The Texas Renegade Returns

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 for 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.

Anyway, Nenna doesn't hate me. She apologised to me. So now we're apologising to each other. I told her what little I guess I can – her father's probably able to tell her more anyway – and promised to translate the lyrics to the songs when I can.

It was so good to get her email.

Saturday, January 19

Blacksuits

Another test session today with Zee. We did basic lifting. Or, rather, I stood around feeling tired and extraneous while she lifted things. Then there was another woman, Mara, who was talkative and had wonderfully sproingy curly hair. She and Zee and Maze are all from 'First Squad': they're the oldest of the Setari, one of the three original combat squads created from children trained intensively to deal with monsters from the Ena.

After they decided the early results were promising, the Taren government vastly expanded the Setari program, and now there's a dozen six-person squads, most of them five to seven Earth-years younger than First Squad. There's also a lot of people in training who haven't yet qualified for active duty on the squads. The Setari program has been running for 60 years (twenty Earth years).

Mara explained all this to me while Zee was working out if being any distance from me effected the temporary increase with her strength. Mara is primarily a Speed talent, but she can also make a glowing light which curls about like a kind of cutting whip. I made her even faster, which she was pleased about, but something about how the whip worked really shocked them. It came out in a different colour and they spent ages studying it and being confused. Then I was put back in my box. I hate being a lab rat.

More Labrattery

After a few hours I was recalled for more experiments with First Squad – all of them this time. There's four girls – Zee, Mara, Alay, Ketzaren – and two guys – Maze and Lohn. All in their mid-twenties, all wearing their black uniforms and looking very fit and smart and...worn. I didn't like to ask if all the years fighting monsters ran together for them, or if they ever get to stop.

The uniform the Setari wear is very interesting. It's flexible and stretchy: solid stuff but not so unwieldy as a wetsuit, and – it's hard to think what it reminds me of. Expensive sport shoes, with their airholes for breathing and all the extra stitching and complexity. It's very tight-fitting and all-covering – the neck part goes right up to the chin and the arms to fingerless gloves, and the soft boots seem to be built in too, and it looks like it must be a pain to take on and off. It's far more layered and complex than the spandex suits of superheroes, but with a cape and a big logo I bet they could pass.


There's something unspeakably tedious about standing about while people act worried and excited, and you don't really understand why. Especially when they started communicating on channels I didn't have access to instead of speaking, which really brought back the whole "you're an experimental subject" feel again.

Maze, Zee and Mara – all of First Squad – are relaxed and friendly, though, which helps. They talked me through some of the implications of the fact that I'm not just enhancing some of their powers, but changing them. It really increases the danger. The accident with Nenna was an example of that – it's possible that I didn't simply increase her strength, but changed the coordinates of her jump as well. They were thinking of it only in terms of an overshoot before, but now they think it was a distortion, and that means that anyone trying to teleport me anywhere would be at huge risk.

I don't seem to distort everything though. Or, at least, it's not noticeable if I am. But Mara's 'Light whip' has a more melting effect when I enhance her, and Alay's Illusion casting goes totally weird. Ketzaren felt dizzy when she tried to make me levitate and Lohn – who gives a good imitation of a Star Wars blaster shooting beams of Light – made a burning wall instead. There was a big pause after that, where First Squad stood about looking disconcerted and listening to someone I couldn't hear, who I guess was having conniptions.

The one thing they did establish is that I consistently distort. So Lohn's beams always became a wall, and Mara's Light whip was always the same. They cheered up after that. They're still going to have to go carefully working out just what effect I have, but consistently weird is a lot better than randomly weird.

And now I'm back in my box waiting for the next test. I think it's the fact that the door won't open to me that bothers me most.

Monday, January 21

Still alive still

I spent the beginning of the day translating song lyrics for Nenna. I am improving. My grammar is terrible, and I had to write a huge amount of explanatory notes to make half the concepts remotely understandable, but it showed me how far I'd come in being able to communicate. Talking to First Squad between testing sessions has been helping. I was feeling very proud of myself, even if I could tell it was a botched job, and had just mailed it off to her when I was brought down for another testing session.

