“Hey, don’t judge me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I can’t be wearing the same four or five outfits every single week. Besides, I have no idea if that hoody of mine is going to last as it gets colder out.”
“You say that now, and then you start off your second semester trying to pay for tuition with boxes of extra clothes.”
“Oh you!” Zoey jabbed at her brother’s sides with a playful level of roughness.
He laughed at her.
* * *
The walkway outside of the condo ran for most of the length of the car park a stone’s throw away. Zoey and her brother resided in one of four units on the fourth floor. On every floor the units were separated by a gated hallway for maintenance workers to get in and fix numerous systems.
Opposite the condo doors along the concrete walkway were trellises that reached the ceiling. They were the first barrier that separated the condominium building from the parking garage, not counting the few meters between them. More than that, they were aesthetically pleasing and blocked some of the sunlight with the vines that grew along their entire spans. It took three trellises and planters to cover the length between any two support pillars, with the exception of the middle of the walkway.
Zoey heard the sprinkler system activate in the planters and looked their way as she passed them. She wondered for how much longer these vines would be watered with it being the second month of autumn.
The support pillars came with round benches jutting out of the bases, which was nice for anyone who wanted to sit outside. Zoey considered the idea for when she needed to read something for class. On a day where it was nice out she would have to try it.
An elevator stood between the condo building and parking garage, amidst the opening where the trellises ceased. Stairs ran on one side as well, though they didn’t always connect with the car park as the elevator did. The elevator on the other end of the maintenance hallway did not connect to the next building to the north, however.
She had checked once already, to her brother’s amusement. She had run down on their side and climbed up the other way. One thing that Zoey had not done yet as take the stairs to the roof of the condo building. She knew that there was one more level of units between her and the top, but she simply had not explored up there as of yet.
Zoey had set foot on the landing of the stairwell when hard, rapid footfalls came and reverberated from the steps below. She was on the way down there, but now she wondered if she needed to move out of the way. Then Tong-Chang appeared, toting a digital pad under her arm. She stopped next to Zoey and caught her breath. She thrust her arms outward, displaying the digital pad in greater detail. It had a note on it.
“My password is ‘Swimming_Bird33,’” it read.
“Tonny, what is this?” Zoey asked.
Tong-Chang said, “Someone throw a rock at our apartment window last night. This note was attached to it. Stars beyond, Zoey, you were right.”
“What do you mean?”
“That note is Il’lyse’s handwriting. This was her personal computer. She’s really alive, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is.”
The digital pad was remarkably similar to the one that Tong-Chang used, unlike the different models that Bon’sinne or Das’ithrios used. This one had thin rubber grips in the middle of the long sides, with the rubber being mint green in color. Zoey held the soft button at the top of the left side and waited a moment. There was no response.
“It’s been a couple years,” Tong-Chang said. “That probably needs to be charged. I brought a power cord with me so we can look at this.”
“I was about to go to the store and browse what they had there.”
“That’s good timing, then. You don’t have to go now, and I’m glad I caught you. Il’lyse was of the mind of letting material things go to people she loved to do with as we please, should anything happen to her. If she’s alive then it’s hers. Yet she gave me this password to use as if I should still keep it.”
“Tonny?”
“I’m sorry, I know I’m rambling a bit, but it would please me to give this to you. You’ll need one. I need to see if it still works once we charge it, but it’s yours if it does.”
Zoey escorted her back toward the condo. They passed Dasos, who was on the couch starting up what looked to be a game. He looked their way curiously before Tong-Chong waved at him.
Her room was notably empty with the exception of the bed and a few small items such as the alarm clock, a wooden rack with three scented candles inside of glass jars, two picture frames with nothing in them yet, the keepsakes from Earth, and a few books stacked in the corner that depicted the major myths and philosophies of Elysium and Ginserei through the ages.
The box that the smaller items had come in was now gone from her space, and the clothes now hung in the bedroom closet along with the iris purple hoody from her time on the ship.
Tong-Chang extracted a rolled, thin cord from the small pouch she often kept at her side, and then she searched around the room. She made for a small plating on the wall closest to the bed. Zoey had wondered if it was an electrical outlet since it was different from the ones she saw on Earth. Tong-Chang pulled back a sleeve on one end of the cord using her thumb, pressed it against one of the four round ports on the plating, and then twisted and released the presumed plug.
She sat on the bed and plugged the other end of the cord into the digital pad directly. Tong-Chang laid the pad upon the mattress.
“Give it a moment, and we can boot it up,” she said. “This is a nice bed set you’ve picked out, by the way.”
“Thank you,” said Zoey.
