SONATAUR

1 QUE THINKS THE curving horizon of the desert is empty and that she is alone. She burrows both hands deeper into the fine white sand and feels the edge of what she believes is a bowl with a curious polished stone yet bone-like surface texture. As it emerges from its dry grave with much labour and thankfulness for the cool predawn air, Que is aghast to realise her small hands are planted in the oversized eyeholes of a giant white face, a skull more than twice the size of her own head. Though she had never glimpsed what lay beneath human flesh during ritual cremations, she instinctively knew it was humanoid and its size astonished her. Amazed by its lightness, she stood it upright and then sat cross-legged in front of it, inspecting and comparing the contours of its eyebrow ridges and cheekbones to her own. A seed carried by the wind distracted her as it passed. As she turned to try and catch it, she saw a trail of smoke from her tribes camp beyond a nearby rise dissolving into the sky behind her; daylight was coming. She turned back to the skull and started to recreate the space from where it came. As she was about to bury it, she realised the sun was only seconds from breaching the horizon. Hesitantly glancing the thin line of smoke behind her, she stood up, effortlessly hoisted the skull above her head and turned to face the sunrise. Impulsively, she lowered it over her head until she could see the sun rising from within.

~ Gratefully emerging from a reef of stone into the glaring sun, Poltauramy finds himself on a rocky rise in dry desert woodland. The navigation devices inlayed in the fabric of his light bending noskin struggle to recalibrate as he begins to wander anxiously, trying to sense his machine for flight. Dusted with red dirt, Que is sitting alone in the shade of a desert Bloodwood. It is now noon and she has been contemplating the movement of shadows across the land since first light.

THE TEKAH AHN

1

VA, Cahaya Dari Jiva. Aes Dana, Leylines. Solar Fields, Dust.

2 GREY LINES MARK the gaps between the volatile sections of luminescent white flooring passing under young Poltauramy IVs bare feet. In the silence, he taps his fingers against his thumb to the rhythm of their passing. In this high security area the entire corridor is capable of dismantling in an instant, containing any undesirable within a cube or directing them to wherever the Overman chooses. Young Poltauramy IV grew within these walls and has been navigating its halls all his life. Once he managed to escape his domicile and ran naked from his au pair down a series of its winding pathways singing twinkle, twinkle little star. Fiala had found him gazing at a replica of James Jeans Host at the edge of the public sector of Bunurong. Now, eight organic human years old, he still never appears on the systems security register as a threat and so frequently goes walkabout, passing through walls into rooms where he pleases. Rounding a gentle curve in the long white corridor, a green speck catches young Poltauramys eye. He pauses at what he knows to be an old installation his Mother has sponsored, a shallow glass window encasing a large amount of soil. In the top right corner, young Poltauramy notices something has sprouted from the soil. He admires the brilliant green of its tiny twin leaves. Lifting and balancing on the toes of one foot, he raises the other so as to gently place it, heel first, flat against the pane and imagine the soil now underfoot.

~ The voltage of a neuron reaches critical level. It fires an electrical signal to another cell, that cell repeats the process. Many neurons fire at the same time. Considering those bearing against glass containments, Nelesia measures the wave thus caused. Set against a glowing white background hover lines of bleeding, blurring colour, the stains of organic inks, fragments of flora, leaves, flowers, feathers, fur, sand and soils, roots and limbs of plants, organs of insects, legs, fangs, shells and wings. Nelesia, a vision of perfect health with porcelain skin, long dark blue hair and glassy green eyes is sitting upright on a bed, gazing idly into empty
2

The Members of Elthred In order of: LoR ReR Unida Ida Idael Ida-el-nor Ideity

THE ELTHRED

H.U.V.A. Network, Dissolving Time. Carbon Based Lifeforms, Comsat.

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31

SHES BEEN GONE a while now, mentions Finlee concernedly. Koyan, from his sitting place on a large stone, pushes more coals into the fireplace with his barefoot. How long? Finlee considers the fingers on his scarred hand. Thirty-six days. He lays two fresh fish onto the fire, Should we send someone to look for her? We need not. If she doesnt return, if we never see her again, how will we know whether or not she has been returned to her family? Koyan thumbs the blunt edge of a water patterned Damascus steel amulet. He gazes beyond the fireplace into the rayless, lush, green rainforest that surrounds their village, now obsidian. ! Realising I was floating again I willed myself back onto my mat and reached across to pull the blanket tighter, I felt coarse unfamiliar fabric. Disorientated, I woke in the middle of the night inside a small wooden hut not tall enough for me to stand in. Confused, I focused on faint firelight that was reflecting off a round piece of polished metal by my feet to reveal a stone bowl of warm fragrant water beside me. Floating on the water was a single white flower and a leaf holding a delicate iron pin. I shuffled to the doorway of hanging bark threads and cautiously stood up outside. It was nighttime. I was on a wooden platform in the trees just over two meters from the ground and the forest was quiet, except for the strange silent hum that humans create where theyve colonised in large numbers. I realised then that I was in a village with more people than before. I gently padded barefoot across a plankway towards the soft light and crackling sounds of a fireplace somewhere below. I looked down to see a thin man with fair shoulder length hair sharpening a long fishing spear while sitting opposite a very old man with long silver hair. It was whom I would come to know as being Finlee the fisherman and Koyan the villages most respected elder. Koyan looked up into the darkness where I was standing. I thought he couldnt see me but then realised my eyes might be

THE AMACITES
3

Solar Fields, Jupiter Sessions.

