Tiera's Earth (Andromeda 9 Book 1)

by Ethan T. Marston

  “I’m pretty sure they do.” Daven seemed surprised at Tiera’s intensity.

  “Are any of these apartments close to the University of Humanities?” Tiera pointed at the wall, where her housing options were still displayed.

  “They should be; the University of Humanities is only a couple blocks away from the Technological University, and I started my search close to home. But let me double check.” Within minutes, Daven had narrowed down Tiera’s options to just two apartments. One looked like a nice studio apartment, where Tiera would live alone; the other was a two-bedroom apartment, where Tiera would have a roommate.

  “That’s Xana,” Daven said, pointing to the picture of Tiera’s potential roommate. She was a woman in her mid-twenties, and she was the first person Tiera had seen on this planet that had vaguely East Asian features but did not have a buzz cut. Her curly black hair came down to her chin, and her pointed eyebrows gave her heavy-lidded, dark blue eyes a judgmental look.

  “She’s been looking for a roommate for a while now—I know because we’ve had a few classes together. She . . . doesn’t really get along well with most people.” Daven seemed like he was trying to be very careful about what he said. “So you’ll probably want the other apartment.”

  “No, I think I’d prefer a roommate,” Tiera said, thinking of the last time she lived by herself. Her life had been a lot lonelier before she had offered Natalie a place to stay. I’ll be lonely enough as the only Earthling here—no need to live alone on top of that.

  “Are you sure? She’s really—let’s just say she’s been looking for a roommate for the better part of two years. I mean, I’ve never lived with her, but she was really obnoxious in the classes we had together. What if you don’t like her?”

  “I doubt that will happen—I get along with most people,” Tiera said simply. And from what he said, it sounds like she could use a friend. “Besides, it takes a lot to get on my bad side. And her apartment complex has a pool,” she added as she eyed the list of amenities.

  “Every university has at least two pools,” Daven countered.

  Tiera smiled. “Well I won’t be living at the university now will I?”

  “Actually . . . ”

  “Yeah, I probably will, huh?” Tiera and Daven both laughed.

  “Alright,” Daven ceded, groaning as he stood up. “I’ll contact Xana and see if we can check the place out in person tonight.” He started typing one-handed on his smart glass. “In the meantime, let’s go get lunch! You aren’t full, are you?” Daven eyed the last bit of toast sitting forgotten in Tiera’s hand.

  “No,” Tiera said almost defensively, then stuffed the last bit of toast into her mouth as soon as Daven turned around.

  “You might want to change into something a bit warmer,” he said as he walked toward a nearby closet and grabbed his jacket. “It’s gotten chillier since last night.”

  Tiera looked down at the green prison clothes she was wearing for the second day in a row. After showering that morning she figured these clothes would be less conspicuous than her Earth clothes, should she go out in public. “Uh . . . The only other clothes I have are my Earth clothes. Is it really that chilly?”

  Daven looked mortified. “I forgot! You don’t have anything! I’m so sorry—I’m so embarrassed that I forgot. You need clothes!” Daven stopped. “Do you even have identification? Did the police upload it onto your smart glass? You’ll need that to register for classes, and—”

  “Daven?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t exactly have a smart glass either,” Tiera said as she pulled out her smart phone. Daven took the phone, which seemed like a brick compared to the chic smart glass in his other hand, and stared at it for so long that Tiera began to feel embarrassed. “It isn’t that bad,” she tried to defend herself.

  “Sorry—I was just thinking. We have a lot to do today.” Daven eyed Tiera’s prison clothes. “You’d better change into your Earth clothes, though. Better to look foreign than like an escaped convict, right?”

  “Oh! I guess you're right.” Tiera smiled at his attempt to lighten the mood, then started for the stairs. “Who knows? Maybe people will see us together and think grungy college t-shirts and jeans are the newest fashion.”

  “Are you saying I look fashionable?” Daven grinned, clearly pleased with himself.

