Origins of Hope

by Anastasia Drapievsky

  She looked up to the sky every time they were on a landing, darkened by smog and light pollution with only the brightest stars able to shine through.

  Stopping on a landing, she asked, “Is space just as pretty in person as it is in holos?”

  Ayzize looked at the sky. “Better, actually.”

  They both stared out at the black sky in silence for a few minutes. “When you leave, can you send me more pictures of space?”

  “Always, Celes." She felt a pat on her shoulder as he promised. "Always.”

  Four

  “Zander, are you listening?”

  Zander started, looking back to Counselor Novak sitting across from him, her blonde hair pulled back into a bun as she inspected him. He glanced down.

  “Sorry, Krian,” he said, his leg bouncing against the chair he sat in, his hands fidgeting with a puzzle block. “I wasn’t listening.”

  Counselor Novak sighed, but when he looked back up, she held a smile for him. “It’s OK, Zander. It can be hard to focus sometimes. Would you like to play a little more before we talk again?”

  Zander shook his head, stilling his hands on the puzzle. A group of toys lay on a rug next to the seating area, and he had already played with them for ten minutes before starting his visit with Counselor Novak.

  “All right, then.” Counselor Novak settled back in her chair, her eyes still kind. “If you need to stop and play, we can do that.” She reiterated that every session they had and at first, he had only played with the toys instead of saying anything. Now he only became distracted once or twice. “How have your classes been going?”

  Zander shrugged. “They’re OK. It was cool making things fly, but now we have to read each other’s thoughts.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “It’s just sitting around talking. It’s boring.” His hands absentmindedly rotated blocks on the puzzle. “At least you have toys to play with while we talk.”

  She smiled again. “You originally said that you were a little scared of the aliens besides Krian Hekla and Prior Matoskah; is that still the case?”

  He shook his head. “No, but some aliens still look kind of funny.” He likened the Jareshi to a human-mantis and the Chilao to a mermaid with legs and shimmering skin, but they were both interesting to look at.

  “That’s good that you’re not afraid, but they find us humans just as strange looking as we do them,” she nodded in encouragement. “What made you change your mind?”

  Zander paused, his chest tightening. “Talking with them, like Celes said to do if I met aliens,” he mumbled, looking down at his puzzle and concentrating on moving the blocks around to fit in a cube. “I thought she would be here by now, but I guess she lied.”

  Counselor Novak paused, the wood creaking when she shifted in her chair. “Why do you think she lied?”

  He blinked, pushing in some blocks to fit in crevices. “‘Cuz she doesn’t like me.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  He shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “I dunno. The other kids made fun of me back home, and she would get into fights with them and would get into trouble. She didn’t have any friends—except one, but he doesn’t come to our house a lot—because no one wanted to be around me. Dad would start yelling at me if I accidentally did something, and he once...” he cringed at the image of his father's ruddy face and calloused palm. “But she would say something to him and he would yell at her instead.”

  Counselor Novak's eyebrows furrowed with a deep frown, before her expression eased. “You are safe here, Zander. No one will do that to you ever again. And, did your sister say that she didn’t like you?”

  “No,” he blinked rapidly again. “But she has to; why would she lie about coming?”

  “It sounds like she only wanted to protect you,” Counselor Novak said in a gentle voice. “Prior Matoskah told me it was OK to tell you if we ever got to the subject, so I think we are about there.”

  Surprised, Zander raised his head, his eyes watery. “What?”

  Counselor Novak scratched her collarbone for a moment. “Prior Matoskah had contacted Celes about you. While he did not tell me why he talked to your sister instead of your father, it didn’t sound like your father would be… clear headed. Your sister had contacted other colleges, looking for a new and better place for you to live; she had told the Prior that she didn’t want you to be in a place where you were made fun of and felt scared to be in. That doesn’t sound like a person who doesn’t like you would do.”

  His bottom lip quivered. “But why would she…”

  “I don’t know,” she answered, her voice soft. “Would you have gone if she said she couldn’t go with you?”

  He shook his head.

  “That might be a reason, then. She might have felt that you needed to get here and did whatever she needed to make sure you were safe.”

