Annette found herself checking each move of her muscles, each smell, each sensation for some waiting disastrous outcome. It wasn’t exactly a relaxing recuperation. Having taken enough pause Annette reached down to lift her sack into the laundry chute. She paused again considering the idea of having Tina convince Niri that it was in Annette’s best interest to allow her room to take care of such menial housekeeping chores as laundry. Not much hope of that.
“Hey Stranger!” A male voice shouted from the main activity room. Annette turned towards it and recognized Carl.
“Hi, Carl,” Annette answered with as much enthusiasm as she could muster given her recent drag.
“Whoa, I hope you’re not upset that I haven’t gotten back to you with your present?” Carl said dropping his own sack of belongings and trotting down the hall to join her.
“Uh, no, I ugh, have a lot of laundry and the chute is too high,” Annette grunted try to lift the sack.
“Let me,” he took it from her, “Smells like Technicolor muck to me. Not quite through with your metamorphosis?” he said as he heaved the sack in to the chute in one quick movement.
Annette blushed, “Yeah.”
Carl flashed her a smile, “Been there done that, with my nose on overdrive. Trust me you could have it worse than you do. So are you sore everywhere?”
Annette grimaced the only time she was sore was when she tried to use her muscles, like during her laundry drag. “Some, I’m going to have to do a lot of retraining, strength, agility, endurance. I have trouble lifting some of the books I’ve been reading.”
“Books? Like with paper and leather?” Carl couldn’t fully contain his enthusiasm, and it hurt as it bubbled over at Annette. Her knees buckled from the telepathic pressure. Carl was quick to catch her. “Sorry, I was a little too enthused at you wasn’t I?”
Annette tried to nod but every muscle was too busy trembling. With Carl’s apology came enough reprieve from the telepathic pressure to nod. Annette managed to stand with Carl’s help, her hand’s were still shaking.
“Maybe I should help you to the clinic,” Carl said with a worried frown.
Annette forced herself to find her feet. “No, I’m fine. I just should get back to the chores.”
“What chores?”
“Well, the floor needs vacuumed, the dishes washed, shelves dusted, fridge cleaned out. These quarters are a lot to handle for one person who gets a cramp when she lifts a feather duster.”
Carl broke out into a wide grin, “Then I have some good news, you have a roommate, and should have more by lunch, today was the last day of testing. I’ll handle everything, you rest.”
“No, I need to pull myself back together,” Annette protested, almost going weak at the knees again.
“Okay, but you have to let me help. I know some telekinetic shortcuts that should make things go quickly,” Carl started off towards the main room, Annette felt compelled to follow.
“I can’t use telekinesis, Tina gave me strict orders to avoid attempting anything,” Annette answered quickly.
“Okay, so I’ll use the tricks you rest. By the way I still have your birthday present,” Carl grinned and stopped short in the hallway.
Annette felt a sudden lurch of apprehension in her gut, “What is it?”
Carl didn’t tell her; he showed her. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her passionately. Without consciously deciding to, Annette kissed back. It was her first kiss, their mouths stayed mostly closed.
When it was over Annette’s lips tingled. The tingling slowly turned into a burning, quickly the burning spread. Annette opened her eyes not clear on having closed them. Light filled her vision stabbing unfamiliar colors at her. Breathing deeply to cool the pain in her eyes, Annette taste-smelled everything, the trail of soiled laundry she had dragged down the hall, Carl’s strange male scent, the paint on the walls even had a taste.
A roar, bass and melodious, reached her in the land of sensory overload, “Are you okay?” It was Carl and it was agony.
Annette slapped her hands over her ears, feeling the roughness of her own hair. She heard Carl breathing and herself. She heard her heart pound, and blood flowing through her veins, dimmer she heard Carl’s heart. It was all too much. Especially the shrill scream. It took her quite some time to realize it was her voice. A hard slap across the face stung and resonated through her.
“Come on, pull it together,” Carl begged.
Annette managed to not scream. She tried to >pull it together’, but her world was beginning to run together she was now smelling the color red. Her legs were buckling and there was nothing she could do but fall.
