The Senthien (Descendants of Earth Book 1)

by Tara Jade Brown

  “No, I am not.”

  “I am Lemony.”

  “I am Dora,” I said. Then I smiled without any specific reason, simply to see this little girl looking at me and addressing me so directly.

  “So what are you?”

  “I am Senthien.”

  “Sentient? Does that mean you’re smart?”

  “No, this name was chosen many years ago for my specific Descendant species.”

  “In our world, sentient means smart… I think.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that.

  “Why are your eyes green?” Lemony continued, deeply focused on my facial features.

  “This feature appeared as a side effect of the genetic transformation used for the particular genetic coding in Senthiens.”

  “What is genetic trans… ration?”

  “Genetic transformation?”

  “Yes, that.”

  “It is a change in your own genetic code with different genetic material inserted into your cell structure to change your physical appearance and your mental state.”

  She was silent for a little bit, as if grasping what I just said.

  “What is a genetic code?”

  “A genetic code is a chemical structure in every cell of your body that determines how your body is developed, physically and mentally.”

  “I can see you two are having a real scientific discussion.” I heard Tania’s voice behind us. I turned around to face her.

  “Mommy!” Lemony came close to Tania, hugged her around her waist, and looked up into her eyes. “Dora says that she is not smart and that this is because of the green color they put inside her body.”

  “Is that so?” Tania nodded and looked at me with a smile.

  “This would not be an exact description of our conversation.”

  Tania’s smile broadened, and she took Lemony by her shoulders and started guiding her back to the village.

  “Lemony is seven years old,” Tania said and started toward the village herself. “We start our school at the same time we remember from our lives before freezing, when children are five years old. They start with basics, which is reading and counting. I think genetic engineering comes only when they are around ten or so…” She winked at me.

  I felt completely out of place. I had conversed with a seven-year-old child as if she was an adult. Lemony, seeing two of her friends standing at the edge of the tree village, started running to meet them.

  “Dora, don’t worry about it!” Tania said. “I’m sure Lemony is quite happy that someone finally talked to her as a grown-up and not as a child.”

  I looked at the ground. We stayed silent for a bit.

  “What plants do you grow on those fields?” I asked to change the subject.

  “Oh, all sorts of stuff. Potatoes, corn, carrots, tomatoes…”

  “Do they naturally grow here?”

  “They don’t grow wild, if that’s what you mean. They were planted. Compliments of the transfer manager.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Ah… they were cryo-stored in the same installation we were transferred to.”

  I pondered that for a moment. Whoever had the authority to transfer them to the safe underground installation—whoever overrode the hundred-year wake-up plan—had also some hope that they might de-freeze in the far future. In that case, they would be in need of nutrients. Whoever this person was, he’d given them the best possible option for a food supply.

  “Dora, there is something else I wanted to tell you. I just saw Stevanion. I think he’s doing worse than this morning. He seems to have developed a cough. We’ll keep him in the infirmary for a few more days.”

  “Can you show me where this infirmary is? I would like to see him.”

  “Yes, of course, Dora. Come with me.”

  The infirmary was a cottage one bridge away from Tania’s. It was bit larger than other cottages, and it had six tightly aligned beds. All the beds were empty except the last one to the right.

  “I’ll be in my cottage,” said Tania. She gave me a gentle smile and left.

  I turned to face the room again but stayed where I was.

  What should I say to him?

  I didn’t even know him that well. He just happened to be porting with me. And happened to get stranded on Earth.

  I approached his bed, my leathery shoes soft against the wooden floor.

  If he hadn’t accompanied me on my port, he would still be in Uni. And he would not be ill.

  I sat down on the neighboring bed. He was so still that for a moment I thought he wasn’t breathing. Then all of a sudden he gave a throaty cough. My heart skipped a beat.

  What should I do?

  I turned around to see if Tania was there so she could help him, but the next moment he relaxed and continued sleeping.

  I remembered my Vision of Stevanion—the first one I’d ever had in an awake state. If the Vision was true, then he was seriously ill. The only way I could help him would be to return him to Uni and take him to the Anas, who could cleanse his whole body. They could save him.

  I took a deep breath and held it for a moment.

  If we’d been ported here, it was feasible that porting would work in the other direction as well. Earth obviously didn’t have porting chambers, but my E-band might be able to generate a hyperspace resonance field that could potentially connect to the same porting channel that brought us here.

  I breathed out.

  I needed to find some kind of power source for recharging, or a working computer system where I could load up my E-band. That was the only way I could at least start the process and then hope to enable the porting link.

  It was late afternoon and I was strolling along bridges, not following any pattern, simply taking one turn at a time. I was mostly looking down, seeing the forest ground through the gaps in the branches of the bridges, or looking up, seeing the clear blue sky through the crowns of the trees.

  Every now and then, I saw a bird flutter between the trees. The sounds of the forest were ever present. There was not one silent moment. And I enjoyed it immensely.

