Roland Jelínek: So, from what you’re saying, I’m assuming that you think that only the friendly Realities are allowed contact with the broader society within the League member states.
Khepri Azizian: That’s correct, Roland. We’ve rarely ever run into any society that is just hostile to the League as a whole, disregarding the Sidhe. Of course, they were hostile to everyone. No one questions that.
Roland Jelínek: We’ve been in contact with Other Realities for almost two centuries, and one of the first ones we came into conflict with was the Tigré. In fact, the Kondarrians came to us to ask for help dealing with the raiders from that Reality and gave us access to the Sky Hurricane and other Realities.
Khepri Azizian: [grumbles a moment] Yes, that is true, but that was long ago. I’m talking about the current day. Over ninety percent of Realities we’ve run into are uninhabited, and the remaining ten percent are mostly human analogs with relatively peaceful worlds that we can trade with. Where are the worlds like the Federacy? Sure they’re peaceful now as we’ve been supplying most of the food to keep their populace fed, and the uninhabited Realities we’ve given them act as a pressure valve for their Citizens. They invaded Devonal as their first reaction to encountering another Reality. No diplomats, just, “Hi, we’re here to take over.”
Roland Jelínek: That’s well established, as are the Tigré we mentioned earlier. What’s your point? Are you asking why we aren’t inundated with hostile societies?
Khepri Azizian: Yes, because we know they’re out there. That’s three out of the hundred or so that we know of. I’ve heard Stormers talking about places where they shoot down aircraft as soon as you enter them. The sales for stealth coating in the Free Cities and non-aligned nations are off the charts. I’ve even heard tell of illegal Gates. So there are hostile places.
Roland Jelínek: There may be places like that, but they’re aboriginal and ....
Khepri Azizian: No one likes that word, Roland. Can’t we just say homebound or Reality-bound? The use of that word is offensive.
Roland Jelínek: To whom? People we’ve never met and will likely never know we use it? [makes a scoffing noise] Fine, there may be Reality-bound places that are hostile or have values incompatible with our own. What of it? We haven’t made contact with any of them. We've run into a few radioactive worlds with all sentient life dead, so perhaps that is their fate?
Khepri Azizian: The problem isn’t that they exist. It’s that we never hear about them. There are hostile Realities, but no one speaks of them except Stormers. I believe that the governments of the League are hiding this information to keep us happy and...
Where are all the hostile Realities? A government coverup or self-destruction?: Expert [Radio broadcast].
Roland Jelínek’s “Dreams with Shadows”
Azizian, K.
(2194, January 9th)
“Louloúdi Tis Néas Elpídas” Girl’s School
Califerne Province
Former Western Hesperia
Atlan Supremacy
Unknown Reality
September 5th, 147 Rule of Atlan (2193 ESC)
Ah, this is boring, Tamirindus Hammarskjold thought as she listened to a lecture on sociology. She blew some of her copper hair off her freckled nose as the warm breezes blew in through the year eight secondary school’s window. The breeze carried the scents of the sea, hot sand, and growing things to her enhanced senses. Sounds of surf, other girls at exercise or play, and horses from the stables also reached her, furthering the misery she felt indoors. She was sure that the fountain in the garden and the Olympic pools were calling her name. The classroom held nineteen other girls of her age group, and most looked just as bored as she did.
The room was typical of most Atlan Supremacy classrooms, with white walls cornered with Ionic marble columns. Decorative trim where the walls met the ceilings and floor was in a faux Greek pattern. The same around the doors themselves. All of it was the same white marble as the columns. The floor was covered in a herringbone pattern of red oak polished to a mirror finish. A large screen made of a very thin metamaterial was in the front of the room. Looking at it, you would be excused to think you were looking out a window with the depth and holographic projections surrounding it. Their teacher Alexander Du Toit was standing at the front of the room and was currently surrounded by a picture from six generations ago.
The video showed a mob of protesters surrounding the Democratic League of Hesperia’s capital building in Philadelphia. Its brick walls and pointy towers contrasted Atlan architecture with its Greek and Roman revival styles. Riot police with crude power armor held huge transparent shields and shoved back the crowd who surged forward when a politician moved forward to address them. Another transparent shield was around the lectern that an elderly man waddled up to. As he spoke, a bang was heard, and a bullet sparked off the protective device. Nevertheless, he continued as black-suited security personnel grabbed and took away the shooter.
