The Senthien (Descendants of Earth Book 1)

by Tara Jade Brown

  “Visionaire Dasnan?”

  I turned toward the TA, who looked exactly like the woman who had fetched me from the porting chamber.

  “Please, follow me,” she said and started walking back to the chamber.

  I walked next to her, ignoring her strange sideways glare and making sure my face remained calm.

  My head was full of questions. Zamnan wasn’t telling the truth. None of the Descendants had such pigmentation in their skin as the women I had seen. And those were not Descendants. They had to be Zema4 inhabitants.

  We arrived at the chamber, and TA-3279 opened the door for me.

  “Thank you for visiting our institute. Please, come back again.”

  “Thank you for your hospitality. May Torquemada Joseph Nadraque watch over you,” I said in the traditional way, then walked into the small chamber and turned around to face the doors.

  The Boolean smiled a thin, flat smile, and the doors closed.

  I stretched my shoulders from their stiff position and looked around. This chamber was wide enough to allow for the teleportation of five individuals with their needed IP space. Although it seemed spacious to port only one person, this chamber was the smallest in its dimensions. Portation chambers came in sizes of such magnitude that they could hold an entire battle cruiser with its accompanying fleet.

  The walls and ceiling, as well as the floor of the chamber, were all covered in semitransparent rosenquartz tiles, each with an intricate pattern of APC chips intertwined in their structure.

  “The port number 445-76-498-02 to porting gate 164’55’16 will begin in three passes,” the female voice of the computer announced.

  I folded my arms on my chest, preparing myself for the process. It was not as unpleasant as an E-shower, although it did something far more radical. The feeling resembled the return of blood flow to an arm that had fallen asleep in an awkward position. But this experience wasn’t limited to just an arm; it affected the whole body.

  The pleasant rose lighting of the chamber dimmed to give way to the dark purple hue of the transfer itself as the complex energy field coordination and power cycles of the porting process began.

  Chapter 2

  “Welcome back to Senthia, Dora Dana Dasnan,” the female AI voice of the porting chamber announced. “It is sixteen hours and twenty-three passes.”

  I shivered once, shaking off the aftermath of the port. The chamber took on a soft rose hue once more, and the doors slid open. I walked into a large tubelike corridor, brightly lit by rows of ceiling lights, busy with people.

  I stopped, thinking of what to do next. Then I turned to the right and with firm steps walked to the Data Center Hall, passing the open entrances to Nature Hall, E-Fitness Hall, and Interactive Coupling Hall.

  The DC Hall was large, three stories of galleries with transparent walls overlooking a central reception area.

  I walked to the counter, and the woman lifted her gaze to me.

  “Good day at Senthia. How can we help you?”

  Part of her job description was to smile, and it never faltered. Her eyes were gray, her hair short and platinum blonde, and although she was sitting, her face was only a head lower than mine. Typical Jacobson traits.

  “I would like to have access to a DC room.”

  “What is the purpose of your visit?”

  “Further Vision development. Broad search criteria.”

  “Of course.” She looked at the holo screen in front of her, which was black from my side. She tapped a few buttons, then swiped through several holo pages before she reached down to her drawer.

  She handed me an E-hook. “Floor three, right, DC room three fourteen. Please return the interface on your way out. Enjoy your stay.”

  I picked up the E-hook and thanked her.

  I walked around the counter and entered one of the four transparent elevator tubes. The door closed and the tube pushed me up to the third floor while I looked down at people entering and leaving the DC Hall.

  On the third floor, the tube wall opened, and I walked out and turned right. All DC rooms were transparent, and I could see the people inside, but the holo screens were dark when viewed from the hallway.

  I found my room, placed my palm on the DC room scanning panel, and entered. The door closed behind me. It was a small room with a diameter of only one IP. It was meant to be occupied by only one person in a standing position. I took the E-hook and put it to my left ear. The object attached itself to my head, allowing me to move freely without it falling off. A tone signaled that the connection to my nanoprobes was established.

  I thought about my search focus for a moment. Without making it too obvious, I needed to find articles about current experiments somehow related to the Mind that had run into problems.

  “Search: Booleans. Current experiments.”

  Several pages with different titles piled up on the desk screen. I swiped the screen upward to bring them in front of me on the holo screen wall.

  “Advancements in Rejuvenation Procedures.”

  I tapped on the title, and the first page of information sheet appeared. I glanced through it.

  “Thirty years regular cycle… scientist at the Boolean Institute used a novel sequence… new virus extends the rejuvenation cycle up to fifty years…”

  Clear.

  I tapped on “virus” to check if it had anything to do with Humans. Several new pages appeared, but none of them mentioned the Human species. I swiped all of the pages on my screen and pushed them down, minimizing them at the bottom right corner.

  I looked back on the piles of information sheets that referred to the experiments.

  “3-D Algae Lakes.”

  I looked into the file.

