by Ben van Eijk
The map that Seth had bought earlier only helped him become familiar with the village; it hadn’t helped provide any clue as to where he was and how he could make his way back home. He was starting to think he might be stuck here. Almost every person that Seth had asked for help had given crazy answers and seemed completely demented. When he did find someone even slightly normal, his elation was so great he ended up giving them the impression that he was also one of the hysterical weirdos walking around. Seth was starting to get a bit annoyed — especially with the happy people. What in Io’s name were they all so damn cheery about?
The most normal conversation Seth had had in this strange town was with Katja. Even though they hadn’t parted on the best terms, he decided she could supply the most information, with minimal questioning. She hadn’t shown any signs of being unnaturally happy or sad… she did seem a bit angry, but that was mostly his own fault, Seth reflected as he thought back on his conversation with her. He picked out the marketplace on his map and started back towards her stall.
Once again, there was no one attending the shop. Seth decided to try waiting patiently this time; no sense in irritating Katja even further. No one appeared for a minute, but Seth was sure she could see him from wherever she was and just didn’t feel like serving him. He was momentarily tempted to start picking at the same piece of wood from earlier, but he quickly decided against that if he wanted Katja to be cooperative. He knocked on the table and waited. Then he shouted hello. Ten seconds later, Katja finally appeared, coming out of a door behind her display of various paper goods. She assumed her favourite stance: hands on hips and a disapproving look.
“You’re back. Did you have trouble reading your verhil?” asked Katja in a slightly sarcastic tone, but with a smile in her voice. Apparently she was not so irritated with Seth.
He pulled the map from his pocket and gestured towards it.
“No no, this is hands down the best verhil I have ever owned, nothing wrong with it!”
Katja laughed gently as she folded her arms.
“Spare me the himmus, boy. What mir you want?”
Ding.
Seth was slightly distracted as he heard that noise again. Recently it had blended into the ambient noise and Seth hadn’t even noticed it during his previous hour of exploration. He wasn’t sure what question to ask first, but he tried:
“Who around here knows where I came from?” He knew how stupid the question sounded before he finished it.
“Ha! Well I would hope that would be you, Seth. You are really a tarin guy! You would get along with my man; he is also a bit of a philosopher,” chuckled Katja.
Seth took a deep breath before his next question, hoping he could assemble some sort of logic:
“What’s with all the crying people in this town? I swear about half the people I see are sad about something.” Katja’s eyebrow lifted as she gave Seth a confused look.
“That is called community service — but how can you not know that? Anyone with a chip knows what that is, and the only people without chips are the Inquirers. You an Inquirer, boy?”
“Well that just raises more uh, raggles! How is crying community service?” he asked, a little frustrated. Seth’s question had just confused matters even further for him. Katja smiled, showing she was clearly amused at Seth’s confusion.
“You really are not from around here. I will tell you what you want to know, young Seth, but it’s going to teth you. From that jingling coming your dress pocket, it seems like you can afford it.” She gestured to the pocket sagging under the weight of the grilliks he had replicated earlier.
Seth put his hand into his pocket and held up one of the grilliks between his finger and thumb. He closed one eye while he looked at it.
“You are right, I don’t know where I am from, and it’s definitely not here.”
Next to the coin in Seth’s hand materialised an exact copy, falling to the stall’s countertop. It was immediately replaced by another one, then another and another until the small stall had grilliks scattered all over its surface. Katjas eyes had widened in disbelief, looking around at the coins in front of her.
“H-how? That is amazing! … And how?” was Katja’s reply to Seth’s display. Seth smiled a little, happy his small coin trick had turned the tables on the nonsense-talking.
“It’s a simple matter of becoming acquainted with the form and shape, and then the particles making up the matter. I was spared the need to imagine the object since I had one in my hand.” Seth knew this answer would not satisfy Katja and could hopefully turn the tables in his favour.
“Can I ask you some more raggles then?” Seth asked.
Katja started to collect the grilliks lying on her table.
“You can ask whatever you want if you pay so generously Seth. I won’t need to sell any more verhils today! Come inside and you can ask all the raggles you like.” Seth followed Katja upstairs into her house.
The interior of Katja’s house was rather cosy. Being the owner of a shop that sold a multitude of paper products, she had decorated the walls with many different images. A lot of them looked like maps, while some seemed to be people in dramatic poses. There was also a painting of a large flower, resembling the reen flower that Seth had eaten earlier. A few rugs were placed at overlapping intervals, covering most of the wooden floor. The rugs had complex patterns made of reds, oranges, yellows and blues. There was a bookcase, barely half full, on the wall opposite the stairs where the two had entered. Behind the bookcase was another staircase leading to a higher floor, but they ascended no further. In front of them were a few wooden chairs surrounding a small table where Katja had indicated they would be holding their conversation.