She had chosen a black, blue, and pearl gray set. The comforter combined two of these colors with silhouettes of a flowering desert plant coming in from two opposing corners, which reminded her of where she came from. The blue ran down the middle length-wise and faded seamlessly into the gray on either side of its width. The sheets and one pillow were the same shade of gray, while two of the pillow cases were blue with black petals or leaves in one corner of either case.
A moment later the bottom quarter of the power supply’s port flashed yellow a few times, and again seconds later. The flashing stayed on periodic repeat while the digital pad remained plugged into the wall.
“You can try it now,” Tong-Chang said, smiling.
So Zoey tried again to boot the device by holding down the button. It loaded up its system, which Zoey admitted was more impressive than what she’d seen on Earth. She tapped into the keys on the interface once the digital pad asked for the password. The one provided by the written note worked.
Tong-Chang put her hands over her mouth without gasping as she often did. She nodded at the screen, her breath quaking. “It’s really her,” she said.
“It really is,” Zoey said.
“Part of me wants to punch that face of hers.”
“Please don’t. It’s kind of mine too.”
Tong-Chang laughed. “You’re definitely you, though. For one thing,no one else I know mumbles random nonsense in her sleep.”
“Who talks in her sleep?”
“You do, you nut. If you don’t believe me you can activate the voice recorder on this thing before you go to sleep next.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Did she always do that? Zoey had no idea. It wasn’t like her uncle on Earth gave a damn to check on Dylan in his sleep, nor had Dylan ever gone to any sleepovers.
Zoey browsed the operating system on the portable computer in her hands. It had all of the college student amenities, plus what appeared to be a game she had never seen before.
“What is this ‘Artifice Squall?’” Zoey asked.
“That’s a tactical roleplaying game,” Tong-Chang said. “It’s about factions of dancers, musicians, and painters as they compete for praise, but ultimately face off against this one group of megalomaniac art critics. It’s one of the few games Il’lyse ever really showed int
erest in playing.”
“Didn’t you three used to go to an arcade a lot?”
“We did. She was happy to get away from the house and spend time with Dasos and me. It was that head-in-the-clouds mentality of hers, I think. We all loved her for it. This, though?”
“It’s like she’s a different person now, from what everyone tells me of her.”
“Maybe.” Tong-Chang lifted the top side of the digital pad. “I’m starting to think there’s more to this than we know.”
* * *
Soror Valide moved from tree to tree, bush to bush, while looking out for any sign of a trap. There was no one visible in the forest around the ravine. She thought for sure someone would have come this way in pursuit of her. She was tired after a long night, and was ready to leave. The stiern-boat remained in the ravine, untouched save for the leaves that had fallen upon it.
This was a mistake, she told herself.
Go back, go back home while you still can, another part of herself said.
She opened the door on the craft’s dockside. It flipped up and down from where the top and bottom portions of the door parted, but the parts struck dirt and rock after coming out by less than an arm’s length. The door struggled to go any further. Soror Valide squeezed in before the door closed. She could feel the side of her boot catch in the top and bottom, forcing her to tug herself free before the door sealed.
Freedom was hers, she thought. Soror Valide made for the pilot’s seat and hit a few buttons in sequence to activate the stiern-boat. The engine hummed. She sat down when she spotted someone coming. The newcomer shot a laser blaster at the protective glass directly in front of Soror Valide. Had the glass not been made to withstand a few such blasts she might have been killed.
The newcomer came into view in time for the craft to lift into the air. Soror Valide held out a hand to obscure her face once she saw her mother. It was unknown if Bon’sinne had recognized her or not, but the stiern-boat’s sensors detected a bunch more shots coming at the underbelly of the craft to no effect.
Can I ever truly go back now?
Soror Valide winced heavily and then flew away.
* * *
“Oh good, there’s an interactive calendar,” Zoey said. “That should help.”
“Do you know the current date without it?” said Tong-Chang. “I’ve been wondering about that for a while.”
“I knew it was the twenty-fourth of . . . something. It was the twenty-third of March on Earth when I left, but the days are an hour shorter there than here, not to mention that the year is also eight days shorter most of the time.”
“Most of the time?”
“Leap years.” Zoey explained to Tong-Chang about how, on Earth, a day was added to the shortest month to compensate for the quarter of a day extra each year had, once every four years.
“Elysium IX’s calendar must be so bizarre to you. Ginserei Prime and Dee Su might as well if I ever get around to telling you about those two. Probably for the best; I wouldn’t want you thinking I was thrice as old as I am.”