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45

MY AMUSEMENT OVER the vintage analogue and electronic instruments dissipated as I left the pilot with two Aleksi in the cockpit of the shuttle. Stumbling heavily through the passageway towards the cargo bay, I looked for the source of the trouble. Geez, I thought, this contraptions nothing more than a flying box. Being here sure improved my appreciation for Skrays. As I made my way between the pipes that had been custom installed for the storage and dispatch of geoprobes, a thin strip of purple caught my eye. Something was hanging from the lip of the closed hatch at the other end of the bay. I made my way over and pulled on what appeared to be a short length of ribbon, it was jammed in the closed hatchway. While I was busy dismissing how the purple strip of cloth came to be there and thinking how implausible it was that it should mess with our instruments, I felt someone behind me. I turned to realise the two Aleksi were striding towards me, but before they could reach me the hatch had opened behind me and the sudden wind that forcefully gusted into the cargo bay grabbed me and tore me backwards. I found myself in white space, unable to see anything but soft white slowly turning blue. A second later, it disappeared and I was faced with an expansive sea of green broken by a winding silver snake. I could feel pressure on the front of my body and details began jumping out at me. I seemed to be moving towards this strange wall, or was it moving towards me? Images of my Mothers work flashed before my eyes. This was no wall, this was an organic landscape and I was falling towards it. I began turning and rotating in the air, I found I could direct myself across ways. Falling was uniquely different to the weightlessness of zero gravity. I found myself feeling as if I were sliding along invisible curves through space. And then Ronan abruptly woke me. ~

POLTAURAMY JR.
MAR POLTAURAMY LAINE PALAMEDES IV HEIR TO SOVEREIGN GUARDIANSHIP OF NETECH & ELIGIBLE FOR IDEITY AT 18 NATURAL YEARS OF AGE

Eerily lit hallways, translucent lifts, zero gravity zones, maximum-security chambers and frigid air comprised the purpose built labyrinth that was his
4

Carbon Based Lifeforms, Abiogenesis. Solar Fields, Reflective Frequencies.

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61

SUNNI STANDS FASCINATED by the waters edge, falling ash dissolving on her skin and wafting gently around her; she senses someone behind her. Lenshu. I thought you were gone, said Sunni. We were waiting on Maine. Sunni frowns as she remembers her clash with Maine at the cliff, where she had fallen and he had walked away. She squeezes more water from the hem of her dress. Sunni-Que said Lenshu. Sonique. Sonique Sonique smiles. Lenshu! calls Finlees urgent voice from the Long Hut behind them, Maine is standing beside him. Hurry up! Lenshu turns and waves to Finlee, one second! before looking back to Sonique. Will you be here when I get back? asks Lenshu. Sonique is distracted from Lenshus probing expression by the dark cloud in the sky beside him. Ash dusts her nose and cheeks as it does Lenshus hair. He brushes his fringe and it leaves grey streaks. Sonique wonders what age he will be when he dies. The realisation of their youth in the face of an unknown future for all their people awes and saddens her. Able to picture the Amacites going about their daily activities, sleeping, eating and dancing, she felt certain that some imperative event would occur, if she would only hold that thought of them living beyong the now. In intensely trying to materialise her vision, she felt an inexpressible force affect pressure in her body and water began to seep from her eyes. From a distance, Aryamo watches Sonique and Lenshu. She points them out to Finlee who turns to hug Yolanda. He whispers something into her ear, Yolanda lifts Finlees hand and gently bites it. Aryamo averts her eyes and notices Maine rolling a stray dread between his fingers, she wonders what hes thinking about and who.

ARYAMO
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75

MY ORANA BIRTHED Que in the Pindan River. Her song had been heard throughout the valley and Que had a short voyage into the air she needed. We had deserted our separate tribes who had been forced to live together with a third in a squalid village of stones made by the ones who brought the poison that makes our children forget who they are. I dont know why the people of stone came to us. I had been told by my great-grandfather that we had moved here to get away from them a long time ago. But here they now came to us with offerings. The people of stone took special liking to our Larawan Tao and offered us food and dwellings, but the dwellings are unmovable and the easy food ravages our bodies. Some parents have outlived their children, who seem to be dying younger ever younger. Our tribes no longer wander, tied as they are to the poison and the easy food. The boys do not learn how to hunt, they scheme how to steal and the girls do not gather, create or nurture, they too steal and dismantle what they will carelessly; all children when taught the ways of the people of stone walk a path of forgetting. I found a broken calendar when I was younger but I was not able to read or restore it. No one listens to the seasons anymore, to the timing of the earth. The needs we took for free with such knowledge, the people of stone tell us we must now labour to get. There is a new and long chain to provide for us, and it binds us. Orana was Illiocan and the first time I saw her she had been holding up a kernel to the light. She had looked beyond it, saw me and smiled. One day when I was watching her make a larawan about the leaf ant water crossing with children from all the tribes Ishisa planted a seed in my heart and it grew for Orana. One day the people of stone covered this special larawan so none may go there and the story soon forgotten. They only like our larawan when they can carry them away to their others in far-away places. Yet they do not know how to read them. I had found Orana crying in front of her larawan covered with the same blank layer of ochre that all the empty dwellings