  It sounded like Celes to do something like that, but... “So… I won’t see her again?”

  “I don’t think so, Zander. I’m sorry.”

  Zander looked down again, this time only holding the puzzle instead of playing with it. “OK,” he said. He already figured that he wouldn’t see her again, but why did it feel so much worse having an adult say it?

  ∆∆∆

  After the therapy session, Zander headed for the lifts that would bring him down to the cafeteria. Touching the holo buttons, the plastic see-through doors slid shut and steadily drifted downward. Passing the other floors, with hallways branching off in different directions and multiple species walking, lumbering, floating, or even swimming in the large tubes in the walls, the lifts slowed and opened into the cafeteria.

  Three stories high, with balconies on the second and third levels, the cafeteria could accommodate all the species that Aorírdal could accept. The bipedal species had little difficulty using the stairs and ramps, and the octopus-like Krshk used the water tubes laced in the walls and through the air. The tubes branched off into the water tanks by tables against the wall, so friends and colleagues could sit together. The methane-breathing Omni had a similar arrangement; they had their own cafeteria since their food would be poisonous to others, but they too had small rooms separated by reinforced glass next to the wall tables. The Omni and Krshk could use environmental suits, but most preferred their own environments.

  Only a few dozen people meandered the cafeteria. Zander had gotten used to all the different species by now, but during the first visit he had clung to Krian Hekla’s pants when she escorted him in his first week at Aorírdal. Five Krshk zipping through the tubes; two dozen Omni floating through their environments; a Kath’laka getting into a heated argument with six Chilao; a spindly Jareshi comparing notes with a feathery Mimõk and a green-skinned Lyre Selyn; and three students (a purple Rym, an Iaiedal, and a human) having a contest to see who could levitate their utensils the highest. Amongst the audible and mental chatter of several hundred people at once, the experience made Zander dizzy.

  Luckily, Krian Hekla had taken his hand and showed him how to get food, ordering at a kiosk and giving a ticket for the chefs to prepare. Most people didn’t notice Zander, and if they did, they were nice to him, offering smiles (from the species that could) while two Kath’laka rubbed Zander’s head in a friendly greeting, two of the Iaiedal projected images of flying doves to him, and a Krshk might have waved a tentacle at him.

  However, Zander remained the youngest person on the station. While no one bullied him often, he felt lonely, and Xenith was the only big kid who even talked to him.

  As Zander descended a ramp to the first floor, he spotted Xenith reading from his Tristat by the ticket kiosk, a holo display around his eyes. Just as Zander wondered if he should grab Xenith’s attention, the holo display disappeared around Xenith’s eyes, and Xenith turned and waved a hand at Zander.

  >>How’s it going?<< Xenith called mentally, since it would have been rude to yell across the cafeteria.

  >>Good, I guess.<< Zander didn’t even have to
project out his thoughts; Xenith had some weird ability to ‘hear’ things even when people guarded against someone else’s prying telepathy. Xenith told him repeatedly that he didn’t want to know anyone’s thoughts unwillingly. Zander didn’t really care, since he thought it was a neat ability. >>Just got out of therapy.<<

  “You did, huh?” Xenith said aloud as Zander drew closer.

  >>Yeah. You don’t want to talk like this?<<

  “Force of habit,” Xenith shrugged, letting Zander skip in front of him to choose what he wanted to eat first. “I only talked telepathically when I first got here, but most of my teachers told me to do that only every once in a while; something about talking out loud keeps our… hm,” he paused a moment. “It keeps humans social, I guess.”

  “What does that mean?” Zander asked, switching to speaking aloud as well. He read through the list of items on the menu, occasionally picking apart the letters several times to sound out the word in his head.

  “We become hermits if we only talk with our heads,” Xenith clarified, leaning in to read the menu behind Zander. “Actually, talking and listening to sounds ‘lights up’ parts of our brain that keeps us social. With people who are deaf or mute though, it is different, so they can use telepathy only and still be social. I dunno; I dozed off in Psyneurology—er, we studied the brain with psychic abilities,” Xenith added when Zander looked at him in confusion.

