by Joan Lennon
‘The Assessor’s through here. Come on,’ she said, leading the way into the next room.
The Assessor was just a chair, and a kind of silver dome thing on an arm above it, and some discreet panels and keyboards to one side. As far as way-in-the-future technology went, it was pretty unthreatening-looking.
Adom, however, was having none of it. He just stood there, shaking his head, and getting more and more stubborn-looking.
‘You are not putting me in that,’ he stated flatly. ‘Enchant my arm, but leave the rest of me alone.’
Jay gave a sigh of frustration. ‘But I have to assess you first. Look – it’s just like, I don’t know – blood types, right? If you needed a transfusion I’d need to know what blood group you were first, wouldn’t I, and so I’d test your blood – and this is no different.’ Adom just looked at her. ‘Oh. Yeah. That explanation doesn’t exactly help, does it? Couple of thousand years too soon.’
‘Not quite that long,’ said Hurple, ‘but no, I don’t think that particular analogy is easing his disquietude very much.’
Jay stuck her tongue out at him, and tried again.
Adom, you need to listen to me here. All I want you to do is sit in the Assessor and I’ll fit the dome over your head, which will map your brain’s wiring pattern. Once I know what kind of neural class you are, I’ll also know what kind of learning package will suit you, we can get you understanding English and any other language you like, and everything’ll suddenly make more sense. Wouldn’t you like everything to make more sense?!’
Unfortunately, there just weren’t the words in Gaelic for a good part of what she was trying to get across, and so English (i.e. gibberish) words kept cropping up instead. The overall effect was to just make things worse.
Jay sighed and then stiffened, eyes wide.
‘Look! An eagle!’ she shouted suddenly, pointing at the ceiling. As Adom’s head snapped up she slapped a patch on to his hand. She just managed to catch him before he hit the floor. ‘Sedative,’ she grunted to the others. ‘Don’t stare at me like that – it doesn’t make any difference to the basic assessment whether he’s awake or not. Come on, give me a hand! He weighs a ton.’
With Eo’s help, she got him into the chair and lowered the dome.
‘What –’ he began, but Hurple shushed him.
‘Don’t distract her,’ he whispered solemnly.
Jay wasn’t listening to them anyway. She adjusted the dome and then plonked herself into her mother’s chair, pulled two of the keyboards over and began coding in information. A number of shapes and graphs came up on the screens around the walls. She watched them closely for a moment and then nodded her head, satisfied.
‘Now can I ask what you’re doing?’ said Eo, a bit huffily.
Jay checked the progress of the shape on the screens one more time. Coming along nicely. She swung back and forth idly in the chair, making Professor Hurple’s head swing back and forth in time.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’m mind-mapping. Well, the computer is. It’s charting the basic wiring patterns in his brain so that I’ll know what sort he’s got – there’s not a lot of point plugging RD-class software into him if he’s got an O-class brain, now is there?!’
There was a pause.
‘Perhaps if you explained a little more fully?’ Professor Hurple suggested cautiously.
‘Yeah,’ said Eo. ‘Assume we’re really stupid.’
Jay refrained from making the obvious reply.
‘OK. We’ve got some time. Let’s see… There are three basic wiring patterns in humans’ brains – three basic classes, is what we call them. There’s O-class, D-class and RD-class. O-class is the most common one. Stands for Ordinary Class. That’s where you have a bog-standard right-left division of things your brain does. There’s some flexibility, obviously, a range of abilities within a class, but still, we’re talking pretty ordinary’.
She checked the screen again and then looked over at her audience.
‘With me so far?’ she asked.
The two nodded numbly.
‘OK… Then there’s RD-class – that stands for Rigid Division. An RD brain has wiring that allows the least flexibility of functions. RD people tend to be extremely specialized. They have huge over-development of specific skills and huge under-development of the rest.’
And the third one?’
‘D-class. Stands for an old word, “dyslexic”. My mum told me what it used to mean but I forget. Anyway, D-class brains have the most complicated wiring of all, pretty anarchic, really, so they have the most flexible brains there are. A D-class certificate opens any door you want to mention.’