  This world…

  This world was perfect—full of colors, sounds, and smells—and I tried to record all I could on my nanoprobes. I needed to see it, to smell it, to remember it after I leave.

  I took a deep breath and trapped the air in my lungs, savoring all the oxygen.

  It was not my world, but would I want to leave it?

  I closed my eyes.

  If the Vision was true, if Stevanion was really so ill that he needed the help of the Anas, then I had no choice on the matter.

  I need to leave.

  I opened my eyes and continued walking, accessing the map of the bridges on my nanoprobes. Tania had said there would be a meeting in the evening, in the clearing on the south side of the village. She had said I should come to her cottage so we could go together, but I was in a new area, and my nano-map did not show a direct connection to Tania’s place.

  Around me, several people were coming out of their cottages and heading in the same direction. I assumed they were going to the meeting, so I followed.

  “Hi! Are you hungry?”

  I turned. “Hello, Patrick,” I said, happy to see a face I knew. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  “Good, because there’s always a lot of food at the bonfire meetings. What have you been doing today?”

  “Tania took me to a small lake pool in the morning. I took a bath.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Yes. A most unusual tactile experience. I would like to do it again.”

  “There’ll be plenty of opportunities, don’t worry.” Patrick looked at me sideways and grinned. His skin was a lot darker than the other Humans I had seen, and his hair was threaded into thick shoulder-length strings. “This way,” he said, pointing to the bridge on the right.

  “Hey, Peter, Tania!” he shouted.

  Peter and Tania turned. Peter had his arm over Tania’s shoulder
and their bodies touched sideways. They were very, very close.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off them. This, I remembered, was called a hug. And the memory induced such a strong emotional response in me that I could barely control it. I closed my eyes. The picture burned in my memory looked exactly the same. Only the faces were different. I exhaled slowly.

  “You okay?” I heard Patrick ask.

  “I am… fine.” I attempted a smile.

  He smiled back. Then he turned to Tania and Peter. “Where’s your bunch?”

  “Rick’s here.” Peter pointed to a young man in front of him. “But the others already went. They wanted to see the fire getting started.”

  Rick turned around and waved, but just as he started walking again, he stopped to look back at me. I stopped as well and so did others around me.

  “Wow, you’re the new one!” Rick said.

  “Rick!” Tania said, her eyebrows folded, her fists bolted on her waist. “This is Dora,” she continued in a softer tone. “Dora, this is Rick, my sixteen-year-old.”

  Patrick laughed. “When you explain it like that, it all makes sense.”

  “Yeah, funny!” said Rick, whose face didn’t at all correspond to his words.

  “Let’s move, people, we’re making a jam!” said Peter, and we all pushed along.

  People were lining up near three different trees that each had a way down to the ground. I took the one in the middle, while Tania, Peter, Rick, and Patrick took the one on the right. My slow pace caused a delay on the tree I took, but no one behind me complained. However, this also meant that I lost track of my group. I continued to follow the stream of people, certain I would be able to find them at the bonfire. A few people looked at me, obviously captivated by the color of my eyes, but most of them didn’t stare, and for the briefest of moments, I didn’t feel like an outsider.

  When I got to the clearing, some sixty people were already there, sitting in a large loose circle. The bonfire turned out to be a large pile of branches and planks of wood engulfed in a crackling fire. In diameter, it was broader than one IP, and the flames rose up high in the air, spurting sparks and weaving smoke into a braided river pattern against the dark sky.

  It was magnificent.

  For a while I just stood there, transfixed by the light, the warmth, and the smell of burning wood.

  A few people passed close to me; one of them even lightly nudged me from behind. This brought me back to the present. Standing at the outer edge of the circle, I turned left and walked around until I found a wide spot between two groups of people engaged in animated discussions. The area was three IPs wide, and I hoped no one would sit too close to me. I took one more look around to make sure no one was standing and then sat down, folding my legs under my body, my knees touching the dry dusty soil.

  Within the next ten passes, more people came to join the gathering, sitting in a random pattern but still forming a broad regular circle around the fire.

  I found myself fascinated just by looking at the Humans’ faces. The fine movements of facial muscles conveyed a whole additional layer to what was being communicated verbally, and I wondered if they realized how much of their information exchange went on through this body language. The Human Jumpers were similar in that way too, but I could still clearly recognize them by their pale appearance and relatively fine build, compared to the Old Earth Humans. Zema4 had a slightly weaker gravity than Old Earth, so they appeared more fragile than original Humans. In Uni, though, Zema4 Humans were considered one of the most physically robust species.

  All of a sudden, I was ripped from my thoughts, my gaze drawn to the flickering flames of the fire in the center of the circle. At that moment, while my eyes were locked on the hypnotic orange movements, I had another Vision.

  A Vision of the man.

  The man in my dreams.

  I just see his face, part of it lit with a dim flickering light, the other in the dark.

  His eyes reflect the flicker of the orange glow coming from the nearby source.

  Then, he looks at me.

  And I gasp.

  The Vision was gone. I looked up from the fire.

