“It'll need to run a brain scan and calibration before you can use it,” Dax explained as he worked, “so it can get everything properly customized for you. That doesn't take long.” Sure enough, after a minute or so he patted her arm. “Okay, it's ready. Are you?”
Lana felt a queasy sensation in her gut, half excited, half nervous. It was a bit like how she'd felt when she'd woken up in the middle of the pirate attack. “I think so.”
“Great. I'll send you in and then join you as quick as I can.” But he hesitated in activating the full immersion, giving her a serious look. “Before you go in, though, I think I should prepare you a bit for what you'll experience. I don't get much time off to do dives, but I remember my first one was a bit . . . overwhelming.”
She felt a flash of concern. Why was he warning her about something he'd promised would relax her? “Is this going to be dangerous?”
“Dangerous? No, at least not unless you go way outside normal operating parameters, which I have no intention of doing.” Dax patted the equipment almost affectionately. “It's just that full immersion will give you an experience so perfect you'll be unable to distinguish it from reality. Some people even make it more real, by amping up the sensory input of everything they experience, although that's not recommended.”
She frowned, dismissing most of what he'd said to focus on the important bit. “If it's just like reality, why are you warning me?”
He paused, considering his words. “Because reality on this ship is . . . familiar. Not much in the way of loud noises, bright lights, or unexpected sights. Alternatively, I've heard Midpoint described as noisy, filthy, smelly, and chaotic, and can imagine when you first arrived there it felt overwhelming.”
Lana held back a shudder as she nodded; he had no idea. Then she felt a bit sad because she realized that was literally true.
“Midpoint was unpleasantly real,” Dax continued. “I plan to show you something far more enjoyable, but you may still find it intense at first. And since you'll be going from lying on this table to being in the midst of that experience, it may be even more jarring at first.”
“My life's been nothing but new, often jarring things since I woke up on this ship,” she said dryly. “Like when warning klaxons in the middle of the night from an approaching nuke woke me up into a nightmare.”
The young man looked momentarily chagrined. “I suppose you have some idea of what to expect, then.” He saw her expression and continued hastily. “But in a good way this time.”
Lana nodded, and Dax stepped back and fiddled with a control panel. And just that suddenly she was standing instead of lying down, feet planted on a firm yet somehow soft surface with intense warm light assaulting her eyes.
She gasped and shut them tight, but her other senses were also being bombarded, although not unpleasantly so: the strong smell of something fresh and cool and green, the sigh of a soft warm breeze rustling her hair and caressing her skin, the light bathing her skin warming her as well. The sounds of distant living things and a sound like rushing water. Something soft and tickly brushing her ankles in the narrow space between her uniform cuffs and shoes.
These senses felt familiar, not because she remembered them but because she recognized what they were, the same way she recognized people's ages and the names of things she'd known. She could hear squirrels chittering and insects droning, and the wind sighing through grass and trees. Sunlight kissing her skin, the smell of grass and the feel of it tickling her ankles.
It was incredible to recognize everything she was feeling, and yet at the same time feel like she was experiencing it all for the first time. She wanted to hug the warm sunlight, kiss the gentle breeze, roll around in the soft grass and breathe deep of its green scent.
It was so wondrous that she delayed opening her eyes, spending over a minute just enjoying her other senses. She was so deeply immersed in the new sensations that she jumped slightly when a familiar voice spoke from only a few feet away.
“Homeworld.”
Lana opened her eyes to find herself standing next to Dax in a large forest clearing, rich green grass and wildflowers spreading away in a carpet that ended in airy trees with widely spaced white trunks and pale green crowns. The sky was blue and the sun warm and yellow-white overhead, and she saw squirrels racing up trunks off in the trees, deer browsing on the other side of the meadow, and bees buzzing from flower to flower.
It also turned out she had heard water, not just the deceptively water-like sound of the wind in the trees and grass. A brook babbled across the clearing nearby, cut deep into the soft rich earth, winding its way eventually out of sight into the airy woods. One of the deer wandered over to duck its head and drink from it, and a few others lazily followed; Lana watched their graceful movements with quiet delight.
“Homeworld, as in the place the Deconstructionist Movement destroyed a hundred years ago?” she asked, looking around in wonder.
“As in the cradle of humanity, recreated by those determined never to forget what it used to be.” He hesitated. “Aside from a bit of creative license to make it more perfect than it probably ever was in real life, even tens of thousands of years ago when humanity first walked its surface.”
The young man knelt to pick a delicate pink blossom, offering it to her. “But even as an idealized copy, something deep within us recognizes this place as the planet that gave us birth. Where we specifically