THARWA & ORANA

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91

THEY OFTEN CHOSE what to conquer based on the knowledge of their own weakness, such as their need for food, daily. However, hunger alone did not beget their conquest of nature and one another. They had developed a parallel system of value that many individuals capitalised on and in doing so disturbed the tentative balance between the intrinsic value of matter and might. They replaced their muscle power with the sun power locked into the earth. They drew from the land believing they were bettering their lives, and so it appeared, on the surface. Their fiscal value system simultaneously fostered discord among individuals and the monolith individuals thus created, corporations; entrepreneurs made of entrepreneurs upon entrepreneurs. There came the faceless masses that ignorantly wreaked havoc and atrocity without retribution, continuing to abuse their knowledge of weakness in ever more nave and devious ways. They were self-replicating like primordial bacteria or our nanoids; cultured, educated, programmed to repeat the will of their writers. The system was ingenious and its fabric far reaching. National grids monopolised the supply of most actual and perceived necessitiesdictated a certain style and standard of livingimpressioned fateful dreams on those who no longer knew how to fashion their own. A resistance to the application of anthrosophical thinking predetermined the collapse of that culture which pitted one against another. It inevitably failed to deliver on many fronts and through threads of compassion woven by global communication in later ages, many people began to realise the true nature and consequence of their bondage. The increasing populations were competing for decreasing finite resources such as productive, fertile soil. Not because there wasnt enough, but because what did exist was mismanaged and monopolised. There was enough for every ones need, but not every ones greed. Industrial and petrochemical revolutions tipped the balance of power to noone. The immeasurable gains capital cells acquired fell away abruptly as varieties of living organisms that had existed for thousands and millions of years were annihilated. As they tried to cover their mistakes their chemicals wove their way deeper into the peoples lives, into the land, air and illusionary symbols of comfort, progress and success the people were
6

POLTAURAMY
MAR POLTAURAMY PALAMEDES EALAHAD III IDEITY OF ELTHRED AND SOVEREIGN GUARDIAN OF NETECH

Muse, Isolated System

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97

PRUSSIAS BRA MOULDED comfortably over the contours of her chest as the memory fibres warmed to her skin and she slipped on her favourite dress. It wasnt like Ronan to call meetings at such short notice; perhaps he had something else to say. Checking herself in the mirror she leaned closer to scrutinize the corners of her eyes, they were still smooth. With a blink, she changed her hair colour from the purple she preferred, to the blue that was more suitable for a woman of her standing. ~ Prussia watched the waiter, Grey, as he talked to an elegantly structured blonde with skin drawings of tarragon leaves crawling across her arms. Prussia couldnt be sure if she noticed a hydra too before Grey had covered it with his hand. Between the tarragon, a single fingerless long glove and tilted hat on her messy haired head, Prussia guessed she might be a virtual artist. It made her wonder what Grey, in his plain uniform might do outside of succo (succurro avum). Maybe he had high programming or manufacturing skills, worked in climate control, repair or maintenance. Prussia supposed this might make him more drawn to a woman who created and marketed virtual sites for hungry minds. Prussia checks the time on the underside of her wrist; D1224. ~ Its a Selardor Festival on the streets of Netech and everywhere people are showcasing their own virtual and temporal creations. While scouting innovators, Members of Elthred mingle throughout the community. On her way to the Festival, Prussia is sitting inside a personal transit pod absorbed in reviewing some notes in her journal. Her scrolling is interrupted by the disgruntled moans of her escort as he bangs the console with his fist. Prussia looks up and raises her eyebrows as the scenery in the windows changes from hovering along a winding ocean coast to that of a fly inspecting garbage in a deserted back alley from the 21st century. Hacktivists? asks Prussia. No, kids. Im sure its something to do with this new version of dashcam,