This was more of the same, just working on the limits of me enhancing people. So they had two, then three of the Setari touching me at the same time to see how many people I could enhance at once.

And down I went. I never used to pass out on frequent occasions. I'm not epileptic, and I never had a fit till I came to this planet. Until now they weren't sure if I was being physically stressed by whatever I'm doing to enhance people. And, well, now they know.

They're getting more anxious about killing me, I think. The greysuits, that is, and whoever it is giving orders over the interface. I don't see these at all, just First Squad and greysuits.

First Squad were very upset, and Zee and Maze came to the infirmary after I'd woken up again and we all apologised to each other for nothing which was our own fault. They don't seem bothered by the tests, they just think they should have somehow predicted what was going to happen and prevented it.

Change of pace

Sa Lents came to see me for the first time since Nenna's accident. He didn't act like he blamed me or anything, but it was still uncomfortable. No experiments 'today', just talking with Sa Lents, trying to describe Earth's history.

My sleep schedule is totally messed up. The lack of proper day and night, and the way the people I've been working with all seem to be on different shifts, really messes with me. Their breakfast is my dinner and so forth.

Tuesday, January 22

Zan

Today I was assigned to a girl called Zan. She's from Twelfth Squad and is another telekinetic. She's short and very serious and has blonde-brown hair which is very fine and cut into a soft and wispy bob. Quite pretty golden-brown eyes.

They've decided to postpone further experiments with me because they think I'm too worn down. Being half-starved on Muina and then that bad cold and then the broken collarbone and all these bad reactions I've had are adding up. Even though I've had regular meals and not really done anything since I was rescued, I've not put on much weight and certainly aren't fit. They want me to get healthy and they're going to confine the tests purely to Zan's Telekinesis for a while. She only has the one psychic talent, with no secondary talents at all.

She's also going to train me. In some kind of judo, which is not exactly something I'm keen on. Hitting people is...just not me. They want to study the effect of prolonged exposure to Zan, and at the same time make me a bit more capable of surviving, should they ever decide it's a good idea to use me in combat. I really am a potential weapon to these people.

It's hard to tell what Zan thinks of all this. She's what Mum would call 'scrrrrupulously correct' and even though she's trained all her life to be an incredibly deadly monster fighter, she didn't act as if there was anything odd about teaching some unco beginner how to stand and how to step back and forward over and over again. Must be dull as hell for her.

She did do the wide-eyed thing when they tested how I enhanced her. By herself she's a lot stronger than Maze. With me, she can lift all the test blocks at once.

Wednesday, January 23

Lab Rat One

I spent all of today having test after test in the medical labs. Ista Tremmar is polite and all, but she's still inclined to leave me sitting on an examining table for an hour while they talk about me. If I didn't have the interface kindergarten to keep me occupied I'd go mad.

Maybe that's what Zan does during our exercises – zones out and reads her email. If I ask her questions, she answers in the briefest possible way, and she never asks me anything. I miss Nenna's chatter so much. I miss that she treated me as a person as well as an exciting curiosity.

When I was delivered back to my box today I drew a rat on all my clothes, and wrote 'Lab Rat One' underneath it, making a little logo for my official designation on this world.

Today I particularly miss Alyssa. I've only known Alyssa a few years, but she's the only person I really tell things to. I hadn't realised how important that was to me.

Thursday, January 24

Attitude adjustment

Strange how going around wearing my lab rat logo makes me feel so much better. This morning's session with Zan went well because I felt less like I was helplessly doing what I was told, and was, well, doing what I was told while wearing an ironic comment about it.