‘They’re the best?’ Eo was struggling to keep up.
‘Well, the official line is that all classes are equal –different but equal – and it’s supposed to be illegal to discriminate against Os and RDs. But everybody knows employers will pick a D-class over anybody else, no matter what kind of capacity they’ve got. It’s only natural.’
‘So, D-class get the best jobs, then RD-class – what does O-class get?’
Jay snorted. ‘O-class gets what’s left! Technical Support,
Maintenance, Minding RDs and Ds… We keep the world ticking over – there’s no shame in that!’ she mimicked, making a sour face. ‘The Psychs are always doing the pep talk. All about proper pride, and everybody being worthy and important in their own way. Makes me want to spit. Or get totally patched!’
Neither Eo nor Hurple knew what to say to this. Eo got as far as ‘Um…’ when the computer beeped.
‘So!’ said the Professor. ‘What class is our unconscious friend?’
Jay swung back to the screen and let out a whistle.
‘Well, I’ll be swamped,’ she exclaimed. ‘The boy’s a D!’
Eo and Hurple grinned at each other, looking absurdly proud. Even Jay felt pleased, in a peculiarly proprietorial sort of way. This was one of her weirdos, after all!
She pushed the dome back up on its arm and applied a stimulant patch to Adom’s hand. Then, as he came to, she began downloading a basic D-class learning package on to a wafer.
‘You don’t get a full implant till you’ve pretty much finished growing, for obvious reasons. Children have strap-ons.’ She didn’t mention she’d only progressed from a wrist-strap model herself a few months ago. ‘Our friend here is certainly big enough, but even if my mum were here, and willing, she doesn’t do implants. Just programming.’ There was a pause as she listened to what she’d just said. ‘When I say “just” programming, it’s not like that’s easy. It’s incredibly complicated, and she’s very good. You don’t get to go to conferences unless you’re already the best!’ She glared at them, but there was nothing but respect – and bemusement – on their faces. Even the rat looked properly impressed. ‘Right. OK.’ She turned back to the storage panel and called up several trays of wristbands. ‘Usually they let kids choose their own strap… Our lad here will probably be wanting something manly… unobtrusive… plain…’
She was interrupted by a broad, calloused hand, which reached over her shoulder and pointed.
There was a short, stunned pause.
Are you sure?!’Jay gargled.
The wristband Adom had chosen was covered in fluffy material. Its clasp was in the shape of an unspeakably cute kitten, with flashy diamanté eyes, one of which winked on and off knowingly. And both the kitten and the fluffy material were…
… pink. Outrageous pink. A pink that made candyfloss pink look understated and subdued.
Jay turned and looked into the boy’s eyes. There was longing there, and she had a sudden spark of insight. Adom came from a time when the palette of colours available to most people consisted entirely of variations on ‘mud’.
Whatever else that wrist strap might be, it wasn’t brown.
Without another word, she lifted the monstrosity out of the tray, inserted the wafer and strapped it gently to his wrist. He was so busy grinning and stroking all that fluffiness that he didn’t notic
e the neural patterners making contact with his skin. Without fuss, they began to send the necessary signals to the appropriate places in his brain…
‘Will it take long?’ whispered Hurple.
Jay shook her head. Any minute now and we’ll be having erudite conversation in flawless English out of our antique boy!’
First words are worth waiting for. First words are the ones that get noted down by adoring parents and recited endlessly to tolerant relatives. Adom’s first words in English, courtesy of his pink and fluffy enchanted arm, came out loud and clear.
‘Saints and Angels,’ he said. ‘I’m HUNGRY!!’
The trip to Jay’s home pod was uneventful.
‘Right, make yourselves comfortable and I’ll get us some food,’ said Jay as she led them into the living area. ‘If I’ve got the different times right, we’ve all been on the go for far too long. Some food, some rest – that’s what we need now’.
Her guests hesitated just inside the doorway, looking uncomfortable.
‘Don’t be so silly! Sit!’