MIN PRUSSIA CATAR

IDA-EL FOR EXPLORATION AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

102

103

YOUNG RONANS MOTHER watches as the last of the red wine spilled onto the floor and across the wall absorbs and vanishes into its hard permeable fabric, to be redistributed elsewhere. Where does it go? puzzled young Ronan in a meek voice. Back to the start. Wheres the start? mumbles Ronan. Sheeba looks despondent, she picks up the empty wine glass and moves toward a bench with a ruby bottle sitting on it. Would you like to make something for your us tonight? Perhaps that one you call beetroot salad? Young Ronan is momentarily confused by the change of subject, but promptly jumps up from the couch. No, I know what we can do! It came to me when I was working with Loki on his new game. When his characters co-op they can share the food they find in the forests and caves. Can I show you Lokis game? I want you and Dad to choose an area each and Ill make up something from what I can find in those places! Young Ronan dashes off into his room to retrieve his play cube. Sheeba smiles, calling after him, Thats a great idea. I found another food shape chart with a converter today, we should make use of it. Ronan beams as he runs back into the room and flicks the corner of his play cube. The room is instantly filled with the overlay of a tropical mangrove forest. Well start here, sang young Ronan as he navigated towards a STORE symbol beside a river on his HUD. ~ While Ronans distracted by the shiny black and white shoes of the lecturer at the front of the crowded open-lecture hall, a young lady with braided slick blue hair enters very late and seats herself beside him. She turns on her journal after placing her own small eDos cell into the glassy desktop to download what she has missed. Ronan can see the name Prussia carved across its surface in neat tiny lettering. While she focuses her attention to the front of the amphitheatre and leans slightly forward, Ronan sneaks a surreptitious look sideways at the angle of her nose, darkness of her lashes, a loose strand of hair slipping from behind her ear and the curve of her exposed neck. As if sensing his gaze, she glances at him without meeting his eyes and leans backwards. Ronan looks

MON RONAN AVSHALOM

CARDINAL EXECUTOR OF ELTHRED

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111

GREY AND ALYSIA

GREY IS MUNCHING on raw hydro-greens, fresh from the Emerald Aquaponic Centre. Moving around Greys bowl of food, Alysia gently taps and drags a finger across the nearest edge of the table in front of the gelatinous like couch they are lying on. After scrolling past the daily maze of local events they are now surrounded by a holofield of the Members of Elthred speaking in Assembly with Poltauramys chair as empty as the raised Boarstone behind them. A separate Topics Pending multiple-choice box appears with a day counter to their side. Can I check the cricket? asks Grey. A reduced holofield of footballers, standing in a circle on the green ground of a packed stadium while observing a moment of silence, flickers by. Alysia moves to select an on-field view of the Reynard Test Series. By thought, Grey activates his own cursor and moves it across another screen. He takes to probing the stats and combing through recent highlights. This rivalry stuff reminds me, says Alysia, of these birds I saw once that built beautiful nests to attract a mate. They would collect blue objects and carefully place them in a circle around this elegantly curved central structure made of swept grass. Hows thisone of the birds snuck off to his rivals nest and was stealing some of his blue ornaments while he was gone. Grey smiles. But wait for it, continues Alysia, while he was stealing his neighbours ornaments that neighbour was back at his house in the process of successfully decimating it! Alysia falls into Greys arms as he huffs in amusement. As the cricket plays, a small, but hardly inconspicuous advertisement runs in one corner for the Reynard Foundation Memory Donor Register. As clips of 20th century violence play in the background, an attractive and concerned looking blonde lady addresses viewers with, Imagine being able to recover your loved one from a post-traumatic stress disorder. Since the crash of the Noriko network the Reynard Foundations MD Register has improved the quality of life for over 4,500 PTSD sufferers. Today, even though retrievable information can be stored on atoms in spbinary codes, memories still cannot be synthetically created for humans. Memories can only be removed or replaced with organically occurring ones that have
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Cell, Under Your Mind. Carbon Based Lifeforms, Hydroponic Garden.

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123

RAINTREES SURFACE IS dark, the sun is on the other side. Leed watches over Young Poltauramy standing with his hands pressed against the glass. Can they see us? Leed leans down beside him, noting his Fathers features cast in the young boys red-brown eyes and dark hair, before looking to the vast, nightshrouded planet in the distance. Long ago, when we first came here, it was discovered how to use certain properties of dark matter. Dorphin Isberg and Koyan Tagailog were responsible for creating the field around us that doesnt allow our light or energy to escape. It limits what type of energy comes in or goes out and keeps us hidden from anyone who might wish to detect us, find us. Like them? Are they dangerous? asked Young Poltauramy, meaning the people on Raintree. No more than ourselves, replies Leed, standing and checking on Poltauramy finishing an amiable conversation with Goshe. Were not dangerous are we? Leed makes eye contact with the two Aleksi behind Poltauramy and Ronan, informing them to hold their positions. Come, your Father has finished. What is it made of? Raintree? Thekeeping us in the dark thingy. The dark wall. The Bergislog Field, I dont knowparticles we cant detect, clusters of contained black holes, dead stars, dusttheres lots of theories. The dust of sleeping stars? wondered Young Poltauramy. Leed hesitates, Come now, walk with me. ~ Leed takes a seat beside Mar Poltauramy at Rechk Point. Before them Raintree glows in the distance, behind them a group of children huddle beside a wall with faded drawings including a replica of Ghostpatrols green Peace figure. They laugh loudly amongst themselves. Tauramy is home with Nelesia. I dropped off the greens you ordered for them, said Leed. Thank you, said Poltauramy sincerely.

