Andrea Höst - The Touchstone Trilogy

There’s no stilettos, either. It was a funny thing to notice. Nenna’s wardrobe is full of platform boots, and sandals, and a couple of pairs of court shoes, and that’s what they’re wearing in the movies too. Haven’t seen anyone tottering about on pinpoint high heels. Make-up and hair is pretty similar – other than the popularity of day-glo dyes – and there seems to be a complex tradition involving henna-coloured designs on your face. Geometric patterns on guys, and curly tendrils for girls, usually on one cheek or the corner of the forehead or drifting up from the throat. It seems to mainly be worn with really formal, dressed up outfits.

No printed-out books that I’ve seen. That sucks. I don’t mind reading onscreen, and there’s no glare or eyestrain problems if you’re reading inside your head, but it’s just not the same as a proper paperback. Also, no meat in all the meals I’ve eaten so far, except for fish. And that not very often. At least, I think it’s fish. Maybe they cook up the monsters they hunt.

Though it’s common not to change surnames when you get married on Tare, the tradition is for the husband to take the wife’s name, so Lents is Tsa Lents' wife’s family name. That’s kind of cool.

Beyond the stars, rampant consumerism

I have money. The allowance has an official name which is very long and vague, but boils down to "Lost Aliens Stipend". Nenna and her mother are taking me shopping for clothes and to see some kind of sport called Tairo.

I keep swapping between excited interest and an unexpected urge to start yelling. I far prefer shopping on Tare to starving on Muina, and yay relatively benign alien civilisation. But the allowance gave me a loud, clear message that what happens now is I learn the language, find a job, build a life here. Getting me home is just not a priority to these people.

Working on gratitude adjustment.

Making a display

Nenna finds my taste in clothes very boring, but otherwise it was a fun day. It’s hard not to enjoy shopping, and I found clothes I liked and managed not to have my head explode from all the layered interface displays everywhere, and didn’t gawk too much at the occasional person who looked really outrageous – blue glowing patterns beneath skin, hair extensions that reach out and touch passers-by, clothing that constantly oozes and changes shape. Nenna called these kind of people teba , which I think might be the equivalent of Goths. Or avant garde experimental artists. They were certainly an exciting reminder that I wasn’t in just any old shopping centre.

Plus Tairo rocks.

Picture a big glass box, with the audience in rows all up against the outer walls. There’s a hole in each wall, painted a different colour, and a bunch of poles at different heights – a lot like canary perches. Add four teams playing a kind of extreme handball with three balls at once. Then make the players totally Spiderman Jr, able to bounce up the walls and off the poles and leap and twist and somersault – and fly.

Psychic powers, just like the blacksuits. Psychic powers are connected to this Ena in some way, and apparently almost everyone on Tare can use the Ena to some mild degree, though things like flying is elite athlete stuff.

Or, possibly, the Ena or the interface enhances natural psychic abilities. Nenna’s explanation was way too confusing.

Anyway, the Tairo match was great fun to watch. I could feel the players thud off the walls right in front of me, and they do things which would make Cirque d’Soleil green. And we had a really nice meal, and Nenna’s mother talked to me after about, well, girl-things and how it all works here. The birth control means I won’t have periods, for a start, which is a big bonus. And she gave me a cream which is some kind of super hair remover. Use it once or twice a year and no stubble. Deodorant comes in waxy sticks. She gave me a few tips on polite behaviour, and then made me cry because she reminded me so much of Mum, all dry and calm and comfortable, and she held me while I made an idiot of myself and told me I didn’t have to pretend not to be homesick and frightened.

Tuesday, January 1

Triple the New Years!

Happy New Year! I wish I was watching fireworks right now. I wonder if New Year is half as big a thing here, since it happens every four months? Nenna’s older sister Liane is going to come over today and we’re going to go to the Roof. I can tell Nenna’s not really comfortable with the excursion: the outside on this planet is basically cold and stormy or cold and windy, and most people simply never go outside. I tried describing Australia to Nenna, and I think even Sydney Harbour would freak her out, let alone somewhere like the Outback. Tarens are severe indoor types. I’m not exactly bush savvy, but, wow, I hope Nenna never gets zapped to Muina.

Whoosh

As Taren days go, I gather this was a good one. Not raining, only lightly overcast, and winds that you could stand upright in. The sea was seriously far down, and looked like the kind you see in those paintings of sailing ships almost standing on their ends. But even the sea was nothing compared to the overwhelming hugeness of this city. The largest land mass on their planet, and almost all of it one whitestone block, like an unsymmetrical step pyramid that just goes on and on.

There was plenty of outdoor activity, but mostly confined to tanz (airships) arriving and leaving in the distance. But I did spot a few other people standing out on the vast whiteness. Maintenance workers, Liane said.

Nenna’s sister is more serious and not quite as nice as Nenna. Not nasty, but she wasn’t too good at hiding how impatient my slow, stupid-sounding speech made her.

Thursday, January 3

Fruit of the Sea

Much of the food on Tare is grown underwater. I thought some of the vegetables were like seaweed, but I didn’t realise how many were water plants. And then there’s plants grown in the big atriums and inside parkland , and vats of algae and hydroponic installations. There are a few bits of land which aren’t covered by city, but it sounds like they’re mostly wind-blasted nature reserves. They farm fish in ocean arrays , and red meat is an incredibly expensive delicacy.

Today was spent mainly on interface training while Nenna was at school. Well, it’s not really interface training any more, just kiddie school. Lessons designed for six year-olds are still hard for me for follow, and very dull. At times I’m just tempted to watch the entertainment channels instead, but after stumbling into a show which I afterwards discovered was labelled "in-skin", I decided I needed more language skills before randomly sampling the entertainment here. "In-skin" isn’t a euphemism for porn, though I bet it’s used for that. It means that every sense that the interface is able to record is transmitted to the audience. Sight, hearing, smell, and touch. I never entirely lost track of me, sitting on a couch, but someone else’s experience was layered over the top of that and I could only cope with a few minutes of that before I had to stop. Then I went and had a shower.

I keep telling myself that I need to be more responsible about my schoolwork, and then five minutes of basic maths leaves me gritting my teeth with anger. I. Just. Finished. High. School. I know addition. I’m hoping to convince someone to tailor this stupid course to me sooner rather than later.

It’s clear that the Lents are giving me some settling-in time before starting to push, but soon Sa Lents will want to work on his study of Earth, and of course I can’t live with the Lents forever. From what little my ineffectual interface searches have shown me, strays don’t have a lot of career options open to them even after they’ve learned the language. And I can’t figure out how long the Taren government will pay for me to try.