“The time of the mob ruled Hesperia and their allies was a terrible time for our world,” their teacher continued. “Their political system was a mockery of our own, allowing the uneducated rabble to vote on decisions that went up to the State level.” The man was in his early middle age, mature, but built like an athlete under his tailored velour suit. His black hair was curled in short loose ringlets over his tanned skin and barely covered the gold earrings with rubies. Off to the side near his desk, his doreia, a woman with pale skin and blonde hair, knelt with her eyes downcast and hands folded in her lap.
“As you can see here, even their last elected leader, President Dodavah Noffsinger was shown little to no respect. He was here trying desperately to hold the Democratic League of Hesperia together while separatist movements tore apart their society from the inside.” He paused and gave the young girls a wolfish smile. “Movements that we sponsored, and they knew we had done so .” Some of the more aggressive girls returned the smile.
He shrugged. “They knew that we Atlan were poised to attack at any moment, yet they fought with one another. Not even an external enemy that literally threatened to kill their cities and enslave the inhabitants could stop them from fighting. The League was a coalition of several different cultures with disparate values that led to disunity and conflict within. This is one of the failures of democratic societies. They can’t understand that they must stop jockeying for power once threatened.”
Tapping the screen that was partially real and partially holographic, he continued. Then, it changed to a perfect representation of Earth’s globe showing a scene of the north and south Hesperian continents and the large continent-island of Australis. “We had them surrounded by the Afrik-Europa-Asia continents under our control and over their heads on Luna and Ares.” Then, the globe spun out, showing zones of control on the Earth and the solar system. “They held areas around Zeus, Hermes, and the asteroid belt. You would think with all this, they might have beaten us. Your history teachers will tell you that it was just barely that we won the Manifest War, but I’m going to show you that their social structure made it inevitable when faced with ours.
“When faced with an external threat such as the Supremacy that they believed was evil, the people of the Hesperian democracies looked inward and decided that they would rather attack their own system and one another than band together to defend themselves. As a result, they rejected the rule of cooler heads when it was in their own interest to take their advice. Instead, each group decided to be separate and independent when war came. This led to the federal system trying to suppress these groups, further weakening members’ trust in their own system. Fortunately for us, they were too busy dealing with internal threats of unrest for their citizenry to be able to hold us off after the bio bombs and seeded diseases had done their work,” he said.
You’re also forgetting the seventy years of cleanup their armed forces gave us with all their underground bunkers and sleep pods, Tamirindus thought. Their military wasn’t a pushover at all. The Atlan side had been hardpressed with their human Maki Legions being devastated by much smaller forces during the invasion. In many cases, they had to rely on Politir forces, especially off of Earth. In the end, it was just sheer tenacity and the fact that the Herperians no longer had a supply chain to keep them supplied that had won the war. Plus, the damn bastards had almost destroyed all our computer systems that controlled all our equipment, power grids, and manufacturing because they were so much better at it than we were.
Her grandma and grandpa had told her of the sweeps and hunts where they had rooted out the last of the Hesperian humans years ago. It was challenging work where they had to go into underground bases filled with feral humans, cyborgs, and their robotic defenses. Many of their friends and relatives hadn’t made it out alive, let alone their Maki. The Hesperian underground warrens were deep and high-tech enough to keep churning out automated killing machines now and then, even occasionally now. However, the Atlan prevailed in the end, with their genengineered Chimera Maki Legions outbreeding the remnants’ capacity to conduct war even with their mechanical and cybernetic soldiers.
Ultimately, everyone in the Helois system was either under the Yoke of the Atlan or dead. One choice had been given to each Herperian they had caught: submission or death. The Hesperians who had chosen submission were domesticated and their descendants genengineered into dorei. The proud Hesperians were now nothing more than chattel tilling the fields for their masters. There were remnant bands of feral humans here and there, living like paleolithic hunter-gatherers, but these were left there for some of the more aggressive Atlan, like her uncle, to hunt for sport. She didn’t know how they survived out there with feral packs of wolfman chimera and the uplifted chimpanzees they now called goblins competing for the same niche. She’d even heard Chimera centaurs had their own primitive tribes in the Great Plains of North Hesperia and Siberia.
The Atlan had even let some of the Hesperians escape to another star system in a generation ship, where they had founded the New Salamis colony. The Atlan had sent probes after them, but they had all been destroyed as the system had been seeded with self-replicating machines and factories and then fortified beyond the assault of Atlan slower-than-light spaceships. So they were unassailable unless someone could develop faster-than-light travel and get past their defenses. Most communications in the last sixty years with the Salamisians had been propaganda and vitriol the two nations spewed at one another. The Hesperians were understandably upset they had not only lost the war for their homes but had been exiled and had their relatives left on Earth enslaved. There were parallels to the history of the Atlan ancestors that were very uncomfortable if you thought about it. Tamirindus thought they had been let go to provide a threat to keep the Atlan together via an external enemy, but it was not safe to voice that opinion.
