by Isaac Petrov
As the gap increases, Ximena turns to the woman, her eyes widening with wonder.
A Neanderthal woman! An honest-to-Goah Neanderthal, brow ridge and all, right in front of her!
She blinks in a futile effort to avoid gaping at her narrow forehead. Neanderthals are supposed to be a bit… brutish. Dim, even. But this smiling, broad-faced woman in her fifties radiates sophistication. Short, brown hair, neatly pulled back, her avatar dressed with the elegant casualness Ximena has only seen in Hansasian sensorials. Why so surprised? Of course you would expect Nubarian Neanderthals in Hansasia, and most definitely in the Lundev, right by the Portal.
The Neanderthal woman’s smile widens, too gracious to let Ximena’s obvious reaction affect her affability. “Ximena Epullan, I presume?” She extends her right hand in greeting. “The missing student?”
Ximena nods. “I- I’m so, so terribly sorry for being late…” She stares at the hand in confusion and shakes it with an involuntary notch of aversion. It’s not that she’s racist, of course not. She enjoys Nubarian adventure sensorials as much as the next guy. Neanderthals are so passionate and full of drama. But in academia?! Not everybody can—
“So delighted to finally meet you!” the woman says like she means it. “My name is Ankhesenneferibre Ankhesenaten, but you can call me Ank.” She laughs with the ease of a person who has just told a joke for the first time. Which obviously she hasn’t.
“Uh, nice to meet you, Elder Ank.”
“Just Ank, please. I’m not Goahn.”
Of course you’re not. Nubarians are pagans, and too stubborn to convert, from what she’s heard. But pagan or not, she is her only hope. “I’m really sorry, uh, Ank. I beg you to accept my apologies for my late arrival. I’m with the Global Program. I hope I can still attend Professor Miyagi’s seminar?”
“Kenji certainly hopes you do. He personally suggested your name when drafting the list of candidates to attend this first edition of the Global Program.”
A tsunami of relief distends Ximena’s features into a wide-eyed smile. “My name? Why?”
Ank smiles noncommittally and puts a finger on her chest. “Part of it is because of your research on the effects of raw power in post-Columbian America. They are—how did he put it?—intriguing.” Ank takes Ximena by the arm and pulls her through the gap while speaking. “And it’s not easy to intrigue him. Trust me, I should know.”
Ximena, baffled at the torrent of gratitude she can’t avoid feeling for this Neanderthal, walks through the gate and has to squint from the sudden brightness of what looks like a sunny grass meadow on a beautiful, mild spring morning. Ximena knows it is all a dream, but the permascape air feels invigoratingly fresh and real. Her accumulated stress seems to evaporate with every breath. The gate shuts behind them, standing ugly and out of place in the middle of the meadow like a lone Gothic monument.
“Kenji is about to arrive,” Ank says, pointing at the regular door that stands in midair next to the GIA monstrosity, “so take an empty seat.” They begin to walk towards a stone amphitheater exquisitely carved into the hills of the meadow. “He is a bit of a showman, you will see,” Anks says with a chuckle. “Very punctual at arriving fashionably late.”
Ximena stops and gapes at the amphitheater below her. It is small—and intimate. A hemicycle of concentric stone steps of elegant simplicity leading down to the central stone-paved stage. Breathtaking! The structure wouldn’t be out of place in the Athens of Pericles—which is probably the intention. It even looks old and smoothed by centuries of exposure.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Ank says, pride filling her voice. “My own design. I hope you get the intellectual, hmm, vibe?”
Ximena cannot reply, frozen at the sight of the students filling the benches up to the brim. There must be over a hundred of them! Those sitting closer to her are easily recognizable as Townsend students—her own people—wearing the familiar white-blue robes with somber patience. The other students though—more than half by the looks of it—whoa! They’re wearing the weirdest avatars she’s ever seen! Each different from their neighbor—a chaotic mesh of excited chatter and electrified anticipation. Most avatars she doesn’t recognize, probably cultural references to obscure Hansasian sensorials she’s never heard of. There are a few more classic themed avatars she can at least identify: there is Batman, over there a don’t-panic green smiling globe, uh, that one is definitely Michael Jackson, and there sits, yeah, Abraham Lincoln no less. The Lundev students are a very colorful lot indeed. And, she now notices, almost half of them are Neanderthal, including Lincoln!
