Regardless of the unlikelihood her mother would see the email, Lyla began typing one up. She started inanely by informing her mother she had made it to the school safely. Then she outlined what she had been doing for the last few days, including glazing over her performance in the placement test. She hesitated on telling her mother she had accepted the headmistress’s offer. Finally she decided it belonged in the email. She wrote about the course of studies they had assigned her, heavily revolving around recent events and tactical planning. That was where Lyla had to stop.
The syllabi made it clear she was being trained as one of the leaders of the team. Truth be told, though, Lyla didn’t feel she had any business leading anyone not ever having set foot outside of the Preserve. That decided Lyla. She paused and put a few hard returns into the letter.
Then Lyla changed tone from child writing mother to factor making a request of the chief. “Chief, to accept leadership of my team properly I believe it is critical for me to step out into the field before they do. I request an authorization to enter the field for an afternoon of self-exploration. Thank you for your time.” Lyla signed the email with her love. She sent out the email before she lost her confidence. That was it, now she would have to wait for a response.
The incoming call icon flashed on the corner of Lyla’s media screen. Surprised, Lyla tapped it. The screen filled with an image of her mother in a busy office. “Lyla, what is this about?” Her mother wagged a pad clearly displaying her email in front of the camera.
Lyla took a deep breath and attacked her mother’s question directly, “Chief, I am in training to graduate as a prime factor in just under five years. I feel I would be better qualified to fit into a leadership role given time spent in the field.”
Her mother lowered the pad with the email and sat back in her chair. “I have seen your test results. The headmistress has signed off on me humoring you. You will know my decision shortly,” The screen went black.
Lyla rose from her desk and began pacing in front of her media screen, expecting the answer to come in the form of another call. Instead, her personal delivery cupboard and assignment pad pinged at the same time. Lyla went to her cupboard first. It held a package labeled emergency return toggle. It was a teardrop-shaped chunk of metal suspended from a broach. Lyla read the attached instructions. She was supposed to put it on, when she was ready to return to the Preserve she just separated the dangling teardrop from the broach. The return would be immediate.
Return to the Preserve? Lyla snatched up her pad. An icon in the corner bore the official seal of the chief factor. Lyla tapped it. She skimmed the form and blinked. It was an exit authorization. Lyla sat hard on her desk chair.
She went through her belongings and found the pass key that would activate the portal in the portal room to return to the school. Then she headed out into the common room. She glanced around, she was the only one out and about. Her gut told her to gather an emergency kit from the commissary area. She took a basic emergency kit and a non-lethal weapon charged with immobilization capsules. She zipped the weapon in the kit and headed for the elevator. Upstairs in the elevator lounge, Lyla used the transport platform to teleport to Sugar Town.
She arrived right in front of the town’s main portal. She plugged the passkey into the slot for a moment and then stepped through the portal when it opened. The first view of the portal room was disorienting. It was infinitely white, in all directions. Really it seemed infinite, above, below and all around. Stepping out into the room was a leap of faith because there was no visible means of support for her feet, but those feet found something firm and unyielding. She had heard that the portal room was actually the interior of a sentient entity, provided to smaller species as a way of concentrating the energy generated by movement through space and time.. The entity thrived on that energy.
Scattered throughout the side of the “room” Lyla stood in were stone archways labeled with different destinations, but they weren’t the portals that gave the room its name. Jutting into the “room” from the side opposite the door into Sanctuary was a large gateway. It was made of a giant compressed carbon crystal, also known as diamond. As gateways went, it was beautiful. The floor had been sheered nearly flat with a gritty texture. The walls had originally been rough diamond though they had since been shaped wider and taller by faceting them. The ceiling was entirely faceted as well, with the words, “Do no harm,” carved in an arch above where the business portion of the portal hung. It looked like a vertical puddle of quicksilver. People passed through it with only the slightest of ripples.
Fanning out from the portal were rows of medical checkpoints. Everyone entering the Preserve was given full health checks before being allowed full entry. Some were passed on to medical observation rooms in a sort of quarantine procedure, but most just entered the Preserve proper either through the door into Sanctuary or one of the stone portals. People also lined up for med checks if they were arriving through some stone arches. She didn’t require a med check, coming into the portal room through the portal she had. Ahead was her goal, the main portal to the omniverse beyond. This would be her first passage out into that new omniverse. She felt butterflies in her stomach. She was born and bred in the Preserve, contemplating leaving it made her nervous, but it was the final test she had assigned herself before accepting the mantle of co-leadership of her group. She strode forward joining the line of people waiting to leave. A watcher approached her, “Miss, may I see your authorization? The portal is only open to factor personnel at this time.”
She pulled out her tablet and shoved the authorization in his face. It was literally a permission slip signed by her mother, the leader of the varied people of the Preserve.
“Sorry, Miss Amante, please follow me,” He led her to the head of the line and gestured for her to be the next to depart.