  “Oh ok,” Zander said, picking an udon dish with vegetable tempura. His sister had always taken him to a noodle place when they were on Endeavor, but Xenith had let him eat one of his tempura dishes two days ago and now it was all Zander wanted to eat. “Did you get to see any brains?” Zander asked, his nose wrinkling both in disgust and interest.

  Xenith gave him a smirk, also getting a ticket for udon with tempura. “Actual brains? Yeah.” He led them to talk to the two chefs on lunch duty. A blue-skinned Rym and a tan-colored Kath’laka stood chatting amiably in the open kitchen behind a counter with a holo-glass display. “Got to see all sorts of them, and not just human ones. Greetings, Krian Galri and Krian Vxk.”

  Galri the Rym smiled. “Afternoon, Xenith and Zander.” His mouth moved out of time to his words; even with the Tristat on Zander’s temple, it still proved jarring to get used to the universal translator.

  “Hi, Krian Galri and Krian Vxk,” Zander said, copying Xenith, and they both transferred their orders to the chef’s holo-glass. He had seen these two chefs several times a month, and they were always nice to him.

  “Honor to you. Hm,” Vxk the Kath’laka stroked a chin with one of her paws as her eyes scanned their order on the holo-glass. “Shame that Caretaker Myl isn’t working today; we fight over her tempura.”

  “She’s being humble,” Galri said, his eyes narrowed in the Rym’s version of a wink. “Vxk’s just as good.”

  “Says you.” Vxk rubbed Galri’s bald head in affection, flicking the holo display over towards the back, where an assortment of ovens, fryers, stoves, and other appliances lined the wall. “Give us five minutes or so and it’ll be ready.”

  While Galri and Vxk washed their hands and prepped their food, Xenith showed Zander the brains of all the species he had studied, using his own Tristat to connect and project images into the holo-display around Zander’s eyes. All the brains looked similar, with slightly different shapes depending on the skull, and Zander couldn’t tell the difference between a Rym, Rovanian, and Human brain. The Omni and the Krshk brains looked strange. While the Krshk had a brain connected to what Xenith called a ‘very complex nervous system’, the Omni had an ‘even larger and complex central nervous system’ that acted as the brain.

  “Whoa….” Zander said, staring between the holo array of interconnected nerves that looked like a weird connect-the-dots drawing, then shifted his gaze to an Omni environment across the room, where an Omni floated around. “That is so cool…”

  “Yeah, it is pretty cool,” Xenith agreed, switching off the holo as Galri and Vxk put their bowls onto trays. “Thank you for the meal.”

  “Not at all.” Vxk shook her paw sideways after Zander also hurriedly thanked them.

  After grabbing their trays, Zander followed Xenith to a table towards the middle of the cafeteria. If they looked up and craned their necks, they could see the Tyli nebula, splashed with colors of blues and reds, through the windows. Setting their trays on a metal table, they took a seat across from each other.

  “So,” Xenith stated as Zander immediately dug into his udon. “Did the session go well, or…?”

  Zander shrugged, slurping his udon. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “We talked about my sister.”

  “That was bad?”

  “Sort of,” Zander muttered. He hesitated, unsure if Xenith would call him a whiny baby, then said, “I just thought… she could come here too.”

  Xenith sighed and Zander looked up at him. The older boy looked sad, his dark blue eyes gazing at the table until he noticed Zander staring at him. “No, I get it. I had an older brother before I came here, too. I missed him a lot.”

  “He never came to visit?”

  “He can’t,” Xenith replied. “No one is allowed to.”

  Zander frowned. “Why?”

  Xenith's expression turned into a deep frown. “For some bogus reason that we’re better off being away from society,” he murmured, stabbing into his bowl with a fork.

  “So….” Zander paused, thinking. “Celes maybe didn’t know she couldn’t come…” The thought made him feel a little better, though that still meant he couldn’t see her again.

  Xenith opened his mouth as if to say something, but then looked like he changed his mind, since he went back to his noodles and shrugged. “I dunno; maybe. I tried to convince people to let me see my parents and my brother; I tried to call them via the web and AR meetings, even scrying.”