We're still working on stances. Step forward, step backward, over and over again, very controlled. I concentrated more on it this time, deciding I at least may as well do the best I can, even if I know that I'm never going to be really good at this kind of stuff, and will only be laughable in comparison to athletic people who have been training since they were five. I'm going to have a go at cracking Zan, too – at least get her to treat me a little less like an assignment. I don't care if she takes a teacher/student attitude, even though she can't be more than a year older than me, but I want some kind of interaction, some kind of response.

I'm really curious about her now, about if she's so serious and unsmiling all the time, and why. First Squad was a lot more open and friendly. And I know I'm not going to get a chance to work out Zan if I'm all sullen and unwilling. I mightn't have a whole lot of power and independence in this place, but I can control the way I act and that will make me feel better.

I've never thought of myself as a 'typical' Australian – that whole laconic and stoic thing – but I'm trying to use that attitude to cope with here. To copy Nick, who is always so calm and unfussed by everything that the world throws at him. Not super-optimistic or unbelievably Pollyanna, but he sets a great balance between dealing with the bad stuff and enjoying all the good bits. Nick would never lose sight of the fact that I'm no longer starving on Muina.


Nick's an ex-step-cousin. His dad was married to my Aunt Sue when we were younger, and we saw a lot of each other – all the family holidays and so forth. His dad started being an ass, so my aunt divorced him, and Nick does a lot of making sure he doesn't go completely off the rails. We still live in the same area, though, and Mum and Aunt Sue keep including Nick in holidays as if we're still related and I see him at inter-school events. He's not quite one of those incredibly popular people like HM, but he has a relaxed focus on what he thinks is fun which makes him really great to be around. Nick would be far better able to cope with being here.

Friday, January 25

Baby steps

I've started looking forward to my sessions with Zan. Not because I like the exercise particularly, but because I'm actually doing something. Medical examinations are the worst – sitting around for ages, holding still for the benefit of the scanners, or getting blood samples taken.

Since I'm waiting around all the time, either in my box or being examined, I'm damn lucky I have something to do, but kindergarten is keeping me sane and driving me nuts at the same time. I want back the access I had before my accident. I can't watch any of the entertainment channels, or even try to read books longer than twenty words. I asked about getting access back, and they said I had to reach certain qualification levels. In other words, no play until I'm out of school. It's obviously an attempt to push me to improve my language skills, but, heck, I'm sure I'd learn lots of useful words watching that silly singing Setari show Nenna liked so much.

Training, even though it's repetitive and I tire quickly, is like being let out of a cage. While Zan is correct and distant, she's also patient, and I think it makes training some idiot stray better for her if I try. I do feel a complete gangling gawk beside her; she's so small and fine-boned. But quite deadly. I saw her practicing when I came in this morning, and was wholly dismayed at the thought of ever trying to move like that, but it seems she's aiming to train me to dodge, rather than try and hit things. And to be fitter and wheeze less.

Saturday, January 26

Speed trial

I hit a round of tests in my interface kindergarten, and was on the back foot from the start since tests trigger a 'test environment', and it's almost like being in a darkened room inside your own head. I could just see the real room. I hadn't realised how thoroughly the interface could impact my senses, and while Ista Tremmar told me later that the interface is restricted from making people completely blind and deaf for safety reasons, that did not reassure me in the slightest.

The tests were timed, which made them incredibly hard for me, since I barely have a basic command of the language, and it takes me too long to understand exactly what the question is before trying to formulate the answer. So of course I ran out of time and only finished the maths test. I aced maths, but failed the tests overall. And now I seem to be repeating kindergarten, which sucks, since the questions are incredibly easy. I don't know if I can get better at this language before I die of boredom.

Looking forward to my session with Zan immensely, because it doesn't matter how badly I speak.

Sunday, January 27

Hands off

Today's practice didn't go quite as scheduled.

I was frustrated over failing the tests yesterday, but stepping back and forth is pretty calming, and so is Zan. I was just thinking that maybe I should call her 'Zen' instead when she stopped stepping back and forth and turned to look up.