Carl was there to catch her. She thought to thank him. Suddenly all of reality turned end over end. By the time her consciousness again found its center, Annette opened her eyes to Tina in a dimly lit room. Carl was gone, and the world was muted.
“Annette? Are you with us again?” Tina spoke softly. Annette flinched, despite the fact that Tina had spoken softly, the words were just too loud. Tina picked up on it and quieted her voice even further, “Sorry, I didn’t think. At least I know your finally conscious again.”
“How long?” Annette asked past a dry and hoarse throat.
“You’ve been out of it for a few days. Carl said he kissed you and you just went nuts. I’m figuring your very special eugenoplasts, didn’t like Carl’s. Or Carl’s didn’t like yours. Kissing him caused them to interact, unfavorably. He couldn’t have picked a worse time to do it either. If I had more information about you at the time maybe, I could have expected this and been prepared,” Tina answered.
“I kissed back,” Annette’s gut felt the need to stick up for Carl.
“Okay so you both have bad timing. The good news is that you will live. The bad news, I had to perform a slap dash job of genetic repair to straighten you back out. The good news is this shouldn’t happen again,” Tina loosened restraints from around Annette’s wrists, to which Annette had been oblivious.
“Can I have some water?” Annette asked before being fully freed by Tina.
Tina finished with the restraints and retrieved a pouch of emergency ration from a storage cupboard. She handed it to Annette and raised the bed so she could sit up. “I was worried for a good piece there. Pessimism is one thing but being right when you’re a pessimist is really no picnic. The words extraordinary measures came up a couple of times.”
Annette sipped at the tasteless beverage and listened to Tina with as much focus as she could muster.
“You know Angela has asked about you. How you’re doing and all. She wanted me to pass along her concern. She says not to stress, you can get back to training when you’re ready.”
Annette mulled things over. Right then, she was too exhausted to even contemplate the future. She felt her eyes falling to half mast and noticed Tina slowly backing out of the room. Annette started to form the impulse to talk but she just didn’t have the necessary momentum to break from the downward spiral of her consciousness.
- - - - - - - - - -
Yllera kicked aside the door hanging to her quarters and flung her newly acquired pile of snake skins in the corner. She had started setting the traps in the surface tunnels of the warren months ago. Trapping snakes and other small animals in the anthill like Agurian warrens was a multifaceted task. It meant food, the protection of supplies, and skins and pelts for use in clothing. Yllera’s traps had been profitable and they meant hours spent learning from a kindly native woman how to preserve them. She’d traded for a matching set and now she was going to make herself a traditional snake skin coat. The coat was a symbol of her ability to take care of herself and the people around her. It was one of the Agurian prerequisites of adult status. She already had that status as an outsider, but the coat would make her officially an insider, eligible to bring things forward in council. Tev and Illay had offered to bring her forward to offer formal relations with Sanctuary, but Yllera sensed it would be a more acceptable offer if Yllera could bring
it forward herself.
So Yllera had spent almost eight months trapping, learning and earning the right to wear it. She hadn’t just been learning about the jacket. Yllera had also formed a more than working mastery of the Tanerian language, at least as it was spoken by the Agurian warren she had joined. Those months had also brought forth surprises. First of which was the size of what Illay and Tev seriously called a small warren. With over five hundred families and miles of almost random tunnels and rooms, it did indeed rate as small compared to the warren of Zesheiaouplac, the center of Agurian culture. The name itself was one of the most secret of secrets, not shared with outsiders. It’s meaning was roughly place of the mourning girl. It was located deep in the northern desert, where the tears of their people were shed.
It shook Yllera to the core to realize how much she had come to identify with the natives. She checked the thought and retrieved her pop-pad. With a few taps she had called the assistant Angela had sent after the first months went well. Tatia was an earth Agurian, like Yllera, but she had the benefit of already being fluent in Tanerian. Tatia had shared the last six months with Yllera and learned everything Yllera had to teach her about the natives. The girl was a freshly minted tertiary factor and honored, beyond all get out, that the fact that she was Agurian meant she was the best available factor when Angela decided to send Yllera an assistant. Angela had consulted with Yllera before the appointment, being that Yllera was the foremost expert on the culture. Tatia had meant Yllera could expand her investigations.
