KAL FELT the summer air of Felis swirl in around him as the metaxic bubble peeled away. It was hot and muggy, but the cats, for all their fur, seemed no worse for it. They lay in clumps around the treehouse, their sides rising gently up and down under the moonlight. Many hadn’t even opened their eyes at the disturbance created by the bubble’s unpeeling. Such events had become commonplace for them.
Kal climbed up into his treehouse and threw his pad onto the table. The interface lit up and erupted into numerous small, slowly filling bars, indicating the progress of the data sync to the treehouse computer system.
He glimpsed his bed, and a small shudder ran through him. He searched the room for something to occupy himself with, anything that would keep him awake.
He walked to the window and looked down at the mess of bird meat strewn across the ground. He smiled, glad that the computer program he’d written to feed the cats in his absence had worked.
Weariness overcame him in a wave and he tried to fight it off. He thought of things he could maybe program, or notes he could write up. On the last world, he’d climbed into an enormous crater for a view of a swirling Lake Michigan. On that Earth, it was not really a lake, but a massive, perpetual whirlpool fed by hundreds of gushing rivers. He had enjoyed the trek, but the effort of mountain climbing had drained him.
Somehow, against all conscious effort, he found himself shuffling into bed, clothes and all, and he shut his eyes.
~
Kal clung to a ladder made of wood and vines. Chirps, buzzes, hisses and squawks sounded from all around him, and everything was green. Leaves and vines surrounded the ladder, which continued upward another ten meters or so. The ground lay at least three times that distance below.
Below. He didn’t like thinking about that direction. He clutched at the ladder as a wave of vertigo spilled over him. He clenched his eyes shut and jammed his chin into his chest. When it subsided, he looked up and focused on the opening that led into the bottom of the large, oval, wooden structure. The wooden bauble hung suspended from the branches of two mammoth trees on either side of him. It pulled at him, commanding him upward, and so he forced himself to keep climbing.
Just one hand carefully over the other, he repeated to himself. He kept his head facing up and focused on the rhythm of the climb.
A breeze burst through the leaves, swinging the rope ladder from side to side. Kal was glad that his hands and feet had been firmly planted on the rungs when it had happened. He waited for the wobbling to cease, then breathed a sigh of relief and continued his ascent.
Before long, he reached the hole in the bottom of the structure and climbed through it. He flung himself from the ladder onto the floor, gasping heavily and glad to feel something solid beneath him once more. The interior was enormous, but it was also very dark compared to the bright jungle outside, and his eyes hadn’t yet adjusted.
He pulled off his backpack, got out his pad, and stood up. He stood at the bauble’s edge, near the wall. A single open portal at the center of the roof cast a beam of midday sunlight down onto the floor. A vast conglomeration of intricate, papery hexagons lay illuminated below it. They wrapped and twisted around one another, spreading out in contorted tendrils, shaped eerily like the map of alternate Earths on his pad.
He readied his pad and put his nanites on alert.
Fist-size insects began emerging from the hexagons. They crept slowly at first, but soon accelerated, swarming forward toward him. Some scuttled over the wooden floor while others flew.
The clattering of their claws against the floorboards and buzzing of their wings became deafening, but he stood his ground, certain that his nanites would protect him.
Just as they were about to reach him, the leading edge of the insect swarm seized up. Their deep green exoskeletons began to shrivel and turn brown, peeling off their bodies. The fliers plummeted to the floor, their wings melting off. The entire swarm began to slow, then turned, limping away from Kal as fast as their sickly limbs could take them.
His pad indicated the cause. Each of Kal’s tiny robots produced a small quantity of nanogenic radiation. While it did not affect most organisms, the radiation had triggered a terribly damaging allergic reaction in these insects, and all Kal had done was try to scan them.
They huddled now, shivering in their hive. Some had lost nearly their entire exoskeleton and were barely anything more than sinewy, goop-covered limbs. Kal deactivated all his nanotechnology except for the auto-medical and auto-defense systems, which were programmed to remain either in or on his body.
When he was close enough, he peered inside one tendril of the hive. A group of three insects lay curled up together. Underneath the brown decay, Kal could see they were growing new, green and resilient frames.
His eyes widened and shot down to his pad, the interface abuzz with new information. The insects did not just have an aversion to the nanogenic radiation, they also had within their genes the ability to adapt to it, to overcome the aversion.
He sent his nanites at the insects, each one ready to scan their genetic configuration.
Data began streaming into his pad, and Kal whooped in excitement as sequences of DNA burst into view on the interface.
~
“I found it! I can—” Kal shouted triumphantly and sat up in bed. The sounds of the jungle had vanished. He sat in his treehouse on Felis. He was sweating, and the wave of realization rushed over him, washing away his euphoria.
His eyes teared up. This happened every time. It always felt real. Kal punched the wall, then his bed, breathing heavily.
It was still night. He could hear Daisy wheezing directly below the treehouse.
Kal got out of bed, wiped his eyes, and sat down at the table in front of his pad. He opened up the DNA sequencing interface. An empty double helix spun in front of him. Above it, GC and AT compounds glowed, waiting to be placed.
He sat and stared at it. Finally, he turned the pad off and rested his head on the table. No matter how hard he tried to remember it, the most important detail of the dream—the configuration of those insects’ genetic code—always eluded him. The rest remained crystal clear in his mind.
This was now the fifth night in a row that he’d had the dream, and although he could remember it clearly in his waking mind, in the dream, it was always as though he was experiencing the events for the first time. The insects’ aversion and subsequent resilience to the nanogenic radiation surprised and delighted him, but each time, he was torn away at that crucial moment, just as he began the genetic scan.
Kal took off his clothes, threw them onto the floor, and trudged back to bed. At least the dream had thus far spared him repetition within the same night.
~
The next time Kal woke was to Max’s meowing and clawing at the tree. Kal groped blindly through his darkened room to the wall panel and fed him. He went for his morning swim, and, after returning to the treehouse, ate breakfast, and resolved to find out if a world existed that matched the jungle of his dream.
He turned on his pad and pulled up a container of still images, each corresponding to one of the ten thousand worlds his nanites had placed on the grid.
First, Kal filtered out the eighteen uninhabited ones he’d already visited. The display was still enormous, filling most of the room, and the pictures were tiny.
Munching cereal and typing at the same time, Kal programmed a filter that would get rid of all but the images that contained a high quantity of the color green, since the trees in the jungle all had big, green leaves and vines.
There, that was better. The cloud of the images contracted to fit nicely over the table, and the pictures were a little bigger. Only about five hundred of them now. Kal scanned them over, but none jumped out.
He also noticed a lot of Earths that simply had green skies. He began flicking away the images that were clearly not matches. It was easy going until he got down to the last fifty or so. The morning dragged on as he scanned through pictures, looking for visual evidence that reminded him of his dream.
Eventually, he narrowed the selection down to five candidates. He didn’t see any wooden bauble structures hanging from trees, but that could have been because the nanites that had taken the pictures might not have been pointed at any.
He sent more nanites off to the five candidate worlds for more photos. Minutes later, they returned. Kal was able to throw out three more worlds right away.
And then he saw it. There they were, beyond the tops of walls, the wooden baubles suspended from the branches, and… people.
Kal gulped.
Until now, he’d been able to avoid worlds inhabited by humans. He had in his treehouse computer all the reports of the first metaxic travelers from Fermilab. He had read each of them dozens of times. They had traveled out to other worlds five years ago, just before Kal had come to Felis. Famously, all the members of Team Haskell had been murdered. The native culture of the world they were exploring had seemed friendly and peaceful at first, and then the team had shown off their pads and nanotechnology. They were executed on the spot, their bodies molecularly disassembled by the powerful and deadly nanotechnology of that world. The pads of the dead explorers had then disassembled themselves, returned to Earth, and composed a mechanical account of the events that had led to their owners’ deaths.
Of course, that world was just one of fifty inhabited worlds that the Fermilab teams had explored, and many other teams had found beautiful, vibrant, and healthy human cultures. In the metaxia, healthy human cultures were the rule, and unhealthy, self-destructive cultures were the exception. But Kal wasn’t a quantum life form or a huge team of experts. He didn’t get to make metaxic mistakes. It would take only one dangerous world to end his adventures permanently.
Kal thought about his dream. He thought of its implications and about the possibility of having it every night for the rest of his life.
He sighed, picked up the pad, climbed down the tree, and walked to a safe distance from it so that he could enter the metaxia.
His target was the jungle world.
~
Kal stood in his bubble, the metaxia swirling around outside. A holographic document hung suspended in the air. It was the preparation procedure that the Fermilab explorers had written for traveling to an alternate Earth with human inhabitants.