The practice room is small and bare, with a floor of padded mats and a high ceiling with a window 'upstairs' in one wall so people can watch. Ista Tremmar had been up there earlier, but when Zan looked there were a half-dozen Setari. The most noticeable was a tall blonde guy at the front, his hands raised in fists against the glass as if he'd just hit it. He was glaring down at Zan like he wanted to hit her instead. Then he stormed out of the chamber, most of the other Setari following him.

Two of them stayed, and I was caught up looking at the girl first because I don't think I've seen anyone that gorgeous outside model magazines. She had that antelope look, but athletic rather than stick-thin. Even at that distance I could see her eyes were very black, with big irises and long lashes. Her skin was creamy bronze and her hair was unreal – these two spirals curling down past her ribs. She was almost as unsmiling as Zan, but I think her attitude was mainly curiosity. Not angry, anyway. The guy with her looked enough like her to be her brother (though no long pigtails, heh), and I didn't recognise him until he tilted his head a particular way to talk, and I realised he was one of the two Setari who had found me on Muina.

Just then Zan told me to go stand in the corner, which totally pissed me off. Even though I'd figured out that there was a yelling match coming, I'm not a dog to be told to sit and stay and get put out of the way. But I went, and just in time, as the door to the hall opened and the blond guy stormed in. There were a bunch of other Setari looking in the door at us, but they stayed there.

"This is it?" the guy was yelling (well, in Taren, you get the idea). "This is your special assignment? The reason we're all on downtime is you're playing with some profanity stray?"

Swear words aren't in my language tool. I can tell it's a swear word, but not what it means, so it's like my head says 'profanity' whenever someone swears. I find that funny and annoying at the same time. I need to find someone who is willing to teach me what they mean.

I knew enough of Zan by this time to not be surprised at her complete lack of reaction to some really buff guy standing over her and shouting. She just said: "Stand down," in a curt little voice and went and picked up one of the towels we'd brought in with us.

I'm not so good at not reacting, so when the blond guy turned toward me, I was glad Zan had stuck me in the corner. And I'm pretty sure I did the open-mouthed gaping thing when he suddenly lifted up and was slammed into one of the walls, for all I knew perfectly well Zan was a telekinetic.

"I said, 'Stand down', Lenton," Zan said, and, wow, totally cold voice. She wasn't smiling or frowning, but her eyes had narrowed and I decided then that it would never be a good idea to piss Zan off.

The Lenton guy didn't take the hint though, and looked really offended and told Zan to put him down before he made her regret it. He was calling her "Namara", which is her surname. All the Setari seem to call each other by their surnames. Zan calls me "Devlin" and I generally avoid calling her by either name because I think it sounds stupid to call someone you see every day by her surname. Even First Squad seem to do it most of the time. I think – hope – it's some kind of on-duty thing and that they're more human to each other when they're not being all proper.

Before the shouting match turned into a bigger mess all the Setari except Zan, who was probably expecting it, paused in clear reaction to suddenly getting a message in their heads. Zan put the Lenton guy down and though he glared at her, he strode off without another word.

"Get changed," Zan said to me, glancing back up at the observation room. The two Setari there were still watching, but turned and left when she just stood looking at them.

"Everyone's really competitive?" I asked. "Or just no manners?" Except, given my grammar and how slow I say stuff, it was more like "Compete all much? Manners no?" I really hate sounding so stupid. Yoda with a lobotomy.

Zan didn't reply. She never responds to questions like that, and I sure as hell wasn't going to push her, so I went and changed out of the loose training jumpsuit into my knee-length cargo-style pants and a sleeveless t-shirt featuring my lab rat logo. I really did draw it on every shirt I considered mine – not my school uniform, but the clothes I'd bought with Nenna and her mother. Zan put on her black uniform, which she manages in a surprisingly short amount of time for something so skin-tight.