Tatia arrived promptly, the girl was nothing if not overeager. Still after six months she acted as though Yllera would send her away at any minute. “What you need boss?”
Yllera had to ask herself, she’d messaged the girl more as a link to her factor-ness than for any real need. “I was getting ready to file my report, and was wondering if you had anything else to add?”
Tatia seemed to consider the question seriously, then just as seriously spoke, “Well, I would remind Angela to send the first available male Agurian. As women there are elements of the culture we cannot have a part in. If she wants a proper picture of the culture she needs to send the proper people.” Tatia still chose to see their mission as anthropological rather than as a political mission. It was both but not in equal amounts.
“I’ll bear that in mind. Anything else?” Yllera felt falsely self important.
“Neyomu was going to show me the sludgeworks, did you want to come see them too?” Tatia asked eagerly.
Neyomu, meaning “not in evil darkness”, was one of Tatia’s acquaintances. Neyomu was a native girl of the age just the young side of womanhood. It was Neyomu’s innocent question eight months ago that had started Yllera on the coat, but that was before Tatia had arrived and made the girl practically family. “Sure!” Yllera said shoving her pile of skins even further to the side. As she rose she felt her bracelet vibrate, it meant an incoming call on her pad. She retrieved it and tapped it to receive.
The face that lit up the screen was Angela. “Hi, Yllera. How’s the kid working out for you?”
Yllera glanced over her shoulder at Tatia, “Good, she’s opened some doors herself. We were just about to check out the warren’s sewage slash lighting system.”
“Sounds fun,” Angela’s nose twitched in sympathy,” I also wanted to talk to you about your last report. From the sounds of things you are making quite a bit of progress. That stuff about the coat is pretty interesting. You keep up the good work you might just earn another coat if you follow me.” Yllera did, Angela was referring to the much coveted prime jacket. It was worn only by prime factors, as a kind of ultimate factor-pack packaged in a stylish hooded duster. Yllera planned to pattern her snake skin jacket after one. “Here’s the real news, I’ve decided to promote you to primary. You’ve been doing the work now you have the title. Congratulations, and good job. I’m guessing you’re busy so I’ll let you go now.” The screen went black and Yllera stared at it for a moment.
“So what’s up?” Tatia asked braking Yllera’s confusion.
“I got a promotion, that was the chief telling me I just made primary,” Yllera answered still a bit stunned. As it sank in her gut began to toss nervously, it had been a rare thing in her life to be visited with something good without something bad being tied to it somewhere. Her gut swore that a promotion meant a catastrophe was lying in wait. Yllera shook it off. “Let's go to see the sludgeworks.”
Tatia led the way through the tunnels to Neyomu’s family’s quarters. It was a group of rooms two levels below the ones Yllera shared with Tatia. Yllera knew the way there by heart. In truth, at this point Yllera could find her way almost anywhere in the warren in the blindfolded, something she had to do once or twice to prove to Tev and Illay she was ready for her own quarters.
Neyomu was waiting just outside of her family’s gathering room when they arrived. She had the look of someone eager to be anywhere else. “I’m glad you didn’t take your time.” Neyomu thought to them sarcastically while saying the Tanerian equivalent.
Neyomu quickly began leading them through the tunnels keeping to a trail which gradually lead upwards. Finally she stopped at a doorway next to one of the many warren exits. It was like one of the airlock doors. She opened it using a specific combination of rotations to the door’s wheel before finally turning a latch on the wall next to the door. It opened letting out a smell which was half sweet, half fetid. Neyomu grabbed three filter masks from a closed cupboard inside the room and handed one each to Yllera and Tatia.
The smell didn’t make it difficult to figure out why the masks were so handily stored, though wearing them did make talking more difficult. Yllera was thankful for telepathy. Yllera glanced around the room full of glassy tanks and pumps. “So how does this stuff work?” Yllera thought to Neyomu.
