My morning appointment had changed to breakfast/dinner with Isten Notra, which was a nice surprise and turned into a fun outing. She lives in a residential section where some of the more important people who work at KOTIS live. It seems to be the equivalent of a gated community and the important thing to me was that it counts as within KOTIS' security and I could go there without an escort. Very cool. I almost didn't arrive on time because I was busy gaping at gardens, and a little café/milk bar that I so wanted to go and buy something from all by myself.
I'm a sad case.
People did recognise me and stare – even in KOTIS few outside the Setari and the medical staff ever see me – but no-one made any move to stop or question me, and I found Isten Notra's home easily enough. It was off a wide, high-ceiling 'plaza' area, which made it feel more like a house to me. No windows, though, which I will always find eternally strange. Apartments on Tare don't have doorbells: you use the interface to tell the door you're there and it lets the person you're there to meet know you're waiting, or just alerts everyone in the apartment. I stood outside feeling incredibly conspicuous until the door was opened by a girl a few years younger than me who started to say something, stopped, and stared in disbelief.
"Isten Notra lives here?" I asked, then paused while another girl, maybe eleven or twelve, came to the door as well, took one look at me, and shrieked.
I swear, I'm starting to want to go back to Earth solely so people don't react to me like that. It's seriously embarrassing. Both me and the older girl went very red, and I tried to say something, but the younger girl shrieked again, pointing at me. The older girl hastily stepped back, gesturing me inside so she could shut the door.
"Kanna, stop it you idiot," she hissed, shaking her sister by the shoulder. "I'm sorry, um, I'll – Kanna didn't–"
"Jor, Kanna, what in the spaces are you–" A guy around my age appeared in the foyer, blinked twice, but managed to neither shriek or be lost for words. "You must be here to see my grandmother," he said. "I'll take you through, but first let me apologise for my sisters. I'd say they're not usually like this, but that wouldn't be entirely honest."
"Shon!" The older girl looked even more embarrassed. The younger girl kicked him in the ankle, but he ignored her and led me further into the apartment.
It was a big place, really nice and comfortably cluttered – Isten Notra lives with her daughter Keel, Keel's husband Fellan, and their children, Shon, Jor and Kanna. She'd told them she was expecting a guest for dinner, but hadn't told them who. I gather Isten Notra likes to keep them on their toes. They were having pancake/crepe things for dinner, and so it worked as well for breakfast for me.
Unsurprisingly, they were all formidably smart. We ended up talking about Earth's space program, about moons and different sorts of planets – they were really interested in Earth's tilt giving us seasons and how that didn't apply to Tare or Kolar, but obviously did for Muina – and then we talked about Mars and Earth science and as usual I wished I'd paid more attention at school, but I didn't make too big an idiot of myself. I wish I'd read more hard science fiction as well as space opera novels, though.
After dinner, and a very yummy gooey toffee dessert which is not precisely what I should be eating for breakfast, Isten Notra asked me if I'd show them how to make origami cranes and so we had an origami session – I can make cranes and a cup and the chatterbox game and paper airplanes and a turtle, which is the most complex thing Noriko taught me. Isten Notra had had a large supply of paper brought to her in preparation, but she didn't have a single pen in the house, and none of them could write anyway, so I couldn't quite explain the chatterbox game properly until one of Isten Notra's minions turned up with a pen. I bet he loved discovering why he'd been sent urgently to find an anachronistic holdover from the pre-interface age, but Kanna adored the chatterbox and had me write several up for her full of the kind of responses an eleven year-old imp thinks is funny, in my slightly strange-looking written Taren (I can write in the Taren alphabet if I concentrate, but I can't write neatly enough to make it look precisely like the standardised letters).