The Aelfs had twelve months as Earth did, but with thirty days in each of them, an additional “day of transition” between eleven of them, and another two-day holiday between the twelfth and first months. Birthdays were celebrated according to solstices and equinoxes, depending on whether their date of birth was two months prior or one month after, and the celebrations took place during five-day festivals at the start of the appropriate months.
Zoey, according to her new records, was listed as a north-summer birth, or a south-winter, which was fitting since Dylan’s birthday on Earth was almost the middle of July. This meant that her festival was at the start of Hundemane, the seventh month.
She vaguely recalled the first few times she awoke as a girl and was asked such things as her date of birth, having additionally to explain that July was the seventh month where she was from. Zoey wondered if Bon’sinne or Keft’aerak had heard about this and adjusted this for their own calendar.
She needed to ask them at some point.
“Ugh, Mom!” Dasos said in the other room. “Why do you do this?”
Back out in the living room, Dasos had been talking to her on the cell-comm. Zoey ran out of her room and looked at him curiously as he pressed his fingers over his brow.
“I understand that,” he said, “but going after her was risky. We don’t want you getting hurt. Yes, Mom. Yes. Mom. I was planning on getting that fixed today. Yes, she’s right here. Would you like to talk to her? OK, I love you too, here she is.”
Dasos handed her the phone.
Zoey held it to her ear and said, “Hi, Mom. What did you do?”
[ 35]
Eight more days passed. Zoi’ne continued to prepare for her first day of college while they came and went. During that time, Tong-Chang asked if she could borrow Zoey’s old phone since her own classwork and job searching were going to be light-weight, so she wanted to work on a side project.
“What kind of project? Zoey asked.
“Oh, you’ll see” said Tong-Chang
Tong-Chang also offered to examine the monitor in the living room, and Dasos relented after half an hour of her promising to behave. Apparently she’d offered to help once before when the two of them were dating. He reminded her that the last time she’d touched it was when she played that prank on him.
Zoey wasn’t sure yet if it was a good idea to start looking for a part-time job of her own since she had never experienced the college life before. She had only heard about it. Tong-Chang and Dasos made it seem simple, but then again they were on break until the semester began.
“What do you think I should do?” she asked her dad, whose ship was in range, temporarily, to keep the messaging delay down to eleven seconds.
Keft’aerak, who appeared on the living room monitor, said, “I think that’s admirable of you, to be honest. How are you doing with your recovery from the trauma you had?”
“Trauma? Oh, you mean from seven weeks ago. I think I’m OK now. I haven’t had any more moments where I felt like breaking down.”
“In that case, Zoi’ne, I don’t see a problem with trying. If you can find a place that needs you for a dozen hours or so a week, then you can test those waters while you get to know your limits better with college.”
“Is there some sort of minimum wage here, or anything?”
“The last I checked there was a minimum pay-rate of a hundred and fifty burras per hour.”
“Cool.”
“A quarter of that is deducted by the government.”
“That much?”
“Wait until you make what I do. You’ll swear it was pirates.”
The weekend before classes started, Tong-Chang had her first prenatal exam at the clinic. Zoey accompanied her since it felt like the right thing to do. The receptionist checked with Tong-Chang’s identification and let them in swiftly.
While the laeknar spoke with Tong-Chang and ran the necessary tests, Zoey saw a pamphlet about reproductive cycles and birth control. There was a note at the bottom of one fold, in small-print, about not taking birth control for female Ginserei due to severe health risks. Zoey wanted to ask the laeknar about it, but she was uncertain if that was wise without giving away again that she grew up on another world.
It was too early to tell for certain how many babies were growing inside of Tong-Chang’s belly, at least until the next visit in about six or seven weeks, but the morning sickness that had started for Tong-Chang was normal. The laeknar handed her a list of foods and beverages that were best during the first few weeks, by which time the nausea should stop or come down considerably.
“Thank you for coming, love,” Tong-Chang said while they waited for the trolley back towards the condo.
Zoey said, “Of course. I can’t even imagine what this is like, but I am right here for you.”
“Bolin doesn’t even know yet. This morning was the first time he witnessed my morning sickness, and thank the stars beyond I w
as able to tell him I had a laeknar appointment today.”
“You really don’t want him or your mother knowing about your pregnancy, do you?”
“No more than you want to tell your family that your sister is still alive. In my case, it could mean the end of this freedom I have been enjoying for over a decade. Oh, it gets even better. Many shaving creams on the market don’t agree with our skin when we Ginserei become pregnant, so don’t be surprised if I start growing hair in places, especially since it’s going to be getting cooler around here.”
“What places would that be?”
“Oh, around my wrists, my ankles, and that spot on my chest. That last one is going to be a bother. I really didn’t want to grow it out.”
Elysium Shining Page 27