When Em Matte stepped into The Eye, she connected the waking world with the mortal ones. Her death led to Union Day, a day in which all the galaxy was suddenly, and sometimes tragically united. Now everyone must struggle to survive and rebuild in a...
Oops! Questa immagine non segue le nostre linee guida sui contenuti. Per continuare la pubblicazione, provare a rimuoverlo o caricare un altro.
There was something too sterile about Dein for Tine's taste, even as used to Nkiru's hyper-cleanliness as he was. Looking out of the window of the hospital room at the small park below, he watched foris children, wearing various shades of white and gray, scamper over uniform grass that spread out to a border of equally manicured flowers circling perfectly straight tree trunks and sidewalks that glowed with advertisements and entertainment.
He'd learned quite a lot about the foris in the months he'd been bringing Orac for gene therapy. One thing that shocked him was that they too culled children, though they didn't call it that. One of the first days he'd been in the hospital, he'd passed a clinic door filled with women at various stages of pregnancy. "So," he'd said to the female orderly that had been guiding him around that day, "this is where yer obstetrician practices," glad that he'd remembered the word from his medical research and hadn't had to resort to "midwife."
She'd given a single chuckle, waving her cybernetic hand dismissively. "No, that's the abortionist's."
His feet faltered for a moment. "All of those women?"
"Of course," she said matter-of-factly. "Any abnormalities are detected during pregnancy and those deemed unfit are aborted. How else would we keep the genetic quality of our citizens high?"
"I thought the surgeries would fix that."
She chuckled again. "The 'surgeries' are to bring us to our highest potential. No one wants to be responsible for corrupting the gene pool of Dein by allowing..." Her words tapered off into a cough as if she'd caught herself and she blushed faintly. "Well, let's just say we chose not to correct more than we have to."
He took a sip from his flask as he looked down at the children playing. In the bed behind him, Orac slept. Tero told him that, in a few months, Orac would be able to use glasses to give him vision for the first time. It would not be perfect, Tero warned, but it would be better. With all hopes of Orac being accepted into his clan gone, the best Tine hoped for was "better."
The door opened and Tine turned to see a female nurse in a silvery suit that covered her whole body save her face, which was hidden behind a glass mask. Beyond her, he saw there was a black curtain blocking their door from the rest of the hallway. His brow knit. "What's going on?" he asked, tucking the flask into his back pocket.
"A pandemic has broken out on Ator both you and Orac, son of Tine, are being quarantined."
"Where on Ator?" he asked as the nurse moved towards Orac, running a scanner over his small, sleeping form.
Whatever the scanner picked up must have been good, because the nurse gave a contented sigh before she looked back up at Tine and said, "Everywhere."
"I was there five days ago," Tine countered, panic beginning to course through him. He'd lived through two plagues. Once when he'd been a very small boy, before the explosion, and the second time just after he'd become a man. He didn't remember much from the first time, but from the second, he could still clearly picture the long row of bodies, two deep, on a pyre such as he hadn't seen before or since. It stretched at least the length of the meeting hall, though he thought it might have been longer. The smallest victims had been on the top row, small bundles, like his own children, and older toddlers, their once-round little bodies disfigured with the swell and stench of rotting flesh even before death took them.