The room was round, like everything else they had seen in Jay’s world. The walls/ceiling were still transparent, offering a view out into the dark water. All around, above and below were other pod shapes glowing, strung together by tubes at all angles like an enormous luminescent marble run. In a few of the pods they were able to catch tantalizing glimpses of the inhabitants moving about, but most had been opaqued for the night and only shadows showed on their curved surfaces. Jay touched a panel and immediately the view from their pod disappeared.
‘Probably better not to let the neighbours know I’ve got company’, she explained. In the ride here, she’d told them of her parents’ absence. None of them had seemed to think it strange, but then they were pretty much all on oddness overload still.
‘Look, would you just relax?!’ she said to them generally. ‘Sit down – chairs can’t have changed that much, right?’
There were things that did look more or less like chairs, of a round, basket sort of shape. Eo and Adom managed to sit in them, though Adom looked as if he were afraid it wanted to eat him instead. Professor Hurple jumped up on to the cushioned bench that ran round the curved walls and settled down.
‘Good,’ said Jay. ‘That’s a start. Now stay there while I get us something to eat – and don’t touch anything!’
Which of course made Eo desperate to find something to touch. There were a number of intriguing panels on the walls… Fortunately, Jay was back very quickly. She pressed more buttons, and tables for each of them appeared from under the floor.
‘Eat first,’ she said brightly. ‘Make plans later!’
The food was… fishy. And a bit seaweedy as well. It wasn’t all that different from what Adom ate a lot of the time anyway, though it looked different on the plate – and the plates were a bit unfamiliar. It took them a moment to realize what their hostess was doing when she started eating hers, but once they gave their own crockery a nibble, they found it quite tasty.
Jay had just served them all some tea when suddenly the pod began to judder and shake. She didn’t seem to notice this much, except to steady her cup, but the others were appalled. It was hard enough being so far underwater, without the walls and the floor jittering about and threatening to split.
‘Earthquake!’ squealed Professor Hurple, and the boys tried to find something solid to hold on to.
‘What? No, no.’Jay looked at them, amused. ‘They’re just de-limpeting the pods! It only takes a moment –nothing to worry about.’
Her guests did not look convinced, even when the shaking did abruptly stop.
‘Look, I’ll show you.’ She went to a wall panel and touched a button. At once the sphere became transparent again, and the light from the room spilled out into the water. ‘See?’
Her guests gasped. Unbelievably, it was snowing out there! Hundreds of little whitish blobs pinged gently against the top of the pod and tumbled on down into the darkness below.
It was hypnotizing, a surreal underwater blizzard. Then, after a few moments it died away, and stopped.
‘Lucky for us, limpets never learn,’ said Jay, returning the surface of the pod to its opaque state. ‘They keep attaching themselves to the spheres – we keep shaking them off- then we collect them at the lowest levels and –’ she held up her cup – ‘there you have it! Tea!’
There was a confused pause.
‘You make tea out of shellfish?’
‘Well, yeah!’ snorted Jay. ‘What else would you make it out of?! Drink up.’
In fact, it wasn’t bad. Adom’s idea of what constituted tea wasn’t like Hurple’s anyway, and Eo hadn’t drunk much of any sort before. And it was warming. Then Adom caught Jay looking at him intently, and started to choke.
‘W-what is it?!’ he spluttered.
‘Oh. Nothing – sorry,’ she said, colouring a little. ‘It’s just, you’re a bit of a surprise. I mean, we studied medieval stuff last year, and I sort of thought you’d be… different. The Medi-box said you were fifteen, and I thought that meant you’d be married already and have six kids, or be dead, or something.’
Adom looked confused. ‘Medieval? What?’
‘Medieval! You know, the Middle Ages – when you live. Lived. Used to have lived.’ She thought about it for a moment. ‘Though you probably didn’t call it that. The Middle Ages, I mean. You probably called it Modern Times, or something!’
‘We call it now,’ said Adom simply. ‘Just the way you do. Why are you all swaying?’
