Touchstone 1 - Stray

since I wouldn’t enjoy mandatory detention. Although they are trying to find all the worlds that the Muinans went to, and so are already trying to find Earth in a way, they didn’t seem to think I should get my hopes up about it. Apparently the Ionoth have been really bad lately and they’re doing a lot more defensive work than exploration.
    Sa Lents is going to be my sponsor. After some more quarantine and testing I get to be integrated into society, and that means a couple of years at least of living with Sa Lents and his family while I learn the language and enough skills to get a job, and he conveniently does a little research project on Earth. He has two daughters – one older and one younger than me – and the older one has just left home.
    They started talking about how long it would take me to learn to use the ‘Kuna’ (a word which also seems to mean ‘spaces’), and we had a really confused discussion for a while until I finally figured out what the injection to the temple was for. I don’t quite understand the whole ‘spaces’ thing, but the nearest I can make out the people on this planet are several steps ahead in terms of computers and networks and virtual environments, and before they could give me this internal dictionary, they had to set up an interface in my head.
    I’m a cyborg! The Tarens use nanite technology and my head has been exploding the last few days while a computer built itself in my brain. And I’m not hallucinating the dot in the middle of the room or the floating words. That’s just the default display of the computer in my head. Before I get sent off with Sa Lents I have to pass basic interfacing-with-virtual-environments training. And currently I have no access rights to anything, so all I can see is a dot.
    I just reread all this big long entry and it sounds nothing like the explanation they gave me, which involved showing me pictures obviously meant for children and saying in their language: “Muina. Home. Planet. Home. Lantar. People.” And me sitting there looking puzzled, as my injected language tool triggered concept recognition, not words. I’m not sure how much of what I’ve written down matches what they were trying to tell me. The pictures were more helpful than what they were saying.
    It was only when I was taken back to my room and had had a shower that I started crying. Because being rescued and going home are worlds apart. And, weird as this sounds, because I’m not a surprise to them.
    Friday, December 21
    Say Ah
    Another medical exam to start my day – if it is the start. Since it never gets dark outside and the lights don’t go out in my room, I’m having a lot of trouble keeping track of time. My meals are all very similar – something fruity, vegetable sticks, either bread or processed fishy stuff – so all I have to go on is when they choose to talk to me, and a watch which tells time for a totally different planet.
    Being able to ask questions, no matter how slowly, really makes a difference to the poking and prodding sessions. The doctor is a pretty nice lady. She even apologised for not giving me painkillers, but apparently it can cause problems with the way the interface builds itself.
    We had a long, if infantile, chat about the interface, which has left me feeling very dubious. I kept picturing my brain being shredded by little wires, until it dribbles out my nose, but from the helpful illustrations Ista Tremmar showed me, the nanites are so small they build a mesh which coats the insides of veins. Computerised cholesterol? Ista Tremmar said that almost all strays have a naturally strong affinity for the Ena, and for some reason this affects the amount of body ‘real estate’ the interface grows to cover, which confused me again because I don’t understand what the Ena is or its connection with nanites.
    Having a large interface may or may not be a good thing, but it sounds like knowing how to use it is what matters. These people spend all their time permanently wired into a really complex virtual world, and they start living there just after they figure out the whole walking thing.
    Kuna seems to translate to ‘virtual space’, maybe. I desperately need a real dictionary, rather than these vague feelings that what they’re saying matches something I know about. I still can’t quite decide what they mean by the Ena. It could be some kind of other dimension? Or an evil spirit world? The fact that it’s involved in travelling