Terra Two

by Francis Rosenfeld

  One good thing that came out of the children's healthy respect for the sisters and Sarah in particular was that her semi-formal teaching of botany and chemistry became an actual course of instruction that was studied very seriously.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  "None of us were born teachers, we shared the knowledge we accumulated over the years the best way we knew. It was impossible not to be enchanted by the innocent curiosity, the spirited energy that surrounded us, always wanting to know more, asking the most unexpected questions, making us all look at life through different eyes."

  "In the ambitious challenges that lay before our young ones we saw our own story, one life ahead, with all the enthusiasm and avant-garde ideas that fueled our dreams and all the reckless daring that made them possible. Were we crazy? Of course we were, why else would we be here?"

  It followed naturally that the place that made perpetual healing just another part of daily life became a medical research center, even though the distance added logistical complexity to the task. First housed in the transparent building the laboratories and testing areas grew so big they needed their own structure and most of the functions moved to a new building, even though Sarah and sister Roberta kept their headquarters in the old building out of habit. Sarah also cherished her old wooden shed with no windows for sentimental reasons and spent long hours there checking on the drying plant racks, mixing up tinctures and preparing concretes.

  The farms were large now and mostly automated and the sisters turned their efforts to sharing their knowledge with the curious and unruly crowd of youngsters that roamed around their daily tasks and mixed themselves in every activity oblivious to social mores and suitable manners, a truly ironic commentary on the sisters' complete rejection of social pretense.

  The children were practically born with the neural interlink bracelets attached to their arms and the usual ways of communication were foreign to them, like florid eighteen century language feels unnecessarily convoluted to a haiku poet. The majority of them mostly thought and the only reason they learned how to speak was that their parents forced them to.

  "How are you going to communicate with grandma?" was the usual commentary and persuasive refrain of the parents and it worked most of the time, but when the children were among themselves they kicked the practice of speaking to the side like a toy they had outgrown.

  The sisters unwittingly enabled this habit for practical reasons, sharing their knowledge with their students was so much faster without having to do the double work of putting their thoughts into words and processing the words they received in return. Besides it was really difficult to follow through with speaking when all the answers came back in thought form.

  "God forbid we ever run out of parts for the bracelets, we'll turn into a nation of deaf mutes", sister Joseph grumbled, although she was always the first to banish chatter as a nasty and irritating habit and never spoke unless she had no other choice.

  Sarah often spent time meditating in the round crystal hall, taking in the serene images of the fields that surrounded her and clearing her mind to let in happiness and peace. The settlers stopped by sometimes to find respite from their hectic lives, the sister's quarters exuded a secluded tranquility that reminded Sarah of her childhood visit to her aunts. The only difference was that there were no stone walls and doorways to hide in, just the iron will of its inhabitants to keep worry and trouble at bay.

  There was one tradition Sarah devotedly maintained - the kitchen was always stocked with fresh baked pastries and cocoa, jars of herbed honey, pitchers of lemonade and bowls of fruit so that curious children who ventured deep into the insides of their transparent home would discover and enjoy yummy treats just as she did in her time.

  ***

  "Are you ready?" Seth interjected, brusque as always. "We're going to be late for the graduation ceremony."

  Sarah was fumbling with the folds of her robe, trying to figure out how they went, the draping didn't seem right.

  "It's hopeless", Seth's encouragement followed, "don't bother, you're not going to get it right in time, just come as you are."

  Sarah came out of her room, slightly peeved that she wasn't going to look perfect for her students. They were used to seeing her in her plain attire, always covered in dust or mud and for once she wanted to look worthy of deference, especially now when the course of instruction of her young disciples was coming to an end.

  "Don't worry, they'll worship you", Seth smirked, half jokingly. Sarah could never tell when she was serious.

  The hall was filled with parents and overexcited youngsters, all looking their best for graduation and completely unable to keep still.

  All the courses of instruction were represented and the sisters' group advanced to their designated place and waited in silence for the ceremony to proceed. The sisters didn't know what drove the graduation committee, but they found it fit for Seth to give the commencement speech. The latter accepted this task graciously, as if she expected it. One of Seth's great skills was to rise to every occasion as if it was specifically designed for her.

  She spoke for a long time in a soft, soothing voice that sounded warm and encouraging, speech and thought blended into one, she spoke about new things to be discovered and how eager all the teams were for them to join in, she recounted their first terraforming efforts and the dreams they had for their adoptive home, she spoke about the wind and the rain and reminded the young ones not to take them for granted, she thought more than spelled out a blessing for the graduates' future and happiness.

  "Above all there is no more important discipline of the mind than owning your thoughts. Never stop questioning your reasons, never abide by rules you don't understand, never give up your dreams. There is an entire universe out there waiting for you to discover it, don't disappoint it by being afraid."

