I will never be Cass here. Even if I was still staying with the Lents, I would always be this stray first and foremost and above everything else. I have this label and there’s no way to take it off. Even if I adapt to the stupid language and the nanites, all the things I spent years learning, all the stories and people which shaped me aren’t here. No-one’s read the novels I’ve read. No-one likes the music I like. No-one on this planet will be able to score people on the Orlando Bloom-meter, the way Alyssa and I used to do with all the cute guys. The only thing which speaks English is this damn diary, which I guess is why I still keep it.
I’m so homesick I could scream.
Sunday, February 3
A wan shadow
No training today. Zan took one look at me this morning and sent me straight for medical exams. I had to work very hard to convince them that the swimming wasn’t the problem, and I look really exhausted and drained just because I couldn’t get to sleep. Leaving out the bit about crying half the night and giving myself the hugest headache in the process. At least this let me know that they mustn’t be monitoring me too closely in my room.
But I ended up spending almost all the day in the medical section, prodded and poked and sitting in machines while they got distracted trying to figure out how my enhancement abilities work. They’ve decided that the number of abilities an individual Setari has might increase the strain on my system when I enhance them. Which is why Zan is training me, since she has only the one. The experiment enhancing three from First Squad at once messed up so badly because between them those three had seventeen talents. Maze has eight all on his own, and apparently there’s a couple of Setari who have even more.
I took the opportunity to have another argument with Ista Tremmar about why my interface had been cut back so much, and why I couldn’t at least have the access I’d had before or straightforward things like being able to see names and so forth, but she just gave me a lecture about qualifying for privileges. It didn’t work to point out that standard access was hardly a privilege, and how stupid it is to run tests which are timed for someone who has been learning their silly language since they were babies. Of course, my inability to speak that silly language with any fluidity made my arguments less than comprehensible.
Ista Tremmar is very strict and by-the-book about a lot of things, but she did say she would review the speed of the tests. But she also told me the simplest thing would be for me to improve my language skills. Bleh.
Monday, February 4
Forward/Backward
Even though I slept quite well last night, swimming practice has been postponed for a few days, which meant Zan delivered me back to my box to sit around again. On the up side, a few more of my interface functions were abruptly restored in the middle of stepping practice. No entertainment, but the minor environmental things like the names over people’s heads. Still, dull day, especially since interface classes are trying to teach me subtraction now. I wish I could pick and choose what the lessons are.
Kanza
That was an infinitely better afternoon than I was expecting. I’d only been back in my box a little while when there was a text popup in my head which is the equivalent of someone outside my room, knocking. Rare consideration, let me tell you, for a visitor to not just open the door.
It was Lohn and Mara, come to kidnap me for lunch. While this was probably their own version of not overlooking the psychological aspects, I had a huge amount of trouble not bubbling over with glee and going completely hyper. Not only did I get to spend some time with the nicest people on this stupid island, but they even planned on taking me outside KOTIS grounds.
The island that the Setari use as a base is called Konna, and is about 20% military facilities and 80% supporting city. The city’s called Konna, too, and was here before KOTIS was established. It was really nice to get out to see atriums and shops, and people not wearing uniforms, and there were plants and advertising and snatches of music and scents of cooking food and everything that the Setari base is not. They even do fake skies, and internal parks and while it can’t entirely escape Huge Shopping Mall Syndrome, it was such a nice change.
We went to an outdoor plaza, with cafés (no coffee or hot chocolate!) arranged around a plant-filled square where kids were running about and someone was busking. Actually busking. Being stuck with the Setari had me convinced that this was such a totally controlled society, though my time with Nenna should have taught me otherwise. I’m guessing there’s little chance that they’ll let me live out here.
The place we went to eat was called "Mimm" and Lohn sat me in the corner of a big booth and then he and Mara sat either side of me with a careful gap so that we didn’t touch. They bracketed me as we travelled through the city too, making sure people didn’t bump me. I thought that pretty funny, since it’s the Setari touching me which is the problem. Most ordinary people wouldn’t have nearly enough talent to hurt me. The food was near enough to fondue as to make no difference (though I’ve no idea what they make the cheese from, and really would prefer not to find out), which seemed hugely out of place on an alien planet, but very yummy! The rest of First Squad showed up just as it was arriving, and I was sorry to see that Maze’s hand was covered in a blue square of bandage tape, and that Zee was walking with a limp.
Maze gave my shirt a quick frown – I’d forgotten about my mascot altogether – and then asked me lots of questions about Earth food and I ended up spending the entire lunch talking. About fondue and then Nordic countries and skiing, a thing they don’t do here at all, and then we swapped different sports that there’s no equivalent to on either world. Taren sports are mostly indoors, unsurprisingly, except for some kind of air races. There’s so many Earth sports that don’t fit well here. Golf and skiing and riding just for starters.
They’d booked a Kanza court for after lunch. Kanza is a very strange game like hockey crossed with mini-golf crossed with Pac-man, except the pucks hover and skim and ricochet madly over the surface of three intersecting recessed circles. The court was in the centre of a grassy amphitheatre where people were eating picnic lunches and watching the games. You play in teams of three and you stand on the edge and hit your pucks all out at once and try and not go in any of the holes until you’ve passed over all the little floating balls of light. If you keep your puck in play you get bonus pucks. It’s tremendously fast-paced and silly and Maze is idiotically good at it so I was glad to be on his and Lohn’s team. Zee sat out because of her leg, and Mara, Alay and Ketzaren were the opposing team and Ketzaren turned out to be really dry and funny and made this hilarious commentary and Lohn really played up to her. I nearly fell into the rink a couple of times from laughing.
After our final round, while Mara’s team was playing, Maze and Lohn went off to get everyone something to drink. I was really tired from all the laughing, and sat with Zee watching the growing audience cheering Mara and Alay playing a duo game when I noticed a couple of people I recognised. The Third Squad captain’s twirly hair makes her pretty hard to miss, even when she’s not in the black uniform. She was standing up the top of the small amphitheatre with another girl, staring down with a really fixed lack of expression. I wasn’t surprised that it was Maze she was watching – half the audience was panting over him or Lohn and most of the rest were drooling over either Mara or Zee. Really, there’s hardly any of the Setari who aren’t above average in looks. It must be a job requirement.