She held her breath and plunged face first into the quicksilver puddle. The mental and physical sensations of travel through this portal were disorienting and entirely new. She experienced synesthesia, tasting magenta and smelling the theme from Seinfeld. Everything slowly resolved itself into a well-manicured public park. She stood on a sidewalk facing a beautifully framed fountain.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” A male voice addressed her from behind.
Lyla spun on her heels with her hand halfway to the emergency toggle on her blouse. She saw an elderly man seated on a well-maintained wood and wrought-iron bench.
He smiled at her and patted the bench next to him, “Settle down young lady. I won’t cause you any harm. I am a friend of your people. I sit here most days just watching your comings and goings. Occasionally I have a chat with your people. Most of them I don’t interrupt. It is clear they are very busy people.”
“Oh,” Lyla sat on the bench.
“My name is Alexander, what’s yours?”
“Lyla, uh, Carlyle I guess,” Lyla answered. It probably wasn’t prudent passing her mother’s last name around out here. Certainly not to a stranger.
“Pleased to meet you Miss, Carlyle -I-guess,” He offered her his hand to shake, “What brings you to this corner of the multiverse?”
“I…didn’t feel right about becoming one of the leaders of my team when I had no experience in a real universe,” Lyla admitted.
“You seem awfully young to be leading anyone…”
Lyla smiled at him, “I know, right? The thing is everyone looks to Goru and I. We all teamed up to take on the placement test and you might say we were the only ones to pass it. Of course now the headmistress has our course set for becoming high level field factors within five years.”
“So you would be working under Brenda?” Alexander asked.
“Yeah, I think so. I am not really read up on current events. I lived a sheltered childhood. My parent’s left a lot out,” Lyla smiled at him.
“Parents only tend to shelter you if they really care. Sometimes they have tough choices to make. I’m sure yours were no different,” Alexander stated.
Lyla nodded slowly digesting his words completely, “I guess it just seemed like my mother thought her work was more important. She barely spent any time with me when I was growing up.”
“She was probably shielding you from dangerous or unfortunate truths,” Alexander said with a shrug.
“My dad always told me she loved me enough to not involve me in her work. Funny how things are turning out.” Lyla gestured to the emergency return bauble.
“Brenda isn’t your mother is she?”
“Oh, no, no I have never met Brenda. I have never met anyone my mother works with…” Lyla frowned. Her thoughts turned inward. Her mother had been so careful to shield her from so much.
“Okay, so she is another factor. The multiverse is a very dangerous place, and she has good reason to fear for your safety. I have seen a few things, like Brenda’s wounds. I bet your mother wanted anything else but this for you,” Alexander was really good at playing devil’s advocate.
“She loves what she does. Why didn’t she think I would to?”
“Lyla, sometimes logic goes out the window when you are a parent. My father was in the military. I loved him for it. He fought for or freedom, but when I turned 18, and tried to join he forbade me. He sent me to college instead. I became a theoretical physicist. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, sometimes parents don’t realize the influence they have on their children. Sometimes children make decisions to spite their parents. My wife married me even though I wasn’t Catholic… I am really off focus today. I’m not feeling well…” Alexander wobbled and nearly fell from the bench. He was very pale and beads of sweat were apparent on his forehead.
Lyla checked his wrists and found a medical ID bracelet. He was hypoglycemic. Lyla dug through her kit and pulled out a high glucose packet like the ones people had been shoving on her. She opened the packet and placed the spigot in his mouth and squeezed. His face registered surprise before he took the packet and began slurping. When he was finished he handed the packet back to Lyla.
“I don’t know all of what you factors do, but I have come to the understanding that you help people when they need it. When your mother starts questioning your career path, you let her know about your first real mission, where you saved the life of a kindly old man who liked to watch a fountain.” He patted her on the head and smiled. Then he pulled a chocolate bar out of his jacket pocket. He offered a piece to Lyla.
Lyla waved it off, “Thank you, Alexander, you’ve been a big help. I think I found what I was looking for.”
“I am going to finish this,” Alexander gestured with the chocolate, “and then I will go home to my daughter’s. She’ll see to it I will be fine. You head on back to where you need to be.”
Lyla nodded and triggered the return tag. She was back in the Preserve before the sensations of the trip had a chance to make any kind of sense. She stood in the medical check in line and waited her turn.
- - - - - - -
Milo was wallowing in the idea that his sister was probably pairbonded to another man. He lay sprawled out on his bed. He couldn’t escape the pessimistic certainty that she and Beaker would choose not to accept Ms. D’llen’s offer. They would go off and start their little family and he would be lucky to see them during Founders week and Christmas. This was Armageddon, his world was coming to an end. He had survived the collapse of one omniverse, but this one would kill him.
The screen on his desk lit up. He saw the light from it reflected on the ceiling. He was so deep in wallowing that he considered ignoring it, until he thought it might be about his sister. That had him out of bed and across the room faster than he could form the intention. He tapped the illuminated icon. His media screen filled with a schedule.