They weren’t, of course. He was. He couldn’t sit straight and his head ached, and he thought suddenly and with enormous longing of the abbey dormitory and his hard bed and the cold wind whistling through the window slit and the clear knowledge of everything a given day could reasonably be expected to hold…
‘The lad’s overloading,’ said Professor Hurple. ‘Put him to bed this minute, or suffer the consequences.’
‘Oh,’ said Jay, looking a touch embarrassed. ‘That’ll be the tea. I put just a little sedative in it, but I guess he’s more susceptible than I expected…’
She realized she was talking to herself. Adom, Eo and Hurple were all asleep, worn out by too much strangeness and too little rest. Jay smiled fondly at them and began to tidy up. She bustled quietly about, putting the furniture they weren’t using back under the floor and gathering things together that might be useful on the great adventure.
Saltwater-powered torch, Water Purifiers (they could be filled anywhere – they were lined with a sensitive oneway membrane which extracted anything non-potable, like salt or harmful bacteria or parasites, leaving only the purest drinking water behind), Medi-kit, a Portable Generator, a selection of Depth Gauges, Hull Pressure Gauges, Oxygen-concentration Gauges…
Leave a note for the parents, she thought. She knew her mum would be getting in touch at some point while she was at the conference. What shall I say that will keep her from worrying, or worse yet, getting somebody else to check up on me…
‘Working on a project with friends…’ Should she try to say what kind of project? Historical? Mythic? Alternate Interpretations of the Space Time Continuum? Better keep it simple. She set the comm to answer her mother’s code when it was activated.
‘Hi, Mum. I’m working on a project with some friends. I’ll probably stay over – bit lonely here by myself. Have a great time at the conference. Love, J.’
That should do it.
She looked through the things she’d gathered, discarding a few and then reinstating them. She got a pocketed belt from her father’s work gear and distributed the kit so that the weight was well balanced. Then she sat on the floor and looked at her visitors for a moment, enjoying the strangeness of it all until a huge yawn interrupted her. She checked the time, set a wake-up call for an hour later, adjusted the floor temperature and consistency to something toasty and soft, and fell asleep.
∗
Waking up was hard for all of them. Jay plied them with
more hot drinks with something in to help. Then they headed out into the city night. Jay coded in a roundabout route that would take them away from the places where people would still be around – clubs and bars and theatres – and instead past empty workplaces and sleepy home pods.
They were cutting it fine. As the minutes ticked by, her band of weirdos was becoming more and more uncomfortable.
‘We’ll get there – don’t worry!’Jay insisted, though she was feeling a bit sick herself. ‘It’s not a problem.’ She paused as a thought struck her. ‘Hey! What would actually happen if you didn’t go and meet the whirlpool thing?’
‘If we didn’t go to it, it would come to us,’ said Professor Hurple. The ferret hunched his shoulders and shivered as he looked out at the homes they were currently passing. ‘The Traveller has immense destructive power.’
Jay shuddered too. ‘Forget I asked,’ she said. ‘Anyway, we’re here.’ They left the train pod, hustled down the side tube and up the ladder to the hatch…
It was cold on the platform. There was a mean, biting wind, and the flat glare from the lights blotted out any view of the night sky. Jay redirected the housing for one of the lights till it was pointing at roughly the same place that the Traveller appeared before. The sea heaved and churned, inky black and revealing nothing. Fingers of spume seemed to be reaching blindly towards the lights.
Something wasn’t right! It made the hair on the back of Adom’s neck stand up. Something was wrong…
‘The tide!’ he yelped. ‘Why isn’t it lower? It should be practically on the turn – low tide! – but the water hasn’t dropped.’ He grabbed her sleeve in a panic. ‘What’s happened? You’ve tricked us – you’ve made us miss the Tide – we’re trapped here forever!’
Jay detached him from her sleeve. ‘Stop that! You forget, our pods aren’t rigid. They’re designed to rise and fall with the tides. The water’s lower – and so are we!’
Adom stepped back from her abruptly. ‘I… of course… I’m sorry’.
Jay gave him a half-grin and rubbed her arm. ‘Forget it. Nothing wrong with us all that a piece of patch won’t fix…’ Her voice died away as she realized, with a cold horror, what she’d forgotten to bring.