Neyomu was grabbing a paddle from a hook on the wall. She motioned Yllera and Tatia closer, then stirred one of the tanks. The paddle left trails of iridescence in the thick fluid. “This is one of the last tanks the sludge here is the most uniform and glows the brightest. It has passed through many filters both biological and mechanical to get to this tank. You may stick your hand in it if you like. It is just a few processes from being food. It is safe, from here it is pumped through the light veins then on to our hydroponics gardens on the upper levels.
Tatia reached the finger in and pulled it back, to roll the fluid between her fingers. “Feel it Yllera! It’s almost like shampoo.”
Yllera was undeniably hesitant, given that the fluid was “just a few processes” from being human - hominid, waste. Tatia smiled encouragingly, but it read like a dare. Yllera could all too easily see the young woman telling the tale of how Yllera, primary factor and her boss, had been too afraid to brave sticking her hand in, waste. Yllera clenched her teeth and stuck her hand in up to her wrist. She moved it through the fluid it did indeed feel like shampoo. She pulled her hand out and watched it slide from her hand leaving very little residue on Yllera’s arm.
That little bit was too much, she could feel every drop acutely. It burned like Tina’s touch had during her metamorphosis. Yllera knew she was in trouble, but her mouth could no longer form the words to express it. In fact her mouth was filling with mucous Yllera felt it coming out of all of her pores at once. Tatia glanced her direction and let out a horrified scream.
Neyomu blanched and ran from the room, Yllera couldn’t tell whether it was for help or from fear. Yllera couldn’t tell much. Her eyes were so covered in the sudden mucous that she could no longer see. Her clothes felt too tight and she ripped at them to make it possible to breathe. She ripped off the mask, the room no longer smelled bad it smelled if anything like food to her strangely extended sense of smell. Sight sound and touch were gone, drowned in the mucous, but smell remained, and fear. Yllera tried to wonder what was happening but she felt so very tired.
- - - - - - - - - -
Max was trying to take the boy-man seriously, he really was. It was just that Richard
took himself far too seriously and thought far too much of himself. Max wasn’t sure how he had been assigned to such a self important twit for his mentorship. It was almost as bad as having to baby-sit a Tanerian princess, almost. It was the last hurdle Ms. Everett had placed before him, and once past it Max could consider himself an official tertiary factor. From there he would be under the command and jurisdiction of Angela Daniel’s, the Chief Factor. All he had to do was keep reminding himself of that fact.
Max didn’t have anything against Niri personally other than her personality. She could talk the arms off of an octopus. While most of the information was important, she had the habit of talking out the details and then the back story behind the details and the details behind the back story. One didn’t converse with the woman, one listened, a lot.
“Are you watching or not?” Richard growled from the edge of the cliff. He was dangling just beyond the sensible distance over the edge with binoculars to his eyeballs. Max wasn’t sure how the boy-man had lived this long with the stupid risks he took. Richard had no work ethic when it came to work, but plenty when it came to foolish hedonism. Right now they weren’t making observations of any of the life forms they were supposed to be cataloging.
Richard was busy trying to get an eyeful of the nude bathing rituals of the local women. It was a goal that was only marginally acceptable and probably better documented by a female factor actually participating, at least in Max’s opinion. Max was supposed to be acting as a lookout to make sure Richard wasn’t caught peeping. Such a cultural faux pas would mean the violent loss of Richard’s ability to act on the carnal impulses getting him into trouble. Of course as a eunuch, he would be free to aid the women in their rituals. Actually, come to think of it, it was very much like babysitting a Tanerian princess.
Max wondered if that was why Niri had chosen Richard, after all she had been a part of the conversation where he rested his decision of whether or not to join the factors on the whole Tanerian princess assignment. Niri wanted, no needed, to know how and if he could handle such a situation. Maybe he should handle it by slapping some sense into the idiot. Max was about ready to give it a try when he was hit by an unexpected gut-churning pain. He yelped uncontrollably.
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