Chapter 2
“Dora Dana Dasnan. We acknowledge your presence on our premises. The distinguished head of our institute will join you in the library,” said the tall, thin, white-faced woman, welcoming me as I exited the porting chamber. Her slick black hair was wrapped at the back of her neck. Like all Booleans, she had no eyebrows, and her eyes were completely black, with no white inside. This made it very difficult to tell where she was looking.
As always, it made me feel uncomfortable.
My face, however, stayed calm. Relaxing my facial muscles, I responded in a well-trained monotonous tone, “I acknowledge your hospitality.”
“Please, follow me,” she said and moved her arm toward the hallway door.
I made a step forward, careful not to break the IP distance.
“We strongly recommend that our visitors always stay with accompanying personnel and never walk through any of our premises unattended.”
I stopped in front of the doors and looked at her. Checking the plate name on her white skinsuit, I said, “TA-645, I have been on your premises before. I am aware of your regulations.”
Her black eyes stared at me for a few moments.
It seems that responding to an assertive remark wasn’t integrated into her genotype.
“We enforce this on every visit,” she said. “The communication of the regulation is obligatory.”
I took a breath to answer but then stopped, turning toward the door. Careful, Dora… “Of course, TA-645. Please, lead me to the library.”
TA-645 turned toward the door too and pressed her palm on the small scanning plate next to it. The door slid open and we stepped into a bright white hallway. It was high, with sufficient width to take a group of six people without compromising their IP space.
We passed many doors, all of them tightly sealed. Each was scan-protected, and they all looked alike, with no indication of a name or a room number. And just like every time before, the corridors were empty. Although I was used to that, it made me feel uneasy, as if the genetically grown technical assistant and I were the only ones in this institute. TA-645 did not talk, but from the corner of my eye I could see her head was strangely twisted in my direction rather than facing the path.
I tried to ignore her.
The whiteness of the hallways was disturbing. It made me lose all sense of what was closer and what was farther away. I closed my eyes to refocus and then opened them again. After a few turns, we stopped next to a door, and TA-645 pressed her finger on a small panel and left it there for a moment. After a faint clicking sound, her identity was confirmed, and the doors slid open.
The room we entered was a library. White walls, white chairs, white desks, each with an empty holographic screen.
Three walls were completely covered in rows of tightly packed chips stored in their slots. It vaguely reminded me of the old libraries I’d seen in the history recap classes, though these images were a lot more colorful than this one here. I was sure all the information on the chips was accessible through the main computer, but the library, it seemed, had to look presentable.
“Dana, please have a seat. Dr. Zamnan Second will be with you shortly. Should you be interested in light informational material, some articles are highlighted in green.” She tapped a finger on an empty white screen next to the door and several chips on the wall to my right lit up green.
“I wish you a productive conversation during your stay at the Boolean Institute,” she said and stepped toward the door. She placed her palm on the scanning screen and the doors slid open.
In that moment, I saw a group of six women passing the corridor. The first one was clearly Boolean, but the rest had beige-colored suits and much darker skin than any of the Descendant races.
Humans?
Their heads were hanging low, as if they couldn’t lift them up. And then, in one short moment, one of them looked sideways and saw me. Her eyes were wide open, her neck and jaw muscles tight. Having had only rare opportunities to observe Human facial expressions, I wasn’t sure what it meant, but my gut feeling told me that she was scared. Very scared.
TA-645 looked back at me with her wide black eyes and then stepped out without saying a word. The door closed, and there was a perfect silence. I exhaled loudly. I needed some kind of a sound to distract me.
I looked around the white room, then sat at the first holo screen. Rather than scrolling through some “light informational material” as TA-645 recommended, I decided to go over the Vision I recently had—the Vision I wanted to share with Dr. Zamnan Second.
Dr. Zamnan stares at the holo screen data in front of him. He turns to TA-002 and says, “This will make our production unyielding. Do we have any reserves?”
“No, distinguished Dr. Zamnan. We already used them.”
“We need to notify the High Priest. The seeding needs to be increased dramatically if we are to obtain the same level of production. Place all our remaining yield into the Mind.”
This Vision was puzzling. I understood that the High Zlathar Priest should know about current genetic experiments, particularly if one of those projects ha presented the Booleans with problems or challenges. But what does the Mind have to do with all of this?
The Mind belonged to the Loreans. They engineered it, they maintained it, they improved it, and all of this information was strictly confidential. They had the absolute intellectual property, even over the Zlathars. So what experiments are the Booleans doing that has to do with the Mind?
The sliding door silently opened and a tall, thin man with long dark hair strapped at the back of his neck walked in. He smiled in the typical Boolean way, his lips spreading only sideways instead of up. I never thought this expression looked happy—or comfortable, for that matter. I stood up to greet him.
“Dora Dana Dasnan. I acknowledge your presence,” he said, his black eyes on me as he walked toward me. He stopped outside the standard IP distance, but for some reason, I felt uncomfortable.