The screen on his desk held an information packet. He flipped through the syllabi. There were an awful lot of very physical choices including marksmanship, rock climbing and track. He had to admit he liked those pastimes but only rarely engaged in any of them because Millie was not as proficient. There was an option of spending some mornings training under Stone’s mentor with Stone.
Milo flipped through the syllabi until he came to the academic courses. It included a substantial unit on higher math, especially where it related to calculating time and space coordinates for teleportation. He shrugged at that. Lyla had been teleporting just fine without mathematical calculations.
The next thickest file appeared to be a nonverbal communications course. After the test Milo wouldn’t be surprised if everyone didn’t have at least a small unit on nonverbal communication. The next file was about the history of factoring. That seemed really pointless. His mother started the movement, and unlike Lyla’s mother his parents did nothing to shield him from their exploits. He flipped through the outline of the course. It emphasized less the events and more the techniques and strategies from the standpoint of evaluating how well they did or didn’t work. It sounded like a lot of boring nitpicking to him.
Milo opened the nonverbal communication packet and began reading about the history of nonverbal communication and some basic schools of nonverbal communication. The thesis project for the course was the development of a personalized nonverbal communication language his whole team was capable of using. Milo blinked. That sounded challenging, it would be difficult for Sport to use the exact same gestures as the humanoid members. He noted that the syllabus encouraged working on it with the other members of the team.
The first unit of the communication class was about pantomime. The goal at the end of the unit was going several hours without speaking or using telepathy and still getting information across to people. Milo considered the things he communicated to people over the course of an average afternoon. He might need to communicate hunger, thirst, the need to use the restroom, and a category of what he considered other needs. In his head he ran through gestures he had used in the past. It was difficult since Millie knew his thoughts as fast as he did.
Thinking of Millie turned the knife buried in his emotions just another turn to the left. He didn’t think he could get through an hour without thinking of her no matter how hard he tried. He fought not to cry, not because it was weak but because he was fatalistically certain it would change nothing.
Math wasn’t about feeling. It had nothing to do with anything which should bring Millie into his thoughts. He pulled up the mathematics syllabus. Then he opened the text file containing the textbook and practice workbook. He began reading the first lesson seemed easy enough. The instructions told him to choose ten problems from each section of the workbook and complete them. Milo decided to do each and every problem in the section. It should distract him for a time.
- - - - - - -
Sport had never been so comfortable indoors. His room was highly modified from the last dorm room he had occupied. Now he was housed alone and things had been arranged with him in mind. He had caught glimpses of the dorm rooms belonging to the others. His was very different from theirs too. His bed was on a low platform tucked into a nook on one side of the room. It was piled with pillows and blankets he could easily arrange into a nest for comfort. Instead of a desk he had a media screen set into a platform three inches from the floor. He had already tried it and it was calibrated to the touch of his primary digit on his paws. A smearing motion zoomed in or out and a slow sustained slide scrolled the screen. It was the most accessible media screen he had ever used.
There was a door leading into a bathroom customized for his needs as a razorwolf. There was a self flushing urinal set directly on the floor. There was a toilet bowl set into the floor so the rim stood barely above floor level for his solid wastes. The sink was set into a twelve inch high counter and the tub and shower combination sat sunken into the floor with steps down into it.
A recirculating water bowl was set at a comfortable drinking height next to the bathroom door in the main bedroom. To the right of the bowl was a floor-level delivery cupboard. There was no closet, just a bank of cupboards for his limited wardrobe of vests, boots and saddleba
gs.
Sport’s media screen lit up, drawing his attention. The syllabi for his courses had arrived. He looked them over, there was a great deal of coursework based on his limited survival and tracking skills. He had always been more interested in refining his psychokinetic skills. He had never really learned how to use his nose properly and to its fullest. He couldn’t scent a trail, nor could he follow one based on visual tracking. Finding the mine during the test had really been a matter of luck. This course confirmed the people observing the test could tell that was the case.
One surprise of the coursework was a class on art appreciation. He wasn’t sure why that had been added. The syllabus was no clue either. He wasn’t surprised to discover he was a teaching aid for a class on inhuman relations, the notes said he was supposed to assist the instructor in teaching the class how to read and write in the traditional razorwolf paw-scratch language.
There was little he could study in his room right now save, the art appreciation course. He began reading about the history of art, from prehistoric human cave paintings to post-futurist Tanerian living sculptures created through genetic manipulation, grafting techniques and judicious pruning. There were also units on non-humanoid art forms, including genetic sculptures made by the microbian civilization, and symbolic paw-scratch scrolls created by his own people. Sport settled himself in and began reading the first module of the course.
Chapter Twenty-one
Good Morning Class
Lyla tapped her stylus on the desk. She had finished reading the assignment five minutes before. There were eight other students in the class, Milo being one of them. He had finished the reading before she did. Lyla watched as one by one the others in the class turned their focus back on Professor Preston. “We are finished?” The professor asked, she was one for the rhetorical questions. “What did the passage tell you about the early factors that you weren’t previously aware of? Milo?”
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