“One,” Kal read aloud. “Initiate the construction of a translation matrix for your target world. You can find the controls under the main menu of the linguistics program. The nanites will travel to the target world, and begin sampling the language of its inhabitants.”
He opened up the interface of the linguistics program and found the appropriate menu, while an Earth with an industrial-era Chicago peeled in and out of view in the metaxia beyond his bubble.
“Do not unravel the bubble until the translation matrix reaches a felicity rating of seventy-five percent or greater.”
He watched the linguistic database’s felicity rating tick upward.
“Two. Enter your age and gender into the sartorial program and activate it.” Kal did as the document instructed and continued reading aloud. “When the red indicator turns green, activate the next phase of the program. The nanites will make the necessary adjustments to your clothing.”
A few moments later, the red button on his interface did indeed turn green, and he pressed it. His T-shirt and jeans shimmered away, and he balked at his new attire.
Instead of pants or shorts, he wore a small thing around his waist that resembled the racing suit he’d worn when he was on the swim team on Earth. On his feet were some kind of moccasins, and a sash about as wide as his palm lay across his chest, running from his left shoulder to his right hip. All three garments were made of the same synthetic material, and they itched terribly.
“What the hell?” Kal looked down at himself. He pulled up the images his nanites had taken of the jungle world and looked more closely at the people. Before he had only noted their presence, not their clothing. Looking at the pictures more closely now, he could see that he was indeed wearing suitable attire for the jungle.
He gazed moments longer at this image. Some of those residents had rather appealing physiques. He shook his head, reminding himself of the dream, and closed the image out.
“Three,” he read from the document. “Run the secondary cultural analysis program. If any warnings pop up with severity four or greater, it is strongly recommended that you abort the mission and return to Fermilab.”
Kal ran the program. A huge list of cultural vectors appeared before him, but all of the danger ratings hovered near zero, with only a few spiking up toward one. Kal breathed a sigh of relief, but reminded himself that, of course, the program wasn’t perfect. It had reported extremely low numbers for the world of Team Haskell’s demise as well.
He pondered Team Haskell and stared at the pad. An idea formed, and he turned his attention back to the photos. A young man in the picture about Kal’s age had a kind of backpack on. It was barely anything more than a synthetic sack with cords to sling one’s arms through, but it would do. Kal programmed the nanites to construct one for him.
He noticed something else. On his grid, the label for the point of light that represented the jungle world had changed. Previously, it had read “Realm #5941,” the ID of the nanite that had originally explored it two weeks ago. It now read “Ydora.” Curious, Kal pulled up the linguistic database and discovered that “Ydora” was the word for “Earth” in the jungle Illinois.
Kal took a few deep breaths. He typed one final command into his pad and stuffed it into his backpack. The blue swirling of the metaxia dispersed, and the bubble wall flashed, then peeled away, the blue whorls coalescing into the deep green hues of the Ydora jungle.
~
Kal walked through the jungle for ten minutes before coming to the edge of the city he had seen in the stills. From the jungle floor, he could just see over its tall walls. The wooden, ellipsoid structures were tied with thick vines to the branches of absolutely massive trees.
It was even hotter here than it had been on Felis, and the heat made the high humidity even more oppressive. Kal realized that the clothing he had, just ten minutes ago, been so reluctant to wear, was actually quite amenable to this climate, and the idea of covering himself more seemed ridiculous. The itchiness that he had felt while in the dry, climate-controlled bubble had disappeared once the humidity of the Ydoran jungle had engulfed him.
Kal spotted a tall man standing near the city gates. He was gazing into the jungle, and Kal’s first instinct was to turn and flee. Too late. The man spotted him, smiled, and nodded. Kal tensed up. He forced himself to exhale slowly and relax. Somehow, he managed to smile back. He commanded his legs forward and they brought him to the city gates.
“Welcome to the hermitage of Shik’wa,” the man pulled a pad of paper from his belt. “How long a residency would you like?”
Kal pondered this briefly. Was it really that easy? Okay, then. Nothing extreme. Not too long, not too short.
“One week, please,” Kal said. The border guard didn’t seem disturbed by this number in any way that Kal could perceive.
“Your name?” the man’s voice sounded officious but calm.
“Kal Anders.”
The man scrawled on the pad with an implement that looked like a quill. It had a long stalk and hairs protruding from it. Kal wondered if it had actually come from a jungle animal or if it was synthetic, like the clothing.
The border guard tore off a slip of paper and handed it to Kal. He then opened the gates and motioned for Kal to enter. Kal hurried inside, and the guard closed the gates behind him.
Kal slowed and gazed around himself, finally seeing the baubles and the rest of the city properly. Shik’wa had two clear levels: one on the ground where he stood, and another that consisted of elevated platforms, bridges and terraces, connecting the wooden baubles that hung overhead.
Unpaved soil thoroughfares divided up the ground level into plots of short, pruned grasses. Teachers instructed groups of young people at some, while artists busily hacked, glued and welded at others. All of the art pieces were abstract. Geometric shapes sprouted from one another in various hues, some with frames of metal and others of wood.
Kal chose a dirt path at random and began walking down it, trying to appear normal. Eventually, he realized he was probably staring at other people too much, and wondered if that act was drawing too much attention. He took a deep breath, and turned down another path.
The crowd grew denser, and the sculptures gave way to doctors tending patients, craftsmen offering their services, and merchants hawking their wares. There didn’t seem to be any currency, just barter. And in the case of food, the hunters and farmers freely gave away their crops and game. What was important, Kal noticed, was a person’s permit paper. Anyone involved in trade insisted on glancing over it prior to the transaction.
The reality of the people moving about him felt very different from looking at the pictures his nanites had taken. Shik’wa’s residents wore the same kind of clothes Kal’s nanites had constructed, although children younger than about four were allowed to go either completely naked or diapered. Among the adults, women and men wore the same thing, except that for women, the sash was reversed, running from the right shoulder to the left hip. Also, some women, particularly the female hunters, wore a kind of tube top. Although everything appeared to be of the same material, the garments came in a variety of colors and patterns. No two persons’ outfits looked exactly the same.
He walked the streets for some time, trying his best to study all the details without appearing too inquisitive. Many of Shik’wa’s residents seemed too absorbed in their own business to pay any attention to him. He mentally patted himself on the back at a successful first attempt at blending in.
Eventually, Kal worked up enough confidence to climb one of the vine and wood ladders to the hermitage’s upper level. Kal leaned over a vine railing and gazed down over the lower level. The thoroughfares formed their own kind of network as well, weaving together the two distinct districts of art and craft.
Feeling even more confident, he decided to give communication a try, and approached a middle-aged woman.
“Excuse me, could you tell me where the library is?” Kal prayed the nanites’ linguistic program would correctly render the word ‘library.’
“Sure,” she smiled. “The archive is just down Mesh’ga Canal Street. Take that bridge and follow it for about a kilometer, then turn left. It’s the biggest bauble in that part of the hermitage. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you!” Kal beamed at yet another success and took off down the bridge network in the direction she had indicated.
Fifteen minutes later, he reached Mesh’ga Canal Street. The actual dirt path lay meters below him, and an equally bustling network of bridges stretched out on either side of him, spanning the upper level.
However, an even more impressive sight commanded his attention. Kal walked to the edge of a terrace. Before him, the trees broke away and he could see Lake Michigan, or rather, Lake Mesh’ga. The sand was grainier and yellower than on Earth or Felis, and he could see people swimming in the lake and playing games on the beach. The waves looked higher, and he spotted a group of young men about his age, surfing on long hunks of wood. Further out, he could see wooden ships, both large and small. A port to the south harbored many more.
Clearly the residency paper didn’t confine a person to the hermitage’s interior. People could come and go as they pleased. Kal wondered what would happen when a permit expired. And what was the upper limit on residency length?
He looked out at the surfers, who looked friendly enough, and fought the urge to join them. He sighed, looking out at the lake one last time, and then hurried down Mesh’ga Canal Street as quickly as he was able.
It didn’t take him long to find the ‘archive bauble’ the woman had spoken of. Its massive size, at least twice the circumference of the others, indeed set it apart.
Kal walked through the archive’s vaulted entryway and entered a hall of shelves that extended left and right, sloping ever so gently. The hallway was missing its back wall, a railing in its place. Kal walked to it and gazed out into the bauble’s hollow interior. The shelves of books wove around the edge of the structure in one continuous spiral hallway. Kal smiled at the sight. Ydora was no Earth, but from this brief glimpse of their culture, it seemed like a place that would be worth exploring in depth. At least so far. The weight of the pad in his backpack reminded him that he had yet to determine their attitude toward high technology.