I'd been at the Notra apartment for nearly three hours when Isten Notra dismissed her grandchildren and took me up to her office to talk about what the drone had recorded of my dream last night. I had been projecting into the Ena again, though less strongly it seems, and I didn't make any permanent sheep, unlike my cranes, a dragon-patterned one of which was in Isten Notra's office. She showed me the visual recording, of a mirage-like image of me sitting in nebulous grass watching sheep, and also the white outline of me sleeping in my window seat. A little after I waved at the drone, the whole thing faded away. I explained counting sheep to Isten Notra, and said yes, I had been aware that the drone was there and described what it had looked like to me.
"We are still at the very theoretical stage with this, Caszandra," she said. "I can tell you this is not Ena manipulation. It does not give the same readings at all. My best initial evaluation is that, at least temporarily, you are creating something resembling a space."
That was far more than I'd realised, and I didn't like the thought of it. "Am I likely to get much stronger? Make permanent spaces?"
"Unlikely. While you are still at the beginning of your development, and these cranes of yours demonstrate you are already capable of producing small, simple objects, the energy required to make a permanent space – you simply aren't physically capable of producing such power. Though I would recommend that you vary what you focus on during sleep as much as possible, as there is a possibility that repetition might achieve what you cannot in a single burst." She tucked a stray curl of white hair behind one ear, and shook her head. "We are only beginning to understand you. The drone has been running scans on the barrier between this space and the near-space around your room, but it shows no sign that your dreams have caused it to weaken. Yet your dream of the Array massive produced audible sounds and even physical reactions among the technicians who were in this space. That is a dangerous possibility. That you are capable of producing a thin version of a space is a thing of curiosity with interesting possibilities. But the implications of you causing effects in real-space, that is something else altogether. Not least because you are terribly at risk of injuring yourself."
Isten Notra sent me off with Shon as an escort, which I thought unnecessary until I noticed how many people were lurking about the streets back to KOTIS proper. Not huge crowds – the general public can't come into the area without a pass – but far more than there'd been when I'd arrived. I could see that Shon had noticed them, but he chattered on blithely about exploration on Muina, which made me feel less uncomfortable. Shon's very torn between the work his grandmother has pioneered in Ena studies, and natural sciences. He's David Attenborough at heart.
He also asked if he could email me, if I was willing to talk about the comparisons between Earth's and Muina's wildlife, and left with a wave when we reached the entrance of KOTIS proper. A nice guy, very relaxed and on top of things. I have a faint suspicion Isten Notra was indulging in some matchmaking, but I think I'll pretend that hasn't occurred to me. I liked Shon, but it's easier not to think about romance at all right now. I figure if I can start waking up not missing Ruuel, I can start thinking about the possibility of other guys, but it's pointless until that happens. Even when I was so upset about that testing session, I still woke up knowing he wasn't there.
I had weapons training after lunch, which involved struggling into bulky grey chest armour. I felt like a Stormtrooper. Drake stood me in the middle of a practice room with actual physical targets in it and had me activate the chest armour, which briefly made an energy shield around me, and then let loose a sort of area effect concussion blast, sending the targets flying in pieces in all directions. It has two blasts, and then will slowly recharge. They're relying on it, far more than any ability I might gain shooting blasters, to keep me safe. I hate it.
What if there was someone I didn't see in range when I set it off? I kept thinking of all the terrible accidents I could cause, which made it hard to concentrate on my blaster practice. Drake kept me almost a full kasse practicing in the armour and while I did start to come closer to hitting stationary targets more consistently by the time he let me go, I still suck at moving objects, never notice anything that pops up behind me, and really am kind of sick of the whole exercise.
After that I took a long bath, and went down to the Sights training area early, intending to play my murder mystery game until Ruuel showed up. I'm liking the game more and more, and it helps me de-stress, but it's amazingly huge so I only play it when I have a good wodge of unscheduled time. On the way to the small training room I couldn't help but notice four female Kalrani gathered around the viewing window into the obstacle course area.
"–by far the best," one was saying. "Absolutely edible."
"If you like your meal ice-cold," another snorted. "You're wasting your time anyway. You think you can compete with
her
?"
"People always say that," said a third. "But it's all just rumour."