  On most of the Uni worlds, oxygen is made by fusion plants and GMO forests in the Nature Halls. However, the amounts produced that way are not sufficient for the whole planet’s population, so Booleans devised a system of algae lakes, which produce the majority of oxygen. Recently, they seemed to have developed a novel structure where algae grow on several levels, therefore producing more oxygen than a 2-D surface previously had.

  It didn’t seem like there were any yield issues here.

  I clicked on “algae.”

  “Skin products… raw food material…”

  I read through.

  Clear.

  Humans were not good test subjects either, because their metabolism is too different from ours. In addition, Booleans have been using in vitro cell-culture preps using Descendant cells for centuries. They wouldn’t need Humans for that.

  I swiped the screens down, and all the pages disappeared in front of me.

  “What else? What about Zamnan Second?” I mused and swiped up some more pages from the search pile I had on the desk.

  “Dr. Zamnan Second wins the Uni Award for Novel Research in epigenetics and mutagenesis.”

  Yes. Yet again.

  Both Zamnan First and Zamnan Second received multiple awards from Zlathars for the development of the Descendant species. All the species in Uni were once Humans. With the targeted mutagenesis during the voyage of the Seedships, led by Dr. Zamnan First, most of the Descendant species were already being developed, though the current range of species took another thousand years to reach their final stage. The large population of original Humans rebelled against Descendants, but they were defeated by Zlathar forces and placed on the concentration planet Zema4, where they are still kept under surveillance.

  I looked back at the holo screen.

  This was not the information I was looking for. I touched a pile of information sheets on the desk and made a fist to mimic crumpling paper. All the sheets of the previous search disappeared.

  “In the Vision, Zamnan Second showed apprehension regarding the Mind. I need to view Loreans,” I said out loud, and typed: Loreans. Mind. Yield.

  Several pages piled up on the table, and I swiped up several of them to look at them on the screen.

  “The high-security Mind central stat
ion is being transported to a new location.”

  I shook my head slightly and read the line again.

  Unclear.

  This information did not make sense.

  The location of the Mind was a tightly kept secret; only high-ranking Loreans and Zlathars knew about it. If it was a secret, then why write about a change of location in the first place?

  Unless…

  Unless this was to dissuade anyone else who would want to search for it.

  I closed my eyes, letting my nanoprobes recalculate the possibilities. Then I nodded and opened my eyes.

  Yes, possible… but then, who? And why?

  I looked back to the article and read through the rest. As expected, it was short and didn’t give away any useful information. The Mind was too valuable to make something of such importance public knowledge. The only issue was that it hindered the creation of my future Visions. If I did not receive correct data, I could not recalculate possible future options.

  I shook my head and raised my hand to the screen, but just before I moved to swipe it away, a line at the end of the article caught my attention:

  “…with the smooth new transition. Moreover, there was no delay in chip delivery. The replacements continue on schedule.”

  Replacements? Of APC chips?

  Definitely unclear!

  I did not know that APC chips had to be replaced. There should be no need to do so. Most of the synthetic materials produced at Uni last for several millennia. Why, then, would they need to replace them?

  I looked back at the board and typed “APC chips” to access more information. All of a sudden, there was a faint buzzing sound, and all my screens went black. I looked up, confused. Then I tapped on the holo wall. Nothing. I tapped on the table desk. Still nothing.

  I pressed the E-hook on my left ear and said out loud, “The DC room is dysfunctional. I need assistance.”

  There was a short break, and then the voice of the woman at the reception replied, “Yes, I see it on the screen. It seems there’s a power outage in your DC room.”

  “Could I change to a different room?”

  “We are closing in a few passes. But I can book one DC room for you tomorrow, if there is a need for it.”

  I took a moment before responding. “Yes, please, book the DC room for me at zero-eight-hundred.”

  “One room is booked. Thank you for your time, and we apologize for the inconvenience.”

  “I thank you,” I said and clicked off the E-hook behind my ear.

  I turned around. The door automatically opened and I joined a group of Senthiens leaving the DC Hall.

  I walked into my apartment and the lights automatically switched on. I placed my hand on the panel to close the doors and walked into my living room, unzipped my boots, and stripped off my clothes. Then I bent down to collect them and stopped, distracted by my thoughts.

  Power outage?

  I had never experienced a problem with the power. Anywhere.

  I stepped toward the wall. “Wash bin.”

  A section of the wall opened outwards, and I dropped my clothes in the bin. The wall closed.

  The power failed just when I wanted to look further into APC chips?

  Should I not have access to this information?

  I uploaded all the information on APC chips that was available on my nanoprobes.

  They were designed and synthetically manufactured by Loreans, and were ingrained into rosenquartz tiles, which were the building blocks of portation chambers. But I had no information what the APC chips actually were. I never thought it was of any importance. Until now.

  I closed my eyes and let my nanoprobes recalculate.

  The APC chips…

  The delivery…

  The replacements…

  The APC chips…

  The yield…

  The yield?