Her teacher continued despite her internal thoughts and was now into the meat of his lecture. The scene had switched to a view of a shanty town filled with derelicts. They were in various states of poor health, with most of them with skin diseases or using various poisonous chemicals to escape reality. “They let their society decay to the point where they allowed their people to live like animals in the streets when they couldn’t take care of themselves. In contrast, even our least dorei working the fields still has food, water, and medical care. In fact, if someone had been treating their dorei this poorly, they would be removed from their owner by the state, and the Politir fined and maybe even physically punished.”
In response, there was a general grumbling in the subvocal range as the girls all expressed their displeasure at the topic being retread again. To anyone without their enhanced hearing, it would have seemed to be a normal quiet classroom with students using styluses to write on their dataslates. This was one of Du Toit’s favorite points, where he said that they had not conquered and enslaved the Hesperians but had liberated them from short, brutal lives under mob rule.
“Oh gods, he’s on this again,” Tamirindus muttered. Next to her, her friend Catherine Hardegree turned and looked at her in alarm, her wavy dark red hair in ringlets bouncing off the shoulders of her blue school tunic.
tami, you said that out loud , Catherine sent via her commsducer. She looked at Tamirindus sternly, motioning for her to look at the teacher with her blue eyes.
Blinking, Tamirindus turned and looked towards the front, only to see her teacher standing before her. The man had crept up so silently and fast it seemed like he had only taken a few strides toward her. She fought back her fight response to someone closing so fast on her but still bared her teeth somewhat.
“Miss Hammarskjold,” he said mildly testy.
“Teacher Du Toit,” the girl said between clenched teeth.
He nodded to her and tapped the top of her head with his pointer stick. “Good, you are suppressing your natural inclination to attack when someone approaches unexpectedly. Attacking a Politir of a higher station would probably be fatal, and not in a social or legal sense.” He leaned in close and eyed her like a wolf would a misbehaving pup, making her get goosebumps. “Now, I realize that my lessons are somewhat boring, but might you know more about the subject than I do? Do they teach you better on Ares in primary school than here on Earth? Do you think you should be teaching the class?”
She shook her head. “No, Teacher.”
Straightening up to his full, almost two-meter height, he motioned to the front of the class. “I insist. Please enlighten us with a breakdown of our society. And why it’s superior to the rabble that was the Hesperians.”
Tamirindus winced and stood up, following him to the front of the classroom. Whispers and snickers surrounded her, and she was sure the private comm traffic about her wasn’t complimentary. She turned and faced the class. The girl was a little shorter than the other girls in her class at one hundred forty centimeters in height. This didn’t make sense since she was born on Ares, where the gravity was lighter. She should be taller than them. She wore the short-sleeved brown and khaki dress, a red bow at the neck, knee socks, and black shoes that were the school uniform.
Plastering on a fake smile, she focused her leaf-green eyes on the other girls in her class. They were all a similar age as her, twelve or thirteen, tanned and athletic, with hair colors ranging from blonde, red, black, and brown. Despite genengineering, there were traces of Europan, Azian, and Afrik ancestry in their faces. The Atlan had originally been pirates, adventurers, exiles, and colonists from all over, and it still showed in the faces of her classmates no matter how much genetic engineering had been done to them in the last two centuries.
The screen behind her turned back to its default setting, where it looked like a blackboard. A four-tiered pyramid appeared behind her with the words “Archontes,” “Polis,” “Maki,” and “dorei” in each section of the pyramid. Archontes was at the top in the smallest area, Polis just below it in a smaller section, Maki in the thin middle section, and dorei was at the huge bottom portion. “Our society is based upon a syncretic fusion of the Hellenistic Plato’s Republic, and a work of the Albionese Francis Bacon called New Atlantis.” Pictures of the older works popped into existence behind her on the screen.
“The tripartite structure of Plato’s Republic had a system with guardians, auxiliaries, and producers. The core of the society was the auxiliaries, the warriors that protected society,” Tamirindus said. A picture of a greek warrior, naked except for a spear and shield, appeared in faux chalk behind her on the ‘blackboard.’ A cloak covered his modesty. “Guardians were the rulers. They were elected from among the auxiliaries and were autocratic but could be removed by the auxiliaries in an election if their rule was unjust. This ensured that society was only run by those with the ability and knowledge to do so. They took advisement of the Auxiliaries and made the laws and decisions that ran the society.” Pictures of several extremely heroic men and women in classical robes reappeared behind her in the faux chalk. “If you look harder, the Guardian and Auxiliary castes are the same, so it was a two Caste system. Since only Auxiliaries could be Guardians and once Guardians were deposed, they became Auxiliaries again.”