Kal began to wander the aisles, passing through rows of books. His nanites helpfully translated their titles to English as he scanned them. He came to the end of one row, and was awestruck to discover a meticulously drawn map of the world. The people of Ydora, it seemed, were excellent navigators and had mapped their entire planet with a high degree of precision, despite having no apparent computer or satellite technology.
The map depicted astounding differences between Earth’s and Ydora’s respective topographies. East Asia and Australia looked more or less the same, but further west, the similarities degraded. India was an island continent and Europe was jammed into Africa with no sea between them. South America was fatter with no isthmus leading off it. And as for North America, well, it was mostly recognizable, except that it seemed to be missing everything east of Texas and south of the Ohio River. According to the map, the Atlantic Ocean lay just two hundred kilometers south of Shik’wa.
Kal stood physically at the same latitude that Chicago lay on Earth, but powerful ocean currents fed this region with hot, wet air, creating the tropical climate.
He tore his gaze from the map, reminding himself that he was here to investigate his dream and wondered if the enormous bauble with the insects was part of a hermitage. That seemed unlikely since the dream experience had been so solitary, so very unlike Shik’wa.
He realized it was unlikely he’d be able to connect the dream’s details with a physical location on his own. He leaned against a bookshelf and sighed. Asking for directions to an archive was one thing, but, “Oh excuse me, can you direct me toward an enormous building filled with giant ants and bees?” was another matter entirely.
He continued his research despite the odds. He eventually turned up a tome that was something like a regional atlas and paged through drawings of Shik’wa and other hermitages, grinning at the familiar names – Rok’fwo, Miil’wak, Mids’no, Mno’ols, Diit’roy and more – but none of the pictures matched the vivid locale that had visited him for the past five nights.
After hours of leafing through artists’ renderings of hermitages, Kal became aware that the archive was nearly empty, and he should probably leave. He realized he’d neglected to feed himself again and resolved to find a meal and a place to sleep for the night.
~
“I found it!” Kal sat up in his bed, sweating and gasping for breath.
He glanced around and realized he was not alone. Tired, annoyed eyes looked up at him from the room’s other beds. His emotions rushed quickly through disappointment and anger before giving way to embarrassment. He tried to fluff his pillow nonchalantly, then rolled onto his side.
Great, he thought. First night in an alternate Earth youth hostel and my dream causes a scene.
He tried to relax and opened his eyes briefly.
Across the room, he saw a young woman, about eighteen, his age, with long, dark braids, staring at him. When their eyes locked, she tapped at her head, then pointed at her eyes with her index and forefinger, and then pointed both fingers at Kal.
Kal repeated the gestures slowly and methodically.
She raised an eyebrow sharply, then shook her head and rolled back onto her side, facing the wall.
Well, crap. That hadn’t been an appropriate response now, had it? Kal inhaled and exhaled heavily, then rolled over and closed his eyes.
~
The sun shone brightly over Lake Mesh’ga as Kal sat on the terrace outside the hostel bauble eating a breakfast of fruit and some kind of dried, mashed grain bars. They were stiff and flaked to pieces at the slightest touch, but tasted pretty good nonetheless.
“Hi.”
Kal looked up to see the young woman from the hostel approach. Seeing her clearly now, she was tall, had dark hair and skin, and a friendly smile. She had a backpack like his strapped over her shoulders, and carried a breakfast tray of her own.
“Hi.” Kal smiled back.
“Can I join you?”
“Sure.” Kal said. She set her tray on the table and sat down in front of him, smiling intensely.
“I’m Sprig’g,” she said.
“Kal.” He almost offered her his hand and then reminded himself that customs could differ too. She nodded at him, and he returned the nod, hoping it was appropriate.
“So, how long have you been traveling?” Sprig’g asked.
Kal blinked. Was she another metaxic traveller? How did she know? “A few weeks. How long have you been traveling?”
“Weeks?” Sprig’g’s eyes grew wide. “You’ve been having the dream for weeks?”
Kal nearly choked on his food. He managed to swallow, coughing to clear his throat. “The dream?”
Kal felt so confused that he wasn’t sure if it had been a statement or a question.
Sprig’g waited patiently for Kal to stop coughing, her eyes radiating intensity. “It’s a huge bauble. You climb and climb that ladder that leads up into it, and there’s a breeze that hits you when you’re almost there. You feel dizzy and pause. Then you climb inside. There’s a beam of light down the center and a pedestal underneath it. An unknown artistic master’s book of the lost works and notes sits at its center, and then just as you open it up and begin reading—”
“You wake up,” Kal finished for her. The orange-hued, half-eaten pear fell out of his hand and clattered against the tray, and he fumbled with his plate, trying futilely to make the behavior seem natural.
“Hasn’t anyone told you about the Sejjh?” Sprig’g asked.
Kal shook his head. “I never told anyone about the dream. I thought… I thought they might think I’m crazy.”
“You’re not crazy.” Sprig’g clasped his hand with hers. “It’s okay. You can tell anyone about the dream, but kids don’t know any more than us, and the adults won’t tell you anything except to go to the Sejjh.”
“Is that what the bauble in the dream is called, the Sejjh?”
“I think so. I’m not sure. The adults all insist that the answer is there. That’s where we have to go to make the dream stop.”
Kal furrowed his brow and bit his lip. “Our dreams are different though.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Well, the beginning’s the same, but in mine, there isn’t a book, it’s, um—” Kal hesitated.
“It’s okay. What do you see?”
“Insects.”
Sprig’g scratched her chin and looked away, pondering this a moment. “Now that’s interesting. The dream is the same except for the thing we find. You like insects?”
“Not particularly, but these insects are… they’re special. It’s like someone knew exactly what I’d want to find and put it in my dream.”
“Same with me,” Sprig’g said. She tapped her fingers on the table. Her food sat on the plate in front of her untouched.
“I’ve been looking for help getting to the Sejjh,” she said finally. “I’ve got permission to tag along with a hunting party going to Rok’fwo, and the riverboats can take me to the Chasmedge, but there won’t be any hunters going out from there.”
“What do you need hunters for?” Kal was immediately sorry he’d asked the question, and cursed himself at getting so worked up in the excitement of finding a person who understood his plight so completely.
She gave him a weird look, blinking a few times. “Because the jungle isn’t exactly safe.”
Kal raided his memory for something he’d learned in the archive bauble to cover up this blunder. “I mean, I grew up around Bauz’tun, so we didn’t have to worry about such things that much.”
Sprig’g smiled again, seeming to buy it, and Kal was immediately glad he’d spent the previous day researching instead of surfing.
“Well, you’re welcome to come with me as far as the Chasmedge. I’m sure the hunting party won’t mind.”
Sprig’g stood and Kal realized for the first time how tall she was. She stuffed the food that was supposed to be her breakfast into her rucksack and threw it back over her shoulder.
“I have to take care of some things before we go. The hunting party leaves at the next bell,” she said. “From the west gate.”
Kal had heard the bells. They sounded all around the hermitage in unison, about once every hour. The next one was perhaps thirty minutes off.
“I’ll be there,” Kal said. Sprig’g did the greeting nod again, apparently also a nod of parting, and took off into the hermitage.
Kal smiled, thinking how fortunate he had been, and looked out over the lake. Then he glanced down at his backpack on the bench beside him and noticed the rectangular outline of his pad, visible through the synthetic material. He remembered Team Haskell, and rearranged the sack’s contents as discreetly as he could.
~
The hardest part of leaving Shik’wa was the revocation of his residency paper. He’d learned in the archive that one should always stay a resident roughly the same amount of time as declared on entrance. Although it was a bit unusual for him to leave early, it wasn’t unheard of. The border guards gave Kal a lecture about respecting the residency system and proper educational planning, but in the end, they agreed to stamp the paper as revoked.
“I guess I didn’t think I’d find help so soon after arriving in Shik’wa,” he said to Sprig’g once they were away from the Shik’wa gates.
“Don’t sweat it,” she said.
The hunting party was a group of two men and a woman, all of them much older than either Sprig’g or Kal. They were built like Sprig’g, lean and muscular, and he realized that they must do this their whole lives. He wondered if their protection came with a price tag.
“Where did you have residency before the dream started?” Kal asked.
“Miil’wak,” Sprig’g replied. “How about you? Did you walk here all the way from Bauz’tun?”
Ah, so Sprig’g was a native after all. But that left the mystery of the dream. And had he walked here from Bauz’tun? That was a good question. He had yet to see a single vehicle on Ydora.
“Yeah,” Kal guessed. This prompted no adverse reaction from Sprig’g, so Kal decided to press forward with his questioning.