LEED
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147

IN A TRANCE, I built a platform not far off the ground in a beautiful tree. After digging Aryamo out of the frozen river of ash that had flooded the landscape, I placed her on it and covered her over with a weaving fixed with the leaves of as many different types of plants as I could find. I made four mounds of dirt on the ground around the tree and a hanging batic made from things gathered in each mounds direction. I left her guarded by a weaver and her dreamnet, made peace and departed. I decided to follow the land flood in the direction from where it came, hoping it would lead me back towards the Amacite Village. Burying Aryamo respectfully had made it easier for me to deal with the belief that everyone in our tribe had perished. I thought back to the silhouettes of Barbuak and Jacklyn with Chriftys children and wondered why I hadnt seen them, they had looked to be in a safer position, higher than us during the flood. I wondered why they hadnt thought to climb on the roof of the hut. I walked through another moonlit night, following the pale exposed ground until I grew tired and nestled into some tree branches on the ground sleep. Early in the morning I was woken by ants crawling over my skin, I shook them off as I looked around and realised I wasnt where Id thought I would be. I hadnt followed the flow directly and was in another area away from where the Amacite village had been. Slightly unnerved I resolved to continue walking in the direction of the sunrise but didnt see anything I recognised that day, if only I had spent more time looking up. That night I looked up at the stars but could only imitate what directions I knew and could not tell where I was in relation to where I wanted to be. I slept unsoundly and set out the next day feeling lost. After a few hours I noticed signs of peoples presence and found a footpath worn into the bush. I decided to follow the path in the hope I might find another village. The path I followed took me over several hills and through one patch of quiet forest where the trees grew in rows and the ground was blanketed with the same dead leaves that were shaped like hairpins. When it looked as though no other plants could grow through the blanket of hairpins, I found
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SUNNI-QUE

Aes Dana, Perimeters.

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153

PRAHLA

10 PRAHLA WATCHES GROUPS of people on the opposite bank. It is a clear and windless day as she sits in the midday sun on carved sandstone with the City of Ashers walls at her back and her feet in the Reinhart River. The men on the opposite bank are felling a fourth tree to make space for an expanding field of various Brassica. One man, face hidden and covered from head to toe with heavy garments, is spraying the soil. He stops cranking the lever in the top of the small barrel hes holding as two men yell at him while others move away. He appears to wait while they finish doing what they are doing. Prahla knows the pungent liquid limits what can grow in the soil. Behind Prahla, moving in and out of the city walls openings, people are milling around and walking up and down the corn, cotton, canola, soy, sugarbeet, zucchini and squash filled terraces descending from the city wall to the riverbank. The food is heavily guarded by several Armin, foot soldiers that patrol and monitor the people of Asher according to the laws established by Mayor Rineharts council. There are people on ladders installing unfamiliar metallic contraptions on the outside wall as they have been throughout the inner city. Prahla realises they look like spring loaded armaments and shudders to think why the City councillors would place unmanned machines, that could be used as weapons, in the centre of the population. Beside her, people are rinsing clothes in the shallow water at the rivers edges and swimming. Nearby, a group of powerfully built gladiators nurse metallic weaponry and sit quietly relaxing while their skin is painted with red lines. One man shifts his ornate grey spear and dislodges red paste from its crushed metal bowl, sending it over the stone edge into the river. An artistan hastily stands and attempts to clutch it from the water, they retrieve a partially dissolved blob and return it to the bowl to dry. Prahla notices a murky black cloud in the water growing downstream of the gladiators. Some children in the river begin to squeal and playfully tease one another as they move away from it. One of the children doesnt want to get out of the water because she has unnaturally thick white patches of hardened skin on the joints of her bodys limbs, making it difficult to move. Prahla feels terrible knowing the disease will spread and that she will probably die early because of her immobility

10

Aes Dana, Perimiters. Aes Dana, Lysistrata.

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AFTER EATING THE animal I felt fuller than I had in many weeks and slept heavily. I dreamed I was walking along the edge of a mountain peak with Perssu, Koyan, Jacklyn, Aryamo, Rechk and Tephio. I felt weightless yet stable and I could see us in traveling cloaks, leaning into the wind. I looked down and my sight flew across a great expanse of swirling liquid like muddy water. It heaved and swelled as far as the eye could see. The sky was grey-brown and cloudy and a great wind whipped at our faces, threatening to strip the clothes from my back and the hair from my head. What is that? an indistinct voice had yelled over the roar of the wind. My voice, unnaturally clear replied, The Hundai. The dream disturbed me, I took a while getting back to sleep after it and looked forward to being in peoples company again though I had grown quite fond of the families of birds, few snakes and mamalya in the area. Upon waking the next day I gathered as many vines as possible and began linking and weaving and double knotting them together. I decided to add more knots to be used as foot holds in case I wanted to climb back up the vine. The day thereafter I stood on the edge of a cliff, surveying the basin, its mountainous boundary receding in the distance and a curious thin whiteblue line, barely discernable on the horizon that I thought may be another desert. I wondered if it was a trick of light as I so often saw in the desert also. As I nursed a section of knotted vines I considered the white rocky landscape behind me, sparsely littered with great old trees. I contemplated the villages that may of existed somewhere in that direction and the devastated Amacite village that had been my home. I had long ago let go of the idea of finding my real parents in their nomad tribe and if Lenshu and Finlee had survived the mudflow when they travelled to Kilmaro, I didnt know which direction they would take upon realising the village was no more. They were in an unknown direction, innumerable days away from where I now stood. I half wished Id stayed at the site of the village for longer, or made more more effort to find my way back. I resolved to visit the sprawling stone village in sight, nourish myself properly and consider returning to search for Lenshu and Finlee depending on what I found there. After ensuring the security of a wrapped portion of food I had tied to myself, I turned and began attaching the vine to trees and