Next was the big testing room, where every Setari in the complex had obviously been ordered to assemble. Maze had told me there were twelve active squads of six people so the rows six people deep showed me who was in which squad. They left spaces for the people who weren't there – three missing teams and a few random gaps. And then they brought me 'into channel' and I saw that even a few of the missing people were 'there': attending the meeting through their interfaces rather than in person. Little see-through holographic pictures of them filled in some of the empty spots. Lohn from First Squad and Zan were the only ones out of place, over to one side near me.

Since Maze was at the first spot of the first set, it was pretty easy to guess that the squad captains stood at front. The team next to him was around the same age – mid-twenties – and everyone else late teens or perhaps twenty. The gap left by Zan in Twelfth Squad was the first spot, which meant she was their captain. News to me. The blond guy was next spot back and was trying to look super-correct, though his face was tense and set. The girl and guy I'd seen in the observation room were the captains of Third and Fourth Squad respectively.

Even the people in charge had shown up as interface projections: the first time I'd seen any of them. They wore blue, which I guess means 'officer'. No-one was chatting, or doing anything but looking straight ahead. And me the only person not in uniform, sticking out like a sore thumb.

Another interface projection 'appeared'. A woman, compact and stern, her hair clipped really short, with a hint of grey in it. She had the really black, almond eyes of the observation-room girl and guy. The Setari all saluted her – they do a fist to shoulder sort of salute – so it was pretty easy to tell she was in charge.

I can re-watch what happens next, and have a few times, because it occurred to me I could record everything. It's really weird to be able to do that, and I'm glad they've not taken the ability away, since this is a scene it's interesting to play over. So far as I can tell, I can't play the recording for anyone who doesn't have the right security level. It makes me wonder what security level I have.

"This is a level 5 classified briefing," said the woman. "As you are aware, Fourth Squad recovered a displaced person from Muina during last month's mission. Namara and Kettara will demonstrate why this has become important."

Zan went first, turning and looking at the big metal blocks. "Current strength," she said, extra clearly, and lifted the largest block she was capable of managing alone. Then she glanced at me, totally giving orders just by turning her eyes in my direction. I was hard put not to roll my own, but obediently stuck my hand on her shoulder, which she'd suggested as less restrictive than hand-holding.

"Enhanced strength."

I had turned to watch their faces when she lifted all the blocks. Only First Squad didn't react, since they'd seen all this before. Most of them did the eyes-going-really-wide thing. A few shifted from their spots, or were openly astonished or upset, but then went back to stony-faced as quickly as they could manage.

Lohn came forward next, and said: "Intense Light projection," and shot a few of his burning beams into a target. He gave me a little smile and when I put my hand on his shoulder said: "Same skill, enhanced."

The burning wall freaked the Setari out a good deal more than an extra-strength Zan. A lot of them exchanged glances before they went back to being correct.

"Subject Devlin's effect on skill users is still under investigation. As you have observed, it is not simply a matter of increased potency. In addition, multiple simultaneous enhancements causes her lethal systemic shock. Until further notice, the subject has been assigned to Namara. Under no circumstances initiate physical contact with the subject unless instructed. Dismissed."

The woman in the blue uniform vanished, as did most of the other watchers. The Setari squad captains, although they were probably dying to give Zan the third degree, sent their squads straight out the door and then most of them left as well, though a few stopped at the door to talk to each other. Maze came across to me, Zan and Lohn and told me I did well. I pointed out that I don't actually do anything, but he said at least I wasn't doing anything consistently and he and Lohn grinned at each other and talked about what would have happened if the enhancement hadn't worked. First Squad is so much more human than the rest of the Setari.

And then the leader of Fourth Squad came over. I was wondering if I should thank Fourth Squad for rescuing me, but if anything this guy was even more unsmiling than Zan is. As an added bonus he seemed to be staring at my chest, which was really amazingly uncomfortable until he said: "Experimental animal?"

Maze thought he was being insulting, and said "Rue-el," in a warning tone, but stopped, probably because he saw my expression.

"You can read English?" I asked – in English – completely disbelieving.

