Touchstone 1 - Stray

could not?”
    Since I was falling asleep, Maze took me back to my rooms after that. He didn’t give me any speeches about staying or going, just told me that if anything even slightly unusual happened I was to send an alert immediately. An alert is a personal panic button, sending a broadcast message to whoever is on security detail. I don’t count Ghost as anything unusual any more, and was very glad she showed up after my nap, sitting on my desk shamelessly begging for attention while I’ve filled up the last of my diary writing this down.
    So today I met a psychic space samurai called Inisar, who did me no favours by making it clear to the Tarens that I’m even more interesting than they suspected, and who may or may not be sent back to kill me. As a result I decided to not be ‘just Cass’ any more, and I know there’ll be times I’m going to regret that so hard, just as I know that the people who are important to me here will have spent some of today discussing strategies for making sure I don’t have reason or opportunity to leave, and finding a balance between me wanting some privacy and their wanting to keep watch on me at all times.
    And after ninja and samurai, I’m wondering if next up will be psychic space pirates.

    Continued in Part Two: “Lab Rat One”

Glossary
    Agowla - The (fictional) high school Cass attended in Sydney.
    Aspro - Aspirin
    Carche Landing - The main airport in Unara.
    Casszilla - Rawr!
    Cruzatch - A dangerous humanoid Ionoth, shadow burning white.
    Ddura - An enormous energy being created by the Lantarens.
    Deep-space - The large portion of the Ena which exists between the ‘memory spaces’. It is white in appearance, and filled with gates which open directly to real-space worlds.
    Deep-space Ionoth - Ionoth which are formed and dwell not in the relatively small Spaces, but instead in Deep-space.
    Diodel - One of the ships KOTIS uses to travel between Tare and Muina.
    Do Not Go Gentle - “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”, a poem by Dylan Thomas.
    Drone - An advanced robot, usually used for scanning and monitoring.
    Ena - A dimension connected to the thoughts, memories, dreams and imagination of living beings.
    Ena manipulation - A psychic talent which can change the substance of the Ena, particularly in stabilising gates between spaces. It can also be used in a limited way to change ‘reality’.
    Escort quest - A mission in an online game involving protection of a non-player character while they travel.
    Fan service - Revealing or provocative shots of characters in anime/manga.
    Fanfic - Fiction based on the stories of others and/or fiction involving a person of whom the writer is a fan.
    First level monitoring - Interface monitoring which triggers an alert if certain conditions are reached (eg. loss of consciousness, heart attack). All residents of Tare are on first level monitoring.
    Gate - A tear or rift between spaces/worlds.
    Gate Sight - A psychic talent which can judge the status of gates between spaces.
    Gate-lock - An enclosure built around a gate from near-space to real-space to prevent Ionoth from passing through.
    Gelzz - A now nearly-extinct cave-dwelling Taren insect noted for its tendency to admit a lingering rotten odour as a defence mechanism.
    Goralath - The name originally given to the ruins where Pandora is later established.
    Gorra - The first island settled on Tare.
    Hasata - A city on Tare.
    HSC - Higher School Certificate. Received when graduating from high school in Australia.
    Ian Thorpe - A famous Australian swimmer.
    In-skin - An immersive interface experience where most of the senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste – are stimulated.
    Interface - An in-body nanite installation used by Tarens as personal computers/the Taren internet.
    Ionoth - Creatures which form in the Ena, usually remnants of the dreams and nightmares of inhabited planets.
    Ista - An honorific for medical doctors.
    Isten - Professor.
    Joden - The Taren equivalent of a minute, though the unit is longer than an Earth minute. One hundred joden equal a kasse.
    Kadara - Naturally-forming massive Ionoth.
    Kalrani - Trainees not yet qualified as Setari.
    Kasse - The Taren equivalent of an hour, spanning approximately two and a half Earth hours.
    Kasse - Two and a half Earth hours.
    Kolar - A hot, arid world settled by Muinan refugees, and advanced technologically by the Tarens.
    Konna - Both the city and the island where the main KOTIS base is located on