Authors: Pamela Foland
Annette looked around again, until finally she spotted the bi-fold picture frame by her media screen. In it was two family pictures; one of her real family, her, her brother, and
her dead parents and sister; the other of her foster family, her foster parents, herself and her brother before he left to become a factor.
Annette snatched up the picture frame. Then she noticed and grabbed her singed teddy bear. That was all she’d come to that house with it made sense to leave with it. She dumped out her backpack and put the bear and picture in it then she added her jewelry box and her diary from under her mattress. She couldn’t leave without that, her diary deserved to know about what happened after all the pages she’d filled talking about becoming a factor. Then on her way to the door, Annette remembered she was still in her pajamas. Quickly, she changed into a jumpsuit, stuffing her pajamas into the top of the bag.
Then before she forgot, Annette grabbed the small bottle of pills Tina had prescribed.
Finally with a last glance, Annette decided that if she needed something else she could just come back for it later.
Annette swung the pack over her shoulder self consciously. Should she try to be casual, or how should she hold herself now. Undecided, she stepped out into the living room where her foster father had arrived and received the news. He smiled broadly at Annette and held his hands out for a hug. She raced to him, sweeping away any residual concern that he might veto her foster mother.
He wrapped his arms around her.
She heard a soft, almost silent whisper, “I know you can do it! I hope you know you are more special than a lot of people give you credit for. I bet you’ll knock that slob, Sinclair, on his butt and show him what a fool he is forever doubting what you can do!” He let her go when she straightened up against his arms in surprise at his words. It was the first time he’d said so much to her at once. He didn’t talk much in general, his first language had been telepathy. Then with him looking her straight in the eyes, but without his lips moving she heard the same soft whisper, “I am so proud of you.”
Annette blinked in shock and turned to look at Niri. Niri smiled broadly and rose to leave, “If you’re ready we can go now.”
Annette blinked again, didn’t Niri know that Annette had heard her foster father’s thoughts? Annette looked back at him. He continued to smile broadly at her. His face said he wasn’t aware of it either. Annette looked at her foster mother, who was now practically in tears. Annette squinted, finally faintly hearing her foster mother’s voice, “I hope she’s careful! She could get hurt again! My poor baby. . .” She didn’t seem to notice Annette’s ability to hear her either. Annette’s head spun counter to her injury, maybe she was hallucinating, or dreaming. She tried again to hear her foster parents, but heard nothing. Yes, she had to be dreaming.
“Are you ready?” Niri paused at the door.
Annette looked at her and nodded, then followed Niri, out onto the walkway all the way to the elevator. Niri pressed the call button, and took the time to tap a brief message into her pop-pad. Niri’s pop-pad had already bleeped, indicating a return message by the time the elevator doors opened.
They paused before entering the elevator, “Annette, everything’s set for you to take the first test tomorrow. We’ll just get you situated in your quarters this afternoon. After that you can rest or do whatever you need to do to relax a bit before tomorrow.” Annette nodded and followed Niri into the elevator.
Niri took Annette the long way to the practice cavern and led her down the hall of instructors offices and from there to the dormitory elevators.
Then Niri took an abrupt left-hand turn down the hall to where the instructor’s quarters were. Annette glanced at the doors as they passed. They all had knobs, unlike most of the doors Annette had seen around Sanctuary, which opened by sliding back into the wall. Also, each door was labeled with a subject and a name, like Director, Chavez or Temporal Theory, Carlson.
Finally, they passed a door labeled Pre-Training Everett. They stopped at the next door which was un-labeled. “Here we are,” Niri gestured at the door, “Now, don’t go getting a swelled head. This is just until you qualify for training. Then you go down in the dorms with everyone else.”
Annette blinked once, twice then three full times, before squinting at the door. Then she chuckled to herself, she must still be dreaming. There was no way she could have even temporary quarters in the same hallway as some of the people she’d admired since she was five. She turned and smiled at Niri.
“Room, you are now assigned temporarily to Annette Peterson. She’s hoping to become a factor trainee,” Niri said out loud.
“Excuse me?” A computer voice vibrated ironically from a concealed speaker. It didn’t sound like the usual computer voice. It was full of personality, mostly feminine, and Annette thought it sounded almost upset by the idea Annette was to inhabit it. “I was assigned to Corrine Dayton, last time I checked!”
Annette sucked in a breath, Corrine Dayton?
She was one of the first factors, counted highly among Sanctuary’s founders, but she had stopped coming back to Sanctuary, since Sanctuary was separated off from the rest of the universe. Passing through the filters with her symbiont was difficult and painful for her. In the end Corrine had decided to make her home elsewhere.
If this was the room she had lived in, it had every right to refuse Annette.
Niri sighed, “And when was the last time you heard from her?”
“Thirty-five years, four months and two days ago,” The computer voice answered.
Niri nodded, “And do you at this time continue to contain any of her personal items?”
“No, Angela retrieved them thirty-four years, three months, and eight days ago.”
Niri nodded again, “So you’ve sat empty for thirty-five-ish years now?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you think you could let this poor girl stay here temporarily? I promise that it won’t be longer than a couple of months,” Niri asked.
“I’m afraid I’ve explained this many times to that pinhead, Chavez. I do not recognize his authority! Therefore why should I recognize the authority of any of his underlings?” The voice muttered. Annette was trapped between utter shock at hearing such things voiced out loud where Chavez might hear them, and wanting to giggle in agreement.