THE CITY OF ASHER

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GARRETT
EDUCATION AND SPECIALISATION IDA

GARRETT STANDS ON a raised step before a small crowd of alumnae in open parkspace, the surrounding glossy floors glow green. Delicate strands of finger-length fibrous green sprout underfoot and begin to sway in a peaceful rhythm, making patterns distinguishable from above. Loosening the dark blue cloak about his shoulders at his neck, Garrett continues to finish his address to the eclectically dressed group of people. Today is an example of how the interdisciplinary and community focused approach we utilise continues to contribute to the mental and emotional wellbeing of our young adults. Todays technologically competent and socially responsible beings are the result of learning experiences that have simultaneously nurtured positive attitudes and respectful relationships. Graduates, we wish to keep you from those who might appeal to your pride, vanity and even moral ambition. As you go boldly forward, remember to: heed the counsel of your elders, theyve made mistakes even if they havent owned up to them yet; be quick to ask for help, everybody harbours a known or unknown desire to do good for another; laud the power of commitment, interest and desire are motivating but they wont get you where commitment can; have faith, wield it with the eyes of reason and use it to leap chasms; create artifacts of love, they are the only ones that endure, your memory into old age will prove this; appreciate the breath of life, the miracle of being; ponder the universe, dont shrink from it; and finally remember to laugh, especially at yourself. Einstein reasoned that, the only reason for time is so that everything doesnt happen at once. So please, continue to cherish your time in the now, your space of being, experience and adventure. As the gathered crowd erupts into light clapping, Garrett steps down, his dark blue cloak billowing gently behind him. A short lady with wild hair steps up to address the crowd, directing them to a nearby venue for a celebratory luncheon. Garrett notices Ataur, makes a beeline for him. Tauramy, sorry to hear about your Mother, consoles Garrett. Ataur nods politely before coolly changing the topic. Nice cloak. I rather fancy it, smiles Garrett. But what brings you out here today? I was expecting the teamwork speech, the one where you explain how our self replicating nanoids maintain the walls around us and use it as an analogy about team dynamicsyou know, unity of purpose and all that.
11

11

Koan, Peleus and Thetis

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NELESIA
DR NELESIA JANE GREENFIELD

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SONIQUE WAKES WITH a start, a vague memory of the edge of the world piercing her mind. A familiar sound causes her to jerk abruptly upright, and her breath catches at the sight of water through bleary eyes. Fleeting memories of the night flood, prompted by the sound of heavy water, force their way to the surface and set her heart racing. Realising shes not moving she calms down and clears her eyes of sand before casting them over the new landscape. The boat she is in rests on a sandbank at low tide. Behind her low cliffs and prehistoric palms relax into the breeze, before her a vast mass of water stretches into the horizon out of sight. She climbs out of the boat, noticing the metal object that has speared the side of the boat as she left the village of stones. Soniques feet sink into the familiar warm grain of the sand and allows it mould around her; comforting in the face of the breathing blue void that confronts her. After pulling the ornate spear from the boats wood and tying it at her waist, she slowly approaches the shore. The sand underfoot sings, each grain passing the message of her contact. Liquid glass licks the surface of pressed sand lined with shells, water plants and the trailing threads of asymmetrical blue balloons. Unsure what to do, Sonique breathes. Water laps at Soniques feet, she monitors the motion of the waves, feels their hypnotic rhythm in the sound of water crashing against water, receding only to play again. Inexplicably, she smiled though she felt like laughing. A wave crests in the distance, unusually far from the shore. Its base darkens, it doesnt sharpen at its peak. It stretches as wide as the length of the Amacites Village. As Sonique instinctively begins to back away from the water, a massive blue smooth stoned object like a giant flat fish slowly rises from the water and begins to skim across the waters surface towards her. Turning and falling Sonique attempts to scramble up the shore. The machination rises out of the water. It continues rising as beads of water slide off its skin, showering Sonique as she lies cowering in awe in the shallows, it slowly passes silently overhead towards the low cliffs and palms behind her. While she watches its dissapear as its underside slowly

14

FINLEE
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Astronaut Ape, Your Personal Sun. Solar Fields, Cruise; Discovery, Altered Second Movements. Cell, Spinning Whale.

