Touchstone 1 - Stray

the train. I hadn’t realised that not everyone here is Asian (or looks Asian, whatever: with black hair and golden skin and ‘Asian eyes’ I’m calling them Asian). Maybe one in ten Tarens don’t look particularly Asian. I haven’t seen anyone really black-skinned or any bleached Nordic types, but there’s all shades in between and I’m not the only pinkish, brown-haired girl, so I at least don’t stick out completely.
    Unless we’re less genetically similar than I’ve been told, the dye bottle is popular, especially colours like lime green. Clothes are almost normal, though formal wear for men seems to involve long coats or robes. I was beginning to think everyone on the planet wore tight-tailored uniforms, but that was just the military, of course. Nenna – Sa Lents’ younger daughter – dresses like she’s out of a music video, but I think I’ll save trying to describe Nenna till later. I’m supposed to have gone to bed.
    Saturday, December 29
    The teens here are your forties
    Sa Lents’ daughter Nenna is the Energiser Bunny of talk. Or just the Energiser Bunny generally, since she’s always moving about, dancing in place, dashing back and forth. I like her, but I’m glad I’m not sharing a room with her.
    The Lents have a three-bedroom apartment in an area called Kessine. They’ve been very nice to me so far, though Sa Lents has been off working at some kind of university and his wife, Ketta, is what I think equates to stock market broker, and spends almost all her time in her home office gazing into nothing I can see. Sa Lents handed me over to Nenna for a couple of days so that she could help me adjust before we started in on our interviews again. He knows how much harder it is for me to talk than listen, and Nenna’s really good at explaining everything we do or see, and asking yes and no questions, and bringing some fun to my infant status. And I guess it’s not really worth his time interviewing me until I can string a sentence together.
    Nenna finds it all very exciting having a stray to look after, and devoted herself to showing me how to change the wall decorations and access the way-too-much entertainment and telling me all the things she thinks worth watching and listening to and getting me to try on her clothes. What was that song? “We’d Make Great Pets”. I do feel a little like a new pet, but really Nenna’s just a normal kid and doesn’t mean anything by it.
    One thing I found out right away is that Nenna’s absolutely obsessed with the blacksuits. The Setari. The word means something like ‘experts’ or ‘specialists’, and after two movies, all the poster-hologram-things in Nenna’s room space, and Nenna going on about them constantly, I’ve figured out they’re some kind of psychic soldier. She was really disappointed that I only saw two of them for a couple of minutes.
    The movies are highly useful, though I can’t tell if they’re supposed to be realistic or over-the-top. One was so 3-D I had to look behind me to catch everything going on, but otherwise they’re pretty similar to what you’d get out of Hollywood, which I guess means that culturally it’s not that different here, for all that most of what’s going on plotwise goes over my head. But watching them really helps with my language mountain: I’m picking up the things people say most commonly, and the way people greet each other. Mixing movies and television in with my interface lessons will make this easier, and more interesting.
    Nenna’s at school at the moment. Despite all the lessons you can have over the interface, there’s still mandatory school attendance for sport and practical science classes and other group sessions. Since the city’s not open to the real sun, there’s three shifts each day instead of a formal night and day. Nenna goes to Shift Three school, and attends four out of six days, which gives me a useful break. Nice as it is to have someone who wants to talk to me, it’s also good to have some quiet to think.
    I’m not allowed to go out of the apartment yet, but Sa Lents says that when I’m a little more adjusted, Nenna can take me on a tour.
    Monday, December 31
    This world is not my world
    For every thing I find which is similar to Earth, there’s as many which are different.
    Tare’s not a democracy, for a start, or a monarchy. From what I could tell from my session with Sa Lents, it’s some kind of quasi-meritocracy. To be put in charge of anything you