“Dr. Zamnan Second, it is an honor to be at your institute, as always.”
“What can we help you with, Dana?”
“There is a Vision I thought you should be aware of,” I said flatly.
His calm, unemotional face grew even calmer as he relaxed all his facial muscles.
“I am ready to hear your recent Vision.”
I lifted my left forearm and swiped the E-band screen, sending the holo report to the first table screen on the right. The holo projection of my torso appeared above the table, bringing some color to the white surroundings.
Pale oval face, high cheekbones, and long, dark gray hair.
Like all other Senthiens, my eyes were bright green with the whites lightly green as well. The only unusual thing about my face were my lips. Senthiens normally had dark, almost purplish, thin lips. But mine were soft, red, and full.
I glanced at Dr. Zamnan from the corner of my eyes and automatically pressed my lips together to make them look thinner.
The monotonous voice of my report recording echoed slightly in the library room until it was finished, and the projection disappeared.
Dr. Zamnan Second still looked at the empty white holo screen.
I kept watching him, but he didn’t move. I realized there was something else that made Booleans so unusual: they never blink. I felt a slight shiver rising up my back, but my face remained calm.
Dr. Zamnan Second slowly turned his head toward me but didn’t say anything.
“Is this information helpful?” I asked.
“At the moment, I do not have the knowledge to confirm your Vision. Our institute is free of any problematic issues.”
“Are there any experiments currently being conducted that relate to the Mind?”
“The Mind is the property of Loreans. It holds no interest for us. Did all your Visions come to be?”
I remembered the Vision I had this morning—the dream—and after a slight delay, I said, “All the reported Visions have come to pass. But I have not reported a large number of Visions as of yet. I am still developing my skills.”
“Yes. Understandable. You are still young,” he said. “Did you communicate this to anyone in the Zlathar Council?”
“The Zlathar Council received this report, as they normally do, but I have not received any query from them for a holo communication.”
“Of course,” he said, but his face tightened. “There is no reason to.”
He stepped toward the exit, indicating that I should follow him. My visit here, I realized, was coming to an end. As the door slid open, I asked, “Is there a specific reason you have Humans on your premises?”
He looked at me suddenly. “Humans?”
“I saw a group of Humans passing in the corridor while awaiting your arrival.”
“You are mistaken. We do not have Humans anywhere in our institute. These premises are clear of all impurity. You did not see Humans.”
“It was then certainly a mistake,” I said, my voice as flat as I could make it. I stepped in front of him into the corridor and Dr. Zamnan joined me. He turned toward me and spread his lips wide into a typical Boolean smile.
“Thank you for sharing your Vision with us. I regret that this had to be the first inaccurate one. I am confident that you will have many more true future Visions.”
As a new TA approached, he said, “TA-3279 will accompany you to our porting chamber.”
“Thank you for receiving me today. It was a pleasure to communicate with you.”
He bowed slightly in response, and I bowed back. Then he turned around and walked in the opposite direction. Soon all I could see, looking back at him wearing all white, was a black head with a long, thin braid floating through the white hallway.
“Visionaire Dasnan?”
I turned toward the TA, who looked exactly like the woman who had fetched me from the porting chamber. “Please, follow me,” she said and started walking back to the chamber.
I walked next to her, ignoring her strange sideways glare and making sure my face remained calm.
My head was full of questions. Zamnan wasn’t telling the truth. None of the Descendants had such pigmentation in their skin as the women I had seen. And those were not Descendants.
They had to be Zema4 inhabitants.
We arrived at the chamber, and TA-3279 opened the door for me.
“Thank you for visiting our institute. Please, come back again.”
“Thank you for your hospitality. May Torquemada Joseph Nadraque watch over you,” I said in the traditional way, then walked into the small chamber and turned around to face the doors.
The Boolean smiled a thin, flat smile, and the doors closed.
I stretched my shoulders from their stiff position and looked around. This chamber was wide enough to allow for the teleportation of five individuals with their needed IP space. Although it seemed spacious to port only one person, this chamber was the smallest in its dimensions. Portation chambers came in sizes of such magnitude that they could hold an entire battle cruiser with its accompanying fleet.
The walls and ceiling, as well as the floor of the chamber, were all covered in semitransparent rosenquartz tiles, each with an intricate pattern of APC chips intertwined in their structure.
“The port number 445-76-498-02 to porting gate 164’55’16 will begin in three passes,” the female voice of the computer
announced.
I folded my arms on my chest, preparing myself for the process. It was not as unpleasant as an E-shower, although it did something far more radical. The feeling resembled the return of blood flow to an arm that had fallen asleep in an awkward position, but this experience wasn’t limited to just an arm; it affected the whole body.
The pleasant rose lighting of the chamber dimmed to give way to the dark purple hue of the transfer itself as the complex energy field coordination and power cycles of the porting process began.