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EARLY MORNING LIGHT filtered through the trees, small birds darted quickly from branch to branch. A cockroach scuttled into leaves littering the path under Lenshus feet. Lenshu is weighted by bags of water attached to a long pole carefully balanced across his shoulders, as he pauses to guide a small spider from his hand to a nearby branch, he hears Que running through the forest and turns to see her come to a halt at the rivers edge several metres away. Hi Sunni, he calls. Que looked around slightly startled and returned the greeting. Hi, she smiled, unable to recall his name. Finlee and Koyan werent sure if you were coming back, mentioned Lenshu across the distance. Que shrugged and looked at the water. I said I would, they were so kind taking me in and making me feel welcome. Lenshu rocked on the heel of one foot and glanced towards the village way, unsure whether to approach her. Que looked up as he was looking away, taking in Lenshus features properly for the first time. The facial features on his oval face seemed softer than most Amacites, closer to that of a Tekah Ahn. She watched the way his undreaded raven hair fell across his forehead when he leaned forward to reposition the pole across his shoulders. What are you carrying? Fish, for Jeln. Que throws a puzzled look. Im carrying them in water to keep them alive, replies Lenshu to her puzzled look. Its one of Tephios ideas, Jenls skills are needed. Stone walls? Oh. I better let you go then, that looks heavy. Not really, its okay. They might die. No, Ive got them. Right. Ill catch you later. Que nodded earnestly as Lenshu turned to continue his relaxed stroll along the rivers edge before veering off into the trees out of sight.

16

LENSHU
16

Ott, Skylon.

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ALYSIA

GREAT START! STUCK between a solid cliff and a thatch hut, laughs Alysia as she watches Sonyas avatar on a screen from her own mutcdom. Three homemates lounge in various positions around the room, absorbed in their own games and services. Peiter was wearing his favourite three-piece suit and flatcap while slowly playing a lightboard curved through the air around him, enjoying the music in his head. He is trying to coalesce the sound with a time-lapse video of the lighting changes in Elbrihim during the last two years Assemblys. Cohen, with leopard-spotted flaming hair was monitoring weather levels for the Bunurong sector while also wandering around Solaris and blackhaired Ebony was seated on the floor quietly wrestling with liquid wire to recreate a puma. Five minutes later Alysia comments, Dont pickpocket your mate. My finger slipped, defends Sonya. Awesome, storm-cloak boots, fur gauntlets, arrow mace Alysia bursts out laughing as a naked man appears, huddled on the stone floor of the cave. A sleeping bear comes into sight. You need to start sneaking, suggests Alysia. Sonya wanders beside water gushing along a rocky stream in the forest along a dark stone path, she approaches a wall, honing in on a light patch. Like a moth to the lightits nothing, giggles Alysia. A man appears and begins talking, Sonya continues walking. Hes talking to you! laughs Alysia, And you run off like, whatever there dude. This game is pretty big, land-wise, comments Sonya, compared to Mith. Yeah, biggest one in the gallery, claims Alysia. Are there any portals around? What? Interconnected game port- Yeah, yeah, interrupts Sonya, No, not in this area but there is a mountain where people tend to come through a rouge IGP from that snowboarding gameI forget what its called. They do try and restrict people from wandering too far from those spots but black market traders do tend to get through. I met a surfer in some underground caverns like this once. Alysia chuckles, Was he trying to pawn gear?

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MON GOSHE TAUR

CHIEF COMMANDING IDA-EL OF CHANNELLED FORCES

18 FROM HIS PRIVATE citadel stationed within Solaris, Goshe remote accesses the abandoned mansion a recently deceased brigadier had frequented. At various stages of her life, Joan Thurman had commanded contingents in terraformative engineering, virtual infrastructure protection and the activities of all one hundred Aleksi within Netech on duty at any one time. Using his Rank Rune, shaped like a glass eyelet, Goshe easily negotiates the walls of Solariss programming and scans the haunted mansion for traces of information Min Thurman may of left behind. People had taken to leaving personal information and artefacts in their other lives, as they were places regarded dismissively by the academically consigned. Almost immediately Goshe recognises an irregularity in the wavelengths emitted by a grand piano in the ancient Victorian style sitting room. Noting there are black and white keys missing, Goshes avatar plays a single arpeggiated chord. Silence echoes throughout the house. Goshe attempts to play it again but is affronted by the loud and harsh noise of a small machine that has begun to churn behind him. Spinning around he realises, sitting on an elegantly carved mahogany writing desk, is a glass blender of the late second industrial revolution; churning air. The noise distorts the image of the surroundings. Bizarre, he mutters as the middle phalanx on his index finger prickles. Glad to be free of that grating noise, he switches off the surroundings and his evair repositions him upright to take the service call. Its Ronan. Goshe presses his thumb and index finger together before stretching them apart to allow the projection of a small holographic screen. Ronan appears, he is clearly travelling inside a BE Faculty capsule. Goshe. Mon Avshalom. Instructions? Execute Exilux at precisely D1233 and at D0216Confevoromateria. Site factor? For Exilux? 40 per cent. Repeat confirm for extraction at closer? That wont be necessary. Ill see you at Lasalle shortly.

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Sundial Aeon, Mimesis.