“How long have you been having the dream?” he asked.
“Five nights now, every night. I woke up in the hostel screaming just before you did. It’s absolutely infuriating. Each time is like the first, even though I remember the dream when I’m awake. I can’t imagine this going on for weeks.” Sprig’g shook her head.
“Maybe the dream’s difference is important. What’s significant about the artist’s book for you?”
Sprig’g didn’t respond. Instead, she marched forward along the jungle path. Kal wondered if, like the insects for him, her desire for the book of the artistic master was a touchy subject.
The hunters stalked through the jungle in front of Kal and Sprig’g, their crossbows at the ready.
A few hours into the morning, Kal slowed to rub at rashes that had formed at his ankles. Pal’mno, the female hunter, dropped back and gave him an impromptu lesson in plants he should avoid brushing up against. Soon, he could recognize the pestilent ones by the shape of their leaves. Kal nodded his thanks to Pal’mno, wondering if he’d done anything right in this culture at all.
At midday, the group stopped for a lunch break. Kal had made the assumption that the merchants, farmers, and hunters would not have been interested in the artistic endeavors he’d witnessed in Shik’wa. He was surprised to see Ben’lorr, one of male hunters, set down his crossbow and produce a sketchbook along with a hunk of charcoal from his sack.
Sprig’g displayed an immediate interest and began asking him about the hermitages he’d studied at. They discussed art for some time before the hunter asked about her background. Sprig’g reluctantly revealed that she was some kind of apprentice in training at something called a mastery in Miil’wak. Ben’lorr’s eyes lit up, and Sprig’g did her best to answer the rest of his questions politely.
After lunch, they resumed their trek.
Kal noticed that the jungle grew not just thicker but also noisier, the deeper they travelled into it. The chirps, squeals, hisses, and squawks grew into a cacophony.
He also discovered the price of the hunters’ protection. They gave Kal and Sprig’g each a sack. Periodically, two of the hunters would run off through the trees, leaving the third to watch Kal and Sprig’g. They’d come back carrying freshly shot, furry prey, and Kal and Sprig’g took turns adding carcasses to their respective sacks.
“How can they tell when there’s an animal nearby?” Kal asked Sprig’g after the second such kill.
Sprig’g shook her head. “It’s something to do with changes in the sounds of the jungle. If the jungle ever goes quiet, then you’re in real trouble, because it means a predator is either pissed off or insane and is about to attack. I learned the basics in first-fourth year. I thought I was going to be a hunter, because I got high marks on the physical evals, but then I tried using a crossbow and found I couldn’t hit a mark to save my life.”
“How’d you get into art?”
“I didn’t really. It’s just something I’ve always done and enjoyed doing.”
Like programming for me, Kal thought.
Sprig’g’s and Kal’s bags steadily filled up with carcasses.
When the light began to fade, the hunters stopped and set up camp. Kal and Sprig’g threw down their sacks. Sprig’g took out her knife, pulled out the carcass of a fox-like creature, and began ripping its body open. Kal gazed transfixed at the gore, and he suddenly lost the appetite that had been developing all afternoon.
“Could you get the hydromesh from the hunters?” she said as she tore through the canine’s innards.
Happy to get away from all the blood and guts, Kal found Ben’lorr and asked him for the hydromesh. The hunter pulled two bundles of blue, foamy cloth from his sack and unrolled them. Each was about half a meter square and a centimeter thick. Kal took them back to Sprig’g, who greeted him by slapping a bloody hunk of raw meat into his hands. She looked at him expectantly, and he found he could only return her gaze with his mouth agape while the gore ran down his arms.
“Oh, you’re—I see. I respect your values, but we have to do our part for the hunters in return for their protection. I promise to do all the cutting if you do the drying.”
He realized she’d mistaken his nausea and confusion for some kind of disapproval of animal meat. “No, no, it’s just I’ve never—”
She took the bloody limb and placed it between the two sheets of hydromesh, then slapped the whole bundle onto the ground.
“Press.” She motioned for him to apply pressure to the top of the hydromesh sandwich.
He did as she had instructed, and the foam constricted, a long whoosh of moist air bursting up off it. The outline of the meat contracted.
When the burst of air had subsided, he tore off the top layer of hydromesh to discover… jerky. Sprig’g grabbed it and slapped another wad of bloody muscle onto the blue foam.
They finished just after the sun went down, their work lit by the fire the hunters had set.
After dinner, Kal got to talking with Pal’mno. He found out she made a hobby of chemical research. She had become interested in it through her sister, who worked at an oil well in the south, near the ocean.
The Ydorans of this region, it seemed, were deeply interested in chemistry, and also in human and animal cells. They were aware of DNA, but only at the chromosome level. The biggest research hurdle for them was generating enough electricity to power scientific instruments. As he talked more with Pal’mno, he noticed that she seemed to worry more about electricity being misused than the scarcity of its supply.
Kal glanced over and saw Sprig’g talking to Ben’lorr again. She was asking him questions about his artwork, but when he asked about hers, she deflected the questions, steering the conversation back to his techniques.
So, she’s sensitive about her talent, Kal thought to himself. Why?
The second day of their journey proceeded much like the first. Although he had swum two or three kilometers every day for the last two years, nothing could have prepared him for the pace Sprig’g and the hunters kept. His legs ached, and today he was carrying a bag of dried meat as well as a bag of dead animals.
The third hunter, Keit’n, paused and insisted on helping them. Kal looked at Sprig’g, not sure how to respond.
“There’s too much burden for you two alone,” he said. “Time to spread it around some. We already have more food than we need for Rok’fwo.”
Keit’n hitched his crossbow onto a loop at his waist, and Kal and Sprig’g each gave him one of their bags. He carried them as though they were filled with feathers.
Just when Kal thought his legs and arms might give out completely, he realized that the sounds of animals had dropped off, the jungle had become less dense, and they must therefore be approaching a hermitage. Half an hour later, and with less than an hour of light left in the day, they arrived in Rok’fwo.
~
Kal and Sprig’g thanked the hunters, nodding respectfully. They each applied for single day residency papers as quickly as they could, then took off into the hermitage, heading directly for Rok’fwo’s youth hostel. They gobbled down dinner and then crashed onto their respective beds, falling immediately to sleep. Kal had his dream again that night, and woke to hear Sprig’g shouting as well.
They looked at one another through gasping breaths, and after a few moments, their tension evaporated as they realized where they were.
Kal gulped, and threw himself back onto the bed to escape the inherent awkwardness of the situation. He heard Sprig’g do the same before he drifted back into slumber.
The morning seemed to wash the episode away, and they ate breakfast together amicably, refreshed.
Curious, Kal decided to try finding out more about her version of the dream from a different angle. “You’re an artist?”
Sprig’g sighed. “Just training. That hunter, Ben’lorr, his stuff is really good. Did you see any of it?”
“Yeah, I saw it. What about you? Do you have a sketchbook?”
“I paint mostly. All my work is in Miil’wak.” She fiddled with one her braids.
No good. Sprig’g simply got too anxious when he tried to talk about her artwork. He decided to let the subject drop for the time being.
“I have a friend here in Rok’fwo,” Sprig’g said. “Her name is Mel’anii. She taught me math, physics, and chemistry when my family had residency here four years ago. I think there’s a good chance she’ll tell us about the Sejjh.”
“Because she’s your friend?”
“That, and I know she’s been there.”
After breakfast, Kal followed Sprig’g down into the Rok’fwo thoroughfares. Just like Shik’wa, Rok’fwo had the two levels. It wasn’t as big as Shik’wa though, and instead of sculptures, it was chalkboards and chemical experiments that filled the city’s grassy patches, which were here burned out and ragged from being splashed with corrosives.
From reading in the Shik’wa archive, Kal had learned that most hermitages specialized in one particular subdiscipline of either science or art, though apparently the word in their language was “scienceart.” They conceived of the two as a single endeavor, not just related, but fundamentally the same.
Wait a minute, Kal thought. He stopped and squinted, inspecting something that looked out of place among the landscape of scientific experiments.
“That looks familiar…”
“Where?” Sprig’g said.
Kal pointed.
“Oh no…” Sprig’g’s expression fell, then gave way to irritation. She seemed to forget Kal and strode toward the statue Kal has spotted.
“Ni’ero!” she shouted.
Kal ran to keep up with her.
“Ni’ero! What the plunder is this?” Sprig’g was beside herself. Literally. The statue was of her. Its skin resembled papier-mache. It was life-sized and depicted Sprig’g with her paintbrush held forward. Kal hoped that the expression on the statue’s face had been intended to seem deep and mystical. Unfortunately, owing to its sculptor’s skill level, the visage made Sprig’g appear more tired and drunk than anything else.