By the end of the conversation Seth felt like he was a step closer to finding his way home. He now knew how different this place was from his home; not just Chos Garren, but the land in which it resided, too. First of all, the citizens of Chos Garren had chips in their heads. The chips were responsible for controlling people’s emotions with something called ‘clase’. Clase would determine if someone would feel predominantly happy, sad, angry or so on. People were rewarded for good behaviour by being given a boost in their mood, making them happy. Anyone who broke a law could be instantly and painfully disabled when their clase was activated, and would serve a sentence of “community service” being driven to tears by clase; the length of the term depended on the severity of their crime. There was a similar system in Swevender, it was just that clase had nothing to do with it.
Katja herself wasn’t deliriously happy or sad. She had recently finished serving a short sentence of community service and her clase was now set to neutral, she told Seth. She also explained how this was the one moment where citizens had a little clarity. The mustachioed man Seth had encountered when he first arrived in Chos Garren was part of town security. His clase kept him alert and a little hostile. He was the same man that had caught Katja committing her crime (Katja seemed very reluctant to admit what the actual crime was).The clase was not something of which she spoke fondly, nor community service; it seemed a traumatic thing to be forced to cry for months at a time. Some people had committed crimes so heinous that their clase was permanently set to melancholy and they would never be able to be happy again.
The Inquirers were the ones who initiated this method of keeping the peace. According to Katja the Inquirers were not nice people, but they were to be feared. They controlled Chos Garren. The Inquirers lived inside the two pipe-covered buildings Seth had seen earlier. These were known as the Reference Centre and none of the town’s citizens were permitted to enter. Nobody knew what the Inquirers did in there, but they rarely needed to come out so nobody actually knew what they looked like anymore. Any stories about them depicted the Inquirers as older gentleman, wearing white trench coats on top of the finest fabrics with devices that performed incredible acts — as incredible as Seth’s ability to materialise coins out of nothing.
The world on which Chos Garren resided wa
s also somewhat confusing to Seth. Katja tried her best but was not able to explain fully. Chos Garren was a village on a continent called Grael, located in the central arc of the world Estever. Estever was the name of the planet, which could also be the planet Seth was from for all he knew; after all, he only recently learned he had been on a city floating above a planet. But Estever wasn’t pure dirt and stone so it seemed likely to be somewhere other than Seth’s place of origin. Estever had three major sections, called arcs. Only the central arc was inhabited by humans. The blazing arc was sunwards, an extremely inhospitable environment. The further sunwards anyone walked, the hotter and dryer it became, and the sun became blindingly bright extremely quick. Not many people had travelled very far into the blazing arc as they had no real protection for such extreme heat. The shadow arc was the exact opposite: it was extremely cold, becoming colder the closer one came to ‘the absence’, which was the area of the shadow arc where absolutely no light could reach. It had a reputation for sending people insane. The shadow arc had been explored a few times by the most ambitious of adventurers and was renowned for strange beasts prowling the barren landscapes. Every creature from the shadow arc tended to come with a very vague description, only ever seen in torchlight or darkness.
Katja also had questions for Seth: she hadn’t met anyone who was able to pull money from thin air and wanted to know his secret. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really something that could be explained or taught so quickly. Seth summarised his power by saying it came from focus and knowing that everything was made of smaller particles which had power to be exploited. This only seemed to cause more questions. Seth performed a few more examples of his power by providing Katja with a pile of grilliks. He also created a new balcony for her house using one of his rings of grey stone. At 22 years of age, Seth’s hormones were definitely causing him to be a little friendlier to Katja than normal; he took pleasure in showing her how little effort it took him to create such things. After a few hours it became apparent that the sky had held a sunset for the last few hours, even though no sun could be seen. Katja explained that this was just how it was in Estever. Their sun did not have cycles like where Seth was from, but was permanently fixed in the same place. Most of the population lived in the small belt of the planet where the sun provided enough light to live normally, but not too much heat. The sun was – according to Katja – partially inside the planet, meaning it was constantly grinding the pole of the blazing arc.
This world made no sense to Seth. He had teleported himself very far away from home indeed. As he spoke of his situation to Katja, she mentioned a resistance group that were rumoured to live in the shadow arc. They had managed to create technology forbidden by the Inquirers, making permanent sources of light allowing them to live in the shadow arc comfortably. Apparently they also used their technology to extract the chips placed in their brains by the Inquirers.
After all this talk Seth started to yawn from lack of sleep. He didn’t realise there was no night in Estever, and had been waiting for the sun to set. Katja was more than happy to accommodate him, but explained she would have to check with her man, who walked in just as Katja was explaining the system of Estever’s sun.
“Who is this young lad Kat? And did you build a new casner on the house today?” came a hoarse voice from the stairway, accompanied by the thumping of heavy boots on the steps. From the hole in the ground poked the head of Katja’s man. His face was covered by black, shaggy hair; only eyes, nose and a little bit of cheek could be seen. The majority of the hair growing from his head had been tied back to make him look a little less like a sea urchin on a human body, a body with a proudly bulging belly.
