Janet Edwards - Earth Girl

So they cracked down on the whole thing, made the History Foundation course purely about pre-history, and made it compulsory for it to be held on Earth. It makes sense. You can’t ignore pre-history. It’s the starting point for everything that has happened since the invention of the portal. So, all historians have to learn pre-history and experience Earth dig sites right at the start of their training.

When I finished dancing round the room, I sent a jubilant mail to Candace. She wouldn’t read it until next day of course. I had enough sense not to wake up my ProMum at midnight with an emergency-flagged mail unless it really was an emergency. Issette was a totally different matter. She was my best friend and I wanted to tell her this right away!

I dashed next door and stuck my hand on the door plate. I could hear the faint sound of its response from the other side of the door. A musical tone, followed by a voice saying, ‘Your friend Jarra is requesting admission.’

I gave it another minute or two and then tried again. The door opened and Issette stood there in a crumpled sleep suit, looking at me with bleary, accusing eyes. ‘This better be good! Are you dead or something?’ She turned round without waiting for an answer, went across to the bed and flopped on it with a dramatic groan.

I followed her in and the door shut behind us. ‘I got the mail about my course. I’ve been accepted!’

‘What? You woke me up at this hour to tell me that!’ Issette lifted her head to glare at me.

I grinned back at her. ‘I’ve been accepted by University Asgard.’

‘WHAT!’ Issette screeched.

A computerized voice interrupted us. ‘Please have consideration for others attempting to sleep at this hour and reduce your noise levels.’

Issette threw her pillow at its sensor box. We all hated having those things in our rooms. Officially they weren’t an invasion of privacy, because the units didn’t record or pass on information, they just told us off reproachfully. If you kept ignoring them for too long then they started making an annoying noise like a gong being sounded every second until they beat you into submission.

It wasn’t just noise they complained about either. They didn’t like fire hazards, messy rooms, or you getting too boy and girlish. It does nothing for a romantic moment when a computer voice interrupts saying: ‘Your current inter-person intimacy is exceeding that acceptable for your age group.’

There were always rumours going round that people had managed to hot-wire their room sensor to bypass monitoring, but most people just set the tampering alarm off and have to pay for a new unit out of their personal credits. Those things are expensive so I’ve never tried it myself. Cathan wasn’t worth it.

‘I can’t wait to leave Next Step and get away from that thing,’ snarled Issette. She turned back to me. ‘You’re not serious about University Asgard? You can’t be!’

I spent the next hour convincing her I was serious, and explaining what I was planning. The computer complained about our noise level several more times. Eventually Issette started taking me seriously.

‘I’d love to see their faces when they find out,’ she said. ‘You have to promise me to vid it and mail it to me.’

‘And you have to promise to keep this secret. Don’t tell anyone, none of our friends, no one. Only you and Candace know. If too many people find out about it, then someone will be bound to give it away. I can’t fool the other students if they’re expecting an ape to join their course.’

Issette pulled a face. ‘Don’t call yourself that!’

‘Please have consideration for others attempting to sleep at this hour and reduce your noise levels,’ said the voice.

We both groaned.

‘You aren’t even telling your psychologist then?’ Issette was shocked.

‘I’m dumping my psychologist. He’s optional after I leave Next Step.’ I didn’t think much of psychologists, and I felt my sessions with mine were a total waste of time.

‘I’d be lost without my psychologist,’ said Issette, but she didn’t argue any more. She was a believer in psychologists and I wasn’t. We’d been round this too many times in the past to bother with it again now.

She got back to the point. ‘I don’t see how you can manage to fool them even if you do manage to keep it secret. You won’t know all their stuff. The right clothes. The way they talk. I know we watch the vids but … And the sectors all have their own silly words. Those aren’t in the vids we see. We don’t see sector only stuff, there’s only the odd bit in a comedy when they do it for a joke.’

I nodded. ‘Yes, they can all speak Language, but they have dialects too. Alpha sector has the strongest dialect because those are the first planets settled during the Exodus century. Did you know, the newer the sector, the closer the dialect is to standard Language? I saw this info vid about linguistic history mapping and …’

Issette had her fingers in her ears. ‘No history lesson. Bad, bad, Jarra!’

‘Stop doing that.’

She took her fingers out of her ears. ‘Well, stop lecturing me on history. You’re always doing it.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Oh yes you are. You’re obsessed.’

‘I’m not obsessed.’

Issette just gave me her special look. It’s a sort of hard stare, which says she’s right, I’m wrong, and we both know it. It’s very hard to argue with, so I gave in.

‘Well, if you say so … Anyway, if I pretend to be from a sector, there are bound to be some other students from there, and I won’t have the accent or know the dialect. My plan is to say that my parents are Military.’

Issette looked suspicious. ‘Is that because you’re a fan of Arrack San Domex?’

It wasn’t, really it wasn’t. I’d picked Asgard because of Arrack San Domex, and he plays a Military character in Defenders , but my decision was based on logic this time.

‘No, it isn’t. All the sectors have their dialect, but the Military don’t. They stick to Language. When they’re on assignment, their kids live in places just like Home and Next Step, and Military kids usually go Military themselves. No chance of running into one in a class of thirty history students.’

‘That could work,’ Issette admitted. ‘That would explain your name too. Hospital Earth and the Military both use stupid old-fashioned names. I mean, “Issette”! Have you ever seen an Issette in the vids who’s less than eighty?’

I giggled. Issette has successfully resolved her anger and bitterness over being Handicapped, but her psychologist is still working on her hatred of her name. The only reason she hadn’t changed it years ago was that she couldn’t make up her mind about a new one.

Issette fell asleep soon after that, so I went back to my own room and started scanning info vids about the Military. You can’t totally trust the facts in these things, but it was fascinating all the same.

Well, the ones about Planet First opening up new worlds were fascinating. The ones about running the solar space arrays were interesting too, though I didn’t follow all the science in them. The policing stuff was a bit too like sociology in school. Yeah, yeah, we have cross-sector Military so the different sectors don’t have their own armies and get tempted to re-invent war. I shouldn’t be rude about it – I’m going history and I know we don’t want any more wars – but it gets a bit preachy.

As for the alien standby exercises, well that was just funny. Even the Military people taking part in them sometimes started to laugh in the middle. How do you train to fight aliens when you’ve never met any? The answer is you get someone to imagine mad scenarios, so you find yourself fighting computer-generated bouncing-ball-shaped aliens who can stick to ceilings or eight-legged things that squirt sticky ribbons at you that explode on contact.