A young man about Kal’s age, presumably Ni’ero, stood behind the statue, massaging its head, the only incomplete portion. At the sight of Sprig’g, he stopped what he was doing and rushed down off his stepladder. He had long, wavy hair and was just a little shorter than her.
Ni’ero embraced her, getting plaster all over her back. She stood frozen, gaping in shock, then snapped to her senses and shoved him away.
“What have you done?”
“It’s my tribute to you!” he beamed.
“How dare you!”
“I love you, Sprig’g. I had to build it. I just— I just had to. You don’t like it?” Ni’ero’s face filled with desperation.
“You can’t do this, Ni’ero. This is a hermitage for chemical engineering, not sculpture!”
“Who cares what the stupid rules are!” Ni’ero shouted. “To plunder with them! I can’t believe I wasted my time on this! And on you!”
He turned his back to her and clenched his fists. Bits of plaster oozed off them and fell to the grass.
“Fine,” he said. “Just… fine.”
Ni’ero staggered toward a sack at the base of his work area and produced a device that consisted of a spout attached to a long tube. He ripped the synthetic cover from the spout, pointed it at the statue, and pulled a trigger at its base. Fire burst forth from its nozzle, and the statue of Sprig’g burst into flames.
Kal watched Sprig’g’s face closely, unsure if he should try to comfort her, or even say anything at all. She covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes wide.
Rok’fwo residents rushed the plot, shouting wildly. Ni’ero tried to escape from the ensuing chaos, but two adults grabbed him by the arms and held him fast. Kal and Sprig’g continued backing away from Ni’ero’s work area as other residents cordoned it off. The statue of Sprig’g burned to the ground. First its arms fell off, giant black embers, then its head, and finally the whole frame crumpled and collapsed into smoldering wreckage.
A team of a dozen men and women wearing headbands rushed up with large buckets of water and doused it.
“I loved you, Sprig’g, I really did!” Ni’ero blathered through tears as the Rok’fwo adults hauled him away.
“I don’t love you!” she shouted back and stormed off in the opposite direction.
Kal was running to keep up with her again.
“I’m… I—” she stuttered.
“It’ll be okay, Sprig’g. We’re just here for a little while to find Mel’anii, right?”
Sprig’g nodded solemnly, still rushing away as fast as she could.
~
Mel’anii, Sprig’g, and Kal sat around a table on a terrace overlooking the tumultuous Rok River. Mel’anii was about as tall as Sprig’g, but with a leaner frame, slightly lighter skin, and a dozen or so metal rings adorning her wrists and ankles. Kal had seen residents of Shik’wa and Rok’fwo wearing them, but this was the first time he’d seen so many of them on one person.
“He did what?” Mel’anii balked at Sprig’g’s story of Ni’ero’s scene.
“He burned it.” Sprig’g sighed. “Just pulled out a glowtorch, ripped off the cover, and burned the whole thing to the ground.”
“I’m sorry.” Mel’anii smiled weakly. She sighed and scoffed. “I honestly don’t know what you ever saw in him.”
“I guess that makes two of us,” Sprig’g tapped her fingers furiously on the table.
“He isn’t… dangerous, is he?” Kal tried.
“I doubt it.” Sprig’g said with a chuckle.
“Rok’fwo’s criminal rehab is top notch,” Mel’anii said. “Setting fire to an image of you… that ought to take, what do you think? A couple of years at least, right?”
“Hopefully longer,” Sprig’g said through clenched teeth, and a protracted silence ensued.
“Mel’anii, Sprig’g told me that you’d been to the Sejjh,” Kal said.
Mel’anii’s face lost its color, and she bit her lower lip.
“You can’t tell us, can you?” Sprig’g said.
“Sprig’g, you know I would tell you if I could.”
“Really? You too, Mel?” Sprig’g leaned forward into the table and glared at her.
Mel’anii, though clearly disquieted, gazed back resolutely, grasping her teacup with both hands. “Do you remember An’do?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not.”
Sprig’g crossed her arms and sat back again. “Yes, I remember him. I remember him and Y’rem trying to turn your class into a circus.”
“He was here just a few days ago. Same journey as you—he was having the dream. You just missed him.”
Sprig’g rolled her eyes. “Funny, I always imagined those two going feral together.”
“No. I saw it even then, An’do especially. The immaturity was a smoke screen to draw attention away from his insecurities. He’s studying Ro’kel functionalisms in Mno’ols.”
Sprig’g’s eyes widened. “An’do got into the Mno’ols mastery for functionalisms?”
Kal couldn’t help but think that if he were on Earth right now, he’d probably have some kind of microcomputer science scholarship. He struggled to push the thoughts away and focus on Sprig’g and Mel’anii.
“Mmmhmm,” Mel’anii sipped her tea, smirking as she set the cup down. She set her hands on the table and looked directly at Sprig’g. “If it were in your best interest for me to tell you what’s at the Sejjh, I would tell you. But it’s not. You’re going to have to go there and discover that for yourself. Trust me, I remember the isolation, the loneliness, and the worry that everyone’s in on some kind of grand conspiracy against you. It’s really not like that.”
Kal felt a little relieved hearing this, but Sprig’g seemed nonplussed. He was now more curious than ever to discover the Sejjh’s secrets.
Sprig’g nodded deeply at Mel’anii, managing to hide her obvious despair, at least a little. “I’ll come see you when I get back then.”
Mel’anii stood and nodded back.
“Nice meeting you,” Mel’anii said to Kal. She took her teacup and walked off.
Kal and Sprig’g sat in silence for a minute or so.
“What do we do now?” Kal finally worked up the nerve to ask.
Sprig’g stared at the table. “We go down the river to the Chasmedge.”
“You were really sure she’d spill the beans, huh?”
She curled up her lip.
“Damn it!” She pounded a fist on the table. Then she exhaled heavily. “Yes, that’s what I’d hoped.”
“Hey, we’ll figure this out together, okay?”
That seemed to cheer Sprig’g up, just a bit.
“How do we get down the river?”
“A riverboat. There’s a harbor. Come on.” She stood up and grabbed her pack. “If we hurry, we might be able to get the overnight one.”
~
Kal and Sprig’g arrived at the harbor where the riverboat crew was prepping for departure. It was a huge, wooden, multi-level craft, and Kal watched as workers loaded it with enormous vats. Fuel, Kal guessed. He wanted to pull out his pad and run scans on their contents, but he stifled the urge.
Sprig’g went off to pick up tickets from a woman standing near the river’s edge.
Kal noticed a group of teenage boys swimming in the river. Their sashes and moccasins lay in piles on the riverbank. The water crashed around them, and a number of them were letting the currents briefly sweep them away before fighting back with strong, upstream strokes. It looked moderately dangerous and therefore extremely exciting. Kal wished he could join them.
He turned, realizing that Sprig’g was standing beside him, watching him watch the swimmers.
“You swim?” she asked. She was grinning too widely.
“Oh, ah, yeah. I swim. A lot. You?”
“Mel taught me track and field. I’ve never been a very good swimmer. Couldn’t get the form right.”
There was a lengthy pause.
Sprig’g nodded in the direction of the river. “You know, it’ll be fifteen minutes at least before the riverboat’s ready.”
Kal dropped his backpack and ran toward the water. “I’ll be back in time,” he said, pulling off his sash and moccasins.
~
Kal did make it back just in time to catch the riverboat. There was nothing to dry himself with, so he rubbed at his hair, shaking the water out. He put on his sash, then remembered the shoulder thing and flipped it over to his left shoulder. He snatched up his pack and ran for the riverboat.
No one seemed bothered by the fact that he was soaking wet, so he boarded still dripping river water. The bell from Rok’fwo rang nine times, announcing evening just as the whistle of the boat sounded its departure.
Kal found Sprig’g at the bow of the ship.
“Have fun?” Sprig’g said.
He grinned. “Loads.”
“Have you ever been over the Chasmedge?”
Kal had seen it on the maps in the archive. An enormous gorge ran from the northwest edge of Illinois diagonally southeast through the state, ending near the border between Illinois and Indiana. The Rok River flowed directly into it.
“No,” he said.
“We’re going to have to cross it. How do you feel about heights?”
“They’ve never bothered me except—well—for some reason they bother me in the dream. It’s weird. I’ve been up tall ladders and mountain paths before and never had any problems.”
“It’s the same for me,” Sprig’g said. “It’s almost like it’s someone else’s dream, not mine. I’ve wondered if the Sejjh is some kind of dream transmitter. That’d be horrific though, don’t you think? Not the kind of thing Mel would think is a good reason to run off into some godforsaken part of the vastness. Someone would have dismantled it by now.”