The man stood, waiting for an answer. Katja rose to give him a ‘welcome home’ hug.
“Boris, this is Seth — umm... Cost. He is from very far away, and he is responsible for the casner and the pile of grilliks.” She gestured towards the table where a sizeable pile of money lay. Boris’ eyes widened, looking first at Seth, then at the table and at the door leading to their new balcony. It looked like he smiled after he had worked out the situation, but it was hard to tell with so much of his face being hidden behind wiry black hair. Boris was a little shorter than Seth. He was wearing a grey, collarless shirt, with a dark brown leather vest and grey canvas pants.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, young man, but for what stalusion would we be giving you so many grilliks? Surely a casner is not so dear?” asked Boris while placing his bag down on the floor. Katja put her hand on Boris’ shoulder and whispered an explanation for the grilliks on the table.
“Oh the grilliks are from you. Well then, it is an extra great pleasure to meet you, Seth.” Boris sat down on the chair next to Seth and picked up one of the coins, inspecting it.
Seth smiled.
“Likewise. I have been having a bit of trouble acquainting myself with Chos Garren and Katja was a great help. I still don’t know how to get home, but I think I am going to try find that resistance she was mentioning, in the shadow arc.”
Boris looked strangely at Katja.
“What resistance might that be young man? I told you that wasn’t true Kat, mir not send the poor guy into the shadow arc looking for something that’s not even there.”
Katja whispered into Boris’ ear again, and he shook his head, audibly saying no. They continued to communicate this way for a while, sometimes glancing back at Seth.
Boris eventually turned back to Seth.
“Listen you can stay here tonight, but tomorrow you will have to find yourself somewhere else to rest. And take your grilliks; we are fine without them.”
Seth was a little irritated. He expected Boris to be a pragmatic person, like Katja seemed to be, but he needed sleep so he gracefully thanked Boris and Katja for letting him stay. Katja didn’t look too happy with Boris’s decision but she went with it. She cooked dinner for all three of them, and very little was said throughout the whole cooking and eating process.
Seth enjoyed the meal thoroughly despite the atmosphere. During the awkward silence Seth began to hum a song to himself which gained scrunched-up looks of disapproval from both Katja and Boris. Seth very rarely had the chance to eat meat in Swevender, and even less since he left, so he almost inhaled his steak when it was placed in front of him. Accompanying the steak was a vegetable the same consistency as a boiled potato, but it was bright yellow and much sweeter. On his plate he also found curved orange rods, both ends wider than the middle. They had a crunchiness similar to apples, but were a little salty. Seth also found a familiar-looking flower which he pushed to the side.
When Boris finished his meal, he picked up everyone’s dishes and placed them back by the stove. He walked back downstairs, and Seth could hear some noises outside of wood being banged about. Boris returned upstairs shortly, then looked pointedly at Kat.
“I am going to bed Kat, I’ll see you soon.”
She nodded her head at him in acknowledgement and moved to where Boris had placed the dishes. She stacked them so she could easily carry them downstairs.
“I am just going to rinse the dishes Seth. You will have to use the floor to sleep, I mir not really have anything else.” Katja seemed a little saddened by her man’s recent actions as she walked downstairs.
Seth moved his hands in an attempt to levitate the dishes from Katja’s hands, but remembered his powers didn’t work right on Estever. Katja gave Seth a strange look as he waved his hands around ineffectually. He instinctively tried to correct his mistake and water flew out of his hands, pushing the crockery from Katja’s hands. In this process Katja got soaked and one of the plates smashed on the floor; Seth caught the rest.
“What was that for? Now I have to go the market and deal with that terrible Mr. Railson for a new neld!” Katja exclaimed, her whole front dripping with water. Seth’s eyes were still wide from the surprise of the smashing plate. He quickly looked at his ring made of steel and a new plate formed from the metal.
“Sorry, I wanted to was
h them for you. I will clean that up, and I still insist on washing the rest,” said Seth apologetically as he placed the dirty dishes on the table.
From behind Seth came Boris’ nasal voice:
“You can throw them all out if you can just trank one out of thin air like that, boy.” Boris had come downstairs to see what was amiss when he heard the plate smash. Katja turned to him.
“I told you, this boy has some otherworldly power! He might be useful.”
“Not now Katja! Come upstairs and dry yourself off — what were you mirring? And you boy, I will have some raggles for you tomorrow,” Boris responded. Katja followed Boris as he walked back upstairs, turning back to Seth just before her head disappeared into the floor above.
“You can cover the innels when you are ready to sleep.”She walked upstairs out of
View. Seth assumed she was talking about the windows, and saw a thick roll of material above each one. Each roll had a small ribbon tied around both ends. Seth undid the knots and the blinds unfurled, blocking 100 percent of the light. Seth lay down on a rug next to the table, but could feel straight away he wasn’t going to get any sleep on this hard floor. Seth stood up and clicked his fingers. He made a small mattress from the same material as his robe, on which he fell asleep instantly.