"Rumours don't go on for years without some basis," the second said. "And–"
"It's about time we got to drill," said the fourth, and I could tell from the way they all straightened and very carefully didn't look around that she'd spotted me and told them I was there. They all headed off down the corridor, and I went to the observation window and looked down.
Ruuel and Taarel. Ruuel was wearing one of the horrid blindfolds, and Taarel was attacking him. Blind and deaf, and he could still avoid her attacks and hop about the moving obstacle course. He couldn't quite counterattack swiftly enough to hit her, but it was a very near thing, and they both kept barely avoiding swinging bars and things which shot out of the walls at them. It all looked incredibly dangerous.
I watched for a minute, then went up to the roof. It was raining, but not too hard, and I stood in it for a while, then went and had a hot shower so I wouldn't catch cold and get lectured. Then I went down and was exactly on time for my appointment so that Ruuel could step me through techniques for what he called 'release triggers'. Every time you go to sleep you have to try and build into your dream something which reminds you that it's a dream, and allows you to wake up. A door, or an alarm clock. He said I shouldn't use the drone as a release because I wouldn't always be sleeping somewhere there was a drone. I stayed really focused, and asked what few questions occurred to me, and he dismissed me quite quickly.
It's not easy to hide things from Ruuel. But all this talk about visualisations and methods of focusing your mind has been very handy. All the time during today's session I was counting. Listening to what he said and keeping count took a lot of effort, and lessened the amount of energy I could devote to feeling stupidly dejected. He at least didn't act as if he could tell I was upset.
All along I've had a sense that he and Taarel are together. They make a great couple, really. And like the Kalrani said, who could compete with her? Even if you ignore little issues of our comparative looks, I'm someone who's still afraid to sleep in her own bedroom. Someone who has to be babysat.
It's stupid to be upset to hear someone say no more than I already knew – that people think they're together, but aren't sure. But I've spent the evening worrying about what I'm going to dream tonight, and stayed up incredibly late and can barely keep my eyes open. Being upset is one of the triggers for my nightmares. And even if Isten Notra is the first person reviewing what I dream, that's no guarantee others won't see it. And I can't talk about it to anyone at all.
Which at least means I have a huge amount of motivation to get this release trigger thing absolutely right first time. I don't think I've ever been so determined to do something in my life.
I'm going to do a counting dots visualisation. And every dot is going to have 'This is a dream' written on it. And every dot will be a release trigger to get me out of the dream. And I will be in a room which is nothing but dots, and every one of them a release trigger. And I don't care if I wake up a thousand times tonight, kicking myself out of my dreams: that's the only thing I'm going to dream.
Ghost just showed up and got very annoyed with me for squeezing her so tightly.
Thursday, June 5
A short history of
I'm glad I've been told to go back to sheep. I did manage to dream of being surrounded by buttons saying "This is a dream". But they were all paintings of buttons. Corridor after corridor of paintings of buttons, and me wandering endlessly through them trying to find the right one to push. It was a long night of feeling exhausted and alone – and all the time feeling watched, though I couldn't see the drone this time. I wasn't scared, and obviously wasn't churning out enough power to have anyone feel the need to come wake me up, but just because I didn't give myself a heart attack didn't mean I didn't feel totally battered and done in by it all.
And woke missing Ruuel like hell, worse than ever. What is it going to take to stop me feeling this way about him?
At any rate, I had breakfast with Lohn and Mara, since I was supposed to be training with them before they went on rotation. I had to talk Mara out of sending me to medical, but I'm really glad we chatted since with them I find it easier to admit what a wuss I am, and how stressed I'd gotten about not wanting people to see my dreams. I guess it is kind of odd, since it was a private conversation with Lohn and Mara being made into television which had me so upset. Maybe it's all the hugs which makes them easy to talk to.
One thing Lohn said really struck me – that if I can control what I dream about, being able to project my dreams in such intense detail is really an opportunity. I could show him what surfing looked like, for instance. That's a nice idea, changing the drone from an intrusive spy to a handy recording device. The big problem is the presumption that I can manage anything resembling control, given how badly I failed last night.