Kal grimaced, and he agreed that the kind of device she described was completely out of sync with what he’d seen of their culture. “Mel’anii did say that we’d understand when we find it.”
“And I trust Mel,” Sprig’g clutched the railing at the boat edge. “None of this makes any sense.”
Kal shrugged and smiled, leaning back against the railing with his arms crossed.
“We’ll have a problem at the Chasmedge,” Sprig’g said. “There won’t be any hunters going to the Sejjh, and we didn’t find anyone else having the dream in Shik’wa or Rok’fwo. We’ll have to wait at the Chasmedge for someone with weapon skills.”
“I can keep us safe,” Kal said.
“Oh you can, can you?”
“I have a new kind of technology that protects me from harm. I can use it to keep you safe, too. Is that okay?”
“What hermitage developed it?”
“Bauz’tun.”
“Hmm. Sure.” Kal watched her eyes. At least part of her was suspicious.
Sprig’g yawned and stretched against the railing. “I’m going to turn in.”
“Night,” Kal said, and watched her disappear into the boat’s interior.
He stood there a while, watching the currents of the river fade away in the waning light. He waited until the sun went down completely and the windows of the boat became little beacons in the dark.
He made sure no one else was around before retrieving his pad from his sack. He turned it on and began programming.
~
The riverboat was still surging steadily down the river when Kal woke up. He and Sprig’g ate breakfast on the deck, and she told him they would reach an outpost called Orr’jen within the hour. It wasn’t a hermitage really, just a waypoint for hunters and artisans. It had few resources and residents, but its location atop the Chasmedge drew a huge number of travelers.
“Have you ever been here before?” Kal asked Sprig’g as they were preparing to disembark.
“Nope. I’ve only heard stories from others.”
Kal had heard that the Grand Canyon was widely considered to be the most beautiful natural wonder on Earth’s North American continent. He’d seen holorenders of it and wondered if the Chasmedge would be similar.
He and Sprig’g joined the crowd of people shuffling across the narrow gangplank off the boat.
Once they were free of the crowd, Sprig’g motioned to Kal to follow as she took off through Orr’jen. He followed her up a ladder, and they arrived atop a plaza of small platforms that overlooked the Chasmedge.
Kal had never seen anything like it. He was so high up. Below the platform, the ground ended and fell away so far that the rock just disappeared into darkness.
The other side of the Chasmedge lay in the distance, and it was clearly much lower than Orr’jen. Kal had read that a geological disaster had occurred on this part of Ydora thousands of years ago. The ground had been wrenched open, and the slab of land southwest of them had dropped about two hundred meters in elevation.
The Rok River gurgled to his left. Kal turned and saw it spilling over into the Chasmedge, dispersing into a cloud of mist and disappearing into the dark haze below.
To his right, Kal could see Orr’jen’s two way stations. One consisted of dangling seats that looked similar to ski lifts. The other was an array of zip lines. Kal spotted a man strapped into a harness attached to one of the zip lines and watched as he was launched away from Kal’s side of the Chasmedge and hurtled down toward the other.
Sprig’g grinned at him. “Hope you were telling the truth about heights.”
~
As the way station technician strapped Kal into the harness, he tried to recall experiences that had made him more nervous than he felt now. There had been particularly tense swim meets, when he’d tried to psyche himself into swimming harder than he was able. His heart raced with a similar intensity now, but emotionally this was very different. He gazed out into the abyss. A thrill and a shudder worked through him simultaneously. Shortly, he knew, he’d be launched over that gaping void, a thin rope the only thing preventing him from plummeting to his death.
Another technician was strapping Sprig’g into the neighboring zip line ten meters away.
“You ready for this?” she called out to him.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.” Kal said through clenched teeth. “You?”
She gave him a reluctant smile. “Couldn’t be better.”
“Belay on?” a technician called out from his left.
“Belay on!” Sprig’g and Kal’s technicians announced.
Kal and Sprig’g flew out over the Chasmedge. There was a moment of tenseness and extreme anxiety, which shortly dissipated into euphoria. The hot wind blew up against his face as he was falling and flying and holding on for dear life. He let out a whoop of excitement and he heard Sprig’g do the same.
Kal looked around at the sky and the birds and even down into the hazy black pit below him. Blue above and darkness below and the adrenaline rush mixed with the blissful blur. Not a single experience in his life could compare.
The lower side of the Chasmedge rushed up to him, and he lurched to a halt. He found himself wishing he could do it all over again.
“That was awesome,” Sprig’g shouted to him as technicians ran up to release them both from the harnesses.
“Incredible!” he yelled back.
Kal saw the technicians grinning at each other, and Kal realized that they must do this at least once or twice a day, up and down, back and forth. He marveled at how such an extraordinary experience could become commonplace, and hoped that such wonders would never cease to amaze him.
~
Sprig’g and Kal checked around the way station for others headed toward the Sejjh, but no one else was going that way. They would be on their own.
One of the technicians approached Sprig’g and Kal grinning. He handed them a map of the Rok Valley, the portion of the river that had been terminated when the Chasmedge had opened up. It was overgrown now, lush jungle where the river had once been.
The man drew a circle on the map, highlighting a great hill, once an island in the river. It lay twenty-five kilometers southwest of the lower Orr’jen way station. Seeing Kal unarmed, he offered to give Kal his crossbow and a knife. Kal initially refused, but the technician insisted. Kal balked at the idea of killing a living thing, but at least Sprig’g seemed happier once he had accepted the weapons.
She dawdled at the edge of the way station and kept looking over her shoulder, watching the zip line hopefully for new arrivals. Eventually, she sighed and hurried off with Kal into the wilderness. The animal noises and thick foliage resumed almost immediately outside Orr’jen’s walls.
Sprig’g seemed more furtive, tense, and alert than she’d been on the first part of the journey. She held her crossbow ready and kept her hand near the knife in the pouch at her side.
They traveled for hours without talking, just listening to the sounds of the jungle. Kal strode casually at first, but as he watched Sprig’g, he realized that each little squawk, hiss, and growl set her on edge, and her eyes darted through the vines and scraggly ferns. Her nervousness was infectious, and Kal found himself stalking through the jungle as well.
Hours passed without incident, and they both gradually calmed. In the middle of the afternoon, they reached a small glade, and Sprig’g suggested they break for a snack. They sat across from one another on a rocky outcropping and pulled food from their backpacks.
“Sprig’g,” Kal said, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”
She looked at him curiously.
“We’ve talked about the parts of our dreams that are the same, but we’ve both been avoiding talking about the parts that are different. For me, the insects are something that I’m a bit… ashamed of. Something about that art book… is it the same for you?”
Sprig’g looked away and nodded.
They sat in silence a few moments more, not making eye contact.
“Alright.” Sprig’g threw up her arms. “But this is just between us, okay?”
Kal nodded.
“I’ve never felt confident in my abilities as an artist,” she said breathlessly. “Everyone told me I’d be a hunter. I loved sports in school. When it turned out I wasn’t very good at that, I tried all the other skilled professions – medicine, trade, farming. I was all right at some, but none felt right.
“I’ve been painting forever. Mel and others encouraged me to submit my work to the Mil’waak mastery, and I got accepted. Everyone’s nice. They compliment my work, but… I guess I feel like I don’t really belong there. Like I’m not… not good enough.
“I imagined once that if I found a book of some hermit artistic master no one had ever heard of, then I could just learn her style, and everyone would always love it. I wouldn’t have to worry about feeling that way anymore and I could get through the apprenticeship. I know how incredibly disingenuous that would be. I wouldn’t really do it, even if it turns out such a book actually exists.”
Sprig’g crossed her arms and leaned back. “What about you? What are those insects of yours all about?”
“Well,” Kal breathed in deeply. “In my dream, I’m able to analyze the insects’ DNA.”
“How? Is there scientific equipment in the bauble?”
“Yeah,” Kal said, careful not to slip a smile at his white lie. “I need to see that DNA. The insects got sick when they got near me. But then they got better. If I can find that DNA, I might be able to go ho—”
Sprig’g gestured for him to be quiet. Both of them searched the jungle with their eyes. It had grown deathly quiet. Kal remembered what Sprig’g had said about the jungle noises dying down, and jumped to his feet, fully alert.
Sprig’g pulled out her crossbow and loaded an arrow, while Kal fumbled with his own.
A tiger-sized canine with maroon fur jumped from the brush, all thrashing claws and fangs. White foam dripped from its mouth. It leapt at Sprig’g, and she ducked to avoid its first attack.