"Don't neglect the psychological aspects," the Fourth Squad captain said to Zan and turned away without another glance at me. Though he added, "It's not inapposite," over his shoulder as he walked away to where the Third Squad captain was waiting.

"How he know what say?" I asked Maze, who was taking his turn chest-staring. "Earth contact after all yes?"

"You've written 'Experimental Animal' on your shirt?" Maze asked, clearly upset.

Zan answered my question: "See Rue-el's primary talents are sight-based. He was reading the symbol, not the words."

Psychic psychic powers, in other words. And Zan was standing stiff and still, with her face so set that I couldn't miss that she was mortified. Because she'd had no idea what my shirt said, and the Fourth Squad captain had dressed her down for that, even if it was just with a single sentence.

There wasn't much I could do to fix that, but I did try to explain. "In Australia – in my culture – important able laugh at self. I–" I tugged at my shirt, then read out the words in English and the closest Taren translation. "Lab Rat One. Is true, is what am me here. Pretend not, that stupid. This–" I shrugged. "Cope mechanism. Sarcasm. Make me feel better wear."

"But it's not–" Maze wasn't getting any less upset.

"I kept in box. Take out for tests. What else call it?"

Maze grimaced, but Lohn laughed. "You have to admit her point. So the people of your world think it's important to laugh at themselves? That's an idea I could get along with. But, Maze, no-one will be laughing if we miss that shuttle, so get a move on."

He dashed off with a wave, and since Maze obviously couldn't think of an argument he sighed. "Let me know if you need anything, Caszandra. Although I suppose it must seem like it, your status is not that." He shot the picture on my shirt a grumpy look, nodded at Zan, and strode off after Lohn.

Zan just said: "I'll escort you back" and took me to my room and left me here.

Being able to record everything you see and hear certainly makes it easier to write down a conversation, though my translation of what they said – and what I was trying to say – is probably not that accurate. I hadn't noticed before, but First Squad all call me 'Caszandra', not 'Cassandra'. Taren is a very zeddy language.

Writing this down took hours, but it's given me plenty of translation practice and time to try and work out which of the three – Maze, Lohn or the Fourth Squad captain – that Zan likes enough to make her mind so much what happened today.


Monday, January 28

Roof

This morning started as business as usual with training. Zan, rather than the greensuits, has been collecting me from my room. We get changed in a side room which has a stock of freshly laundered training outfits and then we do a lot of stepping backward and forward and now side-to-side. Zan had gone back to being imperturbable, and I wasn't in the mood to push her, so I was really surprised when, after we'd changed back, she said: "I've been given leave to escort you around the facility, if there's any parts you wish to see."

"Can go outside?" I asked immediately.

I could see that surprised her. People really just don't go outside much, on this planet. "It's night phase at the moment."

"That bad thing?"

"Well..." She shrugged, and led me to the elevator that led to the corridor that led to the walkway that led to the quickest elevator to the roof. It's not nearly so huge as Unara, but the KOTIS building mound is still pretty damn big. It can't all be Setari facilities, even with all the not-yet Setari who are being trained somewhere.

It was very cold and windy on the bit of roof we ended up on. It feels even more like being on the side of a big mountain than going to Unara's roof did. Unara's more an endless blocky roundness, while the Institute is closer to the water and you can really see the down. But you could also see up since the sky was clear for once and so I found a convenient edge and sat down and stared up looking for any constellations I recognised. I would like to at least be able to stare in the direction of Earth.

"This is similar to your world?" Zan asked after a while. Even she can't just sit and not say anything forever.

"Not my part." I supposed Scotland might look like that, if you covered it with buildings. "Australia – big sky, red dirt, blue sea, lots beaches, huge empty inland. Deserts and tropical forests and...harsh, thirsty country. And then flood." I shrugged. "Out here because never not gone outside ever. Walk to school. Go to beach. Garden. What you do when not being Setari?"

I'd asked her before, but she'd ignored the question. This time Zan sighed, ever-so-softly. "If you want to talk, go inside out of this cold. I'm supposed to be watching your health."