She smiled at the class, and there were yawns and whispers. This had all been gone over in their primary schools, but Teacher Du Toit looked at her expectantly. “The last caste were the producers, and they were the ones that made everything the society required, from food and shoes to being lawyers and bookkeepers. They had no say in how the society was run, and their only responsibilities were to keep doing their professions and follow the orders of the castes above them. The auxiliaries and Guardians were there to protect them from all outside threats.”
“That’s historical, Miss Hammarskjold,” Du Toit said. “Focus on the now.”
She let out a nervous sigh and nodded, “Yes, Teacher.” Pointing to the pyramid of four parts, she said, “Plato’s Republic’s main issue was that it was run by humans with all their issues. Producers would be upset and angry that they couldn’t run things, and there was always the possibility of revolt. We’ve solved that by genengineering ourselves into two divergent species, homo sapiens dominensis , that’s us,” she waved around the room. “We’re the Politirs, and we choose our Archontes to rule each of the Directorships which run our society. We’re stronger, tougher, and better equipped for fighting than our ancestors. We are generally also smarter on average, and most of us have outstanding recall abilities compared to the humans we came from. Oh, we also don’t age much anymore.”
Tamirindus pointed to Du Toit’s kneeling blonde servant, “And then we have homo sapiens dorei . Our ancestors removed certain traits such as aggressiveness and being quarrelsome from them in return for removing genetic defects and being in the peak of health before they die at the age of ninety or so.” The servant looked up to Tamirindus and smiled at her before lowering her own head in deference.
Then the redhead turned and pointed to the pyramid’s middle section, “Maki used to come from the dorei and were the security forces that oversaw domestic law and comprised the bulk of our soldiers in the Legions that fought under and with our Politir. But with the changes in genetics, they can no longer join this caste. So instead, we use our genengineered Chimera who are somewhat within and without the cas….”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
A bell rang, and Tamirindus stopped to look at her teacher, who narrowed his eyes. “Miss Hammarskjold, You have successfully stalled for time and talked to the end of the bell. You will, however, finish this report and place it on my desk in two days. I expect it to have correctly attributed quotes.”
She nodded and sighed. “Yes, teacher.”
----------------------------------------
Catherine sipped on her tea and smirked as Tamirindus annoyedly poked at the fresh fruits and meats on the plates in front of them. It was mid-morning breakfast, just before their second round of classes. Tamirindus and Catherine sat alone on the terrace overlooking a central plaza in the middle of the classrooms. There was a fountain made of gold-flecked marble in the middle of a beautifully manicured lawn with trees. An arcade of flower-covered trellises ran the plaza’s perimeter with tables for the Politir students to study and eat at. Birds chirped and flew among the greenery and provided ambiance with their songs. Off and on, one of the students would start singing or playing their musical instruments. Then, rarer still, someone would have one of their dorei perform. That was a rare treat scheduled so as not to offend any Politirs practicing.
“Aw gods, why did I have to open my big mouth,” Tamirindus whined. “I got homework, and he knows I sleep more than normal. So I won’t be able to make any art either.” She plucked a huge purple strawberry from the pile before herself, dipped it in whipped cream, and ate it.
Her friend with darker red hair laughed, “Because you annoyed him. Not only is he part of a Landholder family here on Earth, making him higher in rank. His family’s also mostly War Directorship, so they think they’re better than us lowly Security and Technical families.”
“Poo,” Tamirindus said and tapped her teacup. A nut-brown blonde girl of maybe nine years of age moved forward and refilled it, expertly dropping in two sugar cubes and pouring just the right amount of cream. Tamirindus smiled at her and said, “Why thank you, Sofia.” She pointed at the fruit bowl. “Pick one.”
Sofia blinked, and then her eyes flicked at the strawberries. Tamirindus nodded and handed her one of the better-looking fruits, and the girl took it. “Thank you, Anaxa,” the doreia said quietly as she bowed and placed the fruit in her apron.
“Of course, Sofia-mine. You’re a good girl,” Tamirindus said. “How are your classes going?”