“Maybe because the girl I’m asking you to let stay here is applying counter to Sinclair’s previously expressed wishes,” Niri answered as though that would make all of the difference, “Frankly, it would piss him off to find out that you let her stay here.”
A slight mechanical burbling passed through the speakers and there was a click. Niri tried the doorknob and it opened. Niri gestured for Annette to enter first. Annette stood there in shock, she was about to enter the former home of one of her biggest heroes.
She couldn’t remember how to tell her feet to move forward.
“Well, come on girl, I’m letting you stay,” The voice grumbled, “Temporarily!”
Annette shoved herself across the threshold and was rapidly disappointed to see that the room didn’t look much different than the one at her foster parent’s house. There was a twin
bed set into a niche in the wall opposite the door, a wardrobe door built into the wall at the foot of the bed, a media screen centered in the wall to the right with a long desk under it. A bathroom door opened in the left-hand wall. Actually the room was smaller than Annette’s old room. For the first time since Niri showed up on her couch, Annette began to think this really was happening and wasn’t a dream. “It’s so small,” she whispered practically under her breath.
“But, spunky!” The voice chimed in from speakers all around the room.
Niri laughed, “Room, you know you could ask to be downloaded into an android body.”
“Pshaw! Then I wouldn’t know what to do with myself! Besides, I can’t leave Corrine’s place all undefended from that twit!” The voice replied.
Niri nodded, “Well, this is Annette, please take care of her.”
“Do I have to feed her? Water her? Please tell me she is litter box trained!” The voice asked.
Annette’s eyes opened wide, Corrine’s room was making fun of her! She didn’t know what to do, so she let her mouth go, “I’m housebroken, if you please! And, if it’s so horribly inconvenient for you, I do know where the cafeteria is to feed and water myself!”
“Hmm, so I’m not the only one that’s small but spunky! I don’t think there will be a problem here
Ms. Everett! You may go.”
Niri smiled, patted Annette on the back, and left. Annette stood in the middle of the room for a while. She couldn’t decide whether she was awake or not. Here she was alone in Corrine Dayton’s old room, she might have heard her foster parents’ minds earlier and shock beyond the other shocks, she might even get to be a factor after all. If this was a dream, she was going to go with it!
- - - - - - - - - -
Yllera tossed another cd into the shimmering event horizon of her stasis loop. Then dropped four on her mattress. She’d already promised them to her roommates. She glanced at her shelves. All that remained there were the required textbooks the bookstore wouldn’t buy back. She would donate them to the book exchange shelf downstairs, maybe they’d save someone else the expense next semester.
Her closet was bare of all but the clothes her roommates had asked for.
Yllera glanced around the room, essentially she was packed. She reached over and un-clamped the loop from its hover module and disengaged the clasp. The shimmering puddle-like event horizon collapsed and she tucked it into the appropriate pocket of her factor pack. Then she pressed the button on the back of the hover module to disengage the mechanism and retract the supporting arm. It joined the loop in the pocket which she zipped closed.
Yllera gathered the books up in her arms and unlocked her room. On her way out the door she felt light headed. She leaned against the door jamb for a moment, and the feeling passed. It was probably just nerves over the recall to Sanctuary. Yllera stepped out into the common study room she shared with her three other roommates. They all looked up at her she smiled back at them. “Have at it, I’m packed!”
“Aren’t you taking anything?” Heather asked eyeing the small knapsack Yllera used for a factor kit-pack. Heather was an ex-cheerleader who’d had the good sense not to pledge a sorority, deciding to get educated not inebriated.
Yllera thought briefly about telling her friends that she’d packed what she wanted in the extra dimensional pockets of her bag, but she knew they’d just laugh it off as another of her oddities. “I sent most of my stuff on ahead.”
“You mailed it? You should’ve just carried it. Shipping is a pain. Besides it’s just a government scam to get a look at our private possessions,” Grace quipped.
She was the one Yllera would miss the most. Grace was a big sci-fi fan, of the three she was the only one who might even half believe the truth.
“I trust the post office more than airline baggage handlers,” Dawn scoffed from the corner. Dawn was the antisocial one. She was the biggest mystery to Yllera.
Yllera felt like she was on the verge of tears. They’d been her friends for a year now and now she was headed home to Sanctuary, and would probably not see or hear from them again. Yllera pulled herself together. She knew she would have to move now that she’d graduated. She just hadn’t thought she’d be recalled to Sanctuary. That wasn’t true, she’d been dreading the possibility since she filed her last report.
“I’m gonna miss you guys,” Heather said finally breaking into tears. Yllera rolled her eyes, although she felt the same way.
“It’s okay, we can write each other, and the world isn’t as wide as it used to be, what with air travel and trains and cars. I mean we can visit each other in practically no time,” Grace said joining in on the waterworks.
Dawn scoffed and went into her room muttering, “Saps.”
“We love you too,” Heather and Grace, cried in unison, mocking their own tears.
Yllera felt her pop-pad vibrating in her hip pocket. That meant her transportation had arrived, “Gotta go, I can’t leave my ride waiting for forever.”
“Yeah whatever!” Dawn hollered back, over a fresh round of sobs from Heather and grace. Yllera knew she heard the raw tones of someone trying not to cry, in Dawn’s voice.