They thought I was stupid.
Wednesday, February 13
Settling in
So, my apartment has three and a bit rooms. The bedroom is a little larger than my original box in the medical facility, with a lot more cupboard space. The bed’s a double bed, too, instead of the narrower hospital-type bed. I had a lot of trouble deciding on what kind of bedspread to buy, and ended up with a dark green one with a pattern of leaves and tiny white and pink flowers.
The kitchen part of the main room has a small refrigerator and cooker and a sink, plus bench and cupboard. Given the Setari can get all their meals from their canteen, there’s no need to do a lot of food preparation in the apartments, but at least it’s possible.
There’s a coffee table and a matched pair of two-seater lounges facing each other over it. All very plain, and nothing you wouldn’t find in any Australian home, though made with a light, possibly hollow frame that seems vaguely related to whitestone. Wood is far too rare here to be used for basic furniture.
I think I’d like to get some throw rugs to put across the lounges. There’s no television or sound system or anything like that because all that’s inside your head, which makes the lounge look rather bare. The study nook is not really a study nook, I think. After all, I haven’t seen a printed book or file yet, let alone anyone writing by hand, so why would you need a table designed for writing? Maybe it’s meant to be a breakfast table? An upright chair and a table, anyway. It’s a good place for me to write in my diary, even if it’s not what it’s meant for.
I really wish I’d brought my pippin statue with me. I only had it for a couple of weeks on Muina, but it was almost like having a pet.
I love the fact that I have a bath, and I did a lot of soaking in it last night, trying to read one of the novels I found in the vast array in my head. I should have bought some bubble bath, presuming it exists here. Bath oils and bath salts and maybe a rubber ducky. The shower is both a shower and a nanoshower. When you tell your nanosuit to go away, it drains down to your legs then kind of spins together and shoots out a special drain. It makes me wonder if all the Setari are all using the same pool of nanoliquid, which is a grotty and funny and disgusting idea. One size fits all taken to new levels.
I’m dressed in my uniform now, waiting for it to be time for me to go to training, and hopefully not get lost! Mara told me that if I have any kind of official assignment – training or meetings or even a medical exam – I’m to wear my nanosuit. I still wish it was a different colour, so people would know I’m not pretending to be a Setari.
Combat Room 3
Full day of training with First Squad today, both before and after lunch. We met at Combat Room 3, one with lots of shielding, and they borrowed a guy called Nils from Second Squad to make illusions of common sorts of Ionoth attacking us while they worked out the best way to use my enhancement while not putting me in too much danger. It was like an elaborate game of tag, and I felt so useless and awkward, especially when Nils had some really nasty illusion-Ionoth swarm the spot I was standing, and had to be rescued. Nils' illusions can’t really properly show the effects of the Ionoth being hit, since they have no substance, but I didn’t like a dozen of them pouncing toward me.
Ketzaren is my primary minder, since she has strong Levitation. If they need to move me quickly, she gives me an order and I have to put my arm around her shoulder. She grabs me around the waist and binds our suits together and then she levitates herself and I get brought along, which overcomes the fact that they can’t put Levitation directly on me when they’re enhanced. Her other talents are Ena manipulation, which seems to be what they use when they’re trying to lock the gates, and Wind manipulation. Wind is a slow-build talent, so only occasionally used in combat.
First Squad was really pleased with how the training went, and they met up with some more of Second Squad for dinner afterwards and talked through strategies and possibilities. Maze was good at making this not an uncomfortable conversation for me, and I was okay with it anyway, since I’d decided that my role was like a caddie for a bunch of professional golfers. I don’t do any of the hitting of balls, but I make the day a little easier for them.
The leader of Second Squad is called Grif Regan, and he’s a very serious type who likes to listen more than talk. Nils, by contrast, is overwhelming. If you took the lead singer of The Doors (forgot his name) and crossed him with Marilyn Monroe, you’d get something like Nils. A really pretty guy who oozes sex. He treats Zee like she’s a particularly delectable mouse, but Zee just ignores him. He also asked me if everyone on Earth could speak with their hands and I explained about my aunt being deaf and we sidetracked into a long discussion about Earth and things which are different between the worlds.
But the question was a useful reminder that everyone here can record everything they hear and see, and even feel, though that’s an extra setting and not one I’m keen on using. And when Setari are on missions, what they record they put in mission reports, so everything Ruuel saw me do or say in the Ena has apparently been reviewed by whole bunches of people. It made me very glad I hadn’t kept trying to talk to Ruuel, and hadn’t done too much shrieking or squealing while panicking. And means I’m sure as hell not going to say anything during official assignments that I couldn’t bear being watched by a hundred people.
No wonder Zan wouldn’t gossip.
I went up to the roof again after dinner, just because I could, and because I could see stars up there now that the sun’s fully set. Tomorrow will be more training, but Maze said that if they’re happy with how it goes they’ll consider going into the Ena with me again, this time to kill things.
Must remember to work the conversation around to different types of gates.
Thursday, February 14
Bubble worlds
Morning was dodging practice with Mara, which went well except for when I dodged in precisely the wrong way and got a ball in the face. I’m not very good at predicting where she’s going to throw the things and that seems to be half of what dodging’s all about.
I asked her if I was allowed to go swimming just for fun instead of it being for training, and she laughed and said yes and told me where to look to see whether anyone had booked the pool. But then later she said that for now it’d be better if she just added the pool into our training schedule, so I guess she checked with someone who decided there was too much chance of me drowning or something.
Over lunch, she explained a little more about spaces and gates. Spaces shift about. Some move only a little, bobbing up and down. Others apparently rotate, like planets. A few even zoom about: little comets on an astral level. And when they move, the connections which were the gates between them shift also, vanishing altogether, or linking up with other spaces, or just phasing briefly out of alignment. Setari with Ena manipulation skills are able to lock the gates, preventing them from shifting, but unless it’s between two relatively stable spaces, it’s immensely difficult to hold them for more than a day or two, and there’s even an argument about whether it’s a bad thing altogether, given that it’s similar to what the Pillars do.