But, of course, as soon as we got back inside someone called her away. And it's back to kindergarten in a box.

Tuesday, January 29

Bored Spitless

I suck at learning languages. Other than English, the only one I even begin to know is sign language, and even with that I spend a lot of time spelling words out because I don't know the sign. It annoys me, because I have a good memory, but there's a difference between remembering and knowing something, I guess.

Despite having an entire dictionary in my head cheating for me when I listen to Taren, I'm struggling to 'know' the words. I know yes and no and hello. And new words like Muina and Setari seem to have sunk in far better than 'bed' or 'morning'. Which is all just a whiny lead-up to saying I figured out how to trigger those interface tests and still can't pass because it takes me too long to phrase answers. I need multiple choice answer tests! What kind of planet gives kindergarteners tests this hard?

I can only do the tests once a day, so now I'm sitting around hoping Zan will show up and still be willing to talk. And feeling a bit annoyed with her for not coming back yesterday. And wondering what her other duties are beyond babying me. It looked to me like she doesn't get on with the rest of her squad, or at least not that obnoxious blond guy.

I wonder what they'd do if I drew patterns on the walls? Everything on this planet is so undecorated and white because they use interface 'skins' as their decoration. I've been trying to work out if the buildings are made of the same whitestone as the buildings on Muina. They don't look anywhere near as simple, of course, but they feel the same to touch.

*sulks*

Bleh. Instead of training, I had medical examinations this afternoon. More scans and blood tests and seeing how my heart is going and dull and uncomfortable as hell.

One thing, though – I don't think any of the Setari have told anyone else what my Lab Rat symbol means. At least, Ista Tremmar didn't pay any more attention to it than last time, and wasn't giving me psych tests or anything.

Wednesday, January 30

Tactics

Zan likes 'classical' music. I should have guessed: it fits in with her being all serious and proper. They call classical music 'orchestral music' (tennanam anam). The instrument Zan plays is called a Tyu and looks and sounds to me a lot like a zither, but is larger than the zither they had in the music room at primary school – about the size of an A3 sheet of paper, but much thicker of course – and has softer strings which she plucks. It's made of wood, which is super rare on Tare. I think it's probably rare to have an actual musical instrument, as well, rather than playing a virtual something in a virtual space.

I was just as interested in her rooms. I had been picturing all the Setari stuck in little boxes like mine, but Zan had a small apartment: one bedroom, but with a separate lounge-kitchen combo and a study nook thing and a larger bathroom than mine – bathtub! I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised. You can apply for adult rights at 50 (almost 17) here, and the Setari are a few steps above an ordinary sort of soldier. Keeping them permanently in barracks or whatever probably wouldn't have worked.

Anyway, I thought Zan's apartment was wonderful. She's decorated it in muted shades of green and blue (the public space, that is) with curling patterns which look a bit like ferns that shift and wind about. And she has a cat! A cat like that screensaver cat that drops down from the top of your screen and wanders about, except this one wanders about Zan's entire apartment, and is blue-green to blend in with the walls. You can sort of pat it, even, because your interface will pretend like you're touching something. I asked if there were real cats on Tare and she said a few brought from a planet called Kolar. Only the really rich can possibly have actual pets.

I'm not under any illusion that Zan suddenly wants to be friends. She's been given me as an assignment, and she still acts exactly like I'm an assignment, just that the assignment has been expanded to my mental health as well as physical fitness and dodging. I don't know whether I like her or not, beyond that she's the only person on this freaking planet that I see on a near-daily basis. I can't remember hanging out with any super-serious girls in the past, let alone someone who is part of the military and kills for a living. She makes me curious though.

After this we went and had another stepping session, and I waited till she was escorting me back to my room before I asked her again: "Setari competitive why?" And when she paused, since this was definitely not the sort of question she was likely to answer, I added: "Your squad, why unhappy, holiday?"

