Alevia Devron, The Site, ten years later.

  Shortly after our research started, we established the piets could not naturally evolve to rival humanity for at least a million years. Interest in the piets waned and people transferred in and out of the First Contact Project. Mostly out. We downsized slowly, but significantly, over the course of ten years.

  The objective of The Site and everyone on it changed to monitor the piets and their evolutionary progress, to the atrophy of research projects. We were mostly record keepers at this point. We still kept up the intrusive studies and experiments, but they were a fraction of what they once were.

  Experimental research made up a diminutive percent of our resources. Maintaining the gravitic and atmospheric fields, life support, cloaking, and transport used almost all of our budget. Secondary was our sensors, analyzers, simulations, data storage, and communication. Research and discovery were tertiary at best.

  Part of me was relieved at our findings. The piets may never experience the universe as our equals, but they would never see how ugly mankind could become when wading through uncharted waters of an out-of-context-problem. I think that is what many of us told ourselves, anyway.

  Part of me wanted to hear the words:

  We are not alone... We are not the only ones...

  Of course, to find other intelligent life, one only need look at humanity’s mastery of clones, androids, genetic engineering, and digital intelligence. But those are all artificial, made in mankind’s own image, stunted and controlled so as not to pose a threat to their creators.

  It is not the same as finding something fundamentally new and borderline incomprehensible. Without a foriegn, naturally occurring intelligence to challenge us, how could we know we are not missing something? Overlooking some fundamental part of ourselves and how we experience reality?

  Part of me wanted to genetically engineer their lines and gift them the capacity for intellect. Genetic engineering and selective breeding were strictly prohibited in every regard to the piets, outside of simulations, which is how we calculated our million year figure.

  Soon, however, most of me just wanted to move on. I shortly lost interest in the piets as well. But I never stopped caring for them. When faced with the decision to transfer out of The Site and take up a new project elsewhere in the Sector, or accept my promotion to Site Administrator; I took up my post, and I watched over the piets. When a decision had to be made about what to do with them, I would be here when it happened.

  I was sitting alone in my office when Mare delivered the news. I had taken up shielding my office and meditating every day, so I could concentrate while in the Void, ever since I became an Administrator. This work required giving my colleagues the chance to talk to me privately and without distractions of any sort. It was also necessary to completely compartmentalize myself away from my work and take a break at times. While I never preferred it, and the anxiety never truly left me, I trained myself to function at peak performance in the Void.

  I was deep in thought when my successor burst through the door. As soon as I saw her face, I dropped the shielding and ripped through the nets, looking for the cause of alarm. In a fifth-of-a-second I returned the shielding as I saw Mare’s implant was completely shielded.

  She closed the door.

  I waited for her to speak, to open up her implant, anything.

  “It’s okay.” I assured her, “Take a seat.”

  Her eyes were wild, feral. A raw mix of warring emotions that could not be singled out. It reminded me of my boss and close friend, Mad Ellie. That look was contagious. I had to keep a stoic face for the girl, though.

  Mare remained frozen where she stood.

  “Something amazing happened... Something terrifying... I may have accidentally broken a few Sector Laws... I don’t know what to do...”

  “You did the right thing coming to me like this.” I said as I made my way around my desk. I placed my hand on the girl’s arm.

Stolen novel; please report.

  “Tell me everything. It’s safe here.”

  She dropped her implant’s shield and sent me a packet of information. One look and I could tell it was as close to raw thought and memory as you could send. Nothing else could take up so much memory. We both took a seat at my desk and I unpacked and processed the data.

  The beginning was cut to just the details. Mare took over The Site’s language project after me and most of my team left to go do other jobs. She oversaw several small projects with the help of one or two colleagues. She apprenticed under me for six months before I took up my position as Department Administrator. When the downsizing began, and I became Site Administrator, she essentially had free rein over every language project for the past ten years. I all but lost track of her in my station-wide and Sector duties.

  The outside world faded as I plunged deeper into Mare’s memories. I watched as the duties of raising a generation of piet hatchlings were turned over to her. I watched as she fitted each of the one hundred children with a more advanced model of the translators we designed, and released them back into the habitat with the older piets. I watched Mare stimulate the children's brains remotely with the translators as they grew. Soon, the children gravitated toward each other. None of the others seemed interested in the kind, or amount, of play and exploring that they were.

  I witnessed them respond to individual and team tests like no group of piets ever had. I tailored individual tests and experiments for each of the children, life experiences that seemed to spring naturally from this place they called home. The experiments turned into a program of schooling that developed their problem solving and critical thinking further. I watched as they grew to develop more complex habits and nuanced personalities than any of their species. Soon, the children formed a distinct niche amongst themselves in the habitat.

  Piets never had such a distinct and complex social network as this group had evolved. Soon they grew to have conversations among themselves regarding the tests, regarding each other. They tried getting to know each other, becoming aware of each other on a level no one had ever tried. They slowly realized that they were different. Not just from the older piets, but from each other as well. None of the older piets seemed to have experienced the same things they have or relate to them and the life they had. None of them seemed to understand the language that the children created amongst themselves. Soon they became aware of an ‘us’ and ‘them’ in their tribe. And the concept of ‘I’ blossomed new meaning among the children.

  Their ability to communicate became stunted after the initial explosion of curiosity. I designed experiments to test the limits of their coordination and communication. The only one I found was time. With enough time, they figured out every problem and surpassed every test I set for them. When an individual or group faced something they could not solve, they asked for help; they discussed the matter with others, or went recruiting for new members.

  The loosely organized niches of the children hardened into a solid faction as the children brought together individuals from the fringes, like Rumeinin and Tilalia, who abstained from the group interests and activities of their peers in favor of pursuing more individualistic desires, like philosophy or apothecary work. More outgoing piets like Corde'esal inter mixed between different loosely connected friend groups and brought each other together.

  Together, they realized that these strange events throughout their lives seemed to change based on how they handled the previous events. Almost as if they were communicating with these events through their actions. And their whole lives have been this sort of conversation, back and forth, with this strange force shaping their lives.

  They had a name for it.

  Tch’a’i’la is what it translated to.

  I knew I messed up. I played too heavy a hand in testing these children. I was too busy with other projects. I gave them too much free time to ponder on the meaning of these strange anomalies. I didn’t take the time to make the tests more normal, more natural, more fitting.

  And now they knew of my existence...

---

  I sprung out of Mare’s memories. Twenty minutes had passed. Ten years, abbreviated to feel like a solid year of testing and observation, of following these children and watching them grow up.

  I could fill novels about what I witnessed, what I felt, what I experienced in that year-long, twenty-minute interval. Tears were streaming down my face as I pulled the girl in close. It was beautiful, what she did, and very messy, the way she did it.

  I, and I’m certain others on my team, theorized this very experiment long ago. But we kept the idea to our most private thoughts. We conveniently failed to mention this possibility to anyone and overlooked the idea of trying it. I was so relieved that the piets were proven to not be a danger to humanity, I didn’t want to be the one to endanger their protected status. I didn’t want to open up the possibilities that would bring, not yet, possibly not ever.

  This girl figured it out all on her own, and she was brave enough to try it by herself. She was right. This may have broken the Sector Law about interfering in the natural evolution of the piets. Probably our highest, most sacred, and secretive rule.

  I looked into the girl's eyes, the wild mix of emotions raging across both of our faces, and we both started laughing hysterically.

  Because even the highest and most sacred laws weren’t enforced by the death penalty anymore.