By that time I was feeling pretty tired and was glad we’d booked ahead for one of the café's private rooms. Particularly since it was rather a fancy café, and the privacy gave Kaoren a chance to remind the kids (and, well, me) of some of the niceties of Taren table manners.
I really have to wonder what my Mum will make of all this, if I manage to get her here. And Jules. I don’t think either of them will like this part of living on Muina at all.
21 - August
August 2
Games
Siame submitted one of her paintings to an anonymous art competition and won second prize, which has annoyed her extremely so far as I can tell. She’s also slowly been resuming her Setari training, attending the talent school at Pandora. Officially she was never dropped from the Setari program, since while Kalrani usually don’t get to take a year off to paint, Sight Sight talents are rare enough and touchy enough that the bluesuits decided that she’d be permitted extended recovery time from being half-gutted by the Cruzatch. Kaoren says she’s returned because she wants to be in the exploration teams working through the ruins outside the Ddura-protected areas.
That includes Kalasa, which is slowly being cleaned as well as studied. They’re learning a lot, having translated the intact books, and those I visualised for them before I went on leave. They’re still having big arguments about whether to completely restore it, or preserve it in its damaged condition. People want to go be tourists there, but it’s still too important. One day, probably, and till then they have incredible virtual tours.
There’s a new interface game starting – being released on Tare and Muina at the same time – and maybe Kolar as well, since the interface is slowly spreading there now Tare has relaxed its restrictions on trade. It’s called Home and it’s based on what is now known of the fall of Muina and the exodus of whole villages through deep-space to find other worlds to live on. Players will take on the roles of junior Lantarens and warriors and have to find a route to a habitable planet and escort hundreds of NPC villagers and explore and settle the planets. Lots of weird deep-space stuff, battles with massives, resting in various spaces accessed on the way, searching for food and supplies, locating planets and checking to see how habitable they are, getting trapped in sprawling zones and having to puzzle a way out.
Battlestar Galactica without the spaceships, basically, but it sounds really different and fun and event-based and I’m definitely going to play a lot. Unlike the online games I’ve played, everyone gets to go through the zones, no matter what level they are, and they just get assigned different tasks according to the skills they’ve built up as the game progresses. I was a bit worried that people would recognise me from my accent, but Nils (who plays lots of online games because he likes battles which don’t have any lives in the balance) told me not to worry, that there’s always plenty of people in games pretending to be Setari, or me, or my kids. He said he sometimes pretends to be someone pretending to be a Setari.
Kaoren says he will play Home with me, and smiled even before I laughed. This is home, and nothing virtual about it.
22 - September
September 17
Echoes
This has been a month where the Ena reminded us that it might have faded as a threat, but it’s far from gone.
First came a stickie outbreak on Kolar, one which was unfortunately discovered because a few of the infected reached the psychotic break stage of the stickie lifecycle. It was in what the Kolarens call The Grey – the permanently twilight area close to the northern pole. The Grey is a highly desirable place to live on Kolar, with just enough light to navigate by thanks to the sun dancing around the horizon, and with a comfortable temperature range, edging toward chilly as you approach The Black[18].
They have more above-ground buildings in The Grey than anywhere else on Kolar, and rather lovely street lighting powered by a kind of fungus which produces a soft radiance it evolved to lure insects. As you head toward The Black it must be like living in glow-worm land. The stickie-infected people apparently ran around smashing all the lights in their building, then spread out into The Grey snuffing the glow-worm fungus leading into The Black and getting luminous gunk on them and leaping out at unsuspecting passers-by. It sounds like it would be funny, but they hurt quite a few people, and mostly died themselves, so definitely not funny.
The stickie infection was very widespread and Kolar was still mopping up when a batch of new settlers on their way from Tare nearly collided with a massive – a particularly difficult one to avoid, too, like a hungry sea urchin-octopus, all spines and tentacles. The ship – the Isadore, the largest of the passenger transports – took a bad knock, gouged all along its underside and nearly tossed off course when it powered free of the tentacles. Nor could they just race off and escape the massive, needing to keep to the delicate timing through the ebbs and flows of deep-space. It was a slow-moving tentacle monster, but fast enough to follow them through their stop-start journey to Muina.
When the Isadore came lumbering through the rift gate, too damaged to do more than avoid setting down directly on top of Atanra, I was on my balcony enjoying the Autumn view and the fact that Twelfth has finally had another posting to Muina. I hadn’t seen Zan since my wedding, though we’ve kept up an exchange of emails, and we were bonding over stepping exercises (which the medics recommended I keep up through the pregnancy).
I was just working my way up to asking Zan her opinion of Shon, who I thought might make a nice match for her, when KOTIS went to full alert. Roake (Lenton), Dess and Sora Nels had been over at Arcadia’s Setari house, and came whizzing up to stand protectively around me.
When the "Massive at Atanra" message came, Zan exchanged a glance with her squad, then they all looked at me, not impossibly large but well past the point where I have to think before bending down or standing up. I’d been dreading a massive attack, since many of the Setari still can’t reliably enhance themselves, but there’s no way I can risk the strain on my system.
"Atanra has plenty of weapons, right?" I said to Zan.
She nodded, attention elsewhere. Because I’m on leave, I hadn’t been brought into the forming mission channel, but just then Kaoren opened a private link to me, because he knew I’d need to know what was going on.
18
South of The Grey is The Gold and then The Sere. Then it reverses to the southern pole. Kolar is a planet of latitudes.