Andrea Höst - The Touchstone Trilogy

Nenna’s thinking about careers right now too: she has to do some aptitude tests tomorrow, and is pretending not to be worried about it. She says she’s going to be a song star, and doesn’t need to excel at this aptitude chain. Song stars are almost as popular as the Setari are, and Nenna’s favourite show in the world is one where this girl is a song star and a Setari. Lots of cute guys, as you can imagine.

There are practically no images of real Setari. The blacksuits don’t do publicity, apparently. They’re taken to the KOTIS island when they’re really little, and are raised to be paranormal soldiers, with limited visits to see their families. I couldn’t work out if they can choose not to go.

Saturday, January 5

Fall apart

Just got my diary back. A lot of not-great stuff happened, and I won’t be staying with the Lents any more.

Nenna did well on her test, and the next day she was allowed to take me out on her own to celebrate. Of course she decided to show me off to her friends.

We went to a place which was a cross between a café and one of those video game arcades where people have Dance Dance Revolution competitions, except this was a psychic powers show-off arena. There was a table of girls waiting, and a couple of guys, and it wasn’t fun being exotic curiosity of the month. It’s not that they weren’t nice, or sneered at me or anything. They got a big kick of listening to me talk in English and even though my attempts to speak Taren are insanely confusing, they hung on my every word as I told them my survival adventures: they were just as interested in what I’d done on Muina as what Earth is like, which is something the KOTIS people didn’t really care about. Being outside, finding your own food, sleeping under the stars: that’s all incredibly foreign and scary to Tarens.

They also wanted to know everything about the Setari I’d met. The Setari have some kind of security level which means that you can’t film them (using the interface – I expect an ordinary camera would work on them). They show up as outlines on interface recordings unless you have permission to capture their image.

My mobile was a useful way to avoid having to keep talking, though it’s running low on batteries again. Nenna’s friends recorded all the song ring tones, and made me promise to translate the lyrics, which I guess would be a good language exercise. They seemed to like the two Gwen Stefani songs, and Mr Brightside . Sweet Dreams by Marilyn Manson weirded them out, but the one they liked best was that closing theme to the Portal game – Still Alive – and so I guess they have a thing about syrupy-sweet sounding music. That it’s a psychotic, murderous computer totally contradicting itself is not something that’s going to translate.

After a while the two guys had a match on the Psychic Showdown thing and that’s where it stopped just being embarrassing and got messed up.

By this time, thanks to Nenna’s patient and devoted explanations of all things Setari, I knew a bit more about psychic powers. Everyone has a connection to the Ena, which seems to be some kind of psychic dimension (or world of dreams, or something). The connection manifests as telekinesis or pyrokinesis, etcetera: there’s a couple of dozen known psychic talents. The original Muinans were really strong in their connection to the Ena, more so than most of the people on Tare are now. Tairo players are strong, but the most powerful psychics are in the Setari, where gifted children are pushed to extremes to increase their abilities.

However, with the interface and circuitry in certain rooms, even weak psychics can be boosted to use whatever talents they have. The two guys were projectors , I guess you’d call it, and they were able to make illusions. Not very clear ones, but it was fun to watch.

Strays are thought to be fairly strongly connected to the Ena, so before we were due to go home Nenna had me try out a couple of things – image projection and trying to float – which involved me standing in the centre of the room thinking really hard about doing those things and nothing happening. I didn’t have to worry about accidentally burning or blowing things up since the room had a filter that meant it only enhanced certain kinds of actions, and to be honest I was glad nothing happened because it would have been weird to suddenly be psychic.

Nenna’s ability is teleportation, though she’s not strong enough to move more than a foot or so even when boosted. But it was amazing watching her flicker from one spot to another: it made her into more than just a talkative kid. Something magic.

If she puts all her effort into it Nenna can take a passenger, and she offered to jump me. And that was a really bad idea.

We jumped to a nearby atrium and fell two floors. I’ve a broken collarbone and lots of bruises. Nenna’s much worse. She hurt her back, and even with advanced nanotech medicine she’s going to be in hospital a long while.

She didn’t die. I’m so glad. So incredibly – I couldn’t have stood it. Because, you see, it was me. They’re not sure why, but they think that something about me made Nenna’s jump go wrong.

So I’m on the way back to the KOTIS island. Not with Sa Lents this time, but a grim greensuit escort. It was an accident, but I feel so awful. I hurt her.

Sunday, January 6

Back to the Lab

Endless medical scans. Apparently they’d already tested me for potential psychic powers, but the only sign they could find was the possibility of being a projector (perhaps the least useful ability in a world where everyone is their own home movie theatre). When they finally sent me off to get some sleep – back in my old room – I can’t.

Part of that’s because I’m sore. They use nanites to glue broken bones back together, but it still needs to heal properly, and I have to lie on my back not to pressure my collarbone. The pain meds wore off too quick.

More tests tomorrow. They haven’t been able to find any reason at all for Nenna’s jump to have gone strange.

Monday, January 7

Turn it up to 11

Today they moved on to practical experiments in a different part of the KOTIS building: a huge, reinforced room with observation windows and massive blocks of greenish metal in a row from small to large. Test Room 1.

First they (voices in my head of people I’d never met) had me stand in the centre of the room and told me to try to project illusions or teleport or move a little box or do anything at all. I couldn’t. I felt a complete dick.

Then they sent in a Setari. He was about twenty-five, reminded me strikingly of Johnny Depp, and had the nicest smile I’ve ever seen. Ever. He told me his name was Maze (or Mase, maybe – all the Taren words I write down are serious guesses as to spelling – the alphabet doesn’t quite correlate to the letters I’m used to). He lifted each of the metal blocks in turn using telekinesis, though he was only able to make it halfway through the row. Then he had me stand next to him, and told me to do exactly what I did when Nenna jumped us. I told him I didn’t do anything, just stood there while she held on to my hand, and he told me to do that then, and held on to my hand while I tried not to look incredibly embarrassed, or to think how much Nenna would want to be in my place.

Maze began lifting the blocks again. And made it about two thirds through them, and was quite wide-eyed by the time he was done. I would be too, since the last few blocks were bigger than school demountables. They brought a different Setari in, a very beautiful woman around the same age, her hair in a long braid. Her name was Zee, and she did the same thing, except she started out wide-eyed.