"The Setari don't compete directly," Zan said eventually. "But how we perform effects privileges, which assignments we are given, and even whether we remain on active duty. Fighting in the Ena is greatly preferred to the more basic duty which is usual on Tare, and not simply because being in the Ena makes us feel…twice as alive. Twelfth Squad had only just been activated for Ena assignments, but were transferred to training routines, and are very disappointed."

"Mostly fight Ena, not planet?"

"The whole concept of the Setari is to prevent anything from the Ena reaching this world. And to find a way to fix the fractures which have made it so easy for the walls around this world to be crossed." She looked even more than ordinarily serious. "The numbers increase every year and the fractures are widening. Working on Tare, it's just clean-up unless there's a major outbreak. The war is beyond this world."


That was a good deal more dramatic than I'd been expecting. Where I'm going to be placed in this war is something too large to think about.

Thursday, January 31

A proper history lesson

I passed the stupid interface test! Only just – I still didn't finish a lot of the questions, but I got almost all the ones I did answer right. So I now have a new year of school to plough through. Still no entertainment channels or anything, but a small library of children's 'textbooks', which is good. I much prefer being able to freely read the books than to sit through the pre-set lessons and their snippets of information. A thorough browse has given me a lot more background and a better explanation of just what happened on Muina and what the situation on Tare is now.

So, whatever it was happened on Muina happened thousands of Taren years ago. They're pretty imprecise about exactly how long ago it was, because they went through a really rough and chaotic first few decades on Tare, so don't have a very good written record. Kolar is the other main planet which properly remembers being from Muina, but its early records are no better than Tare's. The best I can make out, the evacuation from Muina was between 1500 and 2000 Earth years ago. So ha! to the idea of Earth having been populated by people from Muina – the Egyptian pyramids are over 3000 years old and that barely scratches the surface of Earth's archaeological and fossil record. I guess it is possible that some Muinans came to Earth long before that, but we definitely weren't part of the evacuation dispersal. I never believed that, no matter how similar I am to them genetically. It still makes vastly more sense to me for the Muinans to have originally come from Earth, especially because Tare's population also reflects some of Earth's races.

'Lantar' doesn't refer to the entire population of Muina, either, but to a psychic ruling caste which caused the disaster that made Muina uninhabitable. Back then the Ionoth monsters were only an issue for these ruling Lantar (Lantarens?) when they travelled between planets. It's not clear why they were travelling between planets, but it was common enough that they started a huge planet-wide project to make it easier: creating a little network of permanently aligned wormholes. The result of this was like if you decided to stop earthquakes in California by nailing the tectonic plates together: everything started to rip apart around the nails.

The tearing allowed things from the Ena to more easily get to Muina, where they liked to throw themselves on people and eat them. The Lantarens couldn't immediately undo what they'd done because the places where they'd constructed the main supports of their interplanetary superhighway had been flooded with too many Ionoth. So they built these things called Ddura – the massives the Setari are so interested in investigating – which are artificial Ionoth whose job was to clear out Ionoth from the supports and from Muina. But they immediately lost control of the Ddura, and the situation on Muina began spiralling into chaos: whole villages and cities of people inexplicably dropping dead, and more and more Ionoth coming through and eating people.

All the Lantarens on Muina had a big 'teleconference' (hehe!) and decided they had to leave Muina. They couldn't all manage to go to the same place, and it doesn't sound like they wanted to either. There were some who stayed behind on Muina, but no-one's ever found any trace of them, so they were probably killed.

If you stay too long on Muina, something comes and eats you, or you drop dead. I'm glad I didn't know all this while I was busy boiling wool.

Stepping it up

The medics have decided I'm more or less recovered, so Zan says we'll have two sessions of training tomorrow. So funny to be excited about exercising. I wonder if the Setari have to earn TV privileges as well.

I asked Zan what the Ena looked like, and she said that it's incredibly varied, but that the nearest space looked just like Tare, except without the people. It's a shadow of this world. Now that's freaky.