Kal’s heart raced. He was filled with one emotion—fear—but from two conflicting sources: the animal’s ferocity, and the thought of revealing his pad. His mind was a jumble.
The animal twisted itself back around and prepared to leap again. Sprig’g fired at it and missed.
“What are you waiting for?!” Sprig’g shouted.
The crossbow wobbled in Kal’s hands as he pulled at the trigger ineffectually. It wouldn’t fire. Kal cursed and threw the useless contraption on the ground.
Sprig’g pulled out her knife as the beast fell upon her with gnashing teeth. She flinched and braced herself, but her skin shimmered where it bit at her, its teeth and claws not impacting her skin.
Kal felt his heart sink. There was no hiding the truth now. He tore off his backpack and opened it up.
Sprig’g gazed at herself and the wild animal. She seemed unsure if what was happening was real. The beast bit and scratched at her, but the nanites on her skin absorbed all the force of its attacks.
Kal pressed a button on his pad, and the dog hurtled back a couple of meters.
It righted itself and turned its attention to Kal, lunging at him.
Kal pressed the button again, and the animal lurched backward once more.
Unfazed and lost to the frothy delirium, it waved its head about, eyes wild and bloodshot. It reared back, preparing to lunge at Sprig’g yet again.
Kal sighed and tapped a few holographic buttons. Medical program… Pathogen removal… Setting non-human animal target.
The beast lunged at Sprig’g once more, and Kal pressed the final button. The fury went out of the dog’s eyes. It scrambled to a halt on the ground, then turned to its side, coughing up froth. It looked momentarily confused, then scared, before it loped away into the brush.
Slowly, the ambient jungle noises resumed.
Kal could only look at Sprig’g with pleading eyes while holographic readouts danced on the interface. He swallowed the lump in his throat, then turned the pad off and lowered it to his side. His eyes remained locked with Sprig’g’s.
“What is that?” Sprig’g stood, glaring at the pad.
Kal opened his mouth, but words wouldn’t come out.
“What is it?” She stomped toward him.
“It’s a computer.”
“Mistech.” Sprig’g spat the word. “And what did you do to me exactly? Why couldn’t the aard’og hurt me?”
“You asked me for my protection, and I gave it.” Kal’s heart raced.
“No, you used some kind of mistech on me without my permission, and it stops now!”
He looked at the ground and knew that she was right. She hadn’t really given her permission.
“I don’t know what kind of hermitage is developing this crap, but the whole of Ydora is against you. We have ethical standards.”
Kal felt himself tense up. He was afraid and regretful, and he felt more alone than he had in four years. Part of him wanted to tear himself away from Ydora, go back to Felis, and forget about metaxic travel forever. Sprig’g had turned away and was marching deeper into the jungle without him.
“I’m not from Ydora!” he shouted at her back.
Sprig’g turned and marched back toward him. “You want me to believe you came here from outer space?”
“No. Right here. An Ydora with a different history, different culture… different timeline. You called this mistech. I don’t even really understand what that is. To me, this is normal. It’s just a computer.” Kal’s voice wobbled.
Sprig’g eyed him warily for several moments that seemed to stretch on into eternity, and Kal imagined all the secret, horrible technologies the people of Ydora used to punish mistech users. He’d be a Team Haskell of one.
Sprig’g narrowed her eyes and tapped her foot on the ground, just watching him.
“Come on,” she said finally, her voice calm but stern. “Let’s get going. We’re almost to the base of that hill. Oh, and whatever you did to me, undo it. You can undo it, right?”
Kal nodded vigorously. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was feeling. Relief and desperation mixed with fear and panic. He programmed away the nanites on her skin and ran after her through the jungle.
~
They reached the base of the great hill at sunset and made camp. They ate their dinner in silence. Sprig’g insisted on keeping the first watch. When her back was turned, he pulled out his pad, and programmed a defense perimeter around their camp as quickly as he could. Sprig’g had asked him to remove her defenses, but she hadn’t said anything about any other programs he might write.
When he had finished, he lay down and stared up into the vines and long leaves, the light of their fire dancing across them. Eventually, he closed his eyes, just listening to the sounds of the jungle, finding it hard to fall asleep.
Worry seeped into his mind about what Sprig’g was thinking and planning. He jolted up and grabbed his pad, making sure that it was both locked down and that an alarm would sound if anyone touched it but him. With that done, he lay down once more and let weariness overtake him.
When he woke from the dream, Sprig’g remained motionless at her watch. He gathered himself, and they exchanged roles wordlessly. Kal wondered if he’d completely botched their friendship or not.
He had to admit, their culture had an elegant logic to it. Earth’s history had left him well versed in the myriad wounds that improperly utilized technology could inflict. He thought back to his lessons on their last two hundred years of history: nuclear proliferation, nuclear war, the great climate change of the twenty-first century, and the huge technowaste cleanup that had taken nearly two generations’ worth of effort.
And then, through the harsh struggle for survival, he had been told, the remaining cultures of Earth had grown up. They’d stopped working against one another and started working together. Though even in the modern day, with all their technological and social success, there was always the nagging worry that one rotten dictator would appear, and it would begin all over again—poverty, exploitation, and injustice.
If Kal guessed right, Ydora had avoided the problem completely. Instead of creating rules and regulations to limit the use of potentially harmful technologies, they merely had a cultural imperative against their creation and abuse. “Mistech.”
In the morning, he and Sprig’g cleared their camp and began trudging up the hill.
An hour later, they reached the summit. The ground flattened, and stretched out before them, a field of small ferns and grasses. Two absolutely enormous trees towered over the plateau, their thick branches holding at least fifty meters aloft the largest bauble Kal had seen on Ydora. A rope ladder led from the ground up into an open portal at its edge, just like in his dream.
Kal just stood there for a few minutes, looking up at it, Sprig’g at his side, gazing too. It felt so surreal, finally seeing this place in waking life.
The Sejjh.
“What do you think we’ll find inside, your dream or mine?” Kal broke their daylong silence.
“Perhaps both. Maybe neither. Come on.”
~
The climb up the rope ladder was nothing like his dream. Kal had been alone there, and Sprig’g was above him now. He felt no rush of vertigo.
The breeze from his dream was also mysteriously absent, and the air was very still. Not a single gust of wind disturbed the trees. The character of the day was completely different.
Kal looked up and saw Sprig’g enter the bauble. A few rungs more, and he too climbed inside.
Unlike his dream, this bauble had an open ceiling. Sunlight dappled the room in patches, having passed through the leaves and branches above.
At the room’s center stood a granite statue of a man holding a cane. Sprig’g stood a meter in front of it, just staring at it, her back to Kal.
“Sprig’g?”
She didn’t move or speak.
“Sprig’g!” Kal started toward her.
Something, some kind of wave, passed through him, and he slowed, coming to a halt. He still stood in the bauble, but his perception had become hazy, as though a grainy, blur filter had been placed somewhere between his eyes and his brain. The air felt thicker, and the sound of his feet on the floorboards took on a twangy echo.
“Hello, Kal’and.”
The statue had become a real man, who stepped down from his pedestal. He was old, maybe about sixty, and he was adorned with dozens of bracelets and anklets, even more than Mel’anii. His cane, formerly stone, was now made of wood, and rapped on the floorboards as he strode toward Kal. Although Kal’s view of the bauble’s interior had become blurred, the man with the cane appeared to him with crystal clarity.
“Hi,” Kal replied, though his eyes darted about, searching for Sprig’g. She had vanished.
“My name is Lorr’enz. I built this hermitage.”
“My friend—”
“Is fine,” Lorr’enz said. “I’m talking to her too.”
“What is this place?”
“Many years ago, I helped develop a new technology. I learned of radio waves and brain waves, and eventually I got to wondering if the latter could be transmitted in the same way as the former.”
“Telepathy?”
“That was the goal. My research consumed my life, and after many years, I did find some success, but only with dreams. It never worked with waking thoughts. We struggled for many more years to find a practical application for this technology and failed. All the while, I was assaulted by those who suggested my research to be mistech, saying it could cause mental disorders and insanity.”
“Then the dream isn’t mine. But that doesn’t make sense. It had the insects. No one on Ydora could know that I would want to find them so badly.”
Lorr’enz smiled widely. “Yes, that which you desire greatly. You see, it’s also possible, once a dream’s pattern is recorded, to ‘poke holes’ in it, so to speak, to leave parts out that the host mind must fill in.”
“So my unconscious mind made up the insects and added them to the dream?”