  I opened my eyes. Zamnan was worried about the yield. What kind of yield? I had no way of knowing. Booleans work with a variety of living materials for their research. Any one of them could have been the problem. But whatever it was, it seemed very important. Place all our remaining yield into the Mind, he’d said. And whatever they were missing, it was linked to the Mind. Then I thought of another sentence in the article: “…there was no delay in APC chip delivery. The replacements continue on schedule.” But what if that wasn’t true? What if the APC chip replacements were actually not on schedule?

  Was Zamnan talking about a yield of APC chips?

  No, this can’t be. Yield implies growth—growth of something living, not something that has been synthetically manufactured.

  I shook my head and exhaled loudly.

  This seemed too large a concept to process in a conscious state. I hoped that all the newly acquired data provided enough information for a revealing Vision.

  I sat on the soft bench opposite the large beige wall.

  “Wall: Senthia moons,” I said, and the wall dissolved into the night sky with two bright white globes, one of them smaller than the other with a slight purple haze in its white coloring. I slowly relaxed looking at the image on the screen.

  This was probably my favorite image in the library of the Descendant worlds. But the images I would never be able to see, although they were the ones I would love to see the most, were the images of Old Earth. The only ones I had ever seen were in my history recap classes more than three hundred years ago, but there had only been a few, and they were unavailable in the image library.

  This wasn’t surprising. The dead Earth was an all but forgotten memory of the embarrassing beginning of the Descendants’ history, and anything connecting Descendants to that past was scarce.

  I looked at the top right of the image to check the time. It was past nineteen hundred, the scheduled time to take an evening meal. I didn’t feel hungry at all, but I was well aware that too many missed meals would be noted.

  No need to cause an alarm.

  I crossed the room and stopped next to the food processor. It was one of the older types, but I had insisted it shouldn’t be replaced by a newer version. This one produced food that still had some taste.

  Although the meals it made looked like they consisted of different foods, it was all still done out of the same basic paste, with a little bit of taste difference based on the specific nutrient content. The density of the food was also different, which kept the digestion system, gums, and teeth functional, but in the end, it all tasted similar.

  I scanned through the list of meals and decided on the VEV-3, a low-carb, high-protein meal. I tapped the production button and sat on the bench opposite the image wall again, waiting for the synthesis to finish.

  I looked at the moons again, my gaze unfocused.

  There were too many open questions. Humans at the Boolean Institute; the problem with the yield, which was somehow connected to the Mind; the APC chip delivery and replacements; the power problem in the DC room…

  I closed my eyes for a moment, then a moment later, opened them.

  My father. I need to contact my father. He will advise me.

  I got up, voice-opened the clothes wardrobe, and took a sleeveless evening skinsuit. Then I walked to the holo station next to my sleeping area and dialed my father.

  In half a pass, the image appeared, and I heard his voice. “Dora.”

  “Father.”

  He looked the same as the last time I’d seen him: short dark gray hair, piercing green eyes, thin lips, and even younger skin than before.

  “How are you, my child?”

  “I am… fine.”

  His head tilted just slightly. “Did you have any productive Visions?”

  “No. Not recently.”

  “I see.”

  “And how are you?” I said.

  “My rejuvenation cycle has finished recently.”

  “Do you still reject Interactive Coupling?”

  “Yes, as always.”

  “It must be difficult.”

  “It is. For the body. B
ut my mind is free.”

  “It’s been almost four hundred years, Dad.”

  “Four hundred years is just a fraction of time, but an eternity without your mother.”

  There was a moment of silence between us.

  “Dora, it was a privilege, you know this. But it was also a burden. You know this as well.”

  “I understand, Father.”

  “Why did you call?”

  “A power outage.”

  “Yes?” His eyes narrowed.

  “How often does it happen?”

  “Where?”

  “In a DC room. It happened while I was researching APC chips.”

  He inhaled sharply and stayed silent for a few moments.

  “Dora, I usually take the VRA-08 meal,” he then said in a calm voice.

  I opened my eyes wider. My heart started to race. Then I deliberately relaxed my face and regained a neutral expression.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “The search is not important. I would recommend rejuvenation instead.”

  I swallowed, then said, “Thank you, Father. Will you port? Shall we see each other?”

  “I still take the same meal, Dora. Remember that. It’s important.”

  I nodded.

  “Perhaps a good idea for you,” he said, “would be to take a sabbatical, just like I did three hundred and ninety-three years ago.” He lowered his head slightly, still looking at me, making sure I understood what he meant.

  I nodded again. “Yes, Father, this might be a good age to take one.”

  He looked at me for a long time, his lips barely moving to the words he dare not say.

  “Goodbye, my child. As your mother would say.”

  I pressed my lips together and closed my eyes for a moment.

  Then I nodded, opened my eyes, and said, “Goodbye, Father. Until a new holo communication.”

  His image disappeared, and I remained seated.

  VRA-08 was a code.

  It meant that we shouldn’t talk about this subject anymore, because it was dangerous. And recommending rejuvenation actually meant that he was scared for my life. That, should I continue my investigation, I might not live to have my next rejuvenation cycle at all.

  I closed my eyes again, thinking of his last words.