  “I’m saying I look fashionable.” Tiera flipped her curly hair, and Daven laughed. She figured joking around would keep Daven from reading too far into her compliment.

  After she had changed, Tiera and Daven left the apartment. Daven let her borrow one of his many jackets, but Tiera quickly realized she didn’t need it. It was barely chilly—especially for someone who was used to Rocky Mountain winters. Once they entered the silver magnet car that Daven had hailed with his smart glass, Tiera nonchalantly hung the mauve and gray jacket on the back of her seat, hoping Daven wouldn’t insist that she use it.

  “So what’s our itinerary?” Tiera asked, looking out the window as they sped past quiet, pearly neighborhoods. Every now and then she could see children playing in front of a house, and once she swore she saw a dog, but they were moving too fast for her to be sure.

  “Well, we need to get you a proper smart glass, so first we’ll visit the shopping district downtown. After that, we’ll need to upload your identification onto the smart glass at the police station—that’s actually where your holding cell was—and then . . . ” Daven trailed off and looked over at Tiera, his brow furrowed. “Do you know what an immunization is? One that’s injected into the blood stream?”

  “Yeah, I’ve gotten them since I was a baby.”

  “Oh good,” Daven sighed, leaning back in his chair. “We probably have different diseases here than you do on Earth, so we’ll have to get you immunizations for all of them—just to be safe. And you need your identification for that, so we’ll go after the police station.” Daven rubbed his clean-shaven chin. “After that it should just be clothes.”

  “Sounds good.” Tiera watched as the buildings they were passing grew larger, and she noticed that pedestrian traffic was picking up too. Soon she and Daven arrived at some sort of terminal, and as soon as they got out of their car someone else got in.

  “Is this the shopping district?” Tiera asked, looking ahead at the wide walkways between crystalline buildings, flashing different colors as business signs and product advertisements ran across their walls. She folded Daven’s jacket and managed to stuff most of it into her purse.

  “Yeah. Cars can’t get as close to it as they could at the one in Utah, so we’ll walk from here.” Daven took Tiera’s hand and led her a few steps before Tiera yanked her hand out of his grip. He looked confused.

  “You can’t just hold my hand like that,” Tiera berated him.

  “What? Why not?”

  “It’s—we’re just friends! Does everyone hold hands with anyone around here?” Tiera folded her arms, suddenly embarrassed by her knee-jerk reaction. Is there zero overlap between our cultures?

  “I’m sorry, I—do friends not hold hands in Utah?” Now Daven looked embarrassed.

  Tiera took a deep breath and started toward the busy walkways ahead of them, and Daven fell in by her side. “In my culture you only really hold hands with people you’re really close to—like family or, um,” Tiera looked over at Daven, “romantic partners.”

  His face turned as red as the road’s warning light behind them. “Let’s go get sandwiches. Do you want a sandwich? We were going to get lunch, after all,” he said quickly, pointing toward an open-faced restaurant with tables and chairs scattered around its entrance.

  “Sure,” Tiera said, mentally kicking herself for making such a big deal out of this. I could have just said it’s a cultural thing and left it at that. She followed Daven to the sandwich shop—which turned out to be a sort of gyro shop, but less Greek—and let him order for her, taking a mental note of how much her sandwich cost. Tiera gathered a few stares from other customers at th
e shop as she waited, but she figured it was because of her clothing. Or her hair. Most people here had variations of buzz cuts, and they all wore the loose, flowing style of clothing that Daven wore.

  They ate their sandwiches in relative silence on their way to the smart glass store. Tiera couldn’t help but feel a little frazzled as she ate. She usually didn’t get social anxiety unless she embarrassed herself in public—but then, she felt embarrassed and she was in public. We need to talk about something.

  “So are the walls in the different buildings like smart glass? They can show videos and pictures and things like smart glass, so I figure it must be similar technology.” Tiera mentally crossed her fingers.