Lorr’enz nodded that deep Ydoran greeting nod. “The statue I built broadcasts the dream to a specific mental profile—ambitious, talented young people, like you and Sprig’g. When I reflected on my own youth, I came to believe that I might have grown wiser faster, if my ambition had been tempered by a greater understanding of my yearnings, the deep desires that I dared not share with anyone.”
Kal’s heart sank, and he felt his face flush with anger. “No insects… No cure! It was all just a ruse.”
Lorr’enz pointed his cane at Kal’s chest. “What would finding that cure do for you, Kal’and? Is it truly critical for your development as a human being?”
“Critical for my development?? I’d be able to go home, to Earth! It’s where I belong.” Kal crossed his arms.
“Is it now? Then tell me, Kal’and, isn’t there something you’ve forgotten to do?”
Kal glared at Lorr’enz.
“When I was young,” Lorr’enz continued, “I just assumed that the point was to reach the goal or find the solution. But it’s not the destination that matters, Kal’and, rather the journey and the decisions you make along the way. That’s why I created the Sejjh the way I did, out here in the vastness. To give you a journey.”
Lorr’enz sighed and laid a hand on Kal’s shoulder. “There are times in life when you will only get one chance to do things right. Reflect on your desires, or they will rule you from the shadows of your mind and corrupt every decision you make.”
Kal thought of what he’d done to Sprig’g with his nanites, and regretted it deeply. “I think I see what you mean.”
Lorr’enz nodded resolutely and returned to the spot at the center of the room, rapping his cane on the pedestal.
“You may dismantle this statue if you believe it to be mistech. But if you feel you have learned something from this experience, please leave it in place for the next group of ambitious young people to reflect upon.”
“Wait, I—”
Everything went black.
~
Kal opened his eyes. His vision was still blurry. He stood in the Sejjh bauble, and Sprig’g stood in front of him, shaking his shoulders. The statue was behind her, once more made of stone.
Kal looked up. The sun had traveled to the opposite side of the ceiling. The waking dream had taken, what, six hours? His stomach growled in affirmation.
Kal glanced at Sprig’g, who exhaled in relief and caught his gaze only momentarily before looking up at the statue of Lorr’enz. Kal looked it over too. An odd mixture of emotions surged through him, anger and awe both. He’d wanted to find those insects so badly, and yet, somehow he had become suspicious of that desire. What if Lorr’enz was right?
“Mistech?” Kal asked, though still unsure if his guess about what the term meant was correct.
Sprig’g shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
They stole one last look at the statue, so calm in the red and orange glow of evening sunlight, patterns of leaves moving over it in the breeze.
Sprig’g broke their trance, moving quickly for the ladder, and Kal followed. They descended quickly and quietly, but the character of their silence had changed. Kal couldn’t stop thinking about what Lorr’enz had said in the waking dream, and he imagined Sprig’g must be pondering her interaction with him as well.
They made camp at the base of the hermitage and ate slowly beside the fire.
“Why did you take me the rest of the way?” Kal asked, staring at his food. He wasn’t sure he would like the answer.
“Because you’re not an enthusiast,” she replied, calm and sure of herself.
He looked up at her, pleading with his incomprehension.
“You really have no idea what it is, do you?”
Kal shook his head.
“Okay, mistech is a technology or use of technology that creates an inappropriate power relationship between two humans or groups of humans. Equality above all else. So, if I take this crossbow and kill an attacking animal, it’s just a crossbow. But if I point it at you, it’s mistech. And, of course, there are technologies so powerful that they corrupt any person who touches them.
She waited for Kal to nod before continuing. “An enthusiast is someone who learns, makes, or uses mistech anyway. You’re a riddle, Kal’and. You have a mistech device, your computer, but instead of using it to hurt me or manipulate me, you used it to protect me. Tell me, what brought you here from your alternate Ydora?”
Kal looked at his feet. “I’d hoped to find a way to go home.”
“If you can travel between these alternate worlds like you say, what’s stopping you? Did you get lost or something?”
Kal took a deep breath. “No. My Ydora is called Earth, and I know exactly where it is.
“Six years ago, I was on the West Chicago Junior Swim Team. We had a meet, a, um, kind of race, an important one. I jumped into the pool and started swimming, but I didn’t reach the other side. I have a… genetic disorder, a kind of allergy. I’m sensitive to the radiation that nanites make. Too much of it causes my lungs to stop absorbing oxygen. I passed out in the pool and slipped into a coma.”
Sprig’g shook her head, confused. “Nanites?”
“They’re the tiny machines I told you about. On Earth, they’re everywhere. The ground, the air, the water, they’re in and on everything. There’s nowhere on Earth where I’d be conscious, much less safe, so my parents found scientists experimenting with travel to alternate Earths, and they were able to convince them to help me.”
“They brought you here?”
“No, to a different world, one with no nanites, no people at all, actually. I sort of took off on my own. The insects in my dream were hurt by the radiation at first, but then they adapted to it. If I can find a real organism like that, I might be able to apply its adaptation to myself somehow.”
“How many other worlds are there?”
“Pfft. Infinite. Or near it anyway.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“Dangerous, too. Like I said, cultures are all different. You never know how people are going to react to this.” Kal held up the pad.
Sprig’g nodded.
“What about your art?” Kal asked. “Do you still want to find that artist’s book?”
Sprig’g gazed up into the trees and then shook her head. “No. I think I was always judging my own work by someone else’s standards. I wanted to make the best art the residents of Miil’wak had ever seen. But I think I’ve been missing the point. I think, from now on, I’m going to challenge myself instead. I’ve been giving up too quickly, holding myself up against others’ expectations. No, I should make the best art I’ve ever seen.”
Sprig’g pulled at her backpack and opened it up. She produced from it a roll of papers, a brush, and a small bag that made tiny, glass clinking sounds.
Sprig’g grinned. “You said you wanted to see my work, right? Well, I’ve just had an idea.”
~
The next day, they began walking back to Orr’jen. They started out silently. Sprig’g seemed lost in thought, and Kal was hesitant to bother her. Eventually though, she began prodding him about Earth.
“Electricity and machines that do human work, does everyone just use them to hazard?” Sprig’g ended the question abruptly, appearing to wonder if she’d made herself properly clear. “Without limits or restrictions?”
“Yes and no. We are free to do whatever we want within certain limits.”
“Interesting. And your society is stable?”
“Funny you should ask. We used to be a lot more carefree, ‘to hazard,’ like you said. But we had a lot of environmental and political problems because of it, and had to start regulating technology a lot more. We came up with limits based on our experiences of what was and wasn’t healthy and sustainable.”
Sprig’g hopped across the rocks in a little stream cutting through the trees. “We’ve believed for a long time that growing dependent on technologies like those would lead to sloth in the short term and destruction in the long term. Are you saying that’s not the case?”
Kal thought about this as he balanced on the slippery stones. “It’s hard for me to disagree. History tells us we were on that track for a while and came close to destruction. But then we invented the nanites, and, well, we fixed our environment, but now we have to be both careful and responsible. Nanites are the most powerful invention we’ve ever created. If we screw up now, there won’t be any recovering from it.”
Sprig’g smiled. “So you understand ‘mistech’ after all.”
Kal leapt onto the solid ground beside Sprig’g, pausing with a pang of regret as he thought about his own behavior on Ydora.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking at the ground. “I used my technology on you without your permission. Well, without your explicit permission. It’s a mistake I won’t repeat.”
Sprig’g stopped and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Apology accepted,” she said, and they continued onward.
An hour later, the animal noises started to fade, and Kal could tell that they were approaching the lower Orr’jen waypoint. He stopped her.
“I have to go,” Kal said.
“To… another Ydora?”
“Yeah.”
Much to his surprise, she turned and hugged him. “If you get lonely on those other Ydoras, you come back here and find me, okay?”
Kal found himself hugging back. They let go, and he took a few steps back, producing the pad from his backpack. He nodded deeply, the nod of departure.
Sprig’g nodded back.
He activated his nodes. A sphere of cobalt blue electricity crackled around him, and Sprig’g peeled away, along with the rest of Ydora, into the oily blue of the metaxia. Kal’s clothes shimmered, returning to his T-shirt and jeans. He sat in his bubble for five, then ten minutes, just thinking. He opened the backpack, removed a roll of paper, unfastened a clasp, and unfurled it.
The painting he held depicted Kal and Sprig’g in the center of the Sejjh. On the left, behind Sprig’g, the walls shimmered with landscape portraits and murals, while on the right, behind Kal, stood the twisty, hexagonal chambers of the green-shelled insects.
He looked over the work, then rolled it up, refastened the clasp, and returned it carefully to his bag.
He input the coordinates for Felis. It was time for a very, very long swim.