“I’m getting good grades thanks to your help, Anaxa,” Sofia answered, her eyes flicking to Catherine, who coughed a little as her own teacup was refilled by a pale-skinned brown-haired boy.
“Thank ya, Daniel,” Catherine said, her accent coming back as she was annoyed and among friends.
“My pleasure, Anaxa,” her servant replied, backing away.
“Ya spoil your doreia,” Catherine pointed out after she sipped her tea. “She’ll get all expectant if you keep doin that, Tami.”
Tamirindus blinked and tilted her head, “We just do that in Hammarskjold Hold.” She shrugged. “Our dorei love us. Sophia here was born from my brooder Oma-Stella, and she’ll be my children’s Oma when the time comes. Makes sense to treat them right and ‘spoil’ them. Especially on Ares, we’ve got a limited amount of life support for everyone, so you treat what you own with more care. We’re terraforming there for sure, but all the comet bombardment is just starting to make seas. Maybe in two hundred years, we’ll be able to have a breathable atmosphere and more than just a few dorei that aren’t scientists or working on the project.”
Catherine rolled her eyes, “You Arish are normally worse than the old Nihonians for minimalism.” She speared a slice of banana and munched on it. “Then there is the Wild Tami , who disdains minimalism and has her room full of so much art that her poor doreia can’t find room to store it. I don’t know how you’ll manage to get all that back home, let alone follow you for career training and your profession.”
Both Sofia and Tamirindus blushed. “I mean, I do prefer physical mediums when drawing or painting,” Tamirindus said. “It just feels better. Digital is alright, but it feels dead.”
“Meanwhile, your poor doreia is struggling to find places for it all,” Catherine countered and smiled at her friend and her property. “Digitize the older stuff, or your parents will have to buy property in the countryside on Earth just to store it all.”
She made a face at that. “Maybe I could sell some of it,” Tamirindus began as she heard other girls heading to their table. oh no, the three harpies are back , Tamirindus sent via her comms to Catherine.
“Who would want to buy your trash art?” Siùbhan MacIllePheadair asked snidely as she walked up. Her long black hair was in a combat braid down her back. She and her cronies were dressed in the uniform shorts and a loose shirt they all wore for physical exercise at the school. Her mean gold eyes were locked on the two girls at the table, mouth in a sneer of dismissal. “You draw stuff that doesn’t and can’t exist.” Her two friends, Rumiko Yoichi, a girl with Azian ancestry and blonde hair in twin tails, and Kaija Pesonen, a Europan with dirty brown hair, flanked the girl.
“It’s called creativity, you bit….”
“And to what do we owe the pleasure, Siùbhan?” Catherine interrupted Tamirindus smoothly. She gracefully stood up to greet the three girls. Her dorei and Tamirindus’ doreia backed away on the other side of the table and knelt, eyes cast down.
Belatedly, Tamirindus stood up as well, giving the three girls a look of hate. Why can’t they just leave me alone? Tamirindus thought. The three had been hounding her off and on in an attempt to annoy her to the point where she would get into a physical altercation with them so a duel could be called. Tamirindus was impulsive but not stupid. She knew they were better at hand-to-hand combat than she was. They didn’t spend all their free time in the palaestra for nothing.
“I saw you were sitting here with the loser and wondered why on Earth you would do that?” Siùbhan replied. Her friends both laughed on cue when she looked back at them.
Acting like cronies to a Salamisian businessman or something, they’re looking like idiots in a bad show on the Info-Lattice, Tamirindus thought.
Catherine shrugged. “Oh, you know. I happen to like everyone and Tamirindus in particular,” the redhead replied. “Besides, I hear her art’s been quite well-liked among the staff. There’s even talk that some of it was sent ahead to the regional contest.”
Tamirindus looked at Catherine in surprise. She hadn’t heard anything like that. She kept her mouth shut, though. Subvocalizations and her tendency to just open her mouth did tend to get her in trouble, as witnessed earlier in the day.
Kaija stepped forward threateningly, “Her weird ass animal people in steam machines shouldn’t be better than my traditional landscapes!” She stopped at a touch from Siùbhan on her side.
“Maybe some of the staff has poor taste,” Siùbhan said quietly. “Nevertheless, Catherine. Your taste in friends is poor. She might drag you down socially if you keep hanging out with her. I mean, she sleeps eight hours a night and takes frequent breaks to hang out in the garden. How lazy can you be? Is she even a dominensis , or are her genetics faulty?”
Tamirindus’s color blanched from her face in rage, and her anger pheromones flared. A hand touched her shoulder, and she looked at Catherine.