  Zander frowned. He had heard that word before during one of his classes. “That means when you can spy on someone you can’t see with your eyes, right?”

  “Sort of. It can only be done in short distances—usually—and you are not allowed unless the other person says you can,” Xenith sighed. “I tried doing that, but it didn’t work. I had to get used to being here. But from experience, I can tell you that missing your sister will hurt less as time goes on.”

  Zander cocked his head. “What does that mean?”

  “Kind of hard to describe,” Xenith said, frowning as he said the words, before his eyes lit up in an epiphany. “Hey, I have an idea. Have you felt EmTel?”

  “ ‘EmTel’?”

  “Emotive telepathy. Iaiedal use it to talk instead of words.”

  “Oh,” Zander paused and his chest squeezed, remembering that Celes had told him that when he had asked her about aliens. “Uhm, I think I did with Krian Loli—she works in the garden place. She made me feel… nice, I think? Counselor Novak sometimes does it too. Iaiedal do it a lot”

  Xenith nodded. “All it is, is projecting a feeling onto someone else—but be careful. Iaiedal hold back a lot with other species; otherwise it could overwhelm you if you’re not expecting it. Anyway, if it is OK with you, I can show you—don’t know how to say it any other way—what I mean by it ‘hurting less’.”

  Zander stopped stirring his noodles, his brow furrowing in thought. Celes might have done it with him a few times; when he got upset at people teasing him or afraid of their dad, he sometimes felt calmer for no reason. The Iaiedal he had talked to were all nice and didn’t scare him. EmTel might not be too bad. “OK,” he said.

  “All right,” Xenith smiled at him, and Zander felt his mind calmed in reassurance. Xenith rested his fork next to the bowl, then closed his eyes. “Let me know if it is too much; I will go really easy on you, OK?”

  “OK,” Zander said, feeling nervous and excited.

  At first he felt nothing, before the room darkened. Confused, Zander looked around, but the lights hadn’t dimmed. The sounds of the cafeteria, the others talking in a babble of different la
nguages, Vxk and Galri chatting merrily as they cooked, the gentle swoosh of the water tubes and the hum of power from the Omni’s environments, went silent. Everything looked out of focus, and Zander felt angry for no reason. He felt uncomfortable, and he shifted irritably in his seat. Why was he mad? Was this part of the EmTel? He felt a ball of sadness and hopelessness form in his chest, wrapped up in anger. Why am I here? I want my family. I want to go home. Why did they take me? Why can’t I see them? Why can’t I go back? The thoughts were in Zander’s voice, but it sounded angrier than he had ever been.

  Before Zander could figure out what was going on, the ball shrunk, and the anger and sadness went away. The dark clouds around the room evaporated to expose a bright light, and the room became more in focus, yet looked too sharp and splashed with color. The sounds of the cafeteria returned slowly, though louder than before.

  Xenith then opened his eyes, and the room grew darker again, the sounds dulled, and Zander felt the little ball of sadness and anger return.

  “Wait, what happened?” Zander asked, blinking in confused.

  Xenith exhaled slowly. “I remembered how I felt when I first came here and let you feel it—just a little bit of it. I was sad, scared, and angry, and it made everything ‘dark’, yeah?” At Zander’s nod, Xenith continued, “And then everything got lighter and brighter. That was time sped up; I got close with some of my teachers and met my best friends. I still miss my brother and would love to see him again, but I also made a family here. Even if I complain sometimes—OK, a lot—it isn’t horrible here.”

  Zander lessened the grip on his chopsticks, his hand aching from gripping them so hard. “So, everything is better now? It will get better?”

  Xenith nodded. “Maybe not all the way, but mostly.”

  “OK…” Zander looked around the room. “Everything looked brighter, but now it is back to dark. Are you still doing the EmTel thing?”

  “No.” Xenith’s eyes softened, and he looked like Celes for a second when she felt unhappy. “You’re sad and angry, right? Sometimes when you are really sad, everything 'looks' dark; at least to me. You just don’t realize it until you come out of it and feel better.”