It almost feels to Ximena as if he were directing his words at his fellow GIA students, the way he glimpses in their general direction. But no, he was just pulling his hair off his face.
“If you must only learn one thing in this seminar,” Miyagi speaks slower and with greater emphasis, “let it be this, people: Edda was only human, nothing more, living her regular colonial life at the edge of the Hanseatic Imperium a hundred years ago. She was, like we all are—yes, me included, I grudgingly confess—just a limited and flawed mensa of her time.”
Ximena scoffs, and recites to herself, “A bullet is just a piece of metal, until it kills an emperor.”
“Very poetic!” The redheaded Neanderthal sitting to her right is smiling at her with appreciation. Ximena blushes at the unsolicited attention and keeps her eyes firmly locked on the stage below.
“And yet,” Miyagi continues, “there was undeniably something extraordinary about this girl. What she brought upon the worlds is not the product of the common man.”
“She had the Walking talent of a goddess!” the Neanderthal next to Ximena whispers. She involuntarily turns her head to him, and meets his large, blue eyes. His prominent Neanderthal brow ridge enhances the intensity of his gaze to an almost hypnotic level. His white smile broadens. “Name’s Mark,” he says, extending his hand.
Ximena blushes intensely. She is not used to masculine attention, and most definitely not Neanderthal. Luckily her manners go on autopilot and she shakes his hand blandly. First time she touches a Neanderthal, she thinks with apprehension. No, second! There was also Ank before. The Global Program is churning surprises faster than her provincial mind can cope with.
“Didn’t catch your name.” Mark’s eyes pierce hers.
“Uh, Ximena.”
“Ximena,” Mark pronounces slowly, like he is savoring it. “Beautiful name. And exotic.”
She cannot blush further. Her dark skin is hopefully hiding it, but she doubts it; dream permascapes are treasonous that way. She mutters something resembling a non-committal word of thanks and hastily turns her eyes back to Professor Miyagi.
He is pacing in silence along the rim of the stage, leisurely, squinting at the sun that bathes the amphitheater. Ximena can even feel its balmy warmth on her face. Miyagi approaches Ank, who is sitting with her stunning female elegance next to a wudai machine in the shape of a small round table. From her bench, Ximena can see the actual wudai in the device: green tendrils of ivy-like vegetation slowly withering around and inside copper-colored metallic components. Wudai are, at their core, highly psychically-reactive creatures, not quite plants, nor animals, but something else entirely—the true wonder at the heart of the dreamtech revolution.
“Is Bob ready?” Miyagi asks, pointing at the machine.
Ank nods. Ximena knows that that machine is just the dream avatar of a real machine, with real wudai, running in some goahforsaken data center in the wake.
“Great, then let’s watch Edda in action, shall we? Determined to solve once and for all the largest mystery humankind has ever faced. Okay then…” Miyagi turns slowly to the wudai machine, almost hesitantly, “Bob, can you, er, turn on?”
“Acknowledged,” the machine—Bob—replies with a distinctively artificial female voice that Ximena hears directly inside her mind. “Do state archive.”
“Uh,” he speaks slower and louder, “yes, er, please grab the latest draft of Rise and Fall of the Juf?”
“Acknowledged. Do state index of reproduction.”
“Index of…?” Miyagi turns to Ank with a frown of frustration. “What—?”
“Let me,” Ank says with a firm shake of her head. “Bob, load tag 6th December 2399.”
“Acknowledged. Do state perimeter of rendition.”
Ank speaks like she is taking notes on a recorder. “Expand rendition to permascape globalprog dot historydep dot lundev dot edu.”
Bob vibrates for a few moments. “Detected one hundred twenty minds in one million cubic feet of permascape. Do confirm.”
“Confirmed,” Ank says. “Render from index zero, camera tag Edda at Joyousday House, Lunteren.”
“Acknowledged. Rendition begins at index zero.”
As the machine speaks, the spring sun and blue sky over the amphitheater vanish in an instant, surrounding the dumbfounded students in humid darkness. Many gasp at the sudden drop of temperature and Ximena shrinks into herself with an involuntary shudder.
“Oh, sorry, let me…” Ank says, and she must do something in the darkness, because the cold detaches at once from Ximena’s mind. Oh, the relief. The cool winter air is still there, around her, thick and humid on her senses, but not uncomfortable now, like her skin is watching instead of feeling. Other students sigh as well.
“Bob, increase natural light,” Ank says. “Point one lux.”
“Acknowledged.”
Ximena’s eyes—still trying to adapt to the darkness—are grateful for the extra radiance. The contour of the students sitting nearby appear like ghosts. She turns to see Mark’s white smile as he stares intently at something above the stage of the amphitheater. She follows his gaze. Yes, there, she can see it as well.
A house floating in the air.
An elongated one-story house, surrounded by a carefully tended garden—flowers and lawn barely hinted at in the winter night. It is raining too, and as Ximena engages her senses, she begins to feel the drops of freezing water on her head and arms in full immersive experience—blissfully detached from her mind. The ultrarealistic impact of dream sensorials never fails to amaze her, and the quality of this one is… wow! She knows she is sitting on the amphitheater bench—she can see Mark’s comforting shape beside her—and yet she feels like she is right there in that garden, silently approaching the back of the house, sneaking behind a bush and getting her sandaled feet wet on the soaked grass.
Her mind reacts to that. She is not wearing sandals!
“Meet Edda van Dolah, people.” Miyagi’s voice unexpectedly rises from under the floating scene. And it’s as if his voice reveals the perspective Ximena was becoming lost in. Her mind snaps back into place as she realizes that it is not herself who is tiptoeing in the darkness along the geometric reliefs carved across the house walls. Dreamsensos engage you like that—psych-links,