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URIK ADALBRAHT

BARBUAK LEADS THE way through the thicket of the dry forest, Sunnis small blunt Tekahnian axe in hand. Maine walks behind Barbuak wielding a rock sling, improvised using strips of his own clothing after having seen Sunni make one many years ago. Lenshu is walking behind Jaklyn and Chriftys children Luc and Alesandra. When Alesandra stumbles, Lenshu lifts her up onto his back. Were close now, said Barbuak as he hefted his weight over the fallen trunk of an old tree from which new ones were growing, ears open. Over the general chorus of bird song in the forest around them, an alarmed group of birds could suddenly be heard screeching loudly nearby. Noisy miners, noted Barbuak. Jaklyn gasps, Lenshu explains to Luc and Alesandra, That bird, the big black and white one, he was trying to carry the dead one away but they stopped him. Jaklyn points out a fallen bird to Luc and Alesandra that the small noisy miners are now taking turns to swoop at. The miners brush its feathers as they pass, yet it doesnt stir. Thats not a miner, notices Lenshu, speaking of the fallen bird of the same coloured feather. Hes slightly bigger. Are they trying to pick him up? wonders Luc. As the large black and white bird advances, stepping forward on its spindly orange legs, the smaller birds cast down from the branches of nearby trees and drive it away. The birds continue twittering excitably to one another and some stand beside the body on the ground cheeping loudly at the unmoving bird. Theyre trying to wake her up, suggests Alesandra. Theyre protecting him, suggests Luc. Realising they have all stopped walking to watch, Lenshu says, Lets keep moving, as he gently pushes Luc forward. Bah, theyre not protecting him, says Barbuak, rousing himself and continuing to walk off, theyre wanting his feathers for their own Id say. Jaklyn removes Sunnis carry-shade from her back and smacks Barbuak across his shoulders as Alesandra stares, wide-eyed, from atop Lenshus shoulders at the birds boisterously twittering away to one another around the motionless bird. ~

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PRETTY SHIELD TAKES the tears from Niles eyes and flicks the water into the flames of the fire. Warmer? she asks in a whisper. Nile burrows himself into the folds of her clothing, hiding his face from the other people gathered around the camps shared fireplace. Tharwa pats Nile on the back. Ill help you make a new one, offers Tharwa, tomorrow before your Father gets back. Nile, with his face still buried, nods. His Mother squeezes him reassuringly. ~
19

No, use that branch, suggested young Nile as little Que pulled herself higher up into the tree to sit beside him. Once they were both satisfied with their positions in the tree, they quietly enjoyed the view of the heathland from their newfound perch. A shallow freshwater river was sparkling nearby, its bottom lain with smooth stones. Dry grasses littered the sandy bank of the stream on their side and hot red rocky cliffs rose up all around them towards a clear blue sky above. Look, over there, said Que as she pointed towards a lone tortoise inspecting a log under the water as two fish passed one another mid stream. They both smiled. I should catch it! said Nile. No! said Que. Dont hurt him! I wont, I promise Ill put him back. I just want to get a look at him, insisted Nile. Hey! interrupted a close voice, making them both jump. Get out of there please, said Tharwa, speaking quieter than usual. Young Que and Nile hastily clamber back down the tree, half falling onto the ground. Tharwa stands over them, regarding the tree no taller than himself they had climbed. Que and Nile flinched as Tharwas towering figure leaned down and swept them up with his sturdy arms. Without another word, Tharwa carried Que and Nile swiftly up the bank towards a cave behind a tree.

NILE
19

Helios, Every Hair on Your Head

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THE UNDERGROUND AVENUE of crickets, bats, bat shit, stalactites and great stony Oak trees was becoming more crowded with people curiously observing the Greibarians, arms full of books as they hastened from the Banquet Hall to other chambers in the underground metropolis. People looked down from their balconies adorned with ornamental fabrics, out of windows and from atop ladders as more people crowded the path below. Water had begun seeping from the pool they called the Watergate, down the stairwell and into the deep carvings on the floor of the Banquet Hall. The Greibarians were moving the books to another chamber. Discerning Soniques voice as she talked to Tjikko amongst the chorus of excited voices, Rai neared her. Sonique, come with me to the Hall and tell me what you see, asked Rai. They left Tjikkos side and began to wander. Soon they were passing under the stone archway into the great underground cavern of the Banquet Hall. What can you see? asked Rai quietly as people close by threw curious glances. There are people removing the books, said Sonique, though Rai could discern this motion. And some people, continued Sonique, who I think are making a note of what order the books go in, as they are removed. Or maybe they are making sure they go out in the right order The Greibarians, said Rai. Its their calling to preserve our story. What happens if they get it wrong? Wrong? frowned Rai. Wellwho chooses what is recorded? What if something important is missed or lost? Our stories arent preserved in those books alone, assured Rai. And the point of our stories are not to be found in any book. Sonique moves out of the way as some people lift a table from the floor where they had been standing and others begin to place food on it, fresh vegetables. People broke stalks and took leaves, nothing appeared burned. Where does the food come from? asked Sonique, to which several people looked her direction but continued about their way.

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RAI
22

God is an Astronaut, All is violent, all is bright.

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