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  "The children discovered the virtual environment and immersed themselves in it with fervor. For them this artificial world was fairy tale, adventure land and superhero world all wrapped into one flexible and forgiving package right at their fingertips, a place that could be anything they wanted."

  "They came up with ways to use it that we would never have dreamt of, so at home with the programming and the controls that all but sister Roberta had trouble keeping up with their upgrades and suggestions. Once they discovered this world it became their world, just like Terra Two became ours. They knew all the shortcuts and hidden access ways and could wander blindfolded through their virtual maze. The parents went after them looking for doors to walk through only to see the kids pop in and out of walls, tree clumps, ponds, and the most popular - clouds as they moved from one space to the next."

  Sarah showed up out of thin air in the middle of the field, dressed in her work overalls and beaming with joy. She had just attended a virtual reality live feed of a bioengineering conference in Christchurch, a very exciting event to which she was thrilled to have been invited. For all practical purposes it was like being there, thanks to sister Roberta's creative brilliance. A similar device in New Zealand mimicked her every move making the interaction seamless.

  She was delighted to see her college friends and some of the professors. She had a few years on them as far as cellular repair was concerned and most of her friends were a decade or so older, but in glorious shape.

  "How was it?" asked Seth, smiling. Sarah saw that she and sister Roberta have been waiting for her to return so to speak. The cloaking bubble allowed her the comfort of talking to air and soybean bushes without feeling absurd, since she knew nobody could hear or see her.

  "Exquisite, you should see CAHS's new bio-pattern development labs, they created a dodo bird for this particular event, a real one. They didn't know what sounds a dodo bird makes, it being a mythical creature and all, so they gave it the vocal chords of a crested crane, it somehow seemed appropriate. We spent the entire conference trying to tune out the screeches so we can focus on the presentation. I tell
you, the best day of my life!"

  "Why did they pick a bird and not a plant, it's a horticulture school?" asked sister Roberta.

  "More interactive. They had numerous plant exhibits too, have you ever imagined a terrestrial elk coral? It was huge, bright yellow and had bird nests between the branches. You know, living on Terra Two desensitizes one to weirdness, I should have gasped at the sight but it looked like it belonged, so I just acknowledged its presence next to the chestnut tree. The weather was so chilly I shivered all the time, I am not used to temperatures in the seventies anymore."

  "You should have told me before you started", sister Roberta eagerly interjected, "I could have adjusted the temperature to your comfort range, you were not actually there, you know? Next time I'll disable the ambient component."

  ***

  "How many times do I have to ask you not to leave the virtual reality compilers on?" Seth asked a rambunctious group of children who were playing in several environments at once and forgot to turn them off upon getting bored. The kid environments were open to all brainwave scans for simplicity and easier monitoring, so there was no telling when you were going to enter one if you didn't know it was there. Seth got especially annoyed when she stepped into a muddy jungle without warning, to be welcomed by a noisy group of imaginatively designed creatures, but this time she had to find her way out of an underwater adventure through a malachite mine and fall to her exit atop a massive waterfall.

  "That's it, I've had it!" the leader snarled. "I am revoking all your VR privileges for a week and I want to speak with your parents this afternoon. You will all meet me in my office", she managed to utter before she stepped onto a secluded beach covered in conch shells.

  It was an interesting fact of life that the leader, who was way into her hundred and twenties by now, looked the same age as the kids' parents, so the little ones had no understanding of the toll one hundred years of repeating the same request can have on one's nerves. Seth had mellowed with age and a combination of wisdom and wear softened the sharp thunderbolts of her eyes. The wise pondering gaze was the only true measure of her age.

  The children were watching sheepishly as she came out of the bubble, significantly more irate than she was when she got in.

  "Parents, now!" Seth boomed, sliding across the glass floor without a sound.

  It took a while for the children to garner enough enthusiasm to get back home and confess their fifteenth VR occurrence that week to their progenitors and by the time the small penitent group of parents and guilty offspring was gathered in Seth's office the latter was in much better spirits.

  "Please, sit down", she said, affably. "The children are of course grounded for a week, but that is not why I asked you to come here." Seth got up and touched a lit display on the virtual compiler. The room decor changed to Sarah's herb drying shed.

  "We figured since the children are spending so much time in these environments they might as well go to school in one. Of course there would be no difference between Sarah's real shed and the virtual ones so we would like both yours and your children's input to make it more exciting. Some components are not open to discussion - the chemistry equipment, the curriculum, the standard tests, the environmental requirements - temperature, lighting, ventilation. The rest is open to creativity and interpretation."

  The parents pondered the option unsure how to approach it but the children jumped at the chance with gusto, coming up with the most unlikely modifications containing but not limited to using live seahorses as stirrers, running the entire simulation upside down, having the chemical reactions sing cute little jingles when correctly balanced, making Sarah look like a blue Russian cat, having three dimensional models of organic molecules made of colorful hard candy float above their heads, chasing each other around the lab on high speed chairs and of course the oldies but goodies sound making whoopee cushions, randomly falling water balloons and flying zombies.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  "I worry that many events worth recounting were left unmentioned either due to the dulling of my memory or the constraints of time but I trust that younger members of our community will add their stories to the chronicle and bear testimony to the life we built here under the blessing of Grace."

