I find the boy at a table by the window. His face is covered by a thick mop of rich brown hair caught somewhere between curly and straight. He seems tired and bored, tapping absently on his phone, shoulders slumped forward.
I feel the Tether immediately, identifying this boy as the one I have come for, the one I am sent for. It takes all of my discipline not to stare at him, my brain seeking involuntarily to sear his image into my mind.
I manage to pass his table with only a glance, nothing overly long or creepy, as I wait for the pumpkin spice latte I've ordered. The thrum of the Tether in my mind is so distracting that I can hardly focus on the bar as more drink orders are called out. I sneak a few more glances at the boy, still tapping away, oblivious to the effect he is having on me.
"Kota!" the harried barista calls out.
The boy stands, making his way through the maze of tables, chairs, and waiting customers with a slow, exhausted shuffle.
That's how I learn his name. Kota is my Psychord.
He comes to within two feet of me. I could reach out and tap him on the shoulder. The thrum of the Tether rises to a sort of warm buzz like alcoholic intoxication, not that I would know much about that. Incarna are not supposed to ever consume alcohol. It disrupts our connection to the Synthnet.
I catch a sideways view of his face, small nose, sharp chin, and smooth cheeks. His skin is a soft golden brown a shade darker than honey. He takes his drink wordlessly and ambles toward the door. His baggy jeans seem as tired and heavy as the rest of him.
The growing distance between us seems to pull on the Tether. It makes me sad for no reason. I feel a pang of remorse for the boy that goes beyond the Tether. He hasn't made it to school yet—probably on account of the coffee shop taking twice as long as usual to get out orders. It is a given that he will be tardy, but that doesn't seem to inspire any haste in his steps.
I wonder if his exhaustion is the typical teenager-up-until-two-in-the-morning-playing-videogames or if it is something deeper, more serious. I don't need the Synthnet to tell me there is a weight on him that doesn't belong there.
I wait for my coffee. There is no need to follow him out right away. That would be suspicious and creepy, even in this body. I hope he is going to school across the street, but even if he ditches, I will be able to find him. The Tether will let me find him anywhere and at any time.
"Dacien!" the barista finally calls.
I close my hand around the blessed paper cup, and I take my first sip of the divine elixir that makes life in this century bearable. I'm sure all of my past Incarna have been addicted to coffee, at least as far back as it was invented and introduced to Europe. I assert that it didn't reach its full potential until the invention of the espresso machine and the milk steamer. That was the birth of the latte, the single greatest achievement of mankind.
I would know, I've been around for most of those achievements.
The truth about me is in my name, literally. Dacien means "person from Dacia." You'd have to really be paying attention in history class to know that Dacia was a land in ancient Roman times, approximately where Romania is today. That's where I'm from—no not Romania, Dacia, ancient Dacia.
No, I'm not a time traveler. The short version is that during my first life, when I was just a young boy in ancient Dacia, I was discovered by some creatures called the Yul'Nari. They're aliens, for lack of a better word, and they're not the little green man or flying saucer types you might be thinking. The Yul'Nari don't even have physical bodies, at least not anymore. That's one of several reasons they need people like me, but I'll get to that.
When I was first discovered in ancient Dacia, they made me a Mindseeker, a sort of deep-cover secret agent. Our job is to hunt the globe for a different kind of special person. The Yul'Nari call them Psychorda. The basics are simple: Mindseekers like me comb through human societies to find the one person in fifty million who is a Psychord. We then convince them, somehow, to give up everything they know and love to help the Yul'Nari.
Why would they do that? Good question. I'm not even sure I understand the answer. We're not supposed to understand. We're just the grunts, right?
According to the Yul'Nari, there's another alien race out there. I don't know what they're called. I've only ever heard them referred to as the Threat. Apparently, they are very bad news and go around enslaving the minds of lesser races they encounter. The Yul'Nari can protect humanity from this threat but only if we help them maintain something called the Synthnet. It's kind of like a globe-spanning super advanced version of the Internet, but it doesn't link to computers or servers, it links to minds, my mind, your mind, everyone's, including the Yul'Nari's.
Only certain people can sense or control the connection. It's not something you can learn, either you're genetically compatible or you're not, and very few humans are compatible. That's what makes Mindseekers and Psychorda so valuable.
I'm not bragging or anything, but we Mindseekers are so valuable that the Yul'Nari won't let us die. The chance of someone being a Mindseeker is literally one in a billion, so when they do find one of us, they link us to the Synthnet permanently. This makes us technically immortal. That's why I'm still kicking it right now in 2023 when I was first born around 200 A.D.
To be clear, I'm not an invincible superhero or anything. I'm in a body that's just about as fragile and vulnerable as anybody's. I can be hurt. I can be killed. I have been killed in the past, although those memories get blocked when I reincarnate. If I die, the Synthnet uploads my consciousness—the real me—into a new body. It's not a clone, although the Yul'Nari do use my original genetic material as a base to create each of my bodies, what we call Incarna. I've lost count of how many I've had. It's been my little inside joke that all of my Incarna are named Dacien, at least as often as I can get away with having that name.
Now, I imagine you might have some questions about why an ancient alien-serving secret agent who is super valuable and, let's face it, super cool in every way, is following a young high school kid who just wants to get his morning coffee and get on with the day's academic drudgery. First, I'm not a creeper. Second, I don't look out of place at all. I'm still a kid, too, well, sort of. My Incarna is only seventeen years old, and that academic drudgery I mentioned, I still have to do all of that, too. At least, I have to pretend to do it. The reincarnation has a nasty habit of erasing too much of my memory, so I don't remember much of anything from my past lives.