  “Oh—yeah, it’s basically the same. Though not everyone’s walls have built-in smart glass technology. Poorer people usually use mounted smart glass panels on their walls, or they just expand their portable smart glass,” Daven said before taking another bite of his sandwich. He didn’t say anything after that, even after swallowing.

  This will take a little more prodding. Tiera studied the sandwich in her hands as she chewed, then tried again. “I think I saw Kert expand his smart glass before, but I wasn’t paying a lot of attention. How does that work?”

  “Like this.” Daven pulled out his smart glass, pinched it on opposite sides, and pulled. Tiera could only think of origami as it unfolded itself and rotated until it was the size of a tablet. “The image quality gets worse the larger you make it though, so most people just buy different sizes of smart glass. If they can afford it, that is.”

  “Wow! Do they use wires? I don’t see any, but I can’t think of how else they would function without wiring and microchips and batteries and all that.”

  Daven gave a small laugh. “You expect to see all of that? Is that how technology is on Earth? I never got to examine any of your electronics.”

  “I guess? What, do you use nanotechnology or something?” Tiera’s shoulders tightened self-consciously as she revealed her ignorance, but she was happy to get Daven talking again.

  “Yes, we do actually. All of the hardware is microscopic, and it’s spaced out enough that light can still pass through it, so it’s essentially invisible to the naked eye.” Daven paused to take another bite of his sandwich. “And the smart glass doubles as a solar panel, so it takes a lot of use to drain the battery.”

  “So are all of these buildings giant solar panels? And what happens when you do drain the battery?”

  “You leave it in the sun or charge it on your desk.” Daven smiled like it was obvious. “And from what I’ve read, every building on Faroa is a giant solar panel. On most other planets it’s just the roofs and windows, since their buildings aren’t made of ground up crystal—or at least that’s how it is back home on Fugon. There we supplement with wind and hydroelectric power, and in some areas nuclear. Do you have any of that on Earth?”

  They spent the rest of the way to the smart glass store taking about Earth’s energy methods and the politics that surrounded them. When they arrived, Tiera learned that most people get smart glass that’s sized to be proportional to their hand, and that sparked a conversation about Earth cell phone sizes and the history of communication that lasted until they had made it back to the car port. Daven showed Tiera how to hail a car on his smart glass (her own smart glass wouldn’t fully function until it was linked to her identification)—which started a conversation about Salt Lake City’s public transportation system. Daven seemed to love learning about Earth so much that—by the time she had received her identification, had gotten her immunizations and bloodwork updated, and had picked out several outfits—Tiera had gone over nearly every aspect of United States politics she could think of.

  “So are we still going to Xana’s next, or are we going to drop this stuff off at your place first?” Tiera asked as the cashier bagged all of her new clothes. Daven placed his smart glass on the countertop display, and the transaction total—which was about 60 sandwiches’ worth of money—flashed, then went away. Tiera still wasn’t quite comfortable with Daven spending so much money on her. I’ll pay him back someday.

  “They deliver, so we can go straight to Xana’s. Your clothes will be at my place before we get home tonight,” Daven reassured her.

  “So I’m definitely sleeping at your place again tonight?” Tiera tried not to sound like she didn’t want to.

  “That’s right. You won’t be able to live at Xana’s until you’ve registered for classes, remember?” Daven thanked the cashier, then led the way out of the clothes store.

  “Oh yeah. How do I do that?”

  “After you apply to the university you can do it on your smart glass. Just connect it to the Faroa University of Humanities interface and go from there.”

  Tiera’s stomach dropped. “You mean I have to apply to the university? I can’t just automatically get in?” Tiera pulled up the humanities interface—it was something like a website, but without lists and menus. This is the capital of Faroa—this school isn’t going to be easy to get into.

  “Don’t worry about it. Here.” Daven held out his hand for Tiera’s smart glass, and she gave it to him. He typed out “apply” and the interface pulled all of Tiera’s information from her smart glass—then a prompt popped up, asking for an application essay.