“There aren’t any empty places,” Ximena says, browsing the busy place. “But it’s fine. I—I can sit on the stairs.”
“No need, dear. There is one place per student—I made sure of it.” She puts her hands around her mouth, and shouts with a voice that would make Ximena’s favorite fishmonger proud. “YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE! RAISE YOUR HAND IF THERE IS AN EMPTY SPOT BESIDE YOU.”
A sudden silence sinks in in the amphitheater as everybody turns and stares at Ximena. She can almost feel their combined gaze as physical pressure on her skin, and purses her lips involuntarily. That’s what you get for being late.
A lone hand raises up.
Oh, no, it’s the goahdamn Neanderthal Lincoln! Ximena desperately scans the neat rows of white and blue robes, but no Townsend hands volunteer.
“Go, dear.” Ank gently pushes her towards Lincoln. “Enjoy Kenji’s seminar, and welcome to the Global Program.”
Two
The Lure of Truth
The heavy cheering and clapping begins as soon as the Lundev door opens and Professor Miyagi walks down the central stairs of the amphitheater. Everybody is up on their feet, yelling approval.
A standing ovation! In a classroom! Before the teacher says a single word! Ximena has never experienced that before, and to her own surprise she is an enthusiastic participant. Next to an exultant Neanderthal Abraham Lincoln and embedded in the colorful section of Lundev students, she jumps and cheers like she belongs. To be fair, the GIA section is no less engaged.
Miyagi is universal.
When he reaches the stage, he turns and slowly draws his gaze across the cheering crowd of packed students, while nodding with a confident smile.
Ank approaches him and, in a swift move, attaches a small device to his shirt. The way she does it, the casual gesture, the swift exchange of glances. They’re together, Ximena realizes with unsettled amusement. She has never seen a mixed couple before.
“Thank you… whoa… thanks for the noise,” Miyagi’s voice comes loud and clear from a set of loudspeakers installed around the perimeter of the amphitheater. Ximena is always in awe at how a dream permascape mimics the laws of physics to such fidelity as to allow electronics to work. “Well, well. It is not every day that a humble historian is received like a pop star,” he says.
Ximena smiles. She knows that Professor Miyagi is being modest. He is The Expert (yes, capital letters) on post-collapse history and an ultra-popular—and very photogenic—scientific disseminator. A constant face on the sensonet channels as guest contributor, he is also the writer and producer of the most famous historical sensorial of all times: Fahey’s Legacy, Rowan Prize winner of 2504 for the best drama, not bad for what was just supposed to be a documentary. The man is a genius.
“Autographs at the end of the seminar,” he says with a chuckle. “When I began teaching, I never thought I would have to say that to start a lesson.”
The students laugh again and clap loudly. And keep clapping.
“Whoa, people.” Professor Miyagi casually pulls back his long white hair and smiles, seemingly enjoying the attention of his captive audience. “Enough of that nonsense, or it will go straight to my head. Oh, see what you’ve done? Too late… Now I know I’m awesome!”
This time the waves of laughter and heavy clapping take even longer to fade away.
“Thank you,” Miyagi says, and with the way his smile softens, Ximena
knows he means it. “Thanks for that. Love it. Love you people. Love this auditorium. A classic-age amphitheater, no less. Incredible! And the small size, designed to bring us all together, Townsend and Lundev. Just perfect! Can you feel the energy of curiosity? The urge for sharing? The craving for knowledge? For truth? Amazing work.” He points at Ank. “Please make some noise for the finest Shadow-Walker engineer academia has ever produced, Ankhesenneferibre!”
Ximena cheers at the top of her lungs, as does everybody else in the packed auditorium. It takes a while for the noise to fade, but Ank’s ferocious blush takes a lot longer.
“Love it.” Miyagi visibly enjoys the noisy attention. “Love it, people, but let’s chill, all right?” He gestures to the students to sit. “We have work to do.”