Anyway, back on topic. The third reason I'm following Kota is because it's my job. Kota is a Psychord, and he's not just any Psychord, he's mine. He is the whole reason for my existence. Okay, that sounds a lot more dramatic and romantic than it really is. Psychords are more common than Mindseekers. One person in about fifty million people is a Psychord, but the Yul'Nari can't recycle them the way they recycle us. Once a Psychord has been integrated into the Synthnet, a process the Yul'Nari call Binding, it's done, and we have to find a new one.
The Synthet seems to need a continuous supply of Psychorda in order to remain stable. I don't know exactly what happens in a Binding. I assume it makes the Psychorda immortal, too, but disembodied, living entirely in the virtual reality created by the Synthnet, which is a lot like how the Yul'Nari themselves live. Nobody has ever told me this explicitly, I guess it's just implied.
Apparently, due to rules, it's not possible to just snatch Psychorda up alien-abduction style. They have to come willingly and free of deception or coercion or the Binding fails, and we've screwed our one in fifty-million chance. Based on Earth's current population, we can only afford to lose two or three Psychorda a year without risking the integrity of the Synthnet, so even one screw-up is basically a full-on, red-alert disaster.
Full disclosure, my previous Incarna is infamously responsible for one of those screwups, so I guess I'm kinda on alien probation right now. Kota isn't just valuable to my Yul'Nari masters, he's valuable to me. If I lose him, this Incarna is probably going to be my last Incarna. Bye-bye immortality. I don't know the details of my last screw-up. That has been memory wiped, so I'm assuming it was extra bad with a side of trauma. That happens sometimes. Being a Mindseeker can be rough, and the Yul'Nari don't want us all running around with serious cases of PTSD, you know?
Elixir of life firmly in hand, I head out of the coffee shop. Now that I've identified my Psychord, I better get to work on the whole recruitment part of the job.
The Tether starts to pull me toward Milton Jamison High School across the street. Looks like Kota is going where he should be going. Halfway there, the direction of the Tether changes abruptly toward a nearby park. It's a big park with lots of trees, winding jogging paths, and places for shady business. My heart sinks.
The Tether is one of the strongest Synthnet abilities, and it's unique to Mindseekers like me. It's part tracking device and part empathic link. It's also a private one-to-one connection between a Mindseeker and the Psychord they're supposed to recruit. Right now, only I can feel the Tether connecting Kota and me, but if I do my job right, then eventually Kota should be able to feel it, too.
Like you might have noticed in the coffee shop, the Tether is really, really good at keeping us focused on the goal. I guess that's necessary. I mean, think about it. I might be an alien secret agent, but I'm still also a teenaged boy. My body and my organic brain are all seventeen. I might be aware of the fact I'm not a normal seventeen-year-old but that only changes things a little bit. For all intents and purposes, I'm just a teenage boy and sometimes it's easy for me to get...sidetracked.
I know that sounds bonkers, but that's the thing about being an Incarna. We have to be able to blend in. We have to be able to sell the cover story. I know in a sort of academic way that I am ancient, but it never really feels like I am. I know my job, my purpose. When it matters, I can access memories, knowledge, and even special abilities from my connection to the Synthnet.
The rest of the time I'm just Dacien, a seventeen-year-old high school student. I worry about grades, stress about friends, and I get into way more trouble than you might expect. The Yul'Nari call it "biosomatic interference". I just call it "teenager syndrome". It's really annoying, actually, because there is a part of me that is just so over it.
I get it. Being a teenager is hard, but most people, at least, only have to be a teenager once. Now imagine that your entire existence, almost two thousand years of it, is being a teenager over and over again. I never get to have a full life. Incarna never live past twenty-five or so, even if we aren't killed, something about how these bodies are made makes them just burn out. We don't age. If I make it all the way to twenty-five, my Incarna is destined to just drop dead one day. It will look like a massive, inexplicable brain aneurism, and my consciousness will be transported back to the Synthnet.
My existence is a weird balancing act between knowing enough to do my job properly and not knowing enough that I can blend in without it being a total act. I probably wouldn't sell the seventeen-year-old story if I randomly let slip some Latin when I got angry or remembered esoteric details about the Renaissance, or was able to play an unscripted role in Downton Abbey. I know what I am, but I don't remember much of anything from the lives of these previous Daciens. In most ways, I'm just me, an unapologetic phone-tapping, YouTube-watching, video game-playing product of the digital age.
I'm not bitter about my condition...much.
Okay, Dacien, focus, back to the job.
I'm far more concerned right now with Kota than with myself. Whatever he's getting into has nothing to do with school or anything good for his health. I can feel myself closing the distance between us like a tracking beacon beeping ever faster in my head. In a few minutes, I'm close enough to risk being seen, so I keep close to the bushes and trees—I'm starting to act a lot more like a genuine creeper now, but whatever.
Kota has left the jogging path, making his way down the bank of the stream that runs through the middle of the park. I find a vantage point behind some bushes and catch sight of him. He's meeting with some other guy, older, but not by much, maybe mid-twenties.
They talk, but it's too far away to hear. Hands shuffle. I catch a glint of some folded bills, a bag of weed.
Just great. My Psychord is a stoner.