, and looked like the kind you see in those paintings of sailing ships almost standing on their ends.  But even the sea was nothing compared to the overwhelming hugeness of this city.  The largest land mass on their planet, and almost all of it one whitestone block, like an unsymmetrical step pyramid that just goes on and on.

There was plenty of outdoor activity, but mostly confined to tanz (airships) arriving and leaving in the distance.  But I did spot a few other people standing out on the vast whiteness.  Maintenance workers, Liane said.

Nenna's sister is more serious and not quite as nice as Nenna.  Not nasty, but she wasn't too good at hiding how impatient my slow, stupid-sounding speech made her.

Thursday, January 3

Fruit of the Sea

Much of the food on Tare is grown underwater.  I thought some of the vegetables were like seaweed, but I didn't realise how many were water plants.  And then there's plants grown in the big atriums and inside 'parkland', and vats of algae and hydroponic installations.  There are a few bits of land which aren't covered by city, but it sounds like they're mostly wind-blasted nature reserves.  They farm fish in ocean 'arrays', and red meat is an incredibly expensive delicacy.

Today was spent mainly on interface training while Nenna was at school.  Well, it's not really interface training any more, just kiddie school.  Lessons designed for six year-olds are still hard for me
to follow, and very dull.  At times I'm just tempted to watch the entertainment channels instead, but after stumbling into a show which I afterwards discovered was labelled "in-skin", I decided I needed more language skills before randomly sampling the entertainment here.  "In-skin" isn't a euphemism for porn, though I bet it's used for that.  It means that every sense that the interface is able to record is transmitted to the audience.  Sight, hearing, smell, and touch.  I never entirely lost track of me, sitting on a couch, but someone else's experience was layered over the top of that and I could only cope with a few minutes of that before I had to stop.  Then I went and had a shower.

I keep telling myself that I need to be more responsible about my schoolwork, and then five minutes of basic maths leaves me gritting my teeth with anger.  I.  Just.  Finished.  High.  School.  I know addition.  I'm hoping to convince someone to tailor this stupid course to me sooner rather than later.

It's clear that the Lents are giving me some settling-in time before starting to push, but soon Sa Lents will want to work on his study of Earth, and of course I can't live with the Lents forever.  From what little my ineffectual interface searches have shown me, strays don't have a lot of career options open to them even after they've learned the language.  And I can't figure out how long the Taren government will pay for me to try.

Nenna's thinking about careers right now too: she has to do some aptitude tests tomorrow, and is pretending not to be worried about it.  She says she's going to be a song star, and doesn't need to excel at this aptitude chain.  Song stars are almost as popular as the Setari are, and Nenna's favourite show in the world is one where this girl is a song star
and
a Setari.  Lots of cute guys, as you can imagine.

There are practically no images of real Setari.  The blacksuits don't do publicity, apparently.  They're taken to the KOTIS island when they're really little, and are raised to be paranormal soldiers, with limited visits to see their families.  I couldn't work out if they can choose not to go.

Saturday, January 5

Fall apart

Just got my diary back.  A lot of not-great stuff happened, and I won't be staying with the Lents any more.

Nenna did well on her test, and the next day she was allowed to take me out on her own to celebrate.  Of course she decided to show me off to her friends.

We went to a place which was a cross between a café and one of those video game arcades where people have
Dance Dance Revolution
competitions, except this was a psychic powers show-off arena.  There was a table of girls waiting, and a couple of guys, and it wasn't fun being exotic curiosity of the month.  It's not that they weren't nice, or sneered at me or anything.  They got a big kick of listening to me talk in English and even though my attempts to speak Taren are insanely confusing, they hung on my every word as I told them my 'survival' adventures: they were just as interested in what I'd done on Muina as what Earth is like, which is something the KOTIS people didn't really care about.  Being outside, finding your own food, sleeping under the stars: that's all incredibly foreign and scary to Tarens.

They also wanted to know everything about the Setari I'd met.  The Setari have some kind of security level which means that you can't film them (using the interface – I expect an ordinary camera would work on them).  They show up as outlines on interface recordings unless you have permission to capture their image.

My mobile was a useful way to avoid having to keep talking, though it's running low on batteries again.  Nenna's friends recorded all the song ring tones, and made me promise to translate the lyrics, which I guess would be a good language exercise.  They seemed to like the two Gwen Stefani songs, and
Mr Brightside
. 
Sweet Dreams
by Marilyn Manson weirded them out, but the one they liked best was that closing theme to the
Portal
game –
Still Alive
– and so I guess they have a thing about syrupy-sweet sounding music.  That it's a psychotic, murderous computer totally contradicting itself is
not
something that's going to translate.

After a while the two guys had a match on the Psychic Showdown thing and that's where it stopped just being embarrassing and got messed up.

By this time, thanks to Nenna's patient and devoted explanations of all things Setari, I knew a bit more about psychic powers.  Everyone has a connection to the Ena, which seems to be some kind of psychic dimension (or world of dreams, or something).  The connection manifests as telekinesis or pyrokinesis, etcetera: there's a couple of dozen known psychic talents.  The original Muinans were really strong in their connection to the Ena, more so than most of the people on Tare are now.  Tairo players are strong, but the most powerful psychics are in the Setari, where gifted children are pushed to extremes to increase their abilities.