As the cheering begins to fade, Ximena feels an electrifying excitement. Professor Kenji Miyagi! Her family is going to want details. How’s he dressed? Like Ank designed his dream suit: elegant and yet with a pointed academic vibe. Ximena even thinks those words in Ank’s oh so perfect Hansasian accent. How does he look? Eastern Asian descent, obviously; youthful in his mid-fifties; plentiful white hair capped at his shoulders.
“Welcome to the first edition of the Global Program. I hope the first of many, because the Global Program lies close to my heart.”
Ximena smiles with anticipation. The Global Program! Miyagi’s concept child to use academic collaboration to warm the cold war that has split the world for a hundred years, and counting. Since the Dreamwars, the GIA and Hansasia have been rival regimes. Ximena’s native Goah’s Imperia of the Americas is the largest in population and expands the inhabitable latitudes of the North and South American continents. Hansasia, while not so populated, is enormous and, Ximena must admit, more technologically advanced. It stretches along the northern half of Eurasia, from the Hansa to China, plus a sizable part of Nubaria across the Portal to top it up. A true monster. And its scientific and cultural heart is, of course, Miyagi’s alma mater: the one and only University of Lunteren-Deviss, or Lundev for short.
“The Earth is getting smaller. Too small for petty differences, I’m sure you all agree.” Miyagi’s voice is lighthearted and practiced, the clean Hansasian accent not unlike Ank’s. Ximena read somewhere that a century ago Townsend’s Montana English was the peak of refinement, but, like most things, that changed after the devastations of the Dreamwars. “It is high time we talk more, so I say let’s start the conversation with the least controversial of topics: science. And, since this Program is my initiative, of course we’ll begin with the sexiest science of them all: history.”
A fresh round of spontaneous clapping and whistling, Ximena’s included, drowns the hemicycle and Miyagi’s words for a few moments. As the noise fades, Ank approaches Miyagi and whispers something in his ear.
“Sorry, people,” Miyagi says, “but first the admin. Where is the…?” He turns to Ank, who swiftly produces a sheet of paper from thin air and hands it to him. “Ah! All right,” he inspects the paper, “health comes first. We are in for a long-format session. You are all aware, right? With so many of us in such a small permascape, time dilation is off the charts, which is great because I plan to keep you trapped in my seminar for several dream-days. We are going to revisit the entire history of the Reformation and the Dreamwars in one go. And in great detail! It’s going to take a while, people.”
Ximena has done long-formats before. No big deal. She actually enjoys the immersion of dream-binging for days without end, no hunger, no tiredness, pure engagement. And this seminar promises to be epic, a detailed insight into the events that precipitated the end of the largest empire Earth has ever seen. Bring it on!
“And you know what that means, right?” Miyagi continues. “After the seminar you must all hold strict dream rest for at least a wake-week, got that? No excuses. No exception. Any porn you need, keep it strictly digital.” He raises his voice at the sudden barrage of laughs. “I’m serious, people. No sneaking in the dreamnet for a week, all right? Let your brains recover.”
He raises his eyes at the benches, to unanimous nodding.
“Good. Next, hmm, Censor Smith sends his apologies. He will miss the early part of the seminar. Okay, what else… Ah!” He looks up again, “You all had your dream pills or are using wu-sarcs, yes? We don’t want people waking spontaneously and missing dream-hours of seminar because it took them a few minutes to go back to sleep.”
More nodding and hums of assent.
“Good, and the last…” He cringes slightly as he reads and then turns to the Lundev section with an apologetic expression. “Yes, uh, sorry, people. No creative avatars allowed. Dress code is strict civilian.”
Silence hangs in the air for a moment, before a tsunami of protests and whining floods the auditorium. Neanderthal Lincoln next to Ximena is standing, and like many others around her, booing and muttering very ugly words of disapproval. It takes some time of Miyagi patiently appeasing them with reassuring gestures until his voice can be heard again.
“I hear you, I hear you, but this is non-negotiable. Censor Smith was very specific. Please, people, don’t make this a freedom-of-expression thing. There are rules even in the Lundev. You cannot show up, say, naked. The threshold today is just a tad higher. So please, out of respect for our fellow GIA students…” He extends his hand at them, all sitting in astonished silence in their neat white-and-blue robes, just like Ximena.