  “I have to write an essay,” Tiera said blankly. She wasn’t nervous about writing—she knew she was good at that—but she had no idea what the university was looking for, or what sort of writing style was appropriate.

  “That’s one of your options, yeah,” Daven said as they rounded another corner filled with shops, and Tiera thought she could see the car port through the throng of people ahead. “But writing isn’t the only option: your essay can be a recorded speech, a creative performance, a personal interview with a member of the registrar’s office—if you can think of it you can probably do it. Of course,” Daven added, “just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should. They can still reject your application, after all.”

  “And you said I shouldn’t worry about it?” Tiera said flatly.

  “We’re going to do a joint video application—right now. Just introduce yourself and I’ll handle the rest.” Daven seemed so confident.

  “But—”

  “Tiera, trust me. I got you out of jail, didn't I? I can get you into a university.”

  “That’s not that impressive—it’s not like I’m a hardened criminal or anything,” Tiera grumbled. She didn’t feel safe doing something as important as applying to a major university with a spontaneous video.

  “Yeah, your mind just holds anti-government secrets—no big deal. My—” Daven stopped himself, then sighed. “Look. My family has connections, okay? I can get you in.”

  Is he ashamed that his family “has connections”? Tiera studied Daven’s expression for a moment. “Fine,” she ceded. He looked so sincere, and Tiera figured this was probably her best shot at getting in. “But let me think about what I want to say first. I still want to impress them—I don’t want to ride your family’s reputation for the rest of my life.”

  “Neither do I,” Daven said so quietly that Tiera wasn’t sure if she was meant to hear it, but he kept talking before she could respond. “Alright. Do you think you can decide what to say by the time we get home? I might be able to get you approved as soon as tomorrow night if we submit your application today. And the sooner the better, since a new round of classes start next week. Otherwise you’d have to wait a month!”

  “Classes only last a month?” Tiera asked, perplexed. “And yeah, I can figure it out before we get home.”

  “Classes here typically last about three months, but since the universities here are so large we have rolling semesters, so one starts every month. Most other universities on Faroa—and on other planets—only have three semesters per year though.”

  “Right.” Tiera nodded. I can’t imagine how many professors they have then—or how many students! They were only a few yards away from the car port no
w. “What’s Xana’s address? I want to try hailing a car this time.”

  “It’s Dawning Court Apartments in sector . . . ” Daven checked his smart glass, “217! I’ll send her a message so she knows we’re on our way.”

  “Thanks,” Tiera said, then repeated Xana’s address to her smart glass. As soon as she had sent the order, Tiera felt a soft rumbling in the ground. Frowning, she looked at Daven to see if he had noticed, but he was still typing his message to Xana. After looking across the street, Tiera realized what was happening—a hole had opened up in a paved area adjacent to the road, and a silver magnet car slowly rose out of it. The road in front of them turned red as it approached.

  “Is there an underground garage, then?” Tiera asked. That was so cool!

  “Yep.” Daven still hadn’t looked up from his smart glass.

  Tiera approached the car and its doors opened as soon as she was a few feet away (she guessed her smart glass gave off some sort of signal to identify her), then she and Daven climbed in. They sat in different rows this time.

  “Hey Daven?” Tiera asked as the doors closed and the car started moving.

  “Yeah?” He must have been doing more than messaging Xana, since he was still on his smart glass.

  “How many people live in Faroa City?”

  “About 35 million.” He made it sound like it wasn’t a big deal.

  Tiera took a deep breath. I need to think about what I want to say in my essay tonight, she thought to herself, forcing herself not to ask Daven any other follow-up questions. “Alright” was all she said, then she looked out the window.

  About five minutes into their car ride, Tiera heard a musical sort of tone coming from behind her. She turned around and looked at Daven, who was looking out the window, arms folded. The tone sounded again, but he didn’t react.

  “Hey Daven?”

  “Yeah?” he said, still facing the window.

  “What’s that sound?”