The other girl shook her head imperceptibly. “You know they want a duel, Tami,” she said just low enough for her to hear. “Don’t take their bait. You’re not good enough to take them on yet.”
Wrinkling her nose, Tamirindus calmed down, and the three girls who had gotten smirks on their faces looked at one another.
“Oh, I thought I smelled that the little Arish wanted to fight? I guess I was wrong,” Siùbhan said with a smirk. “Gonna run back to your little bumpkin colony planet?”
“Siùbhan,” Catherine said quietly.
The other girl looked at her offhandedly, “What, dear? Can’t you tell I’m playing with this doreia in dominensis ’ clothing?”
Catherine gave a predatory grin to the black-haired girl, “You know. I thought I had heard from a little bird that some contraband Salamisian music might be heard in the Southern wing of the dorms.”
Siùbhan blinked, and a tiny controlled fear scent came from her. “Salamisian music? I wouldn’t know anything about that,” she said huffily. The other two began releasing scents of nervousness and fear, but it was well controlled.
Catherine continued, “Oh well, I thought since you three live in the wing, if you heard any of it, you might want to tell me before one of the staff caught wind of it. I mean, anyone caught with stuff like that might be considered seditious. Who knows what subliminal messaging those evil Salamisians have put in the music.” She walked closer to the three and gave them a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I mean, Security Directorship would have to investigate their families too, don’t you think?”
The three took a step back, and Catherine backed up. “But if the staff doesn’t learn about it, things will be fine, won’t they? You’ll tell me if you hear any of it so we can destroy the evidence and keep our school lives peaceful, won’t you?”
Siùbhan nodded and drew up to her full height, “Fine. We’ll find our fun somewhere else.” She turned to leave.
“Fealty to Poseidon,” Catherine said brightly, putting her right fist to her chest. Siùbhan had to answer in kind, or it would reflect badly on her family. The salute had been in place since their country declared independence from the Albionese three-hundred-and-fifty years ago and was akin to a national trait.
Siùbhan frowned and turned back around, returning the salute. “Glory to Atlan,” she said formally before turning on her heel and stalking off with her cronies and their dorei in tow.
Tamirindus blinked and gave a tiny smile. Catherine seldom spoke of her family’s ties to Security as it could make people very frightened of her. The department was not only in charge of domestic policing but also political infractions. She had heard that you could disappear in the middle of the night for a ‘talking to’ if you were too vocal about certain things or were seditious.
“Umm, Cathy,” Tamirindus started.
Catherine turned and hugged the girl with a strength that would probably have crushed a doreia. Dominensis could only use their full force with one another as their muscles were almost four times more powerful than a human’s. “What?” she said brightly. “I just wanted to scare those three. They look down on us but don’t understand the political balancing acts that keep us from each others throats.”
“I’m AC, right?” Tamirindus asked with a little smile.
Catherine looked at her like she was nuts and held her at arm’s length. “Tami, You’re the brightest spot of my day,” she said after a moment. “I’d be purely bored without your fun stories and art.”
“It’s just you mentioned Security and…” Tamirindus continued.
“Pffft,” Catherine dismissed. “Look, if you ever do something dumb, it’d be because you got absent-minded. You’re smart, creative, and funny. All I could ask for in a best friend.” She released her and winked. “And I’m pretty sure you don’t want any Salamisians walking in here, declaring you a monster and calling for your blood.”
Tamirindus wrinkled her nose, “There’s no way we can get along if they want me dead just because of my genetics.”
“Eh, ferals. We’ll conquer ‘em one day and put ‘em under the Yoke ‘ventually,” Catherine said with a shrug, her accent a bit thicker. She looked to her dorei, “Right, Daniel? We Atlans’ll protect ya’ll from the scary feral humans.”
The pale boy bowed to her, “Yes, Anaxa. Shall I pack the remains and make a picnic basket for you and Anaxa Hammarskjold?”
She smiled brightly, “Oh yes! Do that.” Turning to Tamirindus, she asked, “Can Sofia help him?”
Tamirindus shrugged, “Sofia-mine, help Daniel, AC?”
The doreia bowed and said, “Yes, Anaxa.” She moved to the table as the two dominensis turned away.
Catherine put her hand in Tamirindus’ and started heading towards the engineering building. She smiled brightly at her, “So, you have to tell me. What did you dream about last night?”
The smaller girl smiled and shrugged, “Feathered dinosaurs.”
“Feathers? Do tell!”