  Everyone was still in the same relaxed positions they had been a moment ago.

  I realized I was holding my breath, and I exhaled. I had all but forgotten about my recurring dream. So much had happened since the last time I had it. And with a sad weight on my shoulders, I realized I’d missed having this particular Vision—this particular dream.

  I miss him, whoever he is.

  I smiled very slightly and raised my gaze toward a new group of people just coming into the circle, only to lock onto a pair of dark eyes reflecting a flicker of fiery orange flames.

  Those eyes were locked on mine, too.

  And they belonged to a man.

  The man from my Visions.

  Chapter 8

  My heart was racing. Breathing erratically, I tried to make sense of the flood of jumbled thoughts that rushed through my mind.

  Of course—the Vision.

  Old Earth.

  He is here!

  The very realization had panic, thrill, excitement, and pure joy woven through it.

  He looked at me for a few moments, but then he turned his head and looked away. A moment later, he looked back at me again.

  And he kept looking as he walked to the other side of the circle, surrounded by several people. They all sat near a group of elderly men. Everyone else was very loud, talking at the same time, but he remained silent, his eyes fixed on me.

  And me?

  I kept looking back at him, transfixed, unable to break my gaze.

  Then, without taking his eyes off me, he must have said something to the man on his right, because that man turned to look at me. He said something to my Vision man, shrugged his shoulders, and then turned away again, focusing his attention back to the group engaged in discussion.

  Another moment passed with both of us bluntly staring at each other across the fire, and then he smiled, raised one hand, and gave a barely noticeable wave.

  Not sure what he was gesturing, I turned my head and looked away. I was dizzy from the combination of rapid breathing and wild heartbeat.

  I used all my willpower to slow down my breathing again. Very slowly, with the deliberate trained force of hundreds of years and a Senthien background, I gained control over my body again.

  By this time, all were quiet, and one man was holding the attention of the entire gathering with his strong but clearly aged voice.

  I slowly raised my head toward the source of words, careful not to let my eyes slip sideways toward the man from my Vision.

  “The first time we did this,” he said, standing up and moving closer to the fire, “we were all afraid. Everybody was sitting a lot closer together than you are now.” And he moved his wrinkly hand in a circle, pointing to all the people sitting around the fire. “We didn’t know what had happened. It certainly wasn’t the cool flying cars and kilometer-high buildings I was expecting to see one hundred years after my beauty sleep.” He chuckled.

  “It seemed as if we had gone several thousand years back from our present, to a time when Humans did not yet exist. Some of you”—he gave a slight nod to Patrick—“thought that this was in fact the future, but that it wasn’t the Earth.

  “Some thought it was one hundred years later, as it was supposed to be, but an environmental catastrophe had happened to Earth and we couldn’t recognize it anymore.

  “Some thought our cryo-sleep had lasted a very long time indeed, and as we acquired more information about our new surroundings, we realized that this was in fact the case.”

  He turned away from the fire, the orange light drawing patterns on the beige shirt hanging down his bony structure. He walked back to his seat, turned to the circle, and slowly sat, folding his legs underneath him.

  “Every time we lit the bonfire, everyone would tell something new that they’d found out or discovered, and we would all work together t
o find out what that meant. We also talked about our fears, our wishes, and our sorrows. Although we were alive, for some people, this also meant sorrow.” And with that he gave a sideways glance at the man from my Vision.

  I looked at him then and realized he wasn’t looking at the old man at all. He was looking at me.

  “With time,” the man continued, “we learned to live in our new wild world, far from any advanced standard of living we had known in our time. Cutting wood, building houses, making bridges, fishing, farming… everything we used to be able to buy, we now had to make ourselves. We were all fortunate that many of us had jobs or hobbies that weren’t necessarily linked to electricity and technology, and we made use of that.”

  I was quite sure he wasn’t telling this for the first time. This was for us—for the Jumpers. This was for me.

  “A few months ago, we started getting visitors.” He smiled, his cheeks folding into half-circles around the corners of his mouth. “We welcomed the Human teleporters—Jumpers, as we fondly call them—and in these few months we learned so much more than we had in the last nine years.

  “We learned about the News and the first Evacuation flights of Humans who would become Descendants. And we also learned how long ago that was… and that was so much longer than any of us could have imagined.”

  He sighed as he spoke the last word.

  “We learned a lot about the future, actually, about the present, and the people in this new time. And we learned where Humanity is placed in the Uni hierarchy.”

  His voice was cracked and low. He didn’t look at me, but I still lowered my gaze to the ground. I was the only representative of the Descendants at this gathering, and there was a part of me that felt ashamed.

  “There are still many mysteries,” he continued in a new vibrant tone, “and we will discover them along the way. For now, something we, the Old Earth Humans, want to do—need to do—is to get some of our prehistoric technology back.”

  He smiled slightly at the thought of whatever he was about to say.

  “There is a certain charm in living purely with nature—wooden houses, cotton clothing, bio-organic food—but some of us miss certain products of technology. Like… light bulbs.”