However, with the interface and 'circuitry' in certain rooms, even weak psychics can be boosted to use whatever talents they have.  The two guys were 'projectors', I guess you'd call it, and they were able to make illusions.  Not very clear ones, but it was fun to watch.

Strays are thought to be fairly strongly connected to the Ena, so before we were due to go home Nenna had me try out a couple of things – image projection and trying to float – which involved me standing in the centre of the room thinking really hard about doing those things and nothing happening.  I didn't have to worry about accidentally burning or blowing things up since the room had a filter that meant it only enhanced certain kinds of actions, and to be honest I was glad nothing happened because it would have been weird to suddenly be psychic.

Nenna's ability is teleportation, though she's not strong enough to move more than a foot or so even when boosted.  But it was amazing watching her flicker from one spot to another: it made her into more than just a talkative kid.  Something magic.

If she puts all her effort into it Nenna can take a passenger, and she offered to 'jump' me.  And that was a really bad idea.

We jumped to a nearby atrium and fell two floors.  I've a broken
collarbone and lots of bruises.  Nenna's much worse.  She hurt her back, and even with advanced nanotech medicine she's going to be in hospital a long while.

She didn't die.  I'm so glad.  So incredibly – I couldn't have stood it.  Because, you see, it was me.  They're not sure why, but they think that something about me made Nenna's jump go wrong.

So I'm on the way back to the KOTIS island.  Not with Sa Lents this time, but a grim greensuit escort.  It was an accident, but I feel so awful.  I hurt her.

Sunday, January 6

Back to the Lab

Endless medical scans.  Apparently they'd already tested me for potential psychic powers, but the only sign they could find was the possibility of being a projector (perhaps the least useful ability in a world where everyone is their own home movie theatre).  When they finally sent me off to get some sleep – back in my old room – I can't.

Part of that's because I'm sore.  They use nanites to glue broken bones back together, but it still needs to heal properly, and I have to lie on my back not to pressure my collarbone.  The pain meds wore off too quick.

More tests tomorrow.  They haven't been able to find any reason at all for Nenna's jump to have gone strange. 

Monday, January 7

Turn it up to 11

Today they moved on to practical experiments in a different part of the KOTIS building: a huge, reinforced room with observation windows and massive blocks of greenish metal in a row from small to large.  Test Room 1.

First 'they' (voices in my head of people I'd never met) had me stand in the centre of the room and told me to try to project illusions or teleport or move a little box or do anything at all.  I couldn't.  I felt a complete dick.

Then they sent in a Setari.  He was about twenty-five, reminded me strikingly of Johnny Depp, and had the nicest smile I've ever seen.  Ever.  He told me his name was Maze (or Mase, maybe – all the Taren words I write down are serious guesses as to spelling – the alphabet doesn't quite correlate to the letters I'm used to).  He lifted each of the metal blocks in turn using telekinesis, though he was only able to make it halfway through the row.  Then he had me stand next to him, and told me to do exactly what I did when Nenna jumped us.  I told him I didn't do anything, just stood there while she held on to my hand, and he told me to do that then, and held on to my hand while I tried not to look incredibly embarrassed, or to think how much Nenna would want to be in my place.

Maze began lifting the blocks again.  And made it about two thirds through them, and was quite wide-eyed by the time he was done.  I would be too, since the last few blocks were bigger than school demountables.  They brought a different Setari in, a very beautiful woman around the same age, her hair in a long braid.  Her name was Zee, and she did the same thing, except she started out wide-eyed.

After this was endless, boring variations of hand-holding and block-lifting.  They found that whatever it is I'm doing keeps working for a little while, even if they let go of my hand, and decided I'm a new ability: a magnifier or an amplifier.  Not nearly as fun as having psychic abilities of my own, but I guess it's more good than bad that they were all excited and disconcerted.  Back in my room now; time for kindergarten.

Tuesday, January 8

Suckitudinous

They decided to expand my interface.  Apparently all the Setari have an interface network all over their bodies, instead of just on one side of their head, because it increases their link to the Ena and thus their strength.  They gave me a bunch of 'hypoinjections' – even in the soles of my feet! – and
then
told me what they'd done.  And then switched off my interface so that even my language tool went away.

Tare nearly had a Casszilla incident.  They could have at least pretended to ask.  I went hot and dizzy and said really rude, overloud things in English and only just stopped myself from shouting because I had to work at not crying in front of them.  This was horrible enough the first time. 

Friday, January 11

O.o

Cannot begin to describe how awful I feel.  Contemplating vengeance of the direst sort.

Monday, January 14

For the ones that are still alive

Well, they nearly killed me this time.  I've been in the infirmary for the past few days on life support.  My expanded interface
really
expanded and I started having convulsions.  Apparently.  I don't remember too much of it.

I still feel awful; I can barely sit up to write this.  It'll be a few days before I'm anywhere close to not-ill. 

Friday, January 18

Apologies

Nenna sent me an email.  She sent it a couple of days ago but my interface hasn't been on.  And when they turned it on, they only gave me my language tool, kindergarten and bare-bones basic room functions.  Ista Tremmar tells me that I'll be given access back after further assessment, and that I can write to Nenna, but I can't explain anything to her, or tell her much about what it's like here.  Then she gave me a big file of rules to read, but my head wouldn't be up to it even if it was in English.  The interface has stopped expanding but I'm still horribly headachy.