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Later that night, after having her butt thoroughly whipped by the physical instructor at the palaestra, Tamirindus sat in her room. It was decorated in the typical Europan style of over two and a half centuries ago in celebration of conquering the continent. Duck egg blue roses abounded in pastel wallpaper on high walls between light oak wainscotting and chair rails, decorative floorboards, and ceiling trim. There were tables of beautiful mahogany, chaise lounges, and comfortable sofas. A small dining table had four chairs on one side of the room and an antique writing desk with metamaterial computronics installed. A large king-sized bed covered in pillows and light but fluffy sheets were on the other side of the room.
Or this was how the room was presented to her last year. It was currently a somewhat organized mess with stacks of paintings against the walls and sketchbooks everywhere, all organized by date. The only purely clear area was a corner of the room covered in a dropcloth with an easel set up that had a half-finished painting of several large dinosaurs with opposable thumbs making a fire in a makeshift camp. They were all covered in feathers and looked for all the world like toothy Macaws. Primitive huts were woven together out of ferns and palms. In the rear of the painting, two of the creatures carried a large dead monkey tied to a long pole between them. Smaller versions of the creatures ran about the village, seemingly at play.
Her bed was the other area that looked like nothing had changed. Sofia had pouted and cried for days when Tamirindus had gotten paint on the sheets once, so she relented and decided to only bring her dataslate and stylus to bed to sketch things if she woke up prematurely. Maybe she did dote on the doreia, but they were friends, so why not? She was at her cluttered rolltop desk full of notes from her last dream. Tamirindus didn’t have time to compile them tonight but was confident the next day off they had for Temple, she would be able to get them all caught up. No one really went to Temple to worship Poseidon anymore, but they all accepted the day off with glee.
She had written the report that Teacher Du Toit requested and finished her homework reading assignments as well as completed a small wheeled robotic light-tracking sunflower. It had followed her around the room when she turned out the lights and carried a small light source until it had gotten lost in the piles of her artwork. She had it turned off and was writing with her stylus on her dataslate. The little devices were merely terminals for the school computer but had their own memories in which their homework was stored.
Her books were stored in her commsducer, a quasi-organic computer that every person who lived under the Atlan Supremacy had implanted in them before birth. It allowed the storage and learning of many subjects, from languages to physics. It also allowed for limited connection to the Info-Lattice, the interconnected database and communications hub that her people use for entertainment, learning, and communication. Portions of it's functionality such as being able to mass communicate were unlocked when certain milestones were achieved such as age or maturity. Pubilc communications were looked through by Security and any mentions of crimes were investigated, with false accusations being a crime. Shows were still projected onto vid-screens in houses if you wanted to watch passively without it taking your entire attention. Unfortunately, while she could access the information, she still had to learn it the old-fashioned way. That meant taking notes and practicing.
Sofia padded up to her and gave her a small plate of sliced fruit. “Here you are, Miss Tami,” the girl said. Formality usually dropped between the two when they weren’t in public. In Hammarskjold Hold, all the dorei and Maki just called their owners by name, only switching to formal and semi-formal speech when others were around. In this room, she knew there were cameras and recording equipment. Ostensibly they only came on for medical and safety reasons, but she wasn’t so sure about that. So for propriety’s sake, she had Sofia use her semi-formal title. Just in case.
“Ah, thank you, Sofia,” she hugged the girl and ate the food gratefully. Unfortunately, like all dominensis, Tamirindus’ body used up calories at a fantastic rate, and they needed to eat at least three to six thousand calories daily.
“Are you going to see Miss Catherine again?” Sofia asked. “She’s nice but strict. I like Daniel. He’s very gentlemanly.”
Tamirindus laughed and smiled, “Sofia, I swear. You wait seven more years before you start getting sweet on a boy. I can’t afford to have two of you yet or sell you to Catherine. I’d drown in my own papers.”
The blonde’s eyes widened, and she shook her hands, “No, no. I’m not sweet about him. Daniel just has good manners and showed me how to make some dishes I thought you’d like. I want to learn more of them.”
Tamirindus laughed and tousled the other girl’s hair. “Well, good. Wait till I start having those feelings, at least. I’d feel all left out.” She checked the time and sighed. “You know, sometimes I wish I didn’t have to sleep so much. The other girls will be up and running around in a few hours, and I’ll still be out like a light.”
Her doreia smiled at her and shook her head. “Nah, then you wouldn’t be you, Miss Tami. I remember last year when you didn’t sleep cause you were so excited about coming to school. You almost passed out during the Opening Ceremony. Though, I guess that was good cause you met Miss Catherine then. Still, all the other girls called you ‘sleepy’ and ‘weird’ cause of that and after you started showing your art.”