  "I ask for forgiveness for the details my forgetfulness banished to oblivion, testify that the ones described are true and accurate to the best of my knowledge and remain your humble sister in faith, Joachima. We don't know how long our lives will be, we were already blessed with longevity beyond human reach, but we know that three things will last forever--faith, hope, and love--and the greatest of these is love."

  Sarah's fingers paused for a second, caressing the old touch table; she rested her gaze on the endless soybean fields whose velvety foliage shifted color like the surface of the sea in the breeze. The suns were setting and a myriad of shiny metal studs showed up in the coffee caramel sky.

  "Are you done yet?" Seth asked flatly, as she watched Sarah write the last phrase, as usual managing to get incredibly close without any sound. The waters of time had not habituated Sarah with this behavior and she was still startled by it when it happened because she was usually engaged in an activity that captured all her attention and the leader's proximity always took her by surprise.

  "It feels like the events themselves took less time than their description and we've been here for over a hundred years. Good thing our life expectancy is longer than anticipated, I wouldn't have lived for the completion of this project otherwise."

  Sarah knew better than to take the leader's theatrical effects to heart. She turned, poised.

  "It's almost done", she said.

  "I'd say it is completely done, it is supposed to be a account of the most important events, not the roman fleuve of our generation. There are cob webs on your lab equipment. The children aren't educated. You haven't filed any research papers during the last two months. I have to study in a Roc bird's nest because nobody reminds the youngsters to put away their toys. The planet surface gathered an additional inch of galactic dust since you started."

  Sarah got the gist of the repartee.

  "I'll finish today", she said. Seth turned on her heels and vanished, quiet as a ghost.

  Sarah with the angel hair picked up Solomon, who protested as always, and got closer to the glass to watch the sunset. She could hear giggles and running from the adjacent hallway where the kids were moving from bubble to bubble, and the irate mumble of sister Joseph admonishing them and complaining about cats jumping at her feet unexpectedly. Some of the sisters were still in the fields, she could see them among the plantings programming farm equipment for the following month.

  They were expecting a ship full of visitors tomorrow and everybody was busy with last minute preparations, sister Roberta had a presentation for the guest science team that of course put everyone on edge, they weren't sure if this was despite of or because they didn't know what it was about.

  Far into the distance the city was bustling with activity and shuttles shuffled back and forth over the land and the water.

  Sarah put Solomon down, turned off the touch table and walked towards the door. Her old companion followed her like a shadow, weaving around her ankles with a litheness that defied his age. They walked together through the glass doors out into the fields with their footsteps muffled by the soft texture of Terra Two's dirt.

  They stopped at the bean tree and sat under its canopy with Solomon curled up in Sarah's lap as he sat every evening. Light diminished gradually and her gaze gleamed, focused inside rather than out. She turned on her bracelet and joined the old chant as the sisters started evening prayer.

  "As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be a world without end." 

  Commencement address to the class of 2198

  I never would have dreamt to watch God's creation spring to life under my eyes, not to mention be entrusted to make it happen, but here I am, more than a century later, sharing whatever wisdom I gathered during
this incredible journey with you.

  We don't always understand the way we are brought to our purpose and only see it in retrospect, a frozen unchangeable story. We fashion our future from each moment; some decisions we make for ourselves and some are presented to us, they are presented and repeated as many times as needed for us to understand them.

  If we are lucky we rise to the challenge but often the things we learn about our hearts in the process aren't easy to bear. Some people insist that hardship forges character, others profess that ugliness and indignity crush the human spirit. I will not comment on either theory since it is more important why character is forged.

  We were so young when we arrived, so strong in our beliefs, so well prepared we thought we were ready for anything. We couldn't possibly anticipate what anything meant in this strange land and when the unexpected occurred, it always took us by surprise.

  The most important lesson of our journey was the understanding that there is so much more to creation than the human mind can grasp and we shouldn't have taken for granted that which we believed to be true.

  If your soul is unwavering, your soul will be tested, and tested again, and turned around, and tested unexpectedly again, ad infinitum. Don't squander your essence in this losing battle with deceit; truth, goodness and love never cause suffering.

  Clean and mend the canvases of your lives and learn to see the wishes that always seem to elude you as the most important threads. Watch the world work miracles around you and know that nothing is impossible in the sight of God.

  Our greatest achievements often came in the form of crisis and as we fought for our existence we cut new paths forward for your generation; the challenges we surmounted became the foundation of your work. We mirror our times but are always too close to our tasks to see their significance.

  Be happy, beloved, keep your dreams alive, try the impossible, dare to change the world! Never forget that you are the pieces that make up the puzzle of history.