Miyagi folds his arms across his chest and stares on as the Lundev students grudgingly comply. It is a sight to behold, all those weird and flamboyant characters shrinking—that’s how it feels—into regular, almost boring looking students her age, dressed in regular Hansasian style civilian clothes. Next to her, Neanderthal Lincoln is unceremoniously un-Lincolned into a redheaded Neanderthal man in his twenties with a mean frown in his narrow brow and a “bollocks” on his lips.
“Thank you for your understanding,” Miyagi says with a slight bow of his head. “Now, cheer up,” he raises his voice with practiced confidence, “and shake off those long faces. You are in for a treat, people. The best lecture of your lives is about to begin!”
Yes, finally! Ximena tries to keep her legs from shaking with anticipation. She totally believes the man. This is going to be the most important seminar of her life. She feels it in her bones.
“History,” Miyagi begins in a solemn voice, “is a tough science.” He sighs theatrically, as if he were confessing his deepest sin. “A true bitch, trust me. Truth is elusive. Convenient lies always loom on the surface, so tempting.” He stops and stares into the eyes of his enthralled audience with an unusually stern expression. “You are here not only to learn what happened a hundred years ago. No, people, that’s not really that important. You can always look it up. Much more important, if I succeed, is to give you the mental tools to dig out the truth from under the heavy layers of historical bullshit.”
Some students chuckle. Ximena doesn’t. His words resonate deep in her, like an old melody she cannot remember. To dig out the truth…
“I’m dead serious,” he says. “A tough science requires tougher scientists. The aim of this seminar, my aim, is to make you think tough. So, I expect you people,” he slides a finger across the auditorium, “to do much of the talking. I want to hear your thoughts, take part in the analysis, and come together with conclusions and historical theories that—like any other science—approximates us to the objective truth.”
The objective truth.
Miyagi’s smile returns. “So, woo-hoo.” He playfully wags his fingers. “This semester we are diving deep into events that happened just a century ago—early twenty-fifth century. Life then differed greatly from now. Why?”
He looks expectantly at the young faces. A shy hand rises from among the GIA section. It’s Cody.
“Please, why was it different, uh…?” He points at Cody, frowns, and then turns to Ank. “The name thingy, please?”
Ank smiles and nods. “Done,” she says without moving a muscle.<
br />
Miyagi points his finger at Cody again, and large, friendly letters appear floating over his head: Cody O’Higgin. “There! Cody, please. Why was life so different a mere century ago? I mean, think about it, it’s not that long ago. There are still people around that lived through those events. The ink of history is not quite dry yet. So, what was so crucially different back then?”
“Well, sir, a hundred years ago we were on the verge of extinction.”
“Please class, don’t call me sir, all right? Just Professor, or simply Kenji. And yes, humanity went almost belly up. But that doesn’t really answer the question. Why was it different from today? How do you know we will not soon go extinct ourselves?”
Cody falls silent, considering.
“Er… Well, there are no obvious threats now. Back then there was the Dem-Pandemic, the ritual deaths, the brief lives. Now all is different. Better. We have a larger population, technology…”
The redheaded Neanderthal next to Ximena—the former Abraham Lincoln—raises a hand. Professor Miyagi points at him with a nod. A name appears over his head. “Mark, please. Your opinion?”
“Well,” Mark turns to Cody who is still standing at the opposite side of the amphitheater, not too far away considering its size, “I don’t agree that population and technology are by themselves a guarantee against calamity. Not according to history. Take, say, the peak of the golden age, at the end of the twenty-first century. The human population was, like, twenty times larger than today’s. Technology was also more advanced back then, even if we are catching up. They had colonies on Mars, and on the Moon and some asteroids. And what, in just a few decades, humanity lost all that and collapsed to numbers not seen since, uh…”
“Good point, Mark,” Miyagi says. “We barely made it through both collapses. By the mid twenty-second century humanity was a pathetic shadow of its former self. Anything to say in reply, Cody?”