Tamirindus laughed a little, “They can’t understand it is all. But, at least Cathy understands me and likes the art.”
“Daniel says that she still thinks it’s weird, but it makes you more interesting,” Sofia said. “Miss Tami,” she added quickly.
Tamirindus laughed and shrugged. “Long as we’re friends, I don’t care.” She put her slate and stylus down and started shucking her school clothes. “Gonna take a shower, get my bed ready.”
Sofia nodded, and Tamirindus went to the far end of the room and into the bathroom, a combined shower, sink, and toilet. She went into the shower compartment covered in small smart nozzles. “Temperature forty-six, ten minutes,” she said and let out a happy groan as the water hit her at one degree over her body temperature. After the ten minutes were up, she headed out and toweled off, leaving it in the hamper near the room. Sofia stood near her bed with the covers open and inviting. Tamirindus yawned loudly. Hot showers always did the trick for her.
“Here you go, Miss Tami,” Sofia said and helped her to bed. She slid into the soft cotton sheets and soon had the light sheets cover her.
“You get to bed too, Sofia. I know you only need six hours, but staying up late is worse than waking early, as Mama says.”
The doreia smiled and shook her head. “I’ll have your uniform and school supplies ready and a fresh sketch pad by your bed for when you wake up, Miss Tami.”
Nodding, the young girl closed her eyes and yawned. “I wonder where I’ll end up tonight,” she said out loud moments before she fell asleep.
The Earth fell away from Tamirindus as she felt her mind shoot up into the sky. The vast stretches of Northern Hesperia were dark except for the tiny areas of habitation and recolonization. All the old major cities were bright with the lights of reclamation equipment that would process out the radioactive soil and eventually replant trees where the Hesperians had made their last stands. She passed up to the atmosphere and saw the hundreds of mega space stations that held most of the Atlan manufacturing capability. The craters of Luna glowed brightly with their domes even though it was a new moon. The cities within the domes were fantastic forests filled with genengineered trees and creatures. One day her home planet Ares would be like that too.
She smiled as she looked over her planet. It was a stunning blue and white marble that they had brought back to life from a self-inflicted nuclear winter and final war in the last seventy-five years after resistance was crushed. Her great-great-grandfather lamented that they could have shared the planet with the Hesperians, but everyone had been keen on war. He lamented the loss of the different cultures swept aside as the Atlan cemented their hold on the planet. Everything had become the same everywhere as the Atlan culture forced its way into everyone’s life. But, of course, he only said this in their Hold on Ares and then only among family. Sedition charges aside, they would be ostracised from society and removed from their jobs at the Directorship if anyone thought he was soft on the Hesperians and their descendants on New Salamis.
Tamirindus was thinking about this when it happened. There was a tug on her ‘soul,’ and she was suddenly among endless sunset-colored clouds that looked as fluffy as pillows and sheep. She whooped in glee and willed herself to fly among them. Her body followed her mental commands, and she dove into the clouds, which felt like cotton candy. She spun with her arms out and pulled out of the clouds, crying out in happiness. Small golden specs followed her like gulls followed a whale. Wait, that was bad. She wasn’t fat, was she? Tamirindus shook away the thought, reached out to touch them, and felt sheer joy and excitement when her fingers connected with the little specks of golden light.
This was why she didn’t care about all the jibes and whispers about how weird she was. Tamirindus flew every time she fell asleep and played among the clouds. No one else she knew had ever recognized her drawings of this place, so she was reasonably sure it was unique. She wasn’t watched, as her commsducer never recorded her dreams. The only records of this place were in her art. Here she was truly free.
Moments later, she felt one of the little gold lights pull on her, and she followed, diving into a cloud. Its cotton candy depths thickened and then parted with a flash of bright green light and a spray of water that ghosted through her body. Blinded momentarily, she covered her eyes and then opened them. She was standing on a street somewhere with Azian writing on the buildings and small fossil-fueled cars whizzing by. She ran and leaped over the vehicles, clearing them easily, to land on the sidewalk.
Humans walked past her and minded their own affairs, no one paying attention to the Atlan among them. They never did. She was a ghost here. Smiling brightly, Tamirindus ran to look at the stores. It looked like it might have happened two centuries ago in one of the Hesperian cultures, maybe Nihon or Cathay. Everything was so different and new to her! Her great-great-grandfather had lamented that the Hesperians and all their myriad cultures were gone, but they were here in her